The Shadowrun Situation

[Fucks]

Only the dumb and stupid take a writing assignment for Shadowrun Missions:

Anyway, yeah. Missions pays a flat rate of $50 for writers, regardless of actual word count (So, if anyone's looking to write adventures and willing to work cheap, talk to me! ). Beyond writing, there's also whatever Layout gets paid, what the developer gets paid, and what the artists gets paid (For Missions, this is usually Cover, plus 3 Interior pieces, plus 2-4 Contact art pieces, plus 1-2 maps). I know as Missions developer, I get the same amount as the writer for every adventure that I get published (So $50 there). Dunno what the eBook line pays offhand.

Layout and Art are both handled by other departments, so not really sure what the costs for those are. I know we pay less per piece than for the main line, though, as I mentioned earlier.

We also give our dedicated proofers Battleshop credit for proofing Missions. That costs us a little as well, and gets factored into the budget somehow.

Anyway, long story short, I have no idea how much it actually costs us to produce a Mission. A few hundred bucks, though, at least. ANd as I pointed out, this is, by far, the cheapest product and the least paying product CGL does. Thus far we've been profitable, but not by a lot. 04-00 is reportedly selling pretty well (And I've been pimping and promoting pretty hard to help that), so hopefully we see a sales increase with 04-00, and that sales stay steady with 04-01 and onward. Then maybe we can start paying a little better (crosses fingers).

@Critias: I would LOVE 2 1/2 cents per word. Like I said, it works out to 1/4 cent per word though, more or less Looks like 04-00 was just under 21K total, buta couple thousand of that is the "Boiler plate" stuff at the beginning and near the end. 04-01 will be a little longer than that.

Most Missions are closer to the 15K mark though, depending on the author and that particular adventure. Story Heavy adventures will be more wordy than action oriented ones.

@sabs: Stat blocks definitely make word count a little less reliable and definable. Especially since depending on what you're working on, they can be quicker (a simple cut n paste) or longer (if you need to do math and calculate out stats and essence and such) than an equivalent sized block of actual text.

Bull

[sabs]

Or the fans who want to get their hands into writing for an RPG.

You get published for $50 turning in an adventure you were going to run for your players anyways.

What's wrong with that.

[A Man In Black]

What's wrong with that.

If you pay a pittance, you get a pauper's work.

[sabs]

Missions are a cute thing, but not that important.

MANY of us build our own missions, worlds, without using 'canned adventure modules'

This has been true since the beginning of RPGS.

So, expecting amazing grace from a Missions is silly. It's a Module, that's going to sell maybe 1/5th as much at best, as a rules book.

[TheFlatline]

Or the fans who want to get their hands into writing for an RPG.

You get published for $50 turning in an adventure you were going to run for your players anyways.

What's wrong with that.

Methinks the work they'll end up squeezing out of you is a lot more than you expect.

I imagine the hourly rate would come out to something that would look like a pittance to someone in a sweat shop in China.

[sabs]

So?

You're obviously not writing Missions for Shadowrun to make a living.

[TheFlatline]

You've obviously never been in a situation where you agreed to do something for a token payment and then it exploded into a major issue that you had to put way more time into than was worth.

At 50 bucks, anything more than, say, 4 hours spent writing the mission is a waste of time. If it balloons up to 20 or so you're really fucked.

Plus, if you walk away at any time, they still own your mission. You're just out 50 bucks and author credit.

[raben-aas]

Or the fans who want to get their hands into writing for an RPG.

You get published for $50 turning in an adventure you were going to run for your players anyways.

What's wrong with that.

That's what I thought. Before actually writing my 1st adventure for publication (not Missions). There is a HUGE difference between your usual 5-10 odd pages of scribbled game notes and writing an intelligable adventure text that tells ANOTHER GM how to run your adventure.

It's still an incentive for fans to see their material published (spokethed the Missions artist) but it's not like "heck, I can use the stuff that is just lying around here".

AAS

[Neurosis]

What's wrong with that.

If you pay a pittance, you get a pauper's work.

Because of course things made by poor people are innately less valuable because poor people are innately less talented?

I get that this is probably just a saying, it's just not one I particularly like.

That's what I thought. Before actually writing my 1st adventure for publication (not Missions). There is a HUGE difference between your usual 5-10 odd pages of scribbled game notes and writing an intelligable adventure text that tells ANOTHER GM how to run your adventure.

Not quite as huge a difference with the way that I take notes. I tend towards the very thorough side, possibly because enough time can elapse between writing down an adventure and running it that I may as well be effectively another GM by the time I return to my own notes.

You've obviously never been in a situation where you agreed to do something for a token payment and then it exploded into a major issue that you had to put way more time into than was worth.

At 50 bucks, anything more than, say, 4 hours spent writing the mission is a waste of time. If it balloons up to 20 or so you're really fucked.

I imagine the hourly rate would come out to something that would look like a pittance to someone in a sweat shop in China.

The job that I worked for all of 2009 was one of these situations. The hourly rate really was sweatshop like. But it was also on the most mind-erasingly boring and incomprehensible topics possible, as opposed to being on Shadowrun, which is something I love.

I think you may be slightly overestimating what writing (short of novels) pays in general. I sold a story (that certainly took more than four hours to write, counting edits) to a magazine for exactly $50 dollars. That magazine published Harry Turtledove the next month, so it's not exactly like it was a fanzine, it was at least semi-pro, and that was their standard rate for fiction.

That last thing, however...

Plus, if you walk away at any time, they still own your mission. You're just out 50 bucks and author credit.

That REALLY sucks. It certainly is an effective incentive to slog it out and give them their fifty dollars worth. : (

[Ancient History]

Missions put out a couple of good writers (John Dunn and Stephen McQuillian had a lot to do with Missions), but overall Missions are bottom of the barrel in terms of quality on any level - and they still have the audacity to charge people for the things.

Of course, I've never quite understood the point of Missions, just like I never quite understood the point of the RPGA. I understand the reasoning behind having a game where anybody can bring their character and sit in on a game without being tremendously over- or under-powered, but the restrictions on the characters - and the format of the Missions campaigns - are just bloody annoying to me. I mean, this is a game where they basically say "All those optional rules in the book? No. You want to play a what? Centaur? Go fuck yourself. Oh, you want to spend your hard-earned Karma and nuyen on that? Go fuck yourself again, only harder." Maybe it's my permissive GM streak, but it goes against my grain.

To me, Missions should have just been about advertising. Buy the books, download the Missions for free. Granted, I know why they started charging - the cost to write, art, edit, and layout a Mission is something like $250 - but to me, that should be a cost of doing business. Or at least if you're going to charge somebody for one of these things, it should be a quality product, which most of them aren't.

And then there are all the things that should have happened (in my opinion), but don't. The Not-A-Contest which never went anywhere. Missions campaigns that reflect or tie into the major storylines or sourcebooks...never happened. Seriously, it should not be difficult to pump out an adventure that uses stuff in War! so that it's available about the time War! hits the streets. That should be a non-issue. It should be automatic. It doesn't happen.

Part of the reason is, I think, the Missions writers and developers are too out of the loop, too engrossed in their own ongoing Missions campaigns. I don't think anybody was willing to interrupt an ongoing Denver Missions arc to do a one-off on Street Magic.

[raben-aas]

I don't get the idea behind Missions.

I get Missions as in "being a quite enjoyable series of ready-made adventures", an I see a huge NEED for that in SR (not necessarily the "series" bit, but the "pre-made adventure" bit). Then again conventions and convention play are not THAT big deal in Germany, so maybe I don't get that whole convention play bit.

So yeah, you can work on a product, love it, and not know what it's about

From my POV it seems that Missions is for some reason NOT seen as pre-made adventures for the general "mass" of SR GMs, but as a tool for a VERY select group of convention GMs. Seeing that publishing something for a select few doesn't make ANY sense from a business POV, I think what Missions REALLY needs is better marketing ad maybe some kind of "re-targeting" towards nw SR fans/gaming n00bs.

In Gemany, te leaing fantasy RPG (the Dark Eye) has a close-to-limitess shitload of ready-to-use adventure books, making it not only the most popular but also the most actually STILL PLAYED RPG. I think SR could profit immensly by focussing more on adventures (with bits that can be used and re-used (via some copy/paste format) in own adventures) and less on "even more background details".

Being a GM with little time on my hands, I could really use more ready-to-use grunts, factions, NPCs, locations, encounters (and tables) -- do NOT need to know what happens in a city I'll never play in (as opposed to "runs that can be played in every city").

[sabs]

Most GM's worth their name rarely use pre-made adventures.

Unless the adventure is something really special and fun.

Temple of Elemental Evil comes to mind.

I've run countless games of ED, an I never used the premade adventures, except as more background info, and I once had an NPC who relayed the events of one of the adventures to the PC's as something he had done.

I find pre-written adventures really unsastifying.

[raben-aas]

On the one hand, I agree.

On the other hand, I find that attitude grotesquely elitist. I wasn't born being the great GM I am now (cough cough). Playing premade adventures helped me a great deal in developing the skills needed for being a GM, and even when I started writing adventures of my own -- heck, even NOW -- I kept/keep plundering adventures for useful bits I can "copy/paste" into my next adventure or quasi-random sideway encounter.

While I enjoy reading a lot of RPG books, I find myself actually USING a rather large amount of snippets from adventure modules, wether they are traps, riddles, a complete encounter, a "dungeon on the wayside" (i.e. for stalling) or any SR equivalent thereof.

When I started playing SR -- and esp. CP2020 -- using the premade hooks and adventures was a HUGE help. I do not know if we do ourselves or SR a favor by dismissing premade adventures as "stuff unworthy for the REAL GM".

[TheFlatline]

I think you may be slightly overestimating what writing (short of novels) pays in general. I sold a story (that certainly took more than four hours to write, counting edits) to a magazine for exactly $50 dollars. That magazine published Harry Turtledove the next month, so it's not exactly like it was a fanzine, it was at least semi-pro, and that was their standard rate for fiction.

That last thing, however...

Plus, if you walk away at any time, they still own your mission. You're just out 50 bucks and author credit.

That REALLY sucks. It certainly is an effective incentive to slog it out and give them their fifty dollars worth. : (

There's a big compensation that you're missing from your published story: You're now published in a rather respected publication. That makes the next publishing that much easier. You have an order of magnitude of advantage over me if we both submitted similar stories to a publication since you have a publishing history in an industry magazine.

And I'm just guessing, from all the boilerplate I've ever read for creative submissions, that CGL keeps your mission. Hell most contracts I've signed to work in a completely unrelated industry are so vague that you basically are agreeing that if you write a novel on your lunch breaks, the company owns it entirely and you don't have any rights to it.

I'm assuming that there's some boilerplate somewhere that states that all submissions become the property of CGL and blah blah blah, meaning if they crib an idea or two from your after reading your submission, you're SOL.

[fbmf]

On the one hand, I agree.

On the other hand, I find that attitude grotesquely elitist. I wasn't born being the great GM I am now (cough cough). Playing premade adventures helped me a great deal in developing the skills needed for being a GM, and even when I started writing adventures of my own -- heck, even NOW -- I kept/keep plundering adventures for useful bits I can "copy/paste" into my next adventure or quasi-random sideway encounter.

+1, except that I actually was born a great GM, I just worry about exposing the world to too much of my greatness in one sitting.



Game On,
fbmf

[Neurosis]

Most GM's worth their name rarely use pre-made adventures.

Unless the adventure is something really special and fun.

Temple of Elemental Evil comes to mind.

Eh, it depends on the game system in question, imho. With my personal method, creating adventures for SR is a significant undertaking and even meeting less frequently than I want, my group is meeting too frequently for me to always have original content ready. It's nice to have something you can just pick up and play. Granted, even with something like Ghost Cartels, it takes a bit of creativity and hacking on the part of the GM to get the quick adventure sketches playable. Basically, I agree with raben.

My group has really enjoyed the prewritten adventures I've GM'd. It's not that they haven't enjoyed the adventures I've written myself, just that, having the text there let's me concentrate more on making it enjoyable, if that makes any sense, rather than on playtesting it as written. In a way I am free to be more creative with other people's stuff--I know that's a bizarre sentence--because it is there to riff on and play with. Maybe a better way of saying what I'm saying is that using pre-written content makes it feel more like I'm participating in a relaxing activity, i.e. playing a game. It makes me feel less responsible, which is freeing.

There's a big compensation that you're missing from your published story: You're now published in a rather respected publication. That makes the next publishing that much easier. You have an order of magnitude of advantage over me if we both submitted similar stories to a publication since you have a publishing history in an industry magazine.

I thought that too and then collected my largest crop of rejections ever after my first sale. It sucked, and I really haven't submitted anything since then. But, I take your point.

Shadowrun is fairly respected (albeit obviously not at tgd) at least, it used to be. At the very least it would be a GAMING INDUSTRY CREDIT, right? That's got to be a good thing. Even if some people in an internet forum are talking about how godawful missions is.

Being a GM with little time on my hands, I could really use more ready-to-use grunts, factions, NPCs, locations, encounters (and tables) -- do NOT need to know what happens in a city I'll never play in (as opposed to "runs that can be played in every city").

If you're ever in need of these for reals, I've got plenty of crap on hand I've written that you're free to cherry pick.

I agree about missions that are universal.

[TheFlatline]

Some pre-written stuff rocks. The setting for the Renraku Arcology is one of the most loved pieces of fluff in any RPG for my group, ever.

The problem I have with pre-written games, especially SR games, is that at some point or another, one of my players invariably hits a point and questions a fundamental portion of the mission. "Why are we motivated to do this?" or "why don't we just cut our losses and run?" or plots that don't make sense at all because 90% of what's going on is never even vaguely revealed to the players.

It's not even a very insightful question usually. It's something along the lines of "if the most powerful fucking elf on the planet absolutely has to have something happen, why trust the mission to such low stakes players like the PC party?"

[Fuchs]

Some pre-written stuff rocks. The setting for the Renraku Arcology is one of the most loved pieces of fluff in any RPG for my group, ever.

The problem I have with pre-written games, especially SR games, is that at some point or another, one of my players invariably hits a point and questions a fundamental portion of the mission. "Why are we motivated to do this?" or "why don't we just cut our losses and run?" or plots that don't make sense at all because 90% of what's going on is never even vaguely revealed to the players.

It's not even a very insightful question usually. It's something along the lines of "if the most powerful fucking elf on the planet absolutely has to have something happen, why trust the mission to such low stakes players like the PC party?"

That's why I usually only use pre-written stuff as "Hooks" and tailor them for my own campaign/group's preference. In D&D that means cutting out 50 to 90% of the combat encounters. In Shadowrun it means finding a reason for the players to do the job, and often finding a job that makes sense.

[raben-aas]

That's why I usually only use pre-written stuff as "Hooks" and tailor them for my own campaign/group's preference.

Same here.

The runners of my group are working in Berlin, have their established Fixer and also their established "hot topics/favorite enemies". When I tailor a pre-made adventure (or bits thereof) for my group, I usually discard the whole "meet an obviously suspicious fixer"/"work for pennies"/"accept a mission that is obviously designed to frag the runners" bit and just use the plot ("what has happened before, what is about to happen"). I then put a fitting price tag on it and introduce the mission via the established contact(s).

I also happen to replace Seattle locations with Berlin locations

Also, I use and re-use complete parts. In one of the German adventures, there is a bathing house run by the Yakuza. So far, I have used this location complete with security setup and goons about six times – that is: I have kept it ready in the event that the runners follow a not-too-obvious trail to an important NPC of the current mission who happens to have a bathing house (of varying names) in his komlink.

So far, they have scanned the respective (varying) NPC's komlink 2 out of 6 times, but never actually visited the respective bathing house. If they ever do (finding the routine of the NPC and the dates when he visits that place is no problem after hacking the komlink = kalendar) I have a complete "sidequest" ready, with maps, security layout, guards, watcher spirits, nasty surprises, names of patrons/servants/other guests ... you name it.

Even when I do not use the encounter, it still feels good to have it ready. I might as well use it on the fly in those "what building is adjacent to the office tower BTW?" kind of situations.

[Fuchs]

Published runs should be written so a wide range of groups can take the mission, not just a narrow selection that fits a specific moral profile. The "work for pennies" is an example of that as well.

[raben-aas]

If you're ever in need of these for reals, I've got plenty of crap on hand I've written that you're free to cherry pick.

I'm ALWAYS in the need Part of the problem of working on SR art & stuff is that you have less time working for your own SR group Or, well, PLAYING.

[Kot]

On an unrelated topic - the SR4 forums were upgraded. Finally. I hope no spambots will slip through this time.
And the PBF games there are fun.

[Surgo]

If you're ever in need of these for reals, I've got plenty of crap on hand I've written that you're free to cherry pick.

Don't delay -- put that stuff up online! If you need webspace I can give you some.

[sabs]

There's a big big difference between data mining an adventure for 'ideas' and running a 'module'.

And it's not elitist.

A GM who only runs modules, and doesn't let you do anything not covered in the module isn't really a good GM.

A Gm that uses Harlequin's Trilogy to come up with a plot of his own.. is.

[name_here]

"why don't we just cut our losses and run?"

If the answer of "Then we won't get paid" isn't sufficent, shouldn't you just let them cut their losses and run?