Pathfinder is more successful than anything you could design

[Prak]

The taking advantage of them part comes in when you dumpster dive DA for someone who is talented, but doesn't know business. You can lowball them a price, and they'll likely take it, especially if you feed them the usual bullshit like "you can use it in your portfolio" or "if this takes off, we'll have more work for you in the future."

This makes no sense to me.

I guess it is taking advantage of people if I hire a high quality slut for $1000 per hour, but only pay the low quality slut $20 per hour.

If the no-name bulk-rate ghetto awesome artist wants the same price as the awesome artist with a good reputation and huge portfolio of awesome professional work, then the no-name artist is never going to get anywhere. They have to accept a lower market price.

I have contracted out accounting, legal, and IT services to less established individuals/firms to save money. The quality of the work is usually pretty good. Sure, sometimes it's best to hire the "big names" for something, but not always. I don't see why the same principle does not apply to buying art for a game book.

People are not as retarded as you seem to think, especially when it comes to selling their time and effort. Even if they "don't know business." So you "lowball" the price (according to what?) -- the person can accept that price or not. If they do not accept it, only then would you say the offered price is "trying to take advantage of the artist." But if they DO accept it, it is because it IS a fair price to that person. If not, they simply won't take the offer.

According to this, right fucking here:


$3000-$5000 is the going market rate to hire a trained professional to do your cover. Now shut the fuck up.

[Seerow]

$3000-$5000 is the going market rate to hire a trained professional to do your cover. Now shut the fuck up.

But I thought the discussion was about hiring an untrained but talented artist, and accepting that in exchange for your lower price, the person you are dealing with is likely to be much less professional and probably miss every deadline you ever set?

ie a terrible choice for any product on a delicate timetable, but for a first book where you have no preexisting fanbase waiting, no pressure from above demanding a release for this holiday season, etc, it is an acceptable trade off. And if the artist turns out to be really professional and works well, then you hire him on later as a full timer paying the going market rates.

[Prak]

Seerow: I can see the reasoning. But I still think it's wrong to go so low as 10% of the going market rate, even in that case. 50% maybe, but 10%? No, it bespeaks a complete lack of respect for artists.

Admittedly, I may be a bit over sensitive here. Also, admittedly, I'd love to be offered $300 for a piece to be used as a cover, it's $300 I don't currently have. I still think you should offer market rates, and not lowball, because companies, especially in the RPG industry, have a history of treating artists little better than trained dogs, and expecting the artist to be greatful for "We can't pay you, but think of the exposure!"

[Seerow]

Seerow: I can see the reasoning. But I still think it's wrong to go so low as 10% of the going market rate, even in that case. 50% maybe, but 10%? No, it bespeaks a complete lack of respect for artists.

Admittedly, I may be a bit over sensitive here. Also, admittedly, I'd love to be offered $300 for a piece to be used as a cover, it's $300 I don't currently have. I still think you should offer market rates, and not lowball, because companies, especially in the RPG industry, have a history of treating artists little better than trained dogs, and expecting the artist to be greatful for "We can't pay you, but think of the exposure!"

As you point out, 300 dollars for a piece of artwork is a good deal for someone who isn't well known. If you can get 300 bucks for something you normally do as a hobby, you're more than happy to take it regardless of what a professional may get for it. Your last line implies you don't think the exposure is worth it, but being able to have on your portfolio that you did the cover image for a published book isn't something to ignore. It greatly increases the chances the artist will get that 3000 dollar commission the next time.

I understand having a personal stake in wanting artists to be paid well, but a lot of times when people are paying for art, a small fraction of what they actually pay for is the art itself. A lot of that extra money comes from reputation and professionalism, something a random guy on deviant art doesn't have. New artists need to build that reputation. You may not like that, but it's the way that it has always worked. A new kid who makes an awesome painting can't expect the same tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars that a famous artist might get for the same work. In fact he's much more likely to end up trying to convince someone to give him 50 bucks for it at a art show with 100 others just like him.

[infected slut princess]

Prak dude, is that supposed to be a devastating reply or something? Are you shitting me?

That book is written by the Graphic Artist's Guild -- a bunch of established industry professionals setting the price for what people should pay them.

but what if you are... not an established professional? What if you are a struggling johnny artist who can't command the $3000-$5000 market price suggested by the all-knowing GAG guild? I guess you just don't get any work ever, BECAUSE THE BOOK SAID SO!

What is wrong with the johnny artist selling their work for less than that? Get bent. You're just trying to keep the struggling artist down with your dumb book.

And does it work the other way? What if you are the best graphic artist ever, and you can charge people $50,000 (or more!) for cover art, and they're willing to pay it? Sounds pretty cool, but wouldn't that be taking advantage of the art buyer, because the book said that's not a fair, ethical price? I guess maybe you should never allowed to get rich with your art, eh? I mean, that must be true if you take the book of GAG (an apt abbreviation btw) to be the ultimate arbiter of all prices established between individual buyers and sellers of cover art.

EDIT: seerow made a similar point but was nicer about it.

[Prak]

It's not so much that I consider the exposure or addition to my portfolio worth it, it's that I'm only vaguely better off than Count in my life situation.

By principle, I think it's wrong to lowball artists, especially if you're going so low as to try and get something for free (which many companies do), and that it hurts the art market and artists as a whole for an artist to accept too low a price, because it allows companies to lowball artists.

But by wallet, if K offered me $100 an interior character illustration, say for the classes, or whatever, I'd take it, because I'm fucking broke, and ten illusrations gets me a clunker so I don't have to hop the bus and feel like I have no right to ask someone out on account of not being able to pick them up for the date.

So I guess the answer is to find artistically capable people who are only not having to eat shit soup because their parents are too kind hearted to toss them out of the nest.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Ok, here's the deal princess. You can fucking do whatever the hell you want, I have no control over you. K can as well. If K wants to dumpster dive through DA and find someone who does awesome art, and offer them a shit price for what is honestly a lot of work, he can do that. He may even find someone willing to work for that price. Ultimately he is then likely to have to put up with an unprofessional person. But again, he can totally do that if he wants to.

You know what? Screw you. If I get out of college, get a decent job (ain't looking likely), and save up enough money for a few years between a house, taking care of my folks, and maybe raising a kid I might have like $40,000 of my own money saved up to take a chance on this project. God Forbid that I would take out a loan or anything.

I don't have 3-5,000 dollars to be pissing away on cover art just because someone thinks it's going on a fucking cover. I'd rather spend that money on getting another fucking 600 books printed. Why the hell would the artist care anyway that it's going on the cover of something? They were offering $500 for artwork, I stumbled upon them and agreed on the price. Or was that on the assumption that I would just keep it on my harddrive and masturbate to it and if I wanted to do something useful with that picture I commissioned it would cost extra?

[infected slut princess]

after that sidebar about the "fair price of cover art" (for which i take most responsibility), maybe now we can return to the more interesting line of discussion of making a profitable game, and also the discussion about how some games fire up the imagination more than other games regardless of whether the rules are awesome or not awesome.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I have a couple of KRAZY advertising ideas that I'm not quite willing to share, but one I have brought up before is using established Internet Nerd Personalities to promote your product.

Internet Nerds like Todd In The Shadows and Rich Burlew sit on that uncomfortable boundary between being famous enough to reach tens of thousands of people but not being rich enough to command outrageous advertising prices. If you posed as a fan and gave them some free product you could probably get them to talk about your game. Of course your game would have to be really really good for it to catch fire this way. You are really going to have to stretch your production values for them not to go 'meh, I'm a nerd, but I'm not a (free) shill', but, such a task isn't impossible.

There's no way around having to hit the pavement and show up at cons and blowing your advertising budget just on having a booth that maybe 100 people will buy a book from per con, but that should save the embarrassment of showing up at TrogdorCon 99 and not even the RPG.net staff being about to recall you in their TTRPG-hipster databank.

[Seerow]

I have a couple of KRAZY advertising ideas that I'm not quite willing to share, but one I have brought up before is using established Internet Nerd Personalities to promote your product.

Internet Nerds like Todd In The Shadows and Rich Burlew sit on that uncomfortable boundary between being famous enough to reach tens of thousands of people but not being rich enough to command outrageous advertising prices. If you posed as a fan and gave them some free product you could probably get them to talk about your game.

Of course your game would have to be really really good for it to catch fire this way. You are really going to have to stretch your production values for them not to go 'meh, I'm a nerd, but I'm not a (free) shill', but, such a task isn't impossible.

Rich would probably tell you "Go buy an ad on my forums if you want the promotion", I know that several fan projects have bought ads on the forum. Those typically run like 10-20 bucks a day, but there was a brief period where it spiked up near 100.



That said, there are other web comic authors I think would be willing to advertise like that. There's even a few I'd be interested in getting work done from (For example O from Commissioned Comic has an art style I love, and would totally make a game system with him as the main artist if I could afford him)

[Lago PARANOIA]

20 bucks a friggin' day?! Maybe if he actually returned to his old thrice a week schedule or at least churned out a damn comic faster than once every two weeks.

[Seerow]

20 bucks a friggin' day?! Maybe if he actually returned to his old thrice a week schedule or at least churned out a damn comic faster than once every two weeks.

He only puts the ads on his forums. He explicitly refuses to put one on any page other than the forums because he doesn't feel it's right to charge advertising on his comic when it updates so sporadically. However the forums are so active that they get a pretty good price despite that. (He doesn't actually set the prices, he uses project wonderful, which works on an auction system. So whatever people pay, that's what they actually think it's worth)

[Prak]

Can we vote to change Lago's title to Scrooge?

Wait... on second thought, I don't like the idea of publically changable titles...

[Daztur]

Whatever else can be said about Pathfinder, it certainly READS a lot better than 4ed or any came I could make personally (I tend towards bare bones when it comes to rule text, which works fine in play but isn't going to sell me any books).

I don't agree. Pathfinder rulebooks present all the rules hidden within walls of text. 4e is much cleaner and more concise when it comes to the presentation of the rules.

I agree that 4E is better when it comes to looking up a particular rule. But when it comes to picking up a book and reading it for entertainment value, 4E is about as entertaining as stereo instructions.

Exactly. When it comes to selling books, "is it good for entertainment reading?" trumps "is it good at clearly presenting the rules?" every time. Hence Vampire. Hence the AD&D 1ed DMG. Hence RIFTS. Hence most popular games. I could definitely pick up and enjoy a random chapter of the 1ed DMG even if I hated AD&D rules and never planned on playing them again, but would anyone ever read the 4ed text for fun if they didn't plan on playing a 4ed game?

[A Man In Black]

Very true. If you were developing an established product line you'd want to go with artists who can do the job quickly and professionally, but for your first-time vanity project that no one is expecting you should just suck up the extra three weeks and browbeating the artist to get it done. If you kick so much ass that you can become an established product line you can switch artists if they were flaky; if not you can step up the pay and put them in your established stable if they want a permanent job. There's no way you're going to avoid having to pay extra, but when you're in game limbo there's no time pressures until you actually produce the game.

That's a horrible plan for a variety of reasons, the chief one being that either you have professionals who won't want to dick around waiting for your goofball artist (or who will want to eat at some point) or amateurs whose delays will compound each other and cause you to risk people drifting away from lack of interest (or, again, food). Plus, some jobs can't be done whenever by amateurs without looking kind of crappy. If you're just grabbing someone off of dA to make some art to get people hyped for your Kickstarter, okay, that can get done whenever. But if you need art that is actually going to make sense and fit in your layout and meet your art orders without making everyone sit around with their thumb up their butts with big blank rectangles waiting for the artist to get their shit together... that takes someone who can at least pretend to be a pro, and they will want pro pay.

[infected slut princess]

LAGO, bro, you have to spend money to make money. I wish you would share your other KRAZY advertising ideas. Promotion through big name nerds with clout is a good one.

Meanwhile, someone needs to get Brian Goldner on the phone and tell him that Mike Mearls and the other WotC idiots are losing to Pathfinder. Which is fucking pathetic.

[Lago PARANOIA]

AMiB: Getting a professional artist who will churn out artwork on time and to your specifications is a concern once you actually have demand for your product. While you're still humping the TTRPG Nobody circuit and churning through your 50K business loans or savings you're not going to really be helped by having an extra two month's worth of time - even assuming you get someone completely unprofessional.

ISP: Project Wonderful, eh? That's a substantially better deal. I see those guys all of the time on websites. Unfortunately I'm skeptical about how much exposure they really get. I mean, I see ads for things like webcomics and MUDs. Got any stats?

Another idea - rather than directly shilling an advertisement you can pay an Internet Nobody (i.e. someone with a large fanbase but not so large that they can shut you out; if you're into LPs Bobbin Threadbare, raocow, or HellDragon is fine but ProtonJon or DeceasedCrab is probably out) to play a game with you online with you as the DM and some other guys interested in promoting the product. Then just post the replays on YouTube.

You'll want to break out the golden campaign material, though. None of this Robot Chicken half-assed stuff. And yes, sometimes this means that you'll have to sacrifice authorial or gameplay integrity in order to make the game look 'cool' such as declaring the DarkFire will in fact burn down the door. Remember, you're a shill, not a sperg. You should probably get FrankTrollman or Koumei to help you make the writing punchier. And feel free to use special effects like a story slideshow or post-game flash animation. You ever see Outlaw Star?

[infected slut princess]

Lago,

you have some pretty good ideas about using online methods for advertising, especially about getting video of live sessions with identifiable nerd squads and putting it on YouTube. Any businessman in this day and age who ignores YouTube is an idiot. I don't know what your "KRAZY" ideas are supposed to be, unless it's like "KRAZY" as in "crazy awesome".

You don't have some of the fortuitous circumstances Paizo had when they brought us Pathfinder. But what do you think of using scandal to promote your ultimate RPG? For example, in the 80s when Christian groups were opposed people playing D&D, it got a lot of publicity. I forget what it was all about, some crazy kid killed himself because his character died or something? I don't remember. Also, the game "Mass Effect" for xbox got publicity on Fox News when they reported it was a "rape game" or something ridiculous like that. You want to make the ultimate RPG forbidden, yet totally cool, like smoking cigarettes.

Also, some general things apply: I mean, for starters, if you seriously want to be putting out a real game product someday that you are selling, you need to establish yourself as an acknowledged expert. You should have a website with all your theorycraft, and some actual stuff you've created, even if for other people's games. Fuck dude, setting up blogs is free and you can make money with them while you dick around in college or whatever your "day job" is.

And that goes for basically all the other designers, "real" and "wannabe" alike. Like, where is the FrankTrollman website? Where is the "anti-Mike Mearls" site, or the Tomes site? you guys need to put yourself out there more. You can't just rant on forums, as entertaining and interesting as that can be. I only offer this as a suggestion, obviously I have no idea what most of your do for "real life", but whether or not you want to be a game designer and/or sell games or do something totally different, everyone needs a website to promote themselves. And i don't mean your facebook page.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I can't speak for FrankTrollman, but I am working on a product right now (it's not very good I'm afraid, hence all of the trial balloons I've been floating lately) and I personally would like to lay low for awhile until I have enough of something to bring to market. If Frank or K or Koumei or whoever have a product that they think is good enough to earn real cash moneys I wouldn't be surprised if they were holding it in the wings until they could devote more attention to it.

Why? Because on the wild and wacky world of Web 2.0, if your product lies fallow for two years you're pretty much good as forgotten. Anyone remember 8-Bit Theatre? Or homestarrunner.com? Or Maddox? I'm not saying that these guys couldn't be the new 'it' guys for nerds, it's just that any effort between the time period where they let their product lie more-or-less finished or fallow and when they decide to devote their attention full-time to promoting their product is pretty much a waste.

I mean, even if I had a finished product right meow I wouldn't even think about trying to advertise it until I had completed my EE degree, got a job, and built up a cushion of money because of that effect.

You don't have some of the fortuitous circumstances Paizo had when they brought us Pathfinder. But what do you think of using scandal to promote your ultimate RPG? For example, in the 80s when Christian groups were opposed people playing D&D, it got a lot of publicity. I forget what it was all about, some crazy kid killed himself because his character died or something? I don't remember. Also, the game "Mass Effect" for xbox got publicity on Fox News when they reported it was a "rape game" or something ridiculous like that. You want to make the ultimate RPG forbidden, yet totally cool, like smoking cigarettes.

You can't really force a scandal, or at least one where you won't come out looking like a tool.

If Exalted became vilified in the press or by some celebrity as some social darwinist Rwandan rapist soldier simulator (even though for certain books like Lunars that's pretty much true), it would build sympathy and intrigue because that accusation doesn't jive with first impressions. If FATAL was vilified like that it would generate some Streissland-ish interest like Rapelay but would for the most part be hurt by the attention because those kind of accusations ring much more true.

If you want to benefit from media hysteria or moral panics, you have to seem like you're an unironic victim in the whole thing. Unfortunately since you're operating at a really low threshold of awareness you really need to go over the top (as in FATAL levels) for anyone to notice or care. I think it'd be a possible strategy for D&D, but not for some no-name vanity project.

Remember, Exalted has a naked loli in a fursuit in it in the core rulebook and blatant lingerie cameltoe on another sourcebook. In order to jump ahead of the scandal line you're either going to have to be really lucky (and probably get pushed to the side anyway) or have to provide content considerably more vile than that. Content considerably more vile than bestiality rape camps.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Or Maddox?

He just went on a book-signing tour for his second book. I'm sure there's lots of people that remember him.

[Chamomile]

Actually, Frank has spoken for himself concerning what products he's working on right now. It's called Asymmetric Threat and he will probably be making something like ~$100 monthly in real, actual money for it, and that because he can't be bothered to market it past putting up a few forum posts and torrents and letting word of mouth do its work.

Taking the Denners who are provably good at making content (mostly Frank, K, Koumei, and Kaelik that I can think of, there's probably more), any of them could've written Tome, could've written After Sundown, could be writing H:AT now. These things are well-thought out and well-written, but they aren't particularly visionary, they're just much-needed rebalances of existing systems, sometimes with the serial numbers filed off and a few new tricks added. Frank isn't impressive because he can write these things, but because he actually does write them. So if your plan for success is to not do things because you're waiting for the opportune moment, then your plan sucks, because the opportune moment to be building a portfolio is right now. Sure, no one's going to be impressed if the guy with a bunch of half-finished products he never got around to completing shows up and says that you can pay money for the privilege of seeing his second draft this time, but if you have a finished product that is actually fun, nothing could be more important than making sure people know about it.

And if you have a halfway finished product that is actually fun that you're hoping to use to launch your D&D-killing franchise, you're horribly deluding yourself and you will waste barrels and barrels of money failing, because your first effort will never, ever be that good.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Frank isn't impressive because he can write these things, but because he actually does write them.

This is important advice.

[FatR]

Pathfinder is mechanically a deeply, deeply flawed game. This was pointed out many times by denizens of the Den, and a bunch of you were booted out for it.

Pathfinder is a wild success, Pathfinder is the new D&D standard. Best seller, etc. etc. etc. and dog crap rules have not hurt them at all.

But is Pathfinder's mass appeal in its flaws?

Don't delude yourself. Mechanical balance is not the most important part of TTRPG appeal, not by long shot, as long as you don't fall below the quite vague threshold of unplayability. Exalted mechanics are pretty much utterfail, and it still was one of the more popular fantasy RPGs. I'm inclined to attribute its eventual withering to 2E setting suckage and overall decline of WW fanbase due to nWoD setting suckage, rather than to anything mechanic-related. Rifts, I heard, was pretty much the same. For that matter, all iterations of WoD too were massively unbalanced at best.

What matters is a setting appealing to people (I mean, people beyond one's circle of RL and Internet acquaintances), good writing (if people don't want to read your books unless it is needed to prepare for a game, you fail!) and good presentation. Nothing written on the Den has any advantage over Pathfinder even on the first two points. While I actually hate Golarion quite a bit, I must admit that it is a kitchen sink well aimed at Paizo's target audience, i.e., people who bought and liked their previous adventures, and that it does the kitchen sink duty better than, say, Forgotten Realms. The Tome setting, whatever of it can be gleaned from scattered fragments, is just an attempt to seem smarter and more knowledgeable than authors of usual DnD, while not really being such.

[Mask_De_H]

I vehemently disagree with you that the Tomes aren't fun to read, FatR. The High Adventure In XXX and the idea bits in RoW and Dungeonomicon are breezy and interesting, even without understanding the underlying mechanics behind them. I personally love the class taglines; "I've seen this kind of fire-breathing chicken demon before. We're going to need a longer rope" is what made me give the RoW Fighter a once-over and that's how I ended up here in the first place.

I also don't think there is a Tome setting, outside of story hooks (like in RoW or the High Adventure sections).

[FatR]

I don't mean that Tomes aren't fun to read (although they are not fun at all to use as a reference, but I'll forgive them that due to being an incomplete and, more importantly, free product). I just mean most of their setting tidbits are a strong argument against extrapolating a setting from mechanics. Unlike the Tippyverse they aren't even good as a thought experiment, due to the rules being changed to suit the vision left and right.