It is not profitable nor encouraged to create a good rpg.
A good rpg sells its initial run, people give a thumbs up, then the community drops dead as nothing to talk about.
A bad rpg sells its initial run, people balk at it make videos ripping it apart. This gets people to yell at them they're wrong and this is how they should play the game then follow up with easy to find build videos for charter archetypes. Then shit adventures drop, they get ripped apart and once again someone tells them they're doing it wrong go on how you should run the adventure to make the most of it. Repeat with every book and web article that drops like slop on a near weekly basis.
A new player walks in, sees a dead community that has a couple posts a week on wherever they check and this other shit system that has massive amount of new posts almost daily it's a no brainier which they'll drop money on to get into.
Monty Cook was right, you gotta have trap shit options in your game and allow for elitist system masters to fight endlessly or it'll look like your game was a flop.
None of which matters unless you're a grifter trying to make money from RPGs.
You don't have to be a grifter to want to make a living.
If your idea of making a living is by making RPGs, you either are moronic, or underage. Potentially both.
Some people manage it, and there's nothing wrong with at least trying to make a living doing something you love. You probably won't succeed, but you're definitely not going to succeed if you don't try.
Nobody manage it. Companies do. People are employed by those companies, on regular desk jobs, and usually only for a part of a life cycle of a specific edition.
>b-but
No butts, you just have no fricking clue what you're even talking about.
>ou probably won't succeed, but you're definitely not going to succeed if you don't try.
Underage it is, then. And American at that
>>ou probably won't succeed, but you're definitely not going to succeed if you don't try.
>Underage it is, then. And American at that
This just sounds like a weak excuse to demand that people make games for you to play without trying to get anything from you in return.
>Companies do
Do they? My impression is that they make money selling RPG accessories like splat books, not the RPGs themselves. Merely publishing RPGs is not a sustainable business model.
>I have absolutely zero idea how this business actually operates, even on the most fundamental level
As already pointed out, hello underage. Come back after you get your first job or start shaving, whichever comes first. But I suspect it will be the job.
Employed 32-year-old here, what exactly is my job in healthcare supposed to teach me about how the RPG business operates?
>Employed 32-year-old
No idea anon. Absolutely no idea what holding a job should teach you about the concept of profits and long-term income, along with sustainability of any given business.
Yes, I believe you indeed have no idea.
If you ever had a job and, more importantly, had to sustain yourself with it, you would understand such basic concepts as long-term income, ability to profit out of your work, the effort-pay grade-downsides matrix and few other things that are universal, regardless if you're a construction worker or an investment banker. This is such basic shit, only a literal child or a neet living in mom's basement would ask or act confused.
More importantly, if you were 32, you would be already an adult by the time when the hobby picked up the current trends and distribution channels. Which puts to question both your age and your actual interaction with the hobby itself.
And then there is the fact that being a working adult in the 30s, you have absolutely zero reason for teenage-bullshit angst over how world is this cruel place and all business is about exploiting everyone while twirling your mustache and raking in money. Unless you're actually moronic. Or simply still a jobless teenager.
In other words: you're either doing terrible job trying to pass yourself as a grown-up man with a job and a hobby OR you're a walking caricature of a manchild. Pick your poison.
>b-but what it was supposed to teach me
You will figure it out in next 10-15 years.
We are all children at heart here or we wouldnt be roleplaying
>muh ackhtually
nayrt, but holy frick you're moronic, kid.
Stop being a literal meme and for God's sake go outside.
Getting a steady salary month to month in the healthcare sector is sufficiently far removed from RPG industry to not, in fact, help much with figuring out how many splat books an RPG developer would have to sell for it to make for a sustainable business.
>And then there is the fact that being a working adult in the 30s, you have absolutely zero reason for teenage-bullshit angst over how world is this cruel place and all business is about exploiting everyone while twirling your mustache and raking in money. Unless you're actually moronic. Or simply still a jobless teenager.
True. That's why I have not engaged in any such angst. I've not said anything about the world being a cruel place or business being about exploiting people. I'm honestly puzzled about what part of my posts you have misread as implying such sentiment. I've said, pretty clearly, that there's nothing wrong with people wanting to make a living with RPGs, that there's nothing wrong with trying to make a living that way, and that's it.
>32 yo with a mind of a 12 yo
My condolences
Explain it to me like I actually am 12-eay-old. Why is it childish to think it's okay for people to want and try to make a living off something they out a lot of time and effort in anyways, and why is it mature to think that people shouldn't even try that?
Yeah, it's pretty fricked up. Doesn't make it wrong to try to make money off RPGs, though.
Dude you answered yourself in your own post. You looked directly at the answer and said whats wrong with trying.
Just going to consider you're a giant whataboutism troll at this point you can't be that dumb.
>buy good book
>play hundreds of games with it
>nothing else to buy
>great business model
Kek
>There is no possibility to release expansions to a good game
>Especially one that sells well and is wildly seen as a good game
>Not to mention modules. Only bad games get modules
You didn't think this through, did you?
The premise was only releasing one good book.
Consult
If you're releasing one book either way it's irrelevant whether or not your system is good or bad, if you want to keep producing content a good system will sell better and allow you to produce more content. The assumption is that all new releases have to "fix" issues instead of just adding new things or adding or subtracting levels of depth.
Honestly yes, only bad games get modules. The rest respect the players enough that their tools are enough and they don't have to lead the GM around by the wiener to run a game and splat books mean they fricked up and had to print more shit to patch up the game or more shit to clutter up the design.
Exactly
>By yes, I don't play tabletops at all, I'm just here to kill time and do something with my terminal boredom, how could you tell?
I'm done. It's getting too blatant at this point
I guess CoC is now a bad game. And so is Savage.
CoC is a collectors game for lovecraft fans to jack off about which obscure mythos monster is reference and Savage worlds is a legit dead game that is out of print.
So yes.
Thanks for making it clear once more you don't play anything at all. As if rest of your post wasn't enough.
Uhm, Pinebox is releasing soon for SW 2
>no true Scotsman
I guess we really can chalk you up as a teen bored in the Sunday afternoon.
>Savage worlds is a legit dead game
I guess Savage Worlds 2e is just a skinwalker. And it's totally not going to hit stores in few weeks. Guess there is also no demand for it, too. After all, it was a decent game, so clearly, not possible anyone can willingly buy more of it now. Or continue to play it for past decade
>Savage Worlds 2e
Isn't the current SWADE edition 4e?
Revised and Deluxe are more like errata than separate editions. Technically, nothing has been called Savage Worlds 2e.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/545820095/rifts-for-savage-worlds-atlantis-rising
Not to mention that the intersection of Savage Worlds and Rifts of all fricking things seems to be doing extremely well through various Kickstarters.
Terra Primate FTW
There are plenty of artisans who make a living handmaking things that they're passionate about. The problem with TTRPGs is that while they are handmade, they aren't tangible and the difference between a terrible and an excellent product isn't as readily apparent.
>the difference between a terrible and an excellent product isn't as readily apparent.
lmao
Making TTRPGs isn't an artisan job. It's a writer job.
You big fricking moron
Get out of here you disingenuous twat. Freelancing isn't as rich a market as it once was, but it still exists. Indie game makers sometimes get lucky and do well.
I remember seeing at least one guy explain how he made a living freelancing, though IIRC ge did so in the 90s and early 00s abd worked a whole lot more than 40 hours a week to manage it. I'd be interested to hear people like Kevin Crawford tell a bit about how they make their living, how much they make off their games, whether they have to have a "eeal" job on the side and whether they work full time or part time, stuff like that.
That's probably a good idea, but it still doesn't make anyone a grifter for wanting to make a living by writing RPGs. Trying to make a living off something uncertain might be overly optimistic, it might not ve pragmatic, but ut's not being a grifter.
>not being a grifter
Make things for the joy of it, share them with others for free to spread that joy, encourage others to do the same
That's cool if you've got the time and energy to do that on top of paying work. I'm not going to fault anyone for wanting to spend more time making RPGs and trying to figure out how to make at least part of their living doing that, though.
Nobody who makes tabletop RPG "manages" anything. They are either employed by a toy making company, a large book publishing corporation or their own company is making money by selling actual, physical games, either in form of minis or board games. No company build entirely on TTRPG survived in this business for longer than a decade without either holding some copyright (and thus living via residues, like Chaosium) or percentage of past earning (White Wolf, and they eventually run out of money, going down after 23 years)
Im surprised nobody has realized that a partnership with Chessex Dice could keep a system alive for decades.
You do if you're trying to make a living from other people playing pretend.
You don't write RPG books to make a living. Sandy Peterson still job hops to this day.
I listen to a podcast by two veteran rpg designers and their primary piece of advice for people wanting to be a full time professional rpg designer is to marry someone with a good job.
They're not wrong. Before D&D, Gygax was a bum out-of-work dad with like 4 kids who published a handful of wargames that were only relatively popular in niche circles, and was playing tabletop with kids who were a decade younger than he was. It's almost a complete fluke he managed to go anywhere in life, thanks to Arneson.
>Monty Cook was right
That explains why he's out of the fricking business, scrapping the bottom of the barrel, with shittier and shittier ideas. A true genius!
The rest of the post is a 3/10 material, needs some extra polish. Monte just makes it too obvious
Whenever I hear about Monte Cook I can only think of his dogshit take on World of Darkness featuring Post Apocalyptic Minneapolis that caused vampires or whatever. He is considered a failure purely for that in my mind.
Nah, it's actually 1/10 if you think about it, for it creates a completely false dichotomy
>An unsupported system ends with a single book
>A supported system continues to be in operation, because it's supported
That's essentially your claim. Which is hardly anything mind-breaking or worth to even bite.
You're too far in. The average casual RPG fan doesn't discuss the system, they discuss the games they've played or the things that happened and the system is just what allows them to do that.
You say there's no incentive, but expansion content of any jobs only works proportionally to the success of the base, and the only actual guarantor of some success is a quality product well made. You're not taking about making a living your talking about tricking people. Don't play do many modules and you'll see.
>The average casual RPG fan doesn't discuss the system
And the one coming in will see either a bunch of talk about a system, or no talk about a system. Which will they join in on? Same goes for their friends who were in the same position once. A person googles your favorite indie game that has made 1 or 2 books 4 years ago but quite possible has hundreds of active campaigns right now and they'll never know. They'll see a dead system. The only other argument is a group of friends who selectively pick people to pull into their group and groom them to their gaming tastes but no one sees that from the outside world and is at a much lower rate than new people stumbling in cause they learned the Pathfinder games and Baulders gate 3 was based on table top games.
I got to ask, and I expect sincere answer:
Is your only exposure to the hobby via youtube and reading /tg/? Because you come off as someone dangerously clueless about the actual way of how and why people play, on the most fricking fundamental level, constantly acting like it's some big-ass grift.
I came in on 3rd edition and was on and off. I began digging up a bunch of simpler and recommended systems, most were complete out of the box and great reveiews, nobody has too many problems, compeltly dead comunity. I do not like this situation but now I understand why D&D, Pathfinder, and other constantly argued about systems are still alive, cause they have a community that wont' stop arguing about how it actually isn't bad its just everyone else is playing it wrong while the owners sling out half baked shit.
I am getting constantly players to a game that came out before you were born, never had a re-print and last time it had anything even resembling a marketing campaign, it was '02. Hell, most of those players that are easy to get are also younger than the game, so it's not some grog gathering.
By your twisted, edgelord cut-throat corporate logic, nobody should be playing it. After all, it's not being discussed, nobody is shitting out modules to it, and the quality of the game is fine, with solid mechanics. I guess people just want to play that specific game, because it does its own specific thing. Amazing, isn't it? Who would have thought that there are OTHER reasons to want to play a game than it being a trainwreck internet talks about. Absolutely inconceivable!
>A bad rpg sells its initial run, people balk at it make videos ripping it apart. This gets people to yell at them they're wrong and this is how they should play the game then follow up with easy to find build videos for charter archetypes. Then shit adventures drop, they get ripped apart and once again someone tells them they're doing it wrong go on how you should run the adventure to make the most of it. Repeat with every book and web article that drops like slop on a near weekly basis.
At what point in this cycle of people talking about how bad your product is do you actually make money?
That's the fun part; you don't.
Nta, but I'd like to point out their finanscial issues have absolutely nothing to do with DnD, you dumb fricking homosexual. WotC isn't even 5% of all Hasbro business. They got hit and hit hard by covid, oil price spikes and then inflation, because they are first and foremost a toy manufacturer that uses huge amounts of plastic
It doesn't help that Blackrock owns them and probably siphons half their funds.
>A good rpg sells its initial run, people give a thumbs up, then the community drops dead as nothing to talk about.
If there's nothing to talk about in terms of game mechanics, home brewing, adventures, etc. then its not a good rpg.
>A good rpg sells its initial run, people give a thumbs up, then the community drops dead as nothing to talk about.
Yes, because we all know how making a good game automatically prevents you from releasing expansions to it. And how you are literally forbidden by law from making reprints and marketing campaigns. Or how people can only talk negative, or are shot dead on site by police if they engage in any other form of discussion
I'm amazed such shitty bait managed to score so many replies in such short order
Meanwhile all of the old school game designers understood that when you make a quality product for people they enjoy it, and the ways to make money within the industry is to either write novels within your game/setting, or modules within your game/setting, many recognized it's important to have other jobs as well.
>only bad games are allowed to have expansions and marketing
>your goal is to stay in the TTRPG business indefinitely
>bad word of mouth increases sales, good word of mouth decreases it
Is this some sort of Bizzaro world episode?
Bad word of mouth?
> Wow shit sucks look how terrible this is
> 1000 replies of how it isn't and you're doing it wrong
Sure that bad mouthing sure didn't prompt more discussion on how they're wrong and outnumbered no matter how incorrect it is.
So the bad word of mouth was overwhelmed by good word of mouth? That wouldn't happen if there weren't people who genuinely like the game. Something like that is definitely not going to happen if you start a discussion on how shit FATAL is.
>A good rpg sells its initial run
Sounds profitable enough to me.
They took the time to scrape ever ounce of paper off that bottle and you can still easily tell it's Jack Daniels.
Monte Cook inherited his position working on 3rd edition because he was a veteran adventure module writer for 2nd Edition, and among one of the few senior workers at the company during its transition to WOTC after the buy-out.
He then proceeded to dump all the caster-sucking-off shit he included in his dog shit modules ten-fold upon D&D as a whole.
For better or worse, it got low IQ toddlers interested in it and fostered a new generation of people getting interested in the medium, and the game does things very well, like providing deep, tactical, engaging combat, skill lists which, honestly, were an improvement over 2nd's vague and nebulous "skills" that ran off percentiles and had little rhyme or reason for even being there, and re-adding monks after 2E, for no reason, removed them. All of his changes to casters I absolutely hate. Feats are good-and-bad, good in that they provide endless opportunities for different builds, bad in that they end up pigeon-holing certain builds with moronicly long and complex prerequisites needed some of the more interesting ones.
He wasn't "right", so much as he "fell flat on his face" despite managing to make it through the doorway.
>good
>rpg.
Not possible. This thing you're talking about can not exist.
It's true that controversy creates some flash-in-the-pan cash in the short term, but it doesn't build a brand in the long term.
Monte Cook does undoubtedly favour casters and some of his ideas did suck, but I actually liked his Arcana Unearthed/Evolved setting and thought it had plenty of potential for growth.
People like to hate on the guy almost as a meme and say he broke 3e, but I played 3e and 3.5 heavily and tbh it was monks who were broken af in those editions.
Ex0lains why RIFTS is so slow a community. Uncle Kevin got it right, & never needed to improve
Nobody will care enough about a bad RPG unless you build the franchise with good RPGs first to turn it from niche to mainstream, once in the mainstream you can kick back on your laurels with name recognition and cheap cameo spots though.