Gen Con Wrap-up: Getting Started in the Industry

This is my Game Designer hat. You should get one.

It’s been a crazy few months for me since GenCon. This post is later than most Gen Con posts you’ll see, but I think you’ll like it anyway.

On the Thursday of Gen Con, I had the honor to moderate a panel titled “Getting Started in the Industry: Freelancing and Self-Publishing.” First lesson learned, people in the industry lead busy and tumultuous lives. The panelists changed almost completely from once I first submitted the panel and the day we spoke. The room was full regardless and we had a great time.

Our Panelists were Matt James of Vorpal Games, Tracy Barnett of Sand & Steam Productions, Eloy Lasanta of Third Eye Games and Shoshana Kessock of Phoenix Outlaw Productions. Each of the panelists has made a name for themselves in the field of RPGs and most have had experience as a Freelancer and as an Indie Publisher.

That was the heart of what I wanted to get at with this panel. The number one question I get from people is ‘How do you get started in the Industry?’ It’s a question that doesn’t have one answer, and the answers keep changing with technology and trends. Up until recently the number one answer was “Write, then submit to people with open calls.” Now however it’s so easy to self-publish, but should you?

I’d like to pretend I left that panel with a list of do’s and don’t’s, but I did not. Nearly every topic presented, every question posed, had at least one delegate disagreeing with what one should do. For every positive experience, there was one that didn’t work out quite right.

Everyone did agree on one thing. You have to write, every day ideally, even if you don’t have a project at the moment. Most of the panelists encouraged blogging highly as part of that, something I am guilty of slacking on myself. Not just brainstorming or reading, but writing is critical. If you get an idea, even if you can’t work on it currently, write as much of it down as you can. The more you write on a regular basis the easier it becomes. From personal experience, the longer I wait between projects, that harder something becomes, even when it was once easy.

So now that you’ve got good writing habits, how do you move on to being published? This really boils down to personal preference. There’s really only a few key differences between being published by others, and self-publishing:

Freelance/Submissions: You do the writing and some of the promoting. Chances are you don’t do anything else. You may get a flat fee or royalties, but once your work is done it’s someone else’s job to edit, layout, find art, publish, distribute and at least some marketing. Once it’s out of your hands its out of your control. Sometimes your publisher will let you give feedback on some of the other steps, but in the end things will change (things you created) and you can’t stop it.

Self Publishing: You are responsible for everything. Even if you hire other freelancers to do some of the work, the work they do is your responsibility. You also have full control. The title isn’t going to change, even if the editor advises that it should, unless you approve that change. You don’t get paid unless the product earns enough profit to pay you back for all the money you put into it, or unless you rely on donations/crowdfunding.

Before this article gets too long let me say how I got started. I remember reading Dungeon & Dragon magazines and never dreaming that I could submit to them. In my mind only writers submitted to such things. The idea that you became a writer by starting to write, never crossed my mind. I started blogging when D&D 4e first came out. I was creating a lot of content that I had used in 3.5 that didn’t have a 4e version yet. I got frustrated keeping up a schedule on my own and stopped the blog after a few months. Half a year later I got an email from Chris Stevens, who has stumbled across my dead blog and asked me to come write for him. He would even pay me!

That led to me valuing my own work much more, and a lot less stress since I wasn’t the only author supporting the blog. Soon, I was submitting to Kobold Quarterly. Wolfgang Baur writes one of the most supportive and encouraging rejection letters I have ever received. Kobold Quarterly may be gone, but Kobold Press remains. I highly recommend new designers to pitch to Wolfgang.

There’s a lot more to write about here. Let me know in the comments what questions you’d like answered.