Forming team to create RPG games

Hi Mike.

Good luck with your venture.

I am a bit concerned about this proposition as you have not said enough to pique my interest (your descriptions are very generic) and the request for an NDA at this stage is something that puts me off. What totally kills it for me is that you are talking about a non-compete agreement, meaning that if I already happen to be working on a project that has features in common with something on your roster, and I get that published, I risk having you suing me.

Of course, I am just one guy, and I'm probably not the best fit for your project (I've done a lot of RPGing over the years, but it's boards and cards that interest me most at the moment), so my balking at the proposal can probably be ignored. But if you want to get the attention of anyone worth hiring, I think you probably need to take the risk and share a lot more than you have.

Good luck!

He doesn't need to share anything except details related to design (artwork and layouts). If they are HIS games and he is the "Game Designer" well then he'll know all the details and only pass on sparringly enough information to do card/board layouts and/or card art, etc.

Now if he is looking for a co-designer... That might be harder to find.

Since most designers are already working on several designs. Finding the right person might be a challenge. Then by placing the request of signing a NDA or NCA considering that many games a losses or have a very limited lifespan, I doubt he find the help he need (if he needs any to begin with...)

My policy is simple when it comes to teamwork:

1. You'll be credited in the rulebook for any and all efforts you are involved with.
2. Only the people investing money get money back. So no royalties unless you put money in.

You'll see at how many people balk at point #2. Are their contributions worthless? No. I give credit where it is deserved. BUT if I'm the only one investing $20,000 to produce the game... You'll get HALF if you invest in half the venture...

Something along those lines.

Not that I don't trust "Mike" - but partnerships are very dangerous things.

If you know anything about LLCs, you'll know that although the liability is limited to the company, nothing prevents one partner from going on a spending spree and buying a Lamborghini while the other partners eat his dust and watch their credit scores plunge because nobody can afford to pay the incoming bills!

About 15 years ago I was working with a consulting firm (true story). They had three (3) partners and they offered me "partnership". I said politely "No thank you." Why? Because I feared that one or more of the partners would use my credit and drive us into debt while he spent all kinds of money - because he wanted a lavish life.

My accountant told me this: "You own the company, you pay the bills. Until someone you can trust comes along and is willing to SHARE on paying the bills, you are the owner of the company. No shares or royalties unless people invest." Basically he told me that's not how business is done.

And also why would I want to SHARE in the debts of a company? Watch out for potential partnerships - they could rob you of everything you've worked for...

Now if he pays people "up-front" and you can sign some kind of contract that you will produce certain deliverables given an hourly rate or a fixed negotiated price for services ... that might be more doable. As I said earlier the onus is on him to make the game "production" happen.

As per my arrangement was to be I ("me, myself and I") would own the company responsible for developing the Product (Development company) and the partners would own the company for the consulting services (Contractual company). That was my pitch to them... In the end it did not work out.

There's more money to be had in consulting services - and it means little overhead. Each member is a direct income for the firm.

In a development company, it's more of an "investment" - we invest in developing technology that we deem will sell. Ideally we develop a product that our consulting firm can consult on... So we can share some of the direct income earned by professional resources on Projects.

That's sort of a "nice" model - because it means working together rather than working against each other...

But all this is outside the scope of "Game Design" where the income is rather small - and the overhead rather high (Think Graphic Design and Artwork).

NDA probably isn't necesarry.
NCA is total overkill and hugely offputting.

Super offputting with no money up-front and no indication of the value or profit of the project or how you will make money. Especially since this sounds like years of work (5 games at once?!).

Even if I had a ton of money that meant I could just do free work for years, and could just pour my time into this project, I'd never do it under these terms.

You also seem to be using RPG wrongly. You seem to be talking about a miniatures games, not RPGs. It would be a very strange RPG to last less than an hour. But in terms of "long play" AD&D isn't noteworthy - RPGs take as long as you want them to, it doesn't really matter what system you use. I guess you actually mean *complexity* rather than play length? But AD&D isn't all that complicated, it also dates your games knowledge quite a lot - this all makes me think your experience of gaming is you played AD&D back in college a few decades ago, back when AD&D was more relevant, and you don't know much about games otherwise.

5 games at once: Seems like you're way overreaching and haven't really looked into how much work this is going to take. Especially since they're all in different genres, I doubt you're actually really knowledgeable about all of those genres at once.

Would also help this sort of pitch if you say what you can do in the project, what sort of projects you've done before, and why you're worth signing up with on such a big investment.

Hi Mike,

So it looks like you are mostly inspired by computer RPGs, given your citation of the PCGamer article. Is your plan to implement something based on a computer RPG as a tabletop game?

I have not played a computer RPG for something like 20 years, so that whole area has passed me by -- and I didn't play them much before then, mostly playing tabletop RPGs.

The tabletop RPG scene has developed a lot over the last decade or so, with D&D going through a phase of almost mimicking MMORPGs before getting to its 5th edition, which I have not yet played but looks very good; there has also been a growing "indie" RPG scene, experimenting with completely different formats, like in Fiasco (to pick one of the better known examples), which is GM-less and about building a story in the style of a Coen brothers film. And there is so much other stuff going on in between. Many boardgames now take aspects of roleplaying and fit them into a different format like, for example, Runebound, or MageKnight.

I'm not trying to provide a lecture here, but I am hoping to point out that "RPG" covers a lot of different styles of play. Can you give some more details at least about the style of play you are working on here?

Cheers,
Rob

Creating an RPG is, well in my opinion, a tough nut to crack. Since RPGs take such a huge time commitment, finding people to play a new RPG through a whole campaign can be a bit daunting. In addition, there's a human element that game designers have to take into account when creating games...with an RPG, almost anything can happen and you have to make sure you have fixes for that.

Of course with the background you have, I'm sure you have sufficient amount of experience.

Still, while your offer seems legitimate, it's kinda hard to get people on board with your project since 1) Everyone here wants to design their own game, 2) We don't know who you are, and we don't know how you operate, which means 3) Not many people trust that you can deliver.

I'm not saying that in a bad way, I'm just saying that someone showing up asking for people to follow you may be a bit...overwhelming.

It's like...someone walking into a lawyer's office claiming to be a lawyer, asking people to follow them, but no one knows who they are, where they came from, what they've done, or what they can bring to the table.

You gotta earn the respect of your peers before asking them to follow you.

In the same way, how can you entrust your precious ideas to a stranger here (not that we're incapable)? Yeah, there are "standard business practices", but is that really the way to start a relationship? It's like if you're about to date a woman and you say, "Ok, I know we just met, but I'd like you to sign a prenuptial because, you know...standard business practices" It sounds silly, but that's what your proposal feels like.

It's like this: I'm not a fan of running my own Kickstarter. You're basically begging tons of people to invest in your idea when you launch a campaign. I think this because 1) Nobody knows me in the industry, 2) I don't (currently) have the connections to go through with a campaign. Now that I've successfully published a game through a publisher, received fairly solid reviews, and have gotten to know the movers and shakers in my industry, I feel a little more confident I could run a Kickstarter campaign; I've established relationships with influential people, I've gone through the process of knowing how games are made, and I've got more experience as a designer.

While your intentions are noble and you feel confident you can do this, like I said, consider gaining the respect of your peers first.

Again your description sounds more like a miniatures game (ala Descent, Doom, D&D board game, etc) not a RPG. You put some miniatures on the table, move them around, toss some dice, slay some monsters is just a miniatures game not a RPG.

How do you intend to fit a RPG experience (an engaging story, plot, character interaction, challenging obstacles, twists, turns, gold&xp) into an hour?

I don't think my perspective here is unusual, so it seems reasonable that a lot of other people will have the same response. It's in your best interests to answer these questions for prospective co-workers or customers.

Ok so telling people you're pitching too about the history of the project would also make the pitch more interesting. But you didn't say a lot about it, so your pitch was boring.

I think you misunderstand my intentions? I don't know what you think I'm trying to do, but what I *am* trying to do is give you honest feedback about how you could write a better pitch next time.

I only know about you what you have written here. I will judge you based on that.

I was telling you how you came across, and why your pitch was ineffective, so you can do better next time you try something like that. Or you could take it personally and be defensive rather than taking feedback seriously.

If my take of you is wrong, then there are two explanations: 1. you communicate yourself badly and should try to think more about how you communicate, 2. I misread how you communicated and can change my mind

Personalising this and being defensive doesn't in any way tell me that I am judging you incorrectly. You spent almost that whole post being defensive and ignored a number of helpful comments I made.

For example, you didn't say anything about past projects you have completed, which would be *really* good on a pitch as it tells prospective co-workers that you're able to finish projects. Should I take that as implicit admission that this is your first attempt at publishing?

I have a feeling that you will enjoy FFG's re-release of the Baron Munchhausen RPG. The game was originally released by Hogshead as part of their "New Style" RPGs around the turn of the century, which included some other noteworthy titles, like Pantheon, that spearheaded where indie and experimental formats are going today. Last I checked, the older editions could be found in new condition and were still quite affordable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogshead_Publishing

Noice. I've never played Amber, although I enjoyed all of the novels. As I recall, the system was a good fit for the setting. I owned Everway, and I really wish that I still had my copy. Couldn't ever find anyone willing to give it a shot. The closest thing I can think of is that Dixit game. The game I'm working on right now is sort of in the tradition of HOL and Greg Costikyan's Violence but playable and with senior citizen PCs.

I think my favorite non-traditional RPG has to be Talsorian's Castle Falkenstein. It was a pleasure just to read it, but again, it was a trick finding players. The whole journal for a character sheet shtick was very time intensive, and as fantastic as the Comme Il Faute sourcebook was, not everyone wanted a crash course in proper Victorian etiquette just to play a game.

Admittedly, I'm out-of-date on clever RPGs these past fifteen years or so. I hear about plenty, but I have less time to play games, and everyone just wants D&D. I'm having a tough time deciding right now because I have about a dozen people in line ready to try out RPGs, and I feel like the right choice is to start with the classic dungeon crawl experience, but I want so badly to run some Call of Cthulhu . . . or Paranoia.

People have nightmares from my Call of Cthulhu games. Players have gotten up to turn on more lights. The way I run games like that now involves a character pool, so if your guy dies, you can tap an NPC and take control. That way, you still have the tension of character death without player downtime or arbitrary "And just then a wandering fireman shows up" introductions. I also like to do preludes, so everyone thinks that it's the real game, we get into a little of the backstory, and then everyone dies and we break out the real characters. I'm excited about my current game idea because Lake Okeechobee in Florida is full of skeletons -- they just keep finding them, and it was once referred to as being like a pumpkin field of skulls when a portion dried up. What a great start that is!

I have actually been called a killer DM for my D&D games though because of how I structure my games. Players tend to begin with deeply flawed characters since we do 3d6 assigned in order without re-rolls, I give shit for equipment and make them work for everything. The players fall in love with these characters, treasure their accomplishments and social connections, and value them far more than they do their power game counterparts. Getting a +1 short sword is a big deal. That these characters are at serious risk of death every time they go on an adventure heightens that experience and the pride of accomplishment, so killer DM has become a sort of affectionate term that gets trotted out when they know I'm not going to fudge the dice and a TPK seems imminent.

Of course, then there's Paranoia. I used to make miniatures out of clay to demonstrate character deaths, like strapping them to bottle rockets or hitting with a hammer (which is good for a startle when nobody knew you had one).

Umm, actually...

CURRENT PLAYERS PEAK TODAY GAME

672,962 883,493 Dota 2
518,837 529,216 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
54,112 61,725 Rocket League
49,048 49,066 ARK: Survival Evolved
43,971 50,851 Football Manager 2016
43,812 52,698 Team Fortress 2
36,000 40,245 Sid Meier's Civilization V
32,580 43,864 Grand Theft Auto V
29,782 32,137 Garry's Mod
28,780 32,708 Rust

So a middleman between a publisher and a game designer?

But why would either a publisher or a game designer need a middleman?