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A long while ago, I joined a forum set up by a publisher for one of their authors. They did not moderate it. They did not pay any attention to it, except to fix technical issues when they cropped up. A community formed. It was, generally, a pretty good one, surprisingly. If someone was an rear end in a top hat, we'd tell them off, and if that didn't work, we'd all collectively ignore them. Not, alas, with any ignore function on the forum, but simply through not responding to any of their posts. A fellow got upset that we didn't want to listen to him. I can't even remember what it was that annoyed us so much to start with, but after the shunning began, he started spending about three to four hours every night finding old threads and making contentless responses. Sometimes he'd just put in a short string of random letters to hit the minimum character limit, sometimes he'd have "gently caress you" written over and over again. While each post only took a minute to make, he was spending literally hours. Every night. For nearly a year before we finally gave up and started our own forum with moderation. All because we wouldn't talk to him about Terry Pratchett.
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May 7, 2014 17:59
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That's not somebody being a poo poo that's a sign of mental illness 
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May 8, 2014 12:52
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Anyone got any idea what Fred Hicks is referring to in this tweet? https://twitter.com/fredhicks/status/479285245704167424
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Jun 19, 2014 18:17
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clockworkjoe posted:Anyone got any idea what Fred Hicks is referring to in this tweet? https://twitter.com/fredhicks/status/479285245704167424 Who's got the Firefly license these days?
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Jun 19, 2014 18:45
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Peas and Rice posted:Who's got the Firefly license these days? Margaret Weis has it. They are about to put out their new RPG. I doubt its them though.
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Jun 19, 2014 18:47
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Man. In addition to whatever he wants less of, the industry could use a lot fewer passive aggressive crypto-jabs. Call someone out or don't.
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Jun 19, 2014 18:48
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Sarx posted:I doubt its them though. MWP are well known for not paying people.
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Jun 19, 2014 18:51
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Lemon Curdistan posted:MWP are well known for not paying people. Yes, but I happen to know several of the people who are working on it and none of them have ever said anything negative about the experience.
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Jun 19, 2014 18:57
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Lemon Curdistan posted:MWP are well known for not paying people.
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Jun 19, 2014 18:58
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Sarx posted:Margaret Weis has it. They are about to put out their new RPG. More like already put out. Then again, maybe you shouldn't buy it if MWP is as bad at paying people as you all are saying they are. It's always a shame when good systems are made by bad companies.
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Jun 19, 2014 19:09
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Sarx posted:Margaret Weis has it. They are about to put out their new RPG. Judging from the followup tweets he might be under an NDA preventing him from mentioning the name of the company
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Jun 19, 2014 21:06
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Kwyndig posted:Judging from the followup tweets he might be under an NDA preventing him from mentioning the name of the company
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Jun 19, 2014 21:39
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moths posted:Man. In addition to whatever he wants less of, the industry could use a lot fewer passive aggressive crypto-jabs. Yes, this. In an industry where reputation and networking is everything, either don't say anything publicly if you're not willing to follow up your vaguebooking with exactly who you're talking about, or just loving say it. You add NOTHING to the conversation when you post vague poo poo like this and it happens all the drat time.
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Jun 19, 2014 21:40
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Just a guess, but Catalyst Game Labs was in a kerfuffle several years ago over not paying freelancers for their work. They own the license to the Shadowrun tabletop. Maybe it's them?
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Jun 19, 2014 23:15
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Not paying people, paying them late, or shorting them payments is so common in this industry that just paying someone what you agreed upon on time makes you a saint in the eyes of most freelancers. Which is really sad.
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Jun 20, 2014 01:17
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Yeah, it might be faster to list off the publishers that haven't had issues with regard to making payments on time/in full.
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Jun 20, 2014 01:39
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Someone over in grognards.txt posted an advertisement for a Pathfinder-compatible product of a webcomic, Looking for Group. I'm not familiar with the comic and do not see how it's bad, but a poster responded by saying that a number of known scam artists are involved. Anyone have any light to shine on this? I don't have a grog tax to pay, so I'll answer one of the guy's questions in this thread instead: quote:Okay, given the involvement of known scam artists, I'd really like to know if this is just an OGL dump, or if this existing means Paizo's been involved or has approved it. Direct link to Looking for Group. The Pathfinder Role-Playing Game Compatible logo is used for 3rd Party Pathfinder books. In order to be able to use said logo on your products, you must fill out a form at paizo.com expressing your desire to design 3rd Party Products. You submit an application here. Basically Paizo is not involved with the creation of 3rd Party stuff insofar as companies need to submit applications. Aside from that, and the restrictions provided under the Compatibility License, they can pretty much make whatever products they want (barring "Adult Content" stuff, although I've seen a few Pathfinder products which steer close to this). I do not know what Looking For Group guys have done, although given the large amount of 3PP folks out there it's probable that Paizo's not aware of their possible wrongdoings. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Jun 26, 2014 |
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Jun 26, 2014 18:52
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Looking For Group is a webcomic by Ryan "Least I Could Do" Sohmer. The scam artistry in question may be the time that Sohmer Kickstarted a pilot for an animated version of Least I Could Do, raised something like $100,000, then made a half-assed effort of getting the pilot off the ground before turning around and using the proceeds to open a comic shop instead. I think he may also have been involved in some other Kickstarter attempts too but honestly I don't really care enough to go looking. tl;dr Looking For Group is a lovely comic by a lovely person, insert Pathfinder joke here.
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Jun 26, 2014 19:25
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Libertad! posted:I do not know what Looking For Group guys have done, although given the large amount of 3PP folks out there it's probable that Paizo's not aware of their possible wrongdoings. As the resident webcomics hate figure, allow me to field that part with a brief look at why Looking For Group is bad and why nobody should ever give money to anyone involved with it. Looking For Group (LFG) is a webcomic by Ryan "Rayne Summers" Sohmer, a self-absorbed narcissist whose main webcomic (Least I Could Do, or LICD) is a tour-de-force of lovely pop culture references saturated over a baseline of pathetic wish fulfilment and misogyny so thick you could cut it with a knife. Whereas LICD is set in contemporary modern-day America/Canada, Looking For Group takes us to the lands of Azeroth, where all the serial numbers have been filed off and it's fair use and, look, it's not even called Azeroth, ok?! Yes, that's right, it's a thinly-veiled ripoff of World of Warcraft for hilarious comedic parody that stops trying to be parody and tries to be legitimately serious about 30-40 strips in. It still has the same level of lovely pop culture references and misogyny, though. Sohmer, the architect of this colossal waste of resources, is a man addicted to launching Kickstarters. He's launched maybe seven or eight since the site first came into being, and delivered on about... two. Ish. The last colossal failure was LFG-related, where has asked the paltry sum of a million US dollars to make a LFG videogame. That's right, a videogame based on a webcomic based on... another videogame. Run by a big company with big scary lawyers. This Kickstarter failed not for the usual reason you might think - that you can't make a videogame full of carbon copies of Blizzard's intellectual property - but because Sohmer's die-hard fans were somewhat bitter that the last two kickstarters they donated tens of thousands of dollars to have yet to produce anything. Namely wacky Disney song parody youtube videos like this one. (This is the same "animation studio", run by Sohmer, which produced this unforgettable creation.) There's a lot more besides that, but it's a reasonable general summary. In conclusion, Sohmer is a money vacuum that sucks up cash and produces no reasonable content in return, and giving money to him or anything related to him is ludicrous. Also the LFG product is probably loving garbage because Sohmer has no imagination or creative talent.
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Jun 26, 2014 19:29
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Who is John Solomon...?
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Jun 26, 2014 22:04
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Kai Tave posted:Yeah, it might be faster to list off the publishers that haven't had issues with regard to making payments on time/in full. Fantasy Flight is loving awesome at paying on time and in full.
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Jun 26, 2014 23:04
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Basically, if you're giving money to a man whose primary income comes from making a product named the "Least I Could Do" you've made an error in judgement.
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Jun 27, 2014 02:09
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Peas and Rice posted:Yes, this. Could be worse. A lot of indie designers are passive-aggressive as poo poo and settle for griping about people behind their backs, because apparently calling anyone out for anything isn't The Done Thing. It doesn't help that people who legitimately call others out often get "rewarded" by others telling them not to start drama, directors telling you that the guy he hired just has a different style and you're imagining things, or the guy you called out poo poo-talking you to behind your back to designer friends of his who think it's just an amusing character flaw.
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Jun 27, 2014 10:16
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The real irony is I know like ten examples off the top of my head but I can't name them because I promised not to or they work for a largish RPG company and would try to trash my rep if I said anything. 
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Jun 27, 2014 10:29
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start a new industry with blackjack and hookers
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Jun 27, 2014 14:12
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Start up TG Tattler on Twitter. Spill everything anonymously. E: Stickyleaks
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Jun 27, 2014 14:20
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moths posted:Start up TG Tattler on Twitter. Spill everything anonymously. That sounds cool and good and not what a bitchmade fucker would do at all (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 27, 2014 15:07
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Ettin posted:The real irony is I know like ten examples off the top of my head but I can't name them because I promised not to or they work for a largish RPG company and would try to trash my rep if I said anything. The perpetual balance of "I'd like to get more freelance work" versus "I'd like to talk about companies that are awful at paying their freelancers."
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Jun 27, 2014 18:38
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Funhaver Games is the best at paying freelancers. We don't get enough people saying that sort of thing, either, so now I'm fixing that.
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Jun 27, 2014 18:49
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:That sounds cool and good and not what a bitchmade fucker would do at all Gareth Skarka parachute account spotted!
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Jun 27, 2014 18:55
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moths posted:Start up TG Tattler on Twitter. Spill everything anonymously. Yeah, do this.
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Jun 27, 2014 22:25
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ravenkult posted:Yeah, do this. cannot wait to see the additions to grog.txt after it goes live
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Jun 29, 2014 23:23
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Can anyone tell me current rates for freelance RPG writing? I know RPG writing pays poo poo, I read typical rates are 1-3 cents a word, but that might be out of date info.
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Jul 21, 2014 06:09
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Three cents a word? Get the gently caress out, what do you think this is, a charity? You'll take one cent a word or you'll do it for the love of the game.
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Jul 21, 2014 06:27
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Bucnasti posted:Can anyone tell me current rates for freelance RPG writing? That's about right, yeah. Pay in this industry for freelance writing is seriously subpar.
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Jul 21, 2014 06:52
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Ok, so if I'm budgeting a project, what's a reasonable (as opposed to typical lovely) per word rate? 5 cents a word? Or to be more specific, how much would you expect to pay for someone to write a game conversion like say converting a game to FATE? I want to pay well, but we're talking about an indi RPG, my budget is going to be limited.
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Jul 21, 2014 07:06
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Six cents a word is considered a professional rate. Three would be fine, I think, for your circumstances; no one expects a pro rate doing this.
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Jul 21, 2014 07:34
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Bucnasti posted:Ok, so if I'm budgeting a project, what's a reasonable (as opposed to typical lovely) per word rate? 5 cents a word? Let's say each paragraph has 250 words. There are roughly 4 paragraphs each page. For a conversion book, you can get away with a small one for 50 pages, or go balls to the wall for 100. So then is average $500 to $1000.
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Jul 21, 2014 07:36
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I hate the per-word payment scale and I think it should die forever. Length is a very poor way to measure either the quality of a person's work, or their total effort. It discourages writers from editing for brevity, and discounts the labor involved in different forms of writing. For example, writing 400 words of original prose might take drastically less, or drastically more, time than assembling a set of conversion tables containing a total of 400 words. Per-word pay scales come from the tradition of short- and long-form fiction writing and journalism, where publishers set specific lengths for submitted stories. When your magazine has print space for 12,000 words, it makes sense to pay a writer for 12,000 words, because that represents the portion of your space (and therefore revenue) you can allocate to that item. Game writing is much more akin to technical writing, where nobody is paid by the word. It would be absurd to pay someone by the word to create an API reference, end-user online help pages, procedural administration guide, or tutorial. As a technical writer I have been paid salary or hourly, and if I worked on contract I would expect to be paid either hourly or on a pre-negotiated project-cost basis (with strict change control procedures to increase the pay if the project's scope expands). I suggest you work with your contract writers to estimate how much time and effort will go into a given project, and then pay a reasonable hourly rate for those efforts. Your contractors should prepare and submit a detailed timesheet, and are expected to warn you well in advance if a deadline or total hours estimate appears to be at risk. Alternatively, you could bid out the project. For example, you would describe in detail exactly what the project entails, how many pages you expect, and ask interested writers to submit detailed bids. As a guideline: as a senior-level technical writer with a 4-year degree and 14 years experience I would expect to bill on a contract basis at least $90/hr. I understand game writers can't possibly expect that level of pay (nor can game makers afford it), but considering a contractor must cover his or her own insurance, benefits, retirement, and self-employment taxes, as a rough guideline, take what that same work would be paid as a staff position and double it. So, if you would expect to pay staff game writers $20/hr, a contractor should be paid $40/hr. Of course, you would reasonably expect professional-quality work for that kind of money. I am aware people will probably find these numbers absurdly high. That's one of the terrible problems with the industry currently. e. Just to use the previous poster's numbers, but in reverse: suppose your budget is $1000. At $40/hr that would be 25 hours. Is the final draft you expect to receive from your writer about 25 hours of work? If so, you're right on target. If it's more like 60, you're paying something close to a contractor-equivalent (e.g., after self-employment costs) of minimum wage. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 07:51 on Jul 21, 2014 |
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Jul 21, 2014 07:47
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Thanks everyone. One of the things that I'm trying to do with So77 is be part of the solution, pay good people to do good work for a good rate, at least as much as I can afford to do so. When it comes time do do this I intend to bid out the project to whatever degree I can, but right now I need a number to budget for projections down the road.
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Jul 21, 2014 08:26
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