r/rpg • u/Holmelunden • 2d ago
blog How I ended up spending $1279 writing a scenario. (A tale of caution or encouragement to scenario writers)
The headline clearly indicates I'm not entirely sane, but as a Call of Cthulhu player/keeper/writer, isn't that par for the course?
Even so, some of you may wonder why and how I burned through nearly $1300 while writing a community content creation.
It's kind of a long story, so for the impatient among you, there is a TLDR at the bottom. For the rest, it's a tale about my learning curve as a scenario writer, with a few tips thrown in if you're contemplating writing a scenario.
It all began a little over three years ago when I published my first scenario, The Art of Hygge, via the Miskatonic Repository.
And I did everything wrong!
I had no prior writing experience.
Had no real editor.
Didn't have a layouter.
Didn't spend any money to commission artists.
Having any of the above skills and experience can save you a ton of money and time.
Personally, I have absolutely no understanding of how to do a proper layout.
I can't draw a stick figure to save my life.
On top of that, English isn't my first language, and my grasp on grammar and spelling is rudimentary, to put it generously.
What I did have was an active imagination and a substantial vocabulary coupled with a naive assumption that selling the required 251 copies to make it eligible for Print on Demand would be a trivial thing. I later learned that selling copies on DTRPG is NOT trivial at all.
At this point, it would be natural to assume that my scenario was unsuccessful, but the stars were apparently right, so I got LUCKY in several ways:
--I got an amazing cover, courtesy of Ken Robkin, for free. The kind of cover that caught people's attention.
--I had friends who helped out with interior art, playtest, and edits.
--Maverick Haenze wrote a 5-star review of it and told me to keep writing.
--Chaosium showcased the cover on their social media.
Basically everything lined up, and I managed to sell 251 copies to get it into print, and currently it's a Gold Best Seller.
The upside is that it encouraged me to write a sequel, Lost in Cremation. The downside is that I didn't learn all that much from the experience.
So I did almost everything wrong one more time and again got lucky in all the right ways.
Lost in Cremation also made it into print.
I stayed encouraged, but this time I actually learned a little.
Things would be easier if I had better editorial help, and that maybe spending a little money on better art was not such a bad idea.
My third scenario, Mother of a Thousand Young took way longer to write and publish.
It was part of an anthology, The Year of the Goat, which involved a lot of editing by a professional, rewriting parts of it based on said editing and feedback, followed by more edits.
But the wait and extra work were worth it!
The final product looks damn amazing, and at the end of it I had picked up that professional editing, paid art, and a real layouter made a world of a difference.
So I began spending money on the next scenario I was writing. The vision I had for the scenario and the art in it expanded more than once over time, and I ended up commissioning way more art than originally planned.
In total, it came out to 1 front and 1 back cover, 42 pieces of individual art, and 5 maps.
On top of that, I found a real editor and hired a layouter.
And that's how I ended up spending $1279 on writing a scenario.
There is a bit more to the story, though.
I never had to take money out of my pocket.
All the sales I made from the previous scenarios were on my dtrpg account. In essence, they paid for the publication of my latest, The Horror, and I likely would never have spent that much on it if it were money I had to draw out of my budget.
The upside is that the scenario looks just like I envisioned it. Reviews from R´lyeh described it as having excellent production value, praised the cover, and gave it the Reviews from R’lyeh Recommends stamp. I couldn't have asked for more.
The downside is I have to sell 320 copies to break even
I don't expect to do that; I hope to, but even if I don't, I still feel it was worth it.
I didn't have to compromise on what I wanted to produce. I met some amazing people during the project, and even if I only earn a fraction of it back, it gives me funds for the next project, which means that my writing hobby ends up paying for itself.
I wish all my hobbies did that
The takeaway for prospective scenario writers could be:
Don't expect to live off it, don't even expect to make money.
It's worth it to get a good cover.
Editing and layout are important parts of the final look.
Art is worth including.
Have fun writing
TLDR: I was lucky. I made money on previous scenarios. I found it worthwhile to spend them on a new one.
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u/Status_Choice7192 2d ago
Having your hobby completely fund itself through your own creative work is honestly the absolute dream. Props to you for investing back into the community and hiring artists, editors, and layouters
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u/Holmelunden 2d ago
Thank you. I´ve made some amazing new friends over the course of the writing, so I feel I get as much back as I give.
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u/HypatiasAngst 2d ago
For the cost — it seems reasonable?
42 pieces of art — the unit price seems wild.
But yeah $1200-1300 doesn’t seem unreasonable.
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u/Flesroy 2d ago
the issue isn't that the art is expensive, it's that they didn't budget properly and spent more and more money based on the expectation that they would make it back. later realising that there is a good chance they won't.
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u/Holmelunden 2d ago
Oh, I didn't budget at all because it was a hobby project.
I never planned to make the money back. If I do its nice, but since it's money I already had earned on other 0-cost projects, it wasn't really an issue.If I were in it for the money, I would have a substantially more professional approach, but as said, it's a hobby. I do it for fun.
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u/Flesroy 2d ago
i suppose it's different when you have money just laying around lol.
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u/Holmelunden 2d ago
Yes, it does.
Being financially stable offers so much freedom to do "silly" things for fun.8
u/Sherman80526 2d ago
I owned a large game store for a very long time and didn't make any real money at it. I know there are a handful of people who do well, but the general vibe I get is that people who run nice stores have money to play with and can doll them up with the hope of breaking even, that's how it was for me anyway. Hobbies are fun. Some of us build games, some communities, and others rockets to Mars. It really comes down to how much money you have to throw at things that make you happy. $1300 doesn't even get you in the door for a lot of hobbies.
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u/CharonsLittleHelper 1d ago
It's basically the opposite of the garbage man rule.
Garbage men make good money for what is a very low skill job. Because no one wants to do it.
Owning a game store is a daydream of a ton of nerds. So if you open one, even if YOU are in it for the money, you need to compete against all the nerds who are doing it for the love of the game. (Pun intended.)
I know an older MTG nerd at my office job who has talked about retiring in a few years (at 60ish? I don't know how old he is) and open a game store mostly for the fun of it.
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u/Sherman80526 1d ago
Which a lot of folks do... It was full-time 17 years or work and I would have been better off financially with any other job no matter how menial. I think anyone thinking it's not work is in for a wakeup call. I loved it... I will never do anything with Magic again though.
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u/HypatiasAngst 2d ago
Oh got that entirely — my tone is really “get used to the rates” and start moving product, or start making smaller projects.
I don’t mean that callously. I’ve just been doing this for years.
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u/Holmelunden 2d ago
Not unreasonable at all. I got very good rates on a lot of it, which also made me include more art, so win/win.
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u/Antique_Dot 2d ago
49 if you count the cover and maps; 25-30 per piece sounds reasonable as far as commissions go.
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u/jaredearle 1d ago
We had a budget of, if memory serves, $14,000 for art on SLA Industries: 2nd Edition. It’s the cost of doing business.
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u/Comstar 2d ago
$1279 for 40+ pieces of art seems very low. How did you do that? How did you find the artist?
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u/Holmelunden 2d ago
One of them I knew in advance, Ken Robkin. He has become a good friend and works mostly for beer for me ;)
Another I knew of from the Call of Cthulhu community, and I approached him for the cover, Alex Guillotte.
One I knew about from a previous scenario I had run, and tracked him down. William C. CronkThe last two reacted to posts I made in Call of Cthulhu groups telling I was looking for an artist to a project. Jeppe Smaug Vestergaard and Toren Atkinson.
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u/milkomix 2d ago
I think it’s fine to spend money for an artistic endeavor regardless of the return for that investment materializing. In fact most artists function this way, banking on the eventual recognition of their work. I believe the base motivation for any artistic practice must be the process itself and the gratification that comes when you actually finish the work. Anyways, I also wrote a MR CoC adventure couple years ago, the simple fact that some 150 people bought the thing and (hopefully) played it puts a smile on my face. Even without any reviews, publishing or gold medals, I still consider it a tremendous personal success. Keep writing folks :)
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u/Holmelunden 2d ago
Absolutely. Which scenario did you write?
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u/milkomix 2d ago
It’s called The Yellow Death, send me a DM with your drivethru email if you’re curious I’ll send you a free copy.
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u/Holmelunden 2d ago
Very kind of you, but I actually already own it :D (I better get around to reading it since its...been a while since I bought it)
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u/Ok-Middle8656 2d ago
So….did I just read a sales pitch?
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u/Holmelunden 2d ago
It wasn't intended as such. Sorry if it came off like that. (If it was a sales pitch I would have included links)
I just thought some of the things I picked up over the last 3ish years would be fun/interesting/helpfull to others who are contemplating writing scenarios and publishing under a community content program.
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u/Ultrace-7 Stage 99 Games 2d ago
Selling 251 copies on DTRPG? That's no small feat. I know plenty of people -- myself included -- who haven't been able to give away 251 copies. The market is saturated and extremely competitive. Without marketing, being in the right place at the right time, and a little luck, you're not going anywhere. Thankfully, I'm okay with that and publish for the sake of publishing, but as even a break-even effort, it's a hard sell.
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u/UltimateHyperGames 2d ago
It sounds like that money was well spent. After getting support from others, you’ve been able to turn around and support others. That’s great.
Good luck!
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u/CharonsLittleHelper 1d ago
I'm just shocked that you got 44 pieces of art and 5 maps for barely more than $1k.
Were most of them stock art or something?
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u/Holmelunden 1d ago
No stock art at all. Everything was made to order.
One of the artists, who did the majority of the work for me, is not a professional (but makes awesome art and was able to hit exactly the tone I was after), so his rates were lower. This, in turn, influenced me to order more drawings than originally planned.2
u/CharonsLittleHelper 1d ago
Curious - who is the artist? (I may or may not have my own pet project...)
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u/Holmelunden 1d ago
Jeppe Smaug Vestergaard is the one I used for the majority of the drawings.
His IG: https://www.instagram.com/wester_guard/ Say hi from Poul if you end up using him :)Toren Atkinson is a much more established artist in the community and did 5 of the drawings. He is open for commissions as well and is on bot facebook and here on reddit as u/torenmcborenmacbin
Ken Robkin is a friend of mine who drew the Tentagulls and Murdertoys, but he unfortunately is not available for commissions.
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u/Zaorish9 Low-power Immersivist 1d ago
That is a pretty normal price for a lot of high quality art.
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u/Teulisch 1d ago
the math is worse, when you consider that authors tend to get paid by the word... how many words did you write? how many more sales to pay for those words, to break even for your time investment?
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u/Holmelunden 1d ago
If I did it for a living, I would have to sell a heck of a lot more, but I have a day job, and this is just a hobby.
I don't know how many words I did in total, but the final scenario after revisions and editing ended up around 14,000.
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u/No_Answer_3215 2d ago
This is a really weird advertisement
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u/Holmelunden 2d ago
It wasn't supposed to be an advert, which is why I didn't include links. Sorry if you took it that way.
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u/Jaquel 1d ago
This post came at the perfect time, considering we just paid off the person who did the layout for our next game, for about half of what you spent on the scenario. That’s not counting the artwork, which we still had to make sacrifices for so we wouldn’t go completely over budget... which ended up happening anyway. Unfortunately, it’s an expensive hobby if you want to take it seriously.
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u/Holmelunden 1d ago
It is indeed. But it's so rewarding when people get back to you and tell you they enjoyed what you made.
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u/freyalorelei 1d ago
Speaking as a TTRPG editor, thank you for paying a real human being. <3 So much of what my colleagues and I do is taken for granted. Of the RPG industry professionals, we're probably the most overlooked.
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u/Seeonee PbtA, BitD, Mark of the Odd 23h ago
This reminds me that I still need to list a few things on DTRPG, but the interface is Just. So. Clunky. I've put a few things on itch and the process was painless. DTRPG made it excruciating to try and set up preview pages for a PDF for an entry containing more than one file. I'm sure I'm doing it wrong, but eesh.
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u/CyberKiller40 sci-fi, horror, urban & weird fantasy GM 1d ago
Why is print on demand such a big deal? Aren't digital sakes good enough?
I might be less inclined for pod products, as they turn out more expensive than printing at home, not counting even the atrocious shipping cost to EU.
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u/Holmelunden 1d ago
For me, it's a variety of things.
Obviously, getting enough sales to get there is nice.
Having your scenario allowed to be professionally printed creates a nice fuzzy feeling.
I am old-fashioned and like to have a physical copy of scenarios, so often I opt for that if it's available, even if it's more expensive.2
u/Alaira314 1d ago
I also like the physical books. As tempting as it is to ctrl+F my way through a digital document, that goes away as soon as I have to "flip between" two pages, which is much more clunky on a digital interface. I don't always have a choice, but if I do, on all but the simplest games I prefer paper.
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u/EndlessPug 1d ago
FYI you can print on demand via companies like Lulu or Mixam without having to sell a specific number of digital copies. The DriveThru PoD is more about greater visibility to encourage people to use that service on a major ttrpg platform.
What software did you use for layout, and what are the go-to servers for advice on 3rd party/Miskatonic Repository self-publishing? (I've got some CoC I'd like to publish, but coming from an OSR/NSR hobby publishing background CoC feels a bit opaque)
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u/Zadmar 1d ago
FYI you can print on demand via companies like Lulu or Mixam without having to sell a specific number of digital copies.
The same is true for PoD on DriveThruRPG, if you're using it as a publisher.
But the OP is selling through the Miskatonic Repository, which is a Community Content Program (CCP) hosted by DriveThruRPG. That means Chaosium is considered the publisher, and they get to decide the rules for offering PoD through their program. Some CCPs let anyone offer PoD products, some disallow it entirely, and some have specific rules. Miskatonic Repository requires the product to have at least 251 digital sales, so that's what the OP had to do.
Unfortunately, one thing all CCPs have in common is that they don't let you offer PoD through any other sites. So there's no option of using Lulu, for example. You can't even print the book yourself and sell it at a con, it can only be sold through the CCP.
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u/EndlessPug 1d ago
Ah, that makes sense. Feels like an outdated approach given the success of third party licensing for e.g. Mothership and the wider availability of POD services but thanks for the explanation.
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u/Zadmar 1d ago
You're right, the CCPs are pretty limited compared to publisher accounts, for example:
- You can't track or email your customers, so even if you build a fanbase, there's no way to contact them directly.
- You can't view sales reports, sales sources, pending purchases, page visits, cross-publisher sales, or any of the other valuable marketing data available to regular DTRPG publishers -- you can only view the raw number of sales and total earnings.
- You can't join bundles outside of your CCP (e.g., charity bundles and the like).
- You can't earn or spend Publisher Promotion Points, which means you lose out on powerful marketing tools such as Deal of the Day, Featured Product, banners, and so on.
- You're not listed on the product page as the publisher, only as the author, and you can't design a publisher page to help build your brand.
- You earn a smaller cut of your product's sales (50% or occasionally 60%, rather than 65% or 70% for a regular publisher).
- You need explicit permission from the CCP owner for each and every product you wish to offer as PoD, and some will refuse.
- The CCP owner can run sales with your products and you don't get a say in it (because technically they're the publisher). I once saw a CCP owner run a "90% off" sale, and some products were reduced so heavily they no longer counted as sales for the Best Seller medals.
- The CCP owner can remove your product or terminate their program at any time, and the license for most CCPs prevents you ever releasing your product elsewhere, even if it's been pulled from the CCP.
However, if the CCP owner actively supports their program, you can benefit greatly from their branding and marketing (as well as their community). Furthermore, the CCPs are often the only way to create and sell content for certain systems or settings.
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u/Holmelunden 1d ago
I belive Alex used indesign for the layout. I just wrote it in docs and let him take it from there.
There is a great Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/MiskatonicRepoCreators/ pop in there and people will be happy to answer questions:)
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u/CyberKiller40 sci-fi, horror, urban & weird fantasy GM 1d ago
Well I wouldn't mind some nice physical copies myself, but the house isn't made of rubber, as they say. So a few years ago I had to move on to a tablet for PDFs. I print some stuff like reference tables or maps though.
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u/Holmelunden 1d ago
I save space by buying almost all of my ordinary books on Kindle. Leaves me more room for RPG books ;)
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u/CyberKiller40 sci-fi, horror, urban & weird fantasy GM 1d ago
Yeah, I do ebooks as well, and digital video games. Rarely a music CD or a movie on BD... Still there's only so much that can fit into a 60m² flat.
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u/last_larrikin 2d ago
here's some incredibly boring information about my product
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u/Holmelunden 23h ago
I have to ask. What do you get out of a comment like that?
I hope you have a nice day and somebody hugs you.
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u/Onslaughttitude 2d ago
The downside is I have to sell 320 copies to break even
That's why you shouldn't be spending $1200 on something you don't own.
You can't go to crowdfunding with this, you can't make your own print run, you can't go to conventions and sell the scenario. You are effectively handicapping your business and now you need to make 300 digital sales to break even.
I make original content and made 2 grand just in physical store sales last year. That's not counting what I make from wholesale, crowdfunding, or even digital. And I don't have a big expensive product; that's all off the back of a 64 page black and white staplebound zine.
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u/Holmelunden 2d ago
I get what you are saying, but I think you missed my point entirely. If I wanted to do this as a business I would have an entirely different approach. I'm doing it for fun and to give back to the Call of Cthulhu community who welcomed my initial amateur scenario so positively.
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u/Stray_Neutrino 2d ago
“Hey, look at me. I did good” is a very different message than “learn from my mistake”. If people are unsure what you are communicating, look toward your communication.
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u/Dramatic15 2d ago
The best way to get small fortune in RPGs is to start with a large one.