Write What Sells or Write What Excites?

Today’s video was a little rambling. I woke up with an idea on Tuesday morning and it was one I just had to kind of get out of my head.

The gist of it is this. Most publishers I know have already created their own game. Some more than one. I have published 3Deep, Devil’s Staircase Wild West, Navigator RPG and currently writing Pilot RPG. Sad Fishe Games have Atomsworn and are working on a Feline hack of 3Deep, Foxwood Games has Ballad of the Pistolero, and Earl of Fife have Heroes and Hardships, and that is just to name the publishers I talked to this week about adventures!

So we all have these games. Typically they are Silver best sellers and heading to Electrum. (I think Atomsworn is Electrum, and Pistolero about to hit copper).

The basic business plan is pretty simple, write a game, build a fan base of several thousands and then write companions and adventures to support your game and its players.

But, it is hard to sell a game that doesn’t have companions and adventures to support it. Roleplayers are often compulsive collectors and want options, hundreds of options(!).

So, to fund the game you want to write, we write adventures for games that are really popular, but not our games. We need to sell adventures, to earn some money to buy the art or assets, and promote our names and brands, so we can build the game we want to create.

This can become a treadmill.

The more adventures you write, the more homepage exposure you get, the higher your general profile, the more sales you make, the more Publisher Promotion Points you get, and PPP are used to buy a Deal of the Day, and that is the best way of getting people to play your game. It all makes perfect sense. But, most of those adventures take something out of you, it is a great idea that has been burned up and used, or another week of writing for something else and not your game.

Now, I quite enjoy it, until I run out of time. I am my own task master, and where I used to be happy with one product release a week, now I do two, Monday and Friday. No one tells me I have to, but just because I know I can, I want to do it and better it.

So it occurred to me that if I am going to reuse all these adventures to support 3Deep (in my case) why not start to insert a bit more content that I could pull out and use in another product. I am looking for getting an entire book for free, because it was part of something else.

My 3Deep setting book is long overdue, now is the time to start creating that setting, even if it is just at 200 words a week or so!

Leave a Comment

×