Pathways to Publishing

[Aelwyn]

Okay, probably a weird time to post this. But perhaps the weirdest time is the best time.

I'm an aspiring writer of supplements for BRP. I've never had anything for BRP published in any form. So, I'm a complete noob. I've got two ideas I've been working on for a long time. Both would require a lot more work before I would feel comfortable publishing them, but I might be able to finish at least one in the next six months. I've got two settings, two half-finished campaigns, introductory material, a bunch of creatures, four new races, some ready-to-play characters, and some adventures I'm not satisfied with. Nothing has been playtested. Dustin at Chaosium expressed an interest in one of them, but that was several years ago.

Here are my alternatives, as I see them:

1. Revise over the next year and publish through Chaosium. I'd love to give them right of first refusal, but recent events suggest they won't be publishing many BRP supplements for the foreseeable future. What they do publish will probably be written in-house or by more established writers than me. But you never know.

2. Revise over the next year and publish through a third-party, probably Alephtar, if they'll have me.

3. Revise over the next year and self-publish, probably through print on demand, maybe through Amazon. I'm reluctant to go this route mainly because I don't know anything about it and as far as I know, no one here has done that. There may be copyright issues and other drawbacks I haven't though of.

4. Polish what I've got and upload it here. Let others playtest, get feedback from the fine folks at BRP Central, revise, then either revisit options 1-3, or not. Maybe set up a PayPal account as a tip jar. Possible drawback: It might be harder to convince Chaosium or Alephtar to buy it after I gave a bunch of folks a free preview... but I'm not doing this for the money.

5. Don't polish what I've got--just dump it all here as is and let you guys sort out the juicy bits from the less than juicy. Look at it as my flawed gift to the Basic Roleplaying community.

6. Rework the adventures for a different system, maybe RuneQuest 6, Legend, or OpenQuest. I'm very reluctant to go this route, even if I can find a system that has all the qualities I like in BRP--and I'm not certain I can find that system. 

7. Walk away from a lot of work and a project I really enjoyed, content with the pleasure I got out of working on it, even though no one else will ever see it.

I know there are a lot of writers here--people who have had experience working with and for Chaosium and Alephtar, and people who just upload excellent stuff here. Also a lot of people who buy supplements and therefore have opinions about them.

So what do you think I should do?

I'm looking for advice, encouragement, ideas, a heads-up about some of the dangers lurking in the path ahead, and maybe just some reassurance that there is still a path.

[Nakana]

FWIW, my advice would be keep polishing it allowing for enough time to see what develops with Chaosium. It may become easier to publish with them... Who knows?

Meanwhile do research into self publication. 

At the very least once other options have been explored, share it for free or pay what you want on drivethrurpg. 

 

[soltakss]

Don't work on lots of different things at once, otherwise you'll end up with lots of unfinished things and nothing to show for it. I speak from experience here.

 

Send Alepthar, or Chaoisum, a summary of what you want to do and a rough timescale of when it could be finished. They'll be able to tell you if they are interested.

 

If you have something finished, then you could send the whole thing to Alephtar or Chaosium, as that allows them to slot it into their publishing schedule fairly easily. That's what I did with Merrie England: Age of Eleanor, but it is risky as they might not be interested and you might feel that you have wasted time.

 

If you go down the self-publishing route, then you would need a licence from Chaosium. That might be tricky at the moment. If you ported over to Legend, then you could self-publish with no licensing issues, as long as you include the OGL. However, self-publishing means getting an editor, doing the layout, sourcing artwork and producing a PDF in the right format, not the easiest of tasks.

 

If you decide that putting it out there for free is the right approach, then polish it a bit. It doesn't need fancy graphics and fantastic layout, in my opinion, but needs to be as complete as you can make it. A mind dump of all your ideas is OK for a blog or a website, but not for a finished publication, even a free one.

 

I wouldn't post it for free and then expect to get it published. You would be better off asking for feedback from a few people, sending it to them and seeing what they say. It doesn't hurt to get feedback and there are many people here who would be pleased to help, myself included.

[Chaot]

If you've got significant time in it and you think it's something that's worth being out there, don't start by giving it away.  Refine it, select a small circle of people to review it, then look into your publishing avenues.  If at the end of all of that you still don't have an outlet for it, set it free here.

 

[tooley1chris]

If you've got significant time in it and you think it's something that's worth being out there, don't start by giving it away.  Refine it, select a small circle of people to review it, then look into your publishing avenues.  If at the end of all of that you still don't have an outlet for it, set it free here.

 

NOW you tell me!

 

Edited August 3, 2015 by tooley1chris

[Chaot]

NOW you tell me!

 

Chris, you are far too intelligent to take advice from me.  

[Mankcam]

Firstly I would work out what system really suits it, and is likely to sell it.

So if you feel that it is a Fantasy then RuneQuest is the one and you need to speak to Chaosium/Design Mechanism. If its more pulp modern or early modern, then Renaissance could be the one, and you need to contact Cakebread & Walton.

Dont forget Mongoose (Legend) or D100 Games (OpenQuest) either.

If you are dead set its for BRP BGB then I would still contact Chaosium first, as Ben Monroe has indicated that there may still be a sporadic publication schedule for the BRP BGB line of games, although I suspect this may be more for MagicWorld rather than new properties.

If Chaosium is unable to accept your proposal, I would then contact Alephetar Games to see what their views are about publishing more BRP BGB games

Only release tasters through here - if you want your hard work to be bought then you have to entice, but not give away every detail.

 

Edited August 3, 2015 by Mankcam

[Prime Evil]

Firstly I would work out what system really suits it, and is likely to sell it.

This is the key point - as much as we would love to see the ultimate d100 game system that can do anything, personal tastes do vary and different variants suit different settings.

[RosenMcStern]

Hi Aelwyn.

I will be glad to revise whatever you send me. But this is not the best moment for such considerations. Chaosium is reviewing its licensing model for third parties, so any paper sent them has twice the risk of remaining on the "to read" list for reasons not connected wtih artistic considerations. Please note that this is also true for self-publishing. It is unknown if they will grant any more third party licenses at the same condition as before.

The same goes for Alephtar. I will review anything sent to me at any moment, but the current general situation of licenses with Chaosiumoon does not allow me to tell you "We do this for <pick a system>" with 100% certainty. Things will settle down in a short time, but not immediately.

The only publisher that can currently review a d100 paper and tell you immediately "We will do it" is probably D101 games. Ah. yes, there is also Mongoose. But personally, I would rather have a tooth removed than have again something in print that depends on a Mongoose license.

So it all boils down to "continue refining until Ben announces something about licensing". This does not prevent you from sending drafts to Newt or to me at any time, though.

[clarence]

Lots of good advice here already. As I'm in the middle of a self-publishing process with BRP Space I thought I would chime in. 

Licensing from Chaosium is indeed being reworked and the response I have got from Ben is that they will come to a conclusion "in a few weeks", though I'm sure it can take longer. 

Not the perfect timing for me obviously, but the good thing is that my manuscript got time for another revision : ) 

My biggest concern is that BRP and BGB will be discontinued. What are the options at that point? Are the BRP Quickstart rules good enough to base a supplement on? (Probably not). Will RQ be the new generic toolkit? Cool, but requires a bit of reworking on my part. Going with Legend or some other d100 system? Fully workable, but also a bit of work. At the moment I'm not sure which way to go, but hopefully things will be a bit clearer soon. We just have to wait a few weeks and see what happens when the new team at Chaosium have settled in. Choices of system, publisher and licensing might be crystal clear by then. (Or not...)

 

[Mankcam]

From purely a gamer's perspective, I would think one of the newer MRQ D100 SRD based systems would have wider compatibility uses - in your setting probably OpenQuest may be the most generic system to work from, or you could easily build your own version using the MRQ D100 SRD

Just an idea, but like everyone is saying, its probably going to be a waiting game to see which direction you should take with your product.

 

Edited August 3, 2015 by Mankcam

[RosenMcStern]

My biggest concern is that BRP and BGB will be discontinued.

Chaosium has explicitly and officially stated that this will not be the case.

[Prime Evil]

Chaosium has explicitly and officially stated that this will not be the case.

True. But we don't know what their future plans are yet. It does sound like BRP will be placed on the back-burner for a while so that more profitable product lines can be given some immediate attention, but it's entirely possible that a new incarnation of BRP will emerge at some point down the track. This approach makes sound business sense while Chaosium gets back on it's feet, but it is still disappointing for those who love the system.

[RosenMcStern]

 This comes straight from Chaosium's Facebook page:

The short answer to many of the rumors we've been seeing is this: we're not killing any current product lines (except monographs) without first trying to think of a way to make the more popular/profitable. We have many properties (eg: BRP and fiction) which have not been curated well over the past few years, but that we really believe in. We want to give them a fair shake before just giving up on them.

This should clarify a good deal of everybody's doubts.
As for the details about how they will give them a fair shake, I think Ben will tell us as soon as the answer is actually known.

[clarence]

Thanks Paolo! That's a relief. Now we just need to know their thoughts on licensing.