Can you cite your source on this? That an RPG book WITH art and maps ect has 4 times the amount of text than a novel per page?

I mean I'm not sitting around counting 100s of words, but I'd be .... astounded if one page in an RPG is 4 novel pages. Doesn't sound right.

Hey, look at those credits in the Shadowrun books! I see in SR4A that someone named ADAM JURY is credited with being on the DESIGN TEAM, Writing, Short Story Writing, Cover Design, INTERIOR LAYOUT, and Character Sheet. He might be someone you could ask about that!

Hold it...you mean I don't have a right to know why you left?

But dude...I am a fan?

I have given my hard earned money to CGL?

I have worshipped at the alter of Shadowrun since the dawn of time.

My children were all named for the coolest of Shadowtalk posters!

You would deny to me...me...of all people...the intimate knowledge from the very heart of the company which sustains my life???

*SARCASM OFF*

I wonder why Adam gets a pass and CGL doesn't?

Because Adam's a nice guy who's never (to my knowledge anyway) ripped most of the upset people off or broken contracts he's made with them? That'd be my guess.

There's a shortcut to counting the number of words on a page, you know: count the number of words in a line. Count the number of lines in a column. Multiply those two numbers. Then multiply that number by the number of columns on the page. Do that on a few different pages and you'll quickly figure out some averages.

I designed the Shadowrun, 20th Anniversary book in 2009, along with Eclipse Phase. Every single Shadowrun book that Catalyst published passed over my desk at some point or another; whether I did the entire production myself, fixed up some loose ends, or did some amount in-between. I also produced the BattleTech Introductory Boxed Set, Total Warfare, TechManual, and Tactical Operations. I've written the initial outlines and word count specs for books you've seen and books and projects you've yet to see or even hear about. I know what I'm talking about.

(Oh, and I've done some novels/fiction, too.)

Or you use MS Word Seattle 2072 was 150,000+ words.

Writers aren't the only folks that need payment, you also need things like editors and illustrators. I think Adam did the layout for CGL, but often this is also done by freelancers.

So for the writing Seattle 2072 might cost $5250+ (which isn't much IMHO), but you also have illustrators and editors, not having the numbers what they get paid, but a book like Seattle 2072 might easily cost up to $10,000-$15,000 for the freelancers alone. Now multiply this by a couple of books and the costs quickly add up...

Well, alot of the art in Seattle 2072 was recycled. Not all of it, but alot of it. So they probably saved some nuyen there.
I do not think it costs that much to produce, though. I would guess 6000 for the writing(4 cents per word, as stated elsewhere, times 150,000 words), and probably another 1000 for the editing(figuring that is going to be hourly, like with local news papers).

(Completely uninformed speculation..I expect to be WAY off! but this should illustrate kind of the point) Of that cover price we pay, I am guessing about half goes to the publishing house, 25% goes to the distributors, 15% goes to the FLGS(since 10% discounts used to be common), and 10% goes to CGL. From that 10%, they have to pay their freelancers, artists, licensing fees, and permanent employees.

It IS a lot. I wrote massive chunks of Vice and Corporate Guide, I did a respectable number of countries et al. in the Sixth World Almanac, I was contracted for two entire chapters in REDACTED, I did a lot of writing over the last year or so. No resting on my red curly-haired laurels for me, no sir.

As anyone will tell you, we don't write for the money. It is nice to be paid though.

AH mention 3.5 cents a word a couple of times, I suspect that that is what most writers get.

As far as I know it breaks down as follows (unless things have changed drastically in the RPG business):
40% publisher (CGL in this case)
20% distributor
40% retailer
This is of course the percentage of the MSRP, if the retailer chooses to ask less for the product that's his choice. Some companies like Amazon are capable of negotiating far better prices (often going around a distributor), but those tend to buy a lot of product at once, so that is nice for a publisher.

It varies by the nature of the project. Some are paid by the word, some by the section, some based on the word but varying based on how many words total (they have $5X for writing, so someone writing 20% of the the word count gets paid $X). Some things are even a flat rate based on a project (such as some PDF only products) while I even had one proposed project where I would receive a percentage of the net.

Having worked in the retail book selling business, I can point out a couple of things...


Take your average paperback. Count the words on the page. Usually tops out at ~300ish words per page. This does vary due to font and such but not by much unless unusual circumstances exist.

I also want to point out the SIZE of the page. Keep this in mind.

Your average RPG manual / sourcebook / splatbook / etc is based on 8.5x11 page sizes (or a size very close to it). At comparable font sizes (or smaller fonts, check your SR4A against a paperback book sometime), you can cram almost 4x the words due to sheer page size differences.

So the page content count *CAN* and *WILL* vary between two different formats. SR4A was an *expensive* book in comparison to DOTA: Dusk just from the size difference between the two.

For clarification purposes, the LEs arrived in the warehouse on March 22, 2010. I do not know who began the rumor that the boat just hit port this week. No official street date has been assigned as of yet. I will ensure that the information is propagated as quickly as possible once a street date is assigned.

Thank you.

Roughly 90% of our contracts are done at a price per word. Development contracts, such as those for our PDF exclusives, are the only ones which regularly receive a percentage of NET. Our PDF exclusives such as the Missions, are generally a fixed fee, due to the more fluid nature of electronic layout and a diminished need to hit exact page counts for signatures in printing. The BattleTech side does operate differently in this regard.

For clarification purposes, Kid Chameleon is one of the owners of IMR and a regular contributor to the BattleTech IP, which may be why he is more familiar with that side of the operations.

I mentioned (and put up on the blog) that the boat had docked, but since I didn't have a specific date for that action, I didn't give one. The assumption was subsequently made that it had hit at about the same time as the announcement. Just one of those internet things!

Jason H.

Oooh, important Guests O.o We probably don't leave a good impression here with these threads.

Ah.

I was not aware of this; thanks for the clarification.

That means you're the guy who came up with the zombie apocalypse stats for HMHVV?


Or more generally, how much info/guidelines do freelancers get for their texts? Is it more like "write 10k words about HMHVV, two thirds fluff text and one third stats for the different infected and the virus itself", or does the employer provide all the "raw data" and your job is to translate it into a readable text?

The contact vector for Krieger? No, that was Ancient History in the Runner's Companion. I just did a cut-and-paste of the relevant section, but he came up with all that.

I'm still upset that I couldn't use jabberwocks in that book, but that's neither here nor there. I also tried to make bandersnatchii a little scarier, but was asked to scale things back a little. Also neither here nor there.

In my case, it was the former: "Dude, I need 10K words, to include a 500 word intro fiction and approximately 2K of game information (stats, etc.). We're looking to have HMHVV-II spreading, so include new varieties for elves, orks, and dwarfs along with the rest of the Infected that haven't been translated to 4E yet."

To be sure, there's all sorts of reference available. Runner's Companion had only recently come out, so I had a lot of new information. There was also existing, but fairly new, information in Runner's Havens and a couple of other places about Asamondo and other Infected-friendly locales. But for the most part, I was told, "We need 10,000 words."

This was, of course, only after I'd completed a proposal outlining what I had in mind. The proposal for "The Infected" came from a much larger proposal I'd put together outlining an entire critter book back in the SR3 days, which I think I was calling Call of the Wild for a time before the concept of Running Wild really took off in Rob Boyle's brain. "The Infected" section of that was originally called "Shadows of the Night," and sometimes I wish I'd stuck with that title.

So I guess in all my descriptions of what goes on, I left out the proposal stage. It's not like I was just called up out of the blue and told to write 10K words on the Infected. I'd expressed a lot of interest in it beforehand, and showed them what I had in mind for the section before it was offered to me. There were other competing ideas that I managed to beat out. When Running Wild got delayed, I had to adapt what I'd proposed to the new stuff that had appeared in canon since my original proposal.

Question for the IMR/CGL types looking in on this thread: Would it be a violation of my NDA to show people the proposal that got Rob interested a few years back, during the FanPro era, to kind of show what goes on behind the scenes? It's not the best proposal, to be sure, but it got me the gig. If it's not kosher, I won't do it, but I think it might be educational.

You'd probably want to blame me for that one - different intentions of the use of the word "contact." Very unintentional, mea culpa.


Heh. There have been various efforts at a "Shadowrun Bible" to educate freelancers, but mainly the process goes like this:
1) A Project Specification goes out.

2) Freelancers propose for some or all of the sections in the Project Spec. Different freelancers go into different amounts of detail; some of the proposals end up being longer than the proposed section!

3) The developer in charge picks who does what, sometimes mixing and matching ideas from proposals and/or partnering people together. They include comments on the proposal, and usually there's a bit of talking about the section. Reference materials are provided as necessary, but generally the freelancer is expected to do their own research, with any gaps being (hopefully) noticed and called out by the proofers or developers.

Except in certain extraordinary circumstances, you're not just taking a bunch of raw data and chopping it down - I can think of one or two instances, like the SR Quick Start Rules, where you could sortof make that claim, but even then there's a good bit of design thought that goes into the presentation et al.

I think if you just post your proposal without any dev comments or anything that I'd be okay with that going up. There are other caveats--different devs have different preferences, and proposal formats change--but in general you're right, it could be a nice behind-the-scenes thing.

Jason H.

Perhaps in a separate thread so it doesn't get lots in here and/or derail these thread?

That's the plan. Since Jason thinks it's all right, and I don't really have anything in there that has any trade secrets, and it's even referencing a different version of the game, I think it'll be copacetic. I'm going to let a couple of other folks chime in before I do it, but it will be in its own thread, to which I'll provide a link when it's done.

Why am i somehow not surprised that you of all people would come up with the zombie apocalypse for shadowrun? ^^

That's what I was thinking about, a specification (or series thereof) with all the details of the universe, and if some new info is to be published the secret Canon Cabal creates a new section of the SR standard and then hires a writer to turn that condensated information into a book chapter.

Yes, I'm a CompSci guy, before lifting a finger I read 500 pages of specs about digit movement and then fill a few hectars of whiteboard with requirements like the minimum fingertip velocity when Mars, Venus and Jupiter align in the fifth house.


@Patrick: I'd certainly like to see it.

The Quick-Start Rules were extremely unusual in that an author created the QSR from SR4, and then Randall and I spent a long time paring it even further down, building some bits back up, tearing them down again, figuring out what content should be duplicated/presented in shortened format in the sidebars, etc.

I still think it's one of the best presentations of Quick-Start Rules in gaming.

Especially for those that want to try their hand at professional writing. It could be a very educational experience.

I zapped through the SR4A files and found a page -- page 42 -- that was entirely text, had a mix of header sizes, no sidebars or art or anything. 1215 words. The next page, 43, with a piece of art on it: 868 words.

I had a *lot* of text to fit into that book and despite adding all the new fiction content, did not want to inflate the page count very much.

SR4A is a magnificently beautiful book. Easily one of the most beautiful and ascetically pleasing RPG books I own, and I own 100s. You should be proud of that one.

It single handedly got me back into the game.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...st&p=905894

Jason, just curious if you had been able to gather any info on the RED program yet? I completely understand if you haven't.

Unfortunately, Midnight being mailed out happened, and I've been informed it was an "oversight" on the part of the company president, as they were just too busy getting ready for a trade show to tell the BattleShop employee not to ship the copies--showing, perhaps, the full seriousness with which they approach freelancers and the Shadowrun line, and their responsibilities to both. The situation has not been resolved, as Catalyst has chosen not to pay me the amount (less than $3000) that I am owed for the contracts, as I was informed today by the president of Catalyst of which projects they were choosing to pay. Because of this, Midnight continues to be unavailable, and I have requested that Catalyst destroy all copies of the item if they continue to decide not to pay for my writing. In other news, they are also not paying for my contracted writing for Vice...

On the bright side, this will make those of you who purchased it have collectors items. At least until another company (one can only hope) picks up the SR license and I will ethically and enthusiastically deal with that company to sell the remaining DotA series and the follow up campaign book.

For those of you wondering why I'm personally making such a fuss, let me state that I am a single mother of two young children, currently unemployed. The amounts they owe me for those projects make a WORLD of difference in my life - equal to 5 months of rent payments, to put it in perspective. That I would quit a job rather than compromise my ethics -- when I was asked by Loren Coleman to lie on financial reports to Topps -- should state just how completely terrible the situation was. All I am asking, at this point, is that Catalyst pay me the amounts I am owed, for the work I did in good faith, and that they have profited on. That those profits went out of the company, is not something I should be punished for. Loren's actions have a direct and significant impact on my life and wellbeing, and that of my two children.

Just to nail this home for people, a 120,000 word book at 3.5 cents per word is $4,200. The writing costs for two books is less than ten grand. I couldn't tell you how many freelancers or former freelancers were holding out for payment, but Catalyst not having ten grand to pay its freelancers and get the books it already has in print to market is ridiculous. This is the kind of business nonsense that makes me unwilling to work with them any more.

why is it BTW that the only freelancers complaining are shadowrun writers? is there a real or perceived favoritsm here, are SR writers a little more... "parinoid" of evil corperate shinnagens, or are Btech writers just less willing to air their greviances in public to the point of outright breach of NDA?

If this is true I'd screw ethics, you could get in serious trouble for falsifying financial documents unless you are getting paid mountains of cash it aint worth it. My last job I had to stop doing certain tasks as there legality became lets say questionable. And while I was opposed to the tasks on a ethical level I'm not claiming to be super ethical. But I am not going to prison for $18 an hour.

I applaud your resolve...

Keep the Faith

Not knowing many BattleTech writers, I couldn't say with any great authority. Having heard this line several times though, I do have my theories:

1) Yes, we're naturally more suspicious. It's not paranoia because hey, look, no-one is getting paid and the company shills have already admitted to financial shenanigans.

2) We have reason to be more suspicious. Shadowrun as a whole has had a hard time of it from the company over the last couple years. With every line developer that left, several good old-time freelancers tended to leave with them, and added tons of delays to the whole process. Considering that neither Randall Bills or Jason Hardy are what you might call "core Shadowrun people," their leadership was subject to a certain amount of suspicion.

3) Catalyst loves BattleTech. I don't say that because I think SR feels unloved, I mean really: the owners of IMR/CGL are huge BattleTech fans and have been for years and years. They're members of the community, they take a greater interest in the game, they interact more with the freelancers and fandom. Hell, do you know how long it was before Randall Bills got an account on Dumpshock?

4) We trust our own. I like to flatter myself to think of Adam Jury and Jennifer Harding as friends. At the very least, Adam is the single most professional person I know, and he and Jen have always been straight with me. When two people of that quality leave, I think that there is a very serious problem. If Warner Doles had comes to me in the middle of the night six weeks ago and told me CGL would never pay my outstanding balances, I honestly wouldn't have credited his doomsaying as much, because I only know the guy as a name on the other side of the boards.

Could be a couple of reasons. With noted BT people as the head of CGL, the BT side of the freelancers may feel alot better off and more secure. Could be they're paid more often than the SR side. Could be that they feel more secure with a well known Line Developer, as opposed to a relative newcomer with Jason Hardy. Would the SR side have this problem if Rob Boyle was still in charge? It could just be that the BT freelancers feel more secure in the BT-centric company (and yes, that is the aura CGL has).

Could be that they feel better because BT is producing alot more product currently.

Edit
And if you're the paranoid conspiracy types from the BT side, the freelancers are all doing this because they're trying to form a new company to get the licenses, and that's the only reason they're speaking up
/edit

Interesting...

True. Hence my telling them that what they asked me to do violated my ethics, CGLs contractual obligations, and was potentially illegal.

If Topps management has any belief in this statement, especially if CGL happened to be so foolish as to turn around and send dummied up data anyway, then I'm not sure how it could not become lights out for CGL on the Shadowrun and Battletech licenses. At least under current ownership and management.

Thank you. I'm very proud of that book.

and your making your accusations do to, because even if what you say is true, making these accusations in a public fourm has proably hurt your ability to get a job, but hey, you and these other "disgrunted freelancers" won't need to worry about that when you set your own company up. which is the real reason you're trying to sink CGL isn't it?

the fact that CGL is continueing implies Topps doesn't belive it.

Depends on the terms of the lease and whether there is solid proof yet. Plus it isn't clear yet if CGL is continuing. :/

So, as I read earlier, you terminated your contract. Does that mean the stuff you wrote can no longer be used and has to be replaced? Or does CGL have rights to some of it?

I guess my question is, how do the copyrights work and the approval to use it, and who owns the intellectual property you produce?

Hi Jennifer,

I have heard what you wrote said and seen it written before - did you do those things, or refuse and quit? Obviously I'm not looking to incriminate you, and it hasn't been clear in previous public statements.

- Ket

Anything I've already been paid for, which is everything in print except Vice, belongs to CGL (or is part of the SR property, if you want to define it that way). Everything that I wasn't paid for at the time I terminated my contracts remains my own property, and Jason Hardy has been busy as a beaver assigning various BattleTech authors to rewriting several of my chapters, from what I hear.

Kind of curious...I wonder what the owners of Fan Pro would say...about some of their former employees?

Considering how things played out there.

BT authors writing SR? Is that even rational?

You mean, where the owners (again) weren't paying the freelancers, didn't live up to their agreements, efforts to save the company from itself failed and the whole thing moved to another company?

<shrug> Hell, I still consider Jason Hardy a BT freelancer and he's re-writing some of my stuff for Corp Guide now. I'm thinking this is more than a little of an "if all you have is a hammer" approach, but sometimes hammers get the job done. I personally don't know any of the writers involved, but I hear they're fine writers in their own areas.