Post/Author/DateTime	Post
darkhunter2007 05-20-07, 07:55 AM	DragonLance,Revenloft,Eberron are campains that published by some normal DM's? i mean could each of us make something great like this? (and get rich from bllok publishing...) and last one is-players, books i read from tales of fire and water and DragonLance, the character where players or DMPC's??
GoriceXII 05-20-07, 08:14 AM	Sure you could. Why not? If you have ideas you think others might like to play--why not get them to pay you for it? ;)
Naderion 05-20-07, 08:40 AM	I could! And I can. And I do! :D I'm working on my setting for two years now, and it slowly but steady starts to assume a form. But as you can think yourself, its a LOT of work and I think it will still be two or three years until I'll be able to 'go public' with it. I won't sell it to some company, but I really plan to get a web-site up where you can download all the materials for free in the same quality as the books published by grand name brands. I think it's hard to get something really popular completly in freelance work, but this is the 21st century and who could guess what place online distribution will have in say 10 years? I really have no illusions about becoming as popular with it as the Forgotten Realms, Dragonlnace or Eberron, or whatever, but it's fun writing and if just a dozen or so dms actually put the setting to use, I'm completely pleased with it.
queenfange 05-20-07, 10:35 AM	Yeah, I think lots of us are aspiring to publish our own works (I'm working on a campaign toolkit for dark, gothic worlds myself; just hit 50 pages in Microsoft Word this morning). I doubt more than a few people make much money from such projects; you have to be an excellent writer and editor, as well as have lots of great ideas, a strong understanding of both d20 rules and the legalities of the SRD, and amazing amounts of perserverance (sry about sp). I'm with Naderion; if it's finished, and even half a dozen DMs use it, it'll feel like an amazing accomplishment.
Jürgen Hubert 05-20-07, 10:59 AM	In theory: Yes, you could get that famous. In practice, it is going to take lots of work. Before you can even get near the "top names" in the industry, you need a lengthy list of publications to your name. Of course, that's not an insurmountable problem, but it does require a lot of effort and endurance. Start with writing articles - for Pyramid Online (http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/), or for that upcoming Digital Intitiative thingie. The entry requirements for that are much lower than for writing fully-fledged books, and once you have a few articles to your name, people will take you seriously - both other gamers and the industry professionals and publishers. Then you can start writing supplements for existing lines. Probably not at WotC, but some smaller d20 publisher - they pay less, but they are also less demanding. Once you have published enough for other games, you should have gained sufficient reputation to publish your own worlds and be successful with it. But "success" in the gaming industry does not equate with "getting rich". The sad fact is that no one gets rich from RPG publishing. Understand this principle early so that you won't be disappointed. In fact, I will repeat it again: No one gets rich from RPG publishing! The best you can get from RPG publishing in financial terms is to leverage your experience in some other industry - such as background design for computer and video games, or possibly writing for television. But the number of people who actually manage to make a living purely from writing RPG books is very, very small indeed - they are some of the most prolific writers in the industry, and even they make merely enough to get by, instead of being "wealthy". I don't want to sound discouraging, but you should know what you are up against here. If you still want to go ahead, more power to you - I, too, hope to publish my work one day.
darkhunter2007 05-20-07, 12:58 PM	I didn't said i want to make a living from RPG... it was just a question,thats all....
Jürgen Hubert 05-20-07, 01:01 PM	I didn't said i want to make a living from RPG... it was just a question,thats all.... Well, a question concerning whether it is possible for any of us to publish a setting on par with Eberron, Dragonlance, or the Forgotten Realms cannot be answered satisfactorily without a short examination of how to get there. Otherwise, the answer could be simply written as "Yes." But a thread that already ends after its first followup would be a short one, wouldn't it? ;)