Ron Edwards’ War Stories, Revisited
How modern tools, crowdfunding, and digital platforms have made self-publishing the dominant path for RPG designers seeking control and ownership.
Ron Edwards’ essay War Stories is the final pinned article on the late, lamented Forge website. It’s about him nearly getting burned on a contract when he was seeking a publisher for his roleplaying game, Sorcerer. It details the difficulty of getting published circa the year 2000, the year it was published. This makes it the one piece on the site that’s no longer relevant to the larger discussion of game design and theory.
The gatekeepers have all but been eliminated. RPGNow, the precursor to DriveThruRPG, wouldn’t exist for another year. Amazon only started beta testing what would become Kindle Direct Publishing in 2007. Kickstarter, and the entire crowdfunding movement, wasn’t a thing until 2009. Itch is relatively late to the party, launching in 2013. At the turn of the millennium, if you wanted to publish your own game, you either needed to find a publisher or come up with the cash to print and distribute it yourself.
When people today say they want to publish a roleplaying game, few are talking about pitching it to Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, and so on; it’s far easier to pursue one of the many routes to doing it yourself. When people say they want to work in the industry, they mean they’re going to pursue entrepreneurship rather than employment. The tools to get it into the world yourself are easy to use and often free.
Because here’s the thing: working for an established publisher is great if you’re satisfied playing with their toys. If your passion is to write Call of Cthulhu material, then working for Chaosium could be your dream job. If you’re looking to pitch an original horror game to them, then expect that you’ll likely end up writing for Call of Cthulhu.
But you don’t even need to apply for a job as a staff writer or look for an open freelancing gig. With the available licenses, you can write for a variety of systems. You’re subject to terms and conditions, and they take a chunk of your earnings, but you often get to use their assets and have the added benefit of a built-in fandom. The downside is that those fans bring expectations, set by the original publisher, so you’re not going to be able to wander too far off the beaten path.
Unlike Edwards, the modern game designer has multiple paths to choose from. You can still pursue a more traditional path; you can self-publish using crowdfunding or licenses. For the people who have their own vision and want to try something else, and most importantly, want to retain creative control, doing it yourself remains the most attractive option.
