Monthly Archives: April 2017
RPG Career Advice: Self Promotion
So… look. You have to promote yourself.
Yes, it’s a pain for a lot of people. And it can be uncomfortable or embarrassing, especially if you aren’t used to it. And doing it wrong can turn off some folks, especially early on, who may reply to your promotion with “Who the hell are you and why should I care?”
Those people are doing you a favor, though they don’t know it. They’re giving you a chance at more self-promotion.
Look, if you want an RPG career, you HAVE to self-promote. Because either you want other people to hire you to be part of their projects (in which case you need to get your name and work out there, so people know you are available to be hired and have some idea why they might want to hire you), OR you are doing your own projects (in which case you need to promote them, which if they are your projects is the same as promoting yourself).
Even if you currently have a stable industry job, you should promote yourself. This can increase your value to the company, increase the company’s awareness of your value, and give you options if a meteor strike that company and suddenly you don’t work there anymore.
I am not a social media guru or an example of vast success or riches, so take all my suggestions with a grain of salt. But I had significant problems with self-promotion for years, and these ideas are how I (partially) overcame them.
1. Promote Everyone Else
“Hey, I got to work on this neat project with Awesome Designer and Amazing Editor! They’re doing fantastic work, and I can’t wait to see the end project!”
“Neat Folks have a new Kickstarter, and it looks great to me! Check it out!”
Often the easiest ways to self-promote is to insert your promotion as part of promoting other people, and to simply talk about the things you find exciting even if you aren’t involved with them. Doing these things still puts your name out there, and when you promote other people you encourage them to promote you in return. For introverts, this can be much easier than talking up your own part in projects.
2. Just Do Stuff
Self-promotion doesn’t have to be about saying how great you are. If you put out a new short story, or a cool story hook, or a single feat designed to allow halfling war-bakers make potions out of muffins, you can just put it out, link to it, and make sure your name is easily associated with it.
One of the reason my blog is OwenKCStephens.com is that anything I put on there is easily tied to me.
One of the reasons I put a lot of stuff on there is so people see my name, associated with things they might like.
Creation is promotion, as long as you give everyone involved credit.
3. Have a Way to be Contacted
My email is not hard to find. I let everyone ping me on Facebook. My Facebook and Twitter accounts are linked from my blog. I have a Paizo.com account that accepts private messages. If you want to get in touch with me, it’s easy.
Now, there are good and reasonable circumstances that might make any or all of those a bad idea for the security, safety, or sanity of someone other than me. But whatever method you choose, from a specific work-related email to a forum you can moderate yourself, if you want work in the industry, you need to make sure people know how to get hold of you.
4. If You Mention It, Make It Easy to Find
I have a Patreon campaign. And now, just by linking it, I have made it easy for anyone who wants to give me as little as $1-$3 a month to support these blog posts to do that.
I have both made my point, and self-promoted.
If a project of yours gets a review, link to it in a way that makes it easy to find both the review and a way to buy the product. Endzeitgeist, for example, links to where you can buy the products he reviews when he posts them on his website. That encourages me to use the links to his site when i mention the review, since people can then click-through and buy my stuff. Because he promoted me, I promote him.
If you are excited by your new project, link to where people can find more ifnrmation on it. That increases the chances people will get excited about it, and that helps drive that they found this neat thing because you mentioned it.
If you are going to go to all the effort to promote that you work for multiple companies (such as Paizo, Green Ronin, Rite Publishing, and Rogue Genius Games), promote that fact in a way that helps drive traffic to them.
Readers and fans and customers are often lazy. Make it as easy as possible for them to give you money, follow your posts, or read your thoughts.
You Can’t let the Whole World be Your Job
This is something it took me a long time to figure out as a freelance writer and developer, and it’s a mistake I still make much too often.
You can’t let the whole world be your job.
What I mean by that is you can’t allow every place, every time, and every contact to be work-related. Yes, you may be someone who gets freelance work done at 7am, 9pm, or 3 am depending on how your insomnia impacts you. But you can’t let your expectation be that you should be working at all those times.
Similarly you may well need to have your home workspace overlap with your personal space (though the tax benefits of a home office are not to be underestimated), but you can’t allow ALL your home space to be a place where work often gets done.
It’s great to have friends in the industry… but you need to have conversations and activities and interactions with them beyond things you do for your career.
The reasons for needing to at the very least carve out SOME time and space that is kept separate from work concerns are many and varied, but they can be boiled down to one basic idea.
Sometimes you don’t want to go to work.
Now, whether you can spare the time off, get vacation time, can take a mental health day, or need to play hooky is beyond the scope of this article. The important thing is, if you don’t want to go to work, and you have allowed your entire life to be defined primarily by your work, then you don’t want to get up and engage with life.
And that’s a problem.
Burnout, depression, imposter syndrome, introversion, and even panic attacks are not uncommon in creative writing careers. To survive, you need to know there is a way to exist outside your job.
Yes, your email may be ubiquitous, and your editors may always have a question (or a panicked demand) asking about changes, availability, late projects, and so on. But you can decide there are hours when that isn’t your problem. Time when, even if everything is on fire, you get to read a book, or sit on the balcony and listen to the rain. Whatever works for you.
I can’t tell you how to achieve work/life balance. There’s no magic number of hours per day, or per week, you need to take away from being “on call” to your career. But you need to know you CAN take time away. Subconsciously, your brain needs to be able to grasp the idea that after this project, this crunch time, this weekend, you have a place you CAN get away.
Because, to quote one of my editors, you are no use to anyone dead.
Speaking of My Career
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Dystopian Factions: The Prags
These aren’t “for” anything yet, though I might incorporate them into some kind of Starfinder product at some point.
Prags
The Prags, or Pragmatics, believe that whatever produces the best end result, as defined by the self, is morally good. They consider ethics, philosophy, and religion to be flawed, though not useless, methods to measure how a given action will be viewed by individuals other than the self, which can be useful when determining if an otherwise-useful act carries too great a risk of backlash by those it does not benefit, reducing its value to the self.
Prags often support public governments and policies that support the poor and disabled, on the theory that it is impossible to know if the self will suffer some loss, and creating a safety net gives the Prags the opportunities to take greater risks to improve their own situation, knowing that failure will be mitigates by social programs. They rarely support anything designed only to benefit a specific ethnic group or class, because that either doesn’t apply to them if they are not part of the group, or it risks resentment to the entire class if the Prags are part of the group.
In personal interactions Prags strive to develop loyal friends and trustworthy reputations, as these things have proven long-term benefits. However Prags also openly admit they have an eye out for the U-B, or Ultimate Benefit, a thing that grants the self such an advantage that betrayal of ally and reputation is an acceptable cost to pay for it.
While it is clear that Prag belief in the potential of a U-B makes their allies slightly nervous, Prags see this as a benefit as well. An ally you are entirely loyal to is of more value if that ally is also aware that if the alliance proves to have much less value than expected, it may be suddenly and mercilessly jettisoned. This encourages allies to also keep a watchful eye on how much they consider a Prag’s benefits and needs. Many Prags also claim the the U-B is a theoretical construct — since it is impossible to know the total benefit gained by a complete betrayal until the betrayal is irreversible, some Prags claim no U-B could ever be so obviously worthwhile as to justify such a betrayal as pragmatic.
Such Prags often then wink.
Prags near the end of their lifespan, or stricken with an incurable disease, often arrange for a single final enjoyable event, which culminates in their suicide, to ensure their quality of life does not decline any further.
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House Rules; Initiative By Spelllessness
Initiative By Spelllessness
“Exactly! It’s real and I can touch it.”
Jack Burton from Big Trouble in Little China:
A simple house rule designed to alter the inherent power level of various classes and sets up a cosmology where knowing magic always and automatically means you aren’t as alert to the events of the entirely material world around you. Also, this is nothing more than a minor tweak on the same basic idea from yesterday, but with a different variable as the lynchpin.
Each combat round is broken into 10 phases, though in most combats you can skip many of them. Within each phase, all characters acting in that phase act in order of their initiative modifier (calculated normally).
In phase one, only characters and monsters with no spellcasting or spell-like abilities, and those with only o-level spells or spell-like abilities act.
In phase two, all characters and monsters with spellcasting limited to 1st and lower level spells and 1st or lower level spell-like abilities act.
In phase three, those with up to 3rd level spells and 3rd level spell-like abilities, in phase 4 up to 4th level, and so on.
No other rules need change, and all three phases are still part of a single round. You can hold or ready an action to go in later phases, just as you could hold or ready and act at a lower initiative.
As compared to yesterday, which focused on your level of dedication to combat ability as the thing that lets you go first, in this system the more magic you know the later you go. This means you no longer have rogues going after fighters, or clerics going before wizards. It also mans the bigger an eldritch badass you are, the more you pay for it by other people going before you in the potential games of rocket-tag.
Being a wizard just got tougher.
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House Rules: Initiative by BAB
Initiative By Base Attack Bonus
A simple house rule designed to alter the inherent power level of various classes.
Each combat round is broken into three phases.
In phase one, all characters and monsters with a bab equal to their HD go, in initiative order.
In phase two, all characters and monsters with a bab equal to more than half their HD (but less that their full HD) go, in initiative order.
In phase three, all characters and monsters with a bab equal to or less than half their HD go, in initiative order.
No other rules need change, and all three phases are still part of a single round. You can hold or ready an action to go in later phases, just as you could hold or ready and act at a lower initiative. As long as you aren’t using any 3pp rules that use initiative values to determine anything other than the order characters go in a round, you can just treat this as everyone going on phase one having a +100 bonus to their Initiative check, and every going on phase two having a +50 bonus.
Being a wizard just got tougher.
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Thematic Cheese Feat: High Priest
Sometimes what the GM and players both want is not some carefully balanced, playtested, and theorycrafted expansion of the rules usable by a broad range of characters.
Sometimes you just want some cheese of the right flavor.
High Priest
Regardless of your level or base of operations, you are an acknowledged leader within your religion, able to command vast resources and use pure presence to bring others to your cause.
Prerequisites: Cha 13, member of a church.
Benefit: You gain the benefits of the Leadership feat, except your followers and cohort don’t arrive (and aren’t replaced) automatically, Instead, when you drop a foe to 0 or fewer hit points, if you have a cohort or follower slot open that foe could fill (it is the appropriate level or level-equivalent) you can force the foe to make a Will save (DC 10 +1/2 your level + your Wisdom or Charisma modifier — whichever is higher). If it fails the save, rather that die or fall unconscious, it’s alignment changes to match your deity’s and it becomes a loyal cohort or follower (depending on what slot it took). The foe gains a +4 bonus to this saving throw for each of the things that is true; the foe is a priest or divine agent of another deity or philosophy; the foe has an alignment subtype that does not mach the alignment of your deity; the foe is already a follower or cohort.
Additionally, when in a settlement with a church to your deity, you can command any service that does not have a significant cost to your church. This normally includes feeding and housing a modest number of people and having local priests cast any spell with no costly material components or inherent risks. However, any service with a cost as high as a single gold piece costs the full amount, and you can never use this ability to turn a profit.
Additionally, you can cast atonement, as the spell, once per character level as a spell-like ability.
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Thematic Cheese Feats: Elven Curvedance
Okay, let’s get back to some game ideas!
Sometimes what the GM and players both want is not some carefully balanced, playtested, and theorycrafted expansion of the rules usable by a broad range of characters.
Sometimes you just want some cheese of the right flavor.
Elven Curvedance
You know the ancient, and nearly-lost, art of the wardance of the elven curveblade, which strongly encourages (though it does not require) mobility in combat.
Prerequisites: Str 13, Dex 13, proficiency with the elven curveblade.
Benefit: You can use your Dexterity modifier in place of your Strength modifier when making attack rolls with the elven curveblade, as if you had the Weapon Finesse feat for just that weapon. When you choose to do this, and you make only a single melee attack on your turn, you may also use your Dexterity modifier in place of your Strength modifier when calculating your damage bonus with the elven curveblade (including adding 1.5x your strength modifier when using the weapon two-handed).
If you have an option that you can normally add to a melee attack only when making a standard action or attack action for a single attack, you made add that to melee attacks with your elven curveblade anytime you only make a single melee attack on your turn. for example, if you have Vital Strike, you could use it with your elven curveblade on a charge (a single attack), even though Vital Strike does not normally allow that.
Special: This feat counts as Weapon Finesse for any feat or ability that has Weapon Finesse as a prerequisite or modifies how Weapon Finesse works, but you can only use such feats and abilities with an elven curveblade unless you actually have the weapons Finesse feat.
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Privilege: The Dice Game. An Allegory
I’ve been desperately trying not to write this allegory through game rules, because I’m not convinced either that it is particularly clever, or that any good will come out of its existence. But it also won’t get out of my head, so here it is.
In Privilege: The Dice Game, each person gets to roll one die. You get a number of points equal to your roll. Highest point total wins.
One of three different levels of player privilege is assigned based to each player based on factors outside they players control or merit.
Most Privileged each get to roll 1d20 (a single die with twenty sides).
Less Privileged get to roll 1d12 (a single die with twelve sides).
UnPrivileged get to roll 1d6 (a single die with six sides, or a “normal” die).
Now obviously this means that sometimes an UnPrivileged player will score more points than a Most Privileged or Less Privileged player. To the various Privileged players, this will often feel like they had no advantage, or that their advantage didn’t matter. They did have an advantage, of course. A massive one, in *circumstance*. If you offer to play another game with them, and ask what role they want in order to score the most points, none of them will decide to be UnPrivileged just because one once got more points.
Less Privileged players may focus more on the fact that Most Privileged players have a bigger advantage than they do, rather than the fact UnPrivileged players have a huge drawback compared to the Less Privileged.
The UnPrivileged are likely to complain the game sucks. And for them it objectively does. And if they roll a 6, they will not feel the game is fair just because some of Most Privileged and Less Privileged players roll a 5 or less.
Even if we adjust the game and say the UnPrivileged win ties, they are at a disadvantage. AND, at this point, any Most Privileged or Less Privileged player who ties with a UnPrivileged player may feel it’s “unfair” that they lose ties, claiming that the UnPrivileged have an advantage they don’t. This ignores that the UnPrivileged are still likely to score the fewest points, through no fault of their own.
We could even let the UnPrivileged roll 2d6 and take the better of the two results AND win ties, AND say if they roll two 6s they can roll a d20 and take THAT result if it’s better. And since that may feel unfair to the Less Privileged, we say that if THEY roll a 12 on their d12, they can roll a d6, and if it comes up a 6 they can roll a d20 and take that result if it is better.
And it’s still not a fair game, not because the UnPrivileged get two special rules and the Less Privileged get one, but because they are still systematically less likely to win than the Most Privileged.
Now, with these expanded rules there is no outcome that is impossible for any players. So, with this rule set, it is impossible to identify if a single player is Most Privileged, Less Privileged, or UnPrivileged just by being told their final score. Absolutely any player could, theoretically, get a point score from 1 to 20.
But if you are told the scores of 100 players all at the same level of Privilege, you are going to pretty easily identify which Privilege rank they all had.
End of Line
Owen K.C. Stephens 