>To: HeroQuest-rules_at_yahoogroups.com
>Oh I know David; sorry if it seemed that I implied that *you* should be doing this!
>I think that *someone* at Moon Design should be. If there isn't a publicity person designated already then its well past time that one gets selected/appointed/pressganged/whatever...
Sorry, I don't post here much any more, but this caught my attention. I hope that "Moon Design" won't think I'm revealing any secrets here, and I don't think I am. Nobody has hidden these facts previously. And I think that some disclosure might be useful.
But here it is: Moon Design is, last time I checked, precisely two people. Well, one person, and a helper. I don't know the precise financial arrangements, but I doubt either is a "paid" position per se. That is, I think the owner gets paid from the profits from sales, and I don't know how he compensates the other guy. This may well have changed since the last time I worked with them, note. But I doubt that they've suddenly acquired a staff in the meanwhile.
I'm also going to guess that those who work for Moon Design also have other employment, at least occasionally. It would be unusual if they didn't.
Now, you might think, "What sort of amateur group are these guys?" Well, they're the same sort of people who produce about 99% of RPGs that are out there. There is one, and only one, "Company" out there that makes RPGs... and you know who they are. And that one "company" has gone bankrupt on more than one occasion, and is largely supported by a huge owning corporation that probably keeps them around mostly as a tax write off (sure 4th Ed will be profitable in the short run, but then it'll become a loss-generator as all the other editions have eventually).
The point is that RPG publication is something much more akin to a hobby than it is to a business. At issue is the fact that there are so many more folks who want to produce things for RPGs than there are a market for those things (really not surprising if you consider the collaborative nature of the medium). The RPG "industry" when it pays at all, pays less than 5% of what writers get in any other real industry. Usually far less than 5%. Or, in other words, they don't really pay at all. They just give us an excuse to give to our wives so they don't kill us for spending time writing stuff for them.
Almost nobody makes a living off of RPG production (and only a handful of people have managed to do so for more than a couple of years at a time - folks like Steve Jackson... he employes a couple of full-time people for his warehouse...). I know most of the people in the "industry," if not personally, then second-hand, so this isn't just idle speculation.
So when you're looking at your favorite RPG "Company" just keep these facts in mind. If these are not the facts, somebody feel free to correct me (Greg, as an "industry insider" would know better than anyone). But there's this illusion that having a name to your company means that there exists some full-time staff somewhere who can be "assigned" to tasks.
Now, all this said, "Moon Design" is, from my experience, relatively good at making a business out of this hobby. The product line continues to expand, and I think that their freelancers get paid. That's more than a lot of "RPG Companies" out there can say. So this is not a slam at all. What I'm saying is that with the "market" for RPGs being what it is (supply far, far exceeding demand), you should probably be grateful that there's anything out there to buy whatsoever. And Moon Design does better than most. And at least he's out there taking the risk of losing his shirt to see that HQ continues to exist.
Not even Greg Stafford takes that risk any more. No offense to Greg, who has been a stalwart of the "industry" forever; but I hope you get my point. You can wish it were otherwise, but that won't change the nature of the "industry." You just have to accept it for what it is.
That, or start your own RPG "company," and do better than everyone else. :-)
Mike
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