Archive for February, 2010

I have this mantra: “Work with everyone.” It’s a business & creative endeavor philosophy I started subscribing to around a year ago. I’m still pretty new this this hobby/industry/creative community/whatever you want to call it, but there’s something I noticed that’s worth calling out:

Nearly every person I respect in this space works
or has worked with a lot of different people.

As I’ve started working with different people, I’ve taken lessons from my interactions with all of them. Editing & developing Paul Tevis’ game A Penny For My Thoughts, working with Fred Hicks & Ben Baugh[1] on Don’t Lose Your Mind, working with the massive Evil Hat Crew on The Dresden Files RPG, working with Brennan Taylor in my role as Indie Press Revolution‘s General Manager, all these things keep me on my toes and make me a better, sharper, more proficient professional. (Apologies to those I’m leaving out, as I have taken lessons from all of you.)

If I were to stick exclusively with the same crowd, while we would probably build a fantastic rapport and solid shorthand, I feel like I’d also limit my exposure to new ideas and ways of doing things. And in my former/day-job profession as a software engineer, I totally see that happening all that time.

So, I don’t want to be that guy. I want to try working with everyone, to learn all that I can and to (hopefully) share knowledge in turn. Furthermore–and this is key–I don’t want to give people reason to treat me like someone they don’t want to work with. While I won’t succeed 100%, I think that’s the key to whatever success I have ahead of me. At some point, I want to work with you. And I want you to want to work with me. This means I need to make and keep up a reputation for being reliable, useful, and being thought of more highly than “a total cockbite[2].”

At the moment, the “reliable” one is hurting, because I’ve over-subscribed myself. But, I’m unburying myself and am not immediately taking on new work (though I am always talking to people about “The Future”). That means I have learned one of the early lessons that many freelancers learn the hard way, of over-booking themselves out of fear that saying “no” means never getting another opportunity. (I suspect “the myth of opportunity” is a future blog post.)

I think I’m pretty useful to people. At least, Fred keeps hiring me to do stuff with Evil Hat, so there’s got to be something going for me there. But, again, that usefulness only comes from experience, and a variety of experience is better than being cloistered.

The “not being a total cockbite” is the big one. There are people that I am leery of working with, in spite of my mantra, because they have that sort of reputation. That reputation flags in two ways: One, am I actually going to be able to finish a product or project with this person, or is this just a waste of my time? Two, is this person’s reputation going to drag me down along with him or her? I don’t want to be professionally hurt by being a Cockbite-by-Association. So if I have that sort of reaction to people I might otherwise work with, I have to recognize that people could have that reaction of me. Thus, I take steps to keep myself from being that guy, even if it means I’m a little more boring on Twitter and the like than I otherwise would be.

Thus, “Work with everyone” (or the full version, “Work with everyone who is willing to work with me, but don’t be stupid about it and go into each new working relationship with eyes open”) is shorthand for my entire philosophy on professional conduct. As a freelancer, I’m young. It’s easy to cut off opportunities when you don’t yet have an established reputation. “Work with everyone” helps me take action to avoid that. I won’t be entirely successful, as I’m sure I’ll piss someone off or flag as undesirable to some folks, but I’ll be more successful than if I didn’t try, if I didn’t have a code of conduct that drives my interactions.

Of course, this is just about business. When the day is done, I have a pretty select group of people (although always slowly growing) with whom I want to go to the bar and grab a drink. “Work With Everyone” doesn’t mean “Be Everyone’s Best Friend.” Man alive, I certainly don’t have the energy for that.

- Ryan

[1] Oh, crap. I still owe that man his ENnie.

[2] I do love the word “cockbite.” It may not be a professional word, but by damn it does the job. And it’s fun to say. Try it.

Occasionally at IPR, one of our member publishers asks us to send some comp copies out to reviewers. Now is one of those times, and it turns out that I don’t have as extensive of a list as I’d like. So, I’m calling for folks who have published reviews of indie RPGs to contact me with their information.

If you’re interested in being on our list, here’s what I need from you:

• Your name
• Where you submit your reviews (such as RPG.net, your own blog or podcast, etc.)
• Links to some published reviews
• Whether you accept PDFs, physical copies, or both
• Your physical & electronic mailing addresses (as relevant)

Send that info to management@indiepressrevolution.com with the subject line “Indie RPG reviewer”. This will help me sort you out from other business.

Thanks,

- Ryan

So, a few days ago my friend Justin Smith posted up a list of my old gaming stuff for sale. In that post, he mentioned that I’ve moved to Oakland, CA, and am now “living the dream.”

I suppose that bears some conversation.

Last January, I decided that I wanted to leave Sacramento, my home for 17 years. Every time I visited the Bay Area, I fell in love with it over and over again. I didn’t know what I was going to do once I moved, but I essentially gave myself twelve months to get my life together enough to figure that out. Over the course of those twelve months, several new projects and opportunities came knocking — notably doing project development for The Dresden Files RPG and becoming the general manager of Indie Press Revolution.

After GenCon, I had enough work and contacts to make a stab at being a serious part-time freelance writer & editor. (Enough to where I was working around 60-70 hour weeks trying — and failing — to get everything done, counting my then full-time day job.) I reaffirmed my commitment to move at the end of the year and focus on my budding new career — something my friends and I jokingly called “living the dream.”

Okay, maybe not so jokingly. Here I am, a man who has turned down a life of security for the unpredictably of a freelancer — the feast and famine involved, hoping people will pay me for work rendered, and having to manage my own time/schedule/productivity/etc. I’m now spending several hours a day making shit up (as well as help others make up good shit and display it well), hoping people will keep being interested in it.

And you know what? I’m happy. It’s not easy, and I never imagined it would be. Frankly, I’m flighty and still over-committed, two things I’m going to have to square quickly if I’m going to keep this up. But it’s a new set of challenges in a number of different arenas, and I’m a man who thrives on that. (Some friends know me to say “Something cannot both be easy and worthwhile,” which in hindsight is probably a rather strong indicator of my worldview.)

It helps that I still have my old job in Sacramento as a part-time thing, which means I have steady income and insurance. That takes some of the edge off of the risk. Certainly, it’s not as “sexy” as the whole struggling artist thing, but I’m a 31 year old gamer nerd. Sexy is something I don’t have to worry about.[1]

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’ll talk about more later, like how I hired the aforementioned friend Justin to be my business manager and some of my plans and pitfalls for dealing with this new life as a freelancer. At least, that along with me going back to blogging about design, production & media thoughts.

- Ryan

[1] Some of you will take this as a self-denegrating comment. Others a fantastically boastful one. The “great” thing about this medium is that you can’t hear my inflection to know what I mean by it. [2]

[2] Ohh, Rob Donoghue-style footnotes! I’m keeping it classy!