Category: Resources

Current Openings: Jobs in Gaming

Want to dive into working in games, but not sure where to start? While it may take a bit of searching, there are opportunities out there for those that want to start an RPG or video game writing career.

Leveling Up

To start your RPG journey, it may be a good idea to collaborate with friends, or write and release some things yourself. After you’ve built up experience, put together a portfolio website and a CV of your projects.

If you want to build up experience without taking on huge projects, try a freelancing website like Upwork. They currently have a diverse offering of RPG related jobs (from video games to art work). Maintaining a good score and reputation on websites like these show employers you can meet deadlines.

Check out the random openings I found this week, gleaned from the internet below!

Current Openings

Blizzard Entertainment (the producers of game properties Overwatch and World of Warcraft) are looking for a writer for their games.

Probably Monsters is seeking a Contract Writer to aid in worldbuilding and other game creation elements.

ArenaNet wants a writer to join its ranks to assist in developing character arcs and other story mechanics.

Wizards of the Coast has a Senior Game Designer opening.

Black History Month: Creators to Support

It’s Black History Month, so now’s the time to get acquainted with Black writers, artists, and designers to show them love all year!

Game publishing company New Agenda Publishing is an all star team devoted to hiring people of color, “especially women of color”, for their projects. Misha Bushyager, Jerry D. Grayson, and Eloy Lasanta were recently published by podcast The Jank about their company. It looks like their first game will be Orun, a science fiction game set post human space colonization.

To support creators of color, buy their products and hire them for your projects (we are currently accepting submissions, by the way). If you’re looking for a starting point, Black Game Developers is a list of… it’s in the title. As they say on the site, “Here they are. Hire them. Buy their stuff.”

Finally, if you’re a supporter of RPGs on a budget, Tanya DePass of I Need Diverse Games has the following suggestion:

 

Your Grandma’s Game: Facebook Boost Follow Up

Last time I discussed PanopLit’s boosted posts on Facebook, the demographic break down of who was reacting to the RPG posts through their advertising tools was not available. This data was finally revealed to me, and the results were both shocking and exciting.

This post is going to be some heavy numbers and broad analysis, but I promise it is worth reading (or skimming) through to the end.

To review:

For the November Survey (N), I chose to advertise to “men and women.” The December Survey (D) was only advertised to “women.” Both had a budget of $30.00 and ran for 7 days.

N was seen by 2,782 people, and provided 237 engagements (or actions on the part of the viewers)… D was seen by 628 people, making the reach 78% less than N by limiting the number to one gender on Facebook.

The age range for both N and D was 25-65+. The age interactions are where things got really interested. But first, the gender disparities.

Not only was there less engagement during D’s boosting, but N saw the vast majority of those reacting identified as men. Overall, the results broke down to 95.1% men to 4.88% women. As I had initially expected, many more people between 25-34 reacted… at least if they were male. 56% of total reactors were men who fit in this category, while only 3% were women. The age ranges then sharply declined, with 22% of men falling between 35-44, 10% 45-44, 4% 55-64, and finally 3% above the age of 65.

No women older than 54 reacted to N, and their spread was less dramatic, with 1% each reacting between the ages of 35-44 and 45-54.

Moving to the next month, I expected the vast majority of women who reacted to D to fall in the same lower end of the age category. The largest share did- 30%. However, the spread then evened out between 18% and 17% in each category. Including women aged 65+. Around 113 women reacting to my post were above the age of 65.

Unlike men, whose interactions decreased with age, women were staying essentially the same amount of active after age 35 when reacting to a boosted post about roleplay gaming.

This experiment begs returning to with a higher budget, and clearer parameters, but the initial findings are pointing to women on Facebook being interested in RPGs at an older age than men (or continuing to be interested in them longer). It also makes me sad that these tools cannot be used to measure those who identify as neither men nor women, but Facebook itself may not be the best platform for representing those populations.

Targeting the RPG Community on Facebook

I promoted two posts on Facebook  to the gaming community with different gender ID targets and received vastly different results. Now, this was far from a perfect experiment, but it provided some insight that others promoting their projects through the platform may find useful. Whether creating RPG resources, or talking about something completely outside gaming, Facebook is one of the most important sites to get the word out and build your community.

Both posts featured a call to action. The first was for the November Survey, and the second for the December. I kept the age range between 25-65+, but changed the “interests” on each one. The important data point for me was the gender option.

On Facebook there are only two genders available when targeting posts. This is extremely short sighted. While it might be nice to not be advertised to as a gender outside the binary, it limits the ability of communities to reach their desired audiences completely.

For the November Survey (N), I chose to advertise to “men and women.” The December Survey (D) was only advertised to “women.” Both had a budget of $30.00 and ran for 7 days.

N was seen by 2,782 people, and provided 237 engagements (or actions on the part of the viewers). While a seemingly high number for an unknown organization, less than 9% of those who saw the N interacted with it. Only 8 clicked on the link and I only received 1 redirect from FB that resulted in a survey result. Rounding up, that translates to 0.04% of viewers performing the action requested.

D was seen by 628 people, making the reach 78% less than N by limiting the number to one gender on Facebook. However, the engagement shot up to over 19%, with almost 2% of the total people who saw the promotion choosing to share it. This is compared to 0.4% who shared N. That being said, N had 10 total shares, while D had 12.

There are still more factors to take into account: Both were run during holiday weeks (Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Year’s Eve), but preliminary data provides more focus for my questions. While Facebook does not seem to be the best tool to promote PanopLit‘s surveys or resources due to its extreme targeting restrictions, I wonder what other experiments can be run to narrow in on the gaming community’s make up on the website.

Are less women identified as RPG gamers on Facebook? Generally speaking, most sources agree that women make up the majority of FB users. Do these results indicate they are less engaged, or more likely to interact once targeted?

While I don’t think my small budget of $60 over 2 months and limited resources can solve these questions, it is certainly something to chew on. What kind of engagement have you seen while using Facebook?

More Generous Map Generators

The internet is full of free resources for RPGs, but one of the most basic needs are diverse maps. While graph paper and geometric hallways might fit your needs for an immediate dungeon the adventurers have stumbled upon, some moments need more specific, and maybe more randomized settings to interact with.

We shared some mapmaking resources before. Here are additional resources that are more involved than simply hitting a “generate” button, but still have randomization built in for customized, interactive cartography.

  • For basic combat terrain, check out the hazard generator on Chaotic Shiny. There are plenty of other generators for stats and randomized attributes available on the site as well. This generator will not provide visuals, just attributes.
  • For diverse map visuals that are built up grid-style from a database, check out Dave’s Mapper. You can pick the map style and required elements, plus cool options like side view mapping for deep delving.
  • Pencil and paper are generally the most tactile DMs get with their mapmaking, but Last Gasp ups the ante by providing dice-produced cities divided into burroughs. Their relationships and types are determined by the numbers on the dice and where they physically land.

Can’t wait to see what maps you roll out this year!

(Visual is from Dave’s Mapper.)

Get Your Game out There!

Interested in releasing your game, but unsure where to start? Step one (after creating a prototype of the game) should be to get your friends together and have them give it a shot.

Done with kind feedback from those who most love you? Send your design to a more critical eye by requesting play testers either through a local gaming group, a listing like r/TabletopDesign’s playtesters‘ page, or the big try: a convention.

Here are some other resources!

Free Rules Systems to Build Your Next World Around

RPG Worldbuilding is enough work without hammering out every mechanic. Use these free systems to kickstart your next universe, without the number’s game.

Open Legend is a stripped down rules system with a focus on collaborative story telling. This makes it ideal for those that want their RPG universe to flow with mythology and lore more than physics and condition tables. What is truly outstanding for this system are the level of development that has gone into its tools.

Let’s start with the basics: in order to interact with the gaming world, you need character! Open Legend Character Builder gets you rolling with an interactive character sheet plus tutorial. It’s also a great guide for anyone looking to design their own sheets in the future.

For those who would rather look to the stars, Stars Without Number offers endless possibilities for worlds and encounters. The rules PDF is available free. Set centuries after communication between planets has been cut off, Stars offers the possibility to build and expand a world all its own before introducing it to another one as technology pushes toward the galactic scale again.

Fate is a system designed to mold to whatever genre you want to explore. It’s lighter on dice interaction, heavier on narrative, and ideal for mishmashing genres until you get the characters you’ve always wanted to know. While Fate has plenty of base rules systems to offer, it’s best suited for intimate interactions between characters and spaces than epic architectures or Tolkienesque wars.

This was just the most timid of toe touches into RPG worldbuilding. We’re looking forward to bringing more resources for you to shape your settings into exactly what you imagined, not to mention tips on how to run them.

 

Cartography for Campaigns

The world of role playing games are ripe with seemingly endless possibilities to make your game tactile, more visually engaging, or more easily accessible. One of the most basic tools is the map. Whether for the RPG world, the characters’ homebase, or an encounter, maps instantly pull PCs into the setting and start the game’s movement and engagement mechanics going.

RPG resources are popping up on all platforms. Instagram account Fantastic Maps has excellent how-tos to assist with fleshing out those encounter areas, or populated regions. Check out the classic town map tutorial as a starting point!

For a quick fix on a pick up game, check out this city map generator, complete with auto filled in guild sections. The creator accepts donations for creating and hosting this awesome tool. Give if you can!

Placing NPC and PCs on your RPG map can be just as important to setting the scene. While colored stones, painted wood game pieces, or even just torn paper may do the trick, there’s little more fun in the world of 2D representations of 3D space than fulling illustrated tokens. Some users have created free templates for NPC tokens that you can print yourself from popular games with Dungeons & Dragons. Roll Advantage has provided a free tool to design your own for a more personal touch.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have as much fun playing around with these tools as you will using them in game!