Advice from Big Bad Con
Big Bad Con 2022 Wrap-Up (Part 1 of 2)
Big Bad Con is a story and indie game-focused tabletop roleplaying convention (with a healthy dose of LARPS and board games) held in the Bay Area. Of the four TTRPG cons I went to in 2019, including GenCon, Big Bad was my favorite.
Since then (and during the height of the pandemic), they’ve had a couple of streamed conventions. These conventions focused on presentations and panels with big names in the indie TTRPG scene, talking about their craft. You can watch them all on YouTube here.
In October of 2022, right before Halloween, they had their first in-person event since 2019. Expanded in 2022 was a full “POC programming track” aimed at connecting and supporting POCs in the TTRPG space.
What I did at Big Bad Con
In 2019 I went to Big Bad as an attendee - purely there to check out the scene and play some games. It was amazing! This time around in 2022, I did all the things:
I went as an attendee (both playing games and going to panels)
I was a Ranger (part of the volunteer staff) and helped a bit with setup and running Games on Demand
I was a GM and ran a playtest of Jukebox
I participated in the business trading card game (i.e. first forays into networking as a TTRPG professional)
The POC track included panels, POC game designers from around the world, and a few networking events. The POC programming team put an obvious amount of love, time, money, and care into the track: it was fantastic. If you search #BigBadCon2022, you’ll see a stream of love for the con, mostly in reference to the POC track. Dan Muñoz has a good wrap-up video that gets to a bit of the heart of what the POC track meant for those involved (and if you’re so moved, you can donate here).
Notes and Advice! ✎✎✎
I started taking notes (often sketchnotes) back in my tech conference days. Below is the advice I captured from the Big Bad Con panels I attended and talking to folks around the con:
POC Perspective: Professional Freelancing and Working in Gaming
Q&A with the Creators of Journeys through the Radiant Citadel
Other Panels (didn’t attend these, but have their own write-ups)
Panels
POC Perspective: Professional Freelancing and Working in Gaming
Justice Ramin Arman (@justicearman), Anthony Joyce-Rivera (@AJoyce_Rivera), Erin Roberts (@nirele), Michelle Nguyen Bradley (@iamchubbybunny)
This panel was all POC freelancers, talking about their experience and giving advice for working in the TTRPG industry.
What skills are actually important for freelancing: “Just because you’re good, doesn’t mean you’re going to make it”. Networking and your reputation amongst folks who might hire you is paramount to getting more work. The three traits employers are actually looking at (as opposed to “is the writing amazing?”):
Are you communicative?
Do you deliver on time?
Is the work to my specification (style guide, word count, etc)?
Be proactive about asking for feedback: Many a freelancer has had the experience of getting a job, handing in their work, thinking everything went fine, and then never getting hired by that publisher again (because they messed something up on the project). Asking for feedback allows you to know how a project went from a publisher’s perspective and improve.
Give each project your full attention: You’re often “known” by your last work. Even if you have a portfolio of strong work, your last project will have an outsized effect on your ability to get your next opportunity.
Be reliable by learning to project manage (yourself): A lot of creators burn out in 1-2 years from constant hustling and taking on too much work. Panelists suggested:
Be aware that when it rains, it pours; you might have no opportunities and then suddenly be bombarded with offers. Don’t burn yourself out taking on too many jobs just because they are available. A better solution is to take on a manageable workload and pass on opportunities to other folks you can recommend.
Sometimes you can hire additional people to help out with a project; this can turn a situation where you go from being an overworked individual contributor, into one where you’re able to put together and manage a team.
Collect a bit of data and track how many words you actually write.
Tools and Work Suggestions:
Use AirTable to track all your projects, specifically keeping track of NDAs and when you’re actually allowed to start talking about projects
Sunsama is a todo list plus calendar combination
Have a goal of doing just three things in a day
Zoho invoice, presumably for invoices!
All of that said, there is no magic software to make you a successful freelancer; learn who you are and pick the tools and strategies that work for you.
Using Social Media: If you tie your social media to your professional online presence, you should understand that your audience is potential employers. Ask “would you hire yourself based on your last 50 tweets?”. Potential employers do look at your social media presence; if you’re constantly calling out people/organizations publically, this can spook employers.
Making your own project: Can’t get anyone to hire you? Do it yourself! You can work with folks at the same level as you and bring each other up. Side note, this was actually very inspiring to hear, because it’s what I did for Encounters in the Radiant Citadel. I plan to post here a little bit about my experience running that project so stay tuned!
Pitching to a Publisher
Banana Chan (@bananachangames), Sebastian Yūe (@sebastianyue), Aaron Catano-Saez (@AaronCatanoSaez)
This was a panel, moderated by Aaron, and featuring Banana Chan and Sebastian, who are/work for publishers.
How do you find publishers to pitch to? In the board game world, conventions have “speed networking/pitching” events (this is true at GenCon and Origins). You have a bunch of publishers and a bunch of game devs, then you match up with each other to talk and pitch. For TTRPGs, this doesn’t exist (yet). When doing research, look at what else they’ve published, do you fit their catalog? Know what you need from them. Are you looking for them to fully take a prototype to market? Are you looking for crowdfunding help?
How do you know if a publisher is accepting pitches? Some publishers, such as Hit Point Press, have a contact form. Others will put out “open calls” to say they are accepting pitches; following publishers on Twitter (for indie games and TTRPGs) or Facebook (for board games and OSR) can loop you into some of this, otherwise, pay attention to their websites.
How to pitch? If you have a contact at the publisher, let them know you are pitching. The pitch itself should have the following components:
A unique selling point
Information about who’s on the team
A quick-start or prototype; some sample of what they can expect
Proof that you’ve completed, produced or executed on past projects
A “Media Touchstone”: For example, this project is like a TTRPG version of “Game of Thrones”
The “Elevator Pitch”: Your 1-2 sentence description of the project
For board games, the focus is on the mechanics. Sometimes a publisher will just be interested in the mechanics and will completely re-skin the actual game theme.
For TTRPGs, the focus is on what kind of stories the players will create with your game.
When should you follow up? There was a bit of back and forth about how soon to send up follow-up emails. The advice landed somewhere between 2 weeks to a month. As a point of reference, for Hit Point Press if you don’t hear back in 6 months they are generally not interested.
What does rejection look like? Rejections usually happen when you get to a stage where you actually meet and pitch your design. Sometimes a rejection will be in the form of “come back in three months”, sometimes a publisher might be interested in seeing how crowdfunding goes before committing.
Self-publishing aka “there are paper shortages”: Trying to make anything right now is hard due to the pandemic interfering with the supply chain. It’s a hard time to be a publisher. If you’re self-publishing, the recommendation at the moment is to do books (boxes and cardboard are apparently super expensive right now) and small orders (500-1000 units).
Red Flags when pitching or negotiating contracts:
If the publisher is non-committal or non-communicative about anything to do with payment, stay away!
Check how long the contract is for; 5 years or more is long for industry standards. Sometimes a publisher will license your game, but that doesn’t mean they actually need to make it. Instead, they will hold on to it, waiting for the right time – sometimes when they get ahold of a particular IP and pair it with your game mechanics. Sometimes they’ll just keep it in unpublished limbo.
Be clear whether you are getting a percentage, if you are licensing the rights to them, or if they are buying it outright.
Pay attention to derivatives, i.e. who gets the money if your game is made into a movie, TV show, or video game
Evil Hat is great: Everyone seemed to really like Evil Hat.
Q&A with the Creators of Journeys through the Radiant Citadel
This talk was more cathartic than instructional and I didn’t take much in the way of notes. The writers of Journeys through the Radiant Citadel talked vulnerably about their fears and triumphs while working on the book.
A smaller takeaway was that (and I might be wrong here) there doesn’t seem to be a strong culture of writers working closely together on big projects like this. This was something that a number of the seasoned writers mentioned liking about this project—that they really got to read and give feedback on early versions of each other’s work and there were multiple drafts.
Other Panels
I didn’t get the chance to attend these panels, but here are a few other write-ups:
Journey's through the Radiant Citadel writer Pam Punzalan (@TheDovetailor), posted her own presentation “What's In a Game? Defining the Elements of TTRPGs” on Kofi for her subscribers.
“Speak Loudly, Ready Your Blade: A Politics of Violence in TTRPGs” has a write-up on co-host here, by presenter Aaron Lim (@ehronlime).
Other Tidbits from Networking
Discord servers and Twitter are the places that TTRPG folks seem to hang out. Early career writers joined on to collaborations there.
Simply writing and hoping to “get noticed” on DMsGuild/DriveThruRPG/itch.io is not a good plan. While having best-selling titles in your portfolio isn’t a bad thing, publishers care much more about getting a trusted recommendation for your work (i.e. networking). What they’re trying to verify are the traits mentioned in the Professional Freelancing panel: Do you deliver on time? Are you communicative? Do you follow directions?
As far as 5e D&D writing goes, you can divide writing skills into things like monster stat blocks/mechanics, worldbuilding, and adventure design; it’s important your portfolio shows examples of each of these.
When making your writing/art portfolio, put your strongest work first. Don’t order it chronologically or try to “build” from small to large projects. A potential employer will look at your first link, and if they aren’t impressed, they might never get to your magnum opus.
In closing…
If you’re looking for more Big Bad content, Banana Chan is doing a video blog about the con. Here are the first and second parts from her YouTube channel. Her channel is an absolute treasure trove of insights about game development and making it as a game designer, in honest, 10-15 minute videos. I highly recommend subscribing.
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That’s all for now. If you have any questions about Big Bad Con, feel free to post in the comments. Next week I’ll share a bit about some of the games I played!
Over and Out,
- 🫙 👁️ 👁️