The Murverse Mothership

 

So it’s two years ago and I am on a train. It’s late at night, I’ve just legged it across London from seeing the very excellent Twilght Zone stage play. It’s GREAT. Witty and dark and playful, Serling haunting the entire thing like an unusually well-dressed Banquo. There’s this lovely piece of slight of hand the cast members who ‘play’ Serling have been taught. Out of nowhere, they’ll turn to the audience and adopt his clipped and precise tones, pulling a cigarette out of thin air as they narrate the story that’s just ended. It’s a great touch and a GREAT piece of magic. How great?

Penn and Teller, who I saw perform in Vegas two weeks before seeing this show, were in the audience too. I passed them, they nodded and smiled to me. Because when you’re two of the best magicians in the world you remember everyone and everything, especially audience members’ faces.

So all of this is great but the train? The train is not. It’s late as Hell, it’s a week night (A Thursday I think) and the train is like most trains in the UK; too short, too crowded, too old and too slow. I’m not going to be in Reading before 11, not home before 11.30. But I’m being paid for the work. It’s not much, at all, but the site I’m writing for will take most things I send them and thirty pieces at ten pounds a time is almost like one piece at professional rates, right?

Right?

Except the next day I find out they aren’t paying my travel costs, because I was ‘going anyway’. I scored a press ticket, so I’m not out that much, but still the math is brutal. I ended up travelling close to six hours to write a piece that would land me twenty pounds in the red.

Something in me breaks. This doesn’t happen often but I vowed never to put myself in that position again. I’m worth more than a cursory payment and if it meant I wasn’t going to be recompensed then I wouldn’t go. I stuck to my guns too, and a lot of opportunities have come up since that I’ve turned down because I won’t be reimbursed travel.

So there’s lesson one. Get your expenses covered and if it can’t be monetarily then be sure there’s a token gesture at least. Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson once got paid in sporting goods. They’re fictional, they don’t need to eat. You do.

Get paid.

The one free market I write for hooks me up with Royal Albert Hall tickets a couple of times a year so even then, I’m not working for nothing. Never work for nothing, not just for you but for everyone else’s sake. We’re worth what we’re paid, all of us. We’re never paid enough. You have the power to do something about that.

So, skip ahead  to a couple of days ago. When not being an international man of mystery, writer, bon viveur, occasional jazz maverick and full contact cook I like to write RPG books. I’m good at it too, got shortlisted for an award a few years ago and I’ve written for some big licenses including Doctor Who and Star Trek. Last year I picked up a couple of jobs in quick succession in that neck of the woods. The first was a chunky piece of sourcebook for a new science fiction game based on a European war game. The other was a little supplemental piece for the new version of a classic horror game.

Both were BIG FUN. The big job was that glorious kind of thing where the game world and your style fit like a glove. The editor rode herd on stats, which is always a relief, gave us constant feedback and did a really good job. Love your editors, folks. Cherish the good ones and he’s a very good one. The smaller job was for a different company but just as much fun. I got to do a lot in a little space, throw in some fun lore from the game world and come up with some ideas that really made me smile. Again, good gig. Again, good editor.

Oh you see that too? Yeah that rapidly largening shadow on the ground IS the other shoe dropping.

I opened my email a couple of days ago and had messages from both of them right next to one another. The big job editor was answering my query about whether I could invoice for the work I’d done a year ago. He was very apologetic, explained he hadn’t been able to invoice yet either and they were ‘only now putting the book in review’, a thing I was not told at any point would happen.

The little job editor was writing to tell me the company had just declared bankruptcy.

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyohGod

So! What did I learn from this? Other than a searing relief I was not on a train in the middle of the night coming from a job that paid me in minus figures and a dick punch? This time?

This. This. I learned this.

Good Editors Have Your Back

Neither of the guys on these projects put a foot wrong, both were great team leaders and I’d work with both again in a heartbeat. Little job editor has actually collated invoices from the staff who worked on the book and is meeting with the company owners to try and get us paid. I’m not sure how successful that will be but I’m incredibly grateful he’s doing it.

Don’t Stand There

I love writing RPGS but RPGs don’t care. There’s a wider story here, which touches on Mur’s experiences with the field that boils down to the fundamental assbackwardness of an industry crowdfunding to pay creatives the money they’re owed for the project that’s being crowfunded. That boils down to a choice between being cynical and being realistic. Being cynical? You have to assume this stuff will happen and send your invoice in with your completed work. Being realistic? You have to assume this sort of thing could happen. And you’re your invoice in with your completed work. Which brings us to one of my all time favorite pieces of advice:

‘I get hit every time I stand there.’

‘Stop standing there.’

I’ve done a lot of RPG material and I can measure the amount that was frictionless on my thumb. I’ve been paid for material in a different decade to it seeing print. I’ve had a word count cut by ten thousand words with no reason why. I’ve had work commissioned, written, edited and revised that’s coming up on three years in a drawer. Unpaid. The hours I spent writing that could have gone on anything else which would have had a material payoff by now either in experience or money. And now, bankruptcy and extra edit rounds a year later. I feel like there’s a bingo card for this stuff, mine is full and my prize is…to wait for other people to do their jobs. At my expense.

Like I say I’m not mad at the editors. I’m not even mad at the publishers. I am mad at the industry though and this is where we get Ditch Digggy. As both Matt and Mur have said over and over and OVER, without writers, none of this work exists.

NONE

OF

IT

And yet people like me are still submitting material to books which then go to kickstarter to be able to raise funds to pay us for the book that’s already written and suddenly the Midgard Serpent isn’t just eating his tale he knows that he’s doing it, knows it’s stupid and carries on anyway.

It’s bananas. It’s insulting. It’s a relentless cobbled together failure parade of compromise and systemic devaluing of creatives. No one does it personally but its effects are absolutely that. It’s time to stop standing there. It’s time to do literally anything else.

Which brings us to the third lesson.

Go Independent

I’ve written another RPG over the last couple of years. Co-created with Jason Pitre, After The War is an RPG of survival, community building and mimetic horror at the edge of settled space. It’s been the most rewarding experience of my career in the field. I’ve been paid upfront and on time, I’ve worked with and continue to work with amazing artists and editors and the whole thing has been FUN. Plus, mimetic space horror!

The indie RPG circuit is better put together, moves faster and adapts more readily than the mainstream. Or at least for me it does. It’s professional, up front and makes you feel valued. It’s what I was told the whole industry was and I’ll be sticking around there for sure. The other side of the fence? I’m done with.

 

So, three things!

-Love your editors. Seriously send them muffin baskets and shit it’s totally worth it.

-Don’t. Get Hit. You Don’t Have To Get Hit.

-Go Where You Feel At Home

 

And a surprise special guest that always goes without saying and never should:

GET. PAID.

This job is hard but it can be hard on your terms, not on terms that make it harder for you. And that’s this month’s ditch.