Topic: Rolemaster Unified art: what happened?

[Cory Magel]

I'm not sure I understand the point being made. Setting aside whether a small Italian board game company is an indie developer, Legendary Games started with like four people, and I'm just one person plus freelancers. So, pick whatever size operation you think is the best comparison to Iron Crown Enterprises.

My point is: What was the profit? I don't think you can realistically compare what you did as a justification for complaining. I don't think you want to tell us yours (part of the point of Merkir's question) and I don't think you can tell us on the others mentioned. And before you think you can say you made a profit because you didn't need to pay yourself, that's not a reasonable comparison.

The guys working at ICE can't afford to not make a reasonable profit. While this surely isn't any of their primary job it's also not a mere fun side hobby like skiing or gardening or painting as a hobby for the average person.  If what they are doing paid a salary that I felt was reasonable for the amount of time needed to put into it I'd still be doing it.  Maybe if I won the lottery or suddenly became wealthy I'd start doing stuff on my own... but I don't think anyone at ICE has won the lottery lately.

The vast majority of people here not walked a mile in their shoes, so they need to lay off a bit on the armchair criticism.

[Thot]

If the expense of human art is so high that we can only get that rather unworthy art we see, then maybe ruling out the cheaper methods of the age wasn't such a good move.

Honestly, no art, or old art from earler RM products (if they own them) would have been better than this art.

[pastaav]

Honestly, no art, or old art from earler RM products (if they own them) would have been better than this art.

A big part of reason that Ironcrown made RMU is that the copyright on previous editions are a mess so that it is very hard to tell what is part of the RM that Ironcrown own for sure and what parts former employee of could stake a claim for since the company they worked for has been disolved and replaced by the current Ironcrown. The idea that there is any art from the previous editions that is safe to use from copyright perspective is rediculous. Even if there are good art from the previous edition that is legally bought so it could be reused you would need the assistance of said former employee to prove it so it is a nonstarter.

Anyway, I don't recognize the situation of RMU having horrible art compared to the previous edition...let do a few comparisons. I list pictures from previous edition and compare with a picture from RMU on the same page (or on following pages if none is found).
RMFRP page 100 black and white picture of weird looking bard that is juggling apples. It is damn ugly IMO, maybe it is some old classic motive that I don't recognize but it breaks style from the other pictures and looks objectively horrible.
RMFRP page 146 shows black and white picture of a king a queen...the woman lacks a nose and the whole thing is pretty meh if you ask me.
RMFRP page 200 two black and white pictures of a man holding up his hand and a man hitting himself with a chain weapon. Both are primitive sketches with almost no details.
There are of course better art on other pages in the previous edition, but you don't really need to look for long before you stumble of horrible art in all the old RM books.  The average picture is a simple sketch and everything is black and white, far below the average picture from MERP.

As comparison I look for the same page in RMU and flip sides until I find a picture.
RMU Core Law page 101 Color picture of female orchish sorcerer and some skulls...looks pretty cool if you ask me.
RMU Core Law page 151 The Black Reaver...pretty awesome one if you ask me
RMU Core Law page 200 A simple club since we hit the weapon tables. If we flip sides until we find a regular picture we get the adventure group on page 223 battling a female cyplops....maybe not the best picture but you really have to hunt to find something better in the previous edition.

I leave it to somebody else to do the exercise of doing the reverse and take a bad picture from RMU and look at the same page in the older editions.

[Thot]

Every single race picture that is not Human, Elf or Dwarf in Core Law is not up to the standards that you want for such things.

[pastaav]

I'm not sure I understand the point being made. Setting aside whether a small Italian board game company is an indie developer

The point is old Ironcrown had a couple of whole time employee, but much of the work was done by freelancers. There was also complaints from the freelancers of not getting paid. I, as normal RM user, have little insight to what degree the complaints were founded in reality. Not sure, if it matters anymore if the complaints were correct since we cannot reverse time to undo the situation.

Anyway, the people running the current Ironcrown used to be among the freelancers and when they took over they made a deliberate decission that Ironcrown should operate more like an indie developer company. Few or no real full time employee, but more freelancers who are commishioned to work on their spare time. I think the hope was it would be easier to pay fairly for good sales if you must not support the salary of full time employee.

The difficulty to get RMU finished has slowed the revenue stream and this obviously hurts the revenue stream. The potential to grow is there since RMU and Harp are good games, but I think the business need to grow quite much before the revenue stream will be stable enough to compete with industry giants. Not a perfect situtation, but sometimes you have to play with cards you are dealt.

There are other ways to build a business. If you purchase licesenses for big IP stuff to translate them you get loads of art together with the license and layout become a core competence in a way a indie setup are challenged to match. Ironcrown used to have MERP as license until the IP owner decided the movies meant they wanted to resell the rights. The first version of ICE crashed as they were forbidden to keep selling the MERP material, but were forbidden to destroy all the printed copies they had not sold. The license business allow you to grow quickly, but there are no free lunches and if you don't control your IP you building business value for somebody else.

Like also noted in the thread it is also very hard to compete with people working for free. There are people there working on their pet projects and if they are talented and don't care about the hourly salary they can do astonishing things.

[pastaav]

Every single race picture that is not Human, Elf or Dwarf in Core Law is not up to the standards that you want for such things.

I agree that the race pictures contain some of the worst examples of art in RMU. I have in previous threads argued that some of them need to be replaced in future cleaned up version of RMU, but getting all the books out should IMHO be the highest priority.

[pawsplay]

My point is: What was the profit? I don't think you can realistically compare what you did as a justification for complaining. I don't think you want to tell us yours (part of the point of Merkir's question) and I don't think you can tell us on the others mentioned. And before you think you can say you made a profit because you didn't need to pay yourself, that's not a reasonable comparison.

I definitely pay myself.

The vast majority of people here not walked a mile in their shoes, so they need to lay off a bit on the armchair criticism.

I'm guessing that wasn't directed at me, as I am indie RPG publisher?

So, I see RMU Core Law is a Platinum seller, which means it has sold at least 1,001 copies. The PDF is $25. I'm going to assume the printed books are roughly that plus the cost of shipping and printing; that could be quite different, but shouldn't affect the overall picture too much. That means that on DriveThru, they have generated $25,000 or so in sales, off the top. As far as I am aware, they don't sell anywhere else, so at the 70% exclusive rate, they get to keep $17,500 or so from that book.

Assuming they could predict something along those sales numbers, if they spent 15% of the expected profit on art, they would have around $2625 to spend on art. That may be low; I usually plan on spending about 25% of gross on art, as needed. So let's say somewhere between $2500 and $6000.

When I look at RMU Core Law cover and interior art, the question in my mind is: where did the $2500 go? Because I sure don't see it on the cover.

And just to be clear, while my business is still small, I run a commercial endeavor.

[Cory Magel]

I definitely pay myself.
...
And just to be clear, while my business is still small, I run a commercial endeavor.

How much do you, personally, make per hour on your books?

[5th Knight of Xar]

My point is: What was the profit? I don't think you can realistically compare what you did as a justification for complaining. I don't think you want to tell us yours (part of the point of Merkir's question) and I don't think you can tell us on the others mentioned. And before you think you can say you made a profit because you didn't need to pay yourself, that's not a reasonable comparison.

I definitely pay myself.

The vast majority of people here not walked a mile in their shoes, so they need to lay off a bit on the armchair criticism.

I'm guessing that wasn't directed at me, as I am indie RPG publisher?

So, I see RMU Core Law is a Platinum seller, which means it has sold at least 1,001 copies. The PDF is $25. I'm going to assume the printed books are roughly that plus the cost of shipping and printing; that could be quite different, but shouldn't affect the overall picture too much. That means that on DriveThru, they have generated $25,000 or so in sales, off the top. As far as I am aware, they don't sell anywhere else, so at the 70% exclusive rate, they get to keep $17,500 or so from that book.

Assuming they could predict something along those sales numbers, if they spent 15% of the expected profit on art, they would have around $2625 to spend on art. That may be low; I usually plan on spending about 25% of gross on art, as needed. So let's say somewhere between $2500 and $6000.

When I look at RMU Core Law cover and interior art, the question in my mind is: where did the $2500 go? Because I sure don't see it on the cover.

And just to be clear, while my business is still small, I run a commercial endeavor.

You seem so eager to bash ICE over their choices, a small group of 3-4 or so "freelancers".

I'm asking this because I'm curious:

Looking at your own products on Drivethru: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/3002/wandering-star-llc

Why aren't you budgetting and commissioning artists for  $1000-2500 cover art images for your books instead of using easily forgettable stock art?
You make it seem to us like you can handle book projects better than ICE looking at your posts in this thread, plus sell more copies and get more profit from your projects than they do.
Yet the examples in the links provided to us earlier tell us you've sold tops 50 or so out of one example of books from the links.
It just doesn't add up with me.

[pastaav]

Assuming they could predict something along those sales numbers, if they spent 15% of the expected profit on art, they would have around $2625 to spend on art. That may be low; I usually plan on spending about 25% of gross on art, as needed. So let's say somewhere between $2500 and $6000.

Why should we at all assume they could predict such sales?

The number of sales for individual books before the whole RMU is released was always a total unknown. We know there are many who say they will play other things while they wait for RMU to be complete so it can be played without materials from the previous editions or other roleplaying systems.

Myself, I am pleasantly surprised of the strong sales despite RMU still missing essential parts and I would not have dared to predict such interest in the game before RMU Core Law arrived.
 

And just to be clear, while my business is still small, I run a commercial endeavor.

What is your hourly salary for this commercial endeavor?

How much would your small business need to grow to be able to commission art for $30 000 to cover the five main RMU books?

[Thot]

[...] getting all the books out should IMHO be the highest priority.

Yes, but then, I would recommend to use rather no (or less) art than bad art.

[rdanhenry]

So, I see RMU Core Law is a Platinum seller, which means it has sold at least 1,001 copies. The PDF is $25. I'm going to assume the printed books are roughly that plus the cost of shipping and printing; that could be quite different, but shouldn't affect the overall picture too much. That means that on DriveThru, they have generated $25,000 or so in sales, off the top. As far as I am aware, they don't sell anywhere else, so at the 70% exclusive rate, they get to keep $17,500 or so from that book.

Assuming they could predict something along those sales numbers, if they spent 15% of the expected profit on art, they would have around $2625 to spend on art. That may be low; I usually plan on spending about 25% of gross on art, as needed. So let's say somewhere between $2500 and $6000.

That figure isn't profit, it is income. There were numerous contributors to writing Core Law, who needed to be paid for a good many years of work on the project. The layout guy also needed to be paid. Presumably, the editorial heads received some compensation as well. There's also the initial investment of buying the rights to Rolemaster that need to be recovered before there is any profit. I'm pretty sure that even if you ignore the art budget, RMU didn't reach profitability on the sales of Core Law alone. I hope it did with Spell Law.

[pawsplay]

How much do you, personally, make per hour on your books?

That's tricky to answer, because I make several different kinds of books, and sometimes there is a long tail. But for the smaller books that make most of their sales in the first six months, probably about $10 an hour.

How much would your small business need to grow to be able to commission art for $30 000 to cover the five main RMU books?

I don't know where you are getting that figure. $3,000 would probably get you nice covers for all five books; for twice that, you would have your pick of artists.

Why should we at all assume they could predict such sales?

Well, if you run a Kickstarter, it's a cinch.

[pawsplay]

Why aren't you budgetting and commissioning artists for  $1000-2500 cover art images for your books instead of using easily forgettable stock art?

First of all, at my budget, I'm looking to spend about $600 unless a Kickstarter gets big enough to pay out bonuses. For example, the cover of Conquest of the Universe was commissioned. I also have a cover for Alpenglow, which is going to be a smaller book, that was $400; I don't have that in production yet.

Second, just to state this clearly, several of my books have custom art for the cover. Aside from CotU, The Eliminator and Do Not Approach both have custom covers. A lot of my books have stock art on the cover because they are small books and would not be sufficiently profitable if I spent $150 to $600 on the cover.

Third, I guess "forgettable stock art" is supposed to be a dig. I have Dean Spencer, Eric Lofgren, Storn Cook, etc. who make beautiful art.

Fourth, the cover for Planetfall, I made from a public domain image created by NASA.

So the theme here is, the right cover for the job.

You make it seem to us like you can handle book projects better than ICE looking at your posts in this thread, plus sell more copies and get more profit from your projects than they do.
Yet the examples in the links provided to us earlier tell us you've sold tops 50 or so out of one example of books from the links.
It just doesn't add up with me.

I've never had anybody complain about the art in my books.

As far as my sales, most of my books sell at least 50 copies. Do Not Approach has made Copper in two different versions, besides another dozen backers on Kickstarter. A Fistful of Denarii, with "forgettable stock art" by Jon Hodgson, is an Electrum seller, having sold hundreds of copies.

So, now that my cards are out on the table, I'd like to know, how much did the cover to Core Law cost? Obviously no one owes me an answer. But that's what I'm wondering about. It doesn't look like a $600 cover.

If I had the opportunity to remake a classic, well-known game, I would make sure it has an eye-catching cover. If I produced a book on a shoestring budget, and despite that, it became a Platinum seller, I would be running a Kickstarter campaign to get it the look it deserves, and shoot for Adamantine. If I had Rolemaster, I wouldn't plan on making it an art book, through and through. People who play Rolemaster are paying for black text on white paper, with headings and subheadings and bullet points. That's the aesthetic. I wouldn't put a picture near every heading because I thought it needed one. But I would want an amazing cover, and I would make sure that illustrations for my original fantasy characters looked professional.

And yes, I'm backseat driving. But this as a fan of Rolemaster. I just want to know, why won't you publish the book I want to give you money for?

[5th Knight of Xar]

Why aren't you budgetting and commissioning artists for  $1000-2500 cover art images for your books instead of using easily forgettable stock art?

First of all, at my budget, I'm looking to spend about $600 unless a Kickstarter gets big enough to pay out bonuses. For example, the cover of Conquest of the Universe was commissioned. I also have a cover for Alpenglow, which is going to be a smaller book, that was $400; I don't have that in production yet.

Second, just to state this clearly, several of my books have custom art for the cover. Aside from CotU, The Eliminator and Do Not Approach both have custom covers. A lot of my books have stock art on the cover because they are small books and would not be sufficiently profitable if I spent $150 to $600 on the cover.

Third, I guess "forgettable stock art" is supposed to be a dig. I have Dean Spencer, Eric Lofgren, Storn Cook, etc. who make beautiful art.

Fourth, the cover for Planetfall, I made from a public domain image created by NASA.

So the theme here is, the right cover for the job.

You make it seem to us like you can handle book projects better than ICE looking at your posts in this thread, plus sell more copies and get more profit from your projects than they do.
Yet the examples in the links provided to us earlier tell us you've sold tops 50 or so out of one example of books from the links.
It just doesn't add up with me.

I've never had anybody complain about the art in my books.

As far as my sales, most of my books sell at least 50 copies. Do Not Approach has made Copper in two different versions, besides another dozen backers on Kickstarter. A Fistful of Denarii, with "forgettable stock art" by Jon Hodgson, is an Electrum seller, having sold hundreds of copies.

So, now that my cards are out on the table, I'd like to know, how much did the cover to Core Law cost? Obviously no one owes me an answer. But that's what I'm wondering about. It doesn't look like a $600 cover.

If I had the opportunity to remake a classic, well-known game, I would make sure it has an eye-catching cover. If I produced a book on a shoestring budget, and despite that, it became a Platinum seller, I would be running a Kickstarter campaign to get it the look it deserves, and shoot for Adamantine. If I had Rolemaster, I wouldn't plan on making it an art book, through and through. People who play Rolemaster are paying for black text on white paper, with headings and subheadings and bullet points. That's the aesthetic. I wouldn't put a picture near every heading because I thought it needed one. But I would want an amazing cover, and I would make sure that illustrations for my original fantasy characters looked professional.

And yes, I'm backseat driving. But this as a fan of Rolemaster. I just want to know, why won't you publish the book I want to give you money for?

I won't fuel any discussion over your own cover choices so I'll leave that there.

As for costs and concerns, I think you're better off directing that in an e-mail to ICE.
What we do know is up to 2500 people have already made purchases of Core Law, up to 2500 people have made purchases of Spell Law.
I have my doubts ICE will do much to change the books in a long while, to cater to a few people hesitant to purchase.

[pawsplay]

That's fine by me. I was just trying to respond fairly to people who felt skeptical. I don't really relish going into details about the inner workings of my business.

I already purchased the book. I sold my printed copy. But if this isn't such a big deal to some people, I guess it's not a big deal. I have a lot of fond memories of Rolemaster. This is not the book I want to put on my shelf to commemorate that.

I just wish I understood why Dragon Warriors is kicking Rolemaster's butt so much in the cover art department.

[5th Knight of Xar]

That's fine by me. I was just trying to respond fairly to people who felt skeptical. I don't really relish going into details about the inner workings of my business.

I already purchased the book. I sold my printed copy. But if this isn't such a big deal to some people, I guess it's not a big deal. I have a lot of fond memories of Rolemaster. This is not the book I want to put on my shelf to commemorate that.

I just wish I understood why Dragon Warriors is kicking Rolemaster's butt so much in the cover art department.

I agree, at least that cover in the link might have helped this book reaching Platinum tier, by selling 1000+ copies in 13 years.

[Progbaby]

If the quality of the art in RMU is the most contentious issue of the publications, and judging by the forum response, it appears to be, the actual rules presented must be generally agreed upon to be universally very bad, or very good.

(Edit: for the record I have Core Law and Spell Law, but haven't yet had a chance to play RMU. I'm a HARP GM, so it seems a bit more complex)

[Thot]

If the quality of the art in RMU is the most contentious issue of the publications, and judging by the forum response, it appears to be, the actual rules presented must be generally agreed upon to be universally very bad, or very good.
[...]

They are very good. My only critique so far is that the magic item creation process in Treaure Law seems a bit overcomplicated, but that's also kind of a feature.

[MisterK]

They are very good. My only critique so far is that the magic item creation process in Treaure Law seems a bit overcomplicated, but that's also kind of a feature.

I think this sums up the core aspect of RM(U) quite nicely : in general, it seems (a bit) overcomplicated, but it's also kind of a design feature

I must admit that what made me let go of RM after RMFRP is that I was hoping that RMU would trim the fat and made the system much more compact, more systematic, and less reliant on specialised elements (skills, tables, modifiers, whatever). But, as you say, it's kind of a feature: obviously, this was not what the majority wanted.

I'm not sure art is a deciding factor for people who know what they are getting into. It can be the thing that tips the scales for those who don't know. It certainly was not a deciding factor for not buying it for me, in any case.