092: Finding a team for your gaming project

Courtney: Welcome back friends. We are continuing our conversation on getting started with a new gaming project. So whether that is creating a new game altogether or writing supplements for an existing game, we are digging in into getting this product actually made.

So two weeks ago, we talked about high level, just brainstorming, getting your ideas together on [00:01:00] what are all of the steps that you need to take. And today we’re going to talk about finding a team if your project is large enough, that you are wanting to recruit some members. So hopefully you’ve already figured out who it is that you need to find, what skills it is that you need help with, because that is some stuff that we talked about two weeks ago. So now we’re going to go about how do we actually find those team members?

And a lot of that is going to start with the preparation that you have done.

What I mean, is. If you are looking for artists, hopefully, you took my advice two weeks ago and you created a idea, board of images that are the vibe that you’re going for with your game. And if you haven’t already done that, that’s all right. You want to make sure that you do it before you start looking for your artists. Cause you maybe in this search of looking at images and looking at vibes, you actually found an artist that you really like. They should have [00:02:00] some form of contact. So you can go ahead and contact them directly. If that’s not the case, because maybe you are basing your game’s vibe off of a movie or an anime or TV show, then you’ve at least gathered inspiring images from those sources that you can use as your design board.

The same is going to go with layout. If there are specific games that have inspired you, that you really like the layout in them. Not that you want to copy the layout. We’re not going to do that, but that are inspiring to you, then grab some images of that layout that you like. You’re also going to think about if you are publishing this book, or if it is going to be a PDF only, and if you do want to publish this book, what size do you want the book to be?

Do you want it to be eight and a half by 11. Do you want it to be a smaller book, a larger book. It’s going to be square rectangle, [00:03:00] hardcover, softcover these are all, some things that you’ll want to think about as you’re starting to look for your layout designer.

For writers, hopefully you’ve gathered some inspiration on the style of writing that you’re looking for. Again, these are all creative people and it’s going to help if you have narrowed down what it is you want in your product, for them to help you create this come to life. So once you’ve done all of that homework. That’s when we’re going to start looking. And there’s a couple of different methods in which you can do this. Social media is a big one, especially if you’ve managed to gather at least a couple hundred followers, but even if not, then if you use the hashtags and start really promoting it, then you should be able to have some folks reply to your posts. So you’re going to write something along the lines of

I am designing a futuristic TTRPG set 500 years from now, and I’m looking for artists that have a style similar to [00:04:00] this. And that is where you will share those photos of inspiration.

You’ll want to make sure that you’re tagging or hashtagging TTRPG. If it’s a supplement for specific game like D&D or Mork Borg, make sure that you have used a hashtag for that as well, and just start putting those posts out there. You’re also going to want to do the same thing on discord servers. So there are a lot of different discord servers out there. Again, if you are working for specific games, Then find those games, find Mork Borg, find D&D. Usually for D&D, you’re going to want to look at the DMS Guild, discord server or the drive-through RPG discord server. And you’ll find a lot of folks there. But those are going to be some big places where as well, you will just post, and especially in discord, you can make posts about I’m looking for writers, artists, layout editors. You could put that all in one big post and just start having folks contacting you. It’s really helpful if you have more than one contact method.

So perhaps they could DM you on discord. [00:05:00] Or if you want them to email you. Same thing with the social media. Can they DM you or would you prefer email? You’ll put that as part of your message. That’s going to be a big one, and especially for some of the roles like art, And writing, you’re probably going to get way more interest then what you are actually going to be able to accommodate and. For you, that is honestly a good thing. You want to make sure that they are sending you samples. If they have rates, then have them send you what their rates are. And I’m not saying that you should only pay what their rate is

if you’re going to have the budget to be able to pay more, offer that, but don’t try to negotiate for less than what they say their rate is. Because honestly, In this industry, folks tend to undervalue themselves. So at minimum, be prepared to pay what they’re asking for. And it’s always nice to offer more if you’re able to. But either way, we’re not at negotiating stage right now.

We’re just [00:06:00] trying to find the people that would be interested in working with you.

Let’s say you’ve got 10 people that all sent you a writing sample. You are going to schedule time for yourself to read the samples. And then, as unpleasant as it might sound, you need to rank them. Because you might wind up liking a lot of them and wanting to work with a lot of them. But you are going to have to come up with a ranking system of how concise is their writing, how close to the vibe that you’re looking for.

Come up with a metric so that you can go through and really evaluate. Like how much of a good fit these people are going to be for your product. Secondly, as icky as it might sound, you are going to want to investigate folks a little bit. So hopefully they’ve got a portfolio. You can find their social media. Just take a glance through your, their profiles to make sure that not just their writing or art style fits, but also [00:07:00] they themselves fit with the vibe that you’re going for.

Because unfortunately there are a lot of bad actors in the TTRPG space. And you want to make sure that as far as you are able to tell, their values, align with yours. And that there hasn’t been scandals on previous sites, that maybe haven’t quite followed them to the newer social media sites. It doesn’t sound fun, but it is going to be important for you in the long run to make sure that you’re not accidentally working with any bad actors.

So once you have narrowed down who it is that you want to work with, you can decide on, let’s say maybe you can only afford to add two artists or two writers to your team. But there’s a few more that you actually would love to work with. Maybe you could have some stretch goals that if you are doing a crowdfunding campaign and you hit a certain amount, then you can hire an additional writer. Maybe they’re doing an extra [00:08:00] adventure or able to contribute to your monster manual or your setting.

Folks are honestly, always happy to be added in a project in any way they can, even if that is as a stretch goal. Same with the artists. You know, maybe you want to add some more and a stretch goal can be that you get to add 25% more art or something like that.

You can find ways to try and involve more people, and the fact that they know that it’s a strategical, honestly, help motivate them to promote your crowdfunding page because not only does your game need to your fund at the base level, it also needs to find even higher, so that they can get to participate and be able to work with you.

So once you’ve decided on who it is that you’re going to work with, I always, always, always advise having a written agreement of exactly what it is that you’ve discussed.

So what is it that they are going to provide for you? And what is it that [00:09:00] you are going to pay them? If they are committing to a specific time frame, go ahead and jot that down. If it’s a certain number of reviews with the art. Anything it is that y’all have discussed you want to make sure that you have that in a written documents and agreement.

There are some templates out there online that you can find for free to help you get started, because I know that that is always something that I struggled with at the beginning, because I am not a lawyer by any means. But just having some sort of agreement written down at that both parties sign is going to help you in the future.

So once you found everybody on your team, it is helpful to gather them all into one place. I recommend discord. You can have just a private discord server and it’s just full of your team members. And then that way you’ll be able to chat with them and have things be coordinated as you get started on your project and get further along.

So that is it for what we’re going to talk about for [00:10:00] today’s.

I hope that that helps you have some ideas on where it is that you can look for your team members. As always, if you have any questions, let me know. And if you would like to work one on one, with any projects you can go to my website. LightheartAdventures.Com. Click on the project management tab in the main header. And you’ll find some options on how we can work together from just a one hour consultation, all the way up to hiring me to be your full PM.

I appreciate y’all listening to these episodes and I know that next week we’ve got a super fun interview, so be sure to follow and subscribe so that you can learn from a very enlightening guest. [00:11:00]