Operating under our business banner, Mal and Tal Enterprises, LLC, my wife and I submitted a total of five seminar proposals to the convention system at Gen Con. In a turn of events (pun intended) that had us looking at each other with a mix of excitement and horror, Gen Con accepted all five!

Balancing five presentations across a massive convention footprint is a significant undertaking under any circumstances, but it became a true family enterprise as we coordinated the journey. We brought our teenage kids along to assist with the administrative layout, tech support, and session logistics—a family team effort that coincided with celebrating my son’s birthday in early August. Our seminar schedule kicked off officially on Friday at 2:00 PM EDT in Stadium Meeting Room 12 with Write for RPGs Professionally.

We were relieved to have a room big enough for the attendee list. Stadium Meeting Room 12 featured an integrated A/V equipment that worked well from start to finish. Financially, we structured the event at a $0.00 ticket price point with an electronic ticketing model. The demand was clear from the roster, with the session listing as nearly sold out against its maximum capacity of 30 attendees. Ultimately, around 20 participants cleared the electronic ticketing queues to join us for the live session (shades of my library game, people will register for free events and then not show up).

To foster an interactive atmosphere, we provided custom rewards to attendees who stepped up with questions during our Q&A blocks, giving out branded magnet clips and journals sourced from our talented artist friends. For those who couldn't join us in Indianapolis, here's the breakdown of the core presentation.

When breaking into tabletop game design, the first question everyone asks is, "How do I get hired?" The answer starts with building a public portfolio.

If you don’t have published industry credits yet, you need to create your own line of proof. Platforms like Medium, Substack, itch.io, or even a self-hosted blog are ideal places to create your portfolio of work. Editors aren't necessarily looking for broad worldbuilding lore essays; they want to see that you can write mechanically sound, game-ready content. Posting short stat blocks, 100-word adventure seeds, roll tables, or modular encounter mechanics are all good places to start.

One of the key points we emphasized in the room is the distinction between paid gigs and "swaps" or "revenue splits." Getting paid upfront per word—even at entry-level rates—is hard proof that an editor or publisher vetted your work, deemed it commercially viable, and backed it with capital. It shows you can hit deadlines, accept feedback, and write to a professional standard. "I'll draw art for your module if you write my supplement," or working for a percentage of net sales are common low-tier arrangements. While they can occasionally help you practice, they carry less weight on a resume when pitching to established mid-tier or major publishers. Always aim for paid proof of work if you can, especially when starting out.

PLEASE NOTE: These are broad assumptions and there will definitely be exceptions. To write professionally, you need to know the going market rates and understand the costs of production. Freelancing in RPGs is notorious for low margins, so going in with hard-nosed financial awareness is crucial. Both Russ and M.T. Black have written excellent articles detailing freelancer rates.

• Entry-Level / Indie Publishers: $0.02 – $0.05 per word. (A 3,000-word adventure yields $60 to $150).
• Established Mid-Tier Publishers (e.g., Kobold Press, MCDM, Chaosium): $0.06 – $0.10 per word. (A 5,000-word chapter yields $300 to $500).
• Major Publishers / Industry Leaders (e.g., Wizards of the Coast, Paizo): $0.10 – $0.15+ per word.

If you decide to bypass traditional publishers and self-publish your work on DriveThruRPG or itch.io, your gross sales aren't pure profit. You have to account for real production costs. For some eye-opening costs on what it takes to run your own business, see Cannibal Halfling Games' Three Tiers of RPG Publishing and this Reddit post:

• Editing: Professional line and copy editing typically costs $0.02 – $0.04 per word.
• Art Assets: Cover art ranges from $150 to $500+, while interior spot art costs anywhere from $30 to $150 per piece.
• Layout & Graphic Design: Experienced page designers charge $15 to $35+ per page.

If you write a 10,000-word supplement and spend $800 on editing, art, and layout, you need to sell over 200 copies at $5.00 (after platform commission cuts) just to break even on production expenses.

Because word-count payouts alone rarely cover full-time living expenses, successful RPG writers layer multiple income streams that feed off one another.

Writing directly for rulebooks isn't the only way to build a brand or generate review experience. Program opportunities like Amazon Vine allow reviewers to receive dice sets, battle mats, accessory hardware, and RPG books in exchange for reviews. Building a reputation as an articulate reviewer gives you authority, sharpens your critical writing skills, and creates content you can showcase to publishers (I've been a member for decades).

When you publish reviews, design advice, or module breakdowns on your blog or Substack, never post plain product links. DriveThruRPG and the DMs Guild have partner programs that earns you roughly 5% in affiliate commission whenever a reader clicks your link and purchases a product (or anything else added to their cart during that session). Similarly, Noble Knight Games has its own affiliate program for referring customers to hard-to-find, out-of-print, or physical tabletop goods. When writing an article reviewing an indie module or analyzing a rulebook, always embed your affiliate link, and embed your own self-published companion content link. If a reader buys the recommended book, you make affiliate income; if they buy your supplement, you make creator royalties.

Platforms like Patreon and Substack allow writers to generate recurring monthly income from ad-hoc releases—such as monthly magic items, subclass options, or monthly industry breakdown articles. Converting a casual reader base into recurring micro-sponsors provides a baseline cash flow cushion during lean freelance months.

In creator economy theory, Kevin Kelly’s famous 1,000 True Fans Rule states that if you have 1,000 core fans willing to spend $100 per year on your products, you can generate a gross annual income of $100,000. During our presentation, we broke down why this math is not easy to achieve in the TTRPG space.

Out of that $100,000 gross, payment processors take ~3–5%, digital platforms take 10–30%, physical printing/shipping eats margins, and art/editing expenses cut further into profits. Assuming you could acehive $100,000, your net income ends up closer to $40,000–$50,000 before personal income taxes. In tabletop gaming, a fan might buy a single $10 PDF or back a $25 Kickstarter once a year. Getting a fan to spend $100 every single year requires offering high-tier physical reward tiers, subscription models, or constant product releases. To get 1,000 paying "true fans," you typically need a broader reach of 50,000 to 100,000 casual followers, social media subscribers, or mailing list contacts.

The vast majority of professional TTRPG writers do not write full-time as their sole source of household income. Most writers maintain primary day jobs in tech, education, marketing, or traditional publishing, or they have partners whose benefits (like health insurance) make full-time freelancing feasible. Treating RPG writing as a multi-stream portfolio business—rather than expecting a single massive windfall—is the secret to long-term sustainability.

As our session wrapped up, we hit the structural limits of modern convention scheduling. While the official program allocates a strict 1-hour duration, convention guidelines dictate that presenters technically conclude their sessions ten minutes prior to the hour mark to ensure a smooth transition for the incoming track. In practice, this 10-minute buffer is highly compressed, and throughout the day's broader scheduling, transitions rarely occurred cleanly or on schedule. The presentation we shared at Gen Con is available for free as a PDF on my Patreon.

We made some great connections at the event, but we had two more to go the same day: Launch Your Own Podcast, led by my wife, and Launch Your Own RPG Company. We'll post about both of those in upcoming articles.

Your Turn: What advice do you have for freelancers starting out in the industry?