Paranormal Freelancing is an action-oriented urban fantasy game by the Far Horizons Co-op that is currently on Kickstarter. Players take on the role of assistants to supernatural creatures, letting you play the renfield, a witch’s acolyte, a shapeshifter’s family, and more.

This guest blog is by Chris Falco, the lead writer and project developer for the book.

Sprint Projects in a Co-op

Like any project from Far Horizons, Paranormal Freelancing has a certain process it goes through both to make sure that anyone in the co-op can have input into it, and everyone actually involved in the creation gets a fair share of its creation. There’s a common view out there that this makes for slow creations compared to more traditionally owned publishers, but in reality this couldn’t be farther from the truth. A lot of the decision-making process actually helps us bypass a lot of back and forth so we can bring high quality projects out in a short time period if we want to.

Pitching

Within the co-op, any project starts off with an “unofficial” pitch that then goes into an “official” one. The unofficial one is a heartbeat, a check to be sure there’s enough interest among our contributors to get the project made. We usually do this in a typical Discord chat room and sound out the basic idea. Assuming that goes well, we then make an official proposal out of it. In this particular case, Paranormal Freelancing was an idea I had to fill in a funding gap in “spooky season” since another project slowed down and wouldn’t be ready on time for that. It quickly picked up interest, so we were ready to go.

Official proposals have a small template that we follow, which lays out the scope of the project, the worker requirements, and intentions for funding and profit-sharing. We put these up in an official internal forum for discussion, which lasts for at least 24 hours, or longer if there’s a major point in contention to work through. For small projects like this, though, this is a rarity, as most of the points made (project shares, funding methods) have a template we work off of to begin with.

At that point, we use a voting process to approve a project, which lasts for 24 hours on its own, to be sure anyone of any timezone has a chance to vote on it. This is an automated setup on our server, and most of the time projects like this get approved unanimously; we’re a positive group and so tend to encourage new books unless there’s something about it that grates against our core message. Paranormal Freelancing was no exception to this, and the co-op was quick to approve it without any problems.

Getting Started

Once a project is approved, we finalize the team, though often have one in mind by this point if it’s gotten this far. I’ve worked with or seen the results of these members before and knew they’d be perfect for it: Bri is an amazing artist with a great style to encapsulate the game’s mood, Reilly is an efficient and helpful editor, and Marx has an eye for detail that makes them great for proofing and assistance with project details. This meant we didn’t lose much time on this part, so we could hit the ground running.

The co-op runs individual projects much like a traditional publisher would, with the project leader organizing the other workers, setting timing, preparing crowdfunding, and similar managerial duties. They’re also in charge of interfacing with more permanent co-op roles, like the financial organizer (keeper of the “warchest,” as we put it.) Given the few people involved, I don’t have a lot of micromanaging to do, but I was also left in charge of just about every aspect of preparing the campaign, in addition to the writing itself.

This is a part of why the co-op setup works out so well. The project pitching process is only as long as we make it, and we all believe in the same outlook, so it’s easy to get things ready in time. The whole thing took about three days to get ready, and then we started immediately on actually making the book. Since each project is self-managing, we don’t have any special setup we need to work through except what we make; nothing is run by a separate publishing head or license approval every step of the way.

Because of this, the writing was completed and sent off to editing quickly, and art was able to work alongside this simultaneously, as we already knew what the artistic needs of the project were. Any back and forth between us is direct and efficient in this system when it needs to be.

The Campaign

Another thing that’s atypical of most publishers, this project has been running alongside the Kickstarter campaign, via parallel processes like getting cover art and preview text ready before anything else. Normally that’s difficult as the campaign funds the costs and the publisher won’t risk owing flatly paid freelancers, but since we’re profit-shared, we can set aside some time for it either way. We’ve released games before that work off of royalty alone. Still, funding financially supports us and lets us get the project done more easily, so we’ve been grateful to hit the minimum level quickly.

The payment itself, as mentioned, works off of a share system, which we have pre-calculated for most of our roles, so doesn’t need much time. Crowdfunding is a unique beast, though, so we allow them to be adjusted to account for additional work put into the marketing of it itself; it wouldn’t be fair to expect anyone to make headers, articles, and more without additional compensation, after all. The project leader can usually calculate this with a quick discussion with the other members of that specific game.

At this point, we’re hoping to have the game ready shortly after the campaign successfully funds and the transaction with Kickstarter itself is complete; this is usually a few weeks at most afterwards.

Release

Once the project is ready, the project’s lead or another with access to the co-op’s accounts (find us on DriveThruRPG and itch, on that note) sets everything up. The lead is responsible for making sure any backers get their rewards through there, and calculates the royalty shares for the sites that support it. An account manager does it manually otherwise, and gets compensated with their own shares from our core products.

This, again, is handled by the individual team so won’t take too long. So, while some projects move slowly and take their time, the nature of a co-op isn’t an impediment to it. It’s a fair system that we encourage others to take up, for the health of the industry and to acknowledge the contributions of everyone involved.

– Chris Falco

Paranormal Freelancing is funding now on Kickstarter.com!
Be sure to check out previews and help fund new stretch goals before the campaign ends!

Tags | indie rpgs, kickstarter, rpgs