A strange thing happened this weekend. A friend of mine came up with the idea that he wants to start producing games under his company. He asked me to help, which I’m grateful for, but also a little hesitant. I’ve been looking into game design and starting my own company for a couple of years now, and have come up short based entirely on my monetary situation.

This business idea does present me with at least the option to produce games, but it comes with a cost. Partnership is a scary concept to me. Especially when its not my company and someone else is MY partner. I would love to design a game, have it produced and make money off of it, but I’d much rather do that off of a loan so when I make a good amount of money I can pay the loan and get a good profit. A partnership would mean that no matter how much work I do, how much I put into things, how much of my personal sacrifice goes forward, I still only get 50% with no chance of “paying off” my “loan”.

Yes, getting a partner with an established company means that I don’t have to do THAT part of the company building, and yes I realize it’s his money going into things, but my fear is if I put forth 100% of the work toward a project, just because my partner funds it, he gets 50%.

If the cost of the project is say… $5000, and the finished product brings in say $10,000 after the cost, I would get $5k, and he would too, for doing nothing more than putting the money forward (that was paid off first, before the split). Now what if my product does REALY well? You know, that 1 in a million idea that everyone loves? If I make a million dollars off of what I put 100% of the effort toward, and only cost a fraction of that to produce, suddenly I’m paying him half a million dollars just for having money available?

But that’s just my “worst fear” scenario. I know I’m good at what I do, but not “million dollar project” good … yet.

After focusing on the negative for so long, I may as well look at a few of the positive potentials to this partnership plan. The idea that I will soon have the ability to get my name out there and recognized is an amazing thought. I would love to be able to go to a GenCon, or something along those lines, have people walk up and be like “Lord Xtheth? Can I have your autograph?” “I love that game of yours!” “Can I buy your book?” so on, and so forth.

The fact that I don’t have to have my own money to begin this venture is also a great opportunity, and I do strongly believe that I will make money in bundles with the right few ideas and support from my partner.

Well, that’s it for this week

As always, thank you for reading

Lord Xtheth

Today marks the launch of my podcasting career… It took way too long to set this up, but thankfully it has gotten off the ground. Some of the participants are from the Nerdbound podcast group. NBNeil, Ian M, and Ian B have been confirmed. Also a couple of my real life players have joined, and a completely new guy I found randomly on ENworld.

The 2 week celebration of my birthday starts tomorrow, The Calgary Stampede! I haven’t gone in several years… the last time was when I was 15 or 16, so more than 10 years ago. As I get older, my birthday means less and less, but I claim it gets longer and longer.

I finished reading the rules for Monsters and other childish things. It was a really entertaining read and it seems like an awesome system. I recommend checking it out.

As far as RPGs go, I’m working on a Star Wars Saga Edition game at the moment. It’s going to take place in a different dimension than the star wars universe, so no Darth Vader, no Luke Skywalker, and NO JAR JAR BINKS! Gun-Guns will still exist though, because the race isn’t that bad, just the one character.

I’ve been trying to come up with something to write professionally about. I’m good with fantasy, but it seems almost like there’s too much of that out already, and I might not be able to write anything new at all. I thought about trying my hand at script writing. I know I can write a better script than anything that’s coming out right now, it’s just difficult to come up with something fresh and new that nobody has seen before.

Well, that’s all I got for now, thank you for taking the time to read!

Lord Xtheth