How Many Words per Day?

New RPG creators often ask how many words per day they should aim at writing. It's a question of more than academic interest. Given that most freelance jobs in this field pay by the word, your writing velocity strongly influences the size of your paycheck! But it also determines the size and number of projects you can undertake. 

One of the most exciting moments of my game design career occurred a few years ago when the preeminent RPG-publisher offered me a contract to write for their new hardcover book (I'll let you figure out the details). One part of the agreement gave me pause, however. I had to deliver a 30,000-word draft to them within ten weeks. At the time, I had a busy day job and a young family to look after, and writing was very much a part-time gig for me. I had to do some careful planning to make sure I could deliver. 

One challenge for RPG writers is that different aspects of the system require differing amounts of time to create. Writing up the lore for a fantasy city is very different from constructing balanced features for a new character archetype or designing a new monster. Defining a daily average tends to obliterate these distinctions. I am assuming that most RPG designers will find themselves writing a little bit of everything over time, and hence the differences even out in the long run. 

It is common for RPG creators to compare themselves to novelists, so it might be instructive to look there for guidance. This article from The Writing Cooperative looks at the daily word counts of 10 legendary writers. At the lower end of the spectrum is Ernest Hemmingway, who wrote from about 6 am till noon and produced 500 words per day. They are very fine and well-considered words! Towards the top end of the spectrum is Anne Rice, clocking in at 3,000 words per day. Most of the others come in between 1,000 and 2,000 words. 

I wish I had daily figures for famous RPG creators, but I don't. However, I do have some guidance from TSR, the company that used to publish D&D along with a host of other games. They broke up writing tasks into "module units." A module unit was 24,000 words in length and translated to 32 published pages. A 32-page softcover adventure was 1 module unit. A 128-page hardcover sourcebook was 4 module units. 

TSR expected their full-time game designers to write 1 module unit per month. If we assume 20 working days per month, that translates into about 1,200 words per day. This figure falls nicely within the average novelist velocities defined above, and I think it is a good goal for a new game designer who is writing full-time. If you are writing part-time, you would obviously calculate an appropriate fraction of that.

Now, some of you will no doubt have stories of writing far more words than that, especially in a last-minute dash to hit a challenging deadline. Remember that we are talking about a sustainable average over a long period, not what you can produce in a short-term sprint. 

If we take 1200 words a day as our baseline, we can look critically at RPG pay since companies almost always contract this per word. When I started in this field a few years ago, veterans told me that 5-7 cents per word (US dollars) was pretty typical and that 10 cents per word was the holy grail. Rates have shifted upwards in recent years, and I know of many companies that now offer 10 cents as the minimum to skilled creators.

If we take 1200 words a day at 10 cents per word, we arrive at $120 a day. Interestingly, if you take $15 per hour (which is the minimum wage in several US states) over an 8 hour day, you also arrive at $120. This industry is not well-paid!