TEXT: WRITING GAMES FOR PUBLICATION
  by Monte Cook
  
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  Your Best Game Ever
  These games we play don’t write themselves! Maybe you should do it. 
  Since gaming is such an inherently creative hobby, most GMs—and 
  many players—think about getting their own material published. Maybe 
  it’s a great adventure that they and their group loved. Maybe it’s a 
  character who is really special. Maybe it’s a whole new RPG system. Or 
  maybe the specifics aren’t driving the issue, but just the general idea of 
  being a professional game designer. I mean, you just get to play games 
  all day if you’re a game designer right? (Spoiler: you don’t.)
  I can remember when I was about 14 years old and I saw the D&D 
  module, Dwellers of the Forbidden City, on the store shelf. It was by David 
  Cook, and I noticed the name because, well, that’s my last name too. 
  This was a significant event for me, because it was the first moment that 
  I thought, “Hey, it’s someone’s job to write this stuff.” This was followed 
  closely by the thought, “I want that to be my job!”
  How to write for games, and how to get your game writing work 
  published could be its own entire book. I I wanted to include as much 
  information on this topic as possible in in Your Best Game Ever, but we 
  literally ran out of space packing that book with advice and ideas for game 
  players and game masters. So we took the content we would have put in 
  the book and pulled it together here, and made it free for everyone to read.
  HOW I GOT MY START
  Since I get asked this all the time, let’s get “story time” out of the way first.
  My friend Steve went to the Origins Game Fair while we were in 
  still in college, about 1988. At the time, we played Rolemaster, a fantasy 
  game by Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE). At the con, Steve went to the ICE 
  booth and spoke to the people there. They told him they were looking for 
  a monster book and gave him a set of their writer’s guidelines.
  He brought that information back to me and encouraged me to go 
  for it. I wrote up a proposal and to my surprise, about a month later, an 
  editor at ICE called me and said that they were interested. 
  So I wrote Creatures and Treasures II, a sourcebook for Rolemaster. 
  When the book was done and ICE’s editors were through with it (my 
  editor was Kevin Barrett, who eventually became a good friend), I sent 
  ICE a letter proposing more work I could do. More product ideas I had. 
  They liked one of them and told me to go ahead and write it. This time, it 
  was a Rolemaster/Space Master crossover product called Dark Space. 
  WRITING GAMES FOR PUBLICATION
  CREDITS
   
  Writer 
  Monte Cook 
   
  Additional Writing 
  Shanna Germain
   
  Proofreader 
  Tammie Webb Ryan
   
  Art Director 
  Bear Weiter
   
  Cover Artist 
  David Seidman
  Artists
  Irina Nordsol, Angelo Peluso, Michael Phillippi, Joe Slucher, Matt Stawicki 
  © 2019 Monte Cook Games, LLC. YOUR BEST GAME EVER and its logo are trademarks of 
  Monte Cook Games, LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries. All Monte Cook Games characters 
  and character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are trademarks of 
  Monte Cook Games, LLC.
  
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  WRITING GAMES FOR PUBLICATION
  When I graduated college, I wrote to ICE again and ask if I could 
  have a job. They said that they had a summer internship position open. 
  So for a summer I did all the stuff that no one else wanted to do at ICE. 
  But I worked hard, got paid practically nothing, and strove to make 
  myself indispensable. It must have worked, because that fall I got an 
  offer to stay on full time. A few years later I left to write freelance, but 
  eventually ended up working for TSR. TSR was bought by Wizards of the 
  Coast a few years after that, and eventually I left Wizards to start my own 
  company, Malhavoc Press, to produce d20 (D&D compatible) material. 
  Later, I started Monte Cook Games so I could produce games like 
  Numenera, the Cypher System, No Thank You Evil!, and Invisible Sun.
  I think at the beginning I was just a guy with creative ideas, basic 
  writing skills, and a deep passion for games. Somewhere along the line (I 
  hope), I got a lot better at both game design and writing for publication.
  Was it hard? I have no idea. I don’t have anything to compare it to 
  because I’ve never broken into any other field. It was easier, I guess, to 
  get my first game product published than it was to get my first novel 
  published, but only a little.
  WRITING LIKE A PRO
  If you want to learn writing basics, you can find any number of helpful 
  books or websites on grammar, writing well, and so on. So let’s focus 
  on writing for games. There’s lots of kinds of game writing—rules, 
  adventures, setting material, NPCs, monsters, magic items. . .the 
  list goes on. And they all have their own idiosyncrasies. What’s more, 
  every game ruleset is different, and every publisher is different, so that 
  changes things too. 
  So let’s consider just some general advice that applies to almost all 
  game writing.
  
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  Your Best Game Ever
  blender that can make smoothies for the crew of a starship chased 
  by Cthulhu spawn. Does that make it better? Because that’s actually 
  what it’s kind of like. You’re taking fun, imaginative ideas—sometimes 
  outlandishly wacky ideas—and making them clear and understandable.
  Clarity comes from putting your important points in small, 
  consumable chunks. For example, bullet points are easy to understand, 
  read, and refer back to. But even if the material doesn’t fit into one-
  sentence bullets, or even sentence fragment bullets, consider dividing it 
  into sections with headers. Pages and pages of text is great for a novel, 
  but it’s hell if you want to look back and reference a rule. It’s also been 
  shown that it’s hard to learn from so called “walls of text.” They can be 
  seen as impenetrable and daunting, and you want your writing to be 
  welcoming and digestible. 
   Consider the order in which you’re presenting your information. 
  In pretty much every case, write the most interesting bit first. If you’re 
  making a new monster, and you start with a paragraph about its 
  dietary needs and how it fits into the ecosystem, and only later do I 
  discover that it can blast purple lightning from its eyes that transforms 
  other creatures into clouds of poison gas, you’ve probably made a 
  miscalculation. To use a journalism axiom, “Don’t bury the lede.” Put 
  the most important and most interesting material up front. Mundane 
  details don’t tell the GM that they want to put this creature in their next 
  adventure, and that’s precisely what the first thing you tell them should 
  WRITE TO YOUR AUDIENCE
  Unless you’re specifically writing about creating or running characters, 
  you’re writing for the GM. The GM is your ally here, or rather, you’re meant 
  to be their ally. Don’t keep secrets from them. Don’t be coy. If you’re 
  writing an adventure, they need to know up front what happens. Don’t 
  tantalize—inform. (This is essentially the opposite of writing fiction.)
  Let’s expand on that further, in fact. Writing an RPG book is not like 
  writing a novel or a short story. You’re not the storyteller. The gamers 
  at the table tell the stories. You just empower them. You know, let me 
  say that again because the point is too important to miss: you are not 
  the storyteller. Storytellers create characters and plots. But in an RPG, 
  the players create the characters, and they decide what to do—which is 
  basically the plot. At most, you might create a setting and situations. Or 
  maybe the rules that govern how things get done. But they’re creating 
  the story. You’re creating the tools to help them. If we were talking about 
  building a house, the game writer is not the house builder in the analogy, 
  they’re the person providing the lumber, the hammers, the nails, and so on.
  CLARITY IS VITAL
  While clarity is important in all writing, game writing is more like technical 
  writing than creative writing. That means that it can be more like writing 
  instructions for a blender than like writing a short story. That makes it 
  sound pretty awful, though, I suppose. But if you think of it as a magic 
  When writing game products, imagine yourself at the 
  table—both as the GM and the player—so you’re always 
  aware of who needs to know what information and when 
  they need to know it. This kind of information empathy 
  is one of your greatest tools as a writer.
  —Shanna Germain
  
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  WRITING GAMES FOR PUBLICATION
  do. Your first sentence, paragraph, or section (depending on what you’re 
  writing) should scream: “Your character/adventure/setting/campaign/
  NPC absolutely needs this new thing and here’s why!” 
  At the same time, you’ve got to present the information in a way 
  that the reader can follow. Rules and important information are best 
  explained in short, blunt sentences. (Flavorful material can use more 
  complex language if you want.) One point should lead to the next, and—
  if you’re dealing with a complex topic—you should provide the reader a 
  sort of roadmap of where you’re going before you go there. 
  You don’t want to obfuscate the important takeaway in the middle of 
  a paragraph. Not only are your readers likely to miss it, but even if they 
  do read it, they’re going to have a difficult time referring back to it in the 
  middle of a game. 
  Rambling interjections or preambles, no matter how clever, 
  hide your ideas rather than showcase them. Again, being clear and 
  straightforward is the way to go. Tell the reader right away not just 
  what they need to know but why they’re going to care. If you’re writing 
  a character ability called “Make Everything Dangerous,” that allows 
  a character to make use of improvised weapons, start out not only 
  by telling the player that, but why they would care. “Even the most 
  skilled fighter finds themselves unarmed sometimes. Make Everything 
  Dangerous allows the character to wield any object they can heft as if it 
  were a weapon.”. . .and then get into the game specifics. With those first 
  two sentences, you’ve told the reader what kind of character would find 
  this ability useful, and why. It’s compelling without being too wordy, and 
  it provides a general signal of what’s coming before you dive into details. 
  THINK ABOUT VOICE
  What you’re reading now, like the entirety of Your Best Game Ever, is 
  written in a very conversational style. It’s (hopefully) fun to read without 
  sacrificing clarity. You can write game material in a conversational style, 
  but consider the actual material you’re working on. If it’s a modern game 
  or something similar, that style might be a great choice. But if you’re 
  working on a game that’s about medieval knights or samurai warriors, 
  maybe a different voice or tone would be more appropriate.
  Really great game writing is immersive. Voice—literally how you 
  write the descriptions of the things you’re working with—is a masterful 
  way of creating immersion without being blatant. If the game you’re 
  working on is mysterious, strange, and even poetic, your writing can 
  take on a bit of that flair as well. A science fiction game might be more 
  technical or scientific. A game about faeries should probably be filled 
  with magic and wonder in the words and sentences it uses to describe 
  the magic and the wonder of the setting.
  Now, as you’re thinking about voice, don’t forget the previous point. 
  Voice isn’t an excuse for you to neglect clarity. You need to marry those 
  two concepts together and create something interesting to read while 
  still getting the information across.
  
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  Your Best Game Ever
  follow the example with necessary follow-up details. So, the next part of 
  our Make Everything Dangerous ability might not be the game specifics, 
  but an example: 
  Make Everything Dangerous: Even the most skilled fighter finds themselves 
  unarmed sometimes. Make Everything Dangerous allows the character to 
  wield any object they can heft as if it were a weapon.
  For example, Eveline finds herself disarmed by the flourish of a skilled 
  foe’s blade. Using Make Everything Dangerous, Eveline simply grabs a 
  candlestick off the shelf she’s standing next to, and without missing a beat is 
  back in the fight. 
  And then we give the specific mechanics, starting with a new line 
  break.
  REVISE AND PRUNE YOUR WORDS
  In the example of Make Everything Dangerous, when we look at it again, 
  we realize that you could actually start with the example, because it’s 
  so clear that it almost makes the first couple of sentences unnecessary. 
  Cut them entirely and just have the example and then the rules. Good 
  rules writing almost always requires that kind of excessive pruning and 
  reworking to get it to be as clear and concise as possible. Trim things 
  down so that there’s nothing extraneous or redundant. 
  Redundancy in game writing is a common mistake I see. Compare 
  these two bits of text:
  “On their turn, the cyborg targets a foe with their laser lance. The 
  target must be within medium range. If the cyborg successfully 
  strikes their foe, the laser lance inflicts 6 points of damage.”
  Versus
  “The cyborg uses their laser lance to attack a foe in medium range, 
  inflicting 6 points of damage.”
  EXAMPLES ARE ALWAYS A GOOD THING
  When you write game material, you’re very likely writing something that 
  the reader will learn from, and something they will refer to again and 
  again. This is a challenge, because to teach someone something (like 
  a game rule) you need to explain it carefully in a way they’ll understand 
  and remember. To create an easy reference, you want it straightforward 
  and easy to find without a lot of explanation. Those two things seem in 
  conflict, right? Examples are a great way around this. If you provide an 
  example, it’s a really great way to get someone to understand something. 
  Most people learn something better that way than just through a blanket 
  statement of fact. 
  At the same time, as readers, if we’re referencing something for 
  the second (or ninth) time, our minds learn to just skip the example 
  and look to the heart of the issue. That’s just the way we read. In other 
  words, if you’re writing a new rule, write something very straightforward 
  with few details, add an example showing the rule in play, and then 
  Once you sit down to actually write your game product, 
  the scope of it might seem overwhelming if considered 
  in its entirety. So don’t! Do what I do, which is to take 
  an hour or so to figure out how many words (or pages) 
  I need to write each day to reach a deadline that lies a 
  few weeks or months in the future. Then I just work to 
  that much smaller daily deadline. Each time I meet one 
  of these tiny milestones, I note it in a progress journal of 
  some kind. This demonstrates that I’m that much closer 
  to successfully completing my project, and alleviates 
  any anxiety I might have about failing to get the thing 
  finished on time.
  —Bruce R. Cordell
  
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  WRITING GAMES FOR PUBLICATION
  CONSIDER EVERYTHING THAT’S NEEDED
  You can often tell right away if a game writer is also an avid game player. 
  And the way you can tell they are is when the material really provides 
  everything that’s needed at the table. Consider the ways what you’re 
  creating might get used in the game, not just the way you envision it. 
  Let’s say you’ve made a new magic item for a fantasy game and it’s a 
  sword that gets more powerful as you get weaker, so that the mighty 
  warrior’s blade will be at its strongest when they’ve been fighting a 
  truly terrible foe. Cool idea, but there are at least two very odd potential 
  consequences:
  1. 
  The sword wielder might actually try to hurt themselves, or ask 
  their allies to hurt them, so the sword will be more potent.
  2. 
  The sword, when found by the PCs, might not go to the warrior 
  at all. If it’s more powerful when the wielder is weaker, maybe it 
  should go to the bookish, feeble wizard instead.
  Neither of those is what you envisioned. But your vision doesn’t 
  matter. You’re not the storyteller, remember? The players and GM tell the 
  story. So you’ve got to present your idea in such a way that anticipates 
  the various ways things can go at the table. For example, when you’re 
  designing the abilities of a monster the PCs may fight, don’t say 
  something like “this monster’s fiery aura can inflict 10 points of damage 
  on PCs each round,” because what if an NPC is within that aura? Are 
  they immune? Of course not, but just because your vision was of the 
  PCs facing off against the monster doesn’t mean that’s the way it will go. 
  Instead, consider words like characters, people, or living things. 
  Consider what the people at the table need to know. Since you’re 
  probably writing for a GM, consider how harried a GM can get during 
  games. They don’t want to spend a lot of time referencing rules or making 
  it all up on the fly. Give them what they need. Imagine, for example, you’re 
  writing up a haunted house for a horror game and the PCs are following 
  up on reports of strange lights at night in the attic window. So you provide 
  all the information about the ghost in the attic and so on. But consider 
  By making the second example more concise, we also make it 
  clearer. It’s not just shorter, it’s easier to understand.
  PLAYTEST
  Game material that’s meant for publication should always first be 
  something you test in your own game (or in a specific playtest game). 
  What’s fun for you and your friends is likely to be fun for others. 
  Playtesting will help you find the flaws in your ideas, and—more 
  importantly—expose you to how players and GMs will use the material 
  you’ve created, and what they will need in order to do so. 
  Sometimes the best game material starts as something you created 
  for your home game. You very likely created it because there wasn’t 
  anything available like it. You were filling a need. And if your campaign 
  had that need, someone else’s probably will too. But this origin isn’t 
  really playtesting. 
  For a playtest, if at all possible, you—the writer—should not be the 
  GM. Real playtesting comes after you’ve written a draft of your material. 
  The best test is to give your material to someone else and see if they can 
  run a game using it. As the writer, you’ll naturally fill in any gaps in the 
  material because you already know the intent. But another GM only has 
  the words you’ve put on the page, just like the ultimate end user.
  
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  Your Best Game Ever
  the other angles. The PCs might likely ask the neighbors about the lights. 
  What do they learn? What are the neighbors like? 
  You don’t have to cover every contingency (and in fact you shouldn’t 
  try to), but you do want to cover the likely scenarios. And the way to do 
  that is to really think about what questions the people at the table will 
  have and what the answers to the most common ones might be. This 
  takes experience and empathy. Basically, you have to mentally take on 
  the role of the GM and think about what you’d need in that situation. 
  Fortunately, roleplaying is something we’re all good at.
  GETTING PUBLISHED
  So, even if you can write the greatest game material ever, that doesn’t 
  guarantee anyone’s ever going to see it. It’s got to be published. Long 
  ago (when I got started, so you know, back when the dice were all made 
  out of mammoth bones) there was only one way to do this, more or less, 
  and that was to submit to an existing publisher. That’s still an option, 
  but there are other, newer (and perhaps easier) options.
  THE TRADITIONAL WAY
  The traditional way to get published, as I stated, is to submit your 
  material to a publisher. Now, every publisher is different. They’re going 
  to have different policies, different formats, and different expectations. 
  Contact a publisher individually and find out all you can about them and 
  what they look for or expect before you send them anything. They might 
  not be looking for unsolicited submissions at all. They might only be 
  looking for designers with some experience. They might be looking only 
  for very specific material. Or they might be open to anything. It really 
  varies, but most are happy to let you know if you contact them.
  Expect that everything will take twice as long as you 
  planned. Writing, editing, art, layout, printing—twice 
  as long, often because of things that are beyond your 
  control. Revise your plan accordingly, and if you reach 
  the finish line earlier than expected, that’s great!
  —Sean K. Reynolds
  
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  WRITING GAMES FOR PUBLICATION
  possible, but really, really unlikely. Get your foot in the proverbial 
  door with the submission of something smaller, show them you 
  can be trusted to work as a professional with quality output and 
  an understanding of deadlines, and then do that a few more 
  times. Once you’ve gotten some real experience under your 
  belt, then maybe try to get your game or world published.
   
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  Find out what the publisher wants to publish, rather than what 
  you want to write. As I wrote earlier, I got my first job by writing 
  what I knew the company was looking for. If they’ve got a round 
  hole to fill, be a round peg. Make them grateful you showed up.
   
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  Your submission might only be the means to show them what 
  you can do. You might submit an adventure, but after looking at 
  it, they might tell you that they don’t want it. However, they see 
  that you know what you’re doing and so they’re going to give 
  you an assignment for what they are looking for. For goodness 
  sake don’t take this as a rejection. This is a great turn of events.
  GETTING YOUR FOOT IN THE DOOR
  In general, regardless of the publisher, consider these issues when 
  you’re submitting something for the first time:
   
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  The publisher doesn’t know you, and they probably get a lot of 
  submissions. Why will they publish you and not someone else? 
  Well, if you can make your submission professional, provide 
  examples of your work that show that you understand what you’re 
  writing about, and indicate that you’re flexible and easy to work 
  with, you’re already ahead of the vast majority of submissions. 
   
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  Know the publisher. The publisher very likely has a niche. 
  You should know what that is, and you should tailor your 
  submission to that niche. Some of this is easy. Don’t submit 
  your Call of Cthulhu scenario to Kobold Press. Because Kobold 
  doesn’t publish Call of Cthulhu. Chaosium does. But it can be 
  a bit more nuanced than that. Don’t submit your adventure 
  to a company that mostly publishes rules supplements. Don’t 
  submit your massive tome of game material to a publisher that 
  only does short pieces. Don’t submit your hyperviolent, sexually 
  explicit new game to a publisher that doesn’t appear to have 
  ever published that kind of material before. And so on.
   
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  Most publishers already have a game (or games), and 
  probably a setting or two that they’re trying to support. They 
  probably aren’t as interested in your brand new game system 
  or campaign world; they’re probably interested in finding 
  someone who will help them support what they’ve already got. 
  The publisher of a game is almost certainly going to be more 
  interested in the submission of an adventure that uses their 
  game rules than your brand new game which doesn’t have 
  anything to do with what they’re already publishing. 
   
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  Consider starting small. Trying to start out as a designer who’s 
  never published anything by getting someone to publish your 
  brand new game or your home campaign world is like trying to 
  get hired as a CEO of a huge company right out of college. It’s 
  It’s never been easier to turn a game idea into a product, 
  and to bring that product to market. But never lose 
  sight of the fact that once you decide to do that, you’re 
  running a business. The creative process is one small 
  part of that business, but for your game to be successful 
  you need to be every bit as proficient at marketing your 
  title and running your business as you are at designing 
  your game.
  —Charles M. Ryan
  
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  Your Best Game Ever
   
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  On the flip side, don’t agonize over the fact that your ancient 
  crypt has a wraith in it and some already published adventure 
  with a crypt also has a wraith. You don’t have to reinvent the 
  whole genre every time. Learn the difference between going with 
  the tropes, paying homage to your inspirations, and outright 
  theft of ideas. Those are three different things. The first one is 
  always fine, the second one can be, and the third never is.
   
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  Respect your editor. Your editor might seem like the enemy, 
  but they’re your greatest ally. It’s literally their job to make you 
  look good. If they make changes, or request that you make 
  changes, go along with what they say (or have a conversation 
  and ask the reason behind their changes, so you can come to 
  an agreement). Good editors know what they’re doing, and they 
  will do their best to keep the voice and spirit of your work alive 
  while ensuring it’s clear, consistent, and correct. (An editor is 
  also sometimes called a developer, although sometimes those 
  are two different people. And there’s probably also a proofer or 
  proofreader, but that might also be the editor. It’s complicated, 
  and everyone does it differently.)
   
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  Once you’re done and the project is in the publisher’s hands, 
  let them know you’ve got more ideas too, assuming that you 
  do. Don’t be a pest, but once they’ve published something you 
  designed, they are that much more likely to publish something 
  else from you too. Use that to your best advantage. 
  SELF-PUBLISHING
  The difference between game publishing now and game publishing 30 
  years ago is that now you can do it all yourself. Actually, you could then 
  too, but it would have very likely looked amateurish and unprofessional. 
  Now you can make your product look just as slick and beautiful as 
  anything else on the game shelf. That’s exciting, but it’s also daunting. 
  Getting in with a publisher might be challenging, but a publisher is 
  going to edit your work, layout your work, get art for your work, print your 
  DOING THE WORK
  Once you are working with a publisher, you want to be a pleasure to 
  work with. You want to be professional and pleasant. This is doubly true 
  if you want this first publishing experience to not be your last one.
  Do what’s asked of you. If you’ve been given instructions or 
  guidelines, follow them. The publisher probably has a format they like to 
  use when presenting their material. They probably have a style guide that 
  indicates how they like to do what they do. (DM or GM or something 
  else? Roleplaying or role-playing? Capitalized game terms or not? There 
  are a lot of details involved.) They might have very specific instructions 
  on how to deliver material to them, how to handle rewrites, and so on. 
  When you’re really experienced, or if you self-published, you can do 
  things your own way, but if you’re new and you’re working for someone 
  else, do it their way. If they’ve taken the time to explain what they want, 
  give it to them.
   
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  Meet your deadlines. This seems like a no-brainer, but deadlines 
  are king. You can write the world’s greatest material, but if 
  it’s late, it might be of no use to the publisher. I personally 
  have seen mediocre designers get regular work because they 
  were professional and on time, while far more talented but 
  consistently late designers get shut out.
   
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  Make sure it’s really your work. Don’t directly lift ideas from 
  some other source. Your publisher and your audience know all 
  the same movies, books, comics, and games you do, and if it’s 
  clear that your sci-fi space station is really Deep Space Nine, or 
  your enigmatic NPC is really Doctor Who, they’re going to see 
  that right away. This is lazy at best and plagiarism at worst. This 
  is true of game mechanics too. Now, you might suddenly react 
  to all of this telling me about how copyright law actually works. 
  But I don’t care. I’m not trying to just keep you from getting 
  sued. I’m also trying to help you not look like an ass. Create 
  really original material.
  
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  WRITING GAMES FOR PUBLICATION
  The first is if you’re interested in D&D. It’s called the Dungeon 
  Master’s Guild and it’s a place to sell your self-published D&D 
  compatible material. The Dungeon Master’s Guild offers a wide variety 
  of helpful tools to aid you in creating your product, and, since it’s a 
  popular marketplace, your work has more chance of being noticed. For 
  more information, go to https://www.dmsguild.com/
  The second is the Cypher System Creator Program. It works very 
  much like the Dungeon Master’s Guild, but it’s for the Cypher System 
  from, well, my company—Monte Cook Games. For more information, 
  go to https://www.montecookgames.com/cypher-system-creator/ 
  There are also other projects like this, as well as open game licenses 
  such as the d20 license. Do your homework, though, because they all 
  work a little differently and if you’re using their tools, you have to go by 
  their rules.
  GOOD LUCK!
  Game writing is a fantastic creative endeavor. It can be fun and rewarding 
  in many ways. It can also be very challenging. Don’t necessarily be 
  discouraged if your first attempts fail. And even if you can’t find a 
  publisher or can’t make a go of publishing it yourself, you’ve still got 
  the material to use with your own game group. And playing games, 
  telling stories with your friends, and having fun is the heart of this whole 
  enterprise. Because ultimately, if you are a game designer, what you’re 
  doing is trying to help other people have their best game ever.
  work (unless it’s PDF only), market your work, and sell your work. If you 
  self-publish, you do all of that yourself. You either need to be multitalented, 
  or you need to find people to help. And if any of them aren’t as good at 
  their job as you are at yours, it’s going to diminish the finished product. 
  And perhaps bigger than any of that, a publisher is going to 
  associate your work with their already established games and material. 
  That’s important because if you’re brand new, how are you going to get 
  gamers to pay attention to you in a crowded marketplace? An existing 
  publisher has a track record for quality (hopefully) and so something 
  published by them will get noticed by their existing customer base, and 
  new customers will know it’s okay to give your material a chance.
  I’ll be honest, there’s really no one out there getting rich off of self-
  publishing RPG products. It’s a crowded marketplace, and hard to stand 
  out. That said, self-publishing allows you to do things exactly your way, 
  at your pace. No one can tell you you’re doing it wrong. If you succeed or 
  fail, it’s all on your merits. It’s freeing. And if you really want to, you can 
  start big—a whole new game, a whole new world, whatever you want.
  It’s probably worth mentioning that if you’re self publishing, your 
  project probably needs to be a new game or new world. Because with a few 
  exceptions that we’ll cover in a moment, if you’re self-publishing, you can’t 
  use someone else’s rule system or world. You can’t just create a Seventh 
  Sea adventure and sell it. Seventh Sea is a game created and owned by 
  someone else and unless you’re working with them, you don’t have the 
  rights to publish work that infringes on their intellectual property.
  One of the other advantages of self-publishing is that you can put 
  together a quality piece of work, and even if it doesn’t sell a lot of copies, 
  you still have something substantial to show to a publisher. (And on the 
  flip side, if you’ve been published by an existing company and made a 
  bit of a name for yourself, you’re likely to have more success as a self 
  publisher. So it works both ways.)
  I’m going to point you in the direction of two great self-publishing 
  opportunities. They’re great because they do allow you to use existing 
  rulesets and sell your product in a marketplace where potential fans will 
  already be looking for it.
  Find a way to stand out from the crowd in a creative, but 
  positive, way. When I submitted my resume to Monte 
  Cook Games, I produced a multi-page book, printed and 
  hand-bound, as if it were a hardcover RPG supplement.
  —Bear Weiter
  
  Want to get even more from your roleplaying games?
  The Player Notebook gives you room to keep track of your 
  character’s background information along with notes 
  about NPCs, important places, and other campaign info. 
  It’s 100 pages long and completely system-agnostic, so 
  you can use it for any game—or even multiple characters 
  in multiple campaigns.
  The GM Notebook provides space to record all the 
  pertinent details about your setting, along with notes on 
  your PCs, NPCs, creatures, adventures, maps, and so 
  on. Both new GMs and old hands will appreciate how 
  the notebook guides you through the worldbuilding and 
  adventure-building process. Like the Player Notebook, it 
  gives you 100 pages of space, and is system-agnostic.
  Both notebooks are spiral bound, beautiful, and 
  amazingly useful at the game table and between sessions.
  fb.com/MonteCookGames
  @MonteCookGames
  Available now from the MCG web store:
  www.montecookgames.com
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/System neutral/System Neutral Adventure Design, Dungeoncraft/GM Advice & Writing/Your Best Game Ever; Monte Cook/Your Best Game Ever Writing Games For Publication.pdf