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If you or someone else publishes it and makes it available for sale you can make money. Homebrews aren't great or terrible; each one is unique. There are a lot of really bad ones that are poorly designed, unbalanced, boring, etc. and there are a lot that are brilliant, mechanically sound, and tell great stories.
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Realistically, the majority of D&D was just Arneson, Gygax, and company putting their homebrew up for sale.
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Realistically, the majority of D&D was just Arneson, Gygax, and company putting their homebrew up for sale.
Back in the days of no competitors, no editors, and nothing flooding the market. Much props for the concept, but trying to read anything those guys wrote today? Ouch, man. Ouch.
Back to the OP's point...
There are a tiny fraction of people playing baseball who are good enough for someone else to pay them to play. Then there is the vast majority who will forever say, "Oh, yeah, I played some ball in high school..." before getting back to work.
That's the situation for homebrews.
First, homebrews are very much subject to Sturgeon's Law. Everyone believes they are a great designer and writer, but relatively few people are that good. Fewer still are going to be better than the people who've already bypassed the gate-keepers of editors and publishers. And of the people who make it through that screen, fewer still have the copy editing, technical writing, dedication, and time it takes to bring something up to professional quality. Beyond that, then you have to ask yourself, what else could they be doing for work?
My homebrew stuff, even if I ever brought it up to publication quality, would detract from the career where I already make an excellent wage. I have zero incentive to pursue the world of publication.
Ok, so suppose you really are the one-in-a-million who has the drive, talent, game design knowledge, technical writing, determination, and luck it takes to make something that can be published. And you have enough playtesting, review, and control to make sure your idea isn't absurd. Now you need the luck and determination to market yourself everywhere and get picked up, or to self-publish via vanity press or similar.
The market is *flooded* with RPGs. Quality ones. And crappy ones.
I know of a few people who as a side-gig or as a hobby stream their games, pay-to-play games in Roll20 or similar, or even have a minor book or two that they've done as a vanity project, but that's about it. Major settings and systems are never the work of one writer now, and usually done by teams who have it as their primary employment working for a major company. They may have gotten noticed doing small stuff, but that's it.
Still, consider doing some little indie thing on the side. Some fun little whatever that you print off on the super-cheap and release. Only treat it as a labor of love, because if you think you're gonna make money off it, you're probably in for a rough disappointment.
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The practical answer would be this:
If you put it up in one of the "Homebrew" forums at this site, the expectation is that you are giving it away for free to anyone browsing that forum.
If you are selling it, it is a "3rd party product" and should be mentioned and discussed in a forum with that name.
If you are selling it through Paizo, it will eventually get its own thread (associated with its product page) in the "Products" forum.
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Generally, people write homebrew material for the reason of that they have an idea of something they'd like to see in the game. It's not "a waste of time" because they get what they want from it - for that material to exist in their games.
Yes, you can publish it as 3rd party material. Or only GM paid games. Both of which involve skills besides just designing homebrew, and neither of which will be all that lucrative, generally. But you can. It's just not generally the motive behind it.
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Expect homebrew to be a labor of love. Be pleasantly surprised if you pick up a couple of bucks selling PDFs online, but if you expect the players at your table to pay for it, you're going to end up with a lot fewer players.
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Realistically, the majority of D&D was just Arneson, Gygax, and company putting their homebrew up for sale.Back in the days of no competitors, no editors, and nothing flooding the market. Much props for the concept, but trying to read anything those guys wrote today? Ouch, man. Ouch.
Indeed, though I do miss Abi Dalzim, Mordenkainen, et. al., (their original PCs) on my spell names.
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I love world building, adventure design, encounter design, rule design, and GMing. I do those things for fun. I do not expect to make money off my players for any of it, because to me the whole thing is my idea of relaxation.
Now, if I get something published, that’s a different matter: that would be work for a publisher for which I would expect monetary recompense (I do know of one person who wrote a book that got published and he and the publisher had never discussed pay and he was surprised when the first amount arrived).
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i wonder if you finished your homebrew, will PC pays you money, or you let them play for free ?
as far as i know, homebrew are hard to made and waste a lot of time.
Economically speaking, the time investment is not actually buying an adventure path. Homebrews are passion creations made from those who think they have a good story or those who want to gm for a group of friends with only a set of dice and one phb. In their point of view the time is not wasted. Is anyone's hobby a waste of time?
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I attempted to do a small "Bring a dollar (or two dollars)" a couple times approach, mostly because I'm buying a good amount of materials as a GM for the entertainment of others; but it was unreliable and I don't feel right doing it. But it'd be the same for paid material. The real expense is the models and stuff to me, not writing material I want to have people play.
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I don't think I would ever let people pay me to GM. I would be OK with 'everybody but the GM chips in for snacks and pizza' or something like that. I also wouldn't be offended by an occasional gift certificate as a thank you, but more than that just wouldn't feel right to me.
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I got paid $50/week one summer to run a 2 hour weekly session for some high school kids at a program called Upward Bound. It was a 6 week long session at the local college for kids who needed to catch up on classes they didn't do well in during the regular school year or came from low income backgrounds. I'd have done it for free, but the woman in charge of the program was an Upward Bounder at the same time I was and she asked if I'd do it, so I was considered paid staff for it. Upward Bound for me as a student was 35 years ago and at the time (15 years ago) it felt good to be a part of something that means a lot to me to this day.
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That's awesome, Cal!!! Wow!!
Casual change of topic, speaking of Upward Bound, everyone should go onto YouTube to watch Isaac Arthur's Upward Bound series!
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I meant to say it had been 25 years, not 15 since I ran those games for the Upward Bound kids.
I wish I hadn't redone the math. Now I feel old... lol
When I first began to DM 1e around late 1985 or early 1986 my best friend insisted I run games at other peoples' homes and charge for it because he thought I was good at it. I refused, because I was in it for the fun of it, but he was obsessed with making money at that time. But when I turned it around on him and told him if I charged for one group I'd charge for our group he finally stopped harassing me about it.
So cool!!
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I wouldn't charge my players to play in my homebrew game. My current group is mostly very old friends, so I do occasionally get game books or gift certificates for birthdays or Christmas, because they know me well. But that's the closest they come to paying me to run for them.
On the other hand, I have given some thought to someday developing products for sale using my homebrew material, and that sometimes influences my design choices in the world. For example, my current campaign is a Pathfinder game, but it uses no Golarion-specific IP or lore; that distance helps establish it as its own thing, and saves me the effort of excising any such references if I do try to sell something using it.
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One of my friends runs a game at the local middle school as part of an after school program too. They pay to play in it, so I'm assuming he's getting paid for it.
So, based on this and Cal's story, it seems that if you want to get paid to run your games do it as part of an after school program! :D
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i wonder if you finished your homebrew, will PC pays you money, or you let them play for free ?
as far as i know, homebrew are hard to made and waste a lot of time.
If I tried to charge my friends for playing a game, not only would I not have players, I probably wouldn't have friends.
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If been paid to be a GM, though not often.
I post homebrew material on my blog, and have a Patreon that supports that. It's far from the only thing on my blog, but at least some of the money I make there is due to the homebrew material.
And, of course, I sometimes turn homebrew ideas into products for various game companies, which is another way to monetize it.
Even so, I consider the main purpose of making homebrew material to be the enjoyment I get from doing so.
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As soon as you put a price tag on it, expectations increase significantly. Currently my players enjoy my campaign, but if they had to pay some euros, they would always be tempted to reconsider whether it's worth the money, in comparison to alternatives. Meaning I am under (some) pressure to always deliver something good - and, worse, to become better and better over time. This is my free time, and preparing the next session as well as paying attention the whole session induce enough pressure already.
There is also a political facet: Money is considered too important by many people, in my opinion. If I offer something for free, I fight that, at least a bit.
As soon as you put a price tag on it, expectations increase significantly. ...
someone should explain that idea to Judges Guild...
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As soon as you put a price tag on it, expectations increase significantly. ...of course. so you need to stay focused to create quality homebrew, that put module to shame.
Of course, if you* can put out modules that are better than those from professional publishers, why are you* not doing so, and making money off it already?
*General “you”
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One of my PCs would be willing to chip in a few thousand gold pieces.
As soon as you put a price tag on it, expectations increase significantly. ...someone should explain that idea to Judges Guild...
Judges Guild is still in business?