Which has a greater risk and greater reward: Choosing to work for Paizo OR starting your own Pathfinder supporting RPG company?

This is a simple choice. Which one do you want to take a chance with: Paizo or yourself? Working for Paizo is the pinnacle of many people interested in getting into the industry. Those who love the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game dream about getting to work at Paizo and be become part of the industry. Paizo has the great names, the reputation and the money to do great looking projects, with the biggest names in the industry. Paizo is the elite of the elite. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Or you could do your own thing and start your own Pathfinder supporting RPG company.

It is more than just risky, it is mentally, physically, finically and spiritually expensive opportunity. People will tell you what you do is not professional. People say your quality sucks. People tell you that you should quit and do something else you might be good at. Worst of all you could fail and everyone who knows you attempted this KNOWS you failed. Can your ego handle that? That is a whole lot of risk for what seems as a very little reward.

Why would someone want to take that chance that over the safety of working at Paizo?

Most will not. Most don’t like all the hard work it will take to get a Pathfinder supporting RPG company off the ground. It is all work and NO GLAMOUR to it. Writing. Editing. Rewriting. Editing. Re-rewriting. Editing. Layout. Editing. Printer proofs. Editing. And let’s not even talk about the getting the product into stores and collecting money. The rate of failure is well over 90%. Most will avoid this and take the easy way. But what are the odds of you really getting hired by Paizo? One in a Thousand? One in Ten Thousand? Hell One in a Hundred Thousand maybe? People line up at Paizo even with these odds. Plus to be considered, you have to find somewhere and somehow for your work to be seen, so that means you have to break in via another third party publisher who supports Pathfinder normally. So there is risk all around. You need to make a choice about how you want to get into this industry.

The choice I made was to depend on my own skills and just general “hustling abilities” to become a RPG publisher. While I have not become rich off of this, I do know if anything happened where I lost my job today I have the skills to be successful because I did take a chance by building my own company. For a guy who sells PDF of games to people, I have done OK personally and the business is stronger than ever. If Paizo came and asked me to work at Paizo would I go? Maybe. Would I quit my business just so I could work there, I don’t know most likely not. I like being the boss of LPJ Design and know what I do directly effects how successful it and in turn my life will be. Which has a greater risk and greater reward? Fortune favors the bold so go out and be bold. Talk to you later…