A New Beginning in RPG Adventure Publishing

Prologue

It has been five long years since I've dedicated myself to creating adventure content. I thought it might prove helpful to blog about what it is like to form or in my case, re-form, a small rpg publishing company. I hope to attract others who have done this in the past, to share their own experiences, along side my own. I also hope that start-up rpg companies that come later may find this site useful for their own adventures.

Five years ago White Haired Man took a hiatus from publishing adventures. After six years we had created a myriad of products all focused around one setting for our adventures: Kith'takharos. A remote swamp village where adventurers found action serving the various factions located there. Along the way we published a version for OGL (open game license from Wizards of the Coast for their 3.5 D&D line). We concurrently published our five adventures and setting over to Savage Worlds, for another six products that served a different set of game rules. But wait, there's more! We then took those 12 products and created them for use in Fantasy Grounds II, an online roleplaying service.

We also created a blog which likely lacked the razor focus such a tool should exist for. It is long ago discarded.

A website with all of our content reproduced yet again into a neutral rules repository. The site is long gone.

A forum, which died after a very brief existence. After all, why would a small start up need yet another way to interact with itself.

A formal business registered in the state of Florida.

Essentially, we got mired down in all the different versions of the same original creative endeavor. The business facets became a burden, which also took away from new creative efforts. After six years of this, we literally just burned out.

During the interim years we discussed new projects and starting up again. But, we would soon lose interest because we could not really find a way forward that would avoid many of the pitfalls discussed above. Time passed...

A New Beginning

The end of 2019 is near and I've just spent two weeks vacationing with my formal partner at White Haired Man, the business that foundered in 2014. After much thought over the years and focused discussions during my stay, we have decided to try publishing adventures again under the White Haired Man banner!

Several thoughts helped us towards this end. We felt compelled to share a new adventure, set in a different locale. We have decided to be very careful of what we commit to. We will focus on writing and designing a great adventure with professional trade dress targeted towards the fantasy genre market. Additionally, we will publish our works using the Savage Worlds rules. This will cut many additional non-creative hours out.

At first there will also be no website. We will instead rely on publishing via PDF format only through DriveThruRPG.com, and PEG's access to Studio2 online sales to start. There will be no forum. We will welcome discussions regarding us and the process of running a small rpg publishing firm through this blog. Which I might also get out there right away, will not have any regular publishing dates. When I feel or sense something is important to post upon as it relates to a start up rpg publisher and White Haired Man, I will post. In turn, I invite readers to post their comments about the topics at hand, or suggest topics privately to me here.

We have started out with plans for laying down the foundations of our new adventure. A map of the area and writing is currently underway in house. I have begun reaching out to other artists to gauge their interest in once again working with us. We will likely show some of our work in order to gain some perspective from you, our valued readers.

I plan on digging into creating more textures for use in my upcoming map work. I emphatically invite those of you who have been along this road of self-publishing to speak out on your experiences. Let's see if we can do this better this time around!