To be or to LLC?

When does a business cross the line from being a hobby into a business? This question led me to do much soul searching on behalf of White Haired Man. The IRS has some guidelines about when a hobby may cross over into a business:

• Do you keep records of sales, purchases, inventory, etc? 
• Are you attempting to make a profit, as opposed to just being an hobbyist? 
• Do you depend on the income from said "hobby?"
• Do you do things differently to make more profit from your efforts? Etc.

I found that White Haired Man really borders more on being a hobby as opposed to a business proper. However, I do keep records of transactions and I hope that someday we will be wildly popular and successful.

This leads to choosing how to structure White Haired Man. The IRS lays out all the options here:

• Sole Proprietorships
• Partnerships
• Corporations
• S Corporations
• Limited Liability Company (LLC)

According to the IRS an LLC is described as follows:

"A Limited Liability Company (LLC) is a business structure allowed by state statute. Each state may use different regulations, you should check with your state if you are interested in starting a Limited Liability Company.

Owners of an LLC are called members. Most states do not restrict ownership, so members may include individuals, corporations, other LLCs and foreign entities. There is no maximum number of members. Most states also permit “single-member” LLCs, those having only one owner.

A few types of businesses generally cannot be LLCs, such as banks and insurance companies. Check your state’s requirements and the federal tax regulations for further information. There are special rules for foreign LLCs."

After careful consideration I find that the LLC is the best choice for structuring our small RPG publishing company. It makes the most sense as we are not expecting any other members to join the organization in the short term, and any losses or income will be divided among the current members at tax time. We are also not a bank or insurance company, which would bar us from this choice. Being an LLC also conveys protection for the members of White Haired Man in the event of a lawsuit. Others would be able to sue the company but not the individuals who own it in most cases.

Does Your Company Require an EIN?

This article may seem a little dry, but if you are going to run a company you might benefit from answering this basic question: does your company need an EIN?

An EIN is defined by the IRS (Internal Revenue Service - USA government tax agency) as a unique Employer Identification Number. Here is the web page the IRS maintains regarding its requirements for an EIN. In short if you have employees, or operate a business or corporation, your company will need an EIN.

The IRS requires that the owner or an officer of the company register for the EIN. This person is considered the responsible party. The responsible party will file for the EIN, supplying their personal information, including their Social Security Number. Applying with the IRS takes a few mins and may be performed online, fax, or by mail. The IRS says this takes approximately two weeks once they have your information on hand.

Benefits of having an EIN are strong. With your EIN in hand you may incorporate, create an LLC or partnership, file company taxes, submit year end required reports to the state, create bank accounts, possibly purchase goods without paying sales taxes. I am sure there are many other reasons that I have not mentioned.

Next up on my list of to do's is to decide what form of company to create and which state to file with. Last time we chose to create an LLC, and did so with the state of Florida. I intend to compare both Florida and Michigan carefully before deciding.

Map Elements Design

Aside from coming up with the locale for starting a new adventure, I find myself in need of developing features that will be utilized on future maps. Features such as a scale bar, compass rose, title and legend typeface choices. Over the past week I developed all of these things.

Here is my initial compass rose sketch:

While interesting I did not find it compelling and of course I still needed to address how to incorporate the typeface. This next compass rose is where I am at now. I chose an Adobe Typeface available through Adobe Font, titled Acme Gothic, Black. The final choice was to give the lettering a slight rotation, suggesting action and riffing back upon the earliest days of Savage Worlds design choices:

The scale bar seemed to just follow here:

My next goal is to create and collect an assortment of textures that I might use for brushes and map backgrounds, so that I might bring not only Warten to life, but all future White Haired Man maps. I want my work to appear as if created in a standardized way, a choice I did not make during our last run. My expectations are the more planning I put into map design elements now, the easier it will be to understand what I am trying to convey at a glance.

I look forward to hearing from others regarding my design decisions thus far.

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!