Developer Diaries 00: The Learning Curve for Publishing
The story of Oh Knight Divine
Today’s article is going to be a little different from my usual article. Instead of talking about an idea or concept within roleplaying, I’ll be talking about my first experience writing and producing an RPG product. It’s one part celebration of the release of Oh Knight Divine and one part cautionary tale for those of you who have not yet published your first work. This is also a preview of the premium content that will be published here as I chronicle the process of designing Nighthaven. This is a story that I hope will give aspiring publishers insight into the process of creating an adventure and the hoops that you will be required to jump through to give people a product you can be proud of. Before launching into this story though, I should of course mention that you can get Oh Knight Divine on Drive-Thru RPG. It is pay-what-you-want with all proceeds going to the fund for Ben Shields’ Memorial Service.
As the name and content of the adventure suggests, the original intention for Oh Knight Divine was to release it on Christmas Day bundled with an adventure called His Heinous Harvest written and illustrated by my friend, brother and creative partner Keelan Halvorsen (AKA Wonkee). This was planned to be our Christmas gift to the old-school RPG community who had encouraged us to team up and fulfill our dreams of making RPGs. While Wonkee opted to launch straight into his vision for his setting of Bellifallow, I decided to explore Nighthaven through a seasonal lens. There was one major roadblock to our plan though. We decided to begin this project slated for release on December 25th…in October. The first piece of advice that I would offer aspiring publishers is that October is too late to start any Christmas-themed projects. Regardless, Wonkee and I drove ahead determined that we would finally release our first products.
Around Thanksgiving it became clear that there was a little more work on Wonkee’s plate than either of us originally thought there would be. Oh Knight Divine was written and had been playtested once. His Heinous Harvest had been written and playtested, but it looked as though Wonkee would need to make some serious cuts to fit the format we had selected. His adventure was a disturbing journey through a world that was fueled by nightmare logic. Wonkee’s approach to design calls upon deeply personal experiences, nightmares and hallucinations whereas my ideas come more from fictional works that inspire me. The necessity of drastic cuts combined with the approaching deadline and the desire to keep his vision intact led Wonkee to push the release of His Heinous Harvest into 2024. This left him with only the art for Oh Knight Divine to do but, by the time decisions were made, we were mere weeks from our release day.
Meanwhile, I grappled with putting everything together. Our original plan was to take up our friend Rocky Gardner on his generous offer to do our layout. Rocky, however, was dealing with his own technical issues and was not able to do the work for us. We were days away from release and so, while I awaited the arrival of the art from Wonkee, I set about laying out our book…in Canva. Far from an ideal tool, I know, but with three days until Christmas it was what I was familiar with and what I had to work with. The work wasn’t as difficult as I originally thought it would be and I even found that it was…well, fun to do. It allowed me to get involved in the visual side of the book, not just the words. Speaking of the visuals, Wonkee was finding that work was progressing slower than he originally though. With three days to Christmas, both of our holiday celebrations were in full swing which meant less time to work on Oh Knight Divine. I can’t speak for Wonkee, but I know that my state of mind was definitely affected by the delays. Both of us put in late hours finishing our work and we were finally able to finish it up at the beginning of this week.
That brings us up to the present. Wonkee and I are basking in the glory of releasing a finished product and we’re starting to get feedback from our friends. While nothing went according to plan in this first venture, the experience was extremely valuable. I learned a lot about keeping things on-schedule and being realistic with estimates of time. I also learned about the value of evenly distributing responsibilities. There was a lot on Wonkee’s plate which was unfair of me. It’s been a key theme of our conversations about the direction of our publishing venture, Guts N’ Glory Games. Wonkee and I are aware of the hard lessons learned from this experience and have a good idea of what we’re gonna do moving forward. I couldn’t ask for a better creative partner and I’m looking forward to serving up what we’ve got cooking for 2024.
Thus concludes the story of Oh Knight Divine. If you enjoy hearing about the creative process, I urge you to sign up for a premium subscription to my Substack. In the interest of keeping a lid on my closest Nighthaven secrets until release, all future Developer Diaries will be premium only. I hope you will all give me your feedback on Oh Knight Divine and consider donating to the memorial fund for Ben Shields. 2024 will be an exciting year for both me and Wonkee and I can’t wait until you all can see the results.