Publishing Advice - Ye Book of HeroQuest Fantasy.

Posted by: Newt Newport On: Aug 24th 2010 edited

I've followed with great interest the discussion about Monthly Micro publishing, since I've got some plans of my own.
It started with the idea of building up a full supplement by releasing the individual chapters as modular self contained Episodes pdf releases. Originally I had this planned for an OpenQuest setting, where each Episode would be a region of the setting.
I'm currently gearing up to release Ye Book of HeroQuest Fantasy, under the HeroQuest OpenGaming License (which basically allows you release supplements for the game with page references to the core rules). Long story short of this one is that once upon a time I set out to write not one but two HeroQuest Fantasy supplements, failed to meet my own expectations on both fronts ended up with a lot of material - which when packaged into nice little chunks actually works :)
So the plan is to release five pdfs entitled “Ye Little Book of HeroQuest ..”.
1. …Monsters – 40 or so classic monsters
2. ….Heroes– Professions and perhaps premade characters.
3. …Magic - a grab bag of Religions, Wizards etc
4. ….Fantastic Locations – sample fantasy locations, with HQ abilities/opportunities to play, some notes about world building. A sample world (which ties up 1,2,3 & 4)
5……Adventures – adventure seeds/situations.
Each is about 20-30 pages long, in 6"x9" page size since the idea is to build it up into the final printed book "Ye Little Book of HeroQuest Fantasy".
The advantage of this approach is

I get to see how popular HeroQuest sales wise. From the straw poll of immediate friends I get a lukewarm to downright hostile response, yet in the wider world of the world wide web there may be a viable market.

I get something out on DrivethruRpg.com once a month which stimulates interest in D101.

Each release builds my excitement to see the whole project done and gets immediate feedback from folk eager to see more.

I put my flag in the ground and declare “I AM A HEROQUEST PUBLISHER” to the HQ community, which will be useful if I ever want to do a full traditional straight to print HeroQuest supplement.

When I get to the end of the release schedule, I can bundle the pdfs into a printed compilation which I can sell at conventions and through shops. This can include improvements and errata suggested by the people who have bought the pdf versions.