If you want to make a game module, or any kind of indie game content, there’s one all-important question you’ve got to answer:
Are you going to be a creator?
Creating gaming modules, campaign settings, even board games, isn’t so much a matter of talent. And it’s definitely not a matter of skill. Both of those things, like experience points and boosts to a character’s abilities, come in time. But belief, you need at every step of your adventure.
More to the point, your skills and abilities will come through overcoming challenges, setbacks and encounters with strange events. Like any valiant dungeoncrawler, for an indie game designer to overcome those things requires dedication. Failure isn’t your greatest adversary. Giving up is.
So how much do you want it? In my case, I wanted it a great deal. I’d worked for eighteen years on novel manuscripts and short stories, and managed to get dozens of those little stories published. I’d never had a breakout success at selling the epic tales I’d written as novels, despite having two of them bought by publishers.
Yet for much of that time, I was writing tens of thousands of words each month for the roleplaying campaigns I was running. In 2023, a D&D campaign I was running fell through, and I was left with the prospect of packing up my glossy hardbacks, fistfuls of minis, and having them gather an indefinite hoard of dust once again. But it was the copious campaign notes, and the stories of the NPCs I’d intended to weave, that I didn’t want to consign to the cobwebs.
I figured there was a chance to keep them alive, to have them flourish like they otherwise never would have, if I crafted a series of game modules around these stories and characters. Moreover, I’d have a chance to participate in and contribute to a community I’d always loved as a consumer, not as a fellow creator, the game design community. Having experience writing to a format, I figured that with good models to follow and a bit of research, going from amateur gamemaster to professional game creator would be simple but not easy.
I was right about that. It was simple but not easy. Most of all, because I was wrong about over a dozen other things.
The thing is, I knew I would be. I’ve spent nearly two decades in the corporate world, which is rife with what I call Crackerjack Philosophy; philosophy that’s sweet, easy to consume, and that comes with a cheap prize inside. One of the maxims of any successful business that’s looking to grow is that you have to “fail forward.”
Failing forward means accepting that you’ll make mistakes and that you should learn from them and be encouraged by your learning. A variant of that saying is “fail fast,” which means pretty much the same thing, but with a sense of urgency, a reminder that you should get over your failures as soon as you can.
Both of these philosophies are core to the concept of Agility in business, or Agile Management, a practice that businesses of all kinds use to hack their way to maxing their stats. I’ll touch on it throughout this guide because it’s super helpful to those of you who don’t want to stop at just one module, but for it to be the first step in your journey as a creator.
But for now, we come back to that all-important question. How much do you want to make a module? It’s the same question that confronts any starting adventurer who’s yet to make their first skill check, the very same existential question posed to Achilles, Bilbo and Kvothe.
Are you going to be a creator?
Whatever the answer is, you’re right. It’s that simple. But now will come the hard part. Hopefully, with me as your guide, leading you along the grid map of my mistakes, the journey will be a bit easier.
As you’ll see, I plunged into every pitfall, triggered every trap, and even hit some hostile forces along the way. They became my greatest allies. That story and more are below, along with advice on the technical, financial and creative lessons that I learned the hard way.
For me, it’s a proud way to learn. I tend to play Fighters. I don’t mind scrapes so long as I have a good party to heal me. And you’ll find your party too, which is one of the essential steps below.
I live by one of the principles I acquired from a ValueTales book that I pored over while sitting on the redolent carpet of my grade school library, The Value of Creativity, about Thomas Edison. Think what you will about Edison’s ethics, his mindset was dead-on when he said, "I have not failed 1,000 times. I've just found 1,000 ways not to make a light bulb."
I’ve found about two dozen ways not to make a module. They’re outlined for you below, then elaborated in all the messy details, and include:
- Finding Your Template (Mimic, Model, Master)
- Research in the YouTube University Age
- The Fun Stuff: Legal
- How Not to Suck (aka, Professional Standards)
- Selecting A System
- Finding Your Tribe
- Coloring Between the Lines
- Start Small, Fail Small
- Pack A Lunch (Financial Planning)
- Give Of Yourself (Community Involvement)
- Give A Damn (Community Issues)
- Art in the AI Age
- Playtesting
- Promotion Planning
- Publishing vs. Crowdfunding
- Stretch Goals
- Layout Comes Last
- Fulfillment
- The Next Round
- Leveling Up
There’s your map. Now it’s time to just take it room by room, square by square, until it’s all done. It’s going to take weeks and it’s going to take grief. And so before you answer that all-important, all-powerful question, I’ll give you two magic tricks that’ll help your success.
One, is the ability to control your time. It comes from operating by the belief that you don’t find time, you make time. You absolutely must make the time to go through the steps of being a creator, because whatever time you expect to “find” will be filled up by your current routine.
It was simple for me to go from hours of feverish typing about campaign materials only my gaming group would see, to hours of feverish typing about campaign materials the public would see. That may not be the case for many of you. Regardless, I too had to take a hammer to some of the ways I was living my life, sacrificing them for the purpose of being a creator.
So remember that you must make the time, for you won’t find time and time won’t find you. You’re the creator. Make the time.
The second part is, check your vanity at the door. Expect to fall in the mud publicly, to receive some scolding, and even to make some errors you’ll wish you could take back. Don’t think you won’t scrape your ego’s knees or even suffer some hurt feelings.
This doesn’t mean to check your pride at the door. In fact, you can be proud of yourself every day. You’re doing it. You’re doing what you’ve wanted to do; what tens of thousands have wanted to do but couldn’t find the courage to. So be proud. But also, be humble.
You are human, flawed and fragile. Every hero ever was. You’re among their ranks now because of your courage and determination, because you’re now faced with that all-powerful question and you’re going to answer it, “yes.”
Are you going to be a creator?
Awesome. I believe in you. Now let’s go make some mistakes.