The Test I Could Not Pass Alone
The Hexcrawl guidebooks has three books and three medals. It also has four names behind it, and only one of them is on the cover. Matthijs Holter wrote them, I edited. Michael Sollien did the layout and Nicolai Strøm drew the covers. I did not truly understand until this series how much creators multiply each other.
What each of us actually did
Matthijs has been designing games longer than I have been publishing them. The thinking in these books is his, and it is the kind of thinking that comes from decades at real tables rather than from a theory about tables.
My job was the part that starts when the writing stops. Editing for the reader who is running a game on a Tuesday evening, not for the reader who is admiring the prose. Then the size of the book, the price, the product page, the launch and the way each book points at the next one.
Michael made the pages work. Layout in a game book is not decoration. It is the difference between a rule you can find mid session and a rule you give up on. He is the reason these books hold up on a crowded table.
Nicolai gave the series a face. A cover has about one second to say what a book is, and three covers in a row have to say it in the same voice while still being three different books. That is much harder than it looks.
Why it multiplied
Any one of us could probably have made a version of these books alone. All four versions would have been worse.
The books ended up better than the sum of the four of us, and the numbers followed. Hexcrawl Campaign Style Guidebook is Platinum, past 1,000 copies. Hexcrawl Encounter Design Guidebook reached Platinum as well. Hexcrawl Worldbuilding Design Guidebook passed Gold (500) shortly after launch and spent time at number one on DriveThruRPG's Most Popular under $5 list. The series averages 4.90 in reviews, which is higher than anything else I publish. All three are in the Hexcrawl Complete Playkit.
In July, four of the five best selling titles under five dollars on DriveThruRPG were KR1 books. I wrote none of them.
The same thing happened again with the Sandbox Playstyle Toolkit: The City from Seidmann Games, where Michael wrote the thing in addition to layout, Nicolai illustrated and Simen Strandberg Andresen proofread. It reached Silver within weeks of launch. Once you have a group that knows how to hand work between them, the second project is faster than the first, and the fourth is faster than the second.
The part I keep having to relearn
The instinct in this hobby is to do everything yourself. I understand it. Doing it all yourself is cheaper, faster to start, and nobody can slow you down or say no.
It is also the reason so many good games never leave the folder. You end up spending your best hours on the parts you are worst at, and the parts you are actually good at get whatever is left.
Find the three people who are better than you at their piece, and be honest about which piece is yours. Hexcrawl 4 arrives in September, and books five and six launch together in November. Same four people.
If the part you are stuck on is everything that happens after the last page, I put the checklist I use for every release on one page and made it free, along with a handful of other tools. No course, no upsell, just the paper I work from.
Best,
Karl
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