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When I first started seriously thinking about game publishing as a possible income stream and career, I did what I naturally do when faced with a big, uncertain project: I made a ten-year plan.
I wanted to have some idea of where I was going, even though I knew the plan would probably change along the way.
The first year was particularly ambitious. My original plan was to publish 13 products. Eventually, I revised that to 18 products, including two bundles.
At the time, that seemed like a reasonable way to establish Folding Screen Publishing. Looking back now, with the benefit of actually having started the process, I can see that there was quite a lot packed into that plan.
An Ambitious First Year
The idea behind the first year wasn’t simply to produce as many products as possible.
I wanted to establish a catalogue.
That meant having an initial product line that could grow over time, rather than releasing one standalone game and then figuring out what to do next. The plan was roughly structured around building a foundation first, then expanding from it with additional products and variations.
A.R.C.H. was particularly suited to this approach. Once the core framework and production process were established, I could build additional mission packs around the same basic structure.
That made the product line relatively modular. I didn’t need to reinvent the game every time I wanted to publish something new.
But there was another reason I made the first-year publication plan so ambitious.
More Than One Product Line
I didn’t want Folding Screen Publishing to depend on a single product line.
From the beginning, I wanted to start building two different product lines and settings during the first year. They serve different purposes and they’re also quite different in how much room they have for expansion.
A.R.C.H. is designed around modular expansion. Once the framework and production process are established, I can continue adding mission packs and other variations without having to reinvent the structure each time.
The second line is different. It’s based on a setting I’m already using for my current campaign and I’m also working on a novelisation of it. That gives me plenty of material, but it doesn’t necessarily mean I want to turn all of that material into more game products.
I don’t want to keep expanding a product line simply because I happen to have more material available.
So the two lines aren’t intended to grow in exactly the same way. One is naturally suited to ongoing modular expansion while the other is more limited by what I actually want to do with the setting.
That was part of the reason for making the first-year plan ambitious in the first place.
I wasn’t just trying to produce as many PDFs as possible. I was trying to find out what kind of catalogue Folding Screen Publishing should have.
Three Products In
At the time of writing this, I’ve released two of the 18 products in that original first-year plan.
The third product, the GM Training Kit, is currently in development and is planned to be the next release.
So far, the overall plan hasn’t changed very much.
The two products are all part of the early A.R.C.H. line. Core Operations established the basic game. Starter Operations expanded it with more missions.
The GM Training Kit builds on those missions with additional support for GMs.
The main change to the production schedule has been the timing of this third product.
A Small Adjustment to the Schedule
Originally, I planned to release the GM Training Kit very close to Starter Operations because the two products were designed to work together.
As I got closer to the release, I realised I was rushing it. I initially moved the release back by two weeks. Since then, incoming reader feedback has identified further things worth revisiting, so the release has been pushed back again.
This is probably a better illustration of how I actually intend to use the publication plan. The dates give me something to work towards, but they’re not more important than making the product properly.
That said, I still count these as changes to the plan. The fact that they’re small doesn’t mean they aren’t changes. I want to keep track of where the original plan and the actual publishing process diverge because that’s part of what I’m learning from doing this.
The bigger changes have actually been around distribution.
When the Plan Met Reality
When I first made the plan, I expected to rely more heavily on established marketplaces for tabletop RPGs.
As I’ve started publishing, I’ve changed that approach. I’m now putting more emphasis on being able to operate independently, with direct sales through my own site and itch.io as the main outlets.
That’s not something I could have worked out in advance. I had to actually start publishing to see what kind of distribution model made sense for the way I wanted to run Folding Screen Publishing.
So the plan has changed but not necessarily in the way I expected. The production schedule is still broadly intact. It’s some of the assumptions around how the products will reach readers that have changed more significantly.
The Plan Is a Starting Point
I still think making the plan was worthwhile.
In fact, having such a detailed first-year plan gives me something very useful: a baseline.
Now that I’ve actually started publishing, I can compare what I expected with what is happening in practice.
What I’ve learned so far isn’t that the original plan was fundamentally wrong. It’s that some parts of the plan were easier to estimate than others.
The production schedule has been fairly close to what I expected. The less predictable parts have been everything around it: multilingual publishing, distribution, discovery and figuring out how I actually want Folding Screen Publishing to operate.
I’ve also learned that finishing a product and getting people to discover it are two different problems.
Those are things that are difficult to fully understand before you start doing them.
So when the plan changes, I don’t necessarily see that as the plan failing.
Sometimes it just means I’ve learned something that wasn’t available when I made the plan.
So What’s the Point of an Ambitious First Year?
The main goal of the first year is actually quite simple: I want to build volume in my catalogue.
That might sound like I’m chasing a high product count for its own sake, but that’s not how I approached the original plan. I deliberately chose small, modular products because I wanted to find a level of production where I could build a substantial catalogue while still making products I was happy with.
When I first developed the ten-year publication plan, which I was calling my product pipeline at the time, I spent almost a month working on it every day. I wasn’t just filling in a calendar with product names. I kept probing individual products and asking myself why someone would actually buy them.
That process was important to me because I need to have internal clarity about what I’m doing. Before I spend the time making a product, I want to know what purpose it serves in the catalogue and why I think someone would want it.
Otherwise, I don’t really see the point of making it and putting it on the market. If I can’t explain why a product should exist, then I’m potentially spending my time and effort creating something that nobody wants.
The ambitious part of the first-year plan was therefore not simply the number of products. It was the assumption that small, modular products would let me build that volume without having to lower the quality of what I produce.
That’s still the idea I’m testing now.
The catalogue will take time to build, but I would rather build it deliberately than publish products just to increase the number on the storefront.
Looking Ahead
The ten-year plan is still useful.
I just don’t expect to follow it blindly.
The schedule gives me a direction and a framework for deciding what to work on next. If something needs some extra time, I can move it. If something turns out not to make sense anymore, I can reconsider it.
That doesn’t make the plan pointless.
If anything, having a plan makes those adjustments easier because I know what I’m adjusting from.
Eighteen products was the plan for the first year.
So far, I’m still broadly on that path.
We’ll see what the rest of the year does to it.
P.S. If you’re interested in following whether Folding Screen Publishing manages to pursue this ambitious publication plan, you can subscribe to its newsletter to find out which products are scheduled for release in the upcoming quarter.
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