091: Launching a TTRPG magazine with Hannah Rose & Clara Daly of Wildmage Press

[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to Roll Play Grow, the podcast for tabletop entrepreneurs, creators, and fans. In this show, we dig into processes, challenges, tips, and really look at how to grow a business in the tabletop role play gaming space. Sit back and join in as we learn from the creators behind your favorite brands, about who they are, and how they are turning their passion for gaming into a career.

Courtney: Hey entrepreneurs. I am so excited to share today’s interview with you. We’ve got a special two for one chat today because we are talking with both Hannah Rose and Clara Daly about their new endeavor Wildmage Press. Hannah and Clara have a very impressive background in the gaming industry. We briefly touch on it and I would love to have several more episodes discussing everything they do. But in this episode, we [00:01:00] are focusing on Wildmage Press and their first magazine Horizons. I got to look at the first issue and it is so gorgeous with spectacular tools for DMs. I highly recommend becoming a subscriber.

And I know you’ll see why after this chat. We dig into not only what Horizons is and what they are dreaming about doing with Wildmage Press. But we learn what it takes to start an indie magazine.

I think it is a really enlightening conversation and the fact that it’s with two industry veterans just makes it that much more special.

Before we dive into the interview, I do want to welcome any new listeners to Roll Play grow. This show allows me to chat with so many amazing folks about business, marketing, hardships, lessons learned, how to guides across a wide spectrum of industries within the TTRPG scene. I’m talking with crafters, game designers, musicians, editors, artists, and more. The variety is honestly really fun for me, and I hope it is for you too.

[00:02:00] Speaking of fun creators, I do want to shout out my favorite tea business, Friday afternoon. This is an amazing nerdy business that makes the best tea. The shop is owned by a wonderful human that I interviewed back in episode six. You could snag T gift cards, join a monthly book club that has tea pairings. Or if you’re in the Seattle area, they also offer a custom blending sessions. We are affiliates with them.

So if you go to Fridaytea.com and use the code, LightheartADV you’ll get 10% off your order, help wonderful business and enjoy some delicious nerdy tea. Thanks for hanging out and enjoy this chat with Hannah and Clara.

Hello, friends! I am so excited to introduce y’all to Clara Daly and Hannah Rose, the co founders of the new Wildmage Press. How are you doing today?

Hannah: Good! It’s great to be [00:03:00] here.

Clara: Thank you so much for having us on.

Courtney: I’m so excited. I’ve honestly been following y’all for a while on your own, and then when I saw the announcement about Wild Mage, I was just like, I have to get them on! I want to talk about all of the things. But to kick things off, just a little bit of an icebreaker, I would love to hear from both of you on what is the first game that you remember playing?

Clara: Oh, that’s a good one. Are we talking like any type of game, like board game, playground game?

Hannah: My instant response was this 90s computer game called Mixed Genetics, I think, where you had weird little like alien creatures that evolved. I was playing this when I was like four, maybe less. You had these weird little alien creatures that evolved and imagine like of graphics you would have on a Dell laptop in the 90s early 90s But I think also Freddy [00:04:00] Fish.

Clara: I want to say, and I’m, I’m trying to dig deep back into, into many, many moons ago, but I think it might have been Frogger or something really close to Frogger, like single color, beefy, beefy computer that took up far more space than I had any right to, but.

Courtney: Like, okay, Frogger, I know. The other one’s Hannah. I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Hannah: Freddy Fish was a kid’s game where if I vaguely recall, you’re a fish going on adventures underwater.

Courtney: enough, yeah.

Hannah: So kind of an RPG.

Courtney: Getting started young. So, at what point did You start playing TTRPGs.

Hannah: I started towards the end of high school playing D& D 3. 5 with a group of friends that I’d met through theater, yeah, rolled up my first D& D characters, and then when I was in [00:05:00] college I had a group that we played together for three and a half years.

Courtney: That’s a long time.

Clara: I am probably considerably more recent. I think probably in 2017, 2018 I started playing D& D 5e with a number of friends that I had made. I’ve been interested in it for years. Like, I’d always been curious about it. I’d seen folks playing it. Same with Magic the Gathering. Like, I’d always been, like, at the periphery.

Of other people playing it and been really interested, but never either had a group or had an introduction. It seemed kind of daunting and then, know, around 2017 or so one of my friends was like, Hey, do you want to play? Like, I’m interested in running a game for beginners. I was like, that sounds perfect.

That’s perfectly the on ramp that I need.

Hannah: honestly, it was a few years earlier, but the same for me, in terms of having had people around me play and being interested, but never having been invited before, and that’s an [00:06:00] experience I think a lot of femmes I’ve met have had.

Courtney: Yeah, 100%. Like, my first game wasn’t D& D, and I was actually so opposed to playing it because of just all of the stigma and the I didn’t want to walk into a game store by myself because I was so tired of, the bad attention that you get when you’re a femme walking into a store.

Hannah: gamer

Courtney: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I stuck to video games. I’m glad that that has definitely changed though. So these days, are y’all still predominantly playing D& D, or how much are you able to mix it up?

Hannah: We’ve been mixing it up a lot, actually. I still love playing D& D. I’m excited to be trying out the new 2024 rules. Hopefully I have another long campaign soon, but I’ve been playing a lot of Daggerheart. We have been playing a variety of RPGs, kind of in a staff and tester circle. So we just played deathmatch Island, which is a game that will be [00:07:00] featured in an upcoming issue of Horizons, and a sci fi RPG Mothership. What else, Clara? What else we’ve been playing?

Clara: Those are the two immediate ones that came to mind. I also not too long ago played, I think it was Cyberpunk that one of my friends ran for me. Definitely primarily D& D, but I feel like one of the great things is once you’re in this community, I’ve been having that opportunity of like, kind of same as how I got into D& D.

Someone says, I want to run this, do you want to play? Like, that’s the easiest part, right? Just show up as a player.

Courtney: 100%. So I was saying before we started recording that I’m sure you’ve had to answer this question a lot, so sorry, but for both of you, and we can start with maybe Clara, I would love it too walk me through the timeline of how you went from first playing, and I think you said about 2017, to then starting to work in this industry.

Clara: So, since it wasn’t all that long ago, [00:08:00] my origin story is relatively short. But hopefully kind of inspiring to some folks. So, I am primarily an artist. My day job, I am a digital director, and I do illustration on the side, and that’s primarily in the D& D space. Like, what do I do? I’m digital illustrator.

So, when I started playing D& D, and I started getting more invested in the world, and interested in what it was beyond just our table, some of the players recommended Critical Role. And so I started listening to Critical Role, and was really interested in that, and really inspired to make fan art, as a lot of folks do for things that they love.

And it was within a month or two that Hannah so happened to be Looking for artists for A Tal’Dorei Reborn, and my style and themes and all of that kind of aligned so she hired me to do some pieces there. I was still doing fan art the entire time, and that, as the years have expanded, kind of became my Getting more and more jobs from them, and working [00:09:00] with Darrington, and establishing myself as kind of a landscape and concept and city artist, really. Especially for Campaign 3. And I still do fan art. Like, I still love doing all of that work, but getting that foot in the industry and meeting a lot of these folks and expanding my portfolio, like, has then led Hannah and I along this path that also helped us establish Wildmage Press.

Courtney: Had you done the more city type art before?

Clara: I had, I’ve always been more interested in like environments and landscape and concept the slightly weirder side of like portraits and all of that are really cool, but I think a lot of folks do that. I’ve always been interested in those nuggets of information that a GM will drop or put into their world that are so evocative that I just want I want to make it real.

I want to give some kernel of a setting that can then hold that story and continue it. So that’s always been my interest point anyway.

Courtney: so cool. I love that it’s been able to [00:10:00] evolve like that. So yes, Hannah, tell me about your origin story.

Hannah: Yeah, so mine also comes from getting involved with the community and going from Being at a table, you know, playing D& D with my friends and having a great time, to Saying, okay, I guess I’m gonna get on Twitter. I guess, is this gonna, am I gonna regret this? But I did it because I got on TTRPG Twitter and started talking to people about nerd stuff and feeling like this was a community where can be a nerd in a lot of different ways, right?

I can be a nerd about books. I can be a nerd about science. I can be a nerd about fantasy. I can be a nerd about dice and tech and art and theater. That was really cool and somebody I met online Kelly Butler, the opera geek made a tweet about should be a College of the [00:11:00] Opera Bard and it’d be really cool if it had these powers and I was like, Yeah, I want to practice, like, just play around with doing some design.

I’ll write that up for her, that sounds fun. I started talking to her about it. She was like, well, you have to put this on DMs Guild. You need to actually publish this instead of just posting it on Twitter. And I was like, Okay, I guess I’ll practice doing some layout too. And it was, happened to be at a really fortuitous time where 5E was really entering, like, a golden era and starting to boom, and, but DMs Guild wasn’t super saturated yet and we put College of the Opera up and it was a huge hit, and I got contacted about doing more things, and I started doing some freelance editing, including for Critical Role, and Wizards of the Coast.

And meanwhile, I was becoming less and less satisfied with commuting for my day job, [00:12:00] and decided to go freelance and do this, which is, I will say, if you live in the United States, a thing I recommend if you have another source of healthcare. Do not quit your day job just because you want to be a game designer a freelancer.

Make sure you at least have healthcare. So Yeah I started doing that have done a bunch of work with Wizards and Critical Role and MCDM Productions and through doing Tal’Dorei Reborn with Critical Role as the co lead designer, managing editor, and co art director. We looking for artists who could do Objects, props, scenery, and was looking through the Critical Role fan art tag and saw some gorgeous art that Clara did, looked at her website, said, Ooh, she’s a graphic designer.

Like, she clearly has these skills. and she was just so fun and amazing to [00:13:00] work with that we have continued collaborating together and become friends and decided to found a company together.

Courtney: Honestly, I like you, too, in this space. Yeah, I feel like there’s so much that I could gloss over if I had several hours to dig into this with you, but this moves us into wanting to talk about the main topic of today, which is Wildmage Press. So you decided to found a company together. What happened?

How did, like, this idea come about? What steps did you take to get started? All that fun stuff.

Clara: I will hand that squarely to Hannah. I actually went, I can at least give us the the starting timeline that she shared the idea with me because I went looking back through Discord out of curiosity after we had our launch. It was January 26th. of this year, Hannah messaged me and said, Hey, marketing guru, or something like that.

What do you think about the name Horizon as a, as a [00:14:00] periodical name? So apparently she’d already been thinking about some stuff.

So Hannah, if you want to from there.

Hannah: As Clara knows, I had been thinking about a TTRPG periodical. I had been the managing editor at MCDM Productions where I was running Arcadia, which was a 5th edition magazine. With art, with, with game design and art from a variety of authors and illustrators, and that was just, that was really wonderful.

And MCDM decided to move away from 5th edition. decided to go back freelancing, and,

there was a need in the space for something similar. The community was really sad to see Arcadia go. I was really sad to not be working with wonderful authors and illustrators.

I’d really enjoyed moving into [00:15:00] a role as a creative lead and managing editor, as well as getting to do bits of design here and there. So I wanted to do something similar, but I wanted it to be than I could do just as one individual on my own. I wanted it to be bigger than Hannah Rose’s Game Design Patreon, you know. I’d been tossing around ideas, writing up some specs, and I knew Clara had a background in marketing, so I guess I tossed this idea for a name to her one day.

Names are hard. And I believe it was You know, within three minutes of, of beginning that conversation that I was like, Clara would be an amazing collaborator on this. She has a day job that

is a very cool, busy day job, so she’s probably not gonna be, have time, andalso, we have also bonded over having too many hobbies. She’s probably not gonna have time, [00:16:00] but let me ask! And so I said hey, i’m looking for a creative partner

on this. Would you be interested in co-founding a TTRPG publishing company?

And

Clara: it was an immediate yes. I don’t, I don’t think we had hashed out much more than that, but working with Hannah has been such a delight. And all of the collaborators that I’ve worked with and the people that I’ve met, and I just love this space so much that it was, I didn’t know what the shape of it was.

I truly didn’t know what time commitment I had just said that. Yes, I can do, but it was, it was instant and it started. Building from there, we’re like, Oh, this is actually going to be real. Let’s, let’s start taking the steps to make it real. What’s that look like? And the answer is a lot of spreadsheets. So

many

Hannah: So many spreadsheets, so many color coded spreadsheets.

Courtney: That’s wild that it was January of this year that this all started.[00:17:00]

Clara: Almost February, very, very, very end. And it was just an ask of like, what’s your, what’s your gut thought on this name to a very rapid, want to do this cool thing with me? And I,

Courtney: So after you said yes, what were some of the first things that y’all did to try to figure out how to make this happen?

Hannah: From a, so one of the big spreadsheets was a budgeting spreadsheet figuring out how much money this is going to cost, how much money we need run the magazine on an ongoing basis and thus to start up the company with. Starting it, you know, in February and then looking at announcing it in September and getting our first issue out in October. So that was a lot of math. And research talking with lawyers and financial advisors and accountants and CPAs and being like, Okay, well, I have this question about running a business and [00:18:00] taxes. And the accountant says, Oh, you need to talk to a different financial advisor for that. The financial advisor says, Actually, that’s a question for your lawyer.

And the lawyer says, Oh, well, we work with this financial person on that. Like, everybody has little slices. And Clara and I were hashing out details of what we want the business to look like and Clara brings a lot of the marketing and brand experience there. So we did a branding exercise with questions like, what is your value proposition? And what words do you want to associate with your brand? What do you bring to the space that others don’t? And having to articulate all of that was a really good. I will say, like, big, professional, real business exercise. That I think a lot of folks in the TTRPG space aren’t familiar with, and it was hard.

I was like, this is really hard.

Clara: and I think I kept saying, I know, but you have to do

I

Hannah: [00:19:00] think you said yeah, it’s supposed to be. And I And that has been immensely valuable so a lot of exploration spreadsheets talking to advisors And then reaching out to authors for our first issue Because we have about a six to seven month lead time

Clara: Yeah, and along the way, as Hannah mentioned, like, we had to, we had to establish the brand, everything from, you know, registering the LLC to visually creating logos and colors and palette and deciding what platforms we wanted to be on. We knew that Patreon was going to be, like, a go to for us.

We were absolutely going to be on there, but Hannah came expressing, like, very fairly, like, hey, I don’t want us to be exclusively only on Patreon. I also want to have our own website, which I had extensive experience building and managing and maintaining. So I started going on that side looking at what, what that stack would look like, what the user experience would be, starting to apply the branding as we [00:20:00] were creating it and then simultaneously we had the track where we’re getting the pitches from the designers.

We’re starting to choose what the articles are going to be, looking at our budget tracker and like, all right, here’s how many words, here’s what we’re paying those folks, here’s what the editing is going to cost, here’s what we have for cover and interior illustrations, and how many do we want, and start writing the art orders.

So like a lot of different tracks moving. Simultaneously to stand this all up. And we had a pretty aggressive timeline saying like, we are going to market September and our first issue is going to be October 9th. Like we had established that and now we have to, we have to back into it.

Hannah: And figuring out how to pay people, because we work with a lot of folks who are not from the United States, a lot of international designers and artists, and am really against being paid through PayPal and paying people through PayPal for work, because PayPal takes such a huge cut. and I feel like it really isn’t [00:21:00] fair.

So, researching the best platforms and practices for that. And setting up that pipeline, and, you know, as Claire said registering the business, getting the business license, bank accounts, all of, all of the little admin details.

Clara: cloud storage, like all those little things that when you slide into an existing business, you take for granted setting up our emails. Buying all the domains, like figuring out what platforms we wanted to be on for for all of these different processing things. It’s really something you don’t consider until you’re in the thick of it setting it up.

Courtney: Yeah, and it can be so overwhelming, I feel almost envious that y’all have, like, each other to lean on in that.

Hannah: I knew I couldn’t do it by myself, it would just be so lonely.

Courtney: Yeah, for sure. I mean, gosh, that is wild, though, that just getting almost the runaround of like being passed from different financial person to lawyer to another financial person and just trying to make heads or tails of [00:22:00] that has, I’m sure, was a probably a stressful time.

Hannah: Yeah, it, it was very much just knowing, , this is just part of the process, and, Things can take a while, but that doesn’t mean it’s a major snag, right? It doesn’t mean it is an emergency, or is a huge upset, or it’s a catastrophe. I do like to remind myself, you know, when we’re stressed about deadlines, like, this is game design, it’s not life or death.

Ha ha

Courtney: Yep. That is my background in project management and it’s always been like, is someone dying? Is someone bleeding? If not, send an email.

So definitely related to that., Stepping back a little bit, you said that you were starting to find the, all of the different artists and the writers. How did you decide on who to include for this first publication?

Hannah: We reached out to people mostly that we had worked with before or who came super highly [00:23:00] recommended, who we knew had high quality work, who brought their own voices and original ideas, and who were really reliable. Cause we wanted, you know, we want all our issues to be bangers, but for this first one, we knew we really extra need to stick the landing. So those authors ended up being Aaron Roberts Imogen Gingell, Willie Aveal, Andrew Dickey, and the, the artists ended up being, let’s see if I can get those in the same order, Zuzanna Wuzek, Allie Briggs, Veronica O’Neil and Jessica Nguyen. And also our lead testers, Roman Pena and Anna Guiarmus, are absolutely invaluable.

So I just rattled off a whole list of names, and those are only some of the people who are in the credits.

Courtney: That’s a lot of people to recruit and manage, especially for such a tight deadline for your first one.[00:24:00]

Clara: And fortunately we both had pretty extensive project management experience. I’d been an art director in publishing many many years ago. Hannah, Took the lead on all the art directing for Tal’Dorei and I think had a pretty heavy hand in it for Arcadia. So we co art direct which is very useful and helpful.

Sometimes we’ll be like, hey, make sure we’re aligned on thoughts, but like, can you get back to this person today? Can you get back to that person tomorrow? So having both of us, you know, Really helps like divide and conquer. And I think it also helps, especially because we have folks like internationally, I’m East coast, Hannah’s West coast.

We kind of can cover a fair amount of time zones as well for getting back to people. And we got more pitches that we want to use than we can fit in the first issue. So fortunately I got to then say like, Hey, that’s awesome. Let’s start to slot those into future issues and start to flesh those out.

And that also gives us an idea of what other artists we want to hire.

Courtney: Yeah, for future issues, Will you be opening it up for folks to [00:25:00] reach out to you and pitch to you guys, or do you want to keep it to specific people that you’ve worked with in the past or that are on your wish list?

Hannah: We have several issues slated out already. Like I said, it’s a pretty long lead time, so we have several issues slated out already. We are not accepting pitches for game design right now. Artists are welcome to send in their portfolios to our general email address. And for game design, we may have an open call for portfolios at some point. I actually was just chatting with somebody about some of our criteria for what we look for, and we’re We absolutely want to work with and spotlight new and emerging designers, and that’s something I loved about Arcadia and want to continue to do. However, there are certain criteria of You know, of quality and some experience and to really making something the best it can [00:26:00] be that we look for.

We’re paying top, top tier rates in the industry, but it is a process wherein and it’s almost partly a mentorship process, but it’s a process in which the author participates through several rounds of playtesting and revision. I think that, I think that about covers it. We’re not accepting pitches at this time, but we may do an open call for game designer portfolios in the future. And we are always keeping an eye on the space for promising new designers to reach out to.

Courtney: Yeah, that makes total sense. And again, you said you had several issues already slotted out,

Hey, entrepreneurs. I love introducing you to new creators every episode, but I could really use your support. I would love to invite you to join our Patreon page, where you’ll gain access to behind the scenes content, add your questions to upcoming interviews, and you could even receive a shout out on our site in an upcoming episode.

To learn more, go to lightheartadventures. com slash RPG. [00:27:00] And now back to the show.

I’m curious about, is there anything that you learned after doing this first publication that you realized you want to do differently or improve for future issues?

Clara: think the first issue, and this is maybe not necessarily so much about Horizons itself, but like the brand itself. It took quite a few, unsurprisingly, to develop the brand, develop the templates, develop the styles. And then, like, make sure that those were all buttoned up in a way that they could get picked up down the road and be repurposed.

So, I’m very glad we went through all of that. There were definitely some bumps in the road, but it allowed us to structure things. Everything from social media templates to video templates to the InDesign document itself. Additional assets that we’re creating for, patrons and subscribers.

Like it was, it was [00:28:00] slow and both of our standards for quality are very, very high, but I am glad that we took the time because I think the additional issues

will not take quite as long, which will allow us a little more flexibility to potentially get even more creative with some of the layout and some of the images and just some of the type treatments.

Hannah: Yeah, I think a lot of it is we’ve had this first, you know, first actual run of our, first live run of our processes of developing an issue of Horizons from start to finish engine. There are definitely places to smooth out, to streamline to adjust, but a lot of it just is that streamlining and adjusting and giving us then room to try some new things. you know, we are two people running this company with a ton of contributors and [00:29:00] Clara still has her super cool day job. So a lot of the limitations there just come from being a really tiny team.

Courtney: 100%. That makes sense. And you know, even the most cooperative, amazing freelancers are, it can take a lot to wrangle them and their schedules. So, taken from your website, the description of your quarterly publication is that you’ve got three articles designed with 5th edition in mind, an article for a featured TTRPG system, the desk of many thoughts, a nerdy op ed column, and a plethora of gorgeous illustrations.

How did y’all decide that that’s how you wanted to break down each of these issues? That you wanted three, D& D, one of a different game, the op ed, talk me through how that decision came about.

Hannah: So, as I mentioned, I came from running Arcadia in the past MCDM’s, 5eMagazine, and I I really enjoyed that and wanted to fill that [00:30:00] space in the industry and the community while also trying some new things and having room to explore and branch out. So, you know, as we discussed, we both come from a D& D background.

I’ve been playing 5e since the D& D Next playtest we really love that and also wanted to explore new things. And in the last couple of years, the Industry as a whole has been out and diversifying, and people’s interests have been diversifying. And I’ve just, as a creator, been trying to learn from more, from other games and create opportunities to play more games.

Because it’s not, it’s not about the desire to play new game systems, it’s about finding, you know, it’s about scheduling them. So I really wanted to have a space Where those D&D and not D& D& TTRPGs, can co exist. [00:31:00] Where it’s not all one or the other, and there can be a variety. And also a understanding that if you can use this content however you want, we make everything Really well polished and playtested and edited and easy to drop into your game at a moment’s notice and use as is. But we also think about, as we’re designing it, every, every GM is a designer. Everybody’s mixing things up for their home games and their settings and the way they play a game. And Part of it is just, okay, you can pick up little bits of bits of this and remix it and use it as an ingredient in your own campaigns. And so when that comes to having a variety of systems, I’m looking at it, okay, even if you’re an inveterate 5e player and all you play is D&D let’s make these articles for other systems that might be inspirations, or you might convert [00:32:00] them, or you might just read them and think, hey, that’s cool, I want to steal the narrative from that. Yeah. Or you might be like, okay, I’ve really been wanting to play this system, maybe there are other people in the community that want to use this article. and making, making a space for that to co exist. As for the desk of many things, and Clara, feel free to jump in on any of this. As for the Desk of Many Things, I wanted a space that would be for prose writing in the industry that’s a little more formal than a blog, but not part of journalism officially.

So not part of a media, you know, news site, and also not a formal academic paper, but just a place to, for something about games in the magazine as well as all of that content.

Clara: And to build on the why, why the fourth article being a separate system, and I think I alluded to this earlier, there’s so many games out there that [00:33:00] it often takes someone else saying, hey, do you want to jump in on my game, to be that introduction, because otherwise it can be so overwhelming. There’s so many, and I’m sure they’re all amazing, but to lower that barrier of entry, someone saying, hey, here’s a game, here’s some.

Free quick start rules that come with it. Put your blinders on. Just look at this real quick. See if it sounds cool. Like it’s just making it more accessible and being able to rotate and feature that. So you’re not just locked into one system. And I think having that, like, it’s not that common out there, right?

You’ll follow different news sites, you’ll follow different folks that you really respect in the area, and they’ll sometimes blog or tweet or whatever about a game, but having that as like a baked in part of this set of articles for a system you already know and love, but also as an introduction to another one that you might want to play or have been curious about or just very easy on ramp into trying it.

That’s not something that really seems to exist out there right now. And that’s the best way [00:34:00] I’ve been introduced to games, is someone else saying like, Hey, here’s this cool thing, do you want to jump in? And then I spend the next five days ranting about how everyone needs to play Deathmatch Island, and, you know, prancing that banner, and telling everyone that this game’s amazing.

And it’s the first time a lot of folks have either heard of it, or other people have been like, I’ve been meaning to play that, let me try it now. So, I think, I think that’s something that, And we did discover, like, there’s a reason folks don’t do this, because playtesting for a wholly separate system takes a lot of time.

Designing and the style for the system takes a lot of time. But I think the value that readers get from that, and the access to systems that they might otherwise be too overwhelmed to research, is More than worth it.

Hannah: Yeah, and it’s a lot of admin, too. Like, I’m really excited to collaborate with amazing colleagues across the industry who are making these games that I haven’t gotten to collaborate with and develop for before, and that’s really awesome and fun. It’s also a lot of emails and so there’s a, there’s a big admin lift there, too, not just working [00:35:00] in

one or two D20 based systems.

Courtney: Yeah, I think what you’re saying, Clara, is just, it’s so true. Like, I, my husband and I are, I guess, the ones that like, oh, we introduced the new games to all of our friends because we’re the

Clara: Thank you for being those people. all need those people articles.

Courtney: but it’s like, you know, because we back all of the Kickstarters and he’s usually the DM and it’s like, okay, cool, great.

But then we look at our shelf and we’re like, okay, we have all these games. We want to play all these games. It’s so hard to like. Not only get our own minds like, all right, switching over to this new system, but now getting all of our players , and there’s so few of them, especially that, you know, on the smaller scale side that have the on ramps to make it really easy and accessible.

I think that that’s a very needed thing. And I’m glad that y’all are including that.

Okay, so in looking at the credits of the first issue, I was noticing that you have a very large group of alpha and beta playtesters. [00:36:00] And so I’m just, I’m so curious about how you recruited all of them and like how much back and forth was going. Were they playing it more than once or was it just a one time thing, made some changes and then moved on to beta?

Yeah. Yeah.

Hannah: Yeah gosh, I probably could talk for an entire hour, two hours just about our playtest process and my amazing playtesters have a lot to say about it too and they are, I, I defer to my lead testers for their knowledge of that. So I had worked with several of them before at MCDM and knew that these are people who really understand how to give thoughtful, constructive testing feedback where they know the game and also know how to separate is this about my personal enjoyment or is this about how this mechanic or this narrative is working at the table? Is this [00:37:00] easy to run? Is this confusing the players? this you know, ending in a TPK and why? to be able to give that feedback in a structured way we actually use a spreadsheet, more spreadsheets for delivering feedback, and say, here is the issue, and then, Not backseat game design, but identify what the issue is and what was happening and then I, the managing editor, that over and try to identify what are some solutions and make suggestions and recommendations to the author. For, here is the issue, we could try this or this, what do you think? So we have that pool of alpha testers, some of whom look at all of the articles, some of whom just looked at some of them. and a large group of beta testers as well. Usually people are looking at it in only one of those phases. [00:38:00] And, at least one person is running a live test. With the content, if applicable in each phase, but sometimes more than that.

Courtney: I think that’s really helpful because there are so many people that want to be playtesters and volunteer for it, and then they don’t give feedback, or good feedback, and so I, it’s very valuable to have a group that you can, trust that much.

Clara: And, and they double also as like the last eyes. It’s already gone through copy editing. It’s all already gone through proofing, but these are the folks who know these articles probably the best by now because they’ve run it and they’ve given their feedback. So we also have them do last looks along with our editors are in layout.

Hannah: Or people who didn’t have a chance to participate in the playtesting, you know, were busy, were not able to do that. And so it’s their first look and they’re looking at it with fresh eyes. And that’s also great to have even more people putting fresh eyes on it with the [00:39:00] understanding that that final proof is not the time for any major game design changes.

But they are looking at it fresh and that helps to identify any little typos and layout issues.

Courtney: hmm. So if I’m understanding correctly, Clara, you are more in charge of the marketing side of things, right?

Clara: So I am kind of my

I’m the digital side, so the website, the content marketing social media, email marketing, CRM’s, all of that good stuff, anything data based So yeah, your websites, your marketing is the digital side Your branding, graphic design, visual design, illustration. That is, that is my arena.

Courtney: So obviously leading up to the announcement and then the actual launch of the first issue itself was, I’m sure, a lot to tackle. But what are some of your thoughts on how you’re going to, [00:40:00] you know, increased subscriptions over time.

Clara: So I think the biggest thing that we can do is, like this, like continue to coordinate with folks get the word out there. Hannah and I just came back from a couple days of being at Big Bad Con in San Francisco. So it’s a lot of that networking. It’s just like we’re hiring from our collaborators in the community.

It’s making sure that our name is getting out there in the community. So sometimes it’s in kind, sometimes it’s simply, you know, letting folks know that we have this really cool thing out there, requesting that they cross promote it, tell their friends, tell their friends. A lot of this community really is very word of mouth, just like we were talking about that on ramp into games themselves.

As very often, your friend told you about this cool thing and wants to run it to you. I think a lot of how we are going to survive and thrive the best is going to be through those same networking connections. And that might not just be, you know, our names, obviously, but the names of the high [00:41:00] quality authors and artists.

And everyone that we’re hiring, like every, every touch point there expands the reach a little bit more. So I think that that, that on top of, obviously when the quality is what it is, we’re very, very proud of the product. We know it’s going to stand for itself. It’s just getting it in front of the right folks that are gonna be interested in it.

That is, I think, going to be the ongoing effort and challenge and promoting within our circles and getting in front of people.

Hannah: Yeah, I’ll add on to that. One of the challenges is, decided to make this a quarterly magazine with four whole articles, which is a good number, right? That’s a lot, but we decided, they’re all pretty robust in the content and amount of material there is in each of them. But we decided to do it quarterly, even though many subscriptions are monthly because that was creatively, made sense for [00:42:00] our output and our team size and It gives people a little more chance to play around with the stuff That’s in each article before the next set comes out So we have a bunch of bonus content for subscribers between issues We are doing behind the scenes process posts on the art. We have We’re going to do tokens so people can easily use all these on virtual tabletops. We have some collaborations with other fun, nerdy creators that we enjoy doing things with. We have a bunch of other ideas. Our subscribers will get to weigh in on what they want to see, but we also got to keep focus on Making the magazine making the main product we create.

So each one of those bonus things from a marketing perspective is another thing to talk about on social media, is added value for the people who are giving us their hard earned money, [00:43:00] balancing that with, you know, With as, as a marketing aid again, with just creating this main project and making it as good as it can be, is one of the things that is a business consideration for us.

Courtney: Yeah, absolutely. I didn’t realize you had all of the little fun things in between issues too, which, on the one hand, cool, that’s really great, on the other hand, wow, that’s a lot more work that you have to put into it.

Hannah: Yeah. mean, the more, you know, the more subscribers we get, the more we can put a budget towards that too, right? The more we can say, Hey, we’re You know, I can go back to authors and say, hey, folks really like this article with these Star Dragons, let’s hire you to make another stat block that’s a companion version of a Star Dragon that can, you know, be a Drake Warden Ranger mount or a, you know, familiar or can be used in some other mounted combat system. The more we can, you know, hire artists maybe to illustrate other stuff, Clara can do some extra graphic design, things for handouts that [00:44:00] people could use in their games. So yeah, the more subscribers we get, the more we can deliver.

Courtney: I really do have to, from a, outside perspective, agree that it’s, it is very hefty, and very involved, and. You know, so for example, when I was first going over it and I was reading the scrawler, I was like, oh cool, like a method of transportation. And I’m used to those descriptions being like maybe a page or two long, and then it just kept going.

And there were so many different types of scrawlers. And it was honestly a lot more interesting than a lot of things that I read in stat blocks, which My husband is the type of person who reads rule books for fun, like he doesn’t read novels anymore, he just reads now rule books.

Hannah: all power to

Courtney: I know, I know, I’m like, I am not that person.

I will read a thing when I need to read it because it’s relevant to what I’m trying to do.

Hannah: And I will not read it in order.

Courtney: Yeah.

Hannah: I do not, I do not make TTRPG books and assume someone is gonna read them from the first [00:45:00] page to the last page.

Courtney: Well, now you know there’s one. But yeah, so like, even with that being said, like, it was still drawing me in and it was just like, very interesting.

Clara: I Loved all, like, that article in particular. I also loved all the tables, because when I’ve run games, I feel like I am not necessarily the best at, like, off the top of my head, coming up with that NPC, or that encounter, or, and each of these articles have a have that support. You don’t have to use it, or you can use it for flavor, but like I really appreciated that it wasn’t just like, here’s your scrawler, here’s how many feet it moves per turn, blah.

Like it’s, it’s this rich like world building that all the articles included, which is one of the reasons they’re so big. But we’re, we’re hoping that that really appeals to anyone’s style of running. I know I personally Loved those tables and loved, you know, the little suggested folks that could be on the scrawler with you or the adventures that you could have to guide someone to be able to use this.

Hannah: Loved them [00:46:00] enough to suffer through laying them out in InDesign.

Clara: Oh, tables are rough in layout, but it was worth it.

Hannah: we really look at everything easy to use, not just in being balanced, but also in not being a big lift for the GM, right? So there is stuff like, okay, we’re giving you these vehicles well, let’s give you a table of NPCs that might be, that appear on them. And not just Some, like, descriptions of those NPCs, but also you can roll for what secret they might have, what their destination is, give you encounters that might happen, so you can really, if you need to, fill a session, fill several sessions with this, like Clara said, it’s, you don’t have to use any of that, but You can just use all of it, and they have very little prep time.

I

Courtney: Yeah.

Clara: And you know one of those [00:47:00] NPCs is going to become the party’s, like, favorite person ever that the GM is going to have to have in the rest of the campaign. Like, you just know it. That’s how are.

Hannah: actually want to stick a villain in as a scrawler, lore writer, passenger, who just seems, you know, seems like a chill public transit writer, and then sessions later is revealed to be a major villain.

Courtney: yeah, I want to use Scrawlr so much now.

So one of the things that I love to do in these interviews is acknowledge that, you know, we’re here because we love making things. We love games, but obviously there are a lot of challenges. And I know that we’ve touched on a Some, already, I’m just, there’s a lot that y’all have been doing this year, but is there anything in particular that was maybe harder than you thought it was going to be, or just in general, you’re like, I [00:48:00] knew it was coming, but it just still sucked?

Hannah: I, I feel like the answer is taxes. Not paying

Courtney: Okay that’s fair.

Hannah: because

Courtney: 100%.

Hannah: freelancers. We’re used to that as freelancers, right? I actually do all my own taxes as a freelancer, and I’ve been doing that for many years, and that’s fine, charging people tax is something we have not done before.

Clara: Yeah, the taxes have been an adventure, because then you have to learn about the tax nexus, and then you have to learn that the way that your very specific product is categorized Confuses some of the state level departments of revenue who aren’t really sure if they should recommend that you go in this one or in this one because it’s a digital product but it also has a subscription related to it but it’s also so like that side of things has for sure been and I consider myself pretty well versed in finance but like [00:49:00] this has been an adventure where a lot of folks don’t seem to always even be in alignment.

Where you would expect them to be between, like, your lawyer, your accountant, the local State Department of Revenue, your financial advisor, like, it’s,

Hannah: the tax guidelines for the Netherlands,

your website is telling you that you might have exceeded a tax threshold in the Netherlands, even though you really haven’t, and you do not need to be paying international taxes until you make a lot more money from customers of that country. But it’s, yeah, turns out international finance is super complicated.

Who would have thought?

Clara: who would have guessed?

Hannah: And we also want to expand to doing print, right? Horizons is a digital first magazine. People keep asking if it will be available in print. And the answer is that we are planning on it. We are investigating it and planning on it. But Creating and shipping physical products adds a whole new [00:50:00] level of admin and Tax and complications there, especially with, you know, the, the quality we want to print something like this and make it really nice, but also as affordable as it can be while knowing that international shipping is a thing.

So,

Clara: Finding that balance between, and I know that print on demand is a lot better than it used to be, but like, you normally lose a bit of quality with print on demand versus doing like a large scale even digital print, but then you also have, do they offer drop shipping? Because if you’re gonna drop ship one by one, then suddenly your price doubles, but then you can actually get it to someone versus warehousing it yourself versus, so, it’s It’s very, very involved.

And I know our very first question is the quality and then the second one’s the price point. And then how do we get it to folks and not end up with, you know, 200, 50 page book.

Hannah: right, right. And this being something that’s bigger than we can ship out of our living rooms, right, [00:51:00] that would, I mean, just administratively, that would be miserable, but, you know. Logistically, that’s, that would just, we’re at a higher volume than that could work for. But also smaller than it’s something worth paying warehouse space for.

Courtney: I used to head up fulfillment, and I am like, I am, yep, I’m there with you.

Hannah: Well, we will take any tips you have.

Courtney: For sure. Yeah. Okay, well. Thank you. Let’s flip around. What has been the most rewarding part of this whole journey?

Clara: For me, without question, being on the other side of the fence, not being hired as an illustrator, but getting to hire illustrators and working with them and just watching that magic from the other side.

Hannah: That’s one of my favorite things, too, and when I stepped into art directing with Tal’Dorei Reborn, despite not being an illustrator myself, which, I think, to, to, on a book of [00:52:00] that size and scope and quality as an art director without being an illustrator. I was not qualified to do that. Most people who are art directors are illustrators, but it needed to be done.

And we learned from processes that other people use. And I sure do have opinions about visual design and kept things organized. And You know, without, without bragging, saying that I think it went pretty well, and the artists really enjoyed working with us, and I have really enjoyed to do that, and to learn from the process, from artists I know, from people like Clara, I have been overjoyed getting to do that again and art direct and hire these artists and see sketches come in is just absolutely amazing. But then also to have someone art directing with me who is an illustrator and does have that visual design background and can do paint overs and I can say, okay we’ve gotten this [00:53:00] sketch, I have some thoughts but I’m not sure how to communicate that, and Clara just being able to jump in and know know what we need to do there.

Clara: Sometimes it’s nice to be able to translate and use. Use the language of like, I understand exactly what you’re asking and I agree. Let me put that in words that the artist will understand to be able to action against.

Hannah: And then I get to learn what those are so I can continue to be a better art director, right? Because I do not want to tell people, you know, please draw a red line that looks like a blue circle. But, but yeah, I love learning that and we have loved learning from each other. That’s another one of the highlights.

I wanted to also say one more highlight, which is always the case for this whole work I do, but is the reason I am in this industry, is the reason I continue to be in this industry is the reason why I’ve been excited to found this company is, and excited to release our first issue, that I love it when people use our stuff. [00:54:00] I love hearing about it. We have a, Creature in Horizons 1 called the Terrible Crane, which is the brainchild of one of our authors Willia Beale, and, God, the Terrible Crane, he’s the worst I love him, and somebody recently posted That they were designing a whole campaign around the terrible crane, and it was just the best news I heard, ever. And I love, yeah, I love hearing from people who drop this stuff in their games, and who remix it, and give it to their players, and go on adventures with it and transform it. That’s just the absolute best.

Courtney: Amazing. So obviously, you know, you’ve got this coming out every Are there any other projects that you guys are working on, either as part of Wildmage or outside of Wildmage, that you’re excited about, that you’re allowed to talk about?

Clara: As they say, the allowed to talk about, I think, is the biggest challenge there. We are, [00:55:00] we are looking at, as a lot of publishers are expanded beyond, like this is, this is our flagship pub for sure. This is, this is what, We want to be known for. This is what’s getting the most of our attention. This is what we’re going to regularly put out.

But there is other stuff, and I’m going to dance very carefully, Hannah.

Hannah: Sounds good, I trust you!

Clara: Other, other stuff that we were looking to leverage. Our skills, our talents, pretty much everything that we’re bringing to the Horizons publication to do beyond just that pub. And partnering with some existing spaces to leverage our skills.

Hannah: And things that we can talk about are terms of freelance, Clara has, I’m sorry to answer for you here, but Clara’s continued to freelance with Critical Role and Darrington Press and has recently had, and I believe will have some more art coming out, I’m just gonna brag about you, you did the key art for Downfall, and that looked really amazing, those pieces [00:56:00] for Aeor and have kept working with Worlds Beyond Number which an absolutely incredible podcast actual play with fantastic, wonderful people. And I’ve been working working with their game design team that Brennan Lee Mulligan put together to design some of the player character options and other mechanics. So, we just released a new and updated version of the Witch class. That has been an absolute joy and really fun and I’m glad I’ve been able to keep doing that and squeezing it in.

Courtney: Oh, for sure. I have been very excited to see that witch publication. And I agree, Clara, that art was absolutely gorgeous.

Clara: Aw, thank you. It was, I, I swear every time they hand me a new project I’m like, this is my dream project, and then I get an even more dream project, then I get like, it just, it’s, it’s so [00:57:00] validating and wonderful to be able to be, like, I would be doing this stuff as fan art anyway, right? So being able to like, be leveraged as an artist who loves to do that, and then getting to make some of those pieces canon, like, it’s just such a great feeling. And this entire community is so, so amazing, and it’s really the collaboration that Horizons is affording me to do that makes the not a whole lot of sleep really, really worth it.

Courtney: Fair enough. Amazing. If people want to find you two and Wildmage where should they go?

Hannah: Can find us at wildmagepress. com or patreon. com slash And our website will have all of, all the links out to to places and to subscribe. We’re on Instagram, Blue Sky Twitter, and TikTok at wildmagepress. And I am [00:58:00] on most major social media platforms, not TikTok as wildrosemage.

Clara: And I’m on almost all the social medias as EldritchBlep. Very professional name.

Courtney: Perfect. I will have links to those in the show notes. Hannah, Clara, thank you so much for coming on today. This has been a total blast.

Hannah: Thank you, Courtney. It’s absolutely a delight to chat with you, and I am sure we could chat for many hours.

Courtney: Oh, oh, I wish we could. So listeners, at this point I am going to stop the recording and then I’m going to start it right back up and go into a fun little quick question blitz for patrons, where I will ask these two lovely ladies some more sillier questions.

Some are gaming related. Some are not, like, Describe Your Perfect Sandwich.

So if you want to listen to that you can go to patreon. com slash rollplaygrow. Again, thank you all so [00:59:00] much.

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