(Reposted from the HERO TIME website.)

I’ve explained this some in the past, but for the fifth anniversary of this game, I would like to give you the full story of how I created HERO TIME.

It all started in early 2015. Thanks to the internet, I was exposed to the concept of role-playing games, and after reading the Wikipedia article on the matter, I was hooked on the idea. It was unlike anything I had experienced before, and I was eager to try it.

As inspiration struck, the first thing I did was draw a picture. I remade and colored it immediately afterwards on a different piece of scrap paper, but this time with another piece glued to the back. The original is on the left, and the remake is on the right. You will notice that five of the main cast (Palintyre, Ricard, Jolene, Renault, and Darien) were here from the very beginning. Fun fact: initially, the first four of them were named “Palantir”, “Richard”, “Joan”, and “Raikar”. Only Darien’s name was unchanged.

The original name was “Underground, not very well lit, kinda drafty basements & Mythical, flying snakes”, a parody of “Dungeons & Dragons” literally in name only. It was changed for obvious reasons.

I didn’t play or really know about any specific games, nor could I afford to get any anyways. So, I took what precious little I knew and tried to make my own game. It tried to capture the RPG spirit, but there wasn’t much to it. I worked on it off-and-on throughout the year, and by December, it completely changed into a board game. I still think it’s fairly unique, but it would need to be remade from scratch if I wanted to sell it.

For the time being, my work ended there. However, that certainly wasn’t the end of my ideas for this new little world of mine. I continued to make doodles and parts of stories to expand the fledgling franchise, and most notable were a few drawings from the end of 2016. First was a list of concepts for quests that the heroes could go on, and the only one to be detailed was about a “plague doctor” and how his lair would be infiltrated. That’s right, “Lair of the Plague Doctor” was the first adventure to be thought of. Second was a full-page, “Mos Eisley Cantina”-style drawing of the main cast within the eating establishment of their choice: “Unicorn Wild Wings”. Yes, HERO TIME was initially much goofier than it is now– and that’s saying something.

A few years passed without any major developments in the world of HERO TIME. Then in mid-2018 I discovered something that blew my mind: Fantasy Flight Games’ “Age of Rebellion Beginner Game”. At last, a proper RPG! It took some effort to wrap my mind around the concept (being unlike anything I had played before), but once I got it, it was deeeeelicious. Eventually I got and played through the other games in the line and picked up the “Force and Destiny Core Rulebook”, and it was then that I decided that it was exactly what I wanted for HERO TIME.

I tried to develop a “normal mode” as compared to the board game in November 2018. It was based on the Star Wars games, meaning I wouldn’t be allowed to distribute it, but I would deal with that problem after I finished. Thankfully, I didn’t have to.

I discovered that Fantasy Flight Games took the system it used for the Star Wars games and adapted it into the “Genesys” system– a genre-neutral set of rules that was specifically designed so that you could make the game of your dreams with it. Better still, they announced the Genesys Foundry program, in which people like me could make games built on Genesys and sell them online. Suffice it to say, I was absolutely thrilled. I quickly picked up the core rulebook and got its fantasy-flavored “Realms of Terrinoth” sourcebook later on, and so I had everything I needed.

In February 2019, I began a concerted effort to develop HERO TIME as a proper RPG. Worldbuilding came first, developing the species the players could play as and the lands they would explore.

The trick was sorting out years’ worth of drawings and idea fragments, pulling them together, and deciding what to discard and what to polish up. Two notable examples just from the map above are the “Cerulean Republic” that eventually transformed into Lazurine Kingdom, and the name “Valkier”, which belongs to someone who became a major player in the published HERO TIME’s early history.

The process of development took a three-pronged approach. In addition to writing the foundational “fluff” for this fictional world, I began writing the “HERO TIME Core Rulebook” as I gained a greater understanding of the Genesys system and an adventure module to go with it.

For the first adventure module, or “quest”, I wanted something that had a classic “feel” to it and sounded really cool. I searched my old drawings and found the best adventure that I had, and so construction began on the “Lair of the Plague Doctor”. It was initially designed as a “beginner game” like the ones I enjoyed, but eventually I decided to just make it a normal adventure. Maybe someday I really will convert it into a “beginner game” for my Snake Eyes System.

I drew everything by hand in pencil, and as you can see, it took a very, very long time. I was building everything from scratch, and I didn’t work nearly as efficiently as I could have. This part of the process lasted from March 3rd to August 26th.

Toward the end of the process (specifically August 7th), I wanted to give the game a test run. I took it over to the house of my best friend and his brother, and we played it as I taught them how. We got halfway through before I had to go, but we finished the game in November. The second time, I sprang game-master duties on my friend to ensure that the game was approachable enough for newcomers, and he did a fine job. In fact, some of his ideas and the ones we all came up with at the time made it into the published game. It was then that I was convinced for the first time that this could work.

By November 23rd, I finished typing up the game digitally, so it was one step closer to release. I used the browser program Homebrewery, but sometime later I switched to GM Binder, which I used before getting Affinity Publisher and using it for the new Core Book. I added illustrations, continuously proofread, digitally created character sheets, and readied everything before the game’s release.

Then, at long last, it happened: on April 9th, 2020, at 7:03 AM, I released “Lair of the Plague Doctor”. HERO TIME was brought into the world, and it only took 13 months to do it! Yeah, that took a lot longer than I would’ve liked. However, I learned much in the process, and perhaps more importantly, how to do it correctly and quickly. The game’s follow-up, “The Siege of Windhall”, only took 3 weeks to make. Talk about improvement!

Going back a little, the “Core Rulebook” began production on March 26th of the year, even though I wouldn’t give it my undivided attention until almost a year later. I first started by writing it by hand again, but then I decided that doing it digitally from the get-go would be far better.

Time passed, and the act of worldbuilding and the writing of the sourcebook went hand-in-hand. I agonized over the finest of details in the world of Virbis and its laws, and the gameplay both reflected and determined that. Case in point: because the game was built on Genesys, I had to write HERO TIME’s lore in a way that accommodated its magic system. That in particular was a hard problem that I wrestled with for a while. In addition, the “core rulebook” had to be renamed as a matter of proper definitions, so I started calling it the “Sourcebook”, as was correct.

I’ve written a lot in my GM Diaries and other places on this blog about the exact process of making HERO TIME things, so I won’t go down that rabbit trail. In short, it was two years later on March 3, 2022 (March seems to be a big month for me) that I released the HERO TIME Sourcebook. The vision was mostly realized. Still, there was one last mountain to climb: making a new system that was entirely my own.

Now that I was armed with the knowledge of how RPGs work, I had a fairly good idea of what I wanted and how I could get it. Over the course of about one year, I slowly, clumsily developed an actual role-playing game that was completely new, just like I wanted to in the first place. This project lasted from July 1st, 2022, to December 27th, 2023, and the end result was the Snake Eyes System. It’s a little bare-bones, I admit, but the purpose was for it to be a quick-to-play, easy-to-learn foundation that I or anyone else could build off of.

With that finished, it was time to create the true HERO TIME Core Book. I put it in a different format (6 by 9 inches, like a standard book), and meticulously, carefully went through the original sourcebook to type everything into the new book. The decidedly smaller size meant I need to truncate the writing at every point, but you know what? That actually worked out for the better. It’s decidedly sharper and as concise as possible, resulting in a leaner, meaner book. I never thought I’d say this, but by the end, I actually liked the constraints!

Despite the explosive growth in my artistic skill since the sourcebook’s release, many pictures created for it and other HERO TIME products were still good enough so that I could reuse them. In all, about one-third of the illustrations were reused, while the rest were brand-new or redrawn. While I had half a mind to just do them all over, there wouldn’t have been a noticeable improvement in some cases, and time was a pressing factor. Still, I pulled out the stops for the new pictures I did make, and I think the results speak for themselves.

A new game also requires new character sheets. On one hand, I like the results and the graphic design process. On the other hand, I keep having to make these over and over again like poor Sisyphus and it feels like the sheets mock me with my slow and endless struggles… but anyways.

At last, we reach the present day. In the last five years, I’ve released five quests, a rules supplement, a sourcebook, a character manual, and 14 pregenerated characters, all for the Genesys system. On top of that, I created my very own RPG system. Last but perhaps greatest of all, I will soon release the HERO TIME Core Book, a proper role-playing game built on and significantly expanding my own system. The release date is on the horizon, and I’m looking forward to its publication… and a hard-earned break.