I have been roleplaying various games for well over 48 years, designing my first roleplaying game at 12 years old. A RPG space game system using percentile dice for attributes, well before Star Frontiers (copyright TSR Games). I had two expansion books for it, before expansions became a household name. After a submission to a prominent game company, I was offered $3000 to buy it outright. I declined. Maybe someday, it will get published. My big break came when WOTC authorized licensing of 3.5 products to third-party companies. Yep, I jumped on the bandwagon and made my first product: The Wilds-There and Back. It still is selling here on Lulu.com Unheard of at the time, the project was tasked over Yahoo private chat rooms. Designers were given assignments, and then those assignments came to my Yahoo mail, were edited to form an e-book.