Savage Worlds has an excellent licensing setup that you can check out at:
http://www.peginc.com/licensing/
I have written to the email address provided there to ask about licensing, and they gave me a list of several things they were looking for.
- They hold all their officially licensed products to the same standards as their own products. They check that it has good writing, artwork, and layout. There are links on the right side of their licensing page to information about what they look for in their writers and illustrators.
- Once you get past the initial check that your production values are high, they'll look at rules changes like skills, edges, etc. They want things to be balanced and fit in with their other products.
- They want a small sample to verify that what you're making is good, and after they approve you, they let you do your thing. You don't have to keep sending them everything you're working on for approval.
I would look at published adventures like War of the Dead and go with a similar format. I was in the same boat you are of wanting to make and publish my own PDFs, and if I go forward with it, there are several steps I can see taking.
- Write out the campaign and play through it with my group. I need to make sure it's fun and interesting for other people.
- After each game, ask the players what they liked and disliked and modify my notes.
- Write out the first couple adventures in a Word document and get used to how to format things and work with layout.
- Find a friend who can draw or hire a graphic designer to make some artwork and a suitable background for when I create the PDF.
- Send the PDF to their licensing department and work through whatever criticisms they have.
Beyond that, you'll have to think about how to handle the business side of things. You'll probably want to setup a business, and if you're not used to running a business hire an accountant to handle paying for creating your products and receiving payment. But that's something you'll have to research for your own area as it varies from place to place.
When a bigger hammer doesn't suffice, intelligent heroes need to use Guile and Cunning... which sometimes includes talking enemies to death.
The concept of the "face" in role playing games exists because of some problems that cannot simply be solved by beating them to death with a bigger hammer. These problems include: getting paid, finding a gig, explaining that "it wasn't us" to outraged authorities, and all sorts of other... politics.
The need for a face, for a bard, is directly proportional to how much political wrangling the party faces. If getting paid is a matter of dropping a head on a desk somewhere and saying "gimmie my money" and... they do, then there is no need for a bard. If there's a entrenched bureaucracy between your (carried) head and that desk; suddenly there is a need for a bard.
Incorporate political problems and consequent bonuses to make playing the face appealing.
Players should be able to earn greater bonuses, avoid some combats, get assistance, and get paid because of the abilities of the face. So long as the group is willing, this can also include scouting duties and other unsavoury "we don't have a big enough hammer to solve this problem" problems. However, since some people play RPGs to get away from politics, this is absolutely something that must be discussed with the group first.
Best Answer
Anything you find in the SRD is Open Gaming Licence content and thus free to use so long as you abide by the terms of the OGL. You'll note that it does not contain XP or Wealth-By-Level rules, and you'll also notice that it doesn't really contain fluff; those rules (and the fluff) are still WotC's property and cannot be used. Beyond that, you're perfectly free to use any of the rules in that SRD, edit them, homebrew for them, and add your own fluff to them - in point of fact, that's how Pathfinder, World of Warcraft D20, and many other D20 systems got created and legally sold at profit. However, you are still not permitted to reference D&D in your product at that point (it's a D20 system release, but D&D itself remains the property of WotC, with whom I assume you are not affiliated).