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NihilCredo posted:IIRC the free stretch goals were all or almost all digital though? The operational expenses of delivering physical goods should go down, not up, as production increases, as long as you're not giving them away for free or under cost. No, there were a bunch of physical ones (notepads, stickers, colouring books, probably a few more that I'm forgetting) that he added to existing tiers for free.
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# ? Dec 16, 2013 18:58 |
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# ? May 22, 2024 10:58 |
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Digitally based business that brought in over a million in revenue last year? Nah, let's not upgrade that decade-old computer. Let's wait until it goes tits up right before we're about to finish our first book in five years. -Burlew Business Solutions
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# ? Dec 16, 2013 22:26 |
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To be fair his class's trait chart was: sociable, good story teller, technologically savvy; pick two(max). Need Writer(class) buff, tia.
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# ? Dec 16, 2013 22:41 |
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Robviously posted:To be fair his class's trait chart was: sociable, good story teller, technologically savvy; pick two(max). Need Writer(class) buff, tia. He didn't get many skill points either, should have gone to 4.0.
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# ? Dec 16, 2013 23:00 |
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Are any of us reading OotS for Rich's business acumen? Jesus guys, this is worse than alignment debates.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 02:39 |
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Who What Now posted:Are any of us reading OotS for Rich's business acumen? Jesus guys, this is worse than alignment debates. It's like http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0135.html but in real life.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 02:41 |
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Who What Now posted:Are any of us reading OotS for Rich's business acumen? Jesus guys, this is worse than alignment debates.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 02:47 |
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TequilaJesus posted:Digitally based business that brought in over a million in revenue last year? There are millionaire CEOs with the same approach to business so it isn't really an unusual vice.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 03:01 |
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According to his twitter, he has budgeted for a new computer, and there will be a strip this week, even if he has to start from scratch using his laptop.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 03:26 |
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Robviously posted:To be fair his class's trait chart was: sociable, good story teller, technologically savvy; pick two(max). Need Writer(class) buff, tia. If they could have an admistrative assistant familiar, it might help balance out the more tedious aspects.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 03:35 |
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:If they could have an admistrative assistant familiar, it might help balance out the more tedious aspects. I'd go for a straight up administrative assistant kobold sorcerer/dragon disciple edit: Its not confirmed, but are we assuming that's what Kilkil is? He casts spells, has wings, is literally employed by a dragon (the Empress of Blood). D1Sergo fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Dec 17, 2013 |
# ? Dec 17, 2013 03:43 |
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Kilkil's never cast anything. I'm pretty sure he's just a half-dragon kobold with levels in Expert or something.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 04:06 |
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Carrasco posted:Kilkil's never cast anything. I'm pretty sure he's just a half-dragon kobold with levels in Expert or something. Doubt he is Half Dragon. He is likely a Dragonwrought Kobold with some expert levels. After all Dragonwrought Kobolds are pretty much Kobolds born with wings. (And some extra stuff that makes them quite possibly the best race in the game.)
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 05:21 |
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CapnAndy posted:If Rich had a bit more business acumen we actually could be reading OotS right now, is the thing. As others have said I'm pretty sure it's his crippling disease that's the biggest problem, not where his kickstarter money went.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 06:42 |
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This last few pages really did become somewhat hateful, we might want to dial it down a bit, otherwise we will be publishing our own porn parody of OotS soon.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 06:51 |
As weird as it may be to be asking this, has Rich ever mentioned considering, say, partnering up with someone to share the load with and help with getting onto a more consistent update schedule again?
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 06:52 |
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Who What Now posted:As others have said I'm pretty sure it's his crippling disease that's the biggest problem, not where his kickstarter money went. I'm pretty sure CapnAndy was specifically referring to Rich not spending Kickstarter money on a new computer, thus leading to us not getting the strip that he was finishing today when his current computer died.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 09:18 |
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^exactlyWho What Now posted:As others have said I'm pretty sure it's his crippling disease that's the biggest problem, not where his kickstarter money went. His spastic colon made his ancient computer die? Did he poo poo the office full or something?
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 09:20 |
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loving Rich not knowing that his computer was gonna crap out on him. I hate him so loving much
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 11:08 |
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Message posted:loving Rich not knowing that his computer was gonna crap out on him. I hate him so loving much Yeah it's a little sad that the thread has literally gotten worse than it was when people were posting Goblins. Can we lock it until a new comic lands?
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 11:12 |
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You people are becoming the official forums
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 12:33 |
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The official forums would probably ban people for this, actually.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 13:41 |
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Oh no people are mildly criticizing Rich-San, better lock the thread.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 13:52 |
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greatn posted:Oh no people are mildly criticizing Rich-San, better lock the thread.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 14:40 |
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Message posted:loving Rich not knowing that his computer was gonna crap out on him. I hate him so loving much I am shocked that the grognard making D&D 3.5 comics had his 7-year-old computer die out on him before he upgraded it. You do realize that if you rely on a piece of hardware for your livelihood, it's irresponsible to not maintain it and replace it when it's past its expected lifespan? Waiting for catastrophic failure is not a best practice. edit: If he was holding out the last few months for the new Mac Pros that are due "in December", I feel for him, but he should have upgraded years ago. hey girl you up fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Dec 17, 2013 |
# ? Dec 17, 2013 14:52 |
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There was a series of posts in one of the business threads in TG about some grognardy gaming company that was completely crippled because the System 6 Mac that they'd been making all their books on for twenty years finally poo poo itself and died, complete with the owner of the company having an internet tantrum about how computers should just last forever and there hadn't been any better computers or OSes out since then. Hilarious stuff, and while Rich isn't that bad, it's not like grognards won't stick with old things just because they haven't completely died yet.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 14:56 |
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I am still flabbergasted that you guys give a poo poo what the hell Rich makes his comics on. I mean seriously, there are dozens of posts on how all his money went to printing stuff for you the fans and you're honestly confused as to why he didn't upgrade his computer? It probably just never occurred to him is all, because normal people don't think about when their hard-drive is gonna take a poo poo. Seriously, some of you are acting as if we'd have 40 new comics if Rich had bought a new PC and tablet. But we haven't had regularly scheduled updates for nearly two years or something. This isn't even a particularly long pause for Rich! Good goddamn give the guy a few extra days to budget for a new computer.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 17:24 |
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It's true. Rich is simply busy looking out for the fans, trying to give them what they want. *Takes three weeks to post one page of a stick figure comic.*
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 17:43 |
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Who What Now posted:It probably just never occurred to him is all, because normal people don't think about when their hard-drive is gonna take a poo poo. A person who makes their living off of the contents of that hard drive? Might wanna consider it now and again. Jesus, man, we're not saying Rich kicked a baby and needs to be burned at the stake. We're saying he's not good at business management.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 18:47 |
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So, is this withdrawal symptoms or cabin fever the thread is going through? Well, it was a bad bit to have a possibly unknown-length pause to. Caster Fight, Tarquin possibly about to die, Haley has taken a serious maiming, (or can broken limbs be covered with a Restoration/Greater Restoration once Durkula gets his allotment of spells?) that ensemble darkhorse (nearly?) everyone likes has shown up again - and, as ever, we are awaiting Belkar's impending "death". Well, at least we're not trying to figure out the exact stats of the characters. Yet.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 19:14 |
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According to Twitter, his backup also failed so he's going to be spending some time recreating old comics for the higher-res print run. The guy has every right to take as long as he wants updating the comic, but it's a little funny that the Kickstarter did commit him to devoting time to things other than the primary story but did not result in him purchasing a stable work environment. If your primary interest is in the main, online comic, donating to the Kickstarter was apparently counterproductive.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 19:24 |
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Spiderdrake posted:Yeah this is kind of my reaction, I'm not sure what's so "terrible" about the last couple posts. I haven't seen this many sequential posts ragging on a comic author's real life decisions since the last CAD mock thread got shut down because of people claiming Buckley killed his dog.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 19:27 |
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I was going to write a lot, but Sir Kodiak summed it up best: the reason most of us are pissed is that we threw money at Rich figuring it would help him out and let him devote more time to working, and the end result was actually him being distracted by producing for the stretch goals and being delayed by technical hurdles you'd think throwing nearly a million dollars at would go away.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 19:28 |
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Sir Kodiak posted:According to Twitter, his backup also failed so he's going to be spending some time recreating old comics for the higher-res print run. The guy has every right to take as long as he wants updating the comic, but it's a little funny that the Kickstarter did commit him to devoting time to things other than the primary story but did not result in him purchasing a stable work environment. If your primary interest is in the main, online comic, donating to the Kickstarter was apparently counterproductive. Of course paying Rich to do a bunch of work other than the web comic was counter productive to getting the webcomic done. It obligated him to duo other stuff.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 19:28 |
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Ursine Asylum posted:I haven't seen this many sequential posts ragging on a comic author since the last CAD mock thread got shut down because of people claiming Buckley killed his dog. Second, this thread is no way shape or form anything close to one of the ridiculous hate threads BSS has had. It's mild griping. No one is even saying anything bad about the comic itself. If anything the hyperbole is coming from the other direction.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 19:30 |
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jsoh posted:Of course paying Rich to do a bunch of work other than the web comic was counter productive to getting the webcomic done. It obligated him to duo other stuff. Sure, which is why I only brought it up once it turned out that the money didn't produce the counterbalancing benefit of putting him in the best position to be productive.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 19:34 |
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Spiderdrake posted:Ok wait, first, Buckley did a what now before the thread got shut down? Someone please PM me if it isn't kosher to discuss on BSS anymore. The tl;dr is his dog died, he made a sad news post about it, and half the thread immediately jumped to "He was probably taking lovely care of the dog so it's his fault it died". And second, yeah that's kind of the point. It's a comic discussion thread, and we've spent at least 3 full pages complaining about how lovely Rich is at running a business.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 19:50 |
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Because it's comical.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 19:54 |
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Hindsight is 20/20. Should rich have bought a new computer before this one failed? Yes. But he didn't know his computer was going to die at this moment in time. My family and I run a small business, and we have had 2 major gently caress ups this year that wasted thousands of dollars and a week's worth of time. Both events could have been avoided, if we had done x,y, and z. This poo poo happens. It happens to every company ever. Rich is solving the problem and then he will be back up and running shortly. If he lets it happen again is the time to be upset. As for the books vs PDF thing. There is more to business than purely profit. Rich sells to a certain lifestyle, one of real board games and real comic books. He logos himself in a certain way. This has provided him a niche but loyal following. Sure he might sell more PDFs, but that is not how he wants his product.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 19:59 |
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# ? May 22, 2024 10:58 |
Eschers Basement posted:I was going to write a lot, but Sir Kodiak summed it up best: the reason most of us are pissed is that we threw money at Rich figuring it would help him out and let him devote more time to working, and the end result was actually him being distracted by producing for the stretch goals and being delayed by technical hurdles you'd think throwing nearly a million dollars at would go away. Welcome to Kickstarter. Stretch goals in particular have become an endemic problem for Kickstarter projects, with the costs of the stretch goal add-ons turning out to cost far more than the extra revenue they brought in. It's particularly bad for Kickstarted projects that have physical products rather than purely digital ones but not uncommon even then. Board games are especially vulnerable to this aspect. The Ogre Kickstarter final version ended up producing a box that was too large and heavy to fit on most retailer's shelves! The thing is, a lot of these problems only became clear after the first wave of really successful Kickstarters hit, of which the Order of the Stick's was one. Arguably, since he's basically a one-man shop, the distractions and extra work the Kickstarter created are orders of magnitude worse than it would be for a larger company like SJG that can split the work up over many employees. In short, Rich is a victim of his own success and his is the tale we tell to young children before they try their own Kickstarters.
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# ? Dec 17, 2013 20:06 |