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Flavivirus posted:She's said she's committed to finishing off the rewards from both Last Stand kickstarter or handing things off to other people who are able to commit to that, so I'm pretty confident they'll be delivered. I thought she'd started doing RPGs again, anyway.
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Dec 15, 2014 18:08
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Tekopo posted:Just got Dungeon Lords anniversary edition in the post (just the new stuff)! I wasn't expecting it until after christmas! They didn't charge for their uero-VAT fuckup even though I specified that I needed to pay them more on the survey! A true Christmas miracle! Mine is not here yet *sniffle*. I was so hoping to play it before Christmas.
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Dec 15, 2014 18:23
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Bucnasti posted:If you don't have the knowledge and skills to produce your project, then you shouldn't even be thinking about Kickstarter, you should be learning those things first. You're right. People should be doing that, they should be working up business plans and plotting expenses and planning for calamity, but they aren't. They aren't going in with the mentality of running a (short-term) small business. If they do make it through successfully, the closest thing anyone is like as not to see is 'it was a learning experience' and not any actual analysis. We've got a lot of shared wisdom about how to work a crowdfunding drive, but what seems like very little shared experiences about the behind the scenes stuff like what to look for in fulfillment partners, cost of art and layout, how other people have dealt with emergencies, or the amount of actual work involved and dismal prospects for profit. People are still going to go to crowdfunding because it's easy, but the more who hear stories of how the sausage is made, often enough to repeat it, the more likely someone's going to pipe up and ask about something the would-be developer may not have considered. We're not going to eliminate people biting off more than they can chew, but hopefully their numbers can be reduced to a degree.
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Dec 15, 2014 19:50
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Sefer posted:I thought she'd started doing RPGs again, anyway. I think she's flipping back and forth. Every time she tries to do something with the industry, people are lovely to her.
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Dec 15, 2014 19:52
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Loki_XLII posted:I think she's flipping back and forth. Every time she tries to do something with the industry, people are lovely to her. Between what? Writing and not writing?
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Dec 15, 2014 20:16
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Lord Frisk posted:Between what? Writing and not writing? Yeah, basically. Every time she writes or releases something she gets attacked, so I don't blabber her, whatever she decides.
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Dec 15, 2014 20:44
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Bucnasti posted:If you're expecting any real profit from a TG related Kickstarter, then you're in the wrong business. I treat Roleplaying game production as a hobby that (mostly) pays for itself. Right, I keep seeing this. And yet, I have no idea what this means. Does it mean that people are paying themselves $400 after selling 400 copies of their game? Because gently caress that. Does it mean that people are paying themselves $4000 for selling 400 copies? Because that sounds totally worth it, even if it comes out to below minimum wage when I do the math.
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Dec 16, 2014 00:30
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Jimbozig posted:Right, I keep seeing this. And yet, I have no idea what this means. Does it mean that people are paying themselves $400 after selling 400 copies of their game? Because gently caress that. Does it mean that people are paying themselves $4000 for selling 400 copies? Because that sounds totally worth it, even if it comes out to below minimum wage when I do the math. It means that people are paying themselves $0 after selling 400 copies of their game. Just getting Spirit of 77 to the Kickstarter cost nearly 5 grand up-front. We were able to reimburse ourselves from the Kickstarter, but other than that all the money we took in goes back into the project to deliver the pledges to backers. If all goes well we'll have enough money left over at the end to fund a trip to GenCon to further promote the game, if things don't go well, we'll be paying for that trip out of our own pockets. Despite what it might look like, Kickstarting TG games is not a magical money machine, unless you're selling thousands of copies, you are not going to make much if any profit. The only people who make a living at this: A) Catch lightning in a bottle B) Work way harder than they would doing a regular full time job C) Don't actually deliver anything and are just scamming poeple
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Dec 16, 2014 00:46
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Bucnasti posted:It means that people are paying themselves $0 after selling 400 copies of their game. Just getting Spirit of 77 to the Kickstarter cost nearly 5 grand up-front. We were able to reimburse ourselves from the Kickstarter, but other than that all the money we took in goes back into the project to deliver the pledges to backers. If all goes well we'll have enough money left over at the end to fund a trip to GenCon to further promote the game, if things don't go well, we'll be paying for that trip out of our own pockets. I don't want to make a living off of this. I already have a day job. I don't really care about being highly profitable. I like game design and I do it for fun. BUT... I don't like the business side of things. If what I'm hearing is that I should expect to do hours and hours of work (not game design, not playtesting - those are fun - but honest-to-god lovely form-filling tax-filing work) and do it unpaid, then... why would I? Why not just do the fun design stuff and put out free pdfs? Expecting to get paid for the dozens of hours of work a kickstarter entails is not the equivalent of wishing for a "magical money machine." Working for many hours to make a physical product and send it all over the world to people doesn't sound easy, and it sucks serious rear end that you went through all that and made zero goddamn dollars. I feel bad for you. Not in a condescending way, but in the same way I feel bad for artists who post about getting stiffed for their work.
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Dec 16, 2014 01:04
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To be clear, what I'm talking about here is producing a physical product, where expectations are high, margins are small, the market is overcrowded and shipping costs go up every year. If all you want to do is produce PDFs and put them out there on DTRPG or your own website then the amount of work required is vastly less, and the margins are much higher, but the market is even more crowded and you'll have to work harder at self promotion to get you product seen. If that's your goal then you don't even need kickstarter, the start-up costs are almost nothing. As for why you wold do all that work for no payout, I don't know, why do people participate in any hobby for no pay? As for why I made Spirit of 77... 1. It was a game that I wanted to exist. 2. I enjoy making and playing games. 3. I enjoy learning new skills. 4. I can use this project for my professional portfolio 5. I get to meet new people who share my interests. 6. I get satisfaction from people enjoying something I created. 7. I now have an intellectual property of my own that I can continue to build on and potentially expand into other media.
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Dec 16, 2014 01:37
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I guess because you want to put out a version of your game that has custom art (assuming you're not an artist) and professional editing and layout and maybe a nice hardcopy version that people can put on their bookshelves. I don't think it's unreasonable to want to also get some degree of recompense for the time such a project would involve, but it may not be realistic.
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Dec 16, 2014 01:38
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Do you think that if you had charged $5 more per book/pdf you would have lost many backers? You had nearly 850 backers and more than tripled your funding goal. See, for me, I'd be happier with 600 backers and $3000 in the bank (assuming $5 per backer profit) than 900 backers and $0. It's totally cool if your priorities are different, but for me if I were to make $3000 I would totally do it all over again and make expansion material, which is a good thing for people who like my game. Edit: vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv He's got to be just trolling people at this point. Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Dec 16, 2014 |
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Dec 16, 2014 01:55
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To absolutely nobody's surprise, GMS isn't going to make his release date of the 17th.quote:Greetings, folks --
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Dec 16, 2014 02:23
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Jimbozig posted:Do you think that if you had charged $5 more per book/pdf you would have lost many backers? You had nearly 850 backers and more than tripled your funding goal. I realize this is highly subjective, but I don't know that I would have backed at $30 vs $25. $20 is about as much as I'd like to gamble on a new designer, but his presentation was pro and looked fun enough that I was OK going $5 outside of my comfort level for something that looks both like a labor of love and likely to happen. But $30 puts it into fully-published Amazon discount hardcover territory. At $30 I'm wondering if it'll actually happen, maybe I should wait for the Amazon discount, or read a few reviews first. Now, you had to get $30 off me I'd probably jump on a $5 addon for a DM screen, book of character sheets, cool dice, or along those lines.
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Dec 16, 2014 03:32
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I haven't done a drive-by linking of an Evil Hat dude's blog post in a while, so here, have one that's germane to this particular conversation. Related, on Hick's Twitter recently he went through his earnings and said basically that this was the first year that Evil Hat turned a profit that was enough to actually pay out Evil Hat personnel (not writers/freelancers but like, him and the other people who run it), and that it would never have been possible without his wife's day job/benefits and ten+ years of hard work building his audience. (Also, though he didn't mention this, the licenses probably didn't hurt.)
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Dec 16, 2014 03:55
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Evil Mastermind posted:To absolutely nobody's surprise, GMS isn't going to make his release date of the 17th.
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Dec 16, 2014 04:12
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Oh my god someone actually gave him one thousand american dollars for that? And he still hasn't delivered anything? Makes me feel alot better about my own kickstarter troubles.
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Dec 16, 2014 04:17
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I wonder if Luikart is still an option for that reward.
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Dec 16, 2014 04:20
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Plague of Hats posted:
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Dec 16, 2014 04:24
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On the plus side, someone on RPGNet made the Photoshopped Ninjas in Cowboy Hats RPG, so at least some good came of this.
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Dec 16, 2014 04:28
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Evil Mastermind posted:On the plus side, someone on RPGNet made the Photoshopped Ninjas in Cowboy Hats RPG, so at least some good came of this. I have seen/played worse games.
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Dec 16, 2014 04:36
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Evil Mastermind posted:On the plus side, someone on RPGNet made the Photoshopped Ninjas in Cowboy Hats RPG, so at least some good came of this. quote:Keep Being Awesome (you have nothing to prove) 
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Dec 16, 2014 05:17
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moths posted:I realize this is highly subjective, but I don't know that I would have backed at $30 vs $25. $20 is about as much as I'd like to gamble on a new designer, but his presentation was pro and looked fun enough that I was OK going $5 outside of my comfort level for something that looks both like a labor of love and likely to happen. I had a number of people contact me and say they backed specifically because of the price, I also had a number of people from Canada and UK contact me and say they backed specifically because of the shipping break I offered. So yeah I think I would have lost enough backers at a higher price that it would have hurt me overall. I could be wrong, those are difficult numbers to predict, the optimum price might have been $27 or something, but $25 felt right to me, it was cheap enough for people to take a risk on, and still gave me enough margin to fund stretch goals. I'm firmly in the camp of charge as little as possible to gather as many fans as you can. A fan is worth a lot more to me in the long run than $5, because somebody who loves my product will not only be more likely to back future projects, but they will also evangelize my project to their friends, and now that Kickstarter has allowed me to cover my startup costs, any sales I make afterwards are actually profitable. That's why I will always prefer to get two sales at $10 than one sale at $20 or even $25. The other reason higher volumes are better than higher prices is because of economy of scale, it's substantially cheaper per unit to print 1000 copies of a book than it is to print 500 copies, and even cheaper to print 2000.
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Dec 16, 2014 05:46
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quote:Why not just do the fun design stuff and put out free pdfs? If this is anyone's plan, I'd suggest skipping the last part as it won't make much difference. For a while, I tried playing random Print & Play games off BoardGameGeek. There's thousands; there's individual "designers" with hundreds. They vary wildly in quality, "viability as a printable game", and level of self-promotion... but what they all have in common is that pretty much nobody is interested in them. The designers (probably half of the BGG posters have their "designer" badge thingee) beg for feedback, or try to swap playtesting, for a while, then give up. There's just very little way to sort the wheat from the tares (and so much of it is tares), that pretty much all potential players give up quickly. Games aren't like other content; most people aren't "desperate for more games but can't afford them" or something. And the cost to trying out someone's game isn't trivial; you have to print out some crud, get people together, explain rules, etc - so when you have a bad game it's not "free". Even if your goal is giving away a free PDF, I'd do so via a $1-backer-level KickStarter or something. It's publicity, it implies that you've put non-trivial effort in, and it's also a way of saying "This thing is good enough that someone might pay money for it".
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Dec 16, 2014 17:33
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Evil Mastermind posted:On the plus side, someone on RPGNet made the Photoshopped Ninjas in Cowboy Hats RPG, so at least some good came of this. Haha what the hell, someone turned my stupid post into a pdf. That's great.
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Dec 16, 2014 17:39
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If you're interested in the "making games and getting paid at least a little bit," check out the updates for Sine Nomine's Silent Legions. In update 2 or 3, Kevin Crawford goes through step-by-step his process after the Kickstarter is over, he goes over how he chooses and pays artists, why he uses DrivethruRPG for printing, etc. etc. etc. It's really fantastic stuff if you're interested in making RPGs and trying to sell them one day. EDIT: Update 4, in fact. It's not a backer-only update. Spincut fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Dec 16, 2014 |
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Dec 16, 2014 19:11
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Spincut posted:If you're interested in the "making games and getting paid at least a little bit," check out the updates for Sine Nomine's Silent Legions. In update 2 or 3, Kevin Crawford goes through step-by-step his process after the Kickstarter is over, he goes over how he chooses and pays artists, why he uses DrivethruRPG for printing, etc. etc. etc. It's really fantastic stuff if you're interested in making RPGs and trying to sell them one day. Thanks for that! That's a cool structure he's got going on there. I like it.
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Dec 16, 2014 19:52
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For what it's worth, on the 100 dungeons kickstarter we explicitly set out for all artists involved to make a buck and it worked pretty okay. Most of the kickstarter funds went towards paying me (the writer) and both of our fantastic artists, with more on top for the cover piece. We banked on doing that because subsequent sales probably weren't going to make that bank, and they haven't, although a good portion of the cover price on the book still goes to the artists as an ongoing thing. Make no mistake, though: you still do this in addition to making a regular living.
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Dec 16, 2014 20:29
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Speaking of that,  Final coupon thingies should be going out tonight.
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Dec 17, 2014 00:49
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So I haven't been tracking my pledged kickstarters very well, and I don't remember what the story was with 100DD. I pledged at the hardcover+pdf level ($15), I thought we'd gotten a coupon already, but I remember something about we could use it then or hold on to it for...I just don't remember what. I see I have a 100DD pdf in my set, so there's that. Sorry if it's a hassle, but could you or someone remind me what's the what here? 
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Dec 17, 2014 04:49
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Bad Munki posted:So I haven't been tracking my pledged kickstarters very well, and I don't remember what the story was with 100DD. I pledged at the hardcover+pdf level ($15), I thought we'd gotten a coupon already, but I remember something about we could use it then or hold on to it for...I just don't remember what. I see I have a 100DD pdf in my set, so there's that. Sorry if it's a hassle, but could you or someone remind me what's the what here? We released the 100 dungeons book as originally planned earlier this year (august-ish?). The one you just got or should be getting any time now is for either the combined book with stretch goals included (100 dungeons deluxe NG+), or just the bonus content in its own book (if you already bought the "core" book)
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Dec 17, 2014 06:23
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Ettin posted:I already ripped on this elsewhere, but: Arkham Fate Accelerated Companion for Lovecraft and Cthulhu So when this KS was announced last April I was a little skeptical. Six months after its promised release date, I just checked on these guys and boy was I right: • They're "working on the final integration of the Fate Core rules", aka still writing the game's rules six months after it was supposed to be out • "Expanded and reworked" mechanics include copy-pasting Numenera's gimmick • Creator doesn't seem to understand Fate Core, talks about replacing and removing things Fate Core already did (because the wiki page he's copying uses outdated Dresden Files-era rules) • Seriously, six months late. He's still better at greyscale Photoshop art and deadlines than Skarka though so there's that.
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Dec 17, 2014 14:42
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Ettin posted:He's still better at greyscale Photoshop art and deadlines than Skarka though so there's that. 
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Dec 17, 2014 15:08
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Ettin posted:So when this KS was announced last April I was a little skeptical. Six months after its promised release date, I just checked on these guys and boy was I right: quote:For starters, there is no Trouble Aspect. There is now the High Concept with a Twist. "I'm a researcher and I found a book" sure is a "twist!" Zereth posted:Is that last one a screenshot of the image editor he's using? Holy shitballs. EDIT: quote:Attack and Defend actions are combined into using contests with active (or passive) opposition as they are the same mechanically, with the players just being on the opposing sides of the conflict. quote:Conflicts are reworked to be more streamlined with Maneuvers, Full Defense and Special Moves explained more inline with invoking aspects and contests and set up as examples of how to leverage existing rules. Ahahahaha. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 15:14
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Just collected Miskatonic School For Girls: Holiday Break from the Post Office here in the UK. The base game is pretty simple and decision light, the expansion seems to add a little depth at least.
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Dec 17, 2014 16:36
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Received, and played, Pixel Glory (as well as MSfG:Holiday Break). Pixel Glory is a good basic framework, but it feels like the design space is woefully under-explored. Opponents feel very samey, and I'd have liked to see more variability in victory point value vs. in-game effects for defeating the monster. Definitely fun, but I'd recommend more than 2 players.
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Dec 17, 2014 17:27
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Stonehaven Miniatures has sent me my full-color full-size printouts of my Pop-Up Miniature Terrain Kit, which I think finishes out their kickstarter. All told I think they delivered exactly what they promised, in a reasonable amount of time, so I'm happy. I haven't had a chance to start cutting things out and gluing them together yet, so maybe I'll wind up unhappy, but the instructions seem to be well-written and clear at least, and the artwork is fun. I feel like the value was good. In addition to my high-quality printouts, I got PDFs of everything (in sepia and full color, in full size and a version intended to be printable on 8.5x11/A4), so if anything ever gets worn out or damaged or I want another copy of something, I can always make a run to Kinkos and get it. Nice. e. Estimated delivery was November 2014, so they were late by no more than a couple weeks at most. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 18:17
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Leperflesh posted:Stonehaven Miniatures has sent me my full-color full-size printouts of my Pop-Up Miniature Terrain Kit, which I think finishes out their kickstarter. All told I think they delivered exactly what they promised, in a reasonable amount of time, so I'm happy. I haven't had a chance to start cutting things out and gluing them together yet, so maybe I'll wind up unhappy, but the instructions seem to be well-written and clear at least, and the artwork is fun. I had a chance to meet the husband-wife team behind Stonehaven at Gencon earlier this year (it was their first convention) and I was tickled pink when they recognized my name from my order  The terrain demos they brought to Gencon looked really fun, but I skipped out on that kickstarter so I could pledge more for their half-orc miniature kickstarter. That kickstarter is still plugging away (May 2015), and anyone else who pledged for some greenskins should send them a message via KS to select your minis. No actual pledge manager, just private messaging.
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Dec 17, 2014 19:00
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Do you like zombies? Do you like miniatures? Boy howdy you'll love this zombie miniatures game being Kickstarter. One of a kind! It made $50k in an hour  Funforge is a legit company though so that probably contributed. I haven't looked at the game yet because I can't really get myself excited over the theme. I'm also fairly certain I'm going to hate this augmented reality trend in board games.
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Dec 17, 2014 20:02
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Dagon posted:Speaking of that, Those look quality. Who's the printer? edit; drivethru maybe? How did the inside pages turn out? Cheap Shot fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 21:26
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