So, we’re at Day 14 and 93% funded on Four Perilous Journeys: New Adventures for The Fantasy Trip. Nordvorn, my best-to-date Kickstarter took 20 days to get to this point. So while I’d dearly love to have that extra 7% right the heck now, I must force myself to realize that we’re on a fairly typical trajectory for a Kickstarter.

Editing Status

There was a round of playtesting and some further commentary on Ironskull Castle. Caught a few typos and inconsistencies, and two logical “WTF?” moments. They’ve been fixed. Through Memorial Day, I’ll be editing the manuscripts for content and flow; preliminary layouts of the edited manuscripts should be in place, therefore, by the end of Monday. That will allow me to get playtest copies out to the Master and Commander backers for the other three adventures.

Die-cut Tokens

I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at die-cut tokens and cards. I can report:

• I’ve found a way to make them.
• The art is still going to be the expensive part; this not a surprise.
• The die-cut tokens will be in full color; black and white versions of the tokens will appear as “print them yourself” on the last page of each book.

I’ve contracted with one of my artists to make a trial sheet. He should be getting back to me with 42 sketches based on the characters in Ironskull Castle sometime today or tomorrow. At that point, I’ll place an order for a prototype and have it express-shipped to me.

Once I have the prototype in hand, I’ll put the add-on officially in the campaign. They’ll be $10 per sheet, and you’ll be able to choose which sheets you want ad-hoc in the Backerkit cart phase of the project.

If you are so confident that you’ll be getting tokens, you can certainly up your pledge now (if for some reason it all falls apart, you can reduce your pledge before the end of the campaign) which would help us fund. If 10% of current backers each go in for token sheets, we fund.

Oh, and for mini-stretch-goals: If I can 100 or more of any one sheet, I’ll upgrade the board from 1.6mm to 2.5mm at no extra cost for that sheet. Another very important note: This is a THING, not a BOOK, and will follow a different logistics train than the books. This means international shipping, customs, and taxes could be egregiously high, and I won’t know that until the end. Please plan accordingly.

NPC and Monster Cards

I’m working on these as well. I have had excellent help from SJG on this, and they’ve really gone above and beyond to make this happen. I can’t report anything yet, but I can say anything produced will be identical in form factor to existing cards of similar function. No promises on making “a card for each token” decks yet, though I’d very much like to do that . . . so I’m working on it. If things go to plan and I’m ready with “all but the art” drafts of all four adventures by Monday (and doubly so if we’ve funded by then), this will get most of my attention.

Current and Latent Backers

We’re holding steady at 372 “latent” backers, who are following but not yet pledged. That’s a potential for as much as $30,000 or so: enough to get us through all of the announced Decks of Destiny stretch goals and within easy striking distance of an offset print run.

I’m getting the books re-quoted using the same printer in the EU I’m using for my Dungeon Fantasy RPG projects; maybe that offset print run can come down if it’s a good price.

The key for us now is two-fold:

• Entice those following the project to jump in. We need only 27 new backers to fund, if they come in at the current average pledge
• Get the word out to others. That’s Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, MeWe, gaming forums, and nice things and reminders on the existing TFT comment lists. A word from a backer is worth way, way more than what always feels like a continual barrage of spam from the creator.

The halfway point for Four Perilous Journeys is Thursday. Let’s see if we can fund by then!