Ballistic’s Report for Week Ending Feb 19

Gaming Ballistic Patreon

To help with ongoing funding of art and speed eventual time to delivery, Gaming Ballistic started a Patreon in January 2021. Here’s the weekly update on Patreon status.

• Membership status: 40 patrons and $262 per month
• Special Content: none this week
• The funds from the Patreon are 100% going to be reinvested in the business for advance work. Pre-visualization and early-stage art for projects prior to launch is going to be the most likely sink for the funds. Some of these can turn directly into products; others have a longer lead time.
• I lost a patron due to insufficient GURPS content, as I’ve been head down finishing up TFT work, and starting the new TFT Kickstarter. This is understandable, but regrettable. I need to find more balance in my output, and hopefully that can start next week…

New Releases

New projects available for retail sale.

• Gaming Ballistic Website: none this week.
• Gaming Ballistic on Warehouse 23: none this week
• DriveThruRPG: none this week. I’ll be taking a look at what’s there in PDF format and updating. Probably mid-Feb.

Product Announcements

• No announcements this week

Currently Fulfilling/Shipping

Project where hardcopies and PDFs are going out, or scheduled to do so.

• All domestic orders for More Perilous Journeys have been shipped. Many have started to arrive worldwide. All but 17 international packages, all of them to the EU, have shipped. Those are waiting for Delivery Duty Paid service to start up with Royal Mail, which is supposed to happen “any time now.”

At the Printer

The last stage of production. Following PDF finalization print orders get placed, then take anywhere from 10 days to several months to print and arrive at the shipping center, which is basically my house.

• Nothing currently at the printer

Crowdfunding

Announced or active campaigns.

TFT Character Collection (see splash page image leading off this post!)

The campaign launched at 10am on Friday (today!).

It is the most ambitious campaign I’ve yet run in terms of campaign structure. But I’m excited to see how it goes.

In Development

Writing and content creation for announced projects. Some of this may be cryptic.

• Art for Character Collections 2 has started to arrive; work on the first stretch goal, which is new art for CC1 cards and counters, has also started to arrive
• I discussed yet another item for TFT with David Pulver
• Work is beginning to pick up on the Nordlond Bestiary. So. Many. Monsters.
• I have spoken to Kevin about a few things regarding the intersection of one of my current projects and his own work, and we were pleased at the results

Friction

Bits of news and items that put a monkey in the wrench.

• Still need to move some of my titles to DriveThruRPG
• I published the 2020 analysis for Gaming Ballistic’s financial performance. It was grim. Ironically, due to being laid off in 2020 and getting a severance check, 2020 was actually the very best conditions under which Gaming Ballistic could have posted a significant loss. Lemonade? Yes.
• I did not do any real work on monsters for Nordlond, because I was so head-down with fulfillment for TFT, and my wife was called to Arizona for a week-long spontaneous business trip. Being a single dad with both kids at home bouncing off quarantined walls doth not make for extra time for work
• The couch we ordered that was already two months late could not be delivered because the delivery staff needed a path cleared to my basement back door. This is actually a reasonable request in calf-deep snow…but Macy’s should have let me know in advance. They showed up, declared it impossible, and left. With my couch. It took me 90 minutes to snow-blow my lawn (have you ever used a snowblower on a lawn? It sucks. Badly. It’s meant for hard surfaces.) This was fine…but had I known, I’d now be sitting on my couch. This does not impact Gaming Ballistic other than making the Chief Everything Officer grumpy.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

• Totally got MPJ shipped. Probably mailed out darn-near 400 lbs of books. Woot.
• Got great help from SJGames with feedback on Character Collections; the product page is noticeably superior thanks to their feedback. Also got great help from fans.
• I hate to make predictions, but I’ve got 242 people following the campaign so far (and a few who have said “I never follow campaigns but I intend to pledge”). If these folks all go digital only, we’ll be halfway to funding. If they come in higher, for softcover books, cards, and/or counters, we’ll fund very quickly. If they come in at the average pledge level for Four Perilous Journeys, which had a similar offering breadth in terms of “books and stuff” we’ll crush the funding goal on Day One…but still be well short of even the first stretch goal. This campaign is really all about backer count.