Ballistic’s Report for the Week of March 12

This week was gigantically busy, one way or another. The TFT Character Collections kickstarter ended, a big product announcement dropped, and contracts got signed. Passive voice was used.

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: 41 patrons and $266 per month
• Special Content: CC4 Cover reveal, though that wasn’t exclusive. Lots of discussion and details on the GB Patreon Discord about the guts of Delvers to Grow.

Currently Fulfilling/Shipping

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

• All packages for More Perilous Journeys have been mailed out worldwide. All US packages have been delivered, even the outstanding one that never got a Delivery sign-in.

Crowdfunding

TFT Character Collection (Launched Friday Feb 19; Closed on Tusday, March 9 at 9pm Central)

• Campaign funded in the first day, in nine hours
• Campaign closed with 557 backers. This is the third-highest backer count to date.
• The campaign has thus far raised $28,918. I say “thus far” because the pledge histogram is unusually weighted towards PDF rewards. It’s possible that the campaign grows by quite a bit.
• The backer-count driven pledge goals were of mixed success for me. On the one hand, mission accomplished and doing it this way ensures that the campaign shall rapidly be fulfilled. While it is too soon to say for sure, the odds are it will be profitable, which is a requirement for a business that is a business rather than a hobby.
• On the other hand, next time, the pledge goals for print and PDF will be listed from the outset. That was needlessly confusing and, it turns out, there’s very limited risk from letting books grow along with PDF rewards as long as certain basic conditions are met, and TFT meets many, if not most of them.

Product Announcements

• The next Dungeon Fantasy RPG project for Gaming Ballistic has a title and a cover. Presenting Delvers to Grow.

  

• Delvers to Grow hits two missions
  • Support for games from as low as about 40 points to about 200 points. More is possible
  • Concept-to-Table in 5-10 minutes, to allow newcomers to GMing and playing the DFRPG to get to the fun part FAST
  • The manuscript is in development, and we’re hoping for a late April early May crowdfunding…but that’s a target not a commitment, yet.

In Development

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

• Art for CC1, 2, 3 is all in place. Those books need a preliminary look-over, but they’re basically done.
• CC4 Wizards is more than half finished. The cover is done.
• Kevin’s new project was announced!
• SJGames and Gaming Ballistic formalized the “Thegns” product line, the first book of which is Delvers to Grow. It includes a fairly broad scope of allowed support materials, without having to contract each one. This reduces friction in the product development chain. Of notable importance is the green-lighting of adventure support for Delvers to Grow.

Friction

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

• I am still working finding a testing lab for EN71 certification of the Chinese-made 1″ square counters for the Character collections project. I hope to get this so that I can offer these counters worldwide instead of only in the USA.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

• The custom die for the Character Collection cards is in house and in good shape
• The cards have repeatedly undergone prior EN71 testing and the inks and materials are REACH certified. This means they can be CE marked and there should be no issues with import and distribution. If there are questions, spare packs are being held back for re-testing/confirmatory certification. So this is excellent news.