Well. I got ship approval before I finished typing the “I need to get ship approval” part of this update. That’s fantastic, and kudos to Alain for being so prompt!

I have sent out the 48-hour warning that says I intend to lock orders and charge cards for those who have filled out their surveys. That’s 490 out of 550 or so people, plus four pre-orders. When I charge cards, I will also hit “go” on the distribution, and all PDFs ordered as part of the campaign get delivered to inboxes. The lock order warning is 48 hours.

So things are looking quite good for “all PDFs in hand this Saturday.”

Might there be anything left? In fact, there is. I am pondering some sort of identification label for the counters, something easy to read, and perhaps indicative of what book to look in. I have a few ideas. I also need to double-dog make sure ISBNs and page counts and prices are right on both print and PDF versions of the manuscript.

That’s pretty much it, though.

Miss the campaign? No problem: Pre-Orders are open!

Next Steps

So, what’s next?

Really, at this point it’s looking at the probable order counts and getting the bits into manufacturing.

Books: Once the PDFs go out, I’ll point you guys to the errata page (oh, hey…that’s a pointer too!) for gaming ballistic and you guys can locate any of my mistakes. There are some things that are NOT mistakes, like “this character is not a mega-optimized combat monster.” Another “not-a-mistake” will be experienced characters of 35 points or more having more Talents and Spells than the IQ limit. Mistakes are things like “this character doesn’t have the IQ to cast this spell, or the DX to have this talent.” Or the point costs (35-point character has 34 points in ST, DX, and IQ). Or formatting errors or typos.

Boxes: The counter-sheet boxes have been submitted for proofing from the manufacturer. There’s a bit of a hiccup at the moment with some image resolutions, but that “should be” easy to fix.

Counters: Looks like we’ve broken the 100 units mark for the new sheets. This is great news, as it keeps the costs where they were budgeted to be. I have some analysis to do to see if these make sense to pack in groups…I suspect that they will be best done as “CC2, 3, 4 sheets together” and of course the sheets from MPJ and 5PJ are bundled anyway. Once I do that, I can order these right away.

Cards: The manufacturing of the cards is going to wait until the PDF distribution is complete and any errata generated. My process for cards takes an RTF file created from the book and then does parsing mojo to ensure the words and numbers are exactly the same, to ensure fidelity. Then I’ll get the stuff made. I have done the analysis of these…and with very few exceptions that can be handled as exceptions, most folks either bought ALL the MPJ cards, or ALL the CC1-4 cards. So I’m looking into dedicated packaging for these as sets. This will be a 5×7″ box, roughly 1.5″ tall, that will hold 200 cards. I need talk to my vendor about this, but that’s a standard box for them, so if it’ll work, it will make life easier for the pick and pack part of the discussion.

PDFs: These are the easiest. I’ve sent out the 48-hour notice. At noon on Saturday, all orders will lock. Shortly thereafter, I’ll charge cards. As soon as the cards clear (on an individual basis), the PDFs will be emailed to you by Backerkit.

 

International Orders

As of this moment, there are roughly two dozen folks from not-the-USA who have answered the survey and indicated they want physical goods.

I’m pleased to report that although there are not many orders, they are of sufficient quantity that I won’t lose money getting them tested for Canadian and European standards (the Euro version of that is EN71). This is good for all of us. I will report back on the overall profitability of the segment when the campaign is over and all costs are known. My goal is still to serve the international market, and will continue to strive to do so efficiently. I have a few ideas on this for later.

However, the low number of orders means that what I’ll do here is collect all of the components here in the US and then send One Big Box of “you need this to ship” physical goods from the US to the UK, and then my fulfillment company will deal with it from there (books for not-the-USA still print in the UK; that’s too easy to do it any other way). Might cause some delays.

Pre-Orders

I will leave the pre-order store open for the next few weeks as proofing is completed and you guys look over the material. This would be a good time to drop by your FLGS and point out the retail pre-order level for TFT support. Placing the pre-order now means that the materials – books only – will probably arrive within 6-8 weeks of the order. Possibly less. Those big book orders really help Gaming Ballistic, and they help TFT by putting 14 pieces of support material next to the box sets and hardcovers (and your FLGS has boxed sets and hardcovers…right?). Nothing says “buy me” like a well-supported line.

Even so…individuals can play too, and I’ll be taking orders right up to the  point where I say “I want X number of decks, counter sheets, and books.” That’s probably 10-14 days after the PDFs go out. So…April 12 or so.

Parting Shot

The campaign isn’t over until all of you guys have all of your stuff. But the majority of the work is done. All the art is in and the books have ship approval, which means the creative part – frankly, the hard part – of the project is over. Now it’s very “block and tackle” manufacturing and fulfillment stuff.

I’ll keep you guys informed of the status as we get closer to closing out new orders, and of any hiccups that we face. The next set of possible hiccups is when we actually send bits for testing. These are basically printed goods, so I expect them all to pass just fine…but you do the test in case things are not just fine.

And now…I turn my creative attention to my next campaign:

Stay tuned. Some of the characters from CC1-4 are likely to show up in this format too. Who knows…maybe CC5 and CC6 show up as a Powered by GURPS product first?