This week’s report was delayed by Memorial Day weekend, as I journeyed up north with my family to a lovely lake that I call The Land that Bandwidth Forgot. As a result, this update may be terse.

Delvers to Grow funded, ended, and wound up with 451 backers (of which 446 have confirmed payments) and just over $31,000 in funding. This was an excellent average pledge, but the low backer count has a significant impact on future projects, and not for the better.
I have received all of the materials I need to complete the Character Collections shipments, including a reprint of Dragon Hunt! and all of the missing and damaged counters. I’ll be boxing up the remaining USA and the Canadian shipments and sending them out ideally tomorrow. I’m waiting for three bids from some international shipping vendors, one of which looks really “good,” so much as any such can be good.
The re-ships (grumble grumble gripe) for the More Perilous Journeys packages that did not arrive from Kixto and were not tracked (never again) will follow the same pathway as the International Character collections, and I’ll hopefully take care of everything this coming week.
I am in the final stages of completing my entry for the 2021 PDF Challenge.

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: 46 patrons and $319 per month.
Special Content: Lots of updates to Delvers to Grow, including a version that is complete but for hyperlinks, indexing, the title page credits, and two pieces of art.

Currently Manufacturing/Fulfilling/Shipping

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

I received the full certs for both cards and counters for CE Mark and the US and Canadian standard testing. That was extremely painful in all respects.
Character Collections is now staged for completion. I actually made a verbal agreement for the fulfillment vector about ten minutes ago, so these should be aimed to start moving in the coming days.
More Perilous Journeys has about seven non-deliveries that vanished into the Covid-“asssisted” aether. Resending those in the same batch as above.

Crowdfunding

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

CE Mark resolved. Shipping vector resolved. All materials in hand for fulfillment—was missing some stock due to damage and going out of print on Dragon Hunt—and will commence finalizing that this coming week.

Delvers to Grow (Launched Friday May 7 at 10am Central Time)

The campaign completed at 451 backers and $31,662, though $556 of that are still erroring out.
I won’t beat around the bush: 420-450 backers on my last two projects is simply not enough to sustain the Dungeon Fantasy RPG product line through some of the more ambitious books I had planned.
The project should still wind up being profitable, though I will likely not achieve my income goals for the period of May-July based on current estimates. I will not, however, be far behind, so it’s not a disaster.

Product Announcements

No new uploads this week.

In Development

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

The main Delvers book is edited, laid out, has all the art but two pieces due June 12, and now comes some grunt-work in getting title page, hyperlinks, and ToC/Index in place.
I’m editing Krysuvik. The background settlement of Skalavik is finished, we resolved some map questions, and I’m into the “dungeon” parts. I ran into a snag that I know how to resolve on one, and hopefully that won’t repeat.
The covers for the three example books are in work with Ksenia. I will need to commission a cover for Krysuvik and I’ll probably tap another artist for that, if only because we need to parallel process some of these.

Media List

I’m going to leave the same list up this week as last, because it hasn’t really changed. It’s still a great place to find out more about Delvers to Grow and Gaming Ballistic’s activities.

Character Build Example Update

If you’re going to reshare one post on Delvers to Grow, let it be this one:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gamingballistic/delvers-to-grow-dungeon-fantasy-rpg-powered-by-gurps/posts/3192914

Podcasts and Interviews

SJGames Live!: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1021421988 (video)
Pocket Jacks Comics: https://youtu.be/T4FXNK7nRIg (video)
Roleplay Rescue: https://anchor.fm/rpgrescue/episodes/Delvers-To-Grow-With-Doug-Cole-Bonus-e10moob (audio)
RollMongers/Attack of Opportunity: https://youtu.be/2RJlEp1TC-8 (video)
Gathering of Ages: https://share.transistor.fm/s/cc7aa239
Michael Bonet: https://ninjavspirates.libsyn.com/who-what-why-s28e01-delvers-to-grow-with-doug-cole
GMShadow
Nerdarchy: https://youtu.be/rWIwtxJ_5Bs
Goddammit Zach!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEhnAUneE-E

Forum Threads

Reddit (r/rpg): https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/n4yw8m/delvers_to_grow_fast_flexible_sub250point/
Reddit (r/gurps): https://www.reddit.com/r/gurps/comments/n4uyij/delvers_to_grow_fast_flexible_sub250point/
ENWorld: https://www.enworld.org/threads/delvers-to-grow-fast-character-building-for-dungeon-fantasy-rpg-and-gurps-df.680036/
SJGames GURPS Forum: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=173201
SJGames Dungeon Fantasy RPG Forum: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=173229
RPG.net: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/how-to-get-a-complete-rules-legal-dungeon-fantasy-roleplaying-game-character-in-20-minutes-or-less.881303/

Twitter and FB Threads

The Hard Sell on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GMingBallistic/status/1392873432094740484
Facebook/Gaming Ballistic: https://www.facebook.com/GamingBallistic/posts/960399034729439

Friction

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

The Bestiary project has to be re-thought. The “confirmed” market for those willing to buy Dungeon Fantasy RPG stuff from Gaming Ballistic is on the order of 420-600 people, and that has trended solidly to “fewer than 500” recently. I cannot make a 256-page hardback on that number of people – the art costs alone run more than the full retail price of such a book.
I have discussed reaction plans with SJGames and we’ve come to an agreement on what to do with the Bestiary. I really had hoped to bring a giant hardback to the market on this. Maybe a stretch goal.
Mission X is also not something that is likely to fly on 500 backers. So I’ll have to think about adjusting there too.
I sent notes out to well over 1,000 retailers about my wares and received something like three responses. I know what I need to do here, and why, so while the above was disappointing, it was not surprising. I have solid next steps planned.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

Overall, these last three weeks were a bucket of cold water on my dreams for Gaming Ballistic. But that can be refreshing as well as shocking, so I shall plan accordingly and soldier on. The year isn’t over until it’s over, and in the end, I’m still making games under my own command, which is to the good.
Despite the irksome lack of customer growth, I still have projects remaining that are self-contained and I think will do fine. Some of these will not go the Kickstarter route, but rather some other vector.
I had what I think is a really good idea to grow market demand via alternate means, but I need to think about how best to engage, if at all.