Ballistic’s Report for Week Ending June 11

On time this week! The past seven days saw the KS money come in to my account and major progress finalizing the Delvers to Grow project.

• The Character Collections international orders arrived at customs in Europe, and we’re getting a bit of flak about some of the CE certification. So I’m glad I did it, but there are still details that are getting things held up. Hopefully resolve in a few hours.
• Crypt of Krysuvik is now officially 40 pages, and while there’s still more work to do, it’s moving forward handily. Maps are nearly done. Art is progressing. Only have a few things left to edit and revise.
• The last item of pending business for Delvers are the character books. Those are still being worked, but the art for the three covers is in progress; the art informs the work, so having those in hand should help move things.
• Backerkit is so very painful. Everything that would be sensible to automate is manual.

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: 48 patrons and $328 per month.
• Special Content: Drafts and progress on Crypt and Delvers. Plus the Dragon Heresy “Berserker” combat rules booklet because it came up in conversation on the Discord channel.

Currently Manufacturing/Fulfilling/Shipping

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

• Character Collections boxes working their way through EU customs.

Crowdfunding

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

No further news other than customs.

UPS to Canada is a nightmare. The hidden customs brokerage fees they charge are onerous and hidden. I won’t be using them again, which makes the future up-front costs look higher, but net to the customer will actually be lower.

Delvers to Grow (Launched Friday May 7 at 10am Central Time, Ended May 25 at 9pm Central)

• The campaign funds came in, at the predicte 91.4% of total funds (3.5% transaction fee and 5% Kickstarter fee).
• Now building the backerkit surveys. International shipping is still a nightmare, so be prepared even with books.
• Delvers “build-a-Bjorn” book is basically done. Crypt of Krysuvik is coming in at 40 pages instead of the originally promised 24…a nice meaty book. The three character example books are getting bonus content as well. Where appropriate, there will be spell lists, disad modules, and other stuff to make each character come alive.

Product Announcements

No new uploads this week. Fixin’ to upload Character Collections 2, 3, 4 to DriveThru next week.

In Development

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

• The hard focus is finishing what I have to do on my end for the DtG project. I’ve got plenty of work on my plate with finalizing the main book and working through Krysuvik.
• Once I get Backerkit going (early next week I hope) we’ll be able to start moving into a new distribution mode for existing books. For some (like Rosgarth and Forest’s End) that means doing a bit of scrubbing where errata are concerned. The rest is just “mail comp copies to folks via DriveThru.”

Friction

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

• Despite having CE testing done on the cards, the books did not fly through customs. They should have, but I know what I’m missing and have requested it. I got a formal CE letter from China, but only the test results from the USA; the customs folks want the formal CE declaration even though the tests passed are right there on the page. I hope to see that Declaration of Conformity today…but one never knows.

• Starting to get antsy to receive the DtG example manuscripts. They should be relatively fast layout work…but even so I can’t start until I have them.
• Backerkit setup is such a pain. International shipping profiles, weird importing of add-ons, manual processes that are one-at-a-time rather than a checkbox grid, non-permanence of items and add-ons from campaign to campaign. Gah. I understand why it was built the way it was – people including me use crowdfunding differently than I think folks conceived it way back when…but it’s been that way for years now. If someone can step up and make this stuff a non-problem, they’re going to get my business fast.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

• I got the deposit from the DtG Kickstarter and paid the household for May and June. I won’t be ahead of the game, but I’m not behind. Being on target in this business is no small thing.
• The art that’s coming in for Krysuvik is happy-making. I think it’s going to turn out well.
• Having a few ideas for what to do in the next six months once Delvers is finalized in all respects. Bestiary of course. But what else? I have an idea, and hopefully it will help things along.