Ballistic’s Report for Week Ending July 9

Owing to the July 4 holiday and attendant travel, this update covers June 26 through July 9. These last two weeks were more and more production, but very productive production. So a lot of “to-dos” have moved “to-done.”

• Character Collections international finally passed through customs, shipped, and are starting to arrive. I got hit with extraordinary storage fees because the paperwork was not 100% what they wanted to see. Overall, the 25 orders cost to produce, certify, and ship meant they actually lost money.
• Delvers to Grow’s core book has been sent to the printer
• Crypt of Krysuvik, Strong Delvers, and Fast Delvers have all been completed and distributed to backers. Crypt and Strong are getting an errata pass and will be re-released in updated format today. Then off to the printer for those two.
• Smart Delvers is next up and should be complete by the middle of next week at the latest.
• The Omnibus edition is going to require some creative edit-fu to shrink to a more-desirable 96 pages instead of the “easy” 100 it wants to come in at.
• All of the More Perilous Journeys reships have gone out! Yay! Some have ever started to arrive.
• Finally: The GURPS 2021 PDF Challenge is up and running. It’s already over $15,000 and has unlocked half of the dozen PDFs that may be available. For $3. One of those is mine! GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Encounters 4: Ring Fort. I had a ton of fun writing it, and the map is freakin’ gorgeous.

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: Mostly drafts and updates for the Delvers project.

Lost a few patrons this month. One due to lack of diversity in my free content, the other just had to belt-tighten. The next six months should be more interesting as I try and generate, on the average, one new small release per month.

Currently Manufacturing/Fulfilling/Shipping

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

• All MPJ and Character Collections are out the door
• Delvers to Grow: Core Book (aka Build-a-Bjorn) is at the printer! ETA July 21.

Crowdfunding

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

• Backerkit surveys 95% complete, orders locked, and cards charged
• Initial PDF distribution has begun and four of the five books are in backers’ hands in at least prelim PDF format.

Product Announcements

The full Product Catalog got revised a bit. I also developed an order form, which is available upon request and was sent to a lot of retailers. Alas, no orders yet.

In Development

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

• I’m laser-focused on Delvers…but that’s coming to an end in terms of development work.
• I’m going to sit down this afternoon and come up with a plan. I’m going to challenge myself to release six to twelve new products in the next six months.
• One or two of those has to be a start on the Nordlond Bestiary.
• I have a few other ideas, perhaps some systemless stuff. The Ring Fort entry was so much fun to write I kind of want to do more of those.

Friction

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

• I am still waiting on the formal CE Mark certificate of conformity from STC. It has now been a month to get me what they should have provided right away.
• International shipping of stuff: The Final Tale of Woe
  • 25 orders, collected $800 in shipping and $3600 in top-line revenue
  • Paid manufacturing costs, license fees, Kickstarter and Backerkit fees out of that
  • Shipping was $1,400, so 75% more expensive than I thought, and I thought I was being cautious to the point of “that’s too much.” Nope. That includes several hundred euros in VAT, 200 euros in “this sat on the tarmac so suck it”
  • The real killer was you can’t import without a CE Mark anymore, and that cost me $1,000 EACH for the cards and counter packs. That was the big kicker.
  • Note that the EU wants you to do CE on every batch of product. If they won’t accept a prior cert of conformity for a new batch…that puts paid to any more “stuff” to not-the-USA.
  • Books don’t require CE Mark etc, but they’re still ridiculous to get from here to there. I need a short-run printer like Mixam in the EU. Anybody know one?

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

• There was something, but I can’t say
• I got a nice boost in public relations during the SJGames Live show as Hunter and Sean both said nice things about me.