Delvers to Grow: 11th Kickstarter Successfully Closed

I’ve gotten all the books in motion, if not in backers’ hands quite yet. So it’s time for me to take a deep breath. This was my 11th Kickstarter. Funded, produced, and as I put darn near 120 lbs of books into the international parcel system this afternoon, delivered.

Soon, though, I shall pull together the post-mortem for the campaign. What went well, what didn’t go so well.

One thing that I can say didn’t go as well as I’d hoped is the number of total folks who came by to get the books didn’t really hit what I planned (500) or hoped (600), let alone what I dreamed (1,000,000! Kidding. But nigh-on 1,000 for this type of book set wouldn’t have been nutso).

It is, of course not too late. If it should move you, saying nice things about the books in the forums, on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, or any of the many RPG discussion forums, especially with real-world examples of how they helped, would be spiffy.

Here’s one example:

One of my Patreon subscribers took his preliminary copy of Delvers to his Favorite Local Game Store. He asked if he could run a walk-up game. Of GURPS. (Ahem: let me say that again. He ran a walk-up game of a Powered by GURPS product). Several new-to-GURPS and a few more new-to-Roleplaying joined the game, were playing in 30-60 minutes, and he has since been asked back to run a weekly game. The FLGS has purchased several more copies of the DFRPG boxed set. One of the players actually backed this Kickstarter.

That game is still ongoing.

Showing off the books and pointing out how books lead to players and players lead to sales for your local game stores is phenomenal. Retail orders from Gaming Ballistic (using my handy product catalog) are phenomenally valuable. The difference between success and playing the margins for Gaming Ballistic is probably one or two retail level orders per week. (Note that’s only 50-100 orders per year, and my incomplete mailing list of stores is 1200 strong or more).

As I’ve said before: there’s nothing wrong with my business model that 1,500 backer/customers (or 300 game stores!) wouldn’t fix right up. Most of that is me putting on my marketing hat. But some of it is you, spreading the word.

Thanks to all for coming along this journey with me for Delvers to Grow. I hope it helps you game more, and faster.

Until the next time: Keep up that looting practice!