Ballistic’s Report for Week Ending Oct 29

October continues to be development month, and I made substantial progress along several pathways here. Including a preliminary and very temporary layout for the Nordlond Bestiary.

As goes GURPS and SJGames, as goes Gaming Ballistic, as 90% of my product lines are either Powered by GURPS or for The Fantasy Trip. So I’m thrilled to see that the Girl Genius RPG is over $125,000 in funding with over 2,100 backers as I write this. That’s phenomenal by any metric. Given the BiggerCake metrics, they’re seeing about $4K and 65 more backers per day during this “doldrums” period. So we’re probably looking at another $30K and 500 more people (!!) even before the 48-hour spike at the end. This thing made $90K or so in the first three days, so the last spike could be impressive. It would not shock me to see a $200,000 kickstarter and two waves of printing required, because what looks like a 2,500 copy initial print run may be oversold, even not considering pandemic-era paper shortages.

In short, this is great news for GURPS, though hold your breath as the printing and shipping of the bulk orders gets going, because it’s a total crap-shoot in terms of timing, and while the publishers are held to the fire on it, there’s about nothing we can do to make it better.

Oh: FnordCon4, digital convention, is Nov 5-7. I’ll be there. I think at least one of my Patreon subscribers might intend to run some Delvers to Grow stuff, too.

OK, back to Gaming Ballistic stuff:

• The next Nordlond Actual Play by GMShadow has dropped. Listen to Ep 2 here.
• I got a sort-of revision from Marshall on the systemless Inns and Taverns, mostly focused on formatting rather than content. There were a few tweaks, but if the edits come back with the formats that he’s demonstrated, I breathe a lot easier about the on-ramp to successful layout.
• The Bestiary made very substantial progress this week along three fronts
  • The text got a lot of work. So much work that now we’re into the “this is overwritten and must be tightened” stage.
  • The spreadsheet that turns an impossible layout challenge into something that doesn’t cause horror and despair is up and being edited by myself and some of my Patreon Subscribers. Mostly this is copy/paste from the main draft. I can’t overstate the importance of the spreadsheet to my workflow, as it is much less error-prone than the “copy the master layout, replace everything that needs changing, hope you remember it all” method I’ve used on prior monster and NPC entries in other books.
  • I am likely within striking distance of setting up a temporary Kickstarter page. More on that later, but the point of it is to get folks signing up to “notify me when this goes live.”
• Still gearing up for another Backerkit-only experiment, this one directed at the United Kingdom and ONLY the UK. I may do this in early 2022 instead of right now, but we’ll see … the Tower of the Moon project really was a thorough revamp of my Backerkit sales      presence – new or updated photos, pricing, text, etc. So setting up a UK-only store makes some sense here.

That’s where we stand, and I hope that heading into the Halloween weekend, a lot gets done.

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: 55 patrons and $370 per month.
• Special Content: A preliminary GCA5 data file was uploaded to the site, thanks to above-and-beyond work by Armin, the GCA creator. Also, a preliminary PDF with a lot yet to do, but a lot yet done, was shared on the Patreon Discord.
• I also expect a substantially revised PDF and word file to be ready before Sunday, and that will go out as a Patreon attachment as well.
• Once the spreadsheet happens, sample monsters will be released to the Patrons, hopefully to be tested in combat and other non-violent encounters so that stats and traits can be tweaked as needed.

Currently Manufacturing/Fulfilling/Shipping

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

• Nothing new this period. GB is current with fulfillment and shipping.

Crowdfunding and Product Launches

· The Girl Genius RPG is on fire on Kickstarter. The PDF is available there and also for immediate download on Warehouse 23.

Product Announcements

The full Product Catalog got revised to account for the ready availability of Delvers to Grow.

Tower of the Moon is now on the GB web store in print and PDF . It got a nice review by James Eisert last week.

In Development

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

• Inns and Taverns, by Marshall LaPira. Systemless. First draft submitted, feedback returned, formatting discussion (way more important than it sounds) on Oct 25.
• Two Warring Houses, by Douglas Cole. Systemless. Outline stage and writing, but on hold as I blitzkrieg the Bestiary. Still aiming for at least one, if not more, of these systemless settlement books to appear at the same time as Inns and Taverns.
• Nordlondr Bestiary, Volume 1 by Douglas Cole. Dungeon Fantasy RPG. Outline stage and writing.
• Other ready-to-go support for systemless and the DFRPG. I’ve got several ideas on this one, but they simply MUST wait until I have Bestiary 1 closer to ready so they can go towards launch before the year is up.

Friction

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

• All things considered, this last week went pretty well.
• The art for the Bestiary is scary to think about. There are currently 62 monsters including variants like badger vs giant badger, and if each of them got their own illustration, we’re looking at an illustration density of four images for every three pages. That turns the usual pricing calculation on its ear, since between box text and      natural flow, you’re usually dealing with a substantial illustration every three pages, and maybe some spot art on every spread. That means that 80% of the development budget goes to art, an increase of about 1.5 over the usual estimate.
• I could probably reduce that expense by extensive use of digitally manipulating public domain images of (say) animals to make them look painted (I’ve done this and seen it done before to good effect), as well as taking stock-art images for some of the monsters (many are either classics from mythology or imports from That Other Game with entirely new fluff text, so stock art exists for many anyway). I’m not wild about that, because I really want to see new visualizations. But a better strategy might be to look at what is out there already for stock art, price the funding of the book like that, and then use further stretch goals past “here’s the big book” to improve on the art. I have to look      seriously at that and will do so ASAP.
• I really want this book. I want it hardcover. I want it 240 pages. I want a sewn binding, great paper, and I want it to drip with custom illustrations that really inspire players and GMs. That book probably requires between $60,000 and $75,000 just to get done. Girl      Genius proves it can be done with the right level of interest. But my products have never gathered more than 600 backers to date…so my stress  level is really high on this one, thus the phased approach. But part of me really just wants to throw caution to the wind and go big. I can’t afford that—it’s what I did on Dragon Heresy and I lost $40,000 on that      project—but oh, to win the lottery or pick up 1,500 backer on this would be just spiffy.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

• I got a lot done, and much of it yesterday.
• Major progress on the spreadsheet, which is critical for data merge layout of a file with dozens to hundreds of moving parts on every page. So easy to make mistakes.
• The primary document is getting tighter all the time. I got the introduction done yesterday, and for the longest time it had consisted of “Monsters are good, blah blah blah.” So expanding it to include a bit of background to understand the creatures, how to move them to other campaigns, and the use of the Bestiary to import adventures from      That Other Game? Really good.
• Some preview reveals about the upcoming Bestiary volume      1
  • I did a lot of thinking on pricing and goals. A lot.
  • I intend to have the goals be dollar-based, not backer-count based this time, because the goal is to pay for as large a full-color book as crowdfunding will support.
  • There will be no physical goods offered in the Kickstarter phase, but money can (and hopefully will!) be added as add-ons for physical books.
  • The PDF of the Bestiary Volume 1 will start at $20 and 48 pages, and as stretch goals are achieved will grow, at no change in price. The physical book will be an add-on, and the pricing of that is going to be determined by how many stretch goals are unlocked. The amount of money for that “…and the physical book” add-on will be published right there on the Kickstarter. Backers will effectively vote with their dollars how big the book gets.
  • The “stretch goals” are currently planned to be simple and straightforward: Every $X will unlock Y more pages.
  • International shipping is still going to be a concern. This isn’t a “no,” but it’s a “gulp.” But the good thing about only digital offerings during the primary campaign is that no promises are made until things are more settled. Also, Delvers to Grow taught me a few things here, so the campaign will benefit from that learning.

Happy Halloween!