This week was launch week for the Bestiary, and true to my word, we went live yesterday. As I type this, the Nordlond Bestiary and Enemies Book sits at just over $20,000 raised, with $14,000 more to go. So we had a great first day, but are still looking at picking up nearly 200 backers to fund, and 650 more to hit all the stretch goals.

Is this doable? It really ought to be. My own projects have varied between 420 and 600 backers for Dungeon Fantasy RPG projects; SJGames’ from a low of about 550 (DF Companion 2) to a high of 1,600 (the Boxed Set), with the Monsters 2 book sitting at over 1,000. The Nordlond Bestiary is “like Monsters, but more so.” I’m hopeful.

• What went on this week?
  • Launch day. Obviously
  • I was on Talking Crit and SJGames Live. Talking Crit touched on the Bestiary but is always a wide-ranging chat; SJGames Live focused on DFRPG and the Bestiary
  • I got more final art from the team, and did some pre-visualization
  • I got an outstanding quote from my card printer here in MN for 120-card decks in a custom box.
  • I reviewed one of the Inns and Taverns from Marshall, gave feedback, and suggested after a revision we do some Peer Review through my Patreon

Now that the project has launched, it’s “how quickly can I get the first pack of 128 creatures done, so that when we fund, I’m working stretch goals, not playing catch-up.”

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: 56 patrons and $379 per month.
• Special Content: The patrons got early peeks on everything, including the total spreadsheet of all planned monsters.

No additional patrons this week.

Gaming Ballistic in Media

As part of the launch-day run-up, I was on two shows

Talking Crit with Erik Tenkar and Bad Mike. This has a primarily OSR/D&D audience, but they have always dug my works, they recognize that I’m one of the better planners for Kickstarters, and they value my insight and commentary after running over a dozen projects successfully.

SJGames Live with Hunter Shelburne. This discussion was pretty focused on the Dungeon Fantasy RPG. Lots of previews and screen shares.

Where can you find out more about the project, or make comments?

• The Kickstarter page, of course.
• Gaming Ballistic’s Blog
• The GB Discord channel
• Threads in the SJGames Forums, including the DFRPG and GURPS forums
• Reddit has threads on r/GURPS and r/RPG. That second one was started by a fan, so it is a better place for people to comment than those started by the publisher.
• Same deal with this thread on RPG.net, which has already gathered some commentary.

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 Nordlondr Bestiary launched and is doing well. It’s first-day total funding was more than the entire Hall of Judgment campaign and was a stronger start (looking at KickTraq and BiggerCake) than many other Dungeon Fantasy RPG launches, even from SJGames. So … here’s hoping for a big win.
• The sample layouts have been mostly well received. They’re pretty, but the pre-visualizations need some tweaks in order to be finalized. Font sizes and readability issues that are a hold-over from pulling stat-blocks from other formats. I’m actually planning on re-building the monster sheet template from the ground up using the final form of the background and styles of the parent book, to ensure consistency. With so many elements in a monster writeup, it’s very, very easy to have that go awry.
• On the flip side, pretty much everyone loves the art, and why shouldn’t they. It’s This is exactly the type of project that many of my team lust after: full creativity and range of expression for their talents. Also, the format – limited backgrounds, monster only – that are needed in order to fit all the rest of the creatures’ stats on the page means in many ways it’s a simpler art task than prior work they’ve done for me. (This actually was reflected in their prices, which served to lower the stretch goal for 240 pages from well over $75,000 down to the current $66,000; that actually puts the full book in hand at fewer than 1,000 backers, which is again a big lift, but reasonable).
• Art board!

• Cards! (Again, this is a tentative layout that I’ll tweak once we get closer to final; SM and creature type needs to get on the card, if nothing else.)
• 

Product Announcements

The full Product Catalog is still out there.

In Development

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

• Inns and Taverns, by Marshall LaPira. Systemless. Revised tavern submitted on Nov 11, returned with comments last week.
• Two Warring Houses, by Douglas Cole. Systemless. Outline stage and writing, but on hold as the Bestiary gets launched.
• Nordlondr Bestiary, by Douglas Cole. Dungeon Fantasy RPG. Almost 90 of 128 monsters have some data entries, and it’s now time to systematically go through and ensure each one has the right stuff, including skill levels, appropriate traits, and the like. Patreon members will start to get previews. Lots of them.

Friction

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

• I’ll admit it: I was hoping we’d crush it and fund the first day. We have done very well, of course, but knowing the project is truly in-hand goes a long way to ease my mind.
• I also realized that the funding goal for this project – though needfully so – is larger than the total, final, end of Kickstarter funding for any Dungeon Fantasy RPG project I have launched to date. Simply funding is a record-setting project for me. So … we really are doing well.
• Shipping worries me. I’m going to see if my EU printer will give me a ballpark for what it is right now to bring 400 or so books from there to MN. It’s hard for me to plan without a shipping number, and right now, I’m assuming US-based printing because it’s knowable, shipping from there to here is knowable, and the print costs are high enough that it becomes a worst-case cost
• One should never say worst-case. It can always get worse.
• Turkey Day approaches; that’s likely a lull in pace as people travel.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

• I have mentioned the art before, but the team, including a new member, is really out-doing themselves. Going to be so pretty.
• The campaign really did get off to a good start.
• I know what I have to do now, and no longer have to divide my time so much between preparation and marketing and other things and head-down data entry. So each day should see significant progress.