The last two weeks have been some severe emotional ups and downs for me. Launch day, then seeing the campaign stagnate for a bit, then a sudden uptick after the SJGames Post to the Girl Genius RPG and maybe some of my mailing list action coming through. And FUNDING! The Bestiary is a go … only question is how big.

Plus…a few more exciting things.

• What went on these last two weeks?
  • Post launch, we’ve added $14,000 to the Kickstarter total, funded, and are now looking to threaten stretch goals
  • We’re over 500 actual backers, with 406 following but not pledged.
  • More and more art is coming in; I’ve been posting “monster of the day” updates in Kickstarter and collecting them here in this reddit thread on r/gurps.
  • I had a nice chat with Shadow of the GM (Barry Dewey-Robertson) on his show.
  • I also worked with Nick and Nose and Alain, Steve, and Phil on freaking VTT support for the Bestiary Creatures. I am thrilled with this development.

A lot of my efforts have been focused on marketing and getting the word out. That’s still true, but having funded, the book is happening, and I can start executing on ensuring as fast a turn-around as possible. That means nose-to-grindstone on data entry.

Two major things to close the opening.

Read both the Carrot and Stick. SJGames is very, very good about treating me as an actor with agency and independent strategic goals, but also as a key part of their outreach, product delivery, and planning process. If they see this go gangbusters, they’ll probably look at big, full-color books like this and say “ok, more.” We’ve funded! That’s great for me, but a company with overhead needs a much bigger proof of market than 500 or 600 folks to deliver giant hardbacks (and the Girl Genius campaign, with something like 2,500 books sold, is JUST the kind of message we all need to hear).

Also: the Foundry VTT pack is an experiment. One I’m sure SJGames will be watching closely. I’m asking that you vote with your dollars for this, and know that they are watching the vote.

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: 57 patrons and $389 per month.
• Special Content: The patrons got early peeks on everything, including the total spreadsheet of all planned monsters. I’ve been a little lax about repeating all of the stuff dropped into the Patreon Discord into the actual Patreon group, which I’ll fix this weekend.

We gained two Patrons, but lost one as well.

Gaming Ballistic in Media

I mentioned it in the header, but I joined Shadow of the GM to chat the Bestiary up.

Shadow of the GM: Discussing the GURPS Bestiary with Douglas Cole. Why a bestiary? Why now? How portable? A really good chat.

Nerdarchy: TTRPG Monsters with Gaming Ballistic.

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. Lots of updates. Some of the more interesting ones:
  • Update 9: “So…what’s really in the book?” A list of most of the creatures in the 128-page version.
  • Monsters of the Day appear in various updates. Gremlin, Edderkop, Fjallatroll and Baenadyrid, Rock Lizard, Totally not an Invisible Stalker, Horses.
  • The VTT Pack was added to all pledges of $100 or more
  • A new Pledge Level for the Starter Pack PDFs AND the QR PDF and VTT pack was added at $70. If you are new to Nordlond but have the boxed set (or want to get it), this is the pledge you want if you’re a digital kind of person.
• 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.
• Reddit actually has several threads going on, all of which are worthy of dropping a note into to keep them current
  • The Nordlond Bestiary Campaign Ends Dec 7 has been very active, with lots of positive comments and a self-proclaimed art critic.
  • Nordlond Bestiary – Baenadyrid in Action is a post by Exxar, the Chaotic GM, testing out the “Mantis Demon” vs one or more 62-point knights using Delvers to Grow. It’s a few combats, from 1-1 to 3-1 in favor of the monsters, showing that, as intended, they’re a speed bump, but a capable one.
  • Monster of the Day posts from Nordlond Bestiary: Collected. Instead of trolling updates, this thread has them all in one place.
  • The Nordlond Bestiary and Enemies Book project is now Live! The post that started it all.
• Same deal with this thread on RPG.net, and another on ENWorld, which have already gathered some commentary. Posting to these has generated a non-trivial number of pledges, so contributing to the discussion is valuable.

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 Bestiary Kickstarter had a fantastic start, but then stalled for a long time. Some of that was expected (Thanksgiving holiday in the USA), but some of it wasn’t, and for a bit, it looked like we might not even fund.

Fortunately, we had a fantastic second wind due to a combination of the Girl Genius Update #10 and two different mailing list campaigns. That moved nearly $5,300 in two days, making it the best 48-hour total since launch day. It funded us.

That means, though, that you can’t trust any of the various prediction algorithms. They’re poorly set up to predict campaigns that don’t follow the classic “three days in, lull, three days out” bathtub curve, so expect to see that jump around a lot.

But we’re at over 500 backers confirmed, with over 400 more following but not pledged. If we get half of those, plus some “direct to pledge” action, we could easily threaten 800 backers. We are on reasonable track to demolish the DFRPG and even the TFT Kickstarter record for backers on Gaming Ballistic. Oh, we’ve also surpassed all my prior campaigns but one, the Four Perilous Journeys TFT campaign ($40,108) and looking strong to wipe that one out too.

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 in early November.
• 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. See above, workin’ hard.

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. The lull – the profound and horrible lull – that started on Day 2 was extremely unkind to my mental health. I’ve been wandering around in a funk that only really ended when we saw the surge and funded early on December 2.
• I understand the “folks are watching” can come off as a bit menacing. But that’s just reality. Nothing succeeds like success, and nothing makes you more risk averse than failure…or even a “meh” showing. In a way, “meh” is scarier. You know to avoid an abject failure, but “meh” is full of uncertainty and pain.
• I still may need to wind up with a Day Job in 2022, but I was chatting with a non-SJG industry person, and they noted that this last year has been brutal even for some of the Big Dogs. Even so, I hold out hope that in the end I’ll be able to meet my early goals.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

• Still thrilled with the art
• I cannot say enough about how pleased I am to be able to provide the VTT support. Over the moon, I am.
• SJGames was super nice about plugging my campaign in the Girl Genius kickstarter. There are a lot of new-to GURPS folks there (about 250 bought the Basic Set along with their books, and that’s not something you do if you have been playing it for years) and it’s a potentially big boost.
• The number of followers not yet pledged (407), plus the 505 we already have, is actually enough to take us darn close to $66,000. If we threaten that $62,000 final stretch goal for “new content,” I very much suspect that we’ll see a surge from the TFT folks who want this converted to a TFT Bestiary. The Book of Unlife was a 62-page book of undead, and attracted 830 backers. Even at the minimum “anyone with at least a $15 kick-in gets it” level, that would be $12,000 which is enough to get the thing done, easy.

The number of ways this can take off and succeed is very large. It’s also very uncertain. If you’re on the fence, I ask you to jump.