From last Friday to this Friday was absolutely crazed. The big news is that we saw a gigantic surge in the last 48 hours of the Kickstarter. It broke every record for me as a personal project.

In the end, we came in at 192 pages, nailing some cool Dire Animals, Demons, Slimes, more Animals, and also near-humans and part-humans … but coming up short on Dinosaurs and a lot of the human/humanoid opposition.

So, in short:

• Funded to over $52,000 vs a highest-ever $34,000 funding goal, and committing to my first 12 of 15 “signatures” of monsters. That’s 13 monster types that were designed to fit into 16 pages.
• We saw the nod given to support for Foundry VTT support using the GURPS Game Aid (Unofficial), which is a much bigger deal than it might seem. Nick and Nose have done some amazing work there, and now only await my completion of the monster sheet
• More conversations with my card printer; that second card deck is going to be pretty sizeable, so gotta figure out how to do them.
• I revised the actual monster stat sheet layout and it’s much better. Larger font sizes, better readability, etc. That will stand me in good stead later.
• Even though it was record-breaking for me, we still came up short of what I thought a Bestiary would bring. The Monsters 2 52-pager did over 1,000 backers, and I hoped we’d equal that.
• I have spent a lot of “block and tackle” time on Backerkit and starting to figure out printing and (most importantly) shipping.
• I have not forgotten Inns and Taverns, nor Two Warring Houses. They are definitely on the “think about it later” list.
• I have a ton of ideas in my head for things. Some are still systemless, some very much not.
• Note that as soon as the Backerkit surveys go out, those who complete them will get any PDFs they order that already exist right away after the card is charged. You will not have to wait for already-existing digital products. In fact, all of those PDFs are already loaded into the Backerkit system.

The real work is now very “head down.” Figure out shipping and fulfillment. Pick a printer. Really, really drill into first getting the final list of monsters ready, and then getting stats for all of them. Some of the sections require much consideration and no small amount of non-stat writing. Right now, the non-monster section on special faerie traits is approximately four pages long; I expect to need similar amounts for dragons.

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 $387 per month.
• Special Content: The patrons got early peeks on everything, including the total spreadsheet of all planned monsters. They’ll be getting a consolidated list of “all the samples to date” Real Soon Now.

No change in patron count since last week.

Gaming Ballistic in Media

I’ll leave this section here for one more week.

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 an amazing start, stalled out, then surged at the end.

A funded project is more attractive than one that is not funded. Obviously. And once we DID fund, the impetus to achieve stretch goals went way, way up. We had a few backers throw in very large sums of money simply because they wanted to the project to succeed.

I have a few thoughts on how I approached the project’s funding that will influence my future planning on notional projects that might result in large books. The “less than 50 page” set doesn’t really need so much strategy. But books like this that can grow require more thought.

The really key next step is to figure out shipping so that I can do all the hard work in Backerkit. Thanks to a lot of work on Tower of the Moon, some of that block-and-tackle was done in moments instead of days this time. So that was very helpful. But sorting the logistics of printing and who and where is complicated. I’m talking to a fulfillment partner on this one, and I hope that next week I’ll have a lot more to say.

I do, however, have two weeks to say it.  The usual payout for KS projects is about 17 days after it ends. This allows the (currently) 14 people whose pledges haven’t processed to get in and fix them, and of course the money really rather helps me with buying art. So much art.

Product Announcements

The full Product Catalog is still out there.

I need to modify it to include the Bestiary. I’ll do that over the next week so that when we say “pre-order!” a game store can know what to expect.

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 had a very assumption-challenging conversation with a logistics and shipping partner, and this counts as “friction” because it changes my plans. It changes my communication to my printers. And it may wind up changing my communication to backers. I think the backers won’t mind if it pans out…but it is a change.
• This isn’t unforeseen friction, but it’s likely 6-8 weeks until the final PDF files go to the printer. That probably means 4-6 weeks until backers see the PDF for consumption, error proofing and checking, errata, etc.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

• I’m still stunned at the magnitude of the surge at the end. On the one hand, this is a good thing. On the other, one really wants to fund – honestly fund, not set a goal that will bankrupt a company just to show “funded in the first 10 minutes!” and “52,223% funded!” on a report – in the first three days of a campaign. That means (a) you can run shorter campaigns to minimize doldrums, and (b) everything after that is “can we do better?” That seems to matter.
• I’ve taken a hard look at my family finances over the last four months, and I’ve been able to get a better assessment of what my “break-even” is for Gaming Ballistic. There’s still no question that not actively landing a Day Job represents a significant opportunity cost. But things maybe aren’t as ugly as I thought. Bears thinking on.
• I’m hoping to get a lot done over the next week on the logistics and shipping side of things, and some of those options are really attractive.
• Sometimes Backerkit is just “get surveys, deal with shipping, fulfill.” But this one, I am likely to do a fairly hard push on the pre-order front. Especially with game stores. One the book is a known quantity in terms of pages and content, “buy this thing” might prove worthy, and we’re likely to be in the “still working on it!” phase for 6-8 weeks.