This two week update was basically “head down, all the time.” Mentally exhausting, a bit depressing, but in the end, there’s some significant light.

• Did my taxes. Holy cow I owe a lot of money. Must change plans on reserving some cash for taxes and paying in advance; I learned things about LLCs this year that I should have known but didn’t.
• Shipping was a freaking nightmare with my Freight Forwarding company for the better part of two weeks.
• That being said, we are starting to get to the end of that tunnel. All not-the-US materials will be where they belong by the end of today. I finally resolved all of the issues with Freight Forwarder and they will book shipment from Riga to Baltimore. Books have been sitting on the docks needlessly for two weeks.
• Got my advance copies of the Bestiary! I’m super-happy with them and I think you will be too.
• Last update I said I was tired of my WooCommerce store; THIS update…I am in the middle of testing and refinement for the new Shopify webstore and it’s going to be
• I expect to have a month-long “Grand Opening Sale” for the new webstore in April.
• I have made progress on several new projects, including translating the Bestiary to Portuguese for that market. That’s a new thing for me, but the Brazilian GURPS community is active and helpful. Also: Portuguese-Portuguese is not the same as Brazilian-Portuguese.

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: 63 patrons and $492 per month.
• Special Content: The Bestiary unboxing video and preview access to the web store.

No change from last time.

Gaming Ballistic in Media

• Unboxing video for Bestiary quick reference cards
• Unboxing video of me fondling the books.
• I got a very nice comment on my blog about the book:
  “An absolutely fantastic product that is worth every penny! It more than doubles the monsters available in Dungeon Fantasy. He provides exhaustive examples, advice, hand-holding that enables the new game master to get up and running very quickly. All of these are the product are part of a coherent vision, yet they are easily broken apart and usable for many other campaigns. He has done a superior job and is very much keeping the flame of Dungeon Fantasy alive! Very well done!” -Scott Shafer

Currently Manufacturing/Fulfilling/Shipping

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

Nordlondr Ovinabokin: Bestiary

• All not-the-US product is staged for shipment; books arrive at ShipQuest today (March 25)
• Really had some rough water with the Freight Forwarder; that was really irksome. Things are supposedly moving now. Next step is to get visibility to the actual shipment, which hopefully includes sailing and arrival dates. This is actually where I was expecting the delays to occur, which I was hoping to minimize by coming into a non-traditional port (Baltimore).
• I am told Nick and Nose are close to a full-feature beta on the VTT Module.

Crowdfunding and Product Launches

The Bestiary Kickstarter is in the fulfillment stage

I was encouraged to .

I have a different idea on the Spring Sales Event, to coincide with the migration to the new webstore. Really need to hear back from migration contractor, though – I’m positive they can do it well, and that I cannot.

Product Announcements

The full Product Catalog has been updated for Spring 2022. It now includes Delvers to Grow, Tower of the Moon, and the Nordlond Bestiary. Any pre-orders for the Bestiary will be filled roughly April 2022, once the shipment comes in. I will be changing my retail discount structure to be much simpler, with only two discount levels: 30% and 50%.

I have embarked on a project to convert the Nordlond Bestiary to Brazilian Portuguese. I’m getting amazing volunteer help from several people and I’m excited to see what happens here, if anything. First step will be a PDF-only book to see the best way to reach the audience. A print book will follow, after a suitable time to allow backers to comment on my poor Portuguese.

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. Poked author recently on progress now that Bestiary is in finalization.
• Two Warring Houses, by Douglas Cole. Systemless. Actually saw some writing over Valentine’s Day.
• Nordlondr Bestiary, by Douglas Cole. Dungeon Fantasy RPG. See above, workin’ hard.
• Portuguese Nordlond Bestiary, by Douglas Cole. Workin’ hard.
• Secret Stuff: Exchanged many emails with an author to schedule out multiple projects. This is the same report but with a lot more impact to it. TFT and OSR projects scoped out.

Friction

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

• My freakin’ taxes. Such large sums of money owed. My bad.
• The shipping issues are really unforced errors on the part of my Freight Forwarder. I hear this is the rule rather than the exception these days, but between unannounced vacations, lack of designation of authority, and total siloing on the part of the company (Oh, I can’t charge you, because accounting does that…but not before they get an official invoice from billing, and despite you asking for all of this on March 3, the books have been sitting on the floor in Riga for 10 days and we need new forms from you…). I was only able to resolve the issue by threatening to fire them, and I meant it. That resolved the issue for now. But it was a huge time sink and really frustrating.
• Still back to viking, but need to stay focused on exercise. Always having shipping over my head has been a crushing energy drain.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

• Eventually I did hear back from “ghost company,” as we determined my voice and emails were going into a low-priority folder due to VoIP filtering gone awry. Once that was solved, they made rapid and excellent progress. The new store is so much more responsive than the old one already, though I have a lot of minor work to do to ensure all of the product information is correct.
• I just (literally a moment ago) got word that the books have been scheduled for pickup in Riga, which means presumably that there’s a boat for them to go on.
• I finished the sword commission, and it went really well. Shield is actually a much-less-expensive training shield, so glad that was clarified.
• The Brazilians are really happy I’m translating the book to Portuguese…but the Brazilian Real  has taken a real pounding lately, so their purchasing power is low. I’m going to cut the cost as much as I can, especially for the PDF.