I’m headed off to Fnordcon 5 tomorrow early in the morning (my flight departs for Austin at 7:30am), so I’m going to get this out on Thursday instead, as the odds of me doing this tomorrow are pretty low. This past week was mostly involved with making forward progress on several development efforts, and more shipping.

• If you’re in the market for Gaming Ballistic stuff, all items on my new Shopify store are 13% off from now until the Day After FnordCon on May 2! Including gift cards!
• Fulfillment is well underway for the hardcover Nordlond Bestiary, with books and cards from the UK to Australia, New Zealand arriving to reasonable acclaim. Certain countries are getting nailed for DHL “handling fees” which is irksome and I must think about this in the future.
• I found the books on the water on their way to the port in New York and posted about it in Update #97 in the Kickstarter. The CMA CGM Tosca is due in port Monday, May 2. After that, it’s a bit of a toss-up, but about the earliest it would come in to Baltimore is a highly improbable “at the end of that week.” Best bet is the end of the following week, and the fulfillment company and I have already had “Ready, Set…” discussions about timing the final pick-and-pack.
• With that in mind, all of the books that aren’t on the container ship are already at the fulfillment center, and I’m told the boxes arrived without damage.
• Otherwise, it’s been a busy week for development. A TFT project with David is moving along, and I’m working with a new artist who is giving all the signs of working out very I’m making progress on my own Let Us Rejoice! as well as three other projects (all DFRPG) that are all relatively short.

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: 65 patrons and $608 per month.
• Special Content in April: New webstore preview, old ballistics spreadsheet repost with update, Let Us Rejoice! preview, new “Freight Check Table” card with much fun sarcasm, Delvers to Grow tokens and VTT map packs for those who don’t have them, two articles on using Delvers to Grow to hit 500-600 points.

Lost another Patron but gained two more when I mentioned I had a Patreon on the GURPS Discord. I feel like the content for April is much more “up to snuff” with where I want to be and I hope to continue the trend.

Gaming Ballistic in Media

• RolePlay Rescue posted a quick blurb about receiving the Nordlondr Ovinabokin in the UK
• ShipQuest, my UK fulfillment partner, did tweet out their progress, as have a few others.
• Not exactly in Media, but my short book GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Encounters 4: Ring Fort went on sale on Warehouse 23 and was announced in the GURPS News for the month.

Currently Manufacturing/Fulfilling/Shipping

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

Nordlondr Ovinabokin: Bestiary

• ShipQuest has completed international fulfillment from their end. Books have started arriving all over the world except for the USA.
• Anticipate arrival of US books in NYC on May 2, then a few days to unload, a few more to get to Baltimore, then it’s game on. Unless it’s not, as weeks of unanticipated delays are always possible here.
• More evidence that the VTT setup for Foundry is working well. Time to start talking to the Foundry VTT folks about getting license keys and final distribution so it can go on sale.
• The DFRPG Boxed Sets (11) and Monsters 2 (11) books should be in folks’ hands now; at least two deliveries confirmed.

Crowdfunding and Product Launches

The Bestiary Kickstarter is in the fulfillment stage

The new store is live, which means the Spring Sale is on!

Get 13% off all purchases in the New GB Web Store until May 2, the Day after FnordCon!

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, only a 50% discount level for retail orders.

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.

Let Us Rejoice, is a systemless exploration of festivals and gatherings as great ways to make a world come alive. Uses and collects the Nordlond material that is scattered over several books as examples, but also goes further than that. This will be GB’s first systemless release.

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. Heard back from the author, who had to put it on back-burner for Real Life reasons, but still wants to finish. So postponed indefinitely.
• Two Warring Houses, by Douglas Cole. Systemless. Actually saw some writing over Valentine’s Day. On hold as other things come first.
• Nordlondr Bestiary, by Douglas Cole. Dungeon Fantasy RPG. See above, workin’ hard.
• Portuguese Nordlond Bestiary, by Douglas Cole. Workin’ hard.
• Let Us Rejoice! Systemless short book (probably less than 16 pages) on festivals in fantasy gaming, and why you should be using more of them.
• TFT/OSE Project with David Pulver. David is doing another solo with Gaming Ballistic, and we’re going to try something new with this one too, with a simultaneous release for Old School Essentials. These will be the same flavor but each tuned for the particular game in question.
• Secret Delvers to Grow Material. I’m working with a new-to-me author on some work expanding the Delvers to Grow landscape. I’m not sure if this will go to publication as a stand-alone or be incorporated into a future, broader expansion. I could see either way.
• Secret DFRPG Short Project. Another Dungeon Fantasy RPG project, again with a new-to-me author, that will be a short rules expansion. Think Fantastic Dungeon Grappling s sh0rt, hopefully bringing more optional awesome to one area of play.
• Secret Bestiary Project. One thing led to another, and a long-time collaborator is turning author on this short and focused expanssssion to the Nordlondr Bestiary.

I note that for new authors, Delvers to Grow and Bestiary entries are fantastic ways to get into the game, as such projects lend themselves very well to focused writing and fast turn-around.

Friction

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

• Having some writer’s block as FnordCon approaches, which is more or less terrible. Starting to bust through it, though.
• Between FnordCon and a business trip by my wife, things were absolutely nuts this week.
• Vendor still ghosting me on webstore issues.
• Realizing that I have had functionally no revenue in 2022 for new products (and that’s where you make your real living). This is almost 100% due to having to ride herd on one shipping problem after another, but it’s taken months until that cloud has cleared. I’m not unique here: a fantastic and honest video by El Dorado games shows how a nigh-on million-dollar kickstarter for a pair of boardgames stretched to over two years while profits went from a projected 1/3 of revenue (divided over two years and two people) to 1/11 of revenue (again, divided twice and twice). So it’s hard all over, but they mention getting “corporate jobs” so they can focus on passion projects with no fear.
• Need to make faster progress on the Meatgrinder, since I’m freaking running it Saturday.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

• I’m very, very pleased with my new art collaborator.
• Suddenly, I have something like a half-dozen projects in active development. This is excellent.