FnordCon5 was a blast. The Bestiary is in the USA, or at least in port! Maybe the Best Week Ever for my non-Kickstarter revenue. I chat for over two hours with Erik Tenkar.

• I have pulled the trigger, so to speak, on a theme change on my blog. I’ve moved from my old custom theme to one called Kadence, which is more modern and responsive.
• The new Shopify store has been a real hit so far. Good feedback about responsiveness and presentation. and a stunning total sales number since the store opened on March 24, probably tied to the month-long re-opening sale
• The Bestiary made port on Tuesday or Wednesday (May 3-4) and now we’re in the unload, clear customs, and get it over by rail to Baltimore phase. That’s usually a week all told but is likely two or more in reality.
• I had a fun discussion that started (and continued, and finished…) with no agenda and lasted for over two hours with Erik Tenkar and BadMike on his Talking Crit I’ve been consorting with Erik for like 10 years now, ever since I played with him, Tim Shorts, Peter Dell’Orto, Joe the Lawyer, and others in his B-Team Swords and Wizardry game. Chatting with him is always a good time.
• I attended FnordCon5 in Austin, TX last weekend. It was a small convention, but that let me meet just about everyone. I posted a wrap-up of my impressions on my blog.

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 $613 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.

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. The new patreon subscribers really make a difference. Patron growth is a real goal, but I think I’d need something much more defined … the equivalent of a monthly ‘zine, say … for that to be reality. Doing that as a discount for Patrons would be a thing, and pushing to 200 or so would be a game-changer.

Gaming Ballistic in Media

• I had a fun discussion that started (and continued, and finished…) with no agenda and lasted for over two hours with Erik Tenkar and BadMike on his Talking Crit I’ve been consorting with Erik for like 10 years now, ever since I played with him, Tim Shorts, Peter Dell’Orto, Joe the Lawyer, and others in his B-Team Swords and Wizardy game. Chatting with him is always a good time. Even Jill Bearup (Stage Fighter and Sword Lady) “only” has 610 patreon subscribers, though, and she’s cooler than I am.

Currently Manufacturing/Fulfilling/Shipping

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

Nordlondr Ovinabokin: Bestiary

• Books arrived in the USA May 3-4 and are hopefully unloading now.
• Anticipate arrival in Baltimore for fulfillment May 15-19, but will it happen on time? “Even the wisest cannot tell.” -Galadriel
• The VTT Foundry Module is near ready for distribution; have signed the contract with Foundry, and now Nick and Nose will package up the tested module. Once that’s done, I have to work with Foundry to get license keys and then distribute them. I anticipate this all being done before the hardbacks arrive, which was my goal.
• Shawn Fisher posted a link to this documentary video about some of the strains on the supply chain, and I spent the full hour watching it. Was worthwhile.

Crowdfunding and Product Launches

The Bestiary Kickstarter is in the fulfillment stage, and starting to look like we can perhaps see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I have made arrangements to have the Bestiary PDF and the Delvers to Grow physical and PDF books hosted on Warehouse 23. Expect that soon.

Now Available in PDF format on DriveThruRPG:

• Bestiary and Enemies Book (Dungeon Fantasy RPG)
• Delvers to Grow: Core Book (Dungeon Fantasy RPG)
• Delvers to Grow: Strong Delvers (Dungeon Fantasy RPG)
• Delvers to Grow: Fast Delvers (Dungeon Fantasy RPG)
• Delvers to Grow: Smart Delvers (Dungeon Fantasy RPG)
• The Crypt of Krysuvik (125-point adventure for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG)

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.

Till Death Do Us Part, by David Pulver, will be the next Kickstarter and the next solo adventure for SJGames’ The Fantasy Trip and will mark Gaming Ballistic’s first release for Old School Essentials, whose big Kickstarter nailed over 6,000 backers and $772,000. I may be able to take action on this launch in a week or two, depending on a few things.

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.
• 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.
• Nordlondr Bestiary, by Douglas Cole. Dungeon Fantasy RPG. See above, workin’ hard.
• Portuguese Nordlond Bestiary, by Douglas Cole. On hiatus. The time commit vs likely revenue is questionable here, but ultimately this is probably a good experiment.
• 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.
• 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 short, hopefully bringing more optional awesome to one area of play.
• Till Death Do Us Part, a TFT and 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.
• Two Warring Houses, by Douglas Cole. Systemless. Actually saw some writing over Valentine’s Day. On hold as other things come first.

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.

• Things looking a bit dicey to get Bestiary to Baltimore in time for “everyone has their stuff in June.” Not impossible, but “more delays” are substantially more likely than “everything goes to plan.”
• I think I’m getting a bit of scope creep in my Let Us Rejoice project, but I’ll bring on an editor and let my Patreon subscribers beat it up to keep it on point.
• I’m still looking for “just the right tool” to help me with inventory and bundling. There’s one Shopify app that was recommended to me…but it won’t work for what I want. Another was super expensive for what it did (you pay by the number of bundles sold, so can wind up spending something like $500 per month; that moves a lot of product, and is a clever pricing plan, but there are other packages that cost much less even at the base level and might do what I want). Honestly, this is something Shopify should provide as part of one of their packages. Doing bundles by a collection of SKUs isn’t an advanced feature, here.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

Honestly, this has been a pretty good week.

• Suddenly, I have something like a half-dozen projects in active development. This is excellent.
• Fnordcon was successful well out of proportion to its small attendance. I still lost money, but on a convention where I moved a LOT of inventory down to Austin and only 50 folks showed up, I did really well.
• I’m really liking the direction of many of the projects are taking. The new small Bestiary book is looking good, and I suspect its success will be out of proportion to its page count “for reasons.” The small rules-book is going to be sweet I think, though I suspect that one may not go Kickstarter…or at least not quite how one would think.
• FINALLY the Bestiary is in the USA, even though it hasn’t cleared customs yet. At least it’s in NYC.
• The financial performance due to not-Kickstarter sales, Patreon, the new store, and FnordCon was stellar. In something like a week inclusive of the end of April and early May GB brought in several thousand bucks in revenue. I usually need to see a Kickstarter or major event to move that much
• The size of orders on the new web store seems to me to be higher. Probably because of ease of use
• I also got in contact with my website vendor, who fixed an issue with how the text was (not properly) displaying on mobile devices and confirmed my fix for international sales, which were vexing. As I suspected, the time it took the fix was minutes; it was getting in touch with them that was irksome. Their VoIP based phone and email system has a tendency to filter inactive cases/clients to spam, I believe. Not ideal.