The Bestiary has cleared customs and now we just have to get it to the fulfillment center. A new draft and a new cover are on my desk and nearly finished the preliminary stage of production. Progress continues with other books too. Closed down the old WooCommerce site. Some popular blog posts.

• I shut down the WooCommerce site and am now 100% on Shopify.
• As a side effect, the main blog site suddenly got fast. Or at least not glacially slow, which is still huge. Responsive is better than driving people away, ya think?
• The Bestiary hardcopies cleared customs and are now in the “schedule pickup” stage. Once we get it on a truck, it’s 3-5 hours to Baltimore, and then we can get final fulfillment underway.
• I made major progress on the next TFT book, a solo by David Pulver called ‘Till Death Do Us Part. Look for it on Kickstarter very soon.
• The Foundry VTT module is now in active test with users, with 50 users having received license keys, and my Patreon subscribers getting beta-test versions. Full distribution is pending making sure that there are no super-egregious errors.

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 $595 per month.
• Special Content in May: Wizards to Grow post and a sneak preview at David’s new solo for TFT in preliminary form. Also a WIP of Let Us Rejoice!, a systemless volume building on festivals in fantasy worldbuilding. Preview installs of the Foundry VTT module for the Bestiary.

Thus far, been a good month for Patreon content distribution, with good previews and some real utility.

Gaming Ballistic in Media

• I published three posts recently looking at taking Delvers to Grow way, way past its design intent, to 500–600 points. The knight limited out a bit, the swashbuckler didn’t, and the post on Wizard’s to Grow is one of my most popular on Reddit Look for more of these to come.
• 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 cleared customs and released for pickup May 19.
• From last update: Anticipate arrival in Baltimore for fulfillment May 15-19, but will it happen on time? “Even the wisest cannot tell.” -Galadriel The wisest didn’t get it right, and while it’s only 3-5 hours to get books from NYC to Baltimore, let’s see how long it takes for my freight company to actually find a truck. I told them to just use UPS; it’d be faster and cheaper.
• The VTT Foundry Module ready for distribution, and has actually been distributed to a limited selection of folks. I’m going to let this simmer through the weekend and do a full distribution on Monday.

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, along with ensuring ALL of my products can be had in both physical and PDF form from there.

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. This is temporarily on hold, though I want to do it.

Till Death Do Us Part (TFT), by David Pulver, will be the next Kickstarter and the next solo adventure for SJGames’ The Fantasy Trip. I have a cover, a “splash page” for marketing, and at least an initial layout pour, and some preliminary playtesting. Crowdfunding will probably launch before May is out, but the campaign is going to be kept quite simple. PDF, Print+PDF, and maybe some solo bundles as upper-level tiers. Beyond that, a short campaign and then Backerkit, and that’s it.

Till Death Do Us Part (OSE), by David Pulver will mark Gaming Ballistic’s first release for Old School Essentials. I’m going to follow the TFT version very quickly with an Old School Essentials solo adventure kickstarter. Determining how to offer up the pledge levels to ensure costs are covered with stretch goal growth may be tricky…but I have an idea.

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.

• Nordlondr Bestiary, by Douglas Cole. Dungeon Fantasy RPG. Almost there.
• Till Death Do Us Part, a TFT and OSE Project with David Pulver. First draft received, sent back with comments, and expect a revised and ready-for-final draft this weekend. Cover is finished, pending tweaks for print quality (books tend to print dark, so you have to watch light levels)
• 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.
• 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 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Two Warring Houses, by Douglas Cole. Systemless. Actually saw some writing over Valentine’s Day. On hold as other things come first.
• 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.

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.

• Poor communication (again and again) on moving the Bestiary around, with six emails resulting in the same question ultimately still not answered. Very frustrating trying to get straight info out of this “partner.”
• Didn’t get enough done on Let Us Rejoice this week
• I think I’m going to need to find both a new bundling app and shift over to SendOwl for my digital downloads. Both are going to wind up being paid services, but keeping track of bundles at an inventory level is much harder than it needs to be. The SendOwl thing should be better because of native handling of both License Keys (for the Foundry VTT and future similar products) as well as individual multi-file downloads. Even so…having to do everything multiple times is irksome.
• How to grow the mix of physical and PDF products for kickstarters that you want to get better and better with more backers is tough. I think I have an idea, but what it’s likely to boil down to is “start bigger, grow less.” So instead of just the OSE version of Till Death Do Us Part, I’ll need to start with both that and (say) Dark Lord’s Doom.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

These last two weeks made some progress, but then really accelerated at the end. The last 2–3 days in particular were really productive.

• Major progress on at least three items, minor on two more.
• This includes getting the cover art full preliminary in hand for the new TFT project. The new artist, Brendan Lancaster, did a fantastic job. I like the teaser “splash page” and I like the cover, which uses the same art.
• I’m now probably looking at four Kickstarters in four months if I do it right. First the TFT one, followed immediately by the OSE Solos. Then my systemless project, and then one or more DFRPG projects not written by me (and maybe one that is?). That’s not even including a few ideas I have for quick TFT stuff that I might do as “lightning rounds” perhaps.

The key thing that I need here, to keep the business thriving, is to launch some new product. I need revenue. The good news is that I can definitely see a progression of small projects that will run fairly continually from pretty much 7–10 days from now through…October or so. I need to break out some time to start real work on Mission X, though. I don’t know if that’s going to be this year, but probably not. I would like to time that one out properly and ensure lots of time for testing, so that might slip into 2023.