A hard week, but a pretty good one.

• Till Death Shipping has all packages, including international ones, out the door. More on that below.
• Shields Up has started second-round edits and playtester review. No fight-tests yet.
• Serpents of Legend saw progress and a few fight-tests. I feel the Bestiary-type book is starting to come together with what expectations are, and some of the fight-test results are showing the way.
• I remained uncertain as to whether I’d launch the OSE Solos Kickstarter as planned on Aug 4, and I eventually did pull the trigger. It funded in an hour, though the bar was set lower than usual because of lower development costs for this project.
• Even so, the project did over $8,000 on Day 1 against my estimate that “anything more than $7,000 is a very good day.” And it was the first day. It ends on Aug 27 out of an abundance of concern about pushing the message into places I don’t usually go.
• Even more behind the scenes work.
• Steve Jackson Games is running the 2022 Pyramid Scheme Kickstarter. I don’t have anything in it this time, but I know plenty of folks who do. These are collections of mini-supplements that go through the usual Kromm-vetting, so they’re vetted, official content. Of course, my own stuff is also vetted, official content. Steve says so.
• A follow-up note on this: One sees that the Kickstarter is sitting at $12,456 but stretch goals have been unlocked through $17,500. SJGames is counting GURPSy stuff towards the stretch goals from Warehouse 23, and many of those products are on sale. This is an eminently sensible call given the state of W23 digital infrastructure combined with KS/Backerkit challenges there.

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: 61 patrons and $456 per month.
• Special Content in August: Preview of Shields Up. Preview of monster stats for Serpents of Legend.

Steady in July. I know what I need to do for 2023 to help with this, but I need some breathing room to do it.

Gaming Ballistic in Media

• I recorded a “catching up with Che and Gaming Ballistic” podcast which is ready and will go live when he decides to hit “go.”
• Rob Conley of Bat in the Attic posted a short review of the version of Till Death Do Us Part that I sent him, the first of the four to be “basically complete.”

Currently Manufacturing/Fulfilling/Shipping

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

Till Death Do Us Part (TFT)

• All books are in the mail, and delivery confirmations have slowed to a trickle.
• GamesQuest UK has processed all 16 UK-hub orders; some in the UK have already arrived.
• On Sunday I will close out the remaining pledges and that’ll be that.
• Two months total elapsed time from hitting “go” to “done.” Not bad.

Crowdfunding and Product Launches

 

Old-School Solo Adventures

• Launched Aug 4 at 10am. Funded by 11am.
• Funded in one hour. I mean, I could have set the funding goal to $100 and funded in two minutes, but the goal was actually set as enough people to make printing copies in both the US and UK “not stupid.” Even so, we did better than I thought we would on Day 1, clearing $8,000.
• Prospect look very good to do even more, as well: well over 500 folks are following but haven’t yet backed, and that means there’s probably another 150-200 backers out there.
• I need to tweak out the covers a little bit as there’s a rule about making the system logo look like it’s part of the title; that’s an easy tweak that I’ll knock out today.
• Exalted Funeral agreed to provide 100 books (50 from each hub) for starter kit pledges, and about 10% of the folks are in for physical starter kits; that’s not bad. Another 7% are in for PDF-only starters.
• Picked up two retail orders, one from my local shop! That’s good stuff…anything that increases the SCALE of the required print job is really good for the economics of the project.

Available on Gaming Ballistic’s Shopify Store

• Combate Épico em Masmorras in PDF for the DFRPG

Available on Warehouse 23!

• Delvers to Grow: Core Book in print and PDF for the DFRPG
• Delvers to Grow: Fast Delvers in print and PDF for the DFRPG
• Delvers to Grow: Smart Delvers in print and PDF for the DFRPG
• Delvers to Grow: Strong Delvers in print and PDF for the DFRPG
• The Crypt of Krysuvik in print and PDF for the DFRPG
• Tower of the Moon in print and PDF for TFT
• The Nordlondr Ovinabokin: Bestiary and Enemies Book in PDF-only for now, for the DFRPG
• Dragon Hunt! for TFT is now also available in softcover print
• Dark Lord’s Doom for TFT is now also available in softcover print
• Roc of Sages for TFT is now also available in softcover print
• Catacombs of Living Death for TFT is now also available in softcover print
• The Sunken Library for TFT is now also available in softcover print

Now Available in PDF format on DriveThruRPG:

• Tower of the Moon (The Fantasy Trip)

Product Announcements

The full Product Catalog has been updated for Spring 2022 and probably needs an update for Summer 2022.

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, aimed at mid-August.

Serpents of Legend. Formerly “Bestiary Project 1,” this is partially just a book of cool snake-themed monsters written by Marko Vujnovic (the Chaotic GM). But it also contains some serious serpent-related cosmology for Nordlond, and a really nifty section on snake cults. Initial stats are in, good discussions had on structure and content. Starting to look a lot like a book…

Shields Up! Testable draft in hand! Author paid. Fight-test … starts now if you’re a Patreon subscriber.

In Development

Writing and content creation for announced projects. Some of this may be cryptic.

• The “Bugstiary.” Contract signed. Work slower than anticipated (which itself was antcipated) but still on track. This one is looking at 32 pages, and much more of a strict bestiary book of cool bug-and-insect themed monsters.
• Delvers to Grow Companion. Some new professions. A whole bunch of new disad packages. Epic Upgrades. Who knows what else will strike me? September/October plan.
• Gear Catalog 1? There’s a good start at what is probably a nice 32-page book, maybe a bit more. Also DFRPG. I’ve talked with a potential author on this one and we need to work out a few things, but not in a bad way.

• Inns and Taverns, by Marshall LaPira. Systemless. Still postponed indefinitely. A good time for this would either be along with Let Us Rejoice (in a few months) or real close to the end of the year.
• Two Warring Houses, by Douglas Cole. Systemless. Actually saw some writing over Valentine’s Day. On hold as other things come first.
• Secret TFT Setting by David Pulver. Chatted with David about plans for this, and there’s a hole in his schedule at the end of the year.
• Secret Nordlond-ish Setting by [CENSORED]

The two settings are part of a grand plan you’ll be seeing more of next year.

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. The new concept that I’m shopping around to my circle of authors and contributors will be another entry…but the nature of the concepts requires a firm hand on the wheel for gamer utility. So not going public with that yet.

Friction

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

• My wife had to go out of town on a business trip after spending a weekend at the lake with her sisters. My youngest daughter was in a camp 40 minutes away…so I lost something like 200 minutes each day to “sitting in the car.” That was NOT conducive to getting a lot of good work done on the OSE project, nor was it good for my exercise regimen.
• Bit of angst over a conversation about the CEM book in Brazil. Not a huge deal, but felt like words were either being put in my mouth or my statements were being misconstrued. When I say “I cannot promise to translate the new Bestiary books at this time, given the challenges in backer count and payment processing we ran into on CEM” folks are saying “well, there goes Brazil.” NO. I meant exactly what I said: I can’t COMMIT to doing it NOW, when I have a minimum of nine other projects in my primary markets in my pipeline. “Not now” doesn’t mean “not ever,” but “I might do this” is taken as “I will do this,” so I need to be definite: Not definite: Not yet, and not now, but that doesn’t mean not ever.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

• Till Death got done in less than two months.
• Shields Up is making excellent progress. As it’s a topic near and dear to my heart, it’s getting a lot of my attention, maybe more than it should.
• I still got a lot of work done on a different thing entirely.

I not only funded on Day 1 for OSE, I overachieved my predictions. I won’t lie, though: while 350-400 backers looks pretty good, what I really NEED is more like 700 (not crazy) and what would really, really make Gaming Ballistic happy right now is about 1,400. That isn’t impossible in the OSE/OSR space, but is going to require outreach success that frequently eludes me.