Two weeks, deliberately this time. Lots of work. Surveys coming in, starting to pivot to stragglers. Hope to delivery the initial PDFs of the OSE Solos to backers come Monday. Starting to commission art for the next projects.

• All four of the solos are laid out, hyperlinked, and in final proofing and fight-test. Feeling good about getting these to backers by the end of the weekend.
• Shield’s Up got one new rule, and art commissioning has started. I’ve decided for various reasons to go straight to retail with this one. As soon as the art is done, I’ll put it up for sale. I may actually fire up “pre-orders” on my Shopify Store so I can get a feel for how large the initial print run needs to be.
• The landing page for the DFRPG Bestiary Kickstarter is live: Nightmare Fuel.
  • I’ll be doing the campaign on Backerkit Crowdfunding this time.
  • I launched a Backerkit Launch email and got some good sign-ups/leads. This project will probably need about 450-500 folks backing to fund. These campaigns always do better funding the first day. If you are interested in more monsters, please sign up!
• All three of the Nightmare Fuel mansucripts are in hand. Garden of Evil has a non-edited playtest layout already. The Bugstiary is getting that today. Serpents of Evil is a bit more ambitious in what it’s presenting, and the initial manuscript format doesn’t work with the planned page count. That one is chock full of good stuff, but needs refinement in presentation and organization
• Some of the art commissions on Shields Up, the Bugstiary, and Garden of Evil have been let out, with advances paid and work underway.
• Alvin Helms just launched a new ‘zine on Kickstarter for more support for The Fantasy Trip. It’s called GATE, and if the KS page is any indication, the graphic design and production values are going to be quite high. I’m in for print and PDF myself. Go back it.

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 $463 per month.
• Special Content in September: The initial preview of Vampire Hunter Belladonna was uploaded Aug 31, but it’s real close to September. A near-final version of VHB followed soon after. Shields Up and initial playtest files of Garden of Evil made available. All four hyperlinked OSE solos. It’s been a very good month for output so far!

August saw a slight reduction in members and funds. We picked up another supporter, but really we’re fluctuating around 60-65 people.

Gaming Ballistic in Media

• No new media this last week…been very head-down.

Currently Manufacturing/Fulfilling/Shipping

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

• Comp copies got updated for all recent products in early September. That finally got done.
• Starting to gather all the materials needed to ship the OSE Kickstarter project…probably mid-October!

Crowdfunding and Product Launches

 Old-School Solo Adventures

 Pre-orders are now open for the OSE Solos.

• Survey progress is going well, with 94% completion
• Picked up another retail order from a brick-and-mortar store!
• Only 48 people have yet to complete surveys; of those, 21 “really matter” because they’re physical orders and I must have addresses to deal with them. The other 27 don’t even have a balance so they can be manually completed at the end (though I’d rather folks do their surveys on their own). Functionally we’re at about 97% complete.
• I took delivery of the US-Hub Rules Tome books! Exalted Funeral did a fantastic job printing these, and I did a good job estimating the weight of the book. They were, however, packed loosely in 70-lb boxes…which saves money on shipping but the UPS guy was ticked.

Nightmare Fuel

This will be my first ever formal use of Backerkit Crowdfunding, though I did a semi-successful attempt at this with Tower of the Moon. It’s staged from Oct 13 to Nov 6.

Product Announcements

The full Product Catalog finally got updated on Sept 3 for fall! I took the opportunity to normalize prices for my entire product line. PDFs in general went up by a dollar or two; most print books stayed the same, a few actually came down in price. But with a few exceptions, at least all my stuff is now on the same pricing curve.

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. I have a completed ready-for-editing manuscript on this book, and hopefully will be able to read it (and pay the author) this weekend. This one is on schedule, and part of the Nightmare Fuel campaign. This book is likely 36 pages at this point; growth to 40–48 would not be crazy-talk.

The “Bugstiary.” Work targeted at a draft mid-Sept. This one is looking at 36 pages, and much more of a strict bestiary book of cool bug-and-insect themed monsters. Part of Nightmare Fuel. Cole Jenkins is the author.

Garden of Evil. A last-minute addition to the Nightmare Fuel lineup, this is probably 20 pages. Contract signed (as I type this, actually) and Chares Seager is the author here. Manuscript already in-hand; need to look at this one this weekend as well.

Shields Up! Post-playtest updates made, and layout is complete including some final art, and some temporary images. I will probably offer this up as a flat-out add-on during the Nightmare Fuel campaign, in order to get an initial print run sized. This needs to go into art development next week.

In Development

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

I currently have eight books in active development, to be released in two waves. Four are part of OSE, another four are DFRPG. I suspect that will run me right up to the end of the year, though I could also see another project slipping in for December…but that’s not a great crowdfunding time. I suspect what I’m looking at here is that the DFRPG Nightmare Fuel project will be my focus for fulfillment through the end of the year, and “spare” time will be head-down in content creation, including several long-delayed projects!

• 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. This one is definitely moving into 2023. That’s not a problem as such; having a robust “what’s coming next” is good.
• Delvers to Grow Companion. Some new professions. A whole bunch of new disad packages. Epic Upgrades. Everyman Adventurer modules. Who knows what else will strike me? I know what I want to do with this one, and shall get writing as soon as this OSE project is finished.
• 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. On hold.
• Infinite Archipelago is going to be my new framework for settings that should cross over systems. I have plans for TFT/OSE version of Nordlond, plus more, that GMs will be able to pick and choose and place what’s there. It implies sea travel in many ways, so there are ideas around that. Looking forward to this as a building block for 2023.
• 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. Chatted more, and liking how it works.
• Secret Nordlond-ish Setting by [CENSORED].
• OSE Conversions of Character Collections. I don’t see why not. Monsters, ready-to-go PCs/NPCs with just enough background to make ‘em interesting. Some art for visualization. I may work on this together with two other CC volumes I’d like to make, so they hit as a six-book bundle.
• Mission X: It’s time to get working on this. I’d anticipate late 2023 or early 2024 as it’s a big project.

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. Some of my early discussions with authors are fluctuating between “oh, I get it, that’s cool” and “…but surely those restrictions don’t apply to my cool idea!” Yes, they do.

Friction

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

• I still feel a bit behind on things, but I’m catching up a bit. I wanted to be farther ahead with the OSE solos, but I caught up by a few days.
• Art is expensive. Color art more so. Even then: worth it.
• Haven’t received nearly as much feedback on the OSE solos as I hoped I would from the playtester pool. I’ll have to rethink this.
• The Serpents of Legend initial mansucript came in as a bit of a shock, which started to fade once I realized why it was looking like double the projected page count. Strictly a matter of repetition, done for good reasons, but not space efficient. So…that one will take a week or so to rework.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

• Bouncing back and forth between Nightmare Fuel and OSE work has been good for my mental health.
• I invited some backers from the OSE project who also were some of my earliest supporters to playtest the books. I have gotten proofreading feedback on several books from one tester, and extensive reports with multiple play-throughs from another.
• I worked hard on a cover design for Shield’s Up, then decided that what I wound up with looked way too much like my Dragon Heresy cover, then went back to the drawing board…and now I’m pretty darn happy with the results.
• By day’s end, both Garden of Evil and the Bugstiary are likely to be in PDF format suitable for fight-testing and layout/art decisions. That doesn’t mean there’s no editing to be done. There’s plenty of it. But the most important factors in the books’ utility can be summed up with two concepts: appropriate stats and broad inspiration. What I’m reading in both books will fire imaginations. Now we need to fight test the monsters and adjust to appropriate challenge levels from 62 to 250+ points.
• Had a really good conversation with Alain Dawson on diverse matters.