It’s been four weeks since my last report, and the work here has almost all been “head down” stuff. But good progress made. We’re heading into the Christmas-New Year “season,” which has some impact on timing of some things.

• The Nightmare Fuel bestiary project for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG funded and finished on November 6. Surveys went out three weeks ago, Garden of Evil was first distributed 11 days ago, and since then work has continued on the other two books…
• …including Serpents of Legend, which was released to backers yesterday.
• The Bugstiary cover art was retouched significantly, and the author is closing in on getting me final edits. Matter of days I hope, maybe less.
• The OSE Solos to AUS-NZ got caught in Xmas shipping, I think. The MyUS intermediary wound up charging me $500 for 10-12 parcels. That still probably will wind up being slightly less than sending them direct from the US or UK, but I absolutely took a bath there. This is why publishers hate shipping folks: things change without warning.
• My November DriveThruRPG sales had a really nice spike, which was cool to see.
• Hexagram 10 released…and I have two articles in it. I’d forgotten about those.
• One more on Nightmare Fuel: The covers are really sweet.
  

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 $450 per month.
• Special Content in December: The full Garden of Evil and Serpents books. A lot of behind the scenes stuff on Discord.

Still bleeding members slowly. Once Nightmare Fuel is done I’m going to take a short breath (likely over break) and do some strategizing on Patreon and a few other things.

Gaming Ballistic in Media

• Generic Universal Eggplant posted a review of Garden of Evil. I was worried for a bit because of the title, but the review was positive. I commented, but it looks like my comments were eaten. In brief:
  • The bark armor is just ablative DR, and the discussion about how to handle it was somewhat animated. DFRPG privileges simple, so “yes, the armor just gets whittled away by basic damage” is the simple version. We talked about basically inflicting the Wounded disad, which does a lot of what we wanted, but in the end, went with simple.
  • Limited Camouflage doesn’t come in levels now; it was actually a typo in the Flora metatrait that was the ONLY instance of Limited Camouflage 2 in the book…but we did toy with levels because it makes a lot of sense. Limited Camouflage X gives –X to spot when moving and –2X when stationary.
  • Anyway, the review shows all the signs of being thoughtfully written, which I appreciate.

Currently Manufacturing/Fulfilling/Shipping

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

• The OSE Solos kickstarter has all books on the way. We ran into one oops for a Japanese resident backer that we’ll address, but shipping world is complex these days, so caution and patience is warranted
• The OSE Solo shipment to Australia/New Zealand is on its way there. Regrettably, “slow-boat” was not available so MyUS dinged me for a 3-5 Express Air shipment. Well, that’s good for backers. Fortunately it was 11 orders, not 110. I can handle a few hundred bucks of cost overrun. I cannot handle thousands.
• Nightmare Fuel is not yet in the manufacturing stages…but I expect to start with that next week.

Crowdfunding and Product Launches

 

Nightmare Fuel

• Surveys out and 98% complete. In fact, something like six of the eight incomplete are all digital, though one of those has since decided to add some physical product. Of course.
• The covers and graphic design took some beating on…but I’m very pleased with the end results.
• The interior art is just as good. These are gorgeous books, front to back.
• Garden and Serpents are in backers’ hands. I expect to get Bugs out in the next few days, as the only thing left is a final read-through and edit from the author to me.
• Once the three books are out, I’ll do a marketing push for the last week or so of pre-orders while I go to town getting the quick-reference cards and VTT assets into motion.
• I expect to place the print order for the books in about a week, but I also expect the holiday season to lengthen the manufacturing time.

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, The “Bugstiary,” and Garden of Evil. All part of the Nightmare Fuel campaign. All nearly done.

Shields Up! Finalized, on sale, and print books are in! I must admit, I went with a matte-finish cover and I really like it. The OSE books got that cover too (because the OSE Rules Tome is matte) and I really like that as well.

The Old-School Solo Adventures are on sale on Gaming Ballistic’s Shopify Store in both print and PDF formats!

• Dragon Hunt (for OSE)
• Dark Lord’s Doom (for OSE)
• Vampire Hunter Belladonna (for OSE)
• Till Death Do Us Part (for OSE)

All four of the OSE solos are also available as PDFs from DriveThru.

 

In Development

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

With OSE Solos almost done, Shields Up! released, and Nightmare Fuel campaign live…it’s time to start on active development of some of these projects. Plus a few more.

• 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. Because it’s DFRPG though, and the last DFRPG project did not go well, expect to see this delayed for a bit.
• Gear Catalog 1? Has a revisor/author, and a structure, and a plan to get the manuscript done. This one should be fun.

• Inns and Taverns; Two Warring Houses, by Douglas Cole. Systemless. Chatted with the author, who agreed that he would never get back to Inns and Taverns, so we cancelled that contract. I still want to do the book though. Two Warring Houses as well, but I need to figure out what these will become.
• 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. Came to an agreement on what this will be, when, and how much.
• 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. Starting to wonder what the physical format should be. 8×10 is the DFRPG, but US Letter, A4, A5, 6×9, etc would all be potentially viable. Most likely is the 8.5×11 US Letter format, but I’m still musing.

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 Infinite Archipelago concept 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.

• The response on the Nightmare Fuel campaign was suboptimal. That impacts my 2023 plans for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG and Powered by GURPS lines. It can’t not. So GURPS gets some time off in terms of shorter projects to market, but is always on my mind in the background.
• I’ve taken several weeks of delay on Nightmare Fuel due to editing taking just way longer than expected. The books are better for them, but I am taking notes on what makes a manuscript “finished.”
• Technically all of the books came in over projected page count
  • Garden released at 20 pages and was targeted at 16; in fairness I knew it would be 20 as soon as I saw the outline and planned for it
  • Bugstiary was targeted at 32, immediately expanded to 36, and is now 48 pages.
  • Serpents was targeted at 32, rescoped to 40–44, and will land at 60 pages.

These all are “good news” for crowdfunding backers, as the pledges gain value…but they also impact my COGS and development costs, which make planning victory harder.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

• The Nightmare Fuel art is really pretty. Really pretty.
• The OSE solos physical copies, with the matte covers look and feel amazing. Shields Up! is the same way. I may do more of that.
• The new strategy for how my earnings get paid out (this is just internal decision) is working out really well; I’m glad I did it.