Bring on Hall of Judgment!

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Hrm. Finally getting around to this. Putting "crushing" into the Icelandic translator gives alger; reversing that gives absolute. Maybe it's not to late for

Mylja ormur

Maybe the alger ormur is a worm in vodka?

The translation of "alger" I was thinking of was "total" or "complete", but "absolute" works as well.

So, I'm guessing the worm in question is a worm that crushes things (read adventurers)? Might I suggest "myljandi ormur" or "kremjandi ormur"?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

The translation of "alger" I was thinking of was "total" or "complete", but "absolute" works as well.

So, I'm guessing the worm in question is a worm that crushes things (read adventurers)? Might I suggest "myljandi ormur" or "kremjandi ormur"?

Yes. That's awesome. Find/replace, here I come.

[voodoo54]

Will this be PDF only or do you plan on offering a printed version?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by voodoo54

Will this be PDF only or do you plan on offering a printed version?

full color print (softcover); full-color PDF with hyperlinks.

Right now, the plan is to deliver it by POD. If there are a small number of backers, I may fulfill with premium print via DriveThruRPG. With a bunch more ordering physical copies, I will still do POD, but through another source I found and like - better quality, but longer wait times. If I wind up with 200-300 physical copies ordered, I may wind up using an amazing short-run digital printer I know of in the UK. If it goes absolutely nuts and we're in the 500-750 copy range, and folks are willing to let the delivery promise slide from August to October/November, I can get a sewn offset print run done through my vendor in china (still SOFTCOVER!!!).

[lachimba]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Right now, the plan is to deliver it by POD. If there are a small number of backers, I may fulfill with premium print via DriveThruRPG. With a bunch more ordering physical copies, I will still do POD, but through another source I found and like - better quality, but longer wait times. If I wind up with 200-300 physical copies ordered, I may wind up using an amazing short-run digital printer I know of in the UK. If it goes absolutely nuts and we're in the 500-750 copy range, and folks are willing to let the delivery promise slide from August to October/November, I can get a sewn offset print run done through my vendor in china (still hardcover).

Would there be a cheap delivery option to Australia?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by lachimba

Would there be a cheap delivery option to Australia?

If I print in the UK and ship to Sydney from DriveThru, it costs $6.05 to Sydney, arrives 3-7 weeks. If I print in China, I ship a box to Dice Latte in Korea, and they use Korean Mail, which costs $10-15 for a 1.5kg book, but this will be a lot less. I'd guess less than $10 extra, but I can't be sure. If we do well enough to drive to an offset run in China, there are probably things I can do about keeping that shipping between $6-8.

[lachimba]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

If I print in the UK and ship to Sydney from DriveThru, it costs $6.05 to Sydney, arrives 3-7 weeks. If I print in China, I ship a box to Dice Latte in Korea, and they use Korean Mail, which costs $10-15 for a 1.5kg book, but this will be a lot less. I'd guess less than $10 extra, but I can't be sure. If we do well enough to drive to an offset run in China, there are probably things I can do about keeping that shipping between $6-8.

Seems within my definition of affordable, if not cheap.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Right now, the plan is to deliver it by POD. If there are a small number of backers, I may fulfill with premium print via DriveThruRPG. With a bunch more ordering physical copies, I will still do POD, but through another source I found and like - better quality, but longer wait times. If I wind up with 200-300 physical copies ordered, I may wind up using an amazing short-run digital printer I know of in the UK. If it goes absolutely nuts and we're in the 500-750 copy range, and folks are willing to let the delivery promise slide from August to October/November, I can get a sewn offset print run done through my vendor in china (still hardcover).

That sounds shinier and shinier. So long as the PDF goes out sometime this summer I know I'd be willing to wait until November for the printed book.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

That sounds shinier and shinier. So long as the PDF goes out sometime this summer I know I'd be willing to wait until November for the printed book.

I'm fairly confident that I will meet my distribution of PDFs in the promised August date. That's basically seven weeks, and I don't think I need that much time to do what I need to do. I'll know better by the end of next week, as I pivot hard from "get 288-page Dragon Heresy internal printable PDF file to the printer" to "rewrite the needed bits of Hall of Judgment."

All the ART is done. I will likely generate 2-3 more maps, and if you pop over to my Discord channel, I've shown a preview of the new one. The cartographer, Glynn Seal, did the one already done in like three days. He confirms his schedule is open during the period of the Kickstarter.

So it really is two things:

1) Write the bits that need writing. I basically know what those are.

2) Convert the bits that need converting. That's monsters from one system to another, generate some pre-gens, and then set the tasks that are enumerated in the current book to appropriate difficulty levels. That's tedious but very mechanical (not formulaic, though - 'how hard should this be?' --> 'make it about that hard in GURPS given the pre-gens we have' is the guiding principle)

Anyway, the long pole in the tent is unquestionably the printed product. I would "love" things to go so well I have to do an offset run. Based on my prior KS history, that won't happen.[1] But who knows . . . there comes a point (and that point is roughly at 575-600 physical copies) where the high-quality book is cheaper for me AND better for the customer.

Ya'll are going to have ta help me get there though. That means about one person in three from the boxed set KS will need to pitch in.

And while the self-interest here on my part is pretty naked, I say this only to set expectations. My best-performing KS to date was the one that's about to fufill: a full 5e-derived core book and self-contained RPG, full-color, 288 pages, etc and it attracted 330 folks of which just shy of half opted for print. So in order to get that many physical copies, I will likely need close to 1,000 backers, which is a freakin' amazing KS for ANYONE, let a lone an indie guy like me.

ALL that being said: I have been on time or early on three for three Kickstarters to date, and I have no intention of breaking that streak.


[1] For those that note that my most recent KS DID in fact get an offset run, a 288 page color book by POD has a cost-to-print of $30-40 by the usual methods. So at the high end, if I order (say) 250 POD books, I'm looking at $7500-$10,000 . . . and I can get a LOT of books at that price from an offset printer...1500 of them in fact. The costs on a POD 80-96 pager, in softcover don't carry that kind of multiplier.

[DouglasCole]

Holy crap. My fingers above mixed up hardcopy with hardcover, but this book will not be in hardcover. It will be softcover, because at 100 or fewer pages (likely 80-96) it won't be a very good hardcover candidate.

However, the comment about sewn binding still holds: the printer in China will do a sewn-binding SOFTcover, which I did not know was a thing until yesterday.