More Perilous Journeys: Now LIVE on Kickstarter

[DouglasCole]

https://gamingballistic.com/2020/07/...-fantasy-trip/

Work in progress on the five covers.

[DouglasCole]

Survey Initiation

I have all the covers, I've made mockups of the different products so hopefully you know what you're getting.

[Picture can be found at the KS Update link]

I hope to hear back from Backerkit soon, and they do promise within 2 business days. The only thing that they're pinging me on is shipping for add-ons, but I THINK the "whole order shipping" covers that. We'll see. They treat add-ons and regular pledge items as entirely different things, and I'm not sure how they relate sometimes. Despite this being, what? My eighth or ninth time?

In any case, they'll get back to me. Then I'll send out a "smoke test" to 5-10% of the backers, which will hopefully suss out any challenges. After that, the main surveys will go out.

Survey Closure

I intend to leave the surveys open until August 15. Just as a reminder, this was the original schedule.

• Campaign Launch: May 19, 2020
• Campaign End: June 13, 2020
• Backerkit Phase: July, 2020
• Production: September, 2020
• PDF Distribution: October 2020
• Printing and Delivery: November 2020

Three of the books have been edited and laid out, and art commissioned. It's starting to come in, and I've been posting previews on my Discord channel periodically. The final two are in editing, and then comes layout and art. Even so, hopefully that will be well underway by the time the survey period closes. (Pre-orders stay open until the print order is placed.)

Once the Backerkit phase has completed and the PDFs go out, there will be a reasonable review period to provide errata feedback before the print orders are placed.

That's where we are. With luck, the smoke test goes out soon, with the expectation being "midweek."

[DouglasCole]

Surveys Launched

I pushed the "go" button on the Backerkit survey today, so it's time to collect shipping, get any add-ons you want, etc.

I did wind up adding the Print+PDF bundles for the original Five Perilous Journeys, because oops, I forgot to put them in.

If there's something in my back catalog that you want that's not on there, let me know.

Pre-Orders Open!

In addition to the pledge manager, folks that missed the campaign can go to the*Pre-Order Store*and pile on. There are bundles in the store that are the same price as during the Kickstarter...but not all options are available at the discounts from the campaign: In particular, the "pick 1-3 PDFs" or "choose 1-3 books" are now simply*a la carte.

But if you missed the campaign, come on in, check it out. Maybe buy a few things.

Pre-Orders increase Author Pay

In case you missed it from the campaign, the authors pay rate is determined by the total backers from both the Kickstarter campaign AND the Backerkit pre-order phase.

If we pick up another 45 pre-orders, that will increase the base pay for GM'd adventures to the $0.06 per word that qualifies for membership in the Science Fiction Writers Association. So it's not too late to help things out. Share the link, point folks at the covers or preview pages, and my Discord page!

A Word on Dragon Heresy for Not-the-USA

Dragon Heresy is a 5e-derived RPG that is what can only be described as a 'fantasy heartbreaker.' It's like D&D, but different. It's the origin of what became my Nordlond setting.

I have many physical copies in inventory, but they're all in the USA. Overseas shipping is ridiculously expensive (I once had to drop $75 to get a single copy to Australia) for these. I keep some inventory of all my other stuff in the UK with Kixto, but not Dragon Heresy.

At some point later this year, I'll run a crowdfunding campaign whose express purpose is to move boxes of books over to the UK. That runs something like $150 per box of 10, and my intent is to see if there's enough EU/UK/Rest-of-World demand to stage books over there.

That means if you're interested in what happens when a GURPSy guy starts mucking about with the D&D rules . . . I'd ask that you check out the PDF for instant gratification, and wait a bit on the physical product. The assumption for shipping right now is books for Rest-of-World are shipped from the UK. Moving a $60 book from the US to most other places is a net loss. Let's not do that and find a better way.


That's it! Get on those surveys! I'll go back to alternating between editing and painting my basement. :-)

[Kalzazz]

I really want to thank DHC for adding PayPal support it is fabulous

[DouglasCole]

Dark Lord’s Doom: Distributed!

I got word from SJGames this morning that, barring one small tweak, the file was good to go. I did a final check of the file, tweaked the curves on a few images to prevent them from being too dark, and spooled out the file.

And then I hit go…so you should be able to check your Downloads link in Backerkit and see the first of five adventures waiting for you.

It’s solid programmed adventure…perfect for lockdowns.

I’ll give folks through November 28 to report errata using this link. Please remember “I’d do this differently” is not an errata, and that especially in dialog, folks might not be using perfect grammar. Beyond that, if you find issues, let me know, and David and I will make a judgment call on whether to incorporate them, taking into consideration the magnitude of the problem and whether the fix is (a) better, and (b) doesn’t break layout.

All the hyperlinks should be active and correct. Those are important to fix, obviously…but they also don’t appear in print, so last-minute “Oh, this doesn’t go where it should!” is much easier for that kind of thing.

[larsdangly]

Hi Doug; thanks very much for your continued creative support of this game. On a quick scan through it looks terrific. I did note that some of the NPC stat blocks use different conventions re. recording of adj. DX and armor protection - i.e., one will include the DX adjustment for a shield and state its armor protection whereas another will list that a shield is carried but will not consider it in the DX adjustment or list its contribution to armor protection. I don't know whether that is something you would consider rises to the level of an erata item.

[phiwum]

I got mine and read through the instructions. Looks excellent.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

Hi Doug; thanks very much for your continued creative support of this game. On a quick scan through it looks terrific. I did note that some of the NPC stat blocks use different conventions re. recording of adj. DX and armor protection - i.e., one will include the DX adjustment for a shield and state its armor protection whereas another will list that a shield is carried but will not consider it in the DX adjustment or list its contribution to armor protection. I don't know whether that is something you would consider rises to the level of an erata item.

There are a few NPC’s, notably the Templars of Enok that have shield skill but frequently for plot reasons don’t have them ready or with them. I think bringing such adjustments to our attention is a good idea, so at least there is a common answer on which of those was intentional, and which might actually be mistakes.

There’s an errata form on my blog: https://gamingballistic.com/errata/

As they say: if you see something, say something.

[DouglasCole]

Dragon Hunt! PDF Distributed

This morning I got word from SJGames that the Dragon Hunt! PDF was - with a few tweaks, already made - ready for preliminary distribution and error checking. So I sent it out to 506 hopefully eager backers.

Note: this is a very challenging programmed/solo adventure. I recommend tackling it with all three of the provided characters the first time through.

[DouglasCole]

The first feedback on Dark Lord's Doom: a concise positive review that David can be proud of. "A top class adventure, highly recommended."