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Old 05-22-2019, 09:14 AM   #41
DouglasCole
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Default Re: Four Perilous Journeys: Four new adventures for The Fantasy Trip

Two weeks in: 93% funded

So, we're at Day 14 and 93% funded on Four Perilous Journeys. Nordvorn, my best-to-date Kickstarter took 20 days to get to this point. So while I'd dearly love to have that extra 7% right the heck now, I must force myself to realize that we're on a fairly typical trajectory for a Kickstarter.

Editing Status

There was a round of playtesting and some further commentary on Ironskull Castle. Caught a few typos and inconsistencies, and two logical "WTF?" moments. They've been fixed. Through Memorial Day, I'll be editing the manuscripts for content and flow; preliminary layouts of the edited manuscripts should be in place, therefore, by the end of Monday. That will allow me to get playtest copies out to the Master and Commander backers for the other three adventures.

Die-cut Tokens

I've been spending a lot of time looking at die-cut tokens and cards. I can report:
  • I've found a way to make them.
  • The art is still going to be the expensive part; this not a surprise.
  • The die-cut tokens will be in full color; black and white versions of the tokens will appear as "print them yourself" on the last page of each book.

I've contracted with one of my artists to make a trial sheet. He should be getting back to me with 42 sketches based on the characters in Ironskull Castle sometime today or tomorrow. At that point, I'll place an order for a prototype and have it express-shipped to me.

Once I have the prototype in hand, I'll put the add-on officially in the campaign. They'll be $10 per sheet, and you'll be able to choose which sheets you want ad-hoc in the Backerkit cart phase of the project.

If you are so confident that you'll be getting tokens, you can certainly up your pledge now (if for some reason it all falls apart, you can reduce your pledge before the end of the campaign) which would help us fund. If 10% of current backers each go in for token sheets, we fund.

Oh, and for mini-stretch-goals: If I can 100 or more of any one sheet, I'll upgrade the board from 1.6mm to 2.5mm at no extra cost for that sheet. Another very important note: This is a THING, not a BOOK, and will follow a different logistics train than the books. This means international shipping, customs, and taxes could be egregiously high, and I won't know that until the end. Please plan accordingly.

NPC and Monster Cards
I'm working on these as well. I have had excellent help from SJG on this, and they've really gone above and beyond to make this happen. I can't report anything yet, but I can say anything produced will be identical in form factor to existing cards of similar function. No promises on making "a card for each token" decks yet, though I'd very much like to do that . . . so I'm working on it. If things go to plan and I'm ready with "all but the art" drafts of all four adventures by Monday (and doubly so if we've funded by then), this will get most of my attention.

Current and Latent Backers
We're holding steady at 372 "latent" backers, who are following but not yet pledged. That's a potential for as much as $30,000 or so: enough to get us through all of the announced Decks of Destiny stretch goals and within easy striking distance of an offset print run.

I'm getting the books re-quoted using the same printer in the EU I'm using for my Dungeon Fantasy RPG projects; maybe that offset print run can come down if it's a good price.

The key for us now is two-fold:
  • Entice those following the project to jump in. We need only 27 new backers to fund, if they come in at the current average pledge.
  • Get the word out to others. That's Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, MeWe, gaming forums, and nice things and reminders on the existing TFT comment lists. A word from a backer is worth way, way more than what always feels like a continual barrage of spam from the creator.

The halfway point for Four Perilous Journeys is Thursday. Let's see if we can fund by then!
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Old 05-22-2019, 09:50 AM   #42
raniE
 
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Default Re: Four Perilous Journeys: Four new adventures for The Fantasy Trip

Do you think you’ll be able to ship the counter sheets from within the EU to backers in the EU?
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Old 05-22-2019, 10:32 AM   #43
DouglasCole
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Originally Posted by raniE View Post
Do you think you’ll be able to ship the counter sheets from within the EU to backers in the EU?
Not at this time. I will look for local sources in the EU but right now it’s not available.
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Old 05-22-2019, 02:36 PM   #44
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Not at this time. I will look for local sources in the EU but right now it’s not available.
Understood. Please give a shout if it becomes possible.
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Old 05-23-2019, 10:42 AM   #45
DouglasCole
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Default Re: Four Perilous Journeys: Four new adventures for The Fantasy Trip

FUNDED! And Offset printing, and tokens, and . . .

This update is a big one. Not only did we fund, but . . . well, I'll let you read it.
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Old 05-23-2019, 10:56 AM   #46
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Default Re: Four Perilous Journeys: Four new adventures for The Fantasy Trip

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FUNDED! And Offset printing, and tokens, and . . .

This update is a big one. Not only did we fund, but . . . well, I'll let you read it.
Wow. This is amazing! I think I might have to go a week without eating, but I *MUST* have it ALL!!!
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Old 05-23-2019, 11:15 AM   #47
DouglasCole
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Default Re: Four Perilous Journeys: Four new adventures for The Fantasy Trip

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Wow. This is amazing! I think I might have to go a week without eating, but I *MUST* have it ALL!!!
Once I figure out exactly WHAT that means ("have it all") in terms of work content and critical path to complete, I very well may introduce an "I want it all!" tier for All the Things. That may wind up costing me some money as IWIA will likely involve some discounting, and I'd expect/encourage folks to switch over. But until I know what those items will be, how many, how hard to make . . . we'll leave it as-is.

But these next two weeks will be dynamic as heck.
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Old 05-23-2019, 11:20 AM   #48
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Default Re: Four Perilous Journeys: Four new adventures for The Fantasy Trip

Wow. That's a huge leap in one update. Behold the power of thresholds.

The physical pieces (tokens, megahexes, etc) add a lot of value in my mind. I like books for their own sake as much as many, but the product in adventures (or core rules) is information. Getting that cheaper is good; getting it more accessible, as with searchable PDFs, is also good. But if you're playing FTF, then the game pieces have to have physicality, and so they're a reason to buy a physical product.

(Which I suppose raises a question: does anyone release digital product like the image files for the tokens, so that you can convert them to VTT tokens and the like? Some PDFs you can take apart to get the image files of NPCs and so on -- or often just screenshot them -- but it seems there's a little corner open there.)
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Old 05-23-2019, 11:31 AM   #49
DouglasCole
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Default Re: Four Perilous Journeys: Four new adventures for The Fantasy Trip

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Originally Posted by Anaraxes View Post
Wow. That's a huge leap in one update. Behold the power of thresholds.
Some of the new information, such as the super-duper-outstanding quote from my printer, only arrived on my desk this morning. It also didn't make a lot of sense to make promises of cards, hexes, or tortellini casserole when the base product wasn't underpinned.

As I've said elsewhere, I know what happend: I recorded the POD pricing formula for DriveThru (something like $1.61 + 0.0202 per page, minimum 18 pages) but did NOT multiply it by four to capture that each book is printed separately. At the same time the quote has a fairly steep cost of setup (offset always does) but a MUCH more friendly unit cost (offset always does). Additionally, it seems the setup cost is discounted heavily by printing four books at once.

So boom. Offset's break-even point suddenly shifted LOWER than the current number of physical 4-book orders already placed. Not only will be adventures be better quality, they're more economical to make as well . . . which allows me to confidently offer them up to retailers for distribution.

Quote:
The physical pieces (tokens, megahexes, etc) add a lot of value in my mind. I like books for their own sake as much as many, but the product in adventures (or core rules) is information. Getting that cheaper is good; getting it more accessible, as with searchable PDFs, is also good. But if you're playing FTF, then the game pieces have to have physicality, and so they're a reason to buy a physical product.
Thanks for that thorough explanation. It rings true.

Quote:
(Which I suppose raises a question: does anyone release digital product like the image files for the tokens, so that you can convert them to VTT tokens and the like? Some PDFs you can take apart to get the image files of NPCs and so on -- or often just screenshot them -- but it seems there's a little corner open there.)
I can say that the last page of each of the four adventures is going to be a black and white version of the color tokens. You have, though, given me an interesting thought on which I will follow up.
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Old 05-23-2019, 12:50 PM   #50
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Default Re: Four Perilous Journeys: Four new adventures for The Fantasy Trip

That's terrific; congratulations! As a 'hard copy' backer, I'll appreciate it if the campaign page can update to include a concrete and easy to find list of which things I get with my core pledge and which I'll have to raise my funding level to get (and by how much). I'm a little unsure of these things as it stands.
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