Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

My NEXT project - launching in three days! - is Artifacts of Legend

This two-book project is launching on Thursday on Kickstarter. It will run through June 10. The first book, which gave the campaign its title, is Artifacts of Legend. It is 40 pages long, and contains nine major artifacts, plus a Legendary Item generator to generate cool magic items based on the Named Possession model. The second book, which looks to be 36 pages, is Artifacts of Saga. These are darker, more grey-area in many cases. There are 11 such items (each artifact has a two-page spread), plus strong tie-ins with some NPCs, who are given plot-seed treatment. Finally, it includes two additional power sources for items: spirit-binding and tapping ley-line loops.

With little effort, these mighty weapons can be easily transported out of the Nordlond setting ... and as my future projects take off with the Infinite Archipelago series of settings, you'll see more and more "not Nordlond" coming out of Gaming Ballistic.

Please follow the campaign to be notified on launch.

Artifacts of Legend

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

Neat! I haven't used many magic items in my DFRPG game so far, but I look forward to changing that. I'm also glad for the support for additional settings outside of Nordlond--not that I mind the Nordlond bits either.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

I get it completely. I have a few ideas that I'm looking at right now for other systems, and potentially rip up the map around the Nordlond region into something a lot more fractured, but in a good way.

that doesn't mean I'm done with Nordlond - at all. Not even close. But I want to expand the capabilities in particular ways, with more freedom, and I have many ideas along that line.

But first of course...I have to get this next project filled with art and successfully funded!

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

As a Patreon of GM, I have looked through it and it is very good. I can't wait for the final product.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

The Artifacts of Legend Kickstarter is now live.

Containing 20 objects of great power, plus a random legendary object table, new types of magic items for good or ill, and plot seeds featuring the items and the personalities that need them.

Live on Kickstarter from May 25 through June 10.

I'd appreciate your pledge on this one. Not only is this a fun book of powerful and portable items, it's one of three GURPS-related projects I'm hoping to complete before the end of 2023. Successful projects mean a head start on getting the next ones done.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

Cover Art WIP Update; Page Count Increase


Cover Art!

I got an update on the cover art that focused on more details for the cover page of both books.

[Go to KS Update to see the art]

We're still focusing on "we're too cool for clothing, let alone armor" on the Frazetta-homage that is the cover to Legends.

Team Evil gets even more self-satisifed on Sagas.

[Go to KS Update to see the art]

The covers will continue to evolve as the project goes on.

Page Counts
I've more or less spent the entire weekend on Sagas, since Legends is in a pretty good place. Sagas is growing. Spirit-bound weapons were already kinda cool, but we had some ideas that - I think - make them even more fun. And this has resulted in Sagas overtaking Legends in page count: Now it's looking like it's going to come in at 44 pages, with plenty of example items.

Progress
Right now, we're ... doing OK. We're at 70% funding, with about $4,000 more to go - about 115 more people.

Still, if one must be honest, the response is not overwhelming. We may fund, but the trajectory is such that we're not going to be close to the 500-700 people we saw in the Bestiary, Citadel at Nordvorn, or even Hall of Judgment.

Of course, at a backer count level of 500-700 folks, contemplating a hardcover, sewn-binding, 96-page omnibus gets pretty attractive. The need for printing in the EU and much more challenging staging and shipping gives one pause, but as backer counts hit that range, it seems attractive. A stretch goal - though it's in the distance at this point - of 200% funding for a hardcover omnibus instead of the 2x softcover books isn't crazy talk ... should we get close.

For now, we still have two full weeks to go, so I hope folks jump on board and help push it to fund.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

I reread this post when I wasn't distracted and realized it came off as mean discouraging instead of sadness that more people weren't already supporting because I think the idea is cool.

Rather than make some vane attempt to fix it I'm erasing and moving out of this thread.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

If it happens I can generalize "what mehrkat wants" into a niche for my GURPSy stuff that means I can stay in business, I'd happily settle on that and curate my solicitations accordingly. I'm not trying to say "you're wrong," just that it's been a challenge recently to rack up backer counts sufficient to make the kind of books I like to make (high quality color art, custom commissioned wherever possible, with as high quality paper and binding as the market will support).

That means I'm not making the sort of books the buyers want, but I also see the conventional wisdom of what sells (monster and gear catalogs) falling down. Settings usually don't do that well, 'cause this is the place where many people like to roll their own, as it were.

Dunno. I'm hopeful that this current project will fund, but honestly it's likely to lose money up until/unless I convert it to other systems ... like Old-School Essentials, Shadowdark, and whatever variant of Fifth Edition D&D (including my own Dragon Heresy) seems to be appropriate.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

4. More adventures

Adventures are VERY VERY VERY important, in my opinion.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

I agree, with the caveat that they are also difficult to do well, and it can even be hard to define what a well-done adventure module even is, aside from obvious stuff like how easy to read the map key is and how easy it is to figure out where to start the PCs. (If it fails at either of these basic tasks, it's a bad module, full stop.)

There are plenty of other metrics, like how generous the rewards are relative to challenge, or how evocative the prose is (how vivid a picture it paints for the GM and/or players with only a couple of adjectives), that are difficult to evaluate and more difficult still to excel at.

Still, even with that caveat in mind, adventures are important for conveying norms. There was a thread here recently asking about how much treasure delvers should get from an adventure. The poster was grateful to get any feedback at all from others on what's appropriate. A simple book of dungeon crawls a la Against The Giants sounds like something that would have helped me seven months ago, when I was first learning DFRPG. I don't know if it would fit the Kickstarter business model though.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

Yeah, but they do not seem to sell well.
Maybe an adventure that had new monsters, a divine power-up as a reward, etc. would be attractive. Give those who make thier own adventures something to want in the same product.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

While there were other circumstances involved, the Nordlond Sagas project that produced Forest's End and Dragons of Rosgarth lost me something like $10,000 in the end. I wasn't yet depending on GB as my livelihood then, as I am now, but that would have been rough.

Adventures are also hard to do well from a mass market perspective. For every person that says "Hall of Judgment is too specific, I can't use this Viking crap in my own campaign," there's another who says "Hall of Judgment should have specified every little thing, from the price of grain to the content of every building. Not specific enough."

"Too wordy. You only need like five words per room."

"Not enough lore. How can I even run this without doing all the work I paid you to do?"

Yeah. Oh, also:

"I'm tired of all this fantasy stuff. Do something else."

So...yes, adventures are hard to sell.

Edit: I mean, I love doing them. I would love to have a steady stream of them coming in, and thus going out. I'd like each one to do well enough just by putting it on websites that I don't have to bother with Kickstarter.

But many of the blind submissions I have received are not well suitable. They're "this is an adventure from my campaign" with little to no context shifting to make it more, dare we use the world, generic. It has to have enough hooks to make it go, but not so many it could have only worked in the campaign from which it sprung. A bunch of other constraints too.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

It would be interesting to see some market research on this topic.

What impact do ready made campaigns have on the revenue of the big RPG brands?

If an RPG wants to attract new players, how much do ready made campaigns help?

Are the players and GMs who spend the most money on the game paying for campaigns and adventures, or other stuff?

If the campaigns and adventures didn't exist, would they spend money on other stuff? Or are campaigns and adventures a prerequisite/boost for selling other stuff?

Anecdotally, as our gaming group is now mostly middle aged, all the games played at the moment are ready made campaigns. The GMs don't have the time to create everything from scratch.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

Seeing research would be interesting, yes. In the absence of research, looking at what WotC does could tell you something about what THEIR research is telling them. Judging from their output, campaigns and adventures must be quite profitable because the bulk of their output consists of them, with character-facing splatbooks and monster books only a large minority. (Although they do tend to mix some monsters and magic items into each adventure or campaign setting book, too.)

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

But that doesn't really apply well to GURPS. D&D GMs and Players are a rather different breed, and SJG has come out and said "adventures don't sell well at all".

Now, among GURPS Fantasy fans? They probably sell better than the other GURPS genre fans... which is why I 'd ask Douglas Cole whether his adventures had more backers than his Bestiarys (my guess is yes, despite being a loss, I'd bet the adventures had way more backers).

So Doug, out of your KSes, which GURPS Nordlond ones have been backed the most, the adventures, the Bestiarys, Nordlondr Folk, or Delvers to Grow? (or even Shield's Up, but I think that was an add-on to the Bestiary Expansions?)

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

Maybe it's worth examining why SJG has hitherto been less successful at selling adventures than WotC has, especially to fans of D&D-style fantasy. It's a large potential market.

I was reading the GURPS classic adventure Orcslayer today thanks to a YouTube video review of it, and it strikes me that it would be a very good first adventure for either a GM or a player new to DFRPG and/or GURPS. It has a good but concise setting that takes only a page or so of space (easy to digest), it has enough simple procedures to be interesting but not overly complex (travel 50 miles a day, reduced by encumbrance; here's how to handle food and water and hunting; a couple of others); it's straightforwardly linear but doesn't assume that the PCs must win every battle, not even the big ones; player characters are constrained to be fairly simple so you're encouraged to jump right into play (e.g. if you play a certain warrior maiden, you can choose between her ten-year-old, twenty-six-year-old, or sixty-year-old versions, all with different point values, but you don't need to decide whether she can cast spells or whether to wield a morningstar vs. lance).

I am not a fan of GURPS Fantasy but I'm a fan of DFRPG because of the things it removes from GURPS. I'm a fan of dungeons, dragons, and fantasy adventuring. In discussions about D&D I often meet people who are looking for things DFRPG has. I think selling people on GURPS and then selling them on GURPS Fantasy and then selling them GURPS Fantasy adventures is likely to be harder than just selling a good DFRPG adventure and/or setting and the tools to run it well (DFRPG boxed set + pedagogical support from the adventure itself).

The other thing you'd want to learn from WotC's example is that it helps to include both GM-facing and player-facing material in each book. Adventures should have a couple interesting and novel magic items, monsters, or new ways to spend character points in an appendix at the back. GURPS excels at this kind of thing and DFRPG adventure or setting book writers can take advantage of that. "Those who reach the rank of Eel Brother in the Snake Blossom Cult may spend up to 5 points to buy [combo constructed using GURPS Martial Arts], described in Appendix B." Boom, done! WotC only wishes they had such elegant crunch.

That's the lesson I take from the indirect WotC market research. Execution matters, and GURPS has strengths that WotC doesn't have at these kinds of products. You can beat them at their own game! Go after that market!

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

Judge for yourself!

The first Bestiary was my most-backed DFRPG project, and yet it probably came up shorty by a few hundred backers of what it would have taken to make me really happy with it. Especially given the protestations about GURPS not having a consolidated fantasy bestiary!

Citadel at Nordvorn was next, and I was very happy with it. It also picked up 100 of folks who skipped the original HoJ release.

Hall of Judgment was the first 3pp release for the DFRPG, and pulled in roughly 1/3 of everyone who bought the boxed set (1,587 in the first KS).

Nordlond Sagas was poorly backed and lost over $10,000 net. So not only was it low backer count, the costs ran away as well (the pledge prices were established before the manuscripts came in, and they were targeted originally at 48 and 64 pages, but grew to 112 and 96 in order to properly cover the material...that was an "early learning" mistake in several ways).

Then we have Nightmare Fuel, which went from "folks really like monsters!" to "...um, or not." Artifacts is a gear catalog. They're famously popular...except when they aren't.

If it were possible to predict what stuff of mine folks were going to like, assuredly I would make more of it. But for each example of "folks liked this" we find one or two "...but not twice."

The answer to the above is "that's only half the question." Each thing I repeated, and each thing has done well AND poorly.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

It's interesting that my first reaction to seeing "Old-School Solo Adventures Conversions of TFT solos to OSE" in that list was, "I want that!" followed shortly by "Oh, too bad, it's not DFRPG." Something about that pitch is definitely exciting, maybe the promise of hack-and-slash.

It doesn't surprise me that that one topped the list.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

Followers topped 1440 at one point; of those following, only 275 converted to backers, leaving (by various measures) over 1,000 folks "on the table" who expressed enough interest to follow but not to back. That would have represented - at my best conversion rate - nearly $19,000 in additional revenue.

Solo adventures for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG would likely at least be welcome, if not outright popular. Converting David's efforts to the DFRPG would be interesting, but would require a stretch goal for "Black and White to Color Art," which isn't a bad thing, but it is a hurdle.

We shall see. I've got some plans for other products in other markets, but right now, signs are pointing to "get a day job back in technical industry, and do RPGs as a hobby again." That might wind up being better for everyone, as it means that I can go head down and do the things I want to do, however long they take.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

What's the connection here between system conversions and new art? When I think "old school" I think black and white, simple art. I just picked up GURPS: Orcslayer today and I'm loving all the sidebars and sketches and maps, all in black and white.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

DFRPG is a color line. Doing B/W is a step down In production values from everything else I do/have done for DFRPG.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

Oh, interesting! I see that SJG's black-and-white stuff is apparently all in GURPS DF, not DFRPG, as well. Never even noticed that before, thanks.

I can see how that would make publishing DFRPG stuff harder, for sure.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

Higher production values means higher backer counts (or prices) to cover development costs. If I had the backers, you'd just see me doing more and ore of it. If I could do ONLY the DFRPG (and Mission X when it comes) and broaden the scope of the setting beyond Nordlond (which if you've seen my Infinite Archipelago concept I'm rolling out this year, is in the plan), I'd just poke folks to do more and more.

I love publishing for the DFPRG and GURPS. It's what I'd love be able to just do. I don't regret doing it, and I don't regret making beautiful, full color books.

I just need to have enough interest in them so I can afford to keep doing it, and I haven't nailed down what this subset of the market wants. And there are few enough in it currently that I can't guess wrong without having to make up that miss somewhere else.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

I'm of two minds on the subject. For bestiaries, it makes sense to me to prioritize art: I think I've gotten value out of the art in Nordlond Bestiary for helping me visualize and describe certain creatures. And I sure wish I had a picture of a DFRPG ciuacla. I always look at the picture of the flesh golem with the hook hands on the same page instead--it mixes me up. Edit: oh, this one is fantastic. https://images.app.goo.gl/hiaF9CDBddz4rDkN6 So THAT'S what a vaguely feminine skeleton looks like!

But for adventures I care about layout and ideas. I truly could not care less about color. I'm prepping to run Hydra Island later today (Dungeon Fantasy Companion 3), and of the three art pieces in it, pg 137, 140, and 143, the map on pg 143 is the only one useful to me, and it would be just as useful in black and white instead of black and purple. I can imagine useful art (Sir Sacnoth defending Frog Mother might be a useful thing to show the players a drawing of) but even that is way down my priority list, and two full color pictures of random lizardmen is just a waste of space.

Orcslayer on the other hand is exactly what I want: dense text, lots of thoughtful sidebars on how to run the game, both from a rules perspective and NPC details.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

Ooph. I was hoping for a better, clearer pattern, but there isn't one.

And wow, Dungeon Grappling did really poorly... that's one I'd hoped would have done better, those are the sorts of publications I prefer, rules supplements. But it is wrestling and it was for D&D, and those two don't exactly mix like peanut butter and chocolate among the D&D fans (which would strike me as being a bonus since D&D does wrestling so poorly, but eh, clearly I have no idea what I'm talking about).

I know you didn't do a KS for it, but how has Fantastic Dungeon Grappling done for you (compared to Dungeon Grappling and Technical Grappling)? Do you have any solid figures on that or even a gut feeling?



Heh, inversely (just to show what Doug has mentioned) for me I look for plot and ideas. I'll very often change a layout, toss stats, and change the loot. So while layout can inspire, it's usually gonna all be redrawn, so even sketchy maps work fine for my purposes.

Orcslayer is a very good adventure. I'd also go with B&W images over colour, but then I'm hella old school for B&W images.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

My first-ever kickstarter. I was quite pleased with the results. It’s probably my best selling book overall.

It's sold 702 copies on DriveThru, 481 on various KS and Backerkits, and more here and there on my own sales channels (I used to do fairly well with it on my old web store, but that data was lost when I moved to Shopify)


FDG has done pretty well I think. If nothing else, it went into every copy of the reprinted Box Set for DFRPG, which ain't nothing.

It's moved 186 units on DriveThru; a bunch more on Warehouse23 (that number used to be easy to get; it's not anymore, and nothing to do with the Shopify move).

On various KS it's done 553.

So well over 700 units sold independently, and probably 2,200 or more in folks' hands I'd wager.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

I consider plot or scenario structure part of "ideas", although conveying that structure to the GM efficiently and clearly is part of "layout". I don't necessarily care that much about detailed maps (sketchy can be fine[1]) so perhaps we don't disagree?

A good layout in the sense that I'm using it means the product is cognitively simple to consume and lets me run the adventure directly from the text, without having to copy it somewhere else first and label all the maps/move monster stats into my notes for a given encounter/etc.

Orcslayer has a good layout in most ways: relevant info for NPCs is in short sidebars; organization of scenarios and interludes is clear, and I don't have to hunt around to find key information like "what do I do if the PCs lose this scenario?"

One layout nitpick I have from reading it is that Peredur Orcslayer isn't introduced until a couple of pages after his henchmen are introduced, instead of on page one, but in context it's reasonably clear anyway that "Lord Peredur" is their boss and the local ruler so that doesn't hurt the adventure much.

Because Orcslayer is very linear (though not railroadey), there's no need for a diagram or anything to describe the scenario structure. It's just "move from one chapter to the next, including Interludes where necessary." If the scenario were more complex the layout would need to be more sophisticated, but it's simple.

[1] For maps, maybe the thing I care about most is that the distances make sense instead dungeon encounters being implausibly close together without interacting in any way.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

Ugh, yeah. Do not get me started on the "Five Room Dungeon" format/style. I despise it to the core of my bones.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

Late Pledges are now Open for Artifacts of Legend

if you missed the Kickstarter, or just wanted to wait to make sure it funded, or any number of reasons ... you can come on board now with a late pledge on Backerkit.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

Happy Unruly Colonists Day!

Here in MN, it's raining like crazy and the prognosticators expect this to continue off and on all day, with maximum chance of maximum thunderstorms right around the time we're supposed to set off explosives and stuff. Dang it.

Artifacts of Legend Pushed!
However, as a consolation prize for me, I pushed Artifacts of Legend u20230704 to Backerkit.

If you've completed your survey, you will find an email from Backerkit allowing you to navigate to and download the file.

You have completed the survey, right? (Ahem: for 40 folks the answer is "not yet, but I'm going to get right on that!")

This is a "penultimate" file, in that there are still hyperlinks to hyperlink but I always do that as the very, very last step, because it's tedious and manual and I don't want to do it twice.

Also, there's a chance that the proofers, playtesters, and I have missed a few typos or something, or that there's some mistake that needs fixing.

If you find something, please submit it on the Gaming Ballistic Errata page. Choose the correct file, and use the form to let me know there's an issue. It really is the best way for me to ensure that such matters are addressed properly.

Artifacts of Saga Thursday
I also have a complete version of Artifacts of Saga, but I want to wait until Thursday to push that one, as I would like a day or two to give it the same degree of final editing pass that Legends got. But definitely expect the book by the end of the week. There's one art tweak I'd like to make, and I'll make it if the artist gets back to me by then; it "should" be an easy fix, but Life Happens.

It's Not Too Late

Late pledges are still being accepted on Backerkit, at the same price and with the same options as the main campaign. They will remain open until it's time to place the manufacturing order ... so probably another 10 days or so.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

We have received PDFs with the almost-final version and I just wanted to say how cool these books are.

You get fantasy artifacts you can throw in your campaign. Most of them make good final rewards after a long quest. Some are such evil you want to make sure they are not in the wrong hands.

- You get cool rumours about every Artifact. Mixing facts and false information about an object always makes it for me. It is not really legendary if skalds do not embellish the truth!
- You get interesting NPCs linked to the artifacts. People who can help or threat the delvers or even be the seed to an adventure.
- You get a new racial module (irzhajötun) with upgrade options.

- You get new spirit-binding rules. Rules for divine imbued items! Magic infused stuff! Easy personalization of power items and legendary weapons!
- Random tables to flesh out your creativity.

What I like the most is that you get TONS of adventure ideas. Inspiration is what I want an RPG book for and you find it in every page.

Super happy with my purchase.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

Thanks, Juan!

Even as the publisher, I'm very pleased with how the draft has evolved into a final, polished product with not just a "take this unique thing" catalog, but a metasystem to create your own legendary items.

The spirit-bound thing was something that came up between Marko and I as we talked about extra content for the book (though it is not unique to us, or even GURPS, to have spirits or entities locked inside of items) and I'm again very pleased with how it came out.

And of course, I cannot say enough nice things about how the art team responded to the concepts I provided. They really, really did a great job with these books.

It's not too late: Backerkit is supporting "late pledges," which means you can still get the same stuff at the same prices that happened in the Kickstarter.

We're coming down to the end of that, though, as the late pledges terminate when I order the physical copies of the books from the printer. Then it's "pre-order at retail" for the rest.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

I finally had some time today to look through them (although I've only made it through Artifacts of Legends so far), and I strongly agree. In fact, I went ahead and made an artifact for Shigran (the character I built with DtG, then threw up against some monsters from the Bestiary) - Geirverðjå. I did have to come up with a new Minor Ability to get the weapon I wanted, but that's because I tend to do weird things (in this case, it's a spear where the head can "bend" to function more like a scythe); I eyeballed the value by comparing it to some of the traits that could be reproduced with "Natural Weapons" modifiers.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

Nice use of external material. I can’t draw from that pool but you can. Excellent.

Re: Artifacts of Legend: Coming to Kickstarter May 25
 

Last Call for Late Pledges!

I'm going to be placing the order for the print books in a few days. So this is the last chance to place late pledges and get add-ons at the Kickstarter discounted prices.