Nordlond Bestiary and Enemies Book: Now LIVE on Kickstarter

[DouglasCole]

Wow. What a freakin' day. So awesome.

Tomorrow there's no rest for the wicked, and I'm chatting with ShipQuest in the UK talking international shipping. If I have any good news, I'll pass it on.

But here are some stats:

• We raised $52,223. This outperforms my prior best Kickstarter (Four Perilous Journeys) by about $12,000. We raised more funds during this Kickstarter than 4PJ did*including the Backerkit phase.
• We had 685 actual backers. This outperforms the best DFRPG Kickstarter (Nordvorn) at 600 and the best prior project of mine (again, Four Perilous Journeys) at 608.
• The average pledge was $76.24, beating the next contender (Delvers to Grow) which was $69.19 handily
• The project finished with 773 followers and a 50% conversion rate of followers to backers. That conversion rate is five full percentage points higher than my best prior project, and even 45% was super-high. My low was on the order of 20%, so again: really, really good.
• We funded, and hit four of seven stretch goals. We*almost*hit five. That's 192 pages...so even GURPS Horror is smaller (I always thought of it as a stealth bestiary).

This was solid. Now I have to do my Management Fu thing.

First order of business after I chat with ShipQuest and a few other international fulfillment folks is to get solid quotes from various printers, and really dig in on getting these monsters done. I can also start queueing up the art, which will make my art team happy.

For now, I'm going to go have something to drink.

Thanks again, folks. You turned this from something that looked pretty grim through all of November into the best campaign I've ever run. I'll make you a great book.

[Farmer]

Well done, Douglas! Really happy to be a backer. From what I can see, over 400 print books (based on the pledge level numbers) - that's awesome, and with the extra pages really looking forward to owning that along with the PDF and the VTT pack and so on.

[Refplace]

Congratulations Douglas, hope this bodes well for the upcoming year. Also that the VTT thing works out, seems like that has potential for smaller projects as an add-on.

[Willy]

Great work! May I suggest 2 things? First I guess you have at least made the beasts / emenies for the stretch goals, so what about a add on to the bestiary, only of course if the sales justify it. Second since you offer it both in printed and in PDF form, what about a printer friendly PDf version to make it easier for users to print it out for themselfes whenever they want like the things one shot adventures offers for free. From experience I can say such a version is much better when doing the printing by yourself and saves money, because toner or ink can be expensive and it´s better for the environment.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Out of all the stretch goals, the next two were honestly the ones I was looking forward to the most - dinosaurs are always welcome, and human foes can be readily modified (with Nordlond Races or similar) to be ready-made foes of any race. Here's hoping we see a final surge that gets us at least the dinos (of course, more animals - the final DF stretch goal - would be awesome as well).

Well 4e does have dinosaurs (Lands out of Time), just not as many as Classic: Dinosaurs did.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by maximara

Well 4e does have dinosaurs (Lands out of Time), just not as many as Classic: Dinosaurs did.

Dragons of Rosgarth, a previous Nordlond product, also has some dinosaurs (indeed, the dinosaur teaser art used in this Kickstarter is from that product), but more would have certainly been welcome. Still, the campaign looks to have gone quite well - honestly, at the 24-hour mark, I assumed it would only hit one more stretch goal, but it managed to get through two and a decent bit of the way toward another.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Dragons of Rosgarth, a previous Nordlond product, also has some dinosaurs (indeed, the dinosaur teaser art used in this Kickstarter is from that product), but more would have certainly been welcome. Still, the campaign looks to have gone quite well - honestly, at the 24-hour mark, I assumed it would only hit one more stretch goal, but it managed to get through two and a decent bit of the way toward another.

Sure having more in one place than scattered all over the place is always welcome but I think as cool as they are dinosaurs don't seem to be used much (at least in the games I was in) and that space can be used for things people are more likely to use.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

[*]We funded, and hit four of seven stretch goals. We*almost*hit five. That's 192 pages...so even GURPS Horror is smaller (I always thought of it as a stealth bestiary).

That is more pages than Classic: Bestiary (130 Pages; 150 creatures), Classic: Fantasy Bestiary (131 pages; 250 creatures), Classic: Space Bestiary (114 pages, 300 creatures), or Classic: Creatures of the Night (130 pages; 67 creatures).

I should mention the the higher the creature count per page the less impressive the book was both artistically and information wise. It was not uncommon to see 4 or more creatures shoved on one page (with few is any images) in Classic: Space Bestiary

Classic: Bestiary is likely the best of the bunch but all the classic books lack traits and skills so you have to figure those out on your own if you want them to matter.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by maximara

Sure having more in one place than scattered all over the place is always welcome but I think as cool as they are dinosaurs don't seem to be used much (at least in the games I was in) and that space can be used for things people are more likely to use.

I'm... not sure what point you're trying to make here. The dinosaur (+plants, but I don't care so much for plant monsters) stretch goal not being reached doesn't mean the pages earmarked for dinosaurs are going to be used for something else - it means they aren't going to exist.

Unless you're talking about the order of the stretch goals? To be clear, I'm fine with the order Douglas opted for - sure, dinosaurs possibly being included earlier would have been preferable, but I assume he knew what he was doing when he made the stretch goals, putting them roughly in the order most likely to attract early support (or just... putting them in the order of what he personally most wanted to design/include first and least wanted to design/include last, that's a perfectly legitimate way to do it as well).

[DouglasCole]

International Shipping Update: Anything for Anyone, Anywhere

I was not expecting to be able to make this announcement. But I never really give up on International Shipping, only reluctantly make campaign-specific decisions. I WANT everyone to be able to get my stuff.

But after a lot of chatting with Nord Games (USA) and ShipQuest (UK), I'm pleased to announce that when the Backerkit Survey goes out in a week or so, international customers will be able to

• Switch pledge levels to any of those currently available.
• Add on any of the products that will be listed to your order

As this implies, I will not be doing fulfillment out of my basement.

Both Nord and Gaming Ballistic have the same philosophy when it comes to shipping: Make it as close to a pass-through as possible. So this is excellent. Even better, ShipQuest UK is a VAT agent under iOSS (or will be by the time the books start moving). So THAT part of the decision - which was and is a legit reason to not do international shipping of books and stuff - no longer applies.

The logistics chain provided by Nord and ShipQuest is, quite simply, better than what I was able to do on my own. I couldn't speak confidently to this during the campaign, because I didn't have enough information about who, what, how many, and how much. I know how much ShipQuest spent to become a registered VAT agent, and that was simply not going to happen for me.

But...now the game is afoot.

That does not mean shipping will be cheap or we'll be happy about the rates. We know we will not be happy. But they're better than I was looking at on my own, and the ability to move boxes of my old inventory to stage for international backers, plus a more experienced staff when it comes to working with VAT + Backerkit...I think we can get this done.

Sorry for not being able to lead with this, but hopefully "delayed" is better than "not at all."