Gaming Ballistic - GURPS Content Posts

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

An NPC and/or Townsfolk version of DtGr is on my "must-do" list. My license for the moment is confined to the Dungeon Fantasy RPG, but will expand to "modern near-future sci-fi action" when Mission X hits ... and you better believe it'll use the DtGr methodology in one form or another.

I am really looking forward to Mission X and hope I have enough lead time and notice to pitch in if its a Kickstarter.

As we saw with Template Toolkit 3: Starship Crew that could be a good series for profession lenses, especially if they are designed for more than one of the main series such as Action!, After the End, Dungeon Fantasy, or Monster Hunters.

[DouglasCole]

Gaming Ballistic is an official licensee of Steve Jackson Games creating support for the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game and The Fantasy Trip.

Gaming Ballistic is currently in the last three days of a product launch campaign that includes a number of supplements and adventures for use with both games.

The launch focus is for the new 16-page Gothic horror adventure Tower of the Moon, written by David Pulver.

However, both retailers and consumers won’t want to miss the numerous bundles that are also on offer as part of the launch.

• This Delvers to Grow bundle is a bargain that GURPS players and GMs everywhere will not want to miss! Get to the table fast (like 15-20 minutes from idea to play, or faster with free support using GURPS Character Sheet)
• All the TFT Books in print and PDF is worth well over $300, but on sale for $190. Fifteen professionally published, fully illustrated books including ready-to-go characters, three solo adventures, a five-book campaign arc, and more.
• The TFT and DFRPG Retail Packs each contain five books each of the product line in question at a 50% discount. Not a retailer? Show them to your FLGS, or have them download the GB Product catalog.
• Finally, there are Dragon Heresy, The Fantasy Trip, and Dungeon Fantasy RPG Starter Packs that get you the core rules and a selection of materials to get you going on a new game.

The launch – and the deals – end on September 30 at the end of the day (10pm Central time)

This is a Product Launch Campaign, not a “pre-order” or “crowdfunding” effort. Orders placed ship the next mailing day.

[DouglasCole]

I love talking about gaming, and recently two podcasts dropped (with two more on the way) either where I sat down with a host to chat, or featuring my Nordlond material.

Who What Why Podcast

I joined the Who What Why? Podcast last night and spoke for over an hour with Michael about this direct-to-Backerkit experiment. Why I did it, what went right, what is not as good as crowdfunding via Kickstarter or other platforms, and other topics. Quite a few other topics actually.

Who What Why: S30 E03 KS vs Backerkit with Douglas Cole

Shadow of the GM: Nordlond Saga Actual Play

Additionally, the first actual play session of Shadow of the GM’s foray into my Dungeon Fantasy RPG Nordlond Setting went live this morning. This is technically the fourth podcast with him, as we first did an interview, then he recorded his setup and session zero character generation using Delvers to Grow.

Find the actual session here: This is Nordlond!

[DouglasCole]

Not all conspiracies are connected to the plot

I was chatting on Facebook with someone on Tenkar’s Tavern, and he was relating a story involving a printing company, a church group, and what turned out to be a troublesome counterfeiting ring.

Naturally, my thoughts turned to RPG plots, and one thing that I thought was fun – and an aid in worldbuilding – is to take my usual love for Ken Hite’s Conspyramid and my own use of relationship maps and make sure that not everything is connected. I mean, folks do random stuff all the time, right?

[more in the post...]

[DouglasCole]

BALLISTIC’S REPORT FOR WEEK ENDING OCT 22

Well, “every week on Thursday” didn’t work out so well. I keep missing the alarms (or my 7yo is playing with my phone and dismisses said alarm, which is equally likely).

October has thus far been a very “below the waterline” month, but this week I made good progress on the Bestiary, which is almost certain to be the next thing up.

In other important news, SJGames launched the second phase of the productization of the Girl Genius RPG, kickstarting the hardcover print version.

• I’ve poked Kixto again about invoicing, to no result. I think they might be on a “quarterly” plan or something, or just giving enough time for all packages to arrive. It’s frustrating for me, but one has to understand that follow-up to shipping can drag on months after the ship date, due to global chaos.
• Lots of feedback to Marshall on Inns and Taverns. Combined with his new job, that will set production date back by likely at least a month. That’s an internal date, so “a month later than I’d hoped” is still cryptic enough.
• I have made significant good progress on Bestiary Volume 1. My Patreon Subscribers will see a very preliminary version of the text and some stats. There are so many moving pieces in terms of traits that it’s definitely going to be a “many eyes make it possible” book but I knew that.
• Tower of the Moon got a nice review by James Eisert this week. You can get the print and PDF copies of the book on my website store.
• I’m gearing up for another Backerkit-only experiment, this one directed at the United Kingdom and ONLY the UK. See if there’s enough interest in locally printed stuff that I can support that largest component of my former international market.
• So GB is in a lull between projects, but work is accelerating on many fronts. I hope to have one more thing go live before year’s end, and then I need to use the winter break to carefully plan 2022.

[DouglasCole]

BALLISTIC’S REPORT FOR WEEK ENDING OCT 29

October continues to be development month, and I made substantial progress along several pathways here. Including a preliminary and very temporary layout for the Nordlond Bestiary.

As goes GURPS and SJGames, as goes Gaming Ballistic, as 90% of my product lines are either Powered by GURPS or for The Fantasy Trip. So I’m thrilled to see that the Girl Genius RPG is over $125,000 in funding with over 2,100 backers as I write this. That’s phenomenal by any metric. Given the BiggerCake metrics, they’re seeing about $4K and 65 more backers per day during this “doldrums” period. So we’re probably looking at another $30K and 500 more people (!!) even before the 48-hour spike at the end. This thing made $90K or so in the first three days, so the last spike could be impressive. It would not shock me to see a $200,000 kickstarter and two waves of printing required, because what looks like a 2,500 copy initial print run may be oversold, even not considering pandemic-era paper shortages.

In short, this is great news for GURPS, though hold your breath as the printing and shipping of the bulk orders gets going, because it’s a total crap-shoot in terms of timing, and while the publishers are held to the fire on it, there’s about nothing we can do to make it better.

Oh: FnordCon4, digital convention, is Nov 5-7. I’ll be there. I think at least one of my Patreon subscribers might intend to run some Delvers to Grow stuff, too.

OK, back to Gaming Ballistic stuff:

• I got a sort-of revision from Marshall on the systemless Inns and Taverns, mostly focused on formatting rather than content. There were a few tweaks, but if the edits come back with the formats that he’s demonstrated, I breathe a lot easier about the on-ramp to successful layout.
• The Bestiary made very substantial progress this week along three fronts
• The text got a lot of work. So much work that now we’re into the “this is overwritten and must be tightened” stage.
• The spreadsheet that turns an impossible layout challenge into something that doesn’t cause horror and despair is up and being edited by myself and some of my Patreon Subscribers. Mostly this is copy/paste from the main draft. I can’t overstate the importance of the spreadsheet to my workflow, as it is much less error-prone than the “copy the master layout, replace everything that needs changing, hope you remember it all” method I’ve used on prior monster and NPC entries in other books.
• I am likely within striking distance of setting up a temporary Kickstarter page. More on that later, but the point of it is to get folks signing up to “notify me when this goes live.”
• Still gearing up for another Backerkit-only experiment, this one directed at the United Kingdom and ONLY the UK. I may do this in early 2022 instead of right now, but we’ll see … the Tower of the Moon project really was a thorough revamp of my Backerkit sales presence - new or updated photos, pricing, text, etc. So setting up a UK-only store makes some sense here.

That’s where we stand, and I hope that heading into the Halloween weekend, a lot gets done.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

BALLISTIC’S REPORT FOR WEEK ENDING OCT 29

• I got a sort-of revision from Marshall on the systemless Inns and Taverns, mostly focused on formatting rather than content. There were a few tweaks, but if the edits come back with the formats that he’s demonstrated, I breathe a lot easier about the on-ramp to successful layout.
• The Bestiary made very substantial progress this week along three fronts
  

Looking forward to that Bestiary and the systemless Inns and Taverns has me intrigued too. Sadly many systemless supplements use d10 or d20, not 3d6. That makes them more useful for a game where the dice are used and less useful for GURPS or TFT. ALso more extremes as you cant use the bell curve to have a solid average.

[DouglasCole]

Ballistic's Report for week ending Nov 5

[DouglasCole]

https://gamingballistic.com/2021/11/...ending-nov-12/

Once again, my efforts have nearly all been directed at the Bestiary. And this week there was a lot that happened.

FnordCon4, digital convention, came and went. I think the RPG panel on Saturday went well enough, and the “how to write for SJGames” went very, very well indeed.

What went on this week?

Art, Bestiary Development, a new draft for a systemless project for next year, and more Bestiary development. We've got over 430 folks following the pre-launch page now, but we really need more!

It’s going to be a big lift, estimated at 600-650 backers to be successful, and over 1,100 in order to hit 240 pages. But the numbers are no longer looking quite so grim to me. We’ve hit 600 backers on prior projects before (Nordvorn)…hopefully the historical trend of Bestiaries being popular (and the Girl Genius anecdote that a big hardcover book is in demand!) carry the day.

[mehrkat]

I'm definitely going to back. I would love to see GCS support again (I know this is a big push).

This makes is very helpful for VTT as it can use the import tool to use for foundry that has a very good GURPS support tool.