A Bestiary Approaches for Nordlond and the DFRPG

[DouglasCole]

The Kickstarter for the Bestiary goes live next Thursday, but here's the preview page in the interim! Please share widely.

While the Bestiary is naturally set in Nordlond...that really doesn't change much of the utility provided by a ready-to-use big book of monsters.

Minimum 128-page hardcover; and if we hit the 63,000 top stretch goal, it'll grow to 240 pages.

[Dalin]

I just melted into a puddle of drool.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Dalin

I just melted into a puddle of drool.

I think I need to make this a power of a new monster. The Dalinator.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I think I need to make this a power of a new monster. The Dalinator.

Melting into a pool of drool, melting adventurers into a pool of drool, or a pool of drool that melts adventurers?

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Melting into a pool of drool, melting adventurers into a pool of drool, or a pool of drool that melts adventurers?

All of the above would be a great monster.

[DouglasCole]

The Nordlond Bestiary and Enemies book project is now Live!

Here we go! The biggest project I'm launching this year, and maybe my biggest project ever.

I'm a tetch nervous, but I think we've got this. We shall see.

I wanted to welcome those who joined from the "Follow the Campaign" pre-launch page! I was out of the gate early this time, and hopefully this will help us. If all followers jump in on Day 1 (and a reasonable fraction like the cards and VTT pack pledge), we've got a legit shot at funding.

In any case, two bits of media:

I was on Talking Crit last night with Erik Tenkar and Bad Mike.

Talking Crit with Gaming Ballistic

It was a pretty good discussion, though I didn't spend a lot of time actively promoting this Kickstarter.

On the other hand, I'll be on SJGames Live! at 2pm Central Time today, and that WILL be active promotion.

I intend to show card mockups, token mockups, and hopefully have a full dozen sample monsters and a few other laid-out pages ready to pop up on the screen.

If you have questions, that's a great time to ask them. I'll post a link when I have one.

In the meantime: Join Me on Discord to chat, ask questions, and get updates!

Update 2/3:

All-digital reward added!

It was pointed out to me that some of the settings on the VTT pack and QR PDF were a bit wonky. I added an all-digital pack with the book PDF, the Quick-Reference print-and-play PDF, and the tokenized VTT pack for $50 so you don't have to bother with add-ons and such.

One more new reward: Physical Book plus new PDFs (for international folks!)

The physical Bestiary is aimed at shipping worldwide, but the Quick-reference card decks would be prohibitively expensive at this juncture (not to mention a logistical nightmare).

But...one of my backers noted that Bestiary (Print/PDF) and PDFs of the Quick-Reference Print-and-Play and tokenized VTT pack makes the perfect combo. So I added that as a reward as well.

[Hrafnagudh]

Got the starter one while waiting for my boxed Dungeon Fantasy to arrive (hopefully, soon :'( )

[DouglasCole]

Bestiary Progress:

This week was launch week for the Bestiary, and true to my word, we went live yesterday. As I type this, the Nordlond Bestiary and Enemies Book sits at just over $20,000 raised, with $14,000 more to go. So we had a great first day, but are still looking at picking up nearly 200 backers to fund, and 650 more to hit all the stretch goals.

Is this doable? It really ought to be. My own projects have varied between 420 and 600 backers for Dungeon Fantasy RPG projects; SJGames’ from a low of about 550 (DF Companion 2) to a high of 1,600 (the Boxed Set), with the Monsters 2 book sitting at over 1,000. The Nordlond Bestiary is “like Monsters, but more so.” I’m hopeful.

As part of the launch-day run-up, I was on two shows

Talking Crit with Erik Tenkar and Bad Mike. This has a primarily OSR/D&D audience, but they have always dug my works, they recognize that I’m one of the better planners for Kickstarters, and they value my insight and commentary after running over a dozen projects successfully.

SJGames Live with Hunter Shelburne. This discussion was pretty focused on the Dungeon Fantasy RPG. Lots of previews and screen shares.
Where can you find out more about the project, or make comments?
• The Kickstarter page, of course.
• Gaming Ballistic’s Blog
• The GB Discord channel
• Threads in the SJGames Forums, including the DFRPG (you're already here) and GURPS forums
• Reddit has threads on r/GURPS and r/RPG. That second one was started by a fan, so it is a better place for people to comment than those started by the publisher.
• Same deal with this thread on RPG.net, which has already gathered some commentary.

[SolemnGolem]

I threw in for the KS at $65, the level needed to get a hardcopy version of the book.

I have a hard copy of Characters and another of Campaigns. With the addition of a handsome Ovinarbokin Bestiary on my shelf, I shall have completed the trifecta with a Monstrous Manual equivalent!

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by SolemnGolem

I threw in for the KS at $65, the level needed to get a hardcopy version of the book.

I have a hard copy of Characters and another of Campaigns. With the addition of a handsome Ovinarbokin Bestiary on my shelf, I shall have completed the trifecta with a Monstrous Manual equivalent!

Pretty much. Most of my day for the next several weeks will be attacking the nitty gritty of monster writeups.

Periodically, like every few days during the campaign, I'll tease a completed sheet in the Updates.

Right now, and it's very early of course, BiggerCake things we'll hit about $62,000, which is pretty darn close to the 240-page mark at $66K. To get 240 pages, we'll need to attract another 610 backers to jump on board.

That is ... a lot. It's not an impossible amount, especially for a bestiary: The Monsters 2 campaign had 1,016. But we will need to attract 10 more people than the largest total I have ever attracted to a Dungeon Fantasy RPG campaign (600 for Citadel at Nordvorn).

That means I need the assistance of folks to increase the reach of the message. Retweeting, sharing, commenting on some of the threads that already exist (I have a breakdown of them in this update here), and - even better - taking news of the campaign to your Favorite Local Game store.

In particular, the "well-supported system in a box" pledge level. it doesn't take much - one game store per state at that level - to crush the funding goal and put the campaign into a range where the full-sized book is nearly certain.

I'll be doing my part, but folks hear so much from creators, that they deep-six the information almost as soon as it's received. A customer asking for a pre-order is a guaranteed sale for them, which is obviously attractive.

In any case: I really hope we can inspire enough folks to jump on. It's going to be a very full, very pretty book, useful in most fantasy campaigns, even if the fluff text has a Nordlond bias.