Alternate Token Back Options
almost 5 years ago – Tue, Jul 09, 2019 at 10:47:26 PM

So, try these, and again: comment.

This is the Ironskull Sigil with a red embossed skull and crossbones.

The Ironskull Castle sigil with a capital X, done in the "Rebuffed" font with embossing.

A low resolution cut of the cover color and megahex pattern, again with the skull.

Megahex pattern, red embossed X.

Obviously, for the red background, I'd use a black embossed x, or something else. 

Primary Backerkit Phase Closed today
almost 5 years ago – Tue, Jul 09, 2019 at 12:07:45 AM

Backerkit Cards Charged

Those of you - and it's darn near 95% at this point - who have completed your Backerkit survey will note that I processed your payments today. Thank you for being so prompt.

If you haven't completed your survey, I'd ask that you try and make the time for it. There are only a dozen folks who haven't done it that pledged $2 or more (the $1 folks typically pledge to follow the campaign), so we're very nearly there.

Shipping Check

I think I said this before, but I checked out my international shipping numbers with my fulfillment partner and, including some fees to move goods around for proper delivery, I'm likely within a few tens of dollars of "neither overcharged nor undercharged." US shipping is more straight-forward. So we're good there. Moving "stuff" rather than "books" is still expensive, but at least I'm not going to over charge (bad for you) or undercharge (bad for us all if I go out of business, though worse for me).

Art Progress

I've seen all the counter art for Citadel of Ice. Holy wow, they're amazing. The counter art for Ironskull Castle is likewise finished and I think you will be pleased. I went all googly-eyed over the Curse of the Pirate king Counter sketches, and I cannot wait until the finals come in. They're so much fun.

I need to find an artist and commission the counter work for Crown of Eternity; I have a few ideas there but I might need to recruit for it as well.

I need to ping Glynn now that I have all the four fully laid-out with the minor changed needed to the maps.

I can't start Vampire Hunter Belladonna until it's written. Speaking of which . . .

Vampire Hunter Belladonna

David finished the outline, and requested and received a template update for layout import that incorporated improvements made to formatting styles. He's got the outline and is, I believe, making progress to the draft. Once that's done, I'll edit it and pour it into a layout template, then it's all-hands-on-deck for art and maps.

Counters and Cards

As noted, the counter art is coming along very well. That means I can probably start queuing up the actual print sheets with the vendor, which is a very tedious process, but not difficult. I will need to think of what to put on the back side of the counters; I have a few ideas, including the iconic symbol for each adventure (so you know what set they came from for organization purposes), or a skull and crossbones, blood-splatter, or just a big jagged red X to indicate an incapacitated figure. TFT counts bodies as obstructions, so a "down and inactive" flip-side might be valuable. Let me know.

The final bit is to pick out the cards that will be included in the deck. With five adventures, that's 12 or 13 cards each, but I'll be judicious about which ones get picked. There are fewer unique critter types than there are critters. 

Fair warning, though: I am not likely printing extras of these for retail sale. Once these are finished and shipped, that's it - they're gone until/unless I do another Kickstarter and the decks and sheets are available as add-ons. Depending on the breakdown of things, the price might change to account for the full set of costs incurred, which won't be really known until I'm done.

Schedule

I feel like we're still on course here. This coming week I'll be digging in hard on the final touches on the four finished products, including layout of the Monster/NPC cards and counter sheets. 

CONVergence 2019

Gaming Ballistic had its first "Hey, I have a booth!" convention appearance this last weekend. I wrote about it on my blog.

Um...more progress.
almost 5 years ago – Tue, Jul 02, 2019 at 02:26:07 PM

It's been a bit since I provided an update, so here we go.

Shipping

International shipping still scares the pants off me. That being said, I have made a few adjustments I wanted to cover (again, really: I mentioned it in a prior update).

If you're shipping game accessories to Canada, instead of having the orders ship from the UK, they'll ship from the US. This avoids weird questions with taxes and VAT from the UK side and saves Canucks a few bucks.

If you're shipping books only, which are not taxed, they'll still come from the UK. 

Otherwise, I sent the list of international shipments to my fulfillment partner and he pre-calculated what I was going to likely owe given where we were on things, and basically I've gotten the shipping essentially correct. I'm not hundreds or thousands of dollars over or under for the international shipping, which is what I was afraid of. Under because that would turn a successful project into a very painful one, and I don't want to do that. Over because shipping is not supposed to be a profit center. If one includes the money it will take to get the accessories over to the UK in the first place . . . I may be within a few tens of dollars of "exactly right." So booyah. That's good and right.

Backerkit Progress, Funding, and Spending

We're really doing very well. We're well over 90% and have been for a bit, and have brought in as I type this about $8,600 in extra revenue, with 93% of backers having responded to the survey. In truth, about half of the 37 folks who haven't yet responded aren't receiving any products that are set to ship, so unless they wish to engage in a pledge adjustment or throw down some add-ons, they'll get what they paid for. 

It looks like we're linearizing to about $9,000 to $9,100 in total extra funds, which means overall, the Kickstarter probably brought in close to $50K at the top line. That's rather nice.

I've done a preliminary tally, and total revenue (less Kickstarter fees) will be around $45,000 - $9K from Backerkit and $36K from Kickstarter. I've paid a bunch of bills so far and I project having anywhere from $25-29K left to spend. That will leave me with actual profit for the campaign, plus the distribution sales that hopefully will come once the print versions go into retail stores.

So the trajectory is good, though of course in business there's always room to screw things up.

Covers

Mostly you've seen these, I think. But three of the five covers are basically finished.

I'm working with my artists on the last two covers; I will likely tweak each one out a bit more to ensure maximum readability and uniformity of presentation: logo sizes and position, etc.

Interior

I'm starting to see interior art come in, but that's a bit of the long pole in the tent. One of the long poles.

The art here is by Ben Jan, who also did the covers of Crown (this book) and Curse. I've engaged Sandrine Malus to balance out a few more pieces in Crown, which will effectively finish the book save for title page credits, playtester credits, ISBN, and some map tweaks. 

Citadel of Ice will have the interior art done last...but see below for progress on the counters. 

Pirate King has been commissioned and is being worked; I need to get in touch with the artist for Ironskull, which though the first finished is the last to be worked from an art perspective.

Vampire Hunter Belladonna transitioned to the writing rather than outlining stage in the last week or so.

Counter Art

I got some updates from Rick (Citadel of Ice) on the die-cut color counter art. Holy wow. 

I'll just leave a few examples here, and then sign off.

Cover Previews!
almost 5 years ago – Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 05:33:04 PM

Definite progress. These three are basically only missing the ISBNs.

More on the way. Hopefully soon.

Funds came through, shipping update, and art
almost 5 years ago – Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 01:02:30 AM

Funding!

The big moments in any Kickstarter are the moment you fund, the tally at close (especially if, as with this one, it's a BIG close), and of course, when the money actually hits your account. It might sound crass, but of course I need that money to pay writers, artists, and print books. 

So the money came in: as with Nordvorn, I kept about 91.5% of the funds.

Surge in Work

Naturally, the first thing I did after the money hit the account is started firing off checks to artists.

The cover to Crown of Eternity is coming along nicely; in fact, that adventure got properly laid out this past weekend, and the maps for all the 16-pagers are done and put in the drafts. Really, for the adventures themselves (the original four), the only thing I need is the cover art, assign an ISBN to each (two, actually, one for the PDF and the other for print), interior art, and of course the greyscale versions of the counter art on the last page of the book.

All of these are being worked.

Also, Vampire Hunter Belladonna moved from outlining to actual drafting. That's good news too.

Canadian Shipping

Canada is weird.

I mean that in the nicest possible way. I mean, I'm from Minnesota, and we get confused for Canucks on a regular basis everywhere but up here.

But it turns out that while it's cheaper to ship books from the UK to Canada, it's cheaper to ship books and game parts from the USA.

So if you're in the All the Things or League and the Legion tiers, check your pledge: your shipping just went down by about $7. Make sure all is well there.

Next Steps

Really just more hard work. Art direction (and I'm bringing in a new artist to the team as well), map errata (there are always some), and moving the interior and counter art along. Covers. Some more block and tackle.

Today was the date the Backerkit was SUPPOSED to open. And we're 89% complete, so nicely done to all of you. The cards will start being charged on July 8 (which happens to be the last day of CONVergence, if you want to come say hi to me in Minneapolis), but the pre-orders and surveys will remain open until the files go to the printer. The next "big" date if I keep schedule is that PDFs are supposed to go out July 22, in about  month. This is to let y'all play 'em and try 'em and find my mistakes.

Then we'll take that feedback, incorporate it, and ship the files to the printer between Aug 5 and Aug 15, and that's probably it for backerkit and pre-orders. Still, that's darn near two months.

I'll keep y'all posted. For now, back to work for me!