Dwarven Forge kickstarter

[mister frau blucher]

Hey all,

As you know, we use hexmaps in our games. But the fact is the LAW rules can work with squares as well.

Dwarven Forge makes some of the most gorgeous terrain there is. george and I used to drool at their GenCon setups. But it was always to expensive to build any kind of collection.

Well they are coming out with a new product, "Game Tiles" which is almost the same thing except in a particular plastic rather than resin/stone.

Not sure I am going to go in, as I have a couple hundred dollars worth of Heroscape tiles, and I don't need to toss any more cash away. But it looks great, and some of you may be interested, so check it out:

[mister frau blucher]

This wrapped up yesterday. Some big problems at the end with Amazon's payments, but it still finished at 1.92 Million dollars. Not too bad. Since you have the opportunity to add more while filling out the Pledge Manager, the total could climb to over 2 mil.

[darkscar]

I admit I'm completely unfamiliar with Kickstarter. I have seen it here and there on the interwebs, and it seems to be getting popular.

If I'm getting it right, you give money in the hope that a product is produced in the future? It seems that would go against good consumer practices. Anyone ever get messed over on this deal?

[mister frau blucher]

That is exactly what it is, you pledge money before a project is finished to help fund it to completion. There have been some spectacular failures. I have invested in two Kickstarters, from proven companies, so I am not worried about my pledges.

If you want to waste a half hour, you can google these and find out more. But the big ones in the gaming community that I am aware of have been:

Dwimmermount - the megadungeon created by one time prolific blogger James Maliszewski (sp?) and documented on his Grognardia blog. He spoke many times of turning it into a product for sale, and hinted that the entire thing was near completion. Last April a Kickstarter was held by him and a production partner Autarch, who had a good record with two prior kickstarters. They raised $48,000, demolishing their original target which was like 10K if I recall. Delivery date was the summer...but it stretched on and on, and last december the author stopped communicating with his partners. In limbo the last few months until the Autarch guys got the IP transfered to them for one time publication rights. Now they hope to have one version ready by GenCon and another (for their own game system) by Christmas. Even if the one is ready by GenCon, it will be a year late and a different product than what people pledged for. This is perhaps the poster child of why you should have everything written and ready to go before you start taking money to complete the production.

A bigger one would be from Mike Nystul (son of the guy who the old spell "Nystul's Magic Aura" was named for) who took in $75,000 or so from three different Kickstarters, and has not produced anything for his backers, and last month said all the money was gone. He pledged to fulfill his commitments, but it will be very difficult. Backers have asked for an accounting of where the funds went and at least a concise summation of where the projects stand, even a pdf of what has been accomplished so far, but he has not been particularly forthcoming. Google "axes and anvils" to see one of the projects, and read the updates.

Another one I know little about but is rather infamous is the Far West rpg by some dude named GM Skarka. It successfully funded in like November of 2011, and his backers have seen nothing but excuses since. Various writers leaving and GM not wanting to do the work has been the theme, from what I can tell, but he is not anywhere close to getting it done.

There are probably more examples, and there are quite a few notable successes, like Reaper and Dwarven Forge and Frog God's various projects (Tome of Horrors, Razor Coast).

It is very much a buyer beware situation, and there has been a lot of dialogue on legal recourse on those that do not provide the promised product. There is also a certain amount of kickstarter fatigue going around, even among those who like the concept: "Oh, no, not another one!"

I have been keeping a very close watch on some of them, as it is something George and I are thinking about to fund the production of a few games next year. We would have all the adventures finished, and use it to fund the production of the adventures (art, printing). Stretch goals might be a second countersheet, a second map, and copies of earlier adventures. All in the infant stages at this point, but if done right, and the backers know the product will ship, I think it would be a good way to fund things, at least once.

[darkscar]

Thanks for the response, Bret.

Yeah, I thought the scenarios you mentioned would have likely occurred. Even on a casual glance it seems an ideal platform for fraud, abuse, etc.

I really can't see myself going in for this kind of thing. It just doesn't make good consumer sense, but best of luck to those that do.

[mister frau blucher]

I probably made it sound worse than it actually is. If a project does not reach its funding goals, then you are not charged. And of those that do meet the goals, the overwhelming majority deliver what they promise to. Lateness seems to be endemic, though; at least in the gaming projects I have watched, very few meet their delivery dates. most are a few months off.

But the failures are the ones that stick out. There are a lot of inspiring successes out there.

The main reason we are considering it is that to produce a game, it can take a year before we sell enough to break even. This delays publication of the next game, even if it is all written, as we do not have the funds. if we run a smart Kickstarter, in which we have everything written and ready to go, then we can get art and production costs beforehand and guarantee that a batch of 100 of each game gets printed up and sent within a month. If we raise enough, we can double the components like counters and an extra map, so each adventure would have that much more value (not just in terms of number of components, but the way it would make the adventure better in offering more scenario options with the different maps(as opposed to the one size fits all that we are forced into with our negative shoestring budget!)).

[Lord Inar]

Yeah, I think in probably most of those examples, it was a a case of the designers getting in WAY over their heads, thinking that having the money up front will make the job easier, but maybe the pressure to get things done on a very public timeline actually makes it worse. I know it would for me.

[Lord Inar]

I also think Kickstarter works well with big. Have you thought about an "omnibus edition" of several of the adventures around Redpoint, and expand it with new Redpoint material? Small goals could be the new material in the standard size, adding the option to throw in an existing adventure; the main goal is the omnibus book; and a "large" goal is a copy of everything you produce.

Just a few thoughts...

I've never run a Kickstarter, but I've participated in 20 Kickstarters. 6 are fully complete (all products met), 10 are in progress with some goals met and some late (including several of those mentioned above, both good and bad) and 4 that haven't reached their first delivery date.

10 are RPG related
6 are minis/map related
2 are music related
2 are miscellaneous

[mister frau blucher]

I think that is a nice idea on the Redpoint omnibus. The goal/reward idea is interesting too, kinda close to what I was thinking of.

I have only been in two Kickstarters, this one and the Bones. But I have been watching a lot of them, trying to understand what works and what doesn't.