🌈🚀 Reliable wonder engine. I make narrative role-playing games that imagine a weirder, queerer, more connected world.
enamel pins with fire, a raccoon with a match
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Hi Reader, Welcome back to game night. I'm briefly out of the smithy—Udo has to bury all the bronze swords in the backyard for that weathered look, so the ball's in his court. Still, I've been busy. I'm working on enamel pin designs. What do you think? Can you tell what B is? I've also been publicizing the game. I contracted with a consulting company called LaunchBoom to help me, because I don't know from marketing. Little did I know it would drop me into the crossfire of tabletop games discourse. LaunchBoom's main gimmick is to set up a "prelaunch" page for a Kickstarter, where I ask people to plunk down a refundable $1 deposit. If you back the game, the dollar goes toward your pledge, and you get a freebie too (five dice). If you don't, you get the dollar back. People who make the deposit are 20x more likely to back the Kickstarter than folks who just leave their email address. Given all the thousands of dollars I've fed into this game, it sounded smart. Well! It turns out this tactic blew up in board games last spring, when backers pushed back hard, angry to be asked for money before the Kickstarter even launched. Board game publishers have dropped the tactic en masse. And here I am trying to use it again. It takes six thousand raccoons to build trust and just one to burn it all down. I'm keeping my setup for this campaign, but I doubt I'll do it again. I'm grateful to the nearly thirty people who have already pre-pledged. Coming up! I'm going to GAMA Expo, February 23rd to 27th. GAMA's Horizons Fellowship made that trip possible, so thank you, GAMA. I'm looking forward to connecting with retailers and others in the biz. Then I'm a guest at Breakout Con in Toronto, March 14th to 16th, where I'll run both Raccoon Sky Pirates and Defy the Gods. I can't wait! Maybe I'll see you there. In the meantime, I'll try to keep the raccoons from getting into the strike-anywhere matches. Cheers, P.S. Seriously, what do you think of those pins? P.P.S. If you haven't yet, I hope you'll consider making the refundable $1 deposit and then join us in the private FB group. I'm talking more about Defy the Gods in there—including more work-in-progress art! |
Everlasting, Neverending Game Night
🌈🚀 Reliable wonder engine. I make narrative role-playing games that imagine a weirder, queerer, more connected world.
Hi Reader, Welcome! Please, come in. After some whipsaw weather, spring has gotten determined here. Nothing's blooming in the garden yet, but five years ago, M rescued an orchid from a gutter, and now it's blooming for the first time. So I've put it on the table. I'm still thinking about everything I saw at GAMA Expo. So much waste. It's amazing what sells. It's discouraging how few ideas are in most of it. But it's a privilege to be in this business. I'm so glad I get to make fun things for...
Hi Reader, Welcome! Please, come in. I'll put the kettle on ... you're an hour early, aren't you? No? It's me? I'm an hour behind? I'm still tripping over the time change. Last week, I went to GAMA Expo, the business con for tabletop games. I got to show off the advance copies of Defy the Gods and collect pre-orders. I also got to tell people a new version of Raccoon Sky Pirates is coming! I drove down with Faye of Goblin Door Games, a Horizons Fellows this year who I've mentioned before. Her...
Hi Reader, Welcome! Please, come in, have a seat. The snow is finally starting to melt around here. On the table, we have a tin of shortbread cookies, and in the kitchen, your choice of tea, coffee or hot cocoa. So hey, a few weeks ago I got a little preachy about promises and contracts. Although I wasn’t talking mainly about Jay Dragon, I did imply she'd done some things, or failed to, based on conclusions I drew from the Rascal article I mentioned. I was too hasty. The Rascal piece was more...