Adept Press

Hey Ron,

How is the project coming along?

Jim Raggi just posted an update (http://lotfp.blogspot.ch/2012/11/updates-on-everything.html) concerning his Kickstarter-like projects. One remark he made was that since the money came in rather late, he didn't get to spend it all before the end of the year, so that it counts for profits for 2012, thus it gets taxed. Depending on US taxation laws, it might be a good thing to have the project money coming in early in the year.

Hi! Today is my day for announcing the plans, subject to certain discussions.

The first topic I need help with is choosing among Kickstart (tm), Indie Gogo, and whatever other services are available. I am not terribly concerned about the "keep it if you don't make the goal" issue, although that might be a secondary factor. My concern is mainly, which of these services is the easiest to use and manage.

The second topic is 3D printing. No one seems able to give me the kind of straight, 101 answers I need. Do you start with a picture? What kind of picture? From different angles? Every single tutorial I've looked at or personal answer I've received assumes I know twenty things I don't.

I'm right in the middle of drafting the information I was planning to post today. (I was distracted by "Oh David you're so embedded" and "Oh Paula you're so well-connected.") Suffice for the moment that I'm planning for December 1, and although the point about taxes is a good one, I think I can turn around the funds very fast because most of the goal is supposed to go to Thomas, and my layout guy will eat up a fair amount of the rest.

Best, Ron

I don't know that Jim's operation has any impact on anything Ron is doing, but I should mention that the interpretation of the Finnish taxation system that he floated at his blog is pretty suspect. I've already recommended to Jim that he should visit the corporate tax office and talk it out with the bureaucrats, they'll explain to him how he can make reservations for committed expenses in his book-keeping, which'll reduce his nominal profits for the year. I'm no expert, but I'd be surprised if this wasn't the way to deal with pre-order income.

I'd be surprised if the American system didn't recognize some similar idea. Crowdfunding monies are essentially pre-order commitments, they're more like a loan you're taking from your customers than pure profit.

Ron,

Some blunt comments, coming from no place other than my gut, which keeps nagging me to bring them up. I'm sure you have well-considered reasons which will mitigate all of these. Please take them as friendly concern.

*The elimination of a middle-tier paperback seems off. The logic of "Just take it to Kinko's and get it bound!" is kind of ass. This seems like a step backwards from just running the whole project through Lulu. Presumably, the advantage of running your pre-orders through Kickstarter is to have money up front to do a non-POD volume print run, offering lower price/greater margins than could be offered from a POD or (yuck) one-off printing at a retail copy shop.

*$25 as a price point for the (post-Kickstarter) PDFs seems pretty Tiffany, although this is how much PDFs of the full-color coffee-table-book RPGs are going for at DriveThruRPG.

*A December Kickstarter competes with seasonal gift purchasing. I don't know how much of an impact that has.

*Have more high-end vanity tiers for people who have way too much money and are willing to give it to you.


Okay, less critically:

I'm no expert on the 3D printing, but I could try to translate the technical concepts for you. To use something like Shapeways, you'll need a 3D model created in 3D modeling or CAD software, just like a 3D model for a video game or an animation. You get this by hiring a 3D artist, exactly like you get artwork by hiring an artist. Do you need a sketch or something? I don't know, you'd have to work that out with the artist in question, who would need to interpret your specifications and create something. (Get in touch with me if this is all still frustrating.)

If you're stumped for what you could do for stretch goals, it seems pretty obvious to me you could reach out to the authors of the original Sorcerer mini-supplements and commission them to create revisited deluxe versions of those.

I'm excited to hear this is moving forward!

So! My current scheme has shaped up to look like this.

Products
Two PDFs: one is the annotated Sorcerer core book, and the other is the bundled supplements. They are available in both optimized read-on-screen and optimized print-it-yourself versions.

(Larry, I know I'm leaping off a board into the unknown, but my reasons are first, that I personally would have loved to buy PDFs which I could then print as books when and if I felt like it; and second, that I can no longer realistically send books overseas, so I want to provide some way of supplying customers who want books. I do plan to keep short runs of the actual books available for con sales and those few game stores worth dealing with, and if domestic demand warrants it, I'll expand to selling them directly.)

The big unknown for the crowdfunding is whether I get (or do I say "we make," is that part of the crowdfunding marketing-strategy?) enough to pay Thomas for the awesome covers. That's the goal.

I confess I have no stomach for stretch goals and super-extra stuff. It's just more work, bluntly, exactly what I don't need. If I lose participation because of this, I guess that's the price to pay for simply not seeing any way to make it work without making myself miserable. I'd rather give rewards for simply participating at a decent level.

If anyone out there can actually show me a stretch goal reward that isn't a pain in the ass for me, then please speak up. Or to put it differently, if "we" were to exceed the goal by, say $1000, what Special Thing might you expect for it? I can barely conceive of providing one (1) thing along these lines. And who would be eligible for it, everyone? (impossible! It can't possibly work like that)

So, $1 gets you an acknowledgment.

$25 gets you the two PDFs. (Not to put too fine a point on it, I think each is worth $25, retail, especially if those Denmark covers come through. Sorcerer is more game than any other known to humankind, and each supplement is itself a revolution. I'm sick and tired of under-valuing it.)

$100 (as its own item, not in combination with the above) gets you the two books in very spiffy, custom physical book form along with the PDFs.

For additional increments of $25 (with or without the $100 above), choose one of the following:

Shot glass + T-shirt with cool logo/silhouette (guy or girl demon)
Demon figurine, or again, maybe a pack, depending on how pricey these are to make (Larry, thanks! That does help.) (For some reason, the only people who comment on this item on-line hate it, but I find that plenty of people get all squee-y about it in person.)
Dedicated playtest + feedback for your game in design
A bottle of tequila (just kidding! Or am I? How legal would that be?)

Do I need to say that higher levels of contribution will get you more on-line and in-text acknowledgment? Probably in $50 increments.

Finally, what page/program should I use? Which one is about keeping the contributions with or without the goal, Kickstarter or Indie Gogo? Is there something besides these two, and how do they work?

Do I understand correctly that I should make a come-on video? Should I get someone sexier than me to do it, or should I flaunt my nerdly-self for maximum audience identification?

And yeah, it'll have to be December 1. I would otherwise have to wait until well after New Year's, because post-Christmas is just as bad pre-Christmas, financially.

I want to launch in exactly one week, so I figure a few days of "Ron, no! Do it like this," will help refine it to its best possible form.

Best, Ron

For what it's worth it seems perfectly reasonable to me to drop cheap books out of the ordinary array of options. The times might be a bit early for it, but this'll be how things go in the future: you either read digital, or you get a good-quality hardcover book. I'm sure you'll get plenty of disagreement in 2012 about this, of course.

Also, I can't see anything preventing Ron from setting himself up with e.g. Lulu at a later date, after the crowdfunding. It is true that a POD printer that prints and fulfills on both sides of the Atlantic is probably the best small press option for getting cheap paper books to customers.

Have you considered printing a second run in Europe? That would be one way to provide for overseas customers without having to actually ship books overseas. Of course it's extra work to develop a relationship with some sort of fulfillment service.

Maybe this softcover book thing could be your stretch goal? "If we get to $10 000, I'll change my mind and actually set up to produce PoD-quality softcover editions of these books. The PDF customers'll get an option to upgrade to softcover books if that happens."

--

Regarding Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, my understanding is that they are mostly comparable except for the following points:

• Kickstarter is only available to American projects. (This is the big reason for why IndieGoGo is used at all, it seems to me; Europeans would use Kickstarter as well if they could.)
• IndieGoGo has a limit to the number of different reward levels you can have, and I think it at least used to be that you couldn't add or revise the levels after the campaign start.
• Kickstarter is considerably larger, and thus attracts more walk-in money. You can succeed with IndieGoGo, but it's easier with Kickstarter.
• Kickstarter has a slower and more powerful gatekeeping process: they'll review your project in advance and require more strident financial information compared to IndieGoGo. In fact, you probably won't be able to start at Kickstarter on the 1st. of December unless you've already started working on this.
• There are small differences in the terms of use and expenses of using each; it would be irresponsible to give a run-down of these details when anybody planning to use either service should really read the rules carefully for themselves.

IndieGoGo is the service that lets you have variable funding, by the way. However, I don't understand why anybody would want to use that: the fee they take is higher than it is for fixed funding, and there's nothing stopping you at either IndieGoGo or Kickstarter from simply lowballing your target number if you're afraid of not reaching it. It seems to me that it's a good practice in crowdfunding to only request for as much money as you need to pull off the project, anyway. It's not like people will not participate because you already reached your goal, as the case might have been a while back; rather, it seems like in the crowdfunding scene of today being 100% funded makes your project more interesting instead of less.

My sense of the current scene is that using a site outside those two doesn't make sense; other platforms are so small that you're better off just having a Paypal button and doing your own collection. A minor and unknown crowdfunding platform won't add reliability or noticeability to your collection, but they will take a part of the stake.

--

For your ancillary rewards, it should be noted that Kickstarter disallows sales of booze, so you're out of luck on the tequila front. Although Kickstarter is very loose in interpreting its own rules, I don't expect them to budge on this one. I don't remember offhand, but IndieGoGo probably has a similar limitation.

Regarding a video, I'm told that it's the number one good idea for a crowdfunding project at these sites to have a video. I don't watch them myself, so don't get the appeal, but that is the common wisdom. From the few videos I've seen I'd say that an earnest and genuine video showing off your own independent operation is probably better than trying for any sort of gloss. Of course you could still have other people in your video as well; in this case it might not be a bad idea to emphasize the long pedigree of the game by having well-known game designers speak on the video about their own Sorcerer experiences, for example. Art from the book and a suitable sound-track seem like good ideas for the video, too.

Finally, I would like to say that trying to get this done this year seems a bit over-optimistic. Were I in your stead, I'd take an extra month to choose a crowdfunding site, make a nice video and start premarketing the project. The latter especially might be a good idea: many crowdfunders make sure that their immediate social network is already well aware of the project in advance, so that they'll be ready to give money and spread the word once the project actually starts. This way the initial support can be gauged early on, and the project has maximum time to gain grassroots attention.

On the other hand, if those reasons for delay (time to learn about the service, time to make a nice video, time to premarket) all seem like so much foolishness, then I can't help but recommend simply doing your own crowdfunding web-page on your own domain. These sites are ultimately about trust and publicity, so if you're not interested in maximizing the latter and have no trouble with the former, then you might as well save that 5%+ and collect the money directly yourself. Less hassle and you can set your own terms.

I'm assuming you've reviewed the reports that "harpy" offered (http://http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php?topic=32986.0) near the end of The Forge. They seem to be the most comprehensive review of data I've seen of the numerous options and what works.

Indiegogo currently offers both the "we keep your pledge even if we don't hit the goal" ("Flexible Funding") and a more Kickstarter-like plan ("Fixed Funding"). Kickstarter used to not be good for people outside of the USA, but they've changed this recently. I haven't heard from anyone overseas how the new Kickstarter rules are treating them, though.

Here's Kickstarter's (http://www.kickstarter.com/help/school) page for how to start a project. Here's Indiegogo's (http://www.kickstarter.com/help/school). They both seem like reasonably comprehensive tutorials.

I'm trying to think about what you could put in a video to show why Sorcerer is awesome. If it comes down to just you talking into a webcam in one take, maybe skip it. Do you have anyone who's handy with video production?

What else?

Emphasize that this is a nearly-completed product, to establish credibility that a pledge will result in actually getting something. If you've got a sketch of the art, include that in your pitch as a teaser of the final product.

Come up with cutesy descriptive labels for each level of funding, like "initiate," "adept," "sorcerer," yeah yeah. That seems to be a thing.

If you're offering the books as a set, perhaps you should do a nice slipcover, too?

Bottle of tequila? Exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about for premium tiers. Is what Eero said about no booze on Kickstarter true? Nuts.

Oops. Frikkin' BBcode.

Indiegogo create a campaign guide. (http://support.indiegogo.com/entries/20348433-create-a-campaign)

The more I think about it, the more I realize that I'm not preparing well at one important end: the actual site to do this with. I think all three of your reasons to delay are absolutely correct, Eero. I'm in the opposite position of many Kickstart projects: I have most or all of the actual products, but am totally unprepared for the promotion. So I think it'll be best to kick this down to January 1.

Best, Ron

One interesting thing that I recently saw somebody do was that they made their project page at Kickstarter and then had it make some rounds in the community as a draft before he activated it. Apparently you don't need to start the campaign to publicize the campaign page, in other words. The benefit of doing this is that you can set up your campaign page with all the introductory texts, videos and reward levels, and then ask people for advice when you have everything ready to go. If something is amiss at that point, you'll still be able to change it, which is not true with all things after the campaign starts. (For example, in Kickstarter you apparently can modify reward levels mid-campaign, but only if nobody has yet pledged money at that level.)

The take-home point here is that it's entirely possible to prepare everything, the crowdfunding site included, and then sit on it a bit to consider things or wait for a good moment or whatever. Thus the sooner you start fiddling with the crowdfunding site of your choice, the better.

Quote from: Eero Tuovinen on November 24, 2012, 06:44:40 PM
For what it's worth it seems perfectly reasonable to me to drop cheap books out of the ordinary array of options. The times might be a bit early for it, but this'll be how things go in the future: you either read digital, or you get a good-quality hardcover book. I'm sure you'll get plenty of disagreement in 2012 about this, of course.

Okay, then, I'll be Eero's example.

I think a lot of folks will frankly be baffled (myself included) that they can't buy a real book for less than $100. To be clear, I'm not saying the two-book bundle isn't worth that; it is, and I would pay for it if I had the money and were in the market for it (as it is, I only want the annotated Sorcerer as I already have the supplements. In the future, though, if the supplements were available to buy direct or in a local store I'm sure I'd snap 'em up).

I think you'll also catch flak for that $25 for two PDFs pricing. It's worth it to me, and if the campaign goes forward as-is it's what I'll be chipping into. Still, very few people who want the physical object are going to be thinking, "Oh, I'll just snag the PDFs and print 'em off at Kinko's", I think. People who want the annotated book and can't afford it likely won't shell for the PDF--they'll just see an expensive book and move on. Gamers who mainly butter their bread electronically will also likely balk a bit at the price unless they're big into Sorcerer or you.

I'm not trying to convince you to change your structure, Ron, but just to provide a data point. I've backed maybe twenty Kickstarter projects and my gut tells me that crowd will be puzzled by your pricing structure (and not just my gut; I've had conversations about this with people who really like your stuff that are also confused). If you're throwing the whole shebang out at $2000 I think you'll be fine as-is. I just think you have a lot more opportunity to get more sales and more folks interested if there's a lower-tier that gives out the physical book, one or the other.

Put me down for, "I hope dearly that the physical books will be available direct after the campaign".

I just went back and looked at Dungeon World's Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sage-kobold/dungeon-world-a-game-with-modern-rules-and-old-sch-0?ref=live) (probably the most successful indie Kickstarter) stats: They offered a PDF at $5 and a softcover at $25. Again, I think your PDFs are fine as-is, but a book at $40 or even $50 will be a lot more popular. DW's hardcover kicked in at $65.

You'll get no disagreement from me, Hans - that's pretty much how I expect a majority of the audience to think. I recognize that I belong in a minority in this due to my let's say uncommercial spending habits; to me it makes sense to mostly not spend money on things, but when I do, I don't mind paying pretty well for a nice product. The normal "best value" compromise product is thus not necessarily the most appealing to me.

(Yes, I probably wouldn't buy many roleplaying games at all if I didn't retail games as a hobby.)

I understand that the point in putting a high price point on the PDF is to take a stand on the value of a game in digital format. The pressure on pdf prices has always been downwards, and strongly at that, so seeing a game pdf selling for book prices is naturally shocking. It's a brave gesture, and Kickstarter is the perfect context for it to succeed because people as often as not pay for early access and to support the author. In a long-term market context a high-priced pdf probably just encourages piracy, I suspect.

Thinking about digital reading and the future of the book, it occurs to me that Ron might want to consider doing an EPUB or some other digital format version of the books as well. PDF is getting a big long in the tooth in the progressive circles, so to say; it was never intended as a digital distribution format originally, after all, so it does a good job about being printable but is not so good for digital reading devices.

That's another worthwhile stretch goal, incidentally, although it does cause extra work.

H'm ...

First, I'm not sure if I wrote it wrong or what, but the crowdfunding contributor gets both PDFs for $25, which is good value. Whether the per-PDF price after that point is too high is an issue for another day, although I do see your points. I am even tempted to consider saying, post-crowdfunding, "if you buy Sorcerer PDF, you buy all of it" at a price perhaps at $30.

Neophobia is a real thing. No one thought anyone would buy any electronic form of a book, ever. Everyone thought electronic formats would destroy the demand for physical books. Everyone thought that electronic payment was doomed to terrible credit-card fees and other burdens which would make it impractical. Everyone in gaming thought that deviating from the standard-size core book on the FASA model was market suicide. Everyone in gaming thought that gamers didn't really play, but only read the books and fantasized about it.

And now you tell me there's no demand for a PDF which someone can buy, then trot off somewhere local and print as a book? Come on. Don't listen to your gut. Your gut has shit for brains. (Also, did you see that above, the customer gets an optimized for-electronic format and the print-if-you-want format? If they don't want the latter, they can ignore it.)

I'm adding a stretch goal: if you want the book as a physical object, then I have to make the stretch goal of $2000 beyond Thomas' pay. The good news is that every contributor who put in the $25 earmarked for the PDFs will get the books too, if this happens. I'm hoping that the $2000 will cover both printing and the *fuck*I-hate-it*shit*bastard packaging and shipping.

The ebook/other-format suggestion is also very good, good enough to be a policy consideration with or without stretch goals. But I could happily make it one.

At last, I'm getting the hang of this stretch-goal thing in terms I can understand and enjoy. Thanks guys!

Best, Ron
edited to fix an important numerical typo - RE

Ron,

Regarding international shipping, check out this kickstarter campaign: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/783115992/medium-rare-and-back-again-a-tolkien-cookbook (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/783115992/medium-rare-and-back-again-a-tolkien-cookbook). Note that there is an upfront additional charge for shipping outside the US.

Julie

Ron.

Consider adding other formats (like epub already cited by Eero) to the electronic package as a stretch-goal: it's something you can pay someone to do with the text you already have, and it will pay you lots to have an already available (and already paid) epub version of Sorcerer to sell new customers in the next years.

So, until a certain amount, people at $25 gets 2 pdfs (on-sceeen and to-print), after that they get 3 (adding the epub), and maybe others too with higher levels (as you said in the last post, even a softcover copy could be added at a certain point, but consider the postal expenses for that one)

Ron,

Let me make sure I'm getting this straight. You're getting rid of the $100 level for the book set altogether, and instead creating a stretch goal for the books, which would go to everyone who went in at the $25 level, but only if the stretch goal level was met? And some stuff has clicked with the math of this that you wouldn't be losing money on such an arrangement?

Quote from: Ron Edwards on November 28, 2012, 09:22:14 AM
And now you tell me there's no demand for a PDF which someone can buy, then trot off somewhere local and print as a book? Come on. Don't listen to your gut. Your gut has shit for brains. (Also, did you see that above, the customer gets an optimized for-electronic format and the print-if-you-want format? If they don't want the latter, they can ignore it.)

I'm not telling you there's no demand. I was just offering myself as a real-life example of Eero's neophobic* person. I said I didn't want to try to convince you, but I probably ended up trying anyway. Sorry, that was less than useful.


*and oh yes, I am. I don't mind paying $25 for a worthy set of PDFs, but I get angry when I think about paper books being a luxury commodity. I'm sure I'll get over it.

Aargh! No!

I'm sorry, guys. Holiday events are really stressful when you and the in-laws both have lots of kids, and now I'm right in the middle of single-parenting for a few days. Also, for some reason, this site has been sluggish and defiant all day, making logging on and posting quite upsetting. Breathing deeply -- calm --

OK. First, the $100 thing remains. That is for a very, very fancy pair of books, a specialty item that is only going to be available through this crowdfunding.* Narrattiva and I are talking about some neat ideas for it; suffice to say my aesthetic is very 70s Heavy Metal, not 19th-century occult at all.

From now on, when I say "the PDFs," I'm talking about the basic product, which will have Denmark covers if/when the primary goal is met. When I talk about the stretch goal books, I'm talking about the softcover, printed versions of those PDFs, the same as you could print on your own at Kinko's. It's not the same as the fancy books.

So -- that means there are two distinct concepts at work here.

1. Bennies for contributing. That's what the $1 and the various $25 increments are, as well as the $100 fancy books.

2. Goals and stretch goals. The primary/first one is getting enough money to pay Thomas and various other people, like layout and similar. The stretch after that should be going ahead and printing up physical books myself.** Perhaps a stretch after that would be to set up various other formats for e-books, Kindle-type apps, et cetera.

Does that make more sense?

Best, Ron

* Unless I change my mind about that, which at this moment I haven't. If I do, it'll be a limited edition type thing, or perhaps some deal where I only print more if I get X number of orders. My point is that all this talk is post-crowdfunding.

** Although I'm still not going to do overseas orders for books unless I can get a printer on the same continent.

Ah, got it.

So, I think that's a pretty smart stretch goal! I think the understanding by individual participants that the more participants are involved in the crowdfunding can result in individual participants receiving additional value for their money is a big driver in the sort of word-of-mouth marketing that makes these things successful.


Narrattiva is involved with these books? Oh my, that does sound delicious.

Quote from: Miskatonic on November 29, 2012, 12:20:34 AM
Narrattiva is involved with these books? Oh my, that does sound delicious.

Oh, yeah. I think you'll do fine. I'm looking around for what I can sell...

Hi,

Thanks again to everyone. I think this is finally coming together.

My next step is to get a video made, preferably with a background soundtrack reminiscent of Journey of the Sorcerer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbhAf62wfgE), preferably with a few items to show off, and -- well, I don't know if this is even possible, but with some testimonial clips.

Once at least starting components of this are available, then I'll set up the "draft" page at Kickstarter, just as Eero described. I didn't know that was possible, and now that I do, it's the obvious best start.

Best, Ron

Hey Ron,

It occurs to me you may not know this, and it could be helpful: Luke Crane currently works at Kickstarter, as the Project Specialist for Games. In his own words (http://www.burningwheel.org/forum/showthread.php?12750-Day-Job), "I've been hired by Kickstarter as a Project Specialist for Games. Basically, my job is to look over projects and give advice (and accept/decline them)"

I'm sure reaching out to him would be worth it.

Hello Ron

Good to see that your Kickstarter is shaping up! .epub and the like for a stretch goal is a very neat idea!

Regarding a European printing (this is completely in my self-interest), could you imagine a deal with a little company like, say, Arkenstone Publishing, Narrattiva, or some of the British folk, to just manage the printing and distributing for you? Or does this sound too much like going back to three tiers? Of course, this could apply to all your games, not just Sorcerer.

Hi Christoph,

I would dearly love to see my books printed and shipped more locally, world-wide. My conversations with Arkenstone about this go back to 2006, and with Narrattiva, back to 2010.

At this point, my answer is "yes," but after I get out of the tar-pit I'm currently in. It's pretty hard to convey just how many things I'm grappling with at 95% percent done or negotiated, but all of which have hit some kind of problem and successfully get in one another's way. It's like a big clogged drain. When I clear that, then I can deal with where all the pipes go.

Eero, Moreno, Claudia, et cetera, please don't continue that conversation here. It's something we need to talk about over email ... later.

Best, Ron

Points to consider: totally as anecdotal evidence, put pictures and graphics on your KS page. Heck, even if it's just a stack of books next to a candle with some character sheets and glass beads. Fancy graphical thingies. An illustration or two from the books.

And, more importantly, pictures of the final product, even if they are just mock-ups. I have a great deal of difficulty putting money out to projects that are just text and don't include images of what it is I'm funding/purchasing. This goes double for stretch goals: shot glass? Put a picture(s) of it. T-shirt: show the t-shirt, or the image on the shirt.

I've seen projects that don't do this and, IME, they have a terrible time with funding and especially with getting enough for stretch goals.

Some other funding boost ideas/tier rewards:

• Sorcerer dice -- regular dice, whatever size, with numbers/pips and a Sorcerer-ish icon on the high number (the 'S' from the font you use in Sorcerer, a bloody pentagram in keeping with the heavy metal vibe, a flaming eye, a mystical circle of some kind). Any amount, from a couple, to a block of five or ten. A number of card deck projects have done this and I always drop a few extra dollars for the dice, even though they have nothing to do with the project.


• Sorcerer-ish tokens -- for use in play, tracking penalties or injuries or whatever. I don't know if etched glass beads are possible, or fancy little clips for on the side of character sheets that look like little demon faces, or small brass coins with occult sigils (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigil_%28magic%29) or the outlines of demons on them.


• Art prints -- prints of the art from the book (or especially the covers, which you are and want to hype) at whatever size. Again, a number of card deck projects have done this and it seems a popular way to boost total sales.


• Mini supplements of your design, like Demon Cops -- receive PDFs of those as a reward tier. OR I know you have a few of these in various stages of completeness/usability, too, finishing them up or rounding them out into full minis could be a stretch goal (good way to get paid to work on them).


• Mini supplements that don't require you to do any writing -- as stretch goals; see if you can get some "name" writers on board to write new mini-supplements for backers. Either as "only available to funders during the KS" or also available afterwards, but for slightly more.


• A book of scenarios -- you will write one if you reach a particular stretch goal, like those found in the various books. OR if you already have a bunch lying around that don't need much to bang into shape, make receiving a a PDF of scenarios into a higher tier reward instead.


• Token inclusion in the project -- a reward tier or multiple/different tiers could be the submission of a character or demon, or both, for inclusion in a small book of sorcerers and demons. They describe the character or demon and you stat them up.


• A crazy unique printing -- either of the main game, or the supplement, too. Make this a high tier, limited number reward. Like a leather-bound, full-color glossy, special edition thingie that you bled all over with your own blood (kidding).


• Attend a demon-summoning with Ron Edwards -- you'll attempt to call forth the denizens of the dark realm with drugs and rock and roll! Ok, no. (Though these guys pitching a Lovecraft-inspired film via KS did do a high tier reward where they would do a seance with you in Providence and attempt to summon the spirit of Lovecraft from his grave.) How about just running a game of Sorcerer at GenCon/Forge Midwest/wherever for some backer and X of their friends as a high tier reward.


• Hookers and blow.

That's just off the top of my head.

Oh, we're inventing cool yet extraneous play aids for stretch goals or additional rewards? Might as well, better to brainstorm now than afterwards.

How about a custom cardboard character sheet? It'd be full-color on sturdy cardboard, laminated so as to be erasable and reusable. There would be a couple of cardboard wheels (or perhaps pull-tags) on it for tracking combat penalties and Humanity. The sheet would fold into a folder, of course, instead of being two-sided. Give 4-ish of them to the eligible VIP backers so as to equip the entire group at once, obviously.

Sorcerer dice shouldn't have special symbols (they don't explode or anything, so the highest value isn't special mechanically). Instead, your Sorcerer dice pack should include ~15 black d10s for the GM and ~15 white d10s for the players, as well as a custom dice tower (I'd favour a Janus-like demon's head where you put dice in through one mouth and the other then pukes them out). The idea would be that with two different dice colors you could process all the dice through the tower simultaneously in a normal two-sided conflict. Or, for ultimate decadence, just make the tower small and compact enough to get each player their own.

Of course, the more technologically-minded backers would appreciate a stretch goal for developing a Sorcerer dice application for mobile platforms. A basic mode for rolling dice pools against each other and calculating victories, of course, but also a complex conflict aid that calculates initiative order and so on automatically. Probably no point doing a character sheet application or such to accompany it.

Moving on, an affordable-yet-cool way of tracking Humanity involves two sheets of stickers: the GM uses the first one to distribute Humanity points to the players, and the other one is applied directly on top of the first one to mark off lost points. Once your last gold star (or whatever the stickers look like) is covered by the skull, that's when it's over for your character.

Hmm... that's what I've got for now. For the record, I don't personally want any of this stuff. Well, maybe the demon-head dice tower; that could be sweet.

Maybe you guys aren't seeing that this isn't a lark for me. I'm not sitting on a cart of goodies flinging them left and right as people cheer. If I can't get Adept into a more usable and flatly possible condition, then I'm closing down. This isn't a matter of bankruptcy (sales are fine), it's about stress and service. Right now, I have a depressingly long list of customers who were shorted on their order of Sorcerer core books, waiting for this PDF out of the goodness of their hearts. I not only have to do right by them, but make sure that I'm not in this position again.

So it's not about extras. This is about fundamentals. I am behind, stifled, stalled, and frequently hogtied concerning fundamentals of Adept Press - getting the payments + fulfilling product. This Kickstart is about getting me on my feet and redefining what my whole payment + product model is.

So no! I am not interested in "brainstorming" which is really a form of fantasizing. I am interested in things which are not more fucking "to do" items, but which rather help me solve the problems I have.

Many of the suggestions and points in the thread have been really helpful. Raven, I completely agree with you about visuals at the Kickstart webpage, and I appreciate the portrait of the Kickstart enthusiast. Please note that a bad-ass physical book like you've described is already part of the plan.

But (here I'm speaking to everyone) if you have a suggestion like the demon-dice or stuff like that ... do you know how much it costs and how much stressful time it takes to produce dice? To package them to mail to dozens of people? To ship them? Tell you what - I'll add any cool item like that you suggest, if you personally commit to producing the physical items and getting them to the people who qualify for them without pay. Right out of your own pocket and carved from your own life. Because that's what it would be for me to do it.

I chose the t-shirts and shot glass because they are very easy to order, produce, and fulfill. The little demon-figures will stay in the plan as long as I think they'll fall into that category too. But stuff that isn't? I can't do it. It can't be part of this picture.

Best, Ron

Perhaps the comedy didn't quite communicate here. I was just playing off Raven's list, which amused me exactly because it's full of "extra work", as you've been characterizing it.

For what it's worth, I'm obviously available if there's anything I can help with in getting this revision of Adept business off the ground.

Quote from: Ron Edwards on December 06, 2012, 10:17:54 AMMaybe you guys aren't seeing that this isn't a lark for me. I'm not sitting on a cart of goodies flinging them left and right as people cheer.

Understood. And the site is really grating on me...this edit apparently didn't make it through thanks to the constant timing-out but there was a "Of course depending on what you have the time or energy to do, some or none of these may be possible."

I posted what I did given you already had some additional bits to add as bennies that seemed like a bit of work, and there seemed to be some concern about getting enough folks excited about the project to make the goal, with these being riffs on bennies I have seen successfully used by other projects to boost overall sales/interest at lower tiers.

QuoteBut (here I'm speaking to everyone) if you have a suggestion like the demon-dice or stuff like that ... do you know how much it costs and how much stressful time it takes to produce dice? To package them to mail to dozens of people? To ship them? Tell you what - I'll add any cool item like that you suggest, if you personally commit to producing the physical items and getting them to the people who qualify for them without pay. Right out of your own pocket and carved from your own life. Because that's what it would be for me to do it.

Hold on a moment there, Ron, you don't pay for this stuff out of YOUR own pocket. It comes out of the backing funds. I'd be willing to help out with this, but can't do it out-of-my-pocket because I don't have the funds as that's what the pledges are for. If you're serious, call me or e-mail me and let's talk about this.

Also, Eero, forgive me for reacting this way, and I realize this likely wasn't your purpose in making fun of my perhaps ill-considered attempt at contribution, but I feel like the butt of an equally ill-considered joke.

Ron, how about this: a stretch goal and/or an extra $5-$40(ish) gets an invitation to the "Sorcerer Crowdfunding Fulfillment Party," a day filled with fun, food, drink, conversation, and forced labor - er, parcel stuffing, labeling, and etc.  I'd suspect you have enough support reasonably local to you for this to be worthwhile, and it might be a fit for something you'd think is fun as well as useful.

I think "extras" are built into the current crowdfunding mythology. It seems to me that Kickstarter (and crowdfunding generally) likes to believe that if you work hard and enthusiastically on your project, creating lots of extras and incentives for folks, OF COURSE it'll all be worth it and you'll get a ton o' money for your effort.  I expect you're right to be suspicious about that - personally, I've seen the startup-parallel to that belief play out often enough to know there are many failures for every success.  But it certainly does work that way sometimes.  The huge (HUGE) amount of work Rich Berlew ( PW article (http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/comics/article/50797-rich-burlew-talks-about-his-1-million-kickstarter-book-project.html)) ended up putting into his initially modest "raise money to refresh out-of-print volumes" project certainly paid off.

But even ignoring the market/audience difference between Adept and Order of the Stick, he and his team clearly got excited about the chance to create new stickers, gewgaws, and etc.  Even if you buy into the "work hard + create excitement = PROFIT!" claim ... if YOU are not excited about (e.g.) spiffy dice, that clearly won't work.  But if there is a dollar amount at which you would get excited about spiffy dice, just make sure they "unlock" (or whatever) at that dollar level.

Sorry about that, Raven; I thought that you were being jocular yourself. Hazards of non-verbal communication.

But yeah, technically all sorts of add-ons and such are obviously superfluous in crowdfunding. However, the particular site culture of these popular crowdfunding sites seems to me like it encourages a sense of carnevalism in the proceedings. Perhaps this is why a zillion and one funding levels and various stretch goals that are revealed over time like it was a phone-a-thon (well, it sort of is) are so common. We're even starting to see all sorts of minigames and graphical spectacle associated with the money-grabbing: join a team and try to beat the other team in donating money, achieve a given amount to see the next page in the donation drive comic book, and so on.

It's an interesting challenge to choose how one situates themselves against this background. The hard core of your audience will buy the stuff regardless of the set-up, of course, but what about the casual purchases, and what about grassroots publicity? The common thinking seems to be that making your crowdfunding campaign seem like the opportunity of a lifetime is good for both: the casually interested audience member will invest in your project now that it's facing its dramatic watershed moment and it's time for every fan to prove their worth, and similarly everybody will take extra care to spread the word on the project because it's so special and unprecedented. This is probably why people like to pile rewards and bonuses up as the money collection proceeds; they're stoking the fires of excitement.

(I'd like to note that even if this fever-pitch looks ludicrous in totality, it's not so much so in the small detail. Even if Kickstarter has new unprecedented special deal opportunity campaigns starting up every day, for the individual creators their Kickstarter campaigns are mostly unique events. They'll be working with the repercussions for years, and most likely won't be back for another round of crowdfunding for a good while. This is probably a big part of why Kickstarter can keep up the level of excitement consistently, as projects come and go so quickly.)

I recently went against my habits and invested money in the on-going Moon Design Guide to Glorantha (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/224590870/the-guide-to-glorantha) crowdfunding project. (Interesting book, but you'll probably get it cheaper from the store afterwards.) The basic project is just as simple as Ron's, they're just looking to fund the production of a luxurious coffee table book about Glorantha. The attempt at making everything look SPECTACULAR is palpable when you look at the wide scope of backer levels and how the reveal of new stretch goals maintains interest over the lifetime of the project. And these are relatively level-headed people, too; most of their backer rewards and stretch goal stuff are plain common sense things they'd have been doing anyway, and the rest is there to justify big fish contributions from the people who want to give a lot of money and feel good about it, too. Maybe it could be useful to contrast with your own thoughts and see if you're going to be more or less carnevalistic than Moon Design in your own attempt.

Quote from: Eero Tuovinen on December 07, 2012, 06:07:12 AMSorry about that, Raven; I thought that you were being jocular yourself. Hazards of non-verbal communication.

No problem then, Eero. Consider it forgotten.

Quote...technically all sorts of add-ons and such are obviously superfluous in crowdfunding...However, the particular site culture of these popular crowdfunding sites seems to me like it encourages a sense of carnevalism in the proceedings...I'd like to note that even if this fever-pitch looks ludicrous in totality...

I very much disagree on it being "carnivale"-like in nature or ludicrous-looking from the outside, or that add-ons are indeed superfluous, technically or otherwise. Consider, crowd-funding is a patronage system, except instead of one single patron providing funding you have numerous patrons who have decided your project deserves to live.

Given this, I don't think it is unusual for patrons to ask for a little more than standard for their patronage -- they are, after all, taking a risk giving you money for something sight-unseen and unknowable, that runs a risk of not having an actual pay-out -- so for rewards no one else can have, in exchange for providing the funding for that project.

This is not historically unusual under patron systems, not where the result is to be publicly shared rather than privately held (as in that case the result is the total reward). I also don't think it that unusual, or deceitful, for the individual seeking patrons to encourage buy-in with various gifts or to keep patrons excited about the project they have funded, or enticed to fund (or fund more). None of this seems particular new or "modern consumerist culture" to me, but in fact very old world.

It also seems a behavior instilled in the heart of all such modern efforts from the beginning (Stolze's ransom model, Kobold's patron system, etc), rather than a new behavior specific to this round of crowd-funding culture.

Importantly, I think this very different from the shyster/huckster vibe of a carnival, where the unscrupulous are throwing colored lights and crappy-prizes at you to entice you to spend money to play rigged games. And I think if one approaches the situation from "I don't want to be a carnie" angle rather than from the "I am an artist seeking patrons" angle, it makes a significant difference.

But, given the risk of derailing, the above thoughts are the last I will say about the subject here. I just thought it important enough to mention.

Hi,

Well, it looks like things are under way. This thread helped a lot, as well as a brainstorming session with Nathan.

My goals for the week are to talk with Luke, to make a first-pass video, to confirm some stuff with layout and art so I can have samples, and try it out in the "rough draft" form at the Kickstarter site. Surprising how well it suddenly came together in my mind.

So you know, initial layout for the new core book is really awesome-looking. My hope that the annotations would be on the right-hand facing page throughout has been realized. If we can get those Denmark covers for reals, this is going to be a great product.

I've altered the model yet again, turning the fancy book into a stretch goal instead of a contributor reward. So now all the stretch goals are format (including a hard-copy print run) and all the contributor rewards are gear/kitsch or social. Gordon's party idea sounds fun too actually; I'll have to see whether Forge Midwest is possible given my schedule in the upcoming year.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone. I'll post to let you know when the rough draft is up.

I can't really say this thread should be closed for good, but maybe it's better to let it rest unless you have some kind of amazing idea or comment that you think I simply must see.

Best, Ron