Wow. five years, two Kickstarters, and a heck of a lot of writing and Altais: Age of Ruin is now out.
The book ended up being so much larger than I originally planned, it's 400 pages and we have artwork on almost every page.
So while this is at least a little bit promotional, I also thought I'd post here about some of the things we encountered while making this book and answer any questions other creators might have.
I started writing Altais about 5 years ago now, I was studying a Degree in Game Design at the time and for the first year of development I was just jotting down dot-point ideas in my spare time. Eventually it got to the point where I felt a Kickstarter was possible, but I realised that having a well presented page was essential, so I spent a few thousand dollars hiring artists to make it pretty. I looked at the other games that had been successful but made a big mistake here of thinking I could run at the same level as the big companies. I looked to the recent 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire: the Masquerade as an example of the sort of Kickstarter I wanted to run. It's obvious to me now that this was a mistake.
For my first Kickstarter I wanted to work on the game full-time and produce a book to the same level of quality as Pathfinder or Vampire, so after doing some research, I set my goal at $40,000... and failed utterly. (You can still see the old page here) This was pretty devastating and a huge reality check for me, but after a few months I decided to start again.
I scaled everything back: I planned for a smaller book, less art, and got a full-time job to pay for it. I also got more art created and made a demo version of the book which I made available for free. I restarted the Kickstarter almost 2 years after the original campaign with a $10,000 goal. We raised $13,000! (Second Kickstarter here) At this point I knew I would never make a profit from this game, I had already spent over $8,000 just creating the art for the Kickstarter and the demo book.
So from there writing began, I continued to work a day job to pay for it and wrote in the evenings and weekends. At some point the game began to grow. I decided that I wasn’t happy with the cuts I had made to reduce production costs and decided to aim for my original goal, except now I was paying for it with my day job.
Another thing I somehow didn’t realise until very late in the project is that most RPG books list half a dozen or more writers in the credits. I wrote most of the book myself, with my partner contributing some of the fiction and generally being my muse. I look back on that and wonder how I ever managed it but I’m very happy that I did.
I continued to hire artists and by the time the project was finished, we had written over 200,000 words, and hired 30+ artists to create 275 pieces of art. I also taught myself InDesign and did the layout myself but hired an editor to proof read and make corrections.
So, a bit on hiring artists: Most of ours were hired from DeviantArt or UpWork. Those from DeviantArt generally produced better work but were harder to find. I’d often send 10-20 emails asking if people were available to do freelance work and only one would respond. I have no idea how many emails I ended up sending all together, but it was a lot. The ones we hired through UpWork were a lot easier to higher, they come to you, but you have to sift through the scammers and the work wasn’t as good.
Speaking of scammers, we had several incidents of note:
One artist was hired to create 8 pieces of work. After she had provided 5 of them, we posted one of the pieces as an update on our Kickstarter and soon afterwards we were contacted by someone who had seen it and claimed to be the real creator of that artwork. We investigated and discovered this was true, the person we hired had been taking our money and using it to hire other artists for a fraction of the amount we were paying her. She was so dishonest about it that she had claimed she was part of our company when talking with the other artists and pretty much denied the whole thing right to the end. We tried to get the money we had paid her back but UpWork ruled she hadn’t actually broken any of the site’s rules and she got away with about $1000. We tracked down the real artists and paid them extra for their time and to finish the last 2 pieces.
Another smaller issue we had was with an artist asking for a small amount of the money up front (a common practice) and then doing a crappy sketch and calling it done and refusing to do more or refund the money they had been given.
Fortunately, such incidents were a minority, most of the artists were fantastic to work with.
And so, we finished in October and have spent the last few months getting the book up on DriveThruRPG in several formats. We also had several stretch goals to meet and ended up making two decks of cards as optional game aids.
In the end I spent $22,000 just on art, and after delivering all rewards the total cost of the project is pretty close to the $40,000 I originally asked for.
So now the book is done and somehow I always thought that would be the end of things but I am quickly learning that it is one thing to make a game, and another thing to promote it. Unfortunately, marketing is something I suck at.
So, to celebrate the book's completion and to help raise awareness, I am holding a sale. I’d love it if you could take a look and share a link with your friends.
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/221667/Altais-Age-of-Ruin?src=en
Finally, here’s a bit about the game itself:
Altais is a dystopian fantasy game about technology mistaken for magic. A lot of focus is on the unique magic system which involves manipulating other dimensions to create magical effects. Everyone can learn magic, in fact it’s instinctive and people often use it without meaning to, but it’s also forbidden and those who use it are hunted. We focused on realistic medieval societies and a darker tone than D&D, but it’s also a game about the end of the world and the fall of humanity, both literally through invasion, and figuratively through corruption and superstition.
Anyway I think this has been quite long enough but I’m happy to chat about any aspect of running the Kickstarter or completing the project. If anyone has any questions, I’m pretty transparent about the whole thing.
Thanks for reading
The book ended up being so much larger than I originally planned, it's 400 pages and we have artwork on almost every page.
So while this is at least a little bit promotional, I also thought I'd post here about some of the things we encountered while making this book and answer any questions other creators might have.
I started writing Altais about 5 years ago now, I was studying a Degree in Game Design at the time and for the first year of development I was just jotting down dot-point ideas in my spare time. Eventually it got to the point where I felt a Kickstarter was possible, but I realised that having a well presented page was essential, so I spent a few thousand dollars hiring artists to make it pretty. I looked at the other games that had been successful but made a big mistake here of thinking I could run at the same level as the big companies. I looked to the recent 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire: the Masquerade as an example of the sort of Kickstarter I wanted to run. It's obvious to me now that this was a mistake.
For my first Kickstarter I wanted to work on the game full-time and produce a book to the same level of quality as Pathfinder or Vampire, so after doing some research, I set my goal at $40,000... and failed utterly. (You can still see the old page here) This was pretty devastating and a huge reality check for me, but after a few months I decided to start again.
I scaled everything back: I planned for a smaller book, less art, and got a full-time job to pay for it. I also got more art created and made a demo version of the book which I made available for free. I restarted the Kickstarter almost 2 years after the original campaign with a $10,000 goal. We raised $13,000! (Second Kickstarter here) At this point I knew I would never make a profit from this game, I had already spent over $8,000 just creating the art for the Kickstarter and the demo book.
So from there writing began, I continued to work a day job to pay for it and wrote in the evenings and weekends. At some point the game began to grow. I decided that I wasn’t happy with the cuts I had made to reduce production costs and decided to aim for my original goal, except now I was paying for it with my day job.
Another thing I somehow didn’t realise until very late in the project is that most RPG books list half a dozen or more writers in the credits. I wrote most of the book myself, with my partner contributing some of the fiction and generally being my muse. I look back on that and wonder how I ever managed it but I’m very happy that I did.
I continued to hire artists and by the time the project was finished, we had written over 200,000 words, and hired 30+ artists to create 275 pieces of art. I also taught myself InDesign and did the layout myself but hired an editor to proof read and make corrections.So, a bit on hiring artists: Most of ours were hired from DeviantArt or UpWork. Those from DeviantArt generally produced better work but were harder to find. I’d often send 10-20 emails asking if people were available to do freelance work and only one would respond. I have no idea how many emails I ended up sending all together, but it was a lot. The ones we hired through UpWork were a lot easier to higher, they come to you, but you have to sift through the scammers and the work wasn’t as good.
Speaking of scammers, we had several incidents of note:
One artist was hired to create 8 pieces of work. After she had provided 5 of them, we posted one of the pieces as an update on our Kickstarter and soon afterwards we were contacted by someone who had seen it and claimed to be the real creator of that artwork. We investigated and discovered this was true, the person we hired had been taking our money and using it to hire other artists for a fraction of the amount we were paying her. She was so dishonest about it that she had claimed she was part of our company when talking with the other artists and pretty much denied the whole thing right to the end. We tried to get the money we had paid her back but UpWork ruled she hadn’t actually broken any of the site’s rules and she got away with about $1000. We tracked down the real artists and paid them extra for their time and to finish the last 2 pieces.
Another smaller issue we had was with an artist asking for a small amount of the money up front (a common practice) and then doing a crappy sketch and calling it done and refusing to do more or refund the money they had been given.
Fortunately, such incidents were a minority, most of the artists were fantastic to work with.
And so, we finished in October and have spent the last few months getting the book up on DriveThruRPG in several formats. We also had several stretch goals to meet and ended up making two decks of cards as optional game aids.
In the end I spent $22,000 just on art, and after delivering all rewards the total cost of the project is pretty close to the $40,000 I originally asked for.
So now the book is done and somehow I always thought that would be the end of things but I am quickly learning that it is one thing to make a game, and another thing to promote it. Unfortunately, marketing is something I suck at.
So, to celebrate the book's completion and to help raise awareness, I am holding a sale. I’d love it if you could take a look and share a link with your friends.
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/221667/Altais-Age-of-Ruin?src=en
Finally, here’s a bit about the game itself:
Altais is a dystopian fantasy game about technology mistaken for magic. A lot of focus is on the unique magic system which involves manipulating other dimensions to create magical effects. Everyone can learn magic, in fact it’s instinctive and people often use it without meaning to, but it’s also forbidden and those who use it are hunted. We focused on realistic medieval societies and a darker tone than D&D, but it’s also a game about the end of the world and the fall of humanity, both literally through invasion, and figuratively through corruption and superstition.
Anyway I think this has been quite long enough but I’m happy to chat about any aspect of running the Kickstarter or completing the project. If anyone has any questions, I’m pretty transparent about the whole thing.
Thanks for reading
