P20 Modern Roleplaying Game - only 25 days left!

[pawsplay]

If I were going to put together a team for something like this, I would have budgeted about $7000. $70,000 is a lot for a defiantly niche product that would be in direct head-to-head competition with Spycraft and Mutants & Masterminds. I wouldn't even consider going to print until I was sure I could sell at least 500 PDFs of the product's first edition.

 

[HyrumOWC]

Sooo... What happens now that P20 Modern didn't make its goal? Does the project still go forward with a different source of funding? Is it dead completely?

I looked for some source of information on the SuperGenius Games site, but couldn't find any sort of statement.

We don't have an official answer yet although we just wrapped up our first post-mortem today and should have an update soon.

The project isn't dead, it's just going in a different direction.

Hyrum.
Super Genius Games
"We err on the side of awesome."

 

[Steel_Wind]

I will admit, I was surprised - no, amazed, actually! - that e20 received its minimum quota of pledginess.

But then, that was a. . . slightly less ambitious figure, shall we say.

In fairness, I think the e20 Evolved patrons also consisted of a large number of Star Wars fans -- people who are currently playing Saga Edition.

While Star Wars: Saga Edition fans have never had even close to the numbers of D&D fans -- D20 Modern has never had the numbers of fans that Star Wars had had either. Moreover, D20 Modern is a lot further in the review mirror than Saga Ed. Star Wars, after all, just had the last book in the series released a few weeks ago so the fan base is a little closer to their loss, as it were.

My point: if you were to consider the fans of certain genres of RPG games FRPG>Sci-Fi>Modern would be the fan base numbers you would ordinarily expect to see.

 

[Renfield]

I kind of lost interest when I heard they planned on running with the stat-based classes, that's a deal breaker for me personally.

That and the futility behind their goal. They wanted to take a sort of Patronage Project approach for a massive publishing undertaking. They didn't want a few copies to make it to a few gaming stores, they want hard cover, color, with thousands of volumes shipped to book stores and gaming stores across the country. That's where they came up with the $70,000 necessary to make P20 Modern.

Personally I think they should have thought smaller. Worked on the project itself, get a more low key printing arrangment (hardcover but black and white and make the printing option based more on special order or print on demand. Something like that.

 

[Owen K.C. Stephens]

Personally I think they should have thought smaller. Worked on the project itself, get a more low key printing arrangment (hardcover but black and white and make the printing option based more on special order or print on demand. Something like that.

What we did was figure out what it would cost to give fans what they were telling us they wanted. The biggest request, which included hundreds of posts and direct messages to us, was for a core hardback full-color book that would hit the market with the same penetration as Pathfinder itself, and could become the linchpin for a new round of supplements and expansions.

We knew it was a really ambitious goal, but we do like to listen to our fans. Since it didn't cost anyone any money if it didn't fund, we decided to take our time to try for the platinum standard we were told fans wanted.

Now that we've seen what the actual level of available, funded support is, we're working on a plan that can be done at a much more modest level. While it's not what a lot of people told us they really wanted in their hearts, it will be something we can do at the level of funding we received for our last try.

Owen K.C. Stephens
Super Genius Games

 

[ronin]

I think you'll find once you set a lower goal you'll get more people to sponsor your project. I think people saw that huge number and figured you couldn't raise that level of support so they didn't even bother.

I could be wrong but that's my take on the situation.