D&D General I am so done with kickstarter

[nedjer]

Disappointed. Kind of hard to get started then.... But I understand.

Make a few decent short products for DriveThru then they can speak for your KS. Most ttrpg KS have some sort of 'background' before the first KS.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Make a few decent short products for DriveThru then they can speak for your KS. Most ttrpg KS have some sort of 'background' before the first KS.

yeah even in today's environment (much better then 90's) you need a name and recognition (even if just a little) to get started... so those who are already in the system or close around (friend of a friend) have it MUCH easier to get started.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Myth & Magic?

i just went into the kick starter and CHris Perkins created a work up based on it and it is free..

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Resources & Links Page

scruffygrognard.com

 

[Jer]

Disappointed. Kind of hard to get started then.... But I understand.

It's always hard to get funding for a business. Arguably a lot of problem Kickstarters come from folks who don't realize that's what they're doing when they run a Kickstarter.

(Not all of them of course. You can have a business that has been in operation since 1981 that can run Kickstarters that never fulfill and never hope to fulfill. But then, arguments can be made that many RPG companies have been run poorly over the years even before Kickstarter existed...)

 

[dave2008]

The younglings hate Amazon. But I love Amazon. Because whatever I order, it arrives tomorrow.

Kickstarter seemed like a cool way to support creators.

But it doesn't seem cool any more, with their cash grab towards blockchain so the world can be destroyed faster by climate change.

But what really bothers me, is how long you have to wait for kickstarter products to arrive.

It is almost a year ago when I backed Dungeons of Drakkenheim, still no sign, no idea if it will even come this year.

I have no interest in it now.

I have mostly stopped backing KS projects that have a year+ delivery time. Luckily, not all of them have such long deliver times. As has been mentioned before EnWorld deliveries pretty much instantly and other do so within weeks to a month or so. You just have to pick and choose. I backed the recent MCDM KS, despite have a very lone delivery time. However, it promised regular PDF updates / previews to backers and I trust them to deliver.

 

[Jer]

I have mostly stopped backing KS projects that have a year+ delivery time.... However, it promised regular PDF updates / previews to backers and I trust them to deliver.

yeah that's become my rule of thumb. If it's a long delivery time but they provide a draft of the rules and regular updates, and their release schedule for the PDF compared to print is reasonable then I'm willing to think about it. If they have a long delivery time and they don't have a draft available at KS launch time, then they're basically asking me for a long term loan to fund the development of the game, and I'm less interested in doing that these days.

 

[eyeheartawk]

yup I linked to it up thread. It broke me. I have some of the playtest material.

Thought so. The PHB is a PoD on Lulu. Or, at least was, last I checked.

 

[overgeeked]

I'm cool with Kickstarter more than Amazon. I just wish more creators would have a bigger gap between releasing PDFs and printing physical books. Give the hundreds or thousands more people a chance to put eyes on the text and spot mistakes so they can be fixed before going to print. Even books with professional editors need as many eyes as possible. I recently backed a project, got the PDF, and in the first dozen pages spotted about a dozen mistakes. But...the text was already finalized because they'd hired a professional editor and the few passes they did was considered enough. Nope. Still mistakes galore. Inconsistency of word usage, art covering text, simple spelling and grammar mistakes...on and on. It's really disheartening. I was really looking forward to the book. Now I think it was a waste of money. I won't be able to read the physical book I ordered without cringing. Maybe that's the curse of having been an editor.

 

[Shardstone]

Speaking as a small Publisher, its been really hard.

My book is more then a year late. It was my first ever Kickstarter, and our printer got absolutely destroyed by covid. We've run a second Kickstarter that was on time, but our first book just recently finished mass production. Its a real bummer because, we had nothing we could do. We had already invested our money into this printer, and starting somewhere else would have set us back further given the shipping apocalpyse going on. But people were excited for our book a couple of years ago, not now. And I feel its really hurt our reputation and our chances at continuing the line, but what else could we do?

So, while it may seem like everyone Kickstarter is scamming you, please try to understand that right now is a very difficult time for any project getting printed and shipped.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

I back way too many. Close to 400 now. I am getting pickier and pickier. For books, it needs to be written and ready to go to next stage (small publishers that mean editing and art and then printing. Big ones I really want final polish and print).

I have had zero creators fail to deliver. Getting worried about Petersen Games, though.

I have dropped a bunch of creators after bad experiences. Too late and bad practice like combine shipping of several late Kickstarters after collecting full fees for each.