Blade Runner: The Next Million Dollar Kickstarter?

Grendel_Khan · Jul 3, 2022

Yora said:
They raised over a million just to pay for the printing for a game that was already produced? Can thay just pocket the remainder after paying the printer?

Do you really not get how publishing, or any sort of production works? Maybe if this were a strictly digital product you could wonder what they'll do with some of that money, but even then the profits would feed back into the time it took to pay lots of people to work on the game, and also to keep the company running. But this is primarily a print product, so how in the world could you see their pledge total as pure profit?

Morrus · Jul 3, 2022

schneeland said:
Well, most probably they paid it out of their own pocket/company bank account in the hope that the Kickstarter would raise enough to justify the expenses. I don't think Free League (or anyone else in the RPG industry except WotC) makes enough money to do such an investment without some sort of return.
Admittedly, they probably could have done a pre-order and decided for a Kickstarter for marketing purposes.

That’s how we do it. Take the initial risk on ourselves and hope to recover those costs via Kickstarter in order to fulfill quickly. This year we’ve developed three hardcover books all of which will be coming to KS over the next year.

Yora · Jul 3, 2022

Grendel_Khan said:
Do you really not get how publishing, or any sort of production works? Maybe if this were a strictly digital product you could wonder what they'll do with some of that money, but even then the profits would feed back into the time it took to pay lots of people to work on the game, and also to keep the company running. But this is primarily a print product, so how in the world could you see their pledge total as pure profit?

Not the total. Just the excess from recovering the development costs they had to payed upfront and the costs for printing and distribution.
Assume they would have broken even with 500,000 raised. If they raise 1,500,000, the remaining 1,000,000 only need to be spend on printing and distribution for the exess backers, plus printing stock for later sales.

The point is that they couldn't have known in advance to raise over 1 million, so they can't have calculated to break even with more than 1 million.

Not that hard to comprehend.

Grendel_Khan · Jul 3, 2022

Yora said:
Not the total. Just the excess from recovering the development costs they had to payed upfront and the costs for printing and distribution.
Assume they would have broken even with 500,000 raised. If they raise 1,500,000, the remaining 1,000,000 only need to be spend on printing and distribution for the exess backers, plus printing stock for later sales.

The point is that they couldn't have known in advance to raise over 1 million, so they can't have calculated to break even with more than 1 million.

Not that hard to comprehend.

But how much of a profit margin do you think there is in printing and shipping these books and starter sets? With each additional print pledge that's more they have to spend on production. So the more backers, the bigger the print run, which is all great, but to act like they're just raking in money or like most of that funding total isn't eaten up by production and operation costs is...I don't know. I literally don't know what to say here, so I guess I'll stop.

Yora · Jul 3, 2022

The magic words are fixed costs and variable costs. A very simple and basic principle in the economy of production.
Some costs are the same no matter how many products you produce. Other costs are based on the units produced. If you produce 10 units or 10 million units, the fixed costs are the same.

MGibster · Jul 3, 2022

Colgrevance said:
This is one of very few things I dislike in Year Zero games: Attributes are much more valuable than skills/talents, thus it just doesn't make much sense to make an older (or in this case, more experienced) character, except maybe for oneshot games. I really wish they'd changed this for Blade Runner.

The older characters also get more specialties, promotion points, and chinyen (money), but I don't know if that makes up for having lower attributes.

Yora said:
They raised over a million just to pay for the printing for a game that was already produced? Can thay just pocket the remainder after paying the printer?

I don't typically concern myself with how the sausage is made. Free League offered a product for a particular price point and I went ahead and made a purchase based on my own wants. I'm sure they have a lot of expenses, but if they pocketed the remainder after paying the printer it wouldn't bother me one iota.

Grendel_Khan said:
Yeah that was a surprise. Made me wonder if they ultimately stuck it in due to backlash (or to avoid it). Seems like it’s the same approach as playing a secret Synthetic in Alien: Play like a human until the reveal, then, switch to Replicant mechanics.

Yeah, it reminded me of the secret snyth (so much better than Secret Santa) from Alien. I won't be using it in any game I run.

Crusadius · Jul 4, 2022

Yora said:
The magic words are fixed costs and variable costs. A very simple and basic principle in the economy of production.
Some costs are the same no matter how many products you produce. Other costs are based on the units produced. If you produce 10 units or 10 million units, the fixed costs are the same.

The best I can say about this "extra" money they now have is: great, now they have more operating capital that can be used to pay off debts, fund new products, fund cost of living wage increases, and stave off bankruptcy for another year.

aramis erak · Jul 4, 2022

MGibster said:
The older characters also get more specialties, promotion points, and chinyen (money), but I don't know if that makes up for having lower attributes.

The more I see of YZE games, the more I see Traveller influences...
This is the classic aging paradigm of Traveller... as you age, you gain more skills but lose attributes. In Traveller, the balance point varies widely by edition and Ref (=GM), and one's luck (as Traveller aging is randomized to various degrees).

So, to compare it, it's easier math in all the YZE games with aging than in Traveller.

If one considers the difference per die, with the attribute being used for all three relevant skills, the attribute is 3× the overall value. Since the aging step is -1 attribute level for +2 skill levels, it's almost always a losing proposition for skills alone. But the additional specialty is about the same as a skill level, so I'd say it's almost equal. Why? many of them are advantage on a skill.
on to figuring the relative value of the dice
Let's see... calculating average value per die, unpushed.

	skill	Pushed	array
d6	0.167	0.278	0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1	1/6
d8	0.375	0.536	0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1	3/8
d10	0.6	0.840	0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1 , 1, 2	6/10
d12	0.833	1.111	0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1 , 1, 2, 2, 2	10/12 = 5/6

Attribute value is at least triple that of skill, as it applies to 3 skills, but this ignores the Health and Resilience expendables pools (ie, damage tracks). Given that the chinyen is roughly a one use auto-success... maybe count that as a fraction of a die, sa, 1/10 of worst att+ worst skill?

d6 [[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1],[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1].[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1],[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1],[1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1]] =10/36=5/1=0.278
d8 [[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1],[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1],[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1],[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1],[1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1],[1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1],[1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1]]=36/64=18/32=9/16=0.536
d10 [[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], 4×[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2], 4×[1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1],[2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2]]= (24+40+20)/100=84/100=0.840
d12[[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],4×[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2], 4x[1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1], 3×[2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2]]= 40+48+72=160/144
but that effect is fairly minor in terms of change in relative value, tho ChinYen and Promotion Points are essentially single use autosuccesses at certain tasks, and so should be based upon a pushed roll's value.

Also, there are other aspects that are roleplay functions - reactions to the older character, the nature of contacts the GM will let your scrounge up, and character self-image/confidence/poise/dementia/despair/burnout that are best represented by experienced characters, as well, and the player's mindset for how the character is

I'd say, generally, the trade off is in not favorable if you plan on using all 12 attribute linked skills evenly, but that's also unlikely, so losing the value of a skill outside your competence... It's worth considering it.

If there's a skill you don't plan to use under the attribute you'd not raise due to the lost point, then the value is about 2.5× the value of a skill of same rating... (allowing for either health or resilience losses), and if two, it's about 1.5. FInd the difference going down on the att, and the value of 2 skill upgrades that you'd not take as a younger character.
I've done much of the math for you.... but a more general conversion analysis is dependent upon a number of concept and playstyle issues making a handy table too narrowly construed.

My gut reaction is, "Yeah, it's about right."

MGibster said:
Yeah, it reminded me of the secret snyth (so much better than Secret Santa) from Alien. I won't be using it in any game I run.

The big difference is that in Alien, the player knows it. In BR, only the GM knows it.

MGibster · Jul 4, 2022

aramis erak said:
This is the classic aging paradigm of Traveller... as you age, you gain more skills but lose attributes. In Traveller, the balance point varies widely by edition and Ref (=GM), and one's luck (as Traveller aging is randomized to various degrees).

It does seem as though there's a steep drop in attributes at relatively young ages. Assuming a blade runner starts their career at the age of 25, by the time they're 35 they only have 2 fewer attribute points and +4 skill points. But maybe I'm analyzing this more than I should. Which is odd, because I sure didn't use the power of math and analyze it like you did!

aramis erak said:
The big difference is that in Alien, the player knows it. In BR, only the GM knows it.

During the Kickstarter, I thought one of the designers said that they didn't plan on having replicants who didn't know they were replicants because Rachel was a special one-time-only case. She wouldn't be all that special if you had a bunch of games with characters who were unknowingly replicants.

aramis erak · Jul 4, 2022

MGibster said:
It does seem as though there's a steep drop in attributes at relatively young ages. Assuming a blade runner starts their career at the age of 25, by the time they're 35 they only have 2 fewer attribute points and +4 skill points. But maybe I'm analyzing this more than I should. Which is odd, because I sure didn't use the power of math and analyze it like you did!

Had a bit of a manic episode last night... researching LAPD rank & Promotion. Age and rank both correlate...

Well, assuming current LAPDrequirements, Rookies are indeed going to be Police Officer I's - also known as "boots" - they've at least 21 yo if human, having needed to be 21 yo to attend the Academy... assuming knowing all the right things and people...

Start Age	Minimum Years after joining	Spend X Years in this rank	rank
21 years of age	0	½	Academy
21½	½	1½	Police Officer I	assigned to an FTO
23	2	3	Police Officer II	Still "Probationary" but past the FTO stage
26	5	2	Police Officer III & Police Officer III+1	III+1 is a for special assignments...
28	7	4	Sergeant I or Detective 1	minimum; technically 26 deployments
32	11	1	Lieutenant I	Limited Field Work
33	12		Captain I	Almost desk-bound

Note that Detective II and Sergeant II are rarely under a few years at the prior grade, but it's possible to test for Lt I while a Detective I.
So this means your "rookie" character is likely a PO I, Seasoned are PO II or PO III+1, maybe an actual Detective I, Veterans will be PO III+1 or any grade of detective, and the Sgt II, LT, and Captain are all "Old Timers" as are most Det II & III. Due to the special duty nature,

If you instead count only years post their Field Training, "Rookies" are PO II, Seasoned are PO II, PO III+1, or Det I or Sgt I. Veteran becomes mostly Detective I & II, with a few III+1's and maybe Sgt I. , Old Timers are likely Det I, II or III, Maybe Sgt I. a better fit.

The most readable of the sources:

CAREER LADDERS | Join LAPD

There are two types of advancement within the Los Angeles Police Department: (1) promotion and (2) assignment to a higher pay grade. "Promotion" refers to an advance from one Civil Service class to another, such as from Police Officer to Detective or Sergeant. Promotion is always from an...

www.joinlapd.com