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Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 8369759" data-attributes="member: 5948">I've backed 20 or so kickstarters.  Mostly but not entirely, RPG material.  <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Keep me updated regularly - once a month is fine, even if it's 'we're still waiting on the printers'.  Don't just go radio silence.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Be realistic about your goals and timelines.  If it's two months before your expected delivery date and you're still sourcing art and haven't admitted that the project will be delayed, that's a good way to make sure I'll never back you again</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I'll rarely back first-time kickstarters.  I've done it before, but for RPG material especially the results have always been disappointing and the fulfillment dates enormously late.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I don't want miniatures, dice, dice bags, bookmarks, medallions, or other trinkets as stretch goals.  Miniatures are in fact a dealbreaker - I won't back a kickstarter than includes them, as they're expensive, slow to deliver, rarely useful, and inconvenient to store.  Neither do i want PDFs of products you've already released (I love Kobold Press, but they need to stop doing this) - if I want them, I already own them.  Stretch goals should be additional pages of new material in the core product I'm buying.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I'm not GMing right now and likely won't be in the medium term future, I won't back and don't need adventures.  If your kickstarter is a package of material that includes an adventure book (like Southlands, Iron Kingdoms Requiem etc), I'll still consider it, but the adventure makes it less likely I'll be a backer.  Same with monster books.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I want high-quality colour art.  I'll only back hardbacks - no softcovers or pdfs.  Realistically, I've got more rpg material than I'll ever actually use in a game, so if I'm backing a KS I want it to at least be something i can indulge myself in the experience of reading.  Oh, and if your product has rules material, then i want to see some samples of it on your kickstarter page so i can check if you have any sort of competence in actual game design or balance before i back.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Your kickstarter should tell me how awesome your product is, and it should not do this by slagging off other settings.  I'm getting a lot of ads for Lost Lights in my facebook feed at the moment, and while it should by rights hit all my buttons, to be honest it steps a little too far over this line and the marketing has so far put me off backing it.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Shipping cost matters.  I'm in Australia and most of the time KS shipping is actually surprisingly reasonable (much better than getting similar items shipped from any other seller in the US) but it is something I'll keep a close eye on</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Give me something new.  There's about 4000 iterations of 'Viking-inspired D&D' going around at the moment, and if I step away from 5e you could probably double that.  I don't need another one.  And if you start your pitch with 'dark fantasy' then you're two strikes down already, for similar reasons.</li> </ul>In general, I'm realistic enough to know that kickstarter or something like it is here to stay, and it'd definitely got its plusses in that the quality and production values of small-company or startup game material has skyrocketed since, for instance, the first days of the d20 glut.  But I do have to say that it's a double-edged sword.  So much great stuff is being produced, but so little of it is making it into local game shops.  I was on a big gloomy downer this week (just started yet another new lockdown, sigh) and in the mood to binge on some RPG stuff to cheer myself up.  I wanted to sit down on a comfy couch and spend a cold weekend in front of the fire with a glass of red, some good cheese, and a new 3rd-party 5e campaign setting.  Ridiculously, I couldn't get one.  Other than the core WotC stuff, none of the shops in my large city stocked even a single 5e setting.  A couple had a small selection of Midgard material, but most of it was long since sold out (always a problem with Kobold Press I've found), but there was literally nothing else.  If I want to get ANYTHING from the huge amazing 3rd party D&D ecosystem out there, I need to order from overseas, or PoD, and that'll take a month if I'm lucky.   Or I can back  a kickstarter and not see anything at all for a year.  There's all this great stuff out there, and I can't impulse-buy any of it.  I need my instant gratification, dammit!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /></blockquote>

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