Patronage your experiances?

[Qwillion]

Wolfgang Baur's Open Design gave me the idea, and I have heard a rumor or two of other companies heading that way.

I am curious to hear about peoples experiences away from the company forums.

 

[Angellis_ater]

Well, Dreamscarred Press has been contemplating something like a Patronage system for continued psionics development for 3.5 since our sales have been dropping. But to be honest, we are exploring a number of new business systems to work under, including a "design by order" concept.

 

[Kerrick]

What's Patronage? Link?

 

[Varianor Abroad]

What's Patronage? Link?

Open Design and patronage are discussed here.

 

[Qwillion]

Thank you

Mine is now in my signature

 

[jaerdaph]

Wolfgang Baur's Open Design gave me the idea, and I have heard a rumor or two of other companies heading that way.

I am curious to hear about peoples experiances away from the company forums?

I would expect someone asking for that much money in an open design project to be able to spell "experience", but perhaps that's just me.

 

[crazy_cat]

I would expect someone asking for that much money in an open design project to be able to spell "experience", but perhaps that's just me.

I'd also hope they could spell signature, and that they spell their own username right in the signature block attached to their posts

More seriously, on Open Design (which I've been a member of since Empire of the Ghouls) and patronage projects in general. I think they are a very good idea and a very positive way of funding new works, especially for niche or specialist products at a time where some RPG products are produced and selling (anecdotally) in very small numbers.

That said, I only signed up for OD because I knew the quality of WBs work - from numerous recent Dungeon adventures, and from D&D products going back to Assassin Mountain for Al-Qadim (mid 1990's ?)

A new OD or patronage project needs to impress people if it is going to attract fee-paying patrons. I wish you good luck with your project - but you're going to need to market it to people with some 'wow' factor that you can actually deliver on in order to actually extract money from them. That is why things like spellings in message board posts are important, as spelling mistakes for example create a less than impressive first impression for potential patrons.

Ultimately - any future projects you have planned will sink or swim based on feedback and word of mouth from patrons of your first project.

Good luck.

 

[Qwillion]

Thank you. The Corrections have been made (Except the signature, which is an issue with availability on Enworld).


"but you're going to need to market it to people with some 'wow' factor that you can actually deliver on in order to actually extract money from them. "

We will be releasing some one-page PDFs with teasers and samples. Thank you for the advice.

 

[fissionessence]

I was considering signing up for Baur's Open Design, but I wanted to take a look at some of the previously produced adventures first . . . when I saw that only patrons could purchase them, I was turned off to the whole idea.

I like the thought of an open design/patronage program and collaborating and whatnot, but I am totally against the end results being unavailable to the public, even if there's like a waiting period or something. This was the primary reason I did not sign up for Open Design.

Otherwise, though, it seems cool . . . but it seems like a very risky venture for a publisher.

~

 

[FunkBGR]

Don't forget Stolze does the Ransom model, which is similar in style, but different in scope (once a project has been ransomed, he then releases it for free to everyone)

One thing though, is that they work because the respective authors have been around a long time, and have a lot of name-recognition, credits as designers, fanboi's, etc.

I honestly don't know who you are, so I am a lot more leery about signing up for anything. Once you get some previews out, then I'll take a look and maybe do it.

Hope that helps!