Tell your overdue Kickstarter story

[Morrus]

Oh god, this sort of thing SO MUCH.

I hate it when I see an RPG Kickstarter with a long list of badges, bookmarks, miniatures, dice bags an other tchotchkes. It just stone cold guarantees that something will go wrong with some random obscure and unnecessary component that only 1% of backers ordered, and the whole project will cop massive delays as a result. Steinhardt’s was a $1 million plus campaign that was delayed for half a year because of problems printing a cloth map. Beast World had many months of delays because of spice rubs. Hell, right now I’m waiting on one campaign that has been sitting around twiddling its thumbs for months while the manufacturer tries to sort out its fancy liquid-core dice.

Just print the damn books. More bits and pieces are just asking for trouble.

That's why we don't do them. Or stretch goals. Fulfill the Kickstarter and move on to the next. And that's why we have nearly 60 successfully fulfilled Kickstarters adding up to nearly $4M! It's not about that one big hit, it's about consistency--it's a marathon, not a sprint.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's one of my red flags of kickstarter project backing.

Me too.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's why we don't do them. Or stretch goals. Fulfill the Kickstarter and move on to the next. And that's why we have nearly 60 successfully fulfilled Kickstarters adding up to nearly $4M! It's not about that one big hit, it's about consistency--it's a marathon, not a sprint.

I don't think some kinds of stretch goals are a great evil, if you keep them down to a dull roar and only go for digital form. Even if it takes a while, if it doesn't hold up the main product, that's okay; the stretch goals for Part Time Gods 2e took a while to drop, but that wasn't a big deal.

But physical stretch goals? Oh, heck no.

 

[chuckdee]

The kinds of stretch goals I think are OK- things that you would do no matter what and aren't going to affect delivery, or things that are upgrades to the process, but not the project. What kinds of things do I mean?

Sourcebooks that you already have in your pipeline (though I will say, that despite the value, these put the company in a weaker position as the people most willing to invest in the product won't need it).

Paying writers/artists/contributors more.

Things that ended up on the cutting room floor for cost to include, but might be interesting.

Anything else triggers me to go back and look at how much the desire to trigger FOMO might be putting the project in danger.