Yeah, any way to bring in more money so you're better able to pay your team even if they're not adding anything additional of value directly is fine by me.I suspect that is just a theory and the ones running the KS see this as an opportunity to make some extra money, just like any shop carrying several products would.
On top of that I see that as a distraction to their main product they should be focusing on, because now all this ‘nonsense’ eats up time and attention too.
I do not begrudge them offering a set of dice and a handful of other stuff, but if your list of addons exceeds that, then I stay away because as far as I am concerned you lost track of what is important, and I am not interested in backing something like that.
Now, this applies to TTRPGs, for board games there might be a reason for a few more addons, but there too I would be reluctant to back one that goes overboard’ with it - but I do not see me backing board games anyway
D&D General When did Kickstarters become a bad deal
mamba
Legend
that still assumes that additional money goes towards your core product and not profit, doesn’t it?
My assumption is extra profit goes to pay someone, even if it's just the person running the campaign pocketing it since they'll be the ones responsible if things run over estimates.
mamba
Legend
yes, someone, including whoever you subcontracted to actually make the dice, miniatures, etc., I was just wondering about the ‘your team’ part
It’s also not that I begrudge them making a profit off of it. If your campaign asks for 100k and you end up making 500k, I do not expect all that extra money to go towards the product you expected to be able to do for $60k or so either (I’d expect some to go towards better / more art, maps, etc. however). It really is more the lack of focus I take as a warning sign
Many others? I'll push back on that statement.
If you look at the Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarter club, there are exactly 2--out of 34--that did it without the extra stuff.
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarter Club
Avatar Legends leads the pack in an exclusive club -- Kickstarters for tabletop roleplaying game products which have broken the $1M barrier! It is currently the most successful TTRPG Kickstarter in history with a funding total of nearly $10M, and over 80,000 backers. 24 TTRPG campaigns have...
www.enworld.org
mamba
Legend
I did not say without any extra stuff, I said without more than maybe a handful of addons like dice, minis, etc. (technically I said without a lot…)
Ah, gotcha. Your team in this case is whoever is directly involved in the Kickstarter. If it's one person, them. If it's 3 equal partners, them. You could also extend that if you like to being able to offer more money for the same art and so on, but I'd imagine people running KS that rely on that funding to pay freelancers probably have some sort of binding quote before they run the campaign. No idea if that's the case.
Something I haven't seen mentioned but desperately important to bring up:
Sometimes the publisher (especially a small-time or starting publisher) has no control over the shipping.
Paranormal Power is distributed by DriveThruRPG. But it's printed by a separate company I have no direct access to. When a customer sends me a message about a missing book I can only apologize and pay for another hardcover out of pocket to have shipped to them. Hoping against hope that whatever happened the first time (Damage to the packing material, lost packages, snowstorm buried it and customer didn't see that it's currently frozen to the side of their house until the spring thaw) doesn't happen again.
That did happen, by the way. Apparently a postman in Canada leaned the book against the side of the house near the front door and a blizzard hit before the customer had a chance to see it. I sent out a replacement from my own pocket and got a message just over a month later that the first copy had been hidden under snow. We both thought it was hilarious.
Sometimes the publisher (especially a small-time or starting publisher) has no control over the shipping.
Paranormal Power is distributed by DriveThruRPG. But it's printed by a separate company I have no direct access to. When a customer sends me a message about a missing book I can only apologize and pay for another hardcover out of pocket to have shipped to them. Hoping against hope that whatever happened the first time (Damage to the packing material, lost packages, snowstorm buried it and customer didn't see that it's currently frozen to the side of their house until the spring thaw) doesn't happen again.
That did happen, by the way. Apparently a postman in Canada leaned the book against the side of the house near the front door and a blizzard hit before the customer had a chance to see it. I sent out a replacement from my own pocket and got a message just over a month later that the first copy had been hidden under snow. We both thought it was hilarious.
It’s been mentioned a couple of times.
Only sometimes?
If we controlled the international shipping companies and also local postal workers across the world, we’d be a heck of a lot richer than we are. Rich enough that we wouldn’t need Kickstarter.
I didn't see it. Never did take that nap, in my lame defense.
Though when it comes to things like "Lots of Chotkes" kickstarters I assumed that larger companies got everything shipped to -them-, then repackaged things, then shipped it out separately.
I'm talking about things like that cardboard sleeve as opposed to Amazon's plastic shipping bags they send things out in that are more resistant to weather and the like.
Not "We control the post office" but "We control the packaging material we've chosen for this shipment"... am I wrong?
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