Thursday, April 19, 2012

LotFP Hardcover + Adventure IndieGoGo Campaign is LIVE


Featuring adventures by Aeron Alfrey, Graeme Davis, Tina Engström, Kenneth Hite, Frank Mentzer, Jason Morningstar, Steve Kenson, Cynthia Celeste Miller, Richard Pett, Stefan Poag, Stuart Robertson, Zak S, Juhani Seppälä, and Jukka Särkijärvi.

I do want to say a bit here because I know people are going to lose their minds.

Yes, the stretch goals go all the way to $150,000. No, I don't really expect to draw that much money (but PROVE ME WRONG, PLEASE!), but there is a reason behind it:

Basically, if offering standalone Rules & Magic books, it only makes sense to offer them in bundles. But since paper stock and all that won't be decided on until the early fall, there is no way to tell how much each book weighs, so determining postage for a group of them is impossible, and it would be a total disaster if I lowballed my postage budgeting for potentially hundreds of people.

So I had to assume that the "group pack" would be in the 2kg-5kg range... and funny that, the Finnish postal service charges the exact same for mailing a package that weighs 2001g as they do a package that weighs 4999g.

Offering new adventures by top names was the best way I could think of to offer everyone an opportunity to fill that box up as close to 4999g as possible, absolutely PACK IT with top quality NEW STUFF, without asking you to pay any more than you were for the rulebooks.

And factoring in writing (four figures per adventure, I expect world class work from the famous vets and from the people you don't yet know... and there is no excuse not to pay people well when prefunding before giving the go sign), art (four figures per adventure, these adventures will all be top class)... and Alfrey, Engström, Poag, Robertson, and Zak are getting paid the writer AND artist shares since they're doing both on their projects... plus layout and editing, then printing, and factoring in IndieGoGo's cut and including that a funded adventure means a load more of hardcovers have also been reserved, that $7500 per project disappears real quick.

In fact, this whole campaign has been designed to be almost revenue-neutral for me. I say "almost," I did leave myself a small buffer against unforeseen expenses, but the money you pay in now is for the other creators, and the printer, and the post office. Not for me. I will take my profits from the sales afterwards when they're available as PDFs and the adventures go into distro. (which will largely go right back into the next releases anyway...)

So I've set the stage. Assembled one hell of a crew of adventure writers. It's up to you to actually put this into motion and blast this thing into orbit.

Get to it.

And if it goes well, next year I'll figure out something heavy BRAND NEW thing to release and  we'll do this all over again with a different crew of all-stars.

11 comments:

  1. Ah, yes. I guess I should add that to the description. :)

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  2. In that case, I'm in. About bloody time!

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  3. Proud to support! As soon as I've got a job again I'll probably donate again!

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  4. $30,000 + 32 page new adventure by Graeme Davis ... Death on the Reik is one of the three greatest adventures ever written.

    In your opinion, what are the other two?

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    1. Oh great, I'm being held accountable now. :P :P

      Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread are what I had in mind when I wrote that.

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  5. You do realize between Kickstarter and Indigogo you fucking creators / writers / publishers are going to make me go broke?

    I already have WF in both of it's previous editions and I'm going to be grabbing the latest one too it seems.

    Damn you Jim!

    (just need to explain this "fan support with benefits" to my wife - this shit was an easy button click before last November ;)

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  6. Yeah, my wife doesn't 'get' games, let alone shelling out for them...Jim, you need a support level that includes Flame Princess panties, then I could tell her I bought the Weird Fantasy undies for her and the books are just a bonus. And yeah, that's a win-win for me!
    But, even if you don't, I'm soooo in on this as soon as I free up some paypal next week.

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  7. This is a great piece of news! I've made my contribution and made a quick post to Twitter and Facebook. Tomorrow a short post is scheduled to drop with links to this blog and the IndieGoGo campaign. Im sure you'll reach the funding for the book and I'm curious to see how high the bonus funding will go. Best of luck with this campaign!

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  8. How similar to the previous versions this hardback edition will be? I would love to see something much closer to the new edition of Carcosa, with a similar layout and editing (and fonts).

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  9. The plan at the moment is for the guy that did the Isle of the Unknown layout to do the hardcover layout, but work won't start on the layout until the new edit is done, which won't get started until the hardcover funds.

    It will have a pro look and the PDF will be highly functional, in any event.

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