Pre-Order Old-School Solo Adventures!
over 1 year ago – Wed, Sep 14, 2022 at 03:48:07 PM

Old-School Solo Adventures: Pre-orders are Open!

The campaign funded in one hour. It attracted a record-for-me number of backers: over 800. Layout of all four is complete, and we’re entering a stage of 2-3 weeks of proofing and fight-testing, then the campaign closes, and manufacturing orders go out.

This is an opportunity to get in a “late pledge” for the campaign by pre-ordering the books and PDFs at the same discounted prices offered during the Kickstarter. We’re on track to deliver before mid-November, with PDF availability starting next week (Sept 21).

Check Out the Add-Ons!

It’s a pretty focused offering, but there are several exciting add-ons to consider.

Quick-Reference Cards!

A physical deck of 3.5×5″ reference cards for the monsters in the four adventures. There will be at least 157 cards in the decks. The design above is a work-in-progress but should be close to the final; each card will be tweaked for readability. Monsters that are complicated – like dragons and werewolves – will have a second card listing the common abilities for all such creatures. These allow fast access for monster and NPC stats, in convenient format. Both physical and PDF versions are available.

Dungeon Grappling!

Dungeon Grappling shows that the same basic concepts that you use to smite a foe with your sword are perfectly appropriate when grappling. The attack roll, target number, and effect roll are all unified in the context of grapples to minimize special cases. Finally grappling rules that don’t suck. One book includes rules for old-school games, the Pathfinder RPG, and Fifth Edition.

The Dragon Heresy RPG – Introductory Set

The Dragon Heresy Introductory Set is a fully playable game, covering character creation, adventuring, combat, gear, and challenges. In the book you will find: Norse-inspired culture, cosmology, and mythology. Deadly and tactically interesting combat. Rules and options to bring Viking-style martial combat to the Fifth Edition of the world’s most popular Fantasy RPG, with both tactical and narrative tools This is the PDF version of this stand-alone RPG. You will not need other rulebooks to play. Described by a fellow old-school player as “the only version of 5e I’ll play.”

Pre-Orders Open for a Few Weeks!

The ability to pre-order the books will be held open until it’s time to order the print copies. After that, fulfillment begins and the PDFs and print books will be made available on the Gaming Ballistic webs store only after fulfillment is complete. Get in early!

All Four Adventures in Layout!
over 1 year ago – Tue, Sep 13, 2022 at 11:52:50 PM

I didn't want to post until I got to this point, but I just spooled out the fourth solo, Dragon Hunt!, moments ago.

It came in at 44 pages, so no page growth like Belladonna saw.

Now we'll do about a week or so of fight testing, I hope, internally, to knock any loose rust off the inner gears. I will also go through each one more than once for a proofing pass, and my Mod Squad will do the same, hopefully catching nearly all of the inevitable "this isn't formatted right" or "the dragon is red-gold here, but blue-green here...what's up with that?"

Or, as occasionally happens, "that fight is too easy/always a TPK...should it be that way?"

But this means that I'll send the 48-hour lockdown warnings on Friday.

It also means that I'm going to start pushing a bit more "hey, check out the pre-orders!" through various channels. Retweets, reshares, and the like would be of great assistance.

The next thing up is to get all of the monsters into card format, and start on the manufacturing process for that. I actually expect that won't take more than a day or two. The first is "oh, look, the tedium" as I enter in all of the monster data. Then a bit of spooling and "does this fit on the card?" 

I'll be able to show nifty mockups of various cards as I go, I hope.

But...things are moving along pretty close to schedule. I'd say there's a nice chance of the US folks at least having a very pleasant Halloween...but I'd rather get things to people by mid-November and take extra time to shake down the content than rush out something that has a mistake that patience would have caught.

That doesn't quite mean "they're ready to print!" then. What it does mean is everything is where it's supposed to be, and in particular, Dragon Hunt needs a layout pass to catch artifacts from import and shifting things around. But that's about a day's work, and not a hard day at that.

So here are two sample pages:

OK! Yesterday and today were really nose-to-grindstone...but I like where I am today.

One More Interesting Project: The Monster Overhaul
over 1 year ago – Tue, Sep 13, 2022 at 03:44:01 AM

I will not pepper you with too many more of these. But I did see one more project I think is interesting today:

The Monster Overhaul (Author's Blurb)

What’s a Sphinx without a riddle, or a Minotaur without a labyrinth? What’s a Dragon without a hoard, or a Peasant without a grievance?

The Monster Overhaul is a massive Role Playing Game bestiary designed for at-table utility. Monsters are presented alongside useful tools, ready for immediate use in any scenario.

This book aims to provide a GM with the tools they need, as they need them, without slowing down a session. In the middle of a game, a GM doesn’t need to be told that Bears live in caves or that Ghosts haunt graveyards. They know that. What they need are interesting prompts that are difficult to invent under pressure; names, details, motivations, secrets, riddles, maps, twists, etc.

Numbers are calibrated around old-school fantasy adventure game principles. This book should be compatible with, and has been tested against, the most popular and enduring old-school systems. Check out the example below.

Why I'm Promoting

I'm concerned for the author and their team. He's offering an amazing 340-page book for $50, but his printer of choice - which is also my printer of choice for smaller books - is Mixam. They do great work, but their hardcover books are not cheap to print, at least in the USA, and the KS location is "Orlando, FL." That's a US-based KS and possibly US-based printing.

By my estimate - and yours too if you just plug the values into Mixam's instant quote generator - This $50 book (which will return the team maybe $45 after KS takes their chunk), will cost $32-40 to print here in the states. However, if they print it in the UK only, the price drops to $20-26. Which is better, but I'm still concerned about development costs and staging. This is a book I'd like to see more of, which means it needs to be decisively profitable.

It's 340 pages of awesome monsters, great art, and a whole lot of really helpful GM-facing stuff. I like monsters, I like ready-to-use stuff, and this looks like it fits the bill.

But between the printing cost and the shipping and staging costs (which are almost too reasonable based on what's likely to be a 3.5-4.5lb book), unless there's something really excellent going on behind the scenes - and I hope there is! - the rates and book prices are SO GOOD that I worry that the book will merely break even based on the hardcover sales. (Looking at my own pricing tables, I'd probably have charged $60 for the book, but the issue is the cost of manufacture rather than the retail price).

I'm in for the $20 PDF ... but I pledged $50.

I encourage folks to check out the project, and if you like what you see, throw in. 

Progress Update; Check Out Black God's Kiss
over 1 year ago – Mon, Sep 12, 2022 at 01:13:51 AM

Work, Work, Work

Dragon Hunt! is the longest of the four solos, and requires a great deal of care in the conversion from The Fantasy Trip. Even more than the other adventures, the idiosyncrasies of TFT require careful thought in bringing them over to Old-School Essentials.

The good news is that all of the creatures, NPCs, and PCs are converted, and the introductory section is complete. I'm maybe 15% through the paragraphs (there are 239 of them) right now, but making good progress. I hope to have it all converted tomorrow, and then layout on Tuesday. Then fight-test.

Playtest!

I got some more feedback, this time on a novice to OSE playing through Till Death Do Us Part. Overall, the player was able to complete the quest, though he suffered fatalities in the process, and noted that he had his party rush through the scenario, never resting to regain lost hit points or any other reprieve, which cost him. He's looking forward to playing it again with different choices.

It wasn't all sunshine and roses: There were some questions that could use clarification, and a few residual issues that need housekeeping.

Overall, though, that's at least three reports on Till Death, a few repeats from the same player on Vampire Hunter Belladonna, and at least two on Dark Lord's Doom. Things are shaping up well, I think.

Schedule

I got word that Kickstarter has sent the funds to my bank; that means I'll have sufficient means to place orders for the (roughly) 114 copies of the Rules Tome Hardcover from Exalted Funeral. They're expecting to have the inventory to fill that order this week.

As it is, I'm going to strive to start locking order this coming Friday, which means that I'll give the 48-hour warning on Friday, and orders will start to actually lock on Sunday.

At that point, PDFs that are already complete (such as the add-ons or Dungeon Grappling, Dragon Heresy, and orders for the PDF copies of the Rules Tome) will be distributed. Or, in the case of the Rules Tome PDF, I'll send a  request to Gavin to distribute those.

I will also begin the process of finalizing each of the PDFs and distributing them, probably one at a time with a few days between them.

Once they're all out there and people get a chance to look through, I'll do one more proofing pass (usually with helpful corrections and tweaks submitted by backers; there's always something that gets through) and then send the files to the printer. I'll also start the manufacturing process for the card decks.

I ought to have a few more examples of card mockups from Dragon Hunt and VHB pretty soon now too.

Black God's Kiss

I also wanted to give a nod to a project I just backed by Janaka Stucky. In his own words:

Black God’s Kiss is a perilous setting playable as an RPG module compatible with both 5e and Old School Essentials (OSE)—or as a standalone microgame for two players—with custom rules for Loss of Humanity, and streamlined mechanics for enduring cosmic horror in an eldritch pocket dimension.

Based on the fantasy fiction of C.L. Moore, who stands as one of the great sword & sorcery and weird tale authors of the early 20th century, the box set contains everything you need to delve into the star-lit realm of the Black God—explore forbidden ruins, encounter wretched creatures, and retrieve a weapon of dreadful power ... the Black God’s Kiss!

Janaka chatted me up on Discord, and we exchanged fun commentary on running one of these projects. I thought this one was really need, so I went in at the $59 Core Set level.

If it sounds intriguing, check it out!

GB Update; Hope to get 4th book into fight-test this weekend
over 1 year ago – Fri, Sep 09, 2022 at 03:20:26 PM

Each week I try and post an update of what’s going on at Gaming Ballistic. What went well, what needs more attention, and an eye on upcoming releases plus company health.

This past week was a crazy, head-down week. School started up for my girls, and that’s been good and not-so-good. Lots of work on the OSE solos, but also progress on the next set of Dungeon Fantasy RPG releases.

• Cranking on OSE solos. Daily. Three of four books are finished enough to be in “just fight test it,” and initial feedback and such has been decent.
• TFT and OSE are very different games, and require care for conversion. It’s been challenging, but fun.
• Shield’s Up is missing a few pieces of art and a finalization on the cover, plus spell-check and links. It’s pretty well done though.
• Got great testing feedback on VHB and I think folks will dig it.
• The landing page for the DFRPG Bestiary Kickstarter is live: Nightmare Fuel.
  I’ll be doing the campaign on Backerkit Crowdfunding this time. I’m working with them on a comprehensive marketing/promotion plan
  Folks signing up to be notified once the campaign launches is one of the big metrics Backerkit uses to predict product success; I’m not sure how valid that will be in the Powered by GURPS ecosystem, but we’ll see.
  
• I’ve got two of three manuscripts in hand for Nightmare Fuel, and a preliminary cover design (lacking art) for one of them. Time to start building the art team for all the projects!

Gaming Ballistic Patreon

To help with ongoing funding of art and speed eventual time to delivery, Gaming Ballistic started a Patreon in January 2021. Here’s the weekly update on Patreon status.

• Membership status: 62 patrons and $455 per month.
• Special Content in September: The initial preview of Vampire Hunter Belladonna was uploaded Aug 31, but it’s real close to September. A near-final version of VHB followed soon after. Shields Up (prelim) is next.

August saw a slight reduction in members and funds. We picked up another supporter, but really we’re fluctuating around 60-65 people.

Gaming Ballistic in Media

• No new media this last week…been very head-down.

Currently Manufacturing/Fulfilling/Shipping

Projects where hardcopies and PDFs are going out or scheduled to do so.

• Comp copies got updated for all recent products. That finally got done.

Crowdfunding and Product Launches

Old-School Solo Adventures

Pre-orders are now open for the OSE Solos.

• Launched Aug 4 at 10am. Funded by 11am. Closed with 803 backers and $38,813; that will likely go down to $38,200 or so once folks who are having trouble navigating KS’s payment system drop out.
• Surveys went out a bit early, and I rapidly got about 65% completion. This was very helpful for me to determine shipping rates.
• “Charge Shipping Later” was met with no reaction from the vast majority of folks, but an unhappy few were very upset at being asked for (in their words, with some legitimacy) “a blank check” for me to cheat them on shipping. This irked me greatly until I realized that of my 800 backers, only 199 had backed any of my prior projects. Three in four people on this campaign are entirely new to my orbit; they’ve no reason to trust me yet.
• Nonetheless, the 2/3 of folks who filled out surveys in the first 2–3 days let me generate rate tables, and so shipping got posted and is now basically like any regular Backerkit project.
• International shipping still sucks. In many cases, the cost of shipping outweighs the cost of the products. I’m as irked about this as anyone, but there’s very little I can do about it. I managed to work with a frequent backer in AUS to get shipping from the USA to AUS/NZ down from $87 per package to $40 for AUS, and $45-60 for NZ. This is for books with a $50 or $85 pledge price. It’s crazy. In a way, Canada is worse.

Nightmare Fuel

This will be my first ever formal use of Backerkit Crowdfunding, though I did a semi-successful attempt at this with Tower of the Moon. It’s staged from Oct 13 to Nov 6.

Product Announcements

The full Product Catalog finally got updated on Sept 3 for fall! I took the opportunity to normalize prices for my entire product line. PDFs in general went up by a dollar or two; most print books stayed the same, a few actually came down in price. But with a few exceptions, at least all my stuff is now on the same pricing curve.

Serpents of Legend. Formerly “Bestiary Project 1,” this is partially just a book of cool snake-themed monsters written by Marko Vujnovic (the Chaotic GM). But it also contains some serious serpent-related cosmology for Nordlond, and a really nifty section on snake cults. I have a completed ready-for-editing manuscript on this book, and hopefully will be able to read it (and pay the author) this weekend. This one is on schedule, and part of the Nightmare Fuel campaign. This book is likely 36 pages at this point; growth to 40–48 would not be crazy-talk.

The “Bugstiary.” Work targeted at a draft mid-Sept. This one is looking at 36 pages, and much more of a strict bestiary book of cool bug-and-insect themed monsters. Part of Nightmare Fuel. Cole Jenkins is the author.

Garden of Evil. A last-minute addition to the Nightmare Fuel lineup, this is probably 20 pages. Contract signed (as I type this, actually) and Chares Seager is the author here. Manuscript already in-hand; need to look at this one this weekend as well.

Shields Up! Post-playtest updates made, and layout is complete including some final art, and some temporary images. I will probably offer this up as a flat-out add-on during the Nightmare Fuel campaign, in order to get an initial print run sized. This needs to go into art development next week.

In Development

Writing and content creation for announced projects. Some of this may be cryptic.

I currently have eight books in active development, to be released in two waves. Four are part of OSE, another four are DFRPG. I suspect that will run me right up to the end of the year, though I could also see another project slipping in for December…but that’s not a great crowdfunding time. I suspect what I’m looking at here is that the DFRPG Nightmare Fuel project will be my focus for fulfillment through the end of the year, and “spare” time will be head-down in content creation, including several long-delayed projects!

• Let Us Rejoice! is a systemless exploration of festivals and gatherings as great ways to make a world come alive. Uses and collects the Nordlond material that is scattered over several books as examples, but also goes further than that. This will be GB’s first systemless release. This one is definitely moving into 2023. That’s not a problem as such; having a robust “what’s coming next” is good.
• Delvers to Grow Companion. Some new professions. A whole bunch of new disad packages. Epic Upgrades. Everyman Adventurer modules. Who knows what else will strike me? I know what I want to do with this one, and shall get writing as soon as this OSE project is finished.
• Gear Catalog 1? There’s a good start at what is probably a nice 32-page book, maybe a bit more. Also DFRPG. I’ve talked with a potential author on this one and we need to work out a few things, but not in a bad way.
• Inns and Taverns, by Marshall LaPira. Systemless. Still postponed indefinitely. A good time for this would either be along with Let Us Rejoice (in a few months) or real close to the end of the year.
• Two Warring Houses, by Douglas Cole. Systemless. On hold.
• Infinite Archipelago is going to be my new framework for settings that should cross over systems. I have plans for TFT/OSE version of Nordlond, plus more, that GMs will be able to pick and choose and place what’s there. It implies sea travel in many ways, so there are ideas around that. Looking forward to this as a building block for 2023.
• Secret TFT Setting by David Pulver. Chatted with David about plans for this, and there’s a hole in his schedule at the end of the year. Chatted more, and liking how it works.
• Secret Nordlond-ish Setting by [CENSORED].
• OSE Conversions of Character Collections. I don’t see why not. Monsters, ready-to-go PCs/NPCs with just enough background to make ‘em interesting. Some art for visualization. I may work on this together with two other CC volumes I’d like to make, so they hit as a six-book bundle.
• Mission X: It’s time to get working on this. I’d anticipate late 2023 or early 2024 as it’s a big project.

The two settings are part of a grand plan you’ll be seeing more of next year.

I note that for new authors, Delvers to Grow and Bestiary entries are fantastic ways to get into the game, as such projects lend themselves very well to focused writing and fast turn-around. The new concept that I’m shopping around to my circle of authors and contributors will be another entry…but the nature of the concepts requires a firm hand on the wheel for gamer utility. Some of my early discussions with authors are fluctuating between “oh, I get it, that’s cool” and “…but surely those restrictions don’t apply to my cool idea!” Yes, they do.

Friction

Bits of news and items that put a monkey in the wrench.

• School started, which is good. A complication is my youngest has decided to get up nearly two hours before the bus arrives, and that’s time I usually block out to work or work out. Complicates things.
• Working with Backerkit to refine messaging on Charge Shipping Later (CSL) function. It’s vital to understanding shipping realities rather than theories (where are my orders actually going?), but I’ve suggested an interesting “opt-out/opt-in” for CSL during the survey that will allow folks to nope out if they don’t want to provide info before payment is known.
• Patreon is still an answer looking for a question, but it’s a vital part of what I do each month. Still pondering this and how to make it better.
• Uptake on the NPC/Monster cards for the OSE project is lower than I thought it would be, but I’m still learning that market. I’m getting about half the takers I thought I would for that product, but there’s still time, and maybe some marketing to do there.
• I still feel a bit behind on things, but I am, after all, doing eight books simultaneously. Such is life.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

• I took a few days early this week and knocked out my “tedious but necessary” list. That felt good.
• I invited some backers from the OSE project who also were some of my earliest supporters to playtest the books. No “here’s a play report” yet, but that is probably waiting for the weekend.
• Three of four books are in “probably publishable” state; the last is in conversion.
• I’m taking a slightly different tack with Dragon Hunt, in that I’m working up all of the adversaries and player-character/NPC statblocks first. This is tedious as heck, but will pay dividends when it comes to do final conversion for the fourth book. I hope.
• Finalized Shield’s Up! Something like eight pieces of art on the book and it’s done-done.