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Monday, October 22, 2012

Here's The "Where The F' Are They?" List of Overdue RPG Kickstarters I've Supported



The below list is of RPG Related Kickstarters that were estimated to ship (I am using the ship date for the physical item, not the PDF if there is one) October 2012 or earlier.  I was going to add Indiegogo projects to the list, but they are so few (and this list got so long) I'll summarize as follows: LotFP stuff that I supported was late but has shipped. Barrowmaze II shipped on time!

Colors for Actual Ship Date are as follows:

Red: Hasn't shipped and is (or will be based on new estimates) significantly overdue. This includes projects that have been shipping in dribs and drabs for months. If all backers dont have what they pledged for, it's in red.

Orange: Late but shipped, or recently missed a shipping date and hasn't shipped

Green: Shipped on time. Holy Shit!

DungeonMorph Dice
Goal: $5,000     Total: $20,620     Funded: May 22, 2011
Estimated Ship Date: July, 2011     Actual Ship Date: December, 2011

Adventurer Conqueror King System
Goal: $4,000     Total: $11,648     Funded: August 6, 2011
Estimated Ship Date: November, 2011     Actual Ship Date: April, 2012

Far West
Goal: $5,000     Total: $49,324     Funded: August 25, 2011
Estimated Ship Date: December, 2011     Actual Ship Date: Not Shipped (and has missed interim ship dates)

Far West - last update 10/19 - updates approximately monthly -  First the main / lead artist flaked out in the middle of the job (and claimed to have finished work he hadn't completed), then Gareth got sick, "Far West" as a title will now be cropping up in unrelated media, making marketing a pain I suspect - and no new ship date.

C&C Classic Monsters
Goal: $4,000     Total: $9,108     Funded: December 2, 2011
Estimated Ship Date: January, 2012     Actual Ship Date: May, 2012

Quantum Roleplaying Game
Goal: $13,000     Total: $47,747     Funded: December 30, 2011
Estimated Ship Date: April, 2012     Actual Ship Date: Not Yet Shipped

Quantum RPG - last update 9/27 - recent updates have been for the new setting book for the as yet unreleased RPG - I don't care how you spin it, but kicking off a new Kickstarter without releasing the final product of the first annoys me. Invest more into something I don't yet have? Boggles the mind. Even better, the second Kickstarter failed ($7,751 out of $30,000 raised - it failed on 10/18). Gee, think it failed because no one has the first Kickstarter in hand yet?

Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea
Goal: $6,000     Total: $13,216     Funded: January 15, 2012
Estimated Ship Date: April, 2012     Actual Ship date: July, 2012 and still ongoing completed I believe

Adventurer Conqueror King System Player's Companion
Goal:: $4,000     Total: $20,622     Funded: March 16, 2012
Estimated Ship Date: July, 2012     Actual Ship Date: Not Yet Shipped  

ACKS Player's Companion - last Update 10/9 - Updates approximately monthly. No ship date, but feedback from early release PDF has been applied and the contents revised - Updates average one per month at this stage.

Story Forge
Goal: $12,000    Total: $21,736     Funded: March 20, 2012
Estimated Ship Date: July, 2012     Actual Ship Date: July, 2012

Dwimmermount
Goal: $10,000     Total: $48,756     Funded: April 14, 2012
Estimated Ship Date: August 2012     Actual Ship Date: Not Yet Shipped (New Estimate Spring / Fall 2013)

Dwimmermount - Last Update 10/19 - Updates Weekly. Absolutely the best thing Travis (and James) have done is give weekly updates. In the Way Way Back, where updates were few and rumors were many, folks were getting might uppity, and with good reason. There was certainly a loss of some goodwill during the Way Way Back Times, and Travis is putting the effort in now, but things would have been so much simpler if updates had been weekly from the start, especially with the wide margin the ship date is being missed by.  

King For a Day
Goal: $800     Total: $4,844     Funded: May 1, 2012
Estimated Ship Date: September 2012     Actual Ship Date: Not Yet Shipped (new estimate - December 2012) 

King For a Day - Updates Approximately twice a month. I'm somewhat doubtful of the December 12 ship date, but I'm willing to be surprised 

Artisan Dice
Goal: $300     Total: $91,542     Funded: April 7, 2012
Estimated Ship Date: April, 2012     Actual Ship date: May, 2012 and still ongoing completed now I do believe - this suffered from overwhelming response. If you are going to be late, let it be because you have too many customers ;)

Adventures Dark & Deep
Goal: $2,500     Total: $7,459     Funded: April 15, 2012
Estimated Ship Date: July, 2012     Actual Ship Date: Shipped September, 2012 - I was only in at the PDF level, but congrats for hitting the ship date ;)

Myth & Magic Player's Guide
Goal: $5,000     Total: $24,076     Funded: May 7, 2012
Estimated Ship Date: August 2012     Actual Ship Date: Not Yet Shipped

Myth & Magic Player's Guide - Last update related to this Kickstarter and not it's sister project - 9/21. PDF released to the wild, no hard copies yet


Appendix N
Goal: $1,000     Total: $18,893     Funded: July2, 2012
Estimated Ship Date: July, 2012     Actual Ship Date: Not Yet Shipped (New Estimate Late September  November 2012)

Appendix N - Last Update 10/22 - Updates more than once a week - Brave Halfling is like your cousin who is always late to appointments - whether it's a Kickstarter or a pre-order, the quality has so far been excellent, the timeliness has been poor. PDF versions of the releases look to be on time or close to it going forward - physical products is going to be a wait n see in my opinion.

Nystul's Infinite Dungeon
Goal: $2,000     Total: $16,017     Funded: June 3, 2012
Estimated Ship Date: September 2012 (New Estimate October 2012 for PDF)
Nystul's Infinite Dungeon - Weekly updates - Estimate for physical delivery is November 2012. greatly expanded offering from initial description.

Not RPGs, but Game Related

Dwarven Adventurers Boxed Set
Goal: $1,250     Total: $136,487     Funded: July 25, 2012
Estimated Ship Date: September 2012

Dwarven Adventurers blew away it's goal and added so many miniatures to the set that missing the estimated ship goal was a given before the funding even completed. If you are going to ship late, this is the reason. Weekly Updates

There are some other Board Games and such, which I will update later

10 comments:

  1. and here I am gripping about some of the ones I've done that were a few months late. But yeah, 100% agree on the Dwimmermount thing. Hiding under your bed and sucking your thumb ain't going to cut it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow....I wonder if this is based on pie-in-the-sky estimates of how quickly a project can wrap up, or if its because apparently a large number of these projects don't even appear to be close to complete before the kickstarter hits. Anyway, I've only contributed to one which came out on time, the C&C color 5th printing rulebook, and I was glad I did....but been too timid to back anyone else!

    ReplyDelete
  3. As a kickstarter myself, Brian from Assimilation Alien Host. I at least know where our project is. Ed is sculpting the minis every chance he gets. OUr earliest ship date is April 2013. At this rate Ed will have the masters finished. We are also the casting house, Troll Forged Minis, who are doing the Red Box Games casting as well. That projects final ship date is this month. Ed and I are casting minis like madmen.

    Sorry to hear about the late ship dates for your stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Even relatively experienced small publishers tend to badly underestimate the amount of time it's going to take to get a product from the conception stage to the actual printed product. One of the main reasons I don't take preorders on my own material is that I don't want to be holding other people's money for some indefinite period of time while I may or may not be able to finish a particular product.

    I think the main- and perhaps only- effective technique for dealing with this is to actually have all parts of the project you can do yourself done already before you start the campaign. Don't sell "Will write", sell "Have written". The only thing writing and home-made layout costs is time on your end, so there's really no excuse for going to KS for venture funding before you actually need it to pay real artists or experienced layout people.

    Now that OneBookshelf is doing POD support of KS projects, there's really no excuse for personally handling printing and shipping unless that's your day job expertise. Just send OBS a list of addresses and a chunk of cash, and let them do the magic.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I can see that from a publishing stand point. From the minis side of things TFM can take a "Green" sculpt, RTV it to a master, make the production copies, production mold and be up and going in about 3-4 days. Once that starts is is just a matter of how fast and how many. We kick out around 3000 of RBG's zombies in two days.

    ReplyDelete
  6. As longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer observed,

    “every great movement begins as a cause,
    eventually becomes a business,
    then degenerates into a racket.”

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks for the kind words about Adventures Dark and Deep. I did hit the date for the pdf release, and severely underestimated the time it would take to sort out the technical issues with Lightsource. So that's definitely a "lessons learned" thing on a couple of levels. But at least all the backers got *something* on time, to show that it wasn't a vaporgame.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Oh, and I have to echo Sine Nomine's comment about OneBookShelf. Having them available to do the fulfillment on the print books was invaluable. In fact, I wouldn't have even considered doing a KS without knowing they would be able to handle that end of things.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I'm actually not too concerned about Far West - GMS has a solid track record of quality product.

    For a real horror story, check out Powerchords.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Re: Far West

    In Update 41, GMS clarified that "We'd be printing and shipping in November."

    I just noticed that Update 42 said "I'm still pushing for a November delivery of the PDF to you and to the printer." Huh. That's not the same thing...

    ReplyDelete

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