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Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Far West Funded Four Years Ago Today - Another Month Nears an End and Still No Book - Another Successful Failure



+Eric Franklin over in the G+ Kicksnarker Community was nice enough to point out that Far West, the albatross of RPG Kickstarters, funded today. Add 2 weeks before Gareth got the funds and hopefully he invested the money well. Yeah, probably not. We all know how much postal rates have gone up in the last 4 years. Maybe Gareth can do a Pencil Dice Kickstarter to fund shipping the books - assuming there's funds left to print the books - which assumes the book is ever completed.

Far West was the third successfully funded Kickstarter that I backed. The fifth was Quantum, which was a total crash and burn - the project is abandoned. The tenth was Dwimmermount - oh the drama, but it did complete and ship. In total I've backed 162 successfully funded projects. The failures and partial failures are famous (Nystul, Myth & Magic, Appendix N Adventures, Champions of Zed, Whitman) but less than I would have guessed, and certainly less than my perception of it.

Strange how brightly failure shines in comparison to a sea of success.

Happy anniversary to Far West, the gift that keeps on giving to the Kickstarter community. Another fine example of a successful failure, for even if if finally comes to a successful completion as a product, the ship has long sailed for it to ever be a successful product on the market.

14 comments:

  1. Cmon, he just recently emailed out Chapters 1-8! What's your damn hurry???

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I guess 3 more years for the rest of the chapters?

      Delete
    2. How many more chapters are there supposed to be to the book Mike?

      Delete
    3. I think "chapter 11" is the one backers need to worry about.

      Delete
    4. I see what you did there. Nice!

      Delete
  2. I am still in awe of the epic turn-around on the Dwimmermount project. That thing turned out to be an amazing tome.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Both my kids were reading by the time they were three.

    To put this in perspective, my wife and I can make a new reader in less time than it has taken him to make the damn game.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Coincidentally, I actually did start and complete a four-year degree, began a week after Far West funded and finished with completed board exams and license conferred before the four year funding anniversary.

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  5. The United States got in and out of WWII In less time than it has taken to not ship Far West.

    ReplyDelete
  6. #Farwest and #AgeofLords remain my two oldest uncompleted Kickstarts. The next is The Reliquary from 2 years later ...

    ReplyDelete
  7. Last I heard James Maliszewski disappeared. Did he come back and finish Dwimmermount after all this time?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No, Alexander Macris and Tavis Allison of Autarch took over the writing and finished the project, then published it (available in print and PDF), as well as making the material OGL.

      Delete
  8. Kickstarters are a funny thing...if you wanted to do it right the people kicking in could just get shares of ownership. Or they get to contribute a 'god' as petty gods. Basically you could write a book by allowing contributors to not only pay for publication, printing, but cough up content.

    ReplyDelete

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