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Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Kickstarter - The Forgotten Dungeon Mega Adventure - AD&D, D&D5e, DS, 77W - SUSPENDED


About an hour after this morning's Tavern Chat Podcast went live, The Forgotten Dungeon Mega Adventure - AD&D, D&D5e, DS, 77W Kickstarter was suspended after being live for a week.

Now, there are issues with this Kickstarter, not the least of which is referring to AD&D and D&D5e right in the project title (a no-no) but I didn't catch that both this AND the Dragonscales Fantasy RPG by James M Ward and Stephen A Lee where being run by Stephen Kee concurrently until I recorded the podcast. It was literally something I noticed live. This is verboten according to Kickstarter and I did make mention of this in this morning's podcast.


https://help.kickstarter.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005133933-Can-I-run-more-than-one-project-at-once-

I did NOT notify Kickstarter (or WotC for that matter) of the issues with this particular KS. I hadn't planned to - although I did intend to bring my concerns to the creator later this week for consideration going forward.

Either a listener contacted Kickstarter or someone at Kickstarter reads The Tavern / listens to The Tavern Chat Podcast.

Hopefully, there is a cleaned up relaunch down the line.

Now, the questions become - how was this even allowed in the first place? Shouldn't there be a system in place to catch this? How hard could it be to program the Kickstarter software to do so? Is the restriction on that Kickstarter tells and remind all creators when they start a new project? If not, why not?


8 comments:

  1. Waiiiit a sec... If that's the rule, how can Ken have all those Kickstarters going at once?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was just about to ask that... I've resisted launching another Kickstarter until I fully fulfill the prior one, but that was a personal choice. I did not know that was a Kickstarter guideline.

      Even so, it sure doesn't look like they enforce it a whole lot.

      Delete
  2. Well, we've seen before how little attention Kickstarter pays to creators who want to create 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 projects at once... ;-) But I totally agree that it should be a simple software check.

    if ( openKickstarters = yes ); then
    youCannotOpenMoreKickstartersMessage
    exit
    fi

    (yeah, yeah, it's pseudo-bash, but still, in an actual, compiled language, it would work very similarly and not be all that difficult to implement. I don't understand WHY KS hasn't already.)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Technically speaking, he can use AD&D and 5E in the project title under Fair Use, unless he's planning on using the OGL. The description doesn't indicate whether this would be an OGL product or not.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He's actually using AD&D and D&D5e in the title of the project which I suspect is a no no.

      Delete
  4. They aren’t the only ones to do this. Technically a lot of creators break this rule by running the next one before fulfillment. I won’t name names. KS doesn’t do their due diligence and merely checks a submitted project for innerprojrct idsues, not interproject issues. Maybe they should. Who knows. Clearly running concurrently funding periods isnt allowed. Pity, I was backing the suspended one. Looks good, however, I agree they are stepping on a lot of WotC attracting lines.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know more than a few companies that have run a second (or third or fourth) before completing the first. It's becoming less prominent these days, but it still happens. I have at least funded for one company three different kickstarters, with the last coming in before the first two.

      However, while I knew it was not possible to fund a second kickstarter at the same time as the first, I didn't know it was against the rules to run a second before fulfilling a first. My kickstarter list has a few past and present violators on it.

      Delete
    2. Read it again. You can not run a second KS before fulfilling you first. Very specific wording. It only applies to new project creators. The "only one project funding at a time applies to all."

      You know lawyers wrote that paragraph even though it is in plain language. Read it literally and the meaning is clear.

      Delete

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