The Tavern Chat Podcast - E143 - Did Evil Hat Get Too Big? Layoffs and Product Cancellations Announced

Evil Hat, purveyor of FATE, is not having a good 2018. Reminds me of the yearly purges WotC would have at the holidays...

I received review copies of Dungeons & Dragons - Art and Arcana: A Visual History yesterday and they look amazing. Doesn't translate well to a podcast though ;) Black Hat is laying off stay and canceling some planned releases. They are hoping to be back in "the black" in 2019, which means they are "in the red" for 2018...

Link to Episode 143 - https://anchor.fm/tavernchat/episodes/E143---Did-Evil-Hat-Get-Too-Big--Layoffs-and-Product-Cancellations-Announced-e2bl2c

https://www.evilhat.com/home/refocused-resized-hat-mode-activated/

Evil Hat has Applied for the Star Frontiers Trademark

Evil Hat's application for the now abandoned Star Frontiers trademark was all over the net last week (not that I noticed). It reminds me when I found out that the TSR trademark had been snagged - it was an obvious attempt at nostalgia. Is it the same with Evil Hat?

Although the Star Frontiers rules are freely available online - and I'm not linking as I am unsure of the legalities - I'm surprised its a game that has never been cloned (to the best of my knowledge)

Could you clone a game and then use the revived trademark to reissue it?

No idea what plans Fred "Blue Haired" Hicks has planned for Star Frontiers, but it certainly makes for a fun thought experiment ;)

Evil Hat Releases 100+ Page Preview of Designers & Dragons - TSR (for Free)

Tip of the hat to ENWorld for this piece.

Evil Hat has released the first 25% of the first book of the upcoming four book series - Designers and Dragons. Yep, that little (huge) book that came out a few years ago is going to be re-released in a four volume series.

The TSR section is about 100 pages (and free) and the preview also includes the full index - Volume I is going to be over 360 pages.

I seem to have a lot of reading to do...

That's How We Roll Podcast - Some Extremely Informative Kickstarter Info From Fred Hicks

On the drive home from work this afternoon I finished the first part of the two part Kickstarter seminar at Metatopia over at the That's How We Roll podcast.

It was fucking amazing.

After I listen to part 2 I'm going to go back and listen to part 1 again. It was that good.

If you plan on even possibly thinking you could conceivably run a Kickstarter at some point, this is required listening.

If you want to understand how much of the money raised actually goes to the core product, you have to listen to this.

Some highlights:

Kickstarter takes 5%, Amazon 3-5% of funds raised. If the project fails to fund, no money is taken and the cost to everyone, even the project creator, is nothing.

Stretch goals that include extra physical product can kill a project's ability to be profitable if you're not careful - which is obviously why the Fate Core Kickstarter has PDFs as stretch goals (with the option to pay for a print version of the stretch goals - apparently close to cost)

T-shirts are a killer when it comes to cost (as I've learned researching them for The Tavern - they will be forthcoming, I just need to clear my plate)

In general, only a small percentage (1% - 2% ?) of pledges fail to complete and be charged (from the comments I've seen on some "backers only" uddates, I would have assumed a much high percentage - something I need to keep in mind in the future)

Lots of other goodies, like timing the kick off and ending of a Kickstarter (there is a science to it), the proper length of a Kickstarter - fuck it, what I really need is a transcript. Fucking awesome shit!