1st again? Did lightning really strike twice?

Just kidding. Here’s to a fun, carefree thread today. 😀

Happy Sunday!

The ‘Pass on a Pass’ sounds like a great project. Just wish I could have gotten some of my friends to keep logging in here so I could sign up for the ‘Pass’ to pass on to them. I guess that is their loss.

I really enjoy hearing about everyone’s personal hobbies.

Kickstarter………..what can I say. Every time I back one it seems like they never hit their promised deleivery time. I’ve found myself only supporting games that capture the theme or spirit of a game I’ve always wanted or have the first version of and want more of it because it’s a proven winner. Which leaves me not backing anything on a whim. I don’t like taking risks on something that could just be taking me for a ride.

Hobby on Dudes!

Play the classic game via TTS

Tabletop Simulator
https://store.steampowered.com/app/286160/?snr=1_5_9__205

Raid on St Nazaire [Solitaire Wargame]
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1161482296&searchtext=wargames

Happy Sunday!!!

Happy Sunday .. looking forward to this it has been a busy day so far

I’m one of the backers of the Relic Knights Kickstarter.

I agree there is a risk with kickstarters. There are genuine reasons why kickstarters can fail. The problem is in my experience, most people that fail to deliver on a Kickstarter campaign simply walk away with no explanation to backers about what went wrong.

There’s two points that speaks to the dishonesty with which Ninja Division have conducted themselves. The first is that it has become clear that the Company was in financial strife well before they ran the Relic Knights kickstarter. They ran it as a revenue generating exercise with no realistic prospect of delivering. They have acted like con-men running some type of pyramid scheme trying to keep their company afloat and themselves getting salary/wages.

They used the kickstarter mechanism because there is little to no legal risk and no accountability mechanism. Kickstarter only cares about the income it generates. It could easily prevent companies or individuals from taking advantage of backers by preventing additional kickstarters from being run until delivery has occurred or a proper report has been provided to backers setting out the reasons why a particular kickstarter campaign failed.

The second point is that after the kickstarter Ninja Division allowed backers to purchase existing products in addition to paying for your pledge and shipping. All up I gave Ninja Division US$1500 and have received absolutely nothing. They have not even provided backers the existing products we purchased.

If the actions of the individuals behind Ninja Division are not illegal they are most certainly unethical. They are dishonest and they are cowards.

Happy Sunday!

Kickstarters… Kickstarters… Who got me into this whole Kickstarter habit?
BoW! That’s ####ing who! And it all started with Myth, 6 years and over 100 backed projects ago.

The first Myth KS went well apart from a few delays (to be expected) and some issues with poorly written rules. But then a sorry tale of overlapping KS projects, poor communications from MegaCon (as they became called – who says Americans don’t get irony?). It soon became obvious that they hadn’t managed cash flow and project spend properly so appeared to be borrowing funds from the next campaign to complete a previous one. They also got lax on quality control of manufacturing and the end drew nigh… Still awaiting on some Journeyman rewards.

But that’s one of only a handful that have disappointed or failed completely. My other bugbear with some projects is the gap between waves so when you’re into the game you can’t help but feel something is missing (often variability and some replayability) but when the extra characters etc finally arrive in the last wave everyone’s moved on from that game (SFG… I’m talking DS here!)

So eventually I lose trust in certain companies and individuals and avoid future projects from them… and warn others away by telling them the facts from previous projects, but them’s the risks! The vast majority of positive experiences more than make up for the poor ones. I really need to move out some of the clutter…must learn how to use eBay!

“Join us in the back room” – “Join us in our windowless van”

@avernos ‘s ‘pay it forward’ idea sounds cool; will have to have a rummage around to see if there’s anything in my collection that I want to offload. 🙂

Re: boners – there’s a famous Batman comic from the thirties or fourties where the word boner is repeated a rediculous number of times where it’s meant the sense of blunders/bloopers/etc.
http://www.superdickery.com/batmans-boner/

Pressure pots and vacuum chambers – you do know you’re the Beasts of War and not the Mythbusters right @warzan ? 😜

If you want to make the game really explody, how about packing the ship mini with actual fireworks to set off when it blows? 😜

As for alarm raising, surely going in fast should raise the alarm quicker as it’s suspicious? Might be adding too much complexity, but how about having there be a ‘goldilocks’ speed somewhere in the middle; maybe something like the Germans having to make tests to raise the alarm and going faster means less tests, but each fail raises the alarm level by a larger amount while going slower means more tests but only small increases? Ie going fast means there’s less time for them to take note and start raising alarms, but is highly suspicious so makes them more alert while going slow means they think it’s a regular ship coming into port but gives them more chance to notice things are off and see through the disguise.

“There’ll be some sort of cat in there somewhere” – anyone else getting the image of someone bringing their pet in and the pussy jumping onto the table and rampaging across it like some sort of furry kaiju? 😜

Lloyd’s lighting rig – anyone else envisioning it coming down on the back of his neck guillotine style when he bends forwards over the desk to paint? 😝

Kickstarters – like the sound of you doing a review of kickstarters to keep us all up to date with how they’re going. Got to agree that transparency is crucial for Kickstarters; there’s one that I backed a few years ago that has yet to deliver and the thing that’s frustrating some of us backers is not so much the lack of fulfilment (although that is frustrating), but rather the lack of communication from the company, with months going by without any updates or posts (in fact the last time they even logged in was before Christmas). We’ve asked multiple times for better communication, but to no avail, even though we’ve said we don’t even need full updates; we’d be satisfied with something once a week or once a fortnight saying ‘X pledges manufactured this week/fortnight, Y pledges packed, Z pledges shipped’ or a note to say that production is still stalled or has resumed. We’d still be ticked off at it being years behind schedule, but at least we’d be kept in the loop about what’s going on. Further there have be some whispers that the company are considering starting another Kickstarter and some of us are wondering if they’ve run out of money and said Kickstarter is a cash grab to try and raise funds to pay for this one. This experience has soured me to Kickstarter slightly (I’ve put off even thinking of backing others while I’ve been waiting and it feels like that’s been a waste and I could’ve gone and backed others if I hadn’t backed this one) and it’s put me off wanting to deal with this company again; at this stage I wouldn’t consider buying something else off them, even at retail, and if they do eventually ship I’m in two minds whether to pay the shipping fees (considering how much I’ve sunk in and how long I’ve waited I want to get something out of it, but on the other hand I’ve lost faith in them and don’t know if I can trust them to actually ship it and not just pocket the money 😕) ; at the very least I’ll be earning people away from this company if asked about them (I’ve refrained from naming them to avoid sounding like I’m bad mouthing them for the sake of bad mouthing them, but will name them here if @warzan asks me directly).

When it comes to running multiple kickstarters, I think it depends on the company in question, and that’s where the ideas you guys have put forth would come in really handy; eg someone like Mantic running multiples before previous ones have delivered wouldn’t bother me or raise red flags because they’re such a big name and have a proven track record, whereas a company like the one I’ve griped about above would give me cause for concern.

OTT eating challenge – you do know you’ve doomed @dignity and yourself to eat the testicles, penises and other offputting body parts of every edible animal right Warren? 😜

Whoever draws Justin, please consider naked fanatics, naked hoplites, naked Celts.

GERRY I WILL FINISH PAINTING THAT GIANT SPACE MARINE ONE DAY!

@warzan half ground scale is actually what every 28mm Wargame uses so it should work great for your game.

The Campbeltown exploding wasn’t a guarantee. In the book “Churchill’s Secret Warriors” they cover the raid and the Commando’s had doubts about the reliability of the fuses after the massive impact and the German’s had been on the ship for hours before it was meant to explode and when it didn’t almost all the commando’s lost hope, they imagined the German’s had found the explosives. When it did explode the commando’s got a massive moral boost.

Maybe have a set turn that the Campbeltown is meant to explode and roll a dice of some kind every turn (a D20 perhaps?). If you don’t roll an explosion all the commando’s lose some effectiveness that goes away when the ship explodes. Maybe also have a critical failure that represents the German’s finding the explosives and preventing it. That way the Campbeltown can still have an impact after it “docks”.

That bit about the German mocking the British Officer and the Ship exploding did happen exactly like that. It’s one of the few moments in history that hasn’t been embellished.

Great to see you getting your Grognard on 🙂

Immature fun fact the magnetic bombs the Commando’s used were made from Childrens Sucking Lollies and Condoms.

That Document goes into WATU in WWII and Lindybeige has a great video about it here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVet82IUAqQ

Kriegspiel was the First Official Wargame adopted by a Government and it’s also the worlds first recreational wargame. It was adopted by a recreational wargame club at Oxford in 1873. The Prussian King was given Kriegspiel in the mid 1810’s by it’s creator and apparently he and his inner court quite enjoyed to play wargames. @avernos was right after the Prussian’s stomped the French in the Franco-Prussian War the world took notice of this whole wargaming thing.

I’m with Justin on the Flagging vs Feedback issue. So many people will just ignore that confirmation email from kickstarter and companies will be forced to chase people down just to have their items ticked off which just wastes time. Rather than Kickstarter prohibiting creating new projects maybe just a massive warning on any future projects and the company itself.

As someone who’s been on the periphery of a business failing I have an enormous amount of sympathy for business owners but zero for reckless spenders. My family owns an industrial shed (my Grandfather owned and developed multiple News Agencies before he retired so I grew up in a business world) and we had a tenant that was injured, then his wife who worked with him and helped run the business was injured and the company tanked. Not his fault, he immediately informed everyone involved months before bad things happened because he saw what was going to happen and he dealt with his issues. It looks like these Ninja guys owed people money and still went around recklessly spending money trying to chase that pot of gold (buying that license is disgusting when you owe people money) to pay for everything and I have zero respect or sympathy for people being incredibly reckless and it going bad, pay the people you owe and if you can’t don’t wait until the last minute to tell them and above all never ever lie to anyone you owe something to.

Insurance for Kickstarters would be a great idea and maybe even an option for the backers to get insurance. Backer insurance would probably be the way to go just like we have buyer pays shipping insurance today.

Oh boy can I get you guys some creepy crawlies. I’ll just have to look into how I can send it to the UK.

Justin the Alpha Strike should be my new The Two Towers mud character warrior 😀

Just a couple of quick footnotes to the Gareth Sarka / Far West RPG debacle.

One of the reasons folk are so done with Gareth is that he has claimed to be weeks/days away from completion on multiple occasions, only to go radio silent for months before bouncing back up with another round of woe tales.

As far as I know Gareth hasn’t attempted to run another crowd funded project since Far West, but he has undertaken paid work in the sphere, notably as a contributor to Modiphius Entertainment’s Star Trek RPG, which generated a modicum of controversy as he appears to have initially attempted to obfuscate his involvement, having his name left off the credits of some, if not all, of the products.

I guess we shouldn’t begrudge anyone a livelihood, hopefully he’ll use some of the money to fulfill his obligations.

Oh and the guy he threatened to punch is a retired NYC cop if I recall correctly, so I can see that going real well for him…

Oh boy, you guys may have just underestimated the twisted sense of humor that the internet has. That said this is the backstage and we don’t won’t to hurt you guys but like an older brother tricking his younger siblings into trying stuff for the sheer laughs….we have an responsibility to get a reaction.

The miniature swap/gift discussion seems like a nice idea as well. Hopefully the free subscription give-away leads to a whole host of new “normies” joining us past the 6 months.

Did you just say touching your cock makes you happy ?

Typing as someone that was trying to get a FLGS established, that had crowdfunding as a competitor, to hear that FLGS “were sacrificed”…..

No words, Warren, no words.

On the subject of failed kickstarters I found the view on companies running into difficulty very interesting. I think some sort of flag would be nice for people who aren’t savvy enough to do a bit of research.

I was an AVP backer and I have a bleaker view of Prodos kickstarter. I can absolutely take @warzan ‘s point that things can snowball, but my issues with prodos were never about the delays or difficulties they were facing & I would have had a lot of sympathy for them… if they told us about it. The problem I had with them is that they outright lied to their backers repeatedly about the status of the project and couldn’t and wouldn’t explain what the delay’s were about. Archon are run by some of the same people and frankly they’ve left such a sour taste from AvP for me that I won’t even back projects that are using Archon or Prodos for manufacturing if I know about that up front.

Kickstarter is great for giving the little guy a chance. If a kickstarter fails, well that’s fine, it’s the risk we take in backing them. If you run into trouble and tell me about it then we’re good, you tried, you hit some problems, it happens. But don’t f**king lie to me and tell me it’s all rosy. And when you’re caught out, don’t continue to do it.

Sorry… AvP hits a nerve with me.

I agree with the team, platforms that allow crowdfunding should keep a record of the projects and how they did and what they did and make this public information. They should also do some homework towards the companies that want to do a project.
I don’t see them doing this for several reasons as long as they get their cut of the pie.

@dignity I would be one of the DnD other ones 😀 @avernos thanks for remembering me 😀

Really nice to hear you talk about Ks…. says the man who backed Robotech and the Evil dead boardgame…..

Until I saw the t-shirts I really thought you were saying “Snag an Army” with an Irish accent 😂

Happy Sunday folks
Justin you seem very stressed today 😀

Re. Kickstarter Watch, looking forward to see it make a return. Luckily I have 99% very positive experiences so far out of 31 backed projects (though I am backing Confrontation, so we’ll see about that ratio) and it would also be nice to give some kudos to those creators via the OTT platform.

P.S.: Weird food challenges, really? I thought you were above such YouTube trash.

What I would like to know and it’s probably nothing to do with this weeks show is why Subbuteo has been added to the company/games section?. An interesting addition in my book

I used to really love it but was really crap at it when I was a kid. I remember a game where I lost 26-0. My mate had 27 shots and I only made one save

I think Kickstarter will have no choice but to become more responsible as the platform grows. I have some experience with this being for many years one of the senior team at JUST EAT, as we grew and ended up representing tens of thousands of restaurants the pressure was on us to ensure the quality, pricing, allergy advice was up to scratch, even though there was no regulatory responsibility (this is down to trading standards) but to the public we were the platform and if we hosted/represented a restaurant they want to know we had done our due diligence.

I see this the same as projects hosted on Kickstarter, they are the platform and take a decent cut of the money made so they should take more responsibility (within reason) to ensure who they host is a reputable, responsible, in good standing financially etc.

Perhaps introduce something like NPS (Net Promoter Score) or something similar to give people more insight into the company.

There is of course always a risk and everyone has to be ok with that but I think the more information you can put in front of a potential customer and demonstrate that as the platform you have done your own quality checks it should mean you are at least make a more informed decision.