Reply To: Doomsong & The brutal razor of kickstarter

[greyhunter88 1654xp 1]

It’s changed for me, over the years.

Back in the day, I used to be all about those giant Kickstarters with tons of miniatures and expansions and stretch goals. The CMON-type stuff. I was looking for lots of stuff, good discounts, and the like. The past few years have really put an end to that. Not only did my house flood with tons of stuff I’ve never gotten around to playing, but I was starting to get really annoyed at all the nasty surprises that would pop up years later. $80 custom fees here, $40 extra shipping fees there. This is particularly brutal for Canadians like myself, but you’re always looking at some kind of twist that leaves the whole thing with a bad taste in your mouth. I broke my own rules to get the second Duncan Rhodes paint line Kickstarter recently, and got smacked with $100 of fees on a $120 pledge, not including shipping, with no help in sight from either the shipper or the company running the Kickstarter. Even though the product itself is excellent, the whole experience feels crappy.

The worst were the Mantic TerrainCrate Kickstarter, and one of the recent Reaper Bones ones. After all was said and done, the shipping + customs nonsense meant that I actually paid more for the Kickstarter than I would have paid if I’d waited and bought the stuff retail. Those were the straws that really broke the camel’s back.

I’ve cut my Kickstarter use down by about 90%. Now I’m looking for truly unique products, or ones that make sense to actually back, from an economic perspective. On a personal level, I want something truly interesting, from an actually small company. My two latest Kickstarters were, for example, Jon Hodgson’s miniature photography books, and a little mega-dungeon ‘zine called Tomb. Monte Cook’s “The Darkest House” was also a really unique Kickstarter product I’m really glad I backed. No more mass-produced retail stuff full of random ‘bonus’ crap like plastic tokens and stuff for me, personally.

Economically, it just has to make sense. I can’t keep affording to roll the dice on shipping and brokerage, especially when I have no control over when those extra fees pop up. For an RPG project, my best recent experiences have been tiers with all-digital rewards, and the ability to print-on-demand.

As examples, Low Fantasy Gaming and The Metallic Tome were two RPG products I backed. I got a PDF-tier with everything digital, as well as a voucher for a print-on-demand service (one was DriveThru RPG, I forget the second…) to get the book ‘at cost’. I know a print-on-demand book isn’t as nice as a bespoke hardcover, but they’re honestly pretty good, and for something I use at the table it was more than adequate. It also meant that I could play the game and read the PDF, printing the book when my group and I were ready and excited to play. Snail-mail orders also avoid all the crazy shipping/brokerage fees that come with some large UPS fulfillment, so it was just win-win-win for me.

Your game looks awesome, and I would definitely buy into it. I just wouldn’t back it if the only option was a $100 hardcover pledge that I know is going to mean an extra $40 in shipping and $50 in customs down the line, if that makes sense. Look into a print-on-demand, if you can! Both companies who ran those Kickstarters were I think literally 1-2 people, so it’s got to be possible.

Sorry for the potentially long-winded reply. I hope some of that’s at least decent food for thought. Good luck!