The Perils of Crowdfunding
And raiders on the horizon
So Mythic Bastionland continues to truck along.
I did a Reddit AMA this week and thought I’d pick out a question to share.
Q: Hi Chris. The OSR and NSR scenes have expanded my mind and inspired me to build something of my own. Your influence looms large in these circles and I want to thank you for your advice over the years. My big question is:
From a big picture perspective, what are the steps someone with a day job needs to take to bring an RPG project like Mythic Bastionland to life? Additionally, when is crowdfunding a passion project advise-able compared to other routes of monetization?
A: So I wrote Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland while I was working in full-time day jobs, first as a teacher and then in retail. While it does make things slower than working on a project full-time, I find my creative-energy is the limit, rather than the number of hours in the day. I could happily come home from a full day of work and spend a few hours messing with game stuff, but if I sit down and work on a game all day then I'm exhausted when I step away from the desk.
I'd say the best steps you can take are to find ways to make the most of your creative reserves, protecting those times of day that work for you to make your stuff while your overall time is so limited. It took me like five years to write Electric Bastionland this way, but that leads to your question about crowdfunding.
Without crowdfunding I couldn't have made Electric Bastionland the way it is, and I couldn't have made this into a career. That kickstarter campaign changed everything for me, so I can't help recommend crowdfunding as a huge opportunity with a few caveats:
Have the thing as close to finished as possible before going to crowdfunding
Do as much yourself as possible, but outsource the stuff that you just can't reasonably do (I did this for illustration, distribution, and some fancy print-preparation stuff I don't understand)
Keep the kickstarter super simple with stretch goals, alternate covers etc. as any one of these going bad can jeopardise the whole thing
Of course, this assumes you want to make games into at least a part-time career. The best thing about these passion projects is that we'd probably make them anyway so it's really not a bad thing to just keep it as a hobby.
Elsewhere
Whose Measure God Could Not Take has a rundown of a number of OSR podcasts to check out.
Elfmaids & Octopi has a nice list of magical weapons.
How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox is about to finish on Kickstarter
Coming Soon
Over on Patreon I made something kinda dumb for Mythic Bastionland.
MYTHIC BASTIONLAND - RAIDER MODE
This is untested. To be honest it’s mostly written off the cuff.
Play the game as normal, but with the following changes:
Raiders, not Knights
Roll your character as normal, but do not take a Knight type. You do not automatically know Feats.
Instead pick 1 from each of the following lists.
Expect the full post here and on the blog next week.
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