58% complete in one day
about 3 years ago – Sun, Mar 21, 2021 at 06:48:31 PM

So...after about 12 hours, you guys have something like a 60% completion rate on the surveys. That's freaking amazing.

Things are going very well. I hope that folks that want print books strongly consider changing pledge levels. You'll save a few bucks and the shipping is going to be more accurate.

Beyond that...keep up the good work. I'm going to be pushing the pre-orders on Monday, and if you see my notes, tweets, or blog posts, a bit of push would not go amiss.

Until then: thanks for being so prompt.

The Smoke Test is Live!
about 3 years ago – Sat, Mar 20, 2021 at 12:19:08 AM

Roughly 5% of folks from each pledge level shall receive a preliminary survey to suss out issues. If things are more or less normal over the next 24 hours, I'll  send out all the surveys.

Ballistic's Report for the Week of March 19
about 3 years ago – Sat, Mar 20, 2021 at 12:18:25 AM

This week was a ‘behind the scenes’ week. Lots of admin and writing work, much of it around the eternal mystery that is international shipping. Even so…good stuff.

Gaming Ballistic Patreon

To help with ongoing funding of art and speed eventual time to delivery, Gaming Ballistic started a Patreon in January 2021. Here’s the weekly update on Patreon status.

• Membership status: 42 patrons and $270 per month
• Special Content: CC4 preliminary file distributed; it’s nearly done. Some stress-testing of the Delvers to Grow system revealed making characters in the target point range varied from the slowest at 10 minutes to the fastest: three characters ready to play in less than 10 minutes.

Currently Fulfilling/Shipping

Project where hardcopies and PDFs are going out, or scheduled to do so.

• Fulfillment is effectively complete for More Perilous Journeys.
• I am already moving on to the planning phases of Character Collections

Crowdfunding

TFT Character Collection (Launched Friday Feb 19; Closed on Tuesday, March 9 at 9pm Central)

Most of the week was spent on behind the scenes issues, getting the Backerkit Surveys prepped.

• Update #23 discussed the difficulties of EN71 and other safety testing, and some of the behind-the-scenes stuff really drove home why total backer count, and not-the-USA backer count in particular for this topic, is so important. While the update ended with “it’s not looking good…” we then moved on to:
• Update #24 announced that Cards and Counters will be delivered worldwide. I found a very good testing partner in STC. Their site in NJ will handle the cards, and they have a local site in Dongguan that will test the counters. When the time comes, samples from the actual production run will go directly to the test sites, and Declarations of Conformity with US, Canadian, and European toy safety for ages 10+ (the age of TFT) provided. There’s a bit of a leap of faith here, but if things have a hiccup, I trust you’ll be patient with me.
• Update #25 noted that I had submitted the Backerkit Survey for review and expect it to go off either Friday or Saturday, assuming I get the word. It also had instructions for changing pledge levels, which I suspect is going to be more pertinent this time around.

Product Announcements

• Last week we announced Delvers to Grow. Nothing new on that from an announcement perspective, but there was a lot of work in Patreon testing the system, which thus far has met my expectations fully. Kevin does good work.
  

In Development

Writing and content creation for announced projects. Some of this may be cryptic.

• CC4 Wizards is near-final, and the artists are working on the images. This moves us close to “the PDFs from Character Collections will be distributed before the end of March.”
• Stress-testing of the Delvers to Grow system revealed making characters in the target point range varied from the slowest at 10 minutes to the fastest: three characters ready to play in less than 10 minutes. I mentioned this above…but it’s hard to overstate how important this goal was to the project. We’re talking GURPS character generation at speeds usually reserved for The Fantasy Trip. Or WEG d6. The front-end burden for playing GURPS just got a lot lower.

Friction

Bits of news and items that put a monkey in the wrench.

• There was actually a great deal of depressing and distressing friction this week…but as I sit here on Friday typing this update, this has all turned to fair winds.

Fair Winds

Information about things that move GB forward.

• The safety testing for future cards and counters has been successfully resolved
• Of my 557 backers, all but a single person had their pledges cleared. This allows me to proceed immediately to the survey, which is excellent. Nice work, yall.
• I had a one-hour-long conversation with Backerkit about how to make their shipping more relevant to the real world, offering up concrete suggestions of low, medium, and high difficulty level. The Backerkit rep took my feedback very seriously, and very much took to heart my insisting that “look, if you want this to be easy for creators AND backers, you need to present shipping profiles the way they’re charged to publishers.” That means a flat fee (for basic fee and paying for the box). It means counting the number of SKUs in the cart that require shipping, because most fulfillment companies have a per-item pick fee (sometimes “after the first N items). It means being able to upload a CSV file with postage rates by country. It means being able to have tags or classes for things like “books” vs “not books,” and it means having user-defined Tax Profiles the same way that you have user-defined Shipping Profiles, and those tax profiles are selectable at the SKU level. If we can do that…I won’t have to GUESS anymore what shipping looks like and hope I get it right. My basic point was that several of the suggestions I’ve seen on crowdfunding sites like “flat rate” and “percentage-based” are more or less dumb. They’re easy for the backer, but they’re false simplicity. The right way to do it is to have the ability to have intelligent “whole order” shipping on every order based on what’s actually in the cart, based on actual postage rates by country.
• Also, a bit of a suggestion on tagging “collect address” and “don’t collect shipping address” at the SKU level as well, so that instead of the “old way” of having one Add-on item for PDF, another for Print, and a third for Print+PDF, I can have ONE add-on, and the user chooses the format. Right now, ‘collect shipping’ is done at the overall add-on level. Really, attaching that information to the SKU is the way to go. Backerkit was receptive to that logic.
• I will note that between my sales from SJGames, OneBookShelf, and Patreon I was able to pay my art bill for CC4 without tapping the bank account at all; it was simply “there’s money enough to cover it in PayPal.” This underscores the value of Patreon, but also points out that the “long tail” sales for these things is still low enough that paying for a bit of art is all that one can do. Big campaigns are where the revenue comes from.

Backerkit Survey, Changing Pledge Levels, and VAT (again)
about 3 years ago – Fri, Mar 19, 2021 at 01:51:15 PM

Backerkit Survey

I just submitted the Backerkit Survey for review. Once they get back to me, I'll send out the smoke test (having confirmed a few things about VAT and GST). The UK and EU I know what I have to do there, I believe. The USA is easy. It's that pesky "rest of world" where I want to make sure I get it right.

With luck, I'll get an answer to my question tonight, and the rest of the survey cleared. Then smoke test tomorrow, hopefully surveys launched over the weekend.

I'm going to start locking surveys and charging cards 7-10 days after the surveys go out for real, mostly because I should be ready to distribute PDFs by then. My goal is to have PDFs in the hands of all who ordered them by the end of the month...assuming you've filled out your surveys!

Changing Pledge Levels

I encouraged people to just throw down the $10 pledge and sort the rest out in Backerkit. 

Well, it's time for Backerkit, and as I noted to Alex (the Backerkit primary customer relations guy), they don't really go out of their way to highlight how to change pledge levels.

But the two arrows in the image above show where to go: the pledge level is almost ALWAYS a live link. Once you click it, you'll see what's in your pledge, and also be given a little arrow to change your pledge level.

If you find that you want the books in addition to your PDFs, it is always always always better to change pledge level rather than just throw add-ons into your cart. It's the most efficient and accurate way to get shipping and taxes right too.

VAT and Taxes Again

US tax rates for everything, and worldwide taxes on books are low enough (less than 10%) that I'm just going to eat it.

But for some of the big pledges, I want to remind folks that the prices on Kickstarter were tax-exclusive, and that the tax burden will come due as part of the shipping process. Just be prepared for it if you're ordering "stuff" instead of "books."

Backerkit Preparation and Important International Shipping Update
about 3 years ago – Wed, Mar 17, 2021 at 09:20:12 PM

Status

Yesterday I finished all of the important character stuff for CC4. It's laid out and in the hands of the artists. Well, three of them. I have to get confirmation from the fourth. But even so: it's underway.

I have a bit more to write on the first page, basically the intro and 'how to use the book' parts. Then some filler art for CC2 and CC4 go in, then they're done and ready for ship approval. 

International Shipping and Testing

After a lot of phone calls and emails, I've decided that I'm going to roll with the "anyone can get anything" policy on Card Decks and Counters. So both cards and counters will ship worldwide. You want 'em? You can have 'em...but this comes with a few caveats.

In order to be properly conforming with the various import standards, I will need to pull samples from my manufacturing runs and have them tested using protocols like EN71 and the Canadian, US, and UK equivalents (where they're different).  This will likely take anywhere from 1-2 weeks.

Backerkit Phase Soon

I have started work on the Backerkit back-end. Building up SKUs, weights, sizes, customs value, and all that jazz. Then I'll calculate pledge-level shipping by region, and assign shipping costs to add-ons. Then I'll get the smoke test going, and go live. Hopefully in the next few days.