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[Kickstarter] Petals and Thorns

Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2018 1:42 am
by Chamomile
I am Kickstarting a thing. Specifically, I am Kickstarting an adventure for levels 3-5 in which you must defend a town from an assortment of nasties on a giant wilderness map with several attached dungeons while several factions bicker over who gets to have their way over various inflection points that crop up along the way.

Something that this community in particular will quickly notice is that this is a 5e adventure, which brings the immediate question of why you would ever want to buy a 5e adventure. Most GMs don't seem to actually run the adventures they buy, though, so I figure most of my sales from this forum are going to come from people who don't plan to ever actually run it, just read it as a curiosity and maybe cannibalize a few of its concepts for games run in other systems. The adventure is designed to work with 5e's limitations (in some cases by finishing the game like I'm a modder tweaking a Bethesda release), and I figure some people might find that entertaining for the same reason that Five Nights at Freddy's was really popular as a streaming game.

It's also worth noting that Kickstarter gives visibility to projects based on number of backers, not total money raised, so $1 backers are a lot more helpful than you might expect. If you want to support my efforts to make a living on creative projects but don't want to actually buy the product, a $1 pledge will hit way above its weight level in terms of expressing support (regarding the viability of making a living on creative work by going through TTRPGs, I certainly didn't expect TTRPGs to be the most successful wing of my multi-pronged efforts to get the internet to pay me for making stuff up, but here we are).

Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2018 11:19 pm
by Ancient History
G'luck, C.

Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2018 1:14 am
by ...You Lost Me
Funded in under a day! Congrats Cham.

Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2018 1:50 am
by Chamomile
The first day raised over $500, which was very encouraging. The second day looks like it's gonna struggle to raise $50, which is less encouraging. Still, I've at least got enough to make the minimum viable product.

EDIT: And then someone dropped a link on GitP and I got another like $300. So that's the first and second days that have gone much better than expected. Probably things are gonna slow down on day three, but I said that about day two, so hey, who knows.

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2018 7:51 am
by OgreBattle
Congrats on going way past your goal

Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2018 3:24 am
by Ikeren
"I am a professional GM running a thriving business on Roll20, where my standard rate is $15 per player, per session. At $100 for an expected twelve session play through of Petals and Thorns, backers at this level not only get a chance to play the game as run by its creator, but do so at a discount of over 40%. The Medici-grade $400 backers get an even better deal, not only being able to reserve an entire playthrough for your own gaming group, but getting an even bigger discount on every player past the fourth, to say nothing of having almost single-handedly hit the original funding target."


Wait, I want to hear more about this.

How many professional DM's are there out there? Is this in an industry? Side hustle or full time for many people?

Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2018 5:24 am
by Chamomile
There are at least a half-dozen-ish others on Roll20. I'm not sure how successful they are, but they charge pretty similar rates. People asking for $30/session have pretty much all withered away. For me, it's a side hustle, but a solid enough one that it could provide a foundation for becoming a full-time professional creative if I can get some other revenue streams going. This adventure I'm Kickstarting will hopefully be the start of one of those revenue streams.

Posted: Thu Oct 04, 2018 3:56 am
by Ikeren
Huh, interesting. Thanks for answering.

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2018 10:05 pm
by Avoraciopoctules
Oh, cool! Sure, I’ll back this. Have you plugged it on Something Awful yet?

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2018 10:06 pm
by Chamomile
Nope. I don't have an account there. They still require payment to register, right? Feel free to drop a link there if you're part of that community, though.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 12:53 am
by Avoraciopoctules
https://forums.somethingawful.com/showt ... t488743972

There ya go. I hope it gets you some more pledges! Last I checked the public paywall was down, so hopefully you’ll at least be able to SEE the thread.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 1:40 am
by maglag
2959 bucks and going up, update those stretch goals!

Getting money for doing what you like is the best.