Frank Mentzer's Empyrea Fantasy Setting on KS

[Kellri]

It's the conceit that comes with 'I've been playing D&D for x-number of years and I must be just as good if not better than person x'. Frank has it in spades and it's not doing him any good. If he had even one single ounce of humility it might have been different - instead it's just getting sad and ridiculous like a Sinatra Duets album.

[RFlowers]

This Kickstarter would have been a lot better if they had tidbits to show. Something that they thought the finished product would look like. Laid out text, polished and finished writing alongside illustrations and map segments. Images of these things, so that people could extrapolate holding the thing in front of them. Not random images and unformatted, unedited text. Accompany this with a note that it's preliminary, and could change. People would still see what it could be, though.

The artists conception of the set just makes things worse. They knew they wanted three little brown books only for nostalgic reasons, and even said so. Would it have been so hard to decide what those were beforehand? Surely there are NPCs, creatures and magic items peculiar to Empyrea. Three books right there.

I think if this one tanks, they could regroup and come back for like 50K or 100K.

[Jeff]

This Kickstarter would have been a lot better if they had tidbits to show. Something that they thought the finished product would look like. Laid out text, polished and finished writing alongside illustrations and map segments. Images of these things, so that people could extrapolate holding the thing in front of them. Not random images and unformatted, unedited text. Accompany this with a note that it's preliminary, and could change. People would still see what it could be, though.

This should be a major concern for backers. I've done amateur layout, it's not a fast process. It's tedious and is difficult. When done correctly, it usually precedes contractual artwork and artists are given dimensions for their art which must fill the space in the layout.

The timeline for this is incredibly aggressive. Even if Frank was writing 5000 words per day and finished a fully ready draft in 90 days that required no corrections, the layout alone would be extremely difficult and contracted art pieces to supplement the layout would take time.

Couple this with custom layout for each rule system supported (minor changes, but tedious and time consuming), and the extra books (digest size ones), and you have a very very tough timeline on your hands.

I don't know much about kickstarters. If I did my own KS, I would have document design complete prior (standard layout, fonts, etc.). I would have drafts of all of the documents I intended to produce. I would already have some contracted artwork done for demonstration purposes for the KS. I would have a solid, unalterable, listing of supported systems and how each version of the documents were altered based on the system (stat blocks, classes, etc.). I would have a proposed project timeline and update schedule. I would have a very solid document showing what collaborators would contribute, their responsibilities and deadlines, and any backup plans for collaborators due to disaster (death, severe illness, home burned down, etc.)

I'd have it all before I even begun the Kickstarter. You don't just take people's money without giving them the best guarantees that you can provide. Custom web pages and email addresses would be ancillary (though, as a coder, I probably would have had those finished a long time ago).

I don't see any of this in this KS. But, then again, I don't know much about Kickstarters, so maybe that's just not the way to do things.

[Kalex the Omen]

I don't know much about kickstarters. If I did my own KS, I would have document design complete prior (standard layout, fonts, etc.). I would have drafts of all of the documents I intended to produce. I would already have some contracted artwork done for demonstration purposes for the KS. I would have a solid, unalterable, listing of supported systems and how each version of the documents were altered based on the system (stat blocks, classes, etc.). I would have a proposed project timeline and update schedule. I would have a very solid document showing what collaborators would contribute, their responsibilities and deadlines, and any backup plans for collaborators due to disaster (death, severe illness, home burned down, etc.)

I'd have it all before I even begun the Kickstarter. You don't just take people's money without giving them the best guarantees that you can provide. Custom web pages and email addresses would be ancillary (though, as a coder, I probably would have had those finished a long time ago).

I don't see any of this in this KS. But, then again, I don't know much about Kickstarters, so maybe that's just not the way to do things.

Kickstarter philosophies are as varied and numerous as there are Kickstarters. We were 95% done when we launched our KS campaign. The books were laid out, all art was in place. I just needed to update the "1st Printing" date. The other 5% was illustration books and the artwork contained in them. Given the simplicity of the layout and the fact that all but one piece were full page, they took almost no time to put together. In fact the illo books were laid out before I unleashed the illustrators (when we met our goal 11 days in). I wouldn't do a Kickstarter any other way. Takes a lot of pressure and stress right out of the equation, but I've seen others be successful with less done by campaign close. It really just depends on what you (as the KS creator) believe is complete enough to launch. It also depends on what backers are willing to give on faith alone. I wanted to take backer faith as much out of the equation as possible, especially since it was my first KS campaign.

I guess the short of it is, there really is no "way of doing things."

[RandomEncounter]

There may be no "way of doing things" but there is a wrong way of doing things. Case in point, this KS.

I've backed plenty of them. This has all the hallmarks of being unfulfilled years afterwards even if it funded.

[TRP]

there really is no "way of doing things."

Sure there is. The "way of doing things" is in such a way that persuades folks to give away money for a product that isn't ready to deliver. That's for every KS. Thus far, this KS is not doing that. So, whatever their "way of doing things" is, it's not working.

[MageInBlack]

Just a condensed update for those that don't visit the comments section of the KS...

[RandomEncounter]

Lololololol

[Philotomy Jurament]

there really is no "way of doing things."

Sure there is. The "way of doing things" is in such a way that persuades folks to give away money for a product that isn't ready to deliver.

When Frank first mentioned the kickstarter on Dragonsfoot, I posted that I was pretty leery of kickstarters unless there's a known good track record, but that I hoped it turned out well, and would definitely check out the end result. Frank never directly responded to my comment, but he did say something about being annoyed with "getting skepticism" and "folks not being used to pro operations" and it being "too bad that amateur kickstarters had spoiled things." That soured me, to be honest.

Despite that, I still could've been swayed by a kick-ass and impressive kickstarter campaign with cool info on the product and the plans. I've backed kickstarters before (I'm currently a backer on the AS&SH 2 kickstarter, for example), and if the material in Frank's looked awesome, I might have been persuaded. But nothing I've seen excited me (with the possible exception of Darlene maps) or gave me confidence.

[Falconer]

Wizardawn!!

[RFlowers]

Wizardawn!!

[Blackadder23]

There may be no "way of doing things" but there is a wrong way of doing things. Case in point, this KS.

I've backed plenty of them. This has all the hallmarks of being unfulfilled years afterwards even if it funded.

Correct. The grossly excessive funding target for what looks like a pretty paltry product, the poorly thought-out support tiers (as "Bote" pointed out earlier in the thread), the vagueness and lack of detail, the blithe and dismissive attitude toward the likely difficulties involved in meeting a seriously short delivery date, the fact that the creator reacts poorly to criticism or even polite questioning... all of these are giant red flags.

All in all, this feels like watching another Far West be born (except that KS actually funded, and this one probably won't.)

[RandomEncounter]

There may be no "way of doing things" but there is a wrong way of doing things. Case in point, this KS.

I've backed plenty of them. This has all the hallmarks of being unfulfilled years afterwards even if it funded.

Correct. The grossly excessive funding target for what looks like a pretty paltry product, the poorly thought-out support tiers (as "Bote" pointed out earlier in the thread), the vagueness and lack of detail, the blithe and dismissive attitude toward the likely difficulties involved in meeting a seriously short delivery date, the fact that the creator reacts poorly to criticism or even polite questioning... all of these are giant red flags.

All in all, this feels like watching another Far West be born (except that KS actually funded, and this one probably won't.)

Exactly. The city state KS had activity, positive feedback, examples, tons of stuff seemed like it was going to be fine. And now 3 years later it's still not finished. Last update suggested something big coming to help things along, I suspect it was Frank.

Point being even though that one did things seemingly right it STILL fell off the wagon. This one has no chance of being a success.

[Kalex the Omen]

he did say something about being annoyed with "getting skepticism" and "folks not being used to pro operations" and it being "too bad that amateur kickstarters had spoiled things."

That does sort of bother me to the extent that my opinion is that Kickstarter is for amateurs. All of these multimillion dollar software development houses, and relatively big publishers that do Kickstarters is what annoys me. What ever happened to risking capital? If I ran a big publisher I would never use Kickstarter to bring products to customers. IDK, maybe that's just me.

[ghendar]

there really is no "way of doing things."

Sure there is. The "way of doing things" is in such a way that persuades folks to give away money for a product that isn't ready to deliver. That's for every KS. Thus far, this KS is not doing that. So, whatever their "way of doing things" is, it's not working.

There may be no official "way of doing things" but it seems prudent to go the route that Kalex went. Have most of it done up front. It makes sense for so many reasons. Now, I realize that might not be possible for everyone but if I were to do it, that's the way I would go. Frank has the backers he has now mostly (it seems) on name recognition, not content and that's a red flag.