Not really an emergency...
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Jun 30, 2023 at 10:59:04 AM
... but all the same, I was rather amused to wake up to find that we now stand at $911 in pledges. Thank you again to everyone who has put down a marker! Although we have hit the traditional mid-campaign plateau, we're close enough that it beggars belief that we won't fund.
I won't pretend that I'm not a little disappointed that we aren't in a stronger position as we reach the halfway point of the campaign. I was hoping for something that mirrored the campaign for Book of Chance Meetings, which funded at Day 11 and rose steadily from there all the way to the end. As I said in the last update, Ramen Sandwich Press would really benefit from rolling a critical success with this campaign. Severed Heads and Broken Blades really is a good little book, full of colorful and practical crunchy bits and inexpensive, to boot; I really think you'll like it and I think it deserves better than it's getting. But wherever you go, there you are; and this is where the road has taken us after two weeks.
There are just a few adjustments that need to be made to the book before it is ready for press — we are still noodling around a bit with the cover; our layout department reminds me that we need some zippy copy for the back cover, the manuscript needs one last pass for typos, and I need to select proper epigraphs. I'm thinking, something properly bloodthirsty from The Iliad to describe critical hits, and one of Ned Flanders' favorite expressions for fumbles.
For those of you new to Ramen Sandwich Press: After the campaign, we'll open a store on Backerkit where you will have the chance to buy just about everything from our catalogue at a sweet discount. We'll also offer the remaining hardcover copies of Book of Chance Meetings, which we offered as a successful stretch goal for that campaign. We still have some leftover copies, and we will never sell them outside of crowdfunding. Thanks again, and get ready to break open your piggy bank!
The opposite of momentum, the opposite of good things
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Jun 21, 2023 at 10:06:20 PM
Years ago, when he was coaching the Lakers, Pat Riley coined a word to describe the opposite of having the momentum in a game — he called it ”menmotum.” You may judge for yourself the cleverness of this coinage, but it comes to my mind tonight. It wasn’t about suddenly tripping over your shoelaces or throwing the ball away at every touch so much as it was about being at a standstill instead of progressing; instead of dictating terms to your opponent, you were in a state whare they could dictate terms to you. The opposite of momentum.
If you have followed this campaign day by day, you have no doubt noticed that it has lost momentum since the weekend. I have a sneaking feeling that the Gloomhaven RPG, which just launched in spectacular fashion on Backerkit, may be sucking all of the oxygen out of the RPG crowdfunding space right now. I accept that this may be happening because I’m kind of used to being overlooked, never having been mistaken for one of the cool kids at any point in my life. But I don’t have to like it.
So I’m going to ask a favor of all of you who have supported this campaign: If you could put in a good word for it in the places where you hang out with other RPG enthusiasts, especially online, that would help. Something has to shake us out of this menmotum. Having finished the writing, I can say with certainty that Severed Heads and Broken Blades is a good little book, and it deserves much better than to languish like this.
You may well point out that we’re over 60% funded with more than three weeks left to go. That is true. I’m confident that we will fund. But I chose $1k as the funding target as a test of market interest rather than an accounting benchmark: ”If I can’t get 100 people to spend an average of $10 on this book, I might as well quit.” We should clear that, no problem. But in all honestly, I’m hoping for a big hit, on a par with Book of Chance Meetings, which did a world of good for Ramen Sandwich Press a couple of years ago.
I suppose there’s no sense in concealing that Kickstarter is a crucial source of income for us, more so than is healthy. Outside of Kickstarter and conventions — not coincidentally, venues that are set up so that people will notice us — we just get lost in the vast sea of indie RPG stuff for sale online. I don’t think we get seen at all on DriveThru RPG anymore. When we first started out, we would upload a new product and it would stay in the new products crawl for the better part of a week; now we’re lucky if we last 48 hours before getting crowded out by newer uploads. It might help us get noitced if we got some positive reviews, but we haven’t gotten so much as a star rating in a very long time.
I wish things were not this way, but they are this way. Unless we can sell more books in between Kickstarters and shows we need to make each Kickstarter a home run (or a three-point shot, to keep with the basketball theme) so we can bank enough funds to keep going until the next Kickstarter. Otherwise, Ramen Sandwich Press cannot survive. I hate to put that kind of pressure on a single Kickstarter campaign for a short book, but that’s just how it is right now; if this campaign doesn’t make a strong showing it’s going to be a long and miserable summer at the very least, and there’s a non-zero chance you won’t see us again once 2024 rolls around.
Welcome to the show!
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 11:01:49 AM
We still have a couple of hours to go before the first 24 hours of the campaign are up, but it's going well enough that I might as well post the Day 1 update now. We're off to a fine start, about 50% funded and plenty of road left ahead of us. Thank you to everyone who has put down a marker, and I look forward to having plenty of people join you before the campaign is over.
I am hopeful that Severed Heads and Broken Blades will, at least, match the success of Book of Chance Meetings, which brought in almost 400 backers despite being compatible with D&D 5E only. Here we have a book that is at least as useful to DMs and GMs as is a deep dive into random wilderness encounters, it's less expensive, and it works just as well with both editions of Pathfinder as it does with 5E. A bigger tent, more people — right? The next 4 weeks will tell.
For the moment: I am delighted to see so many familiar names in the backer list, and equally pleased to welcome some unfamiliar names. If you want to fill in my background in gaming, check out the Soundcloud link in my profile. It should take you to an interview that I recorded with game designer, impressario and good friend Harold Buchanan as part of his Harold on Games podcast. It's several years old by now, but it holds up fairly well. Harold on Games is well worth checking out in any event, because he's got plenty of interviews with game industry luminaries who shine more brightly than me.
Thanks again for your pledge, and you will hear from me again... soon? Probably, but I won't bother you until there is something worth announcing.
