Thread: River if Heaven What would you like to see from a Kickstarter?

Ok folks, as soon as OQ2 has shipped current estimate early-mid March, I'm going to be opening up a Kickstarter for River of Heaven, to raise funds for the copious amounts of internal art that I want in the book.

At this stage I have the complete proofed and edited text , layout templates and cover - so this game is not vapor ware

Myself and John have batted around a few ideas for perks and stretch goals, but I thought it be interesting what you the good people of BRP central.

Basic pledge levels so far
1. Pdf only
2. Softcover + Pdf
3. Hardcover +pdf

Things we've come up with as perks + stretch goals: large printed maps of the setting system, T-shirts of the front cover, a cut detailed Ship-ship combat system, a book of adventures.

Remember the point of the KS is to raise funds for the art and for a lesser extent art for future books in the game line, and there are associated costs for me (shiping, and KS fees). If the KS fails, then the book will still come out but it won't have as much art. For example I'd like pictures of all 20 or so character types, if the KS fails I'm only going to be doing 1-4.

Originally Posted by Newt

...
Basic pledge levels so far
1. Pdf only
2. Softcover + Pdf
3. Hardcover +pdf

Neat

Things we've come up with as perks + stretch goals: large printed maps of the setting system, T-shirts of the front cover, a cut detailed Ship-ship combat system, a book of adventures.

Hmm - the last two are presumably fairly time consuming to produce (unless John has them both written and tested already?) so although I'd love them I'd be a little wary that they might impact the delivery date - it'll come as no surprise I (like many I suspect) want RoH YESTERDAY!

Cheers,

Nick

Maps? I love maps! I'm thinking of the excellent maps that came out for ZAON (This used to be downloadable full size, but can't find it now). A large star chart like this, delivered rolled and tubed would be a good stretch goal.

SDLeary

The adventures for OQ2 got me to pull the trigger on that Kickstarter at Runelord level. I just don't have the time to write them myself anymore

Not a fan of t-shirts. I think there should be some add-ons like a GM screen (landscape and letter format) inserts, character sheets, player reference mat (to keep quick reference in front of you when playing), table name tents (pdf form filled out and printed, with art and fonts from the game, then cut and folded for the table). Adventures are nice, but often they are railroad affairs. I would strongly recommend a "sandbox" sector detailed with NPCs, ships, bases, planets, interesting locales, and mind numbing pile of adventure seeds. Suggestions on how to string these together into a campaign would be the cherry on top. Give the GM solid useful information for reference.

Just my two cents...

I would also prefer stuff which is immediately useful for playing the game, and I
would not at all be interested in merchandising stuff like T-shirts.

I would also like to get RoH yesterday!

Not very interested in T-shirts, but a book of adventures would be very nice provided it happens soon.

However, what I would really like to see is for RoH no-art document to be made available to supporters immediately (!) after pledging, so we could start PLAYING

It worked wonders for FATE Core (I pledged even though I'm not a great fan) and could work for RoH as well.

Do you have any of the d100 branded back catalog you would consider adding for the stretch goals?
I'm not interested in adventures, maps or minis all that much.
To be honest, the only thing I found all that interesting was the T-Shirt, and I don't wear many graphic Ts. It's just that a RoH T is effectively unique, which is awesome. That's been pretty much shot down, though.

I just want to see this game in print. RoH has been in my top 3 anticipated games list for a couple years now. I'll try and think of some ideas and comment on any others that appear here.

So glad you guys didn't give up.

EDIT:
I would totally be on board with a sandboxy piece of supplementary material down the pipe as a stretch goal. Scripted adventures just don't appeal to me as much, as a matter of fact the setup of the playtest scenario as scripted was the only thing about the game my group didn't love.

Any stretch goals that would delay the release of the main rulebook would be a bad idea. I join in the chorus of voices crying out for RoH, ASAP!

Early supporters getting an early PDF copy to test out and make some suggestions? Maybe catch a typo or two?

PDF is really designed for printing and not reading on a (small) screen. I have this little E-book reader gadget, that sadly—due to manufacturer neglect—has not received the much needed soft-/firmware upgrades that would allow it to reflow the text in PDF-documents to make them more easily readable on the device. Therefore I would very much like to see River of Heaven—and all other RPG books—released in a format more suitable for such devices, such as EPUB.

A Kickstarter stretch goal would in my opinion be an excellent means to secure the funds needed for such a format conversion. Publishers should not really bother with Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) since such schemes have the tendency to inconvenience the customers while doing very little if anything the prevent copyright infringement from taking place. Infringers can usually find the file with the DRM removed on the Internet while paying customers will often run into all kinds of technical problems while moving the file between devices.

tl;dr: Make an EPUB version, no DRM.

Also—as requested by others—adventures, sandboxes etc. would be great; don't care much for T-shirts.