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.

...

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

Edited February 27, 2013 by NickMiddleton

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

Edited February 27, 2013 by 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.

Edited March 1, 2013 by tedopon
Content, then grammar ;)

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.

Hi all,

Thanks for all the feed back. I'm hearing you loud and proud about having actual content (adventures/extra supplementary info) vs gimmicks. I'm not a fan of the latter as customer myself.

Ok some interesting points coming out of this so far.

Early PDF copy - Definitely up for this. The whole game completely laid out sans art so you can play as soon as you pledge. In return I would encourage bug reporting

Adventures as stretch goal - confirmed with John over lunch that he has 4-5 adventures already written

Sandbox adventure book - I'm a big fan of this style of play myself which is why I insisted on a large 'Friends and Foes' section in the core rule book. This is an interesting possiblity, since John did say that he could do an expanded setting chapter. I'm thinking more a supplemental sector here designed for groups who like to wander around around in a ship from planet to planet.

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.

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I hear you on this one. I pretty much leant Dungeon World from the Kindle version I had on my phone courtesy of the Kickstarter they ran.

Problem with D100 system books, and River of Heaven has this, that epub/kindle doesn't handle the multiple large tables that such a game contains well. There is also an associated cost in software and my time to make this happen, which would delay significantly the release of the book.

There is also an associated cost in software and my time to make this happen, which would delay significantly the release of the book.

Release book first, EPUB later when you have time. And as for the monetary cost, well, just set the stretch high enough in the Kickstarter.

Edited March 1, 2013 by smjn

As for pdfs on a small screen...

I actually prefer reading pdfs on my 7 inch tablet over a computer screen. Mainly because there is the tactile element of having the thing in my hand and manipulating it with my finger gestures.

Every single time I have read a book in epub that was a conversion from pdf, it has been torture. There just isn't a handy way to represent tables and/or page setup/formatting in an epub without completely redoing the layout manually almost from scratch.

I've just invested in a Nexus 7, which is a replacement for a Kindle and Netbook. Ultimately I want to go digital with my rpg books, so its a longer term goal to go digital for D101 releases as well as having print releases. But with the currently D101 release schedule there won't be time to do this for RoH. Therefore I'm going to state up front doing epub / kindle releases is outside the scope of the RoH KS even as an after the main part of the project, the core book has shipped.

Edited March 1, 2013 by Newt

Adventures as stretch goal - confirmed with John over lunch that he has 4-5 adventures already written

Hi - I can double-confirm this - I have 2x adventures that have seen several outings at conventions - one of which was also the playtest adventure. Then there is a mini-campaign (3 parts written, with a 4th in the pipeline) which is designed to introduce players to the default campaign setting. These adventures all work as self-contained one-shots if required. :-)

Early PDF copy - Definitely up for this. The whole game completely laid out sans art so you can play as soon as you pledge. In return I would encourage bug reporting

Gazillion thanks! Take my money, now!

I've just invested in a Nexus 7...

Newt I have a little Nexus 7 and it sure ain't a 'replacement' for any other eReader, its actually one of the best investments you can purchase at the moment I reckon. It comes with Google Play Books for all your ePub reads, and you can easily download the other ePub store apps through Google Play, such as Kindle and Kobo for example. Works great as a reader, and having Google Chrome as the net browser is really good. It's a smooth little gadget to have, you'll only ever need a desktop PC if you're working on word docs etc.

I have most of my rpg collection in the Nexus 7 in pdf format and it works great. It's easy to enlarge the text up to a readable level, and Adobe Reader is very smooth on this device. I have literally hundreds of pdf rpg books in this tablet and it works a charm. I have no concerns whether you go ePub or pdf with River of Heaven, although I'ld probably prefer the later due to how smooth it runs on my device.

Just sayin'

Edited March 3, 2013 by Mankcam