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I finally pulled the trigger on my first Kickstarter!
The general advice for crowdfunding has been, “Don’t bother unless you have a sizable following on social media.” My Twitter never broke 600, but I’ve just reached 3000 on Bluesky, so here I am. Even still, an audience in one place might not carry over to another, so scope is a consideration. Especially when it’s one’s first Kickstarter. It’s easier for people to take a gamble on a smaller project first. So instead of opening with the full game of ESPionage, I’m building a track record with three stand-alone adventures:
The King in Giallo – James Bond by way of Robert W Chambers with a touch of Italian horror.
Sunny Days and Rain – The Prisoner meets The Good Place, covered in late 1970s brown rainbows.
MindGuard – The X-Files in Twin Peaks for a very 90s domestic terrorist thriller.
One thing I’ve learned about Kickstarter, there are essential pieces of advice you must follow for success. And for each piece of advice, someone will tell you you don’t need to do that. With that spirit in mind, here’s the trailer I produced, which is both utterly essential to my success, or a waste of my time:
As I write this, the project is at $652 with 42 packers. I estimate the expenses, art, editing, and layout, will cost ~$1200. My goal wasn’t to make a mint, or break even. It was to mitigate some of the cost, and build the groundwork audience for future Kickstarters. My last project, the novel The Faith Machine cost $2100 in editing (a mistake on my part), resulted in a $200 advance, and only pre-sold 12 copies. Comparatively, this has been a raging success.
Backer levels start at $1 for a full PDF!
Book
The Witch’s Daughter
I discovered this autobiographical tale from Azure Ray’s own Orenda Fink’s appearance on The Dana Gould Hour. An interesting account from a high-drama family where the mentally ill and magical-thinking mother twisted the entire family unit around her will. And a daughter’s journey of understanding, the leads to escape. A lot of people are breaking from their parents these days. While this family fracture isn’t political in nature, the moves are all the same.
Blu-ray
Blake’s 7
In high-school my Sundays nights were spent watching imported BBC on KPBS. The space adventure, Blake’s 7 was my favorite of the offerings. My wife got me season 1 on Blu-Ray and I’m happy to say “The dirty half-dozen in space” still holds up, 45 years after production. An ensemble cast that lets everyone get some time in the spotlight (even the women), the disks provide updated effects, but the shoe-string visual effects of the time hold a spot in my heart.
[Blu-Ray]
RPG
Grimwild
Fantasy adventure remains the gateway into role-playing games. Even after Wizard’s of the Coast’s numerous missteps and attempts to sabotage the industry at large, D&D is still the fist and last RPG most people play. Hopefully, games like Grimwild, will chip away at this dominance, while providing an updated experience for new plays, rather than starting with the dated rule set descended from the 1970s. I’ll be running Grimwild to truly grok the rules, but from what I’ve read I see a lot of potential in this system. It might be the basis for the next two games I write.