Moe Lane's Blog, page 70

Patreon Microfiction: It’s All In The Twist.

100WS-It’s All In The TwistDownload

I ain’t gonna lie: if “It’s All In The Twist” is right and it turns out that humanity starts off as rogue-class it won’t be the worst thing in the universe. That means we get to be ninja, bards, and stealth archers. You know. The cool character classes.

Patreon!

Book of the Week: The Fermi Resolution Worldbook.

The Fermi Resolution Worldbook is now available for pre-order here (fulfilled by DriveThruRPG). No apologies. No shame. The hustle is the hustle.

(You can also get signed copies of all the fiction books there, but it’s admittedly cheaper to get the Kindle versions here.

#commissionearned

A new installment of THE BOLD MARAUDER is up on Patreon!

We are moving along. Check it out here. And don’t forget that there are free one-month memberships! Binge-read THE BOLD MARAUDER tonight!

Patreon!

My wife has cracked open a bottle of mead.

Elderberry honey wine, to be precise. And it is rather good! The kind of good that makes me start thinking about finding some cheese. Or maybe a slice of the surprisingly tasty if somewhat thin pumpkin pie (my wife has decided that adding cardamon to it was an inspired choice). Or, no, wait, there was a Girl Scout cookie station outside the Target…

I’m having at least one more glass here, is what I guess I’m telling you. Possibly two. It’s Friday night and I could use some down time.

Happy Pi Day! [UPDATED, with pies]

…I should bake a pie.

[UPDATE]: I have made pies.

Not my best pies, but I’m pretty sure they’re edible. I also haven’t made pies in a while, so there’s that. Besides: pies.

First look at the final Fermi Resolution Worldbook campaign numbers.

This is going to be just a general look at how things went, and an attempt to find meaning in the numbers. Nobody ever talks about this stuff in public, and I sort of understand why, but data is data and I hope somebody will find it useful. It’d be nice not to guess as much, right?

Okay. To start: the Fermi Resolution Worldbook actually came in over expectations. I was forecasting getting revenues somewhere between two thousand and twenty-five hundred dollars, and was surprised to have it end at just over thirty-four hundred. (It matters because if I had known that, I might have flipped stretch goals and used the spur of an adventure to push even more people to sign up.) Here’s how it shook out…

…and here is a comparison with my older crowdfunds.

Green represents first place, yellow second, blue third. As you can see, the worldbook came in second when it came to number of backers, amount raised, and RBR (Returning Backer Rate), and first when it came to the new/old ratio of said backers (the actual percentage was a surprise). If my RBR had been higher, I would have gotten closer to Frozen Dream’s baseline, but this is still an excellent result for a first-time Backerkit crowdfund.

So why wasn’t the RBR higher, and why was the new/old ratio completely opposite to my usual results? Probably because I was running a TTRPG crowdfunding project instead of a book. People who buy fantasy games may overlap with people who buy fantasy books, but not perfectly – and they also don’t necessarily overlap with people who buy my books. I tried to boost that percentage by pointing out that the worldbook will serve as a ‘bible’ for the Fermi Resolution series; I think it helped, but not as much as I was trying for. Which, again, is fine, and something to consider in the future.

Now let’s compare this project to the Tinsel Rain Kickstarter:

Here’s a day-by-day comparison of the two.

The major things that jump out at me here are both that the Backerkit was consistently better at getting me new backers (their pre-launch system in particular is very good) and that it provided a smoother ‘ride’ through the project. The ‘doldrums’ of crowdfunding are well known: you get a burst in the beginning, a burst at the end, and sometimes a bump in the middle. With the worldbook I was getting pledges virtually every day.

By the way: a large part of that is because I was doing a cross-collaboration project with Lead & Chrome, to our mutual benefit. I wasn’t really sure ahead of time how many of his backers would back my project, and vice versa, but it paid off. I’m curious to see whether this is a feature of cross-collaboration generally, or something unique to TTRPG projects, but either way it still highlights that Backerkit generally has a good toolset when it comes to boosting projects.

Summing up, it can’t be argued that in a lot of ways Backerkit is just better than Kickstarter when it comes to finding new backers. One thing that I do find Kickstarter to be better at is at direct communication with current and future backers; there was an issue during the campaign where somebody tried to get in touch with me with a question, and simply couldn’t. I’ll be offering feedback to Backerkit on that later, but I’m still overall impressed by the way the company has put together a genuine competitor to Kickstarter.

Which is not bad at its job! But they should definitely take notice of their current business environment. They’re no longer in a position to automatically dominate the crowdfunding market.

Hope this analysis helps people!

Moe Lane

PS: Be sure to check out the preorder store.

#commissionearned

‘Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her.’

Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her, Stan Rogers

#commissionearned

I need a vacation.

Like, a few days somewhere there’s no access to my computer. It’s just that there’s always something to do. Then again, I don’t get enough done, so maybe what I really need is a seminar on efficiency… no, that sounds horrible. Definitely a vacation.

Moe Lane

PS: I’m fine, I’m just ready for the school year to be over.

Huddles, Part the Last (Fermi Resolution).

Depending on final word count, this might make it into the worldbook. Dunno yet.

…

Huddle Culture

There was more of one than you’d think. The Dominion had expectations on behavior, and an inflexible attitude on acceptable deviations from it by their slaves. The Dominion also saw no particular reason why superfluous servants could not be thrown back into the nearest huddle whenever it was convenient. Mindwiping was theoretically both common, and effective. In practice, it was generally the latter, but not the former. The Universal Dominion had, and still somehow has, a fundamental problem with taking non-mages seriously.

As a result, there are commonalities. For example, most huddles speak the Dominion’s version of English, and typically have at least one person who can even read it. This is tolerated because even the Dominion finds it easier to send a written message via magic than, horror of horrors, visit a huddle on those rare occasions when it’s necessary. Basic math is somewhat more common, because it’s useful for keeping track of what little surplus resources huddles acquire. There is always somebody in nominal charge, who is usually not one of the readers. Their official title is ‘Scapegoat,’ which gives an idea as to why.

A decidedly not tolerated cultural trait in huddles is their underground faith. Huddles largely follow a monotheistic faith. The Alliance’s research theologians think it was originally derived from Islam, but centuries of repression have stripped it down considerably. All that seems to have survived is their name for God – ‘Lah’ – a recognizable version of the Golden Rule, and a general avoidance of meat as being ‘unclean.’ Huddlers do not avoid alcohol, but they never drink recreationally. Alcohol is a medication and a painkiller, and is thus used to treat both physical and psychological ailments. Huddlers are also extremely aware of the limitations of such treatments, but they typically don’t have anything else to work with.

The ALL YOU NEED IS KILL *anime* trailer.

Not the ‘Edge of Tomorrow‘ anime trailer, mind you. This looks more like the original ALL YOU NEED IS KILL novel (which is good, mind you). I’ve never seen the Tom Cruise flick, but I might catch this one.

#commissionearned