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Updated on June 8, 2022 August 13, 2019 / Fraser
It Came From The Sea! Crunching the Numbers
This post was original presented at my Patreon on 6 Aug 2019.
I've embarked on writing for Saga of the Sea Peoples, (which you can follow at my Patreon) and in doing so, I've started to consider the costs that would be associated with bringing it to actual fruition, meaning distributing it beyond Patreon. The costs for doing a print product – something more than 100 pages – are pretty prohibitive. A ballpark estimate puts the Kickstarter goal at about US $11,500. My biggest success for Kickstarter was Centurion: Legionaries of Rome which brought in around $5,900 USD. Nefertiti Overdrive only brought in about $4,900 CAD, which was about $3,800 USD.
It's possible to produce a 125 page book without editing or certain sections I'd like to include – such as considering migration and integration in the context of the Sea People – and using stock art. That goal would be about $3,000 USD so a Kickstarter goal of $4,450 CAD . . . or, to be more careful, $5,000 CAD.
A PDF-only product, substantially shorter, and using stock art, would have a goal of $4,500 CAD. That means I would need 350 backers at $13.50 CAD (around $10 USD) a pop to hit that target. Were I to do the base minimum – editing, consultation, extra sections, and more art as stretch goals – I could set the goal at $2,000 USD, meaning I would need about 150 backers.
Centurion only had 180 backers, Nefertiti Overdrive had 302 backers, and Sword's Edge had 144 backers. So far, it looks on the edge of do-able, but with definite failure potential. Failure is fine – it means the market isn't interested and if I want to pursue it, it would be on my own dime with minimal expectation for sales.
One thing I learned from the Centurion vs. Nefertiti Overdrive Kickstarters was the value of high ticket pledge levels. Something like creating one of the iconic characters for the game or being a model for a piece of art can support a pretty heft price tag, but does it help?. For the art, I would have to actually increase the goal of the Kickstarter to compensate for the added cost – three openings for modelling for art would increase the cost by almost $600 CAD while bringing in a maximum of $750. That's about eight extra backers, so there is some potential but it's not significant.
In the end, I'm going to push forward with the writing, and can promise you the rules portion. There'll be some historical discussion thrown in there, and I'm continuing to research the era and the Sea Peoples, as it has turned out to be fascinating, but I won't have a "history" section per se unless I'm able to finance this some other way. Kickstarter looks like a possibility, but it needs more analysis and consideration.
Updated on June 8, 2022 August 6, 2019 / Fraser
Abyss of the Crimson Caves, a Fifth Edition Adventure
Sword's Edge Publishing has released its second of three Fifth Edition adventures, this a sequel to Cult of the Abyss.
A minor cult following an obscure myth is seeking artifacts and using ensorcelled children to do their digging. The Crimson Caves hide more than simply this, as the cult is building an army for the day when their deity is released. It's up to a band of adventurers to free the children and foil the cult in this dungeon crawl for Fifth Edition.
Abyss of the Crimson Caves is an adventure for 3-5 player characters of levels 5-7, though it best played with 4 PCs of level 6.
The format of this adventure has the monsters listed without further information in the room description, with the monster's information blocks at the back of the PDF in the order in which they appear. A separate file is included with the monsters information provided in the order in which they appear so that it can be referenced while playing.
This adventure and the earlier Cult of the Abyss is already in the hands of my Patreon backers, as is the following one. If you like the kinds of products SEP releases, you might want to back the Patreon to get them first and usually cheaper.
Abyss of the Crimson Caves is available now at Drive Thru RPG.