Ideas are Like Butts

Not everything I think of is gold. For example, I started with a quick mockup of a spaceship (it's small in the image), and then was thinking that the owners of this would be insectoid - and then I basically drew an army ant if the army wants were somewhat realistic in their basic design. I mean, it's creepy, but not really good creepy. It's just sort of not right creepy. And then, I was thinking it would be cool to call them the 'Chi'it', which I got from chitin, but which I know people would just call 'sh*t'. So, these would be the 'sh*t' aliens, which kind of becomes its own meme, but (again) not in a good way.

Don't think this one is making the cut.

However, I wanted to expand on some of the thinking from last time. One of the things that I am finally starting to understand about this hobby is that visibility is EVERYTHING. You might create decent stuff (I think I do), but if nobody sees it, it doesn't really matter. To whit (I have used that phrase a lot lately), I think that the material I was creating to support Stalwart Age was really good. However, I was posting it on my own blog and to a small patreon behind a firewall, sharing everything with the same small group of people. So, nobody new ever really had any chance to see it. It would be easy for things to go by in your feed and for it to be gone, even if you are someone who likes my stuff sometimes. 

With Stalwart Age, I made the mistake of trying to move the game away from DriveThruRPG rather than towards it. So, for this game, the idea is that the core rules are available on DriveThru, but so are regular (as in every month at the very least) supplements. If I am not constantly reminding people that I have a game and that I keep making stuff for it, then they are going to forget about me and my little game. It's not anyone's fault. There is a TON of shiny new stuff on DriveThru every minute. 

The idea here is that there will be a regular (again, at least monthly) resource of maybe 4 pages or so. My working title is "Transmissions from the Pale", and it would profile a game location (maybe a city, or a small moon, or a space station, or a lost temple... or...) including at least one new species, a few new creatures, vehicles, weapons, and maybe some optional rules. 

I also see the potential benefit of a Kickstarter in terms of building recognition. It's a high-profile place to do a launch. I don't know if I can justify running a KS for a 32-page rulebook (even if it IS full color). I think that IF I was to do a KS, I'd have to learn from the ones I've done before, and find some way to up the game for myself. One possibility would be a built-in one-year subscription to the regular update. You back the game for $25, and you get the core rules in print and PDF, and one year of the monthly 4-page updates. I can almost see a high-level tier where you get a hardcover copy of the four games I've done in this format: Tales of the Splintered Realm, Shards of Tomorrow, Army Ants Twilight, and Stalwart Age in one hardcover volume. I could also go back and remaster the art for Tales, making that book full color. The art is done, and coloring it would be a relatively workable task. Adding some color accents throughout would be pretty easy to do. I mean, this book would probably be around $60, but it might be worth having available. I don't know if a 32-page hardover makes sense, but a 128-pager in full color does.