We're at 22 hours to launch, and I'm really look forward to the KS going live. I want to talk a bit about my mindset, because I think it's important (at least for me), to put this out there.
It doesn't matter if the campaign is 'successful'. I mean, I really (really) want it to be successful. But it doesn't HAVE to be. In the past, I've NEEDED things to be successful, because I wanted so badly to get something else from the project or campaign or whatever - validation, or reputation, or public acceptance, or some sort of score keeping 'against' other creators. I had a revelation last night while listening to Ron Talks Tabletop and an interview with the creator of Prowlers & Paragons, Leonard Pimentel. I listened with interest and spent a lot of time nodding my head and agreeing. Then, I went over and checked out Prowlers and Paragons, and read a little bit about it, and perused the quick start rules. I realized that 1) It's not much like my game at all, and 2) I have zero jealousy of his success. I mean, he's been successful at a very high level with a very polished game. I'm happy for him. I really am. Seems like a nice guy. But, maybe for the first time, I had no twinge of "must be nice" or "why isn't that ME" or some variation thereof. Historically for me, the hardest thing about being a creator is the way that the world constantly presents the success of others as a yardstick to see my own shortcomings. Walking into a comic store or Barnes and Noble or perusing DriveThruRPG has often been a 'this is your life - NOT' sort of journey, where all I could do for the longest time was see how many people had been more successful than I was.
I'm already successful. I have a game I'm proud of. I have people who like it. I get a lot of positive feedback regularly. I have a huge sandbox I've framed in and filled with sand and buried cool stuff in, and now I get to spend a lot of time playing in it and creating for it.
If the KS gets one person who signs up for $10 and then that's it for thirty days, I'll be a bit surprised, but I will be okay. I'm still going to publish a revised version of the game and I'm still going to create some of the stuff I intended for the KS anyway (because I'm excited to work on this and expand the game in this way), but I'll just do it in a different way. I see the KS as a way for others to get more involved; if they want to, great... but if not, it's okay. I'm okay. This mindset is part of the reason I think it will be successful - because I'm not holding on as tight as I have in the past. I'm ready to ride the wave; I guess we'll see if I need a paddle board or a surf board.
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FYI, I think that for the duration of the campaign, I'll be cross posting both here and on the KS page. My regular blog entries will be on that stream as well, just to increase visibility and interactivity; but I don't want to ONLY post there and not here - so, I'll just do both. I probably won't get as personal as I did above. Going to be more business-oriented, but I thought I'd share some thoughts on KS Eve...
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On to the Game...
With Stalwart Team Up #1, I introduced a concept that hero points can be earned as you go through the adventure; early encounters can give you opportunities through heroic action and role playing to earn hero points and add these to your bank; they become more of a dynamic currency throughout the adventure, and the GM will have more ways to award and manage hero points. I think that there will be suggestions for ways to spend more than one hero point at a time; I'm thinking of in X-Men '97 when Magneto 'turned off' all electricity in the world; he had to use all of his hero points to do this, set his hero points at 0 while it was off, and had to turn his power down to D16 while he was maintaining this effect. The book will give specific guidance for managing situations like this. I think that this becomes a special option that is only unlocked once you have D20 in a trait. I'm going to tinker with this a lot more, but I like the idea that the GM has a lot of specific guidance on awarding, managing, and ultimately encouraging you to spend your hero points in play. I think that this is tied very specifically to the ideas of "Series" (a campaign) and "Issues" (individual sessions).
I have a hook for this (from the backer's perspective) that is something akin to DC's aquisition of the Charleton characters in the mid-80s. Alan Moore ended up writing watchmen for them, even though he ended up having to craft all new characters (because Blue Beetle was going to get his own thing, and Nite Owl took his place in Watchmen). You just purchased this comic book company with these characters who appeared back in the day. What are you going to do with them, and how are they going to be the seeds of your new comic book universe? Or... if you have an existing comic book universe, how do you want to layer in these new aquisitions to your line? The KS is going to have some suggestions for how to emulate what I've done, launching a 'comic book company' that publishes the games that you run as the series (with the players at your table taking on roles as the comic book creators... so you're the editor as GM, but the others are the creative team working with you).
It's a whole vibe.
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