Realistic Kickstarter Goals

Using your entire project budget to set your Kickstarter funding goal will make your goal too high. The financially responsible funding goal only covers your remaining costs.

With The One Ring making a big splash on Kickstarter this month, there's been renewed talk of fair funding goals. Free League set its funding goal at 100K SEK (about $12,000 USD), which is unlikely to be enough to cover the costs of producing a full-color, 300+ page book full of art.

Is this too low? Are they gaming the system?

Maybe not.

Kickstarter (or perhaps just Kickstarter culture) rewards projects that make their funding goals quickly, which encourages low goals. Funding on the first day (or hour!) is particularly celebrated. It's tempting to set a funding goal that's much lower than the project's budget in order to be able to hit this funding goal very quickly. That success can be used for marketing oomph, building more buzz and sales in a virtuous cycle.

That is.. if you get enough backers. If you don't, have you basically gambled financial disaster to buy some marketing juice?

Two Crucial Funding Levels

There are two crucial funding levels, one of which we talk about all the time: break-even point. This is the point a which your project earns enough to cover its costs, and makes its first dollar of profit.

The other funding level is one I don't hear about much, and that's the "go/no-go" funding level. How many sales do you need from your Kickstarter to make continuing to production a good idea?

Intuitively, these are the same amount. Why would you go forward with a project that's going to lose money? Unfortunately, this assumption will make you pick the wrong funding level, one that increases your risks.

Sunk Costs

The flaw in this thinking is that by the time you Kickstarter, you've already invested a lot. You've probably at least got a first draft, you've put time into play testing, you've spent time lining up the production team, working out some of your logistics, and you've bought enough art to at least give your Kickstarter a chance.

On Kickstarter launch day, there's no way to "unspend" this money.

If your project is unprofitable, you can't go back in time and not do all that pre-work. This has a huge effect on how you set a financially responsible funding level.

What you need to look at is the various scenarios going forward from that point in time, and setting a funding level that guarantees you'll be in better financial shape than you are now. That funding level only covers your remaining costs! Why is this?

Scenarios

To answer that, let's look at hypothetical indie RPG project. I've picked March 1st as my KS launch date, and by that time I estimate that I will have sunk $5,000 into the project. (Let's say this is three weeks of full-time work at a 'livable wage' of $30/hr, plus $1,000 in assorted freelance help such as KS banner art.)

Having carefully thought out my remaining costs in time and freelance work, I project I'll need another $5,000 to finish the project. (Art, layout, copy-editing, time spent finalizing shipping logistics, coordinating freelancers, etc.)

I've priced the book at $30 (including shipping), and it costs me $20 per book to print, package, and ship to backers. The per-book margin is therefore $10.

This means that my break-even point is 1000 sales. That raises $30,000, which covers the $10,000 in fixed costs, plus the $20,000 in variable costs of delivering 1000 books.

However, my go/no-go point is much less, only 500 sales. Why is this?

Several Disasters

Let's consider several crappy outcomes. One is that I don't get a single backer. If this happens, I won't fund, and I don't go to production. I pull the plug on the project, and (crucially), I don't spend the additional $5,000 to complete the book.

This means that my total costs are the $5,000 I already put in (and a broken heart).

Now let's imagine that I got 900 backers. That's not enough to break even, because my total costs are $28,000. However, my revenue is $27,000, which means my final position is $1,000 in the hole. That's considerably better than $5,000 in the hole, which is where I'd be if I set my target above 900 backers. I'm $4,000 better off by going to production with 900 backers.

Clearly, 1000 is not the optimal funding goal.

With a funding goal of 500, as soon as I get 500 backers, my additional fixed spend on art to complete the project ($5,000) is exactly covered by the margin of my book sales (500 x $10). I'm no better or worse off than pulling the plug. At 499 backers, I'm slightly worse off ($5010 in the hole), at 501 backers, slightly better ($4990).

This is the balance point that matters, when my per-book margin equals my remaining fixed costs.

One way to look at this is to plot my project's final profit based on various funding goals and actual backer levels.

Here is the ideal profit line.

With a funding goal of 500 backers, there is never a point where I'm more exposed than my sunk costs of $5,000. $5,000 in the hole is as bad as it gets. At the same time, as soon as I get even one extra backer past my funding goal, my position is improving.

Let's compare that with other funding goals:

With a funding goal of zero (dark blue line), I've made the choice to spend the additional $5,000 in art costs whether or not I get any sales. This exposes me to some additional downside, as much as $10,000 in the hole if I get no backers.

With a funding goal of 250 backers (red line), I have some protection against the worst, but going into production with 250 sales means my final position is $7500 in the hole, considerably worse than 500 backers.

Now look at funding goals above 500 (e.g. green, orange, teal). Those goals protect me from deepening the hole, but they make it harder to start recouping my costs: it takes many more backers before my project lifts off that -$5,000 profit line. If my funding goal is 1000 and I only get 750 backers, my project doesn't fund. If my goal had been lower, I could have recouped some of my sunk debts, even though my project wasn't profitable overall.

Unconscious Signals

What's interesting about this is that it matches my own gut feel choices while planning my own Kickstarters. I had funding levels that were considerably below the total project budget, because I knew I was going ahead regardless.

With plans to use print on demand, once the book was actually written, there was very little reason not to go ahead with production, especially since post-Kickstarter sales also become available.

Of course, if you have a series of unprofitable books, you need to look at your operation pretty carefully. The time to consider the possibility of turning a profit is before you start sinking time and money into something. When you're hovering over the Launch Kickstarter button, however, very different calculations rule the day.

Servants of Memory Kickstarter Ending!

We've just entered the last 48 hours of the Kickstarter campaign for the fourth Trilemma bestiary: Servants of Memory.

This edition stats out the Trilemma Adventures Compendium creatures for the Year Zero Engine, the system underlying for a number of popular hex-crawling/base-building adventure RPGs.

We've blown through most of the stretch goals, including stats for a number of magic items, a spread of terrain-specific encounter tables, and playable kin for Carreg, Dradkin, Heelan and Ricalu. If we're lucky, before we're done we'll hit that last stretch goal and get three final playable kin.

If that sounds like your jam, you only have a few hours left to jump in on the Kickstarter! If you know someone else who is, there's only a short time to let them know!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/trilemma/trilemma-adventures-the-servants-of-memory

Ennies Wins!

In other news, Trilemma Adventures did very well at the Ennies! As I posted previously, the compendium got nominated in four categories, and we took home a win in two: Silver for 'Best Adventure' (beat out by Mothership's Pound of Flesh), and Gold in Cartography!

Thank you so much for your support, and for your votes!

Next: Ogre Bridge Adventure

As I've revealed to my Vicious Imp patrons, I'm back at adventure-making! Thanks for all of you who have been bearing with me during this long, Kickstarter-scented detour. The wait will soon be over!

Live: Servants of Memory Kickstarter!

As previously announced, there will be a fourth Trilemma bestiary, this time adapting the creatures for the Year Zero Engine. It is now live on Kickstarter!

The Servants of Memory is a hardcover/softcover monster book with 117 creatures and kin inside, more than half of which have detailed attack tables. There are classic creatures like wraiths, brass soldiers and dire beasts, but also weird and horrible things to keep your players on their toes like water shades, void gulls, and the spider-infested bears of lurrock. 

The book makes it easy to use Trilemma Adventures with Year Zero Engine games, of course, but it also stands alone as a solid set of monsters for random encounters or for stocking your own adventures.

We're way ahead of schedule compared to my last Kickstarter. We've already received our format test prints! There's work still to do of course, but our aim is to deliver smoothly and as quickly as possible.

Join in and help us hit stretch goals for:

• Dradkin ritual magic
• Stats for rarities like the Hell Knight's armaments, Spell Engines, and the White Lances of Deel
• Encounter tables for a dozen terrain types

See you on Kickstarter!

Year Zero Bestiary Kickstarter!

There will soon be a Trilemma Bestiary for Year Zero Engine fantasy role-playing games. It goes live on Kickstarter on August 4!

The Year Zero Engine is a system reference document released under the OGL, which powers a family of role-playing games in a number of genres: post-apocalyptic, science fiction, and of course, fantasy. A number of people have asked me if we intended to support this system with a bestiary, and the answer is yes!

For some time now, Craig Atkins and friends have been busily converting the Trilemma bestiary creatures to the Year Zero engine, and we're now preparing our Kickstarter campaign.

The Kickstarter launches August 4!
Follow it on Kickstarter

One of the interesting things about Year Zero is the way many creatures are given a table of random moves: interesting things for them to do in a combat situation. Here are three of the entries from the Cave Stitcher:

Cave Stitcher by Russ Nicholson

Craig put his brain against the juicing sieve and has made custom attack tables for more than 75 creatures, and including kin and animals, there will be over 110 creatures in the bestiary. You can of course use these with the adventures from the compendium, but they work just as well to enrich your own setting.

After my compendium Kickstarter last year and putting out three books since, I've learned a bunch of dos and don'ts. This will be a by-the-book, low-risk Kickstarter with a single goal: putting usable monsters in your hands as soon as possible. We will of course have some fun stretch goals, but everything has been carefully selected to fit into a short production schedule.

Visit the Kickstarter page to sign up for a launch announcement!

My Kickstarter Task List

I recently made a list of all the tasks that I can remember doing while I ran the Kickstarter. I'm sharing it here in the hopes it helps someone who is thinking of running one themselves.

Please note that this leaves out huge chunks of work—literally everything to do with getting the book made and sent to people. That was substantially more work than this list, which is simply what I did to create, promote and run the Kickstarter in order to sell the book.

Most of these line items are themselves complex tasks that I had to figure out. There was very little about this project that was simple, that didn't explode into ten related sub-tasks as soon as I started it.

Without further ado, here's the list:

• Learn the basics of how Kickstarter works
• What options are there to configure on a KS project?
• Did I realize I can only send one survey? etc.
• Planning the Kickstarter offering
• Determine product pricing
• Determine shipping pricing, where I'm shipping to, and how I'm recouping it (built into the one price, or charging shipping)
• Build a simple financial model for various hypothetical funding levels
• Assess my exposure to exchange rate fluctuations (since I'm collecting in CAD)
• Assess my exposure to shipping price increases
• Defining reward tiers (e.g. PDF, PDF+book, wholesale FLGS tier, etc.)
• Pricing my stretch goals, attaching them to funding targets, updating the financial model
• Figuring out the exact start/end dates of the KS
• Build the KS page itself
• Write/revise all the copy, get it proof read
• Solicit bios from the contributors
• Produce supporting graphics for all of the headers, the table of rewards
• Producing alternate versions for many graphics, 'stretch goal met' etc.
• Product mockups/photos and image cleanup/cropping
• Enter all of this into KS
• Produce the KS video
• Storyboard it
• Produce all of the supporting graphic assets
• Hire Mair Perkins (animator extraordinare)
• Script and record the voiceover
• Source sound effects
• Edit it together, render, upload to KS
• Use Kickstarter's subtitling tool to subtitle it
• Edit/render/upload alternate versions of the video to YouTube for other marketing contexts, e.g. pre-launch teaser
• Circulate the preview version of the KS campaign to a smaller audience
• Replying to questions/comments
• Incorporate their feedback into the campaign design
• Pre-launch marketing campaign (huge, huge task)
• Learn Mailchimp
• Edit Mailchimp subscription dialog box into my web site
• Sketch of a marketing plan: who are my 'segments' (enthusiasts, somewhat familiar, total newcomers), where to find them, which ones to pay attention to most and what messaging to use
• Write/publish all of the 'coming soon' marketing assets: social media pinned posts, links in bio, web site, blog post, blog sidebar, twitter/facebook header images
• Figure out what image dimensions work for various social media posts and header images
• Making a diagram of how all these properties and calls to action relate, so I could plan all of the transitions (e.g. "coming soon -> now live -> buy here", "subscribe -> go to the kickstarter")
• Ads and Analytics
• Learn how ad campaigns work on Facebook, Twitter, Google
• Learn how to generate KS referrer codes so I can see which are worth it
• Make a spreadsheet to keep track referrer codes
• Set up google analytics w/ e-commerce for my KS campaign
• Pre-launch prep
• Pre-write all of my launch day marketing, proof read it
• Write my launch day task/checklist (adrenaline poisoning is real)
• Launch day
• Make the KS page public
• Publish all of my launch marketing - blog post, social media, etc.
• Update all of my 'coming soon' stuff to say it's live: blog, site, social media pinned posts, social media bios
• Answer backer questions
• Tweak the KS page in response to questions
• Add questions to the FAQ
• Sending KS updates
• Writing all of the updates (I couldn't do this as I had an interactive campaign and random stretch goals; this easily tripled the work of this task)
• Compulsively refreshing the $ total, checking biggercake, easily 2hrs/day lost to this
• Monitoring my social goals ("If this gets x retweets, we unlock stretch goal y")
• Planning when to publish non-milestone KS updates
• Actually publishing the updates (since you can't schedule them)
• Sourcing supporting art assets for the updates
• Mid-campaign marketing nudges
• Mailchimp, Patreon, blog posts, ad campaigns
• Monitoring the analytics to see whether/which ads are doing anything
• KS campaign end
• Send the "we made it, gang" update
• Editing the KS page for some new, post-KS call to action (e.g. "pledging late? go here and subscribe for updates / buy it at my online store")
• Updating all of my other online presence to swap from "KS now live!" to the new call to action
• Follow-up updates
• Writing & publishing fulfilment updates ("books are nearly ready!")
• Answering fulfilment status questions ("When do Europe backers get their things?")
• Pre-fulfilment surveying ("What's your address?")
• Writing/editing/double-checking the survey (you only get one, unless you're doing BackerKit)
• Sending the survey
• Pre-lock 2-day warning
• Several rounds of nudging non-respondents
• Exporting backer data for fulfilment/reporting
• At least twice, one when the KS ends, and then later once surveys are done, since addresses will have changed
• Manually adding people who pledged but didn't complete the survey, then provide their details via email/KS messaging
• Customer support ("I didn't get my thing/it came damaged"), initiating replacement fulfilment orders

This is quite a lot, now that I see it all in one place!

Compendium: 48 Hours Left

We're now in the final 48 hours of the compendium Kickstarter campaign. This is your last chance to sign up for the limited edition hardcover book.

Generous backers ripped through all of the stretch goals I put down, over and over again. We now have only one left: the map pack PDF.

This means the book now contains 48 remastered adventures, settlements and wilderness regions, an illustrated bestiary, a history appendix, a detailed index, a full-color campaign map, a bonus adventure, and (as of now) 5 additional wilderness regions. Phew!

On top of that, three supplementary bestiary PDFs each add stats for Dungeon World, B/X, and 5e!

Time is running out..

So if you want in before time runs out, hop over to the Kickstarter!

Compendium Offset Print Run

The Trilemma Adventures Compendium will now be manufactured by an offset print run.

Ever since I conceived of this book, I've been on a knife's edge about how to get it printed. I explored both options carefully. Ultimately, I decided to follow Kevin Crawford's advice: if you're a one-person RPG writer, you win by writing, not by trying to be a publisher, wrestling with distribution and inventory management with no economy of scale.

For that reason I chose DriveThruRPG as my fulfilment option. As a Canadian with most buyers of my buyers in the US, trying to figure out cross-border (and international!) distribution for 200 copies of my book made no sense.

DTRPG makes a solid book (especially in the premium colour version that I've selected), and distribution is one-step easy. Obvious.

What's Changed?

With the incredible amount of support I've received from backers, however, things look very different now. We hit 200 hardcover copies on the first day! If things stay on track, it could easily be 800 by the time we're done. This completely changes the situation.

It means that an offset print run is now a completely practical approach for delivering this book, and it will be a better book for it.

Eight days remain!

5e Stats for Trilemma Adventures

Over on the Kickstarter, first we unlocked B/X stats, then we unlocked Dungeon World stats. Now it's time for the big one:

Fifth edition.

Do you love 5e? Do you know Dungeon Masters who do?  If so, please help spread the word, so we can rip the lid right off this thing and unlock everything.

* * *

If you're joining the battle late and you've missed the play-by-post action, you can catch up here!

Here are all five of the comic updates:

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5

..and here is the complete map of the fortress—at least, the bits that the axewives are aware of so far.

Compendium Kickstarter News

We've now reached the mid-way point of the Kickstarter campaign for the compendium. The fifth battle update went out this morning, showing the beginning of the Dradkin counter-attack plan.

It's very bad news for the axewives of Grinvolt.

On the 'book' front, layout is progressing very well, and I'm starting to fill in the spots I'd marked off for extra illustrations. You can see one here, down at the bottom of The Mermaids' Knot.

Here's a detail WIP image of a Priestess of Suvuvena, greeting the adventurers. This one is by Juan Ochoa, who contributed the awesome Heelan warrior for Lair of the Lantern Worm! I saw the sketch of the whole image and I can't wait to see the whole thing.

On May 30, the gate closes for good, and anyone not inside gets turned into chirpers. Any help you can offer, spreading the word to people you think would enjoy this compilation is much appreciated!

$45k Kickstarter Unlock

Things have been busy over on the Kickstarter. A surge of people pushed it up to $45,000 by today (day 8), and as I write there are 997 backers.. three short of a thousand people. (?!)

The stretch goal that was unlocked today was a second gazetteer entry, this time for the south coast. Here, along a strip of rocky coastline are the ancestral lands of Grinvolt, stretching from the labyrinthine High Uttvelt all the way to slumbering Tealwood. In this entry: the hallowed stacks of Millvale, the speakers of the Talking Wood, and the crawling ghosts of Halet Girm!

This means the book is now:

• 48 adventures
• A bestiary of 90+ monsters, with OSR stats in a companion PDF
• A regional hex map
• Four pages of regional gazetteer entries
• A history appendix on the cultures, Seree magic, and the nature of the underworld

The play-by-post mass battle against the Dradkin also took a surprising turn! The axewives picked a startling strategy to deal with a hideous monster:

If you'd like to join in, please do!

Smashing Stretch Goals

The last 24 hours have been remarkable, smashing through six stretch goals. A bunch of people weighed in with their tactics for preparing for the battle.. and now it unfolds.

If you feel like joining the battle, please do!

Trilemma Kickstarter is LIVE

The wait is over, the horn has sounded! Grinvolt axewives are now pouring down the stairs to the Dradkin fortress. Who knows how far they will get, or what awaits them in the darkness?

The Trilemma Adventures Compendium is now live on Kickstarter!

What's in the Book?

• 48 two-page adventures lovingly illustrated with isometric maps

• Remastered for glorious landscape, revised and re-edited

• Ten of the adventures get full-page expansions!

• A detailed index of people, places, gods, and monsters

• Adventure summaries for speedy selection on game night

• Up to 45 pages of stretch goal content! (If we get there..)

For all the details, click through to the Kickstarter page! Grinvolt needs you!

Kickstarter Videos & Marketing

A long time ago, I decided to make my adventure PDFs free. I believed that my content would do a better job at marketing itself than I could trying to sell people on something they couldn't see.

(If you just wanna see the videos, scroll down to the bottom!)

Running a Kickstarter challenges this approach. There's a defined funding period, and I need to get interested parties to the Kickstarter page within that period. Not before, and not after! This means actual marketing. Uh oh!

Thanks to the workspace I'm sitting in these days, I'm getting some quick 'n' dirty mentoring in marketing. Yay serendipity!

This has helped me understand that I need very different messages for different groups of people, which is a challenge with my limited manpower! I'd rather be drawing or writing. Surely you'd rather I was drawing or writing too!

Different Dice for Different Mice

For people who already know what I do (maybe you've downloaded, maybe played, or even supported me on Patreon), the message is, "It's happening now," and "tell your friends."

Beyond this, there's a halo of people who kinda know what I'm doing, and may not know whether it's applicable to them. They might have seen my stuff or even played one at a con, but don't remember my name or my blog name. Or maybe they saw one but don't realize how big the collection is. Maybe they saw multiple pieces and didn't realize they were by the same person. (Branding fail.)

For this group, the message has to start earlier in the awareness process. Yep, this is me, this is where you get them, and by the way.. now.

Then there's are people who haven't heard of me, but would love my content. Maybe they weren't on G+ (my main stomping ground, may it rest in peace). This group needs awareness building, which is apparently time-consuming and expensive.

In a way, I suppose you could view the last five years as exactly this sort of awareness building, a crazily slow word-of-mouth campaign for this book. In any case, it's a bit late to be energetically targeting this group at this point in time.

Even so, I want to make sure that any messages they do see still work for them.

The Call-to-Action Hydra

The other complexity is the "call to action." Apparently, unless you're doing long-term brand awareness, marketing messaging needs to urge you to do something. The trick is, that something changes based on who I'm talking to and when I'm talking to them.

I can put out a video spreading awareness of the Kickstarter before it starts, but unless people have a way of book marking their intention to become backers, it's easy to miss a 30-day window. That mechanism varies from place to place.

Liking a Facebook page, following on Twitter, subscribe to my notification mailing list, add this to your blog roll, visit the Kickstarter page. All of these are different messages. That's not too bad in text, but it's way more labour intensive for video content.

Add to all of this that I can't even send people to the Kickstarter page before it launches; there's nothing for them to do. That means on launch day, all my messaging needs to change. Fun times!

Video Punchline

Anyways, here's the punchline to all of this: two slightly different videos, one meant for pre-launch sharing, and another that sits on the Kickstarter page itself.

I'm curious if you think they do the job - communicating what I'm doing, when, while engaging people who already know what I'm all about. Suitable for a possibly wide audience (in case I get a lot of reshares), but not so slick ad advertising-like that they alienate people who've been supporting me for a long time.

Here's video one, the "pre-launch" video:

Here's the video that gets embedded in the Kickstarter page itself. It's exactly the same for the first 90 seconds, but then has a different ending. (I obviously don't want to send people who are watching this on Kickstarter over to trilemma.com! Although the video might get shared outside of KS.. so I can't even take that for granted!)

If any of this works and the Kickstarter is a success, when the dust has cleared I'll have to draw up my "communication map" that shows how it all fits together.

b.r.b. drawing a communication map

Kickstarter Assault: The Stairs

We're now in the one-week countdown for the Trilemma Adventures Compendium Kickstarter! During the campaign, I'll be running a dungeon assault scenario, where backers help direct the forces.

As we count down the final seven days until launch, I'll be answering questions about the scenario, and using your input to direct Grinvolt's preparations.

Preparations Begun

Four preparations have begun so far:

1. Quarter-Lord Counobel, commander of the Grinvolt garrison occupying the upper level of the Sun Temple, has sent word in three directions for reinforcements to join the attack.

2. At Eamon's suggestion, , has started spreading false rumors word in Dust Town that he intends to abandon the garrison, in the hopes of misleading Dradkin spies.

3. Over on MeWe, Thaddeus Moore directed several men-at-arms to gather great quantities of oily leaves and to make great, two-handed fans, in case a huge smoky fire was needed.

4. Gathana, flametender and the garrison's priestess of Panur has decided to spend all of her time preparing a ritual of blinding light, which the Grinvolt axewives believe hurt Dradkin eyes.

What Is Known

Yesterday I got a question about Dradkin tactics, based on what Quarter-Lord Counobel observed during the battle.


Today's question is about the staircase down to the Dradkin fortress. Here's what is known about those:

1. The spiral stair down to the fortress is long, at least 200 steps.

2. They are large, wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side. It's definitely wide enough for a boulder. (There are plenty outside that could be fetched, and hewn into a round-enough shape to be rolled down.)

3. In the chaos of victory six years ago, three axewives descended on their own; they found a cavernous gallery, spanned by some sort of bridge. Only one returned, the other two were cut down by arrows, but their small lamp wasn't bright enough to illuminate the large chamber.

4. Some axewives wanted to attack downwards, but Counobel ordered a halt. He argued that their task was to stop the raids, and the stairs were easy to defend. The Dradkin would soon be starved down in their claustrophobic mine!

5. This was soon revealed as a false hope. The Dradkin showed no sign of surrender; the occasional breeze on the stairs suggested there are other ways out. (Though none have been found in the surrounding area.)

6. Counobel maintains a guard post at the top. They keep a cauldron of hot oil on a bed of coals, with orders to pour it down if the Dradkin attack in force. At first the guards were in pairs, but as the Grinvolt numbers have dwindled, the duty is now a lonely one.

7. It is common for the guards to report the sounds of Dradkin far below; occasional shouts, metal-on-stone clanking.

8. The rumor among the camp followers in Dust Town is that some of the axewives have been bribed by the Dradkin for information, and may even have allowed spies. Counobel has dismissed this as unthinkable, but weird gems continue to show up in circulation. The story is always that yet another cache has been found behind the limestone wall panels.

Taking the Sun Temple

Spwack asked a great question in the comments.

"Has Counobel learnt anything about dradkin tactics from the first assault? Perhaps that might influence the final push to the last fortress."


That's an excellent question! Here's what Counobel knows about Dradkin tactics:

1. Dradkin don't seem to like daylight; raids on Grinvolt farms were always at night, and no scouts have been encountered in the day (though they may have been hiding).

2. The approach to the Sun Temple itself was unimpeded. The entrance faces west, and the entry chamber lights up spectacularly at sunset. Gathana believes the Dradkin both revere and fear the blinding sun and the surface world in general.

3. The upper level of the Sun Temple seems to be primarily a place of worship. Despite the raids they had launched on the surface from this complex, there were almost no warrior-caste Dradkin present at the time of the attack.

4. The idea that there is a fortress below came from the few surviving/captured Dradkin. As described, the purpose of the fortress was to prevent attack from below, not from the surface. (The Dradkin view the complex as a sort of mountaintop monastery, a 'high altitude' place from their perspective.)

5. The first Grinvolt casualties fell in the round chamber. They were ignored in the first moments of the assault, but when they were checked later, they had no visible wounds, but their skin was crusted with salt. Common belief is they were stricken by a curse, but the warriors don't like to talk about it.

6. The area that is now a barracks was occupied by half-starved Dradkin, who put up little resistance. The area was either a prison, monastic cells for penitents, or some combination of the two. Wall engravings imply that surviving on scarce food is a moral virtue among Dradkin.

7. "Dust Town" (apparently a mine) was fully equipped with tools for digging through the loose, gravelly coprolith, but it seems to have been inactive at the time of the attack.

8. The Dradkin put up a good fight in the Night Temple, owing to the twisty entrance. The score of Dradkin there were armed only with knives and long sticks, (and no armor over their leather garments), but they used the choke point effectively, barricading it with a stone pew.

After a five-minute stalemate of violent shoving and stabbing, the Dradkin allowed a small number of Grinvolt axewives to slip into the chamber, only to topple a second stone pew in front of the entrance. The exhausted axewives were killed before the rest of the attackers could dislodge the barricade.

Once that happened, the Dradkin line broke and they were cut down both there, and in what are now Gathana's workrooms.

9. The most difficult fight was in the segmented hallway leading to stairs downward, against a group of eleven Dradkin, apparently heavy infantry trained in close-ranked fighting.

The Dradkin infantry had what later became known as tomb shields: heavy tower shields with a low step for the user to obtain a small height advantage. The Dradkin blocked the corridor with a fan of tomb shields, trying to buy time for a small number of reinforcements to arrive from below.

Grinvolt had little experience with close-ranked siege fighting, being more used to intra-clan warfare involving longboat raids: loose-formation fights and ambushes with spear, axe, and sling. They were unprepared for the wall of tomb shields, and retreated when the Dradkin second rank opened up with heavy crossbows.

In an apparent tactical mistake, the Dradkin pursued, abandoning their shields. Counobel believes the Dradkin did this because they didn't realize there were so many enemies present in the complex, and thought they had routed a small group of raiders.

The Dradkin infantry made it to the central chamber, but immediately found themselves flanked by axewives coming south from the Night Temple (where the fighting was now done). They made a stand there, and killed 6 axewives before they were themselves killed.

10. Dradkin infantry wear scale-like armor made from chips of bone and metal, sewn onto a three-layered leather vest. (Dradkin seem to use no woven cloth.) The armor is tied on from the back with leather ties, and several of the Dradkin' vests were not tied in their haste to ascend the long stair and retake the Sun Temple.

They were armed with short, spear-like weapons, only a pace and a half long: a wide, stabbing blade affixed to long, bone handle.

11. Tomb shields are as tall as a man, but only a pace in width, and notched to interlock with other shields on either side. They are made of layers of tough fungus, matted together with pitch or resin. Axes cut into them easily, but are likely to get stuck.

Gathana said that the runes on the exterior of the shields were cursed, and would entomb the souls of any who died in front of them (hence the name). She transcribed the runes, then ordered them all burned outside.

Kickstarter Scenario: Assault

As I mentioned, I'm Kickstarting a compendium of my adventures on May 1. I thought we'd have a little fun while it's running: an all-out assault on a dradkin fortress. We'll resolve it during the campaign, a crowd-sourced dungeon battle!

The Scenario

In a Patron-only adventure, "A Clutch of Shadows," I laid out the scenario of a garrison of Grinvolt axewives and men-at-arms, occupying an underground Dradkin 'sun temple'.

The temple is a gateway to the underworld, and has been the source of raids on Grinvolt lands for decades. In a rare display of cohesion, the Grinvolt clans came together to assault it. They surprised the Dradkin, and although they lost many brave warriors, they managed to seize the upper level of the complex.

For the six years since the original attack, Quarter-Lord Counobel has kept a precarious grip on the complex. The morale of the occupiers has faded, and now with the Sun Temple's treasures carted away, so has foreign interest and the money that it brought. Grinvolt songs don't sound so cheery underground, and the echoes of glory won't bring food to the tables. Many have drifted away, returning to their fishing boats and goat pens.

Unfortunately, the Dradkin threat is not gone. Leading down from the Sun Temple is a long, narrow stair, leading to a Dradkin fortress—still occupied by the Dradkin. They have spent the years preparing for a counter-attack. Dradkin spies move among the camp fires of dust town, learning the weaknesses of the occupiers.

Meanwhile other, more horrible preparations are being made below.

Gathana, garrison's flametender seems lost in her research into Dradkin runes and offers no counsel, but Counobel knows in his bones that the garrison's days are numbered. If it falls, all the lives that were spent securing the Sun Temple will have been for nothing, and Dradkin will once more raid the surface with impunity.

He makes a fateful plan: he will spend the last of his influence on a summons, calling back every warrior willing to return to the darkness. When they have assembled, they attack the fortress below.

The Fortress Revealed

When the Kickstarter launches on May 1, I will describe the opening moments of the attack, and reveal a new isometric map, showing the first chambers of the Dradkin fortress!

Every time a campaign stretch goal milestone goal is hit, I will reveal another section of the Dradkin fortress, and describe the progress of the battle.

How the Grinvolt warriors carry out their attack is up to you. During the Kickstarter campaign, I'll be running polls and taking feedback in the comments. What orders does Counobel give? Surface warriors need to use their brains to defeat prepared soldiers of the underworld on their home turf. Six years ago, Grinvolt defeated an unprepared enemy. It won't be as easy this time.

Adventure Location: Aftermath

Counobel's attack may succeed, but it could also fail tragically. Either way, if the right stretch goal is hit, I will take the revealed map and write it up as a new adventure location to be included in the compendium.

The adventure will describe the dradkin fortress in the aftermath of the attack. The battle itself will belong only to those of you involved during the Kickstarter campaign, but whatever happens will leave a legacy for others to explore in play.

The Forces of Grinvolt

Right now, it's ten days before the Kickstarter—ten days before Counobel orders the attack. Here is the disposition of the surface forces:

• Counobel, Quarter-Lord of Grinvolt and commander of the garrison
• Gathana, flametender and priestess of Panur
• 18 axewives (one disgraced) and their families
• 11 men-at-arms, half with families

As well, about a hundred camp followers live within the complex (most of them in 'Dust Town'). The garrison has been faming the lands surrounding the sun temple. The soil is rocky and ill-suited to the clans' traditional crops, but another hundred non-combatants live outside in a slowly growing.

Counobel sent out three messengers a month ago:

• His cousin sailed to Halet Girm with the last of the silver, and is returning with two longboats and 15 men-at-arms.
• Akum went north into Haverlow, but drank from an ill-fated pond and has lost his senses.
• Counobel's daughter Rolan went northeast to Grinvolt. She secured oaths from 13 axewives that they would join the attack. She then decided press further. She found none in Slumbering Tealwood, but two days ago she reached the pass at Splitpeak. As I write this, she can smell the smoke from High Kellan.

(The Sun Temple is in hex 0716, on the south edge of the map.)

Final Preparations

With ten days left, what preparations should Counobel command? Will the axes of the Grinvolt warriors be enough, or should they concoct some other scheme for fighting in the cramped tunnels? Should he send a scout down below, or will that risk a counter-attack before he's ready?

Put your thoughts in the comments!

Compendium Kickstarter: May 1

UPDATE: WE'RE LIVE ON KICKSTARTER

All right, the date is set! The Trilemma Adventures Compendium will be Kickstarting on May 1. If you want an email notification when it launches, sign up on the right-hand sidebar.

The book will contain 48 adventures, regions and settlements, along with a table of contents, adventure summaries (so you can choose quickly), and a full index. (Curious how bad the isopod infestation is? Now you can find out.)

Everyone who backs (at any level) immediately gets the two-page adventure, Clutch of Shadows, in which a garrison of Grinvolt is trying to hold a captured dradkin Sun Temple. On May 1, I will reveal the first section of the still-occupied fortress, deep below the temple.

When the Kickstarter campaign begins, so does the assault. Trying to pre-empt a dradkin counter-attack, the assembled warriors of Grinvolt will fight their way down into the fortress. Every backer represents a soldier in the assault, and as the campaign hits milestones, more of the map will be revealed.

As well as more map, each milestone also unlocks a random stretch goal. The Grinvolt force doesn't know what it's going to find down there, old-school style.

I'm keeping the campaign low risk - I want to get this thing shipped so I can get back to making adventures. Still, I can't resist putting in a few goodies on the treasure table. If the campaign goes well, the book stands to include things like:

• A big table of leads and adventure hooks, all pointing to the adventures
• A new scenario, set in the aftermath of the assault on the dradkin fortress
• A bestiary, consolidating descriptions of the nearly 100 monsters in the adventures
• An updated version of the big campaign map, turning the separate adventures into a sandbox
• Two-page regional gazetteers, in the style of Cleft of Five Worlds, or Roots of Ambition

If the right milestones are hit, there could also be separate bestiary PDFs with stats for B/X, Dungeon World, or both.

The book itself is a hardcover from DriveThruRPG, printed in premium color on heavyweight paper. It's a wide book, in fabulous landscape letter - flop it open behind your GM's screen and you're ready to go.

If you'd like an email when the campaign goes live (or when new adventures are published), you can sign up to the mailing list on the right-hand nav bar over there on the right [waves pretend hands].

On May 1, we descend!

Kickstarter Plans

Time to talk a little bit about my upcoming adventure compilation, which I'm going to Kickstart this year. All of this is tentative, but I figured it can only be helpful to open up my plans and get some feedback.

What will it be?

I'm taking all of my adventures, and putting them into a book. By the time I'm ready, there will be something like 45 of them, all lovingly written up and illustrated.

Beyond this, they will all be:

• All re-edited, and in some cases rewritten for clarity
• Brought up to the same stylistic look and feel of the newer ones
• Replacing a map or two (Steeps of Ur-Menig is really bad)

It will also contain the adventure A Clutch of Shadows, which was never widely released. There will of course be a brand-new compilation-only adventure! Maybe a couple.

The Format

As you may know, some of my adventures are landscape-letter, and some are portrait (tall and skinny). I'm reformatting all of them to have the same orientation, the super-wide and cinematic letter landscape.

If all goes well, there will be three formats to choose from:

A hardcover edition, something on the order of 110 pages. A little more depending on stretch goals. For comparison purposes, this is the of the classic 1e Monster Manual, but of course turned sideways. This is an unusual format, but I think it works really well with the layout.

A saddle-stitched edition. This will come as two or three slim books—stapled, with no spine, they will lie flat. This version is meant to be spread out behind your GM's screen, with everything you need to run one of the adventures right there.

A PDF of the single-volume edition.

Fulfilment

At this point, I'm looking seriously at DTRPG POD for the printing. I'm going to be carefully looking at samples before this is for sure, and it does have the "buy twice" symptom: people will pay once for the Kickstarter, which gives them a coupon for an at-cost copy from DTRPG, with shipping charges worked out at the last moment.

This feels like the right move for me to Kevin Crawford this to a sensible conclusion, in a way that works both for backers and the complexities of my life.

This lets me keep the project very DIY, while at the same time reducing shipping charges for European customers ('cause copies can be printed in Europe).

Extra Content

Here are the types of extra content I'm planning. I'm deliberately keeping the stretch goals modest. My plan is to try to complete the project very soon after funding, so stretch goals that jeopardize this are not an option. No T-shirts, buttons, or anything else I don't know how to make myself. Nor anything that depends on stretch goal writers.

Although.. I have been working with some fabulous guest writers recently, and that will continue over the coming months. In a sense, I'm picking writers I've really been wanting to work with before the Kickstarter campaign, which is a little bit like knocking out stretch goals before the campaign starts. :P

When I ran a poll many moons ago, by far the biggest request for additional content was gazetteer information about the world these adventures are set in. I'm planning to have a few pages on the major regions, and the history of the place. There will probably also be a few regional random encounter tables.

EDIT: A section on hooks for one-shots. What should the party be trying to do in order to engage with the adventure most fully?

I'm seriously considering a section on how to chain adventures together to form larger campaigns. There are some obvious links now, such as Oracle's Decree -> Roots of Ambition -> Lair of the Lantern Worm, and the various underworld adventures that lead to City of the Carreg. Then there are less obvious links, like Circle of Wolves -> Chains of Heaven.

There are now enough new creatures and unusual peoples in the adventures to warrant a short bestiary. This will likely be a paragraph on each creature, as well as systemless awesome stuff they do in combat. This will look a little like a Dungeon World monster stat block, just without numbers.

More detail on the magical items and treasures in the adventures.

Maaaaybe Stretch Goals

Color plates of select adventures—what would it look like from an adventuring party's perspective to arrive at this place?  I have already had one commissioned, and holy snot it's so cool to see it painted. If I go this route (if the math works out), then I might do a few more as a color insert in the middle of the book.

System-specific stats for the bestiary. Probably (in order of likeliness):

• OSR-friendly B/X or Lamentations stats
• Dungeon World
• 5e (maybe)

What Do You Think?

What kind of feedback am I hoping for?

1. That sounds great, especially ____________________
2. I'm interested in this project, but I would much rather buy ______________
3. I have run a Kickstarter of this sort and don't forget ________________