Path to Orek: Tomb-raiding adventure for Pathfinder 1E/2E

Across the finish line, and into the Beyond
about 3 years ago – Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 02:56:43 PM

Woo! Thank you all for welcoming Ramen Sandwich Press back into the Pathfinder fold. This campaign exceeded our expectations, and I'm more than satisfied with the results.

That being said, I have learned by now that the closing date of the campaign is really not the end; it just marks a transition between one state of existence and another. Nothing stops. We don't go into hibernation. At about this time next week, once Kickstarter has finished collecting your pledges (and please do make sure that they have your up-to-date credit card information), I hope to have Backerkit send out the backer survey and open the post-campaign store. There, you will have access to our backlist of titles and the chance to pick up extra print copies, or anything that isn't included in your pledge, at a discount to our normal price. 

I have the store pretty much ready to go, but I should double-check it before submitting it to Backerkit for their inspection. Among other things, we will offer some print copies of Book of Hidden Paths that are kind of dinged up from handling at about half-price.

Path to Orek and Path to the Royal Tombs are still in art/layout, but we are making steady progress. While waiting for the proofs to come back, I've been working obsessively on the next project that we will bring to Kickstarter, a modest system for critical hits and fumbles with the working title, Severed Heads and Broken Blades. I'm almost finished writing it. Because it focuses pretty tightly on the combat rules, it wasn't much trouble to make it guaranteed compatible with both editions of Pathfinder as well as D&D 5E, so there won't be any need to publish different versions for different systems. In fact, you could probably use it just fine with D&D 3E/3.5, and I'm sure the OSR crowd will figure out how to make it work for them as well.

Thank you again, and I'll keep in touch — at the latest, I'll post another update when the surveys go out and the Backerkit store opens up.

I'm done
about 3 years ago – Wed, Mar 08, 2023 at 01:13:18 PM

How's that for a clickbait title? Seriously, though: I am 'done' in that I sent off the manuscript for Path to the Royal Tombs to layout last night, so that phase of creating the rewards for this campaign is now finished. 

Path to Orek is moving nicely through art and layout. Once it's all laid out, I'll review it for final corrections, and then we'll be ready for PDF conversion and printing. Rinse and repeat for Path to the Royal Tombs. I don't have a reliable estimate for exactly when we'll be able to deliver, but it's safe to say that we are well within our projected schedule.

All of you may thank yourselves for that. This campaign funded earlier than I'd expected, which meant that I started writing earlier than expected, and everything followed on from that. 

Furthermore, I appreciate all of you who did not wait until the last minute to put down your marker because I am firmly convinced that you have helped us bring in more backers than we otherwise would have had. Allow me to share with you a graph of backer activity to date:

Most of the Kickstarter campaigns that we have run don't climb steadily like this. They usually plateau after the first several days, then pick up again at the very end. The last time we saw this steady accumulation of new backers during the middle weeks was our campaign for Book of Chance Meetings, which is our most successful one to date. I don't know this for a fact, but I strongly suspect that Kickstarter picks up this steady accumulation of interest and their algorithm then gives the campaign better placement in search and placement in recommendations. Which in turn drives even more backer activity and more funds raised. It also keeps things interesting for me during those middle weeks as I obsessively check the campaign dashboard. So, thank you for not waiting for the last minute to lend your support.

Another interesting note: This campaign has already exceeded our campaign for its D&D 5E-compatible counterparts, Tomb Raiders of Orek and Into the Royal Tombs, both in number of backers and funds raised! That is worth a huzzah! for the Pathfinder community, I think. Certainly, I am grateful for the assurance that returning to Pathfinder was a good bet after all.

I'll keep you all updated as we continue to make progress.

A progress report, because there is progress to report
about 3 years ago – Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 01:14:27 PM

It rained all weekend. And I do mean, it rained. We got over 4 inches on Saturday, and daytime high temperatures have been at least 10 degrees below normal since the middle of last week. Needless to say, I did not leave Ramen Sandwich HQ much. This left me plenty of time to blitz through Path to Orek, and I'm pleased to be able to announce that I handed over the manuscript to layout yesterday.

So we're making good progress. If I can make similarly impressive time in getting Path to the Royal Tombs ready, we can have the rewards into the art and layout stage before the campaign ends and we might be able to get them shipped to you ahead of schedule!

Thank you again to everyone who has backed this campaign so far. Unlike most of our Kickstarter campaigns, which tend to flatline in the middle weeks, we continue to draw a trickle of new backers and followers. All are welcome, no matter when you put down your marker or for how much, but I always take a pattern like this as a good sign. At least, it keeps things interesting before the inevitable rush to get in the door over the last couple of days.

Funded!
about 3 years ago – Tue, Feb 21, 2023 at 01:08:50 PM

It happened yesterday while I was flogging Ramen Sandwich Tees tote bags at Orccon 2023, and I'm just catching up with post-convention business today. Thank you to everyone who helped put us over the top! Our campaigns don't always fund this early, and it's always a relief because it means that I can ease off of pumping up the campaign on social media and the like, and concentrate on the actual work at hand.

In this case, it's also good to have some validation that revisiting Pathfinder was a good idea. Our campaign for Book of Hidden Paths was a bit of a gut punch, as it took an awful lot of urging to get it over the line; it's the closest we have ever come to an unqualified failure on Kickstarter. In fact, if it hadn't been for the backers who came in to scoop up extra stretch goal copies of Book of Chance Meetings, the D&D-compatible version of the book, it would have failed. D&D enthusiasts literally made the difference in a campaign for a Pathfinder-compatible product. That should be an instructive data point for anyone who wants third-party publishers to support Pathfinder — if you want third-party products, then you need to help support the third-party publishers.

Fortunately, I also saw an uptick in interest in Pathfinder at Orccon, too. More copies of Found by the Way sold than in the past, and also (interestingly enough) people who just wanted me to explain Pathfinder to them. As if the name has been floating around, sparking their curiosity. This is a marked change from how things were a year or two ago, when the only people interested in Found by the Way told me, "It doesn't matter whether it's D&D-compatible or Pathfinder-compatible, because I'm converting it to OSR anyway."

Now that we're funded, I will go ahead and start work on Path to Orek and Path to the Royal Tombs. Not today, because I'm still recovering a bit from the convention, and also because I need to catch up on another project. Some of you may know that GMT Games hired me to work with John Butterfield on his forthcoming solitaire board game Away Team, and I don't want to test their patience any more than I have already. But before the week is out, I will get into the conversion work and I expect that both modules will be in layout by the end of the campaign.

And away we go!
about 3 years ago – Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 12:29:07 PM

My traditional Day 1 update will have to be a quick one, I'm afraid, as I am scrambling to get ready for Orccon 2023 this weekend. But I do want to make it a point to thank everyone, old friends and new friends alike, for getting this campaign off to a strong start. We're almost 3/4 of the way to making Found by the Way 11 and 12 real, which is more progress than I had expected on Day 1!

If you're going to Orccon, stop by the Ramen Sandwich table in the Dealers Room; I'll look forward to meeting you. If not, please bear with me, as I probably won't be able to reply to questions and comments until after the convention. For now, excuse me while I try to assemble my new gridwall display after having cleverly dropped a section of the base on my foot.