Designing your own playbooks, Final day of the AL&L print KS
over 2 years ago
– Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 07:12:21 PM
If you’re interested in hacking an existing playbook or even creating a fresh playbook from scratch, last week April shared some invaluable insight on how to do it. From creating moves to including down beats and tackling conditions, it’s a helpful little designer’s diary into the nuances and interplay of moves in Thirsty Sword Lesbians. You can read the full post here.
Final day for Advanced Lovers & Lesbians print Kickstarter!
We’re down to the last 24 hours of our campaign to fund a print version of Advanced Lovers & Lesbians. As backers of TSL, you’ve all had access to the final, complete PDF of AL&L for two weeks now. It really showcases some outstanding work by a diverse team of talent from across the indie tabletop scene and we’re extremely proud of the end result. We hope you’re enjoying it too.
If you’d like to hold this work in your hands, now is the time to back! We’re fully funded and nearly 1500 supporters are already on board. We’ll be giving AL&L the same lavish treatment we gave the print edition of Thirsty Sword Lesbians: matte cover, digest format, full-color interior to show off all that gorgeous art.
But the book is not the only thing included in the AL&L campaign. We’ve got extensive support for Roll20 on deck: 270+ tokens, handouts, backgrounds, and for the first time: Compendium support. Check out this YouTube overview from Sean Nittner for a quick look at the bounty of Roll20 goodies we have lined up.
Remember, this is a quickstarter. The Roll20 rewards will go out in December (next month!) and the physical book is targeted for March of next year.
And one final assurance: If you can’t back the KS right now for whatever reason, both the Roll20 modules and the print book will see wide release. And that includes physical books going to distributors and game shops overseas. We haven’t forgotten about you international backers, we’ve just had too many logistical snags develop over the past year. That’s forced us to limit our reach.
The print version of Advanced Lovers & Lesbians will be just as big, bold, and beautiful as TSL. We hope you put a copy on your shelf. Pledge now: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/evilhat/advanced-lovers-and-lesbians/
ALL the stretch goals! PLUS: You asked for it, we’re doing a print edition!
over 2 years ago
– Tue, Nov 09, 2021 at 01:11:58 AM
Hello friends,
A little less than a year after the Thirsty Sword Lesbians kickstarter closed and we are proud to say that today we are delivering the last of your stretch goals!
You got the book (in print and/or PDF). You got the print-on-demand codes. The many, many backers who pledged for the Roll20 Campaign Module have been enjoying that for months.
And now we’ve got all those stretch goals you helped fund: 10 playbooks, 20+ settings, 4 adventures and more. It’s 272 pages of additional content for Thirsty Sword Lesbians - all fully-illustrated in gorgeous color, professionally laid out, proofread, edited and ready for you to download today.
It’s an expansion we’ve titled Advanced Lovers & Lesbians and you can download the complete, final PDF here: https://tsl.backerkit.com/backer/digital_rewards
We want to thank you for your passion and support. With your help we were able to hire an all-star team assembled from the best and brightest of the indie RPG scene and commission beautiful, full-color artwork that captures the full spectrum of characters you can play as part of the diverse, expansive, and unabashedly queer worlds found inside.
We sincerely hope that Advanced Lovers & Lesbians takes your game to new horizons and highlights the game’s universal themes of found family and deep emotional connections. With this release, the Thirsty Sword Lesbians campaign comes to an end.
Or does it?
Today we proudly launch the KS for the print edition of Advanced Lovers & Lesbians.
It’s the same hardcover 6 x 9 digest format as Thirsty Sword Lesbians and just like TSL it also features a matte cover and full-color interior. It’s nearly 50 pages bigger than the original TSL and the gorgeous art should jump off the page.
While it’s a kickstarter, this effort is more of a quickstarter: The campaign timeframe is just over two weeks, there are no stretch goals, and delivery turnaround will be very quick. We have a quote from our printer in hand and have a high degree of confidence you’ll have your physical copy of Advanced Lovers & Lesbians delivered in March of 2022.
One extra offering we’re excited to include in the campaign is the Advanced Lovers & Lesbians Roll20 Campaign Module and Compendium. We’ve leveraged the development skills we’ve learned over the past year and compiled all the playbooks, settings, and adventures in AL&L into a robust, lavish module for Roll20 that includes tokens, art, and a fully-linked Compendium. All the content from AL&L is available right there in Roll20. No need to share the PDF or have another tab open - you and your entire group can click through the rules and adventures natively within Roll20.
Are there any differences in this from the PDF we just got? No, the content is the same, these are just alternate formats that were not a part of the original TSL campaign. If you’re happy with using the PDF, you’ve got everything that’s in Advanced Lovers & Lesbians.
However, so many of you asked, “Will all of this great stretch goal material be available in print?” And today, we’re happy to enthusiastically say YES!
We hope you will check out the kickstarter and say YES! too.
Profile Name Change Notice
over 2 years ago
– Sat, Sep 18, 2021 at 04:06:23 AM
To long-standing backers of Evil Hat, I apologize for the up-to-15-other copies of this message you're going to see. We've asked Kickstarter to change our profile name to drop the "Fred Hicks /" part off the front of it, and they sound agreeable to it but want us to update every project with a notification and explanation of the change before they'll do it. The reasons for the change are (at least) threefold:
- I'm often not the one actually running our Kickstarters these days; it's a team effort now and I'm only sometimes on that team
- I'm not necessarily going to be at Evil Hat forever, so it'd be weird if Evil Hat's KS account made it look otherwise
- The formatting of the profile name "Fred Hicks / Evil Hat Productions" means that every dang project has launched as Such-And-So by Fred Hicks / Evil Hat Productions, and... it's very rare that I'm actually the primary author (if author at all) on our projects here, so it reads pretty misleading (to me) to suggest that these wonderful games are "by" me. They're published by a company I founded, the company running our Kickstarters, so that's where the focus should be.
Wow, you got to the end of the list? You really are a dedicated fan! Fingers crossed — soon our profile name should be simply "Evil Hat Productions", and you too can experience the glorious mostly-irrelevant change as well.
Thank you as always for your support and attention.
The Reckoning: Revenue, Expenses, and Other Data
almost 3 years ago
– Fri, Jul 23, 2021 at 05:54:58 PM
Hi there folks! Fred here. Publisher. Data guy.
I figured some of y'all might like to see how the numbers settled out for this campaign's revenue vs. expenses, so here's a high level break-down.
The Breakdown: Revenue vs Expenses
Revenue:
- Kickstarter, after payment processor & KS cut: Just under $270k ($269,822.06 to be exact)
- Backerkit, where we did our preorders and add-ons and so forth: ~$31k
Total starting revenue: ~$301k ($301,388.06)
Expenses:
- Marketing & Miscellany (mostly marketing): ~$27k
- Thirsty Sword Lesbians book development (text & art): ~$30k (art was over $21k of that; April's writing gets compensated through royalties; remaining text costs were for editing, system development, contributor settings authors, sensitivity reading, indexing, etc)
- Advanced Lovers & Lesbians stretch goals development (text & art): ~$61k (art budget is ~$27k of that, ~$34k for the authors & editors)
- Manufacture of the physical books: 10,500 units cost ~$39k to print
- Download codes for the Roll20 module: ~$11k
- Freight: ~$4k to get things from the printer to our US and UK points of distribution
- Shipping: $40k to get books to backers
- Project management, social media, customer service, graphic design, Roll20 character sheet and module development: $0, we do all those things in-house at Evil Hat and get our salaries covered by things like our cut of the profits.
Total expenses: just shy of ~$213k (some rounding in the above numbers) — a little over 70% of our starting revenue.
Remaining profit: A little over $88k to be divided between Evil Hat Production and Gay Spaceship Games!
Other Data & Trivia (not to be confused with our art director)
As far as the replacements effort we did after gathering folks' replacements requests over the course of June (see prior updates), that cost us around $6k, but as that came about due to mistakes made by the book manufacturer, we expect them to pick up that part of the deal, so that's not factored into any of the above.
According to the tallies in BackerKit, what we're delivering with all this is...
- ~5300 hardcover copies of TSL (with complimentary PDF)
- ~3000 TSL PDFs
- ~3500 community copies of TSL
- ~2600 Roll20 modules for TSL
- ~8000 stretch goal PDFs (in development for at least a few more months)
... and we couldn't have done it without your enthusiasm and support. Thank you, as always!
All the things!
almost 3 years ago
– Wed, Jun 09, 2021 at 04:18:15 PM
Greetings,
Today is the official Thirsty Sword Lesbians release date, but there is so much more. Here’s all the deets:
Thirsty Sword Lesbians in stores
Thanks to your enthusiasm and financial support, Thirsty Sword Lesbians is available to the general public, starting today. We’re so grateful for your help in bringing this great game to market. If you have friends who missed the Kickstarter, they can pick up a copy online or at their Friendly Local Gaming Store (FLGS)! And, as with any Evil Hat book, Thirsty Sword Lesbians is covered by our PDF Guarantee. If they buy a copy in stores, they can email [email protected] with a copy of the receipt and we’ll send them the PDF absolutely free.
Print on Demand Codes available
All backers at the Flirt ($15) level and above will receive codes through BackerKit for an at-cost softcover print-on-demand copy (or multiple copies if you want them) through DriveThruRPG. Look for an email notification from BackerKit, or you can check your account and access all the other digital rewards at https://tsl.backerkit.com/backer/digital_rewards
The codes can be redeemed on DriveThruRPG. Note that the cost for premium color printing through DriveThru RPG is going up by about $10 on July 1, 2021 so we suggest you purchase a copy before then!
Thanks to your generous support we have a number of community copies available on evilhat.itch.io/thirsty-sword-lesbians! If you have any friends experiencing financial hardship feel free to point them at the itch page to claim a community copy.
Roll20 Compendium and Expanded Bundle Available
When we launched the KS for Thirsty Sword Lesbians last fall we had the confidence and experience with Roll20 to create the Roll20 Campaign Module, which everyone at the Cyber Flirt, Cyber Smitten, and Nice pledge levels received. In the eight months since, we’ve leveled up our skills with Roll20 to the point that we are now releasing a compendium for Thirsty Sword Lesbians. What is the difference?
The short version is that the Campaign Module contains everything you need to play except the rules themselves. (Not a huge issue for backers since you all got, at minimum, the PDF) With the Thirsty Sword Lesbians Compendium, you get the rules, completely integrated into Roll20. No need to tab between windows, if you need to look something up you can do that right there in the search bar within Roll20. The compendium also contains all the settings, and adventures in Thirsty Sword Lesbians!
Curious about playing Thirsty Sword Lesbians on Roll20? Check out our walk-through videos here.
Stretch Goals available in BackerKit
Finally, we’re very excited to share prototype previews of the Advanced Lovers & Lesbians and Diceless Dueling stretch goals PDFs! These prototype PDFs are text complete but don’t have the final polish on them yet. We’re still working on proofing, indexing, and art development. But they’re fully playable and ready for anyone who wants to play one of the (many!) stretch goal options we unlocked. As with all our other digital rewards, you can access these PDFs through BackerKit at https://tsl.backerkit.com/backer/digital_rewards
We expect the final version of Advanced Lovers & Lesbians to clock in at over 250 pages. Many folks have asked whether we’ll offer print copies and we have to admit, that sounds like a great idea! But until all the steps of proofing, indexing, and art are finalized, we’re not quite ready to make that call. We’re commissioning a ton of art for AL&L and we expect that will take five to six months to complete. By then we’ll have a better sense of how retail sales are going and whether or not printing a supplement book would be viable. We’re crossing our fingers that Thirsty Sword Lesbians receives the same support in retail as you’ve all given it on Kickstarter!
The good news is that this timeframe gives us plenty of opportunities to fix any typos or errors in the material before it’s finalized. If you spot an error in Advanced Lovers & Lesbians please let us know through this feedback form. We’ll have the form open till July 15.
Thank You!
It’s a big update, we know. It’s a big day. We’re so excited to get Thirsty Sword Lesbians out into the hands of the public for gamers everywhere to enjoy. We couldn’t have done it without your passion and support. We’re grateful to you for making this terrific game a reality. Thanks!
