Bloodfields: A Post-Mortem
Plus, a goofy new Mothership player class!
With the final backer rewards going out this week (with one frustrating exception) and some of the first retailer orders heading out as well, I figured I’d dig into the nitty-gritty publishing side of The Bloodfields at Blackstar Station project (which includes Ultimate Badass) and break down how it’s sold, the money it’s made, and more.
I know these types of posts can be helpful for folks that are just getting started and with this being my first time using Kickstarter, it seemed especially worth doing.
COSTS
Looking back on this now, it’s wild to think I spent nearly $20k all told to bring this project to life and get it out to everyone. My previous modules (like PIRAD ONE) had a total cost of less than $1k including art, printing, shipping, etc. so this was a HUGE jump in project scale.
Kickstarter/crowdfund projects really thrive off of eye-catching art. I can write the best modules I’ve ever written but it was my original cover art and having a wide variety of interior art from Roque that really let me elevate my campaign page, catch people’s eye on social media, and generally get people to click that link. Money spent on art is money well spent. I imagine I’ll commission even more (and do so earlier) for the Next Big Thing.
Printing and shipping costs were slightly elevated due to the supply chain and shipping lane issues over the last year, but thankfully, they never went beyond the buffers I’d built in when planning my pricing. Collecting shipping closer to fulfillment via Backerkit was also extremely helpful.
The contributor bonus stretch goal we hit during the campaign saw a 100% bonus for all of the main zine contributors (editing, interior art, patch design) so those costs are higher than originally paid out (but everyone absolutely deserved those bonuses for their stellar work and I can’t imagine ever doing a campaign like this and not having that kind of bonus built into it in the future).
SALES
So far, the entire project has seen nearly $27k in sales (including shipping) across the Kickstarter (the vast majority), retailers (the second largest source), and digital sales (a distant third). The Bloodfields zine has seen over 1,100 copies sold (over twice as much as my second best-selling module).
Backing out the various costs I laid out above, that leaves the overall project with a little over $7k in profit. This is essentially my pay for all of my work on the project (as I didn’t factor any sort of hourly or writing rate for myself into the rest of the tracking here). From an hourly rate perspective, I have no idea where I’d end up, but I’d expect it to likely fall somewhere in or below the minimum wage territory. If I choose to look on the bright side and calculate it out on a cents per word basis though that’s $0.84 per word which is pretty good (lol)!
I knew going in that the overall time and effort spent on the project would outpace the money I made. I intentionally underpriced the entire project in order to help gain more backers and get my work out to more folks (that’s part of the reason why the zine bundle retails for $10 USD more than it was available for during the KS campaign). In the future, this definitely won’t be the case.
The reception I’ve received has been quite positive, though things like play reports are always fairly slow to come in. It often takes months for folks to get something new to the table, even if it’s on the top of their pile (and most folks are waiting on their physical copies). I look forward to reading more folks’ thoughts and experiences on it in the future. Ultimate Badass has gotten a lot of consistent talk on Reddit, Discord, etc. which has been great to see. I’m glad folks are having fun tweaking Mothership in that way.
Overall, the project was a huge success, and while it may not have made as much money as it could have (or as I’d like projects of mine to make in the future), it did accomplish it’s goal of helping to kickstart (yes, I know…) my overall audience. It brought over 900 backers on board, helped me get (along with the Orbital Debris campaign) over 1,200 newsletter subscribers, and more. Most importantly though, it helped me prove to myself that I can manage and execute all the various facates of a project like this (and I’m looking forward to doing things more efficiently, more effectively, and a bit more smartly next time too).
Have any other inside-basebally questions about the project?
MISSIVE EXCLUSIVE: GALACTIC GONG FARMER
I have been playing and reading some Dungeon Crawl Classics recently and one of the more unique occupations player characters can have is “gong farmer.” For a long time, I just assumed it was a farmer that they’d given a game specific name - maybe they rang a gong when they were done in the fields or something. In truth, it’s funnier and grosser than I ever imagined:
Gong farmer was a term used to describe someone who dug out and removed human excrement from privies/cesspits. As the work was considered unclean and off-putting to the public, gong farmers were only allowed to work at night. The waste they collected, known as night soil, had to be taken outside the city or town boundary or to official dumps for disposal.
After learning this, I had the idea of making a Mothership class fitting this mold - basically a futuristic septic tank cleaner. What kind of skills would that entail? What has endlessly collecting and shipping human waste all over the void done to your body (and mind)?
Here’s the Galactic Gong Farmer, a brown-collar class for Mothership 1e:
You can grab a more printer-friendly version HERE.
Looking for Lophin - Pt. 2? It’s coming next month! I wanted to more fully flesh out the interior spread so we’ll add to the various locations, both mundane and strange, around the backwoods farm to fill out the interior pamphlet spread.
WICKED WANDERERS WINTER BUNDLE
Iko (of The Lost Bay Studio) recently reached out to me about bringing Papa Mush and Pallid Jailor, two of my Mork Borg supplements, to print. I jumped on the opportunity to join a slew of other cool creators and the bundle featuring those two supplements, along with 13 other things is available for pre-order NOW!
Papa Mush and Pallid Jailor are both featured here as double-sided, full-color A5 cards with revamped layout and extended bits on the second sides (weird shroom items, an enemy encounter, and a strange location)!
MORE COOL STUFF
Disaster Tourism will soon be kickstarting GUILD, a new fantasy TTRPG focused on working your way up through an adventurer’s guild, from hirelings and beyond. It’s got a load of unique procedures, a cool abstracted world, and some other takes on OSR-style gameplay that I’m excited to see in action.
I’ll be writing an adventure tentatively titled “The Tomb of Mother Vix” for the game if we are able to hit the appropriate stretch goal, and I really want to make it happen!
Follow the pre-launch page HERE to get notified when it launches on December 1st!
I did a read-through thread of Himbos of Myth & Mettle over on Twitter recently. Check it out before that site completely explodes!
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I’ve been creating some videos on RPG writing, design, and cool stuff in the space for the last few weeks over on TikTok.
I recently guested on RTFM where we talked about West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game from 1987, and I was REALLY surprised by how much I enjoyed it!
Iko started a call for newsletters from TTRPG folks on Twitter recently, and it’s a really great way to find dozens of other great newsletters from cool folks in the space. I’ve added a few new ones as well here as recommendations you should see on the Substack page.
Marco from SpicyTunaRPG recently launched a Kickstarter for the revamped version of Constant Downpour, now designed entirely for Mothership 1e. It’s a great looking book with a lot of cool add-ons and extra bits for those who really want to dig in. Check it out HERE!
Thanks for reading!
— Christian
Thanks for sharing the campaign post mortem, it's super useful, and congrats on the campaign success!!
+ Thank you for the shout out! Among highlighting some other great stuff going on in TTRPG land!