Troll Lord Games

Kickstarter for those of you who don't hang out on G+, FB, etc... from the author of the series....

" A glimpse of some of the character classes in the three new Codices for everyone: Haliruna ('Witch'), Drachentoten ('Dragonslayer'), Erilaz ('Runemaster'), Molfar ('Shaman'), Koldun ('Sorcerer'), Djadadiji or Vampirdzhija ('Vampire/Witch Hunter'), Nekuomanteia ('Necromancer'), Gladiator, Adventurer/Explorer, and Pythia ('Oracle'). This doesn't even count all of the extra racial elements from the many cultures to put in deriving from Slavic and Classical belief. These books will be packed with Mythic mightiness unlike you have seen before! The Kickstarter is already at the next goal ($15,000+) and there is even a secret door around the corner if we get there....will we get there?"

Based upon looking at the Amazing Adventure and Victorious Kickstarters; between $18K and $20K should be earned. I hope it is more though.

JLL

I would jump on this, but financially the timing just SUCKS for me.

Go0gleplex wrote:I would jump on this, but financially the timing just SUCKS for me.

Yep. They couldn't have wait until the end of September to launch?

R-

Just to be sure you know, and in case it is an option that can work for you, the $1 option allows you to buy one or 2 of the books instead of all 3.

Treebore wrote:Just to be sure you know, and in case it is an option that can work for you, the $1 option allows you to buy one or 2 of the books instead of all 3.

I know, I still don't have the extra cash right now. I'll just wait for a pdf sell, and then pick the paper copies up when I can.

R-

Kind of the same boat. Had a mail mix up with the ex's forwarding and I didn't get paychecks on time, so am dealing with that fallout.

Understood. I had to think about it as well, with all the CC debt I accrued taking three 9 to 14 day vacations 3 months in a row. In combination with my renters moving out this month, and having to wait and see how long I have to pay the full mortgage on that house. So I had to sit down and figure everything out months in advance, and decided to go ahead an back it. If life co operates, I'll have everything paid for in about 5 months.

The jump from I think $99 to $249 was pretty steep... The "need for the books" is not the highest, but I like to support, the first two were nice, so I went with the "get me a copy" and help out a bit.. might have been willing to help a bit more,,, but the jump was too darn tall.

Trolls, drop in a level between $100 and $250, I might reconsider.

Captain_K wrote:The jump from I think $99 to $249 was pretty steep... The "need for the books" is not the highest, but I like to support, the first two were nice, so I went with the "get me a copy" and help out a bit.. might have been willing to help a bit more,,, but the jump was too darn tall.

Trolls, drop in a level between $100 and $250, I might reconsider.

Yeah, I have no idea what they can offer in between, but the $99 level gets me what I want, all 3 in print and PDF.

At $33 a book its well above what I assume sales price will be, but I assume I'm helping the game, the author, the Trolls, and I assume will be rewarded if others kick in with little cool bits and things... maybe a nice form fitting lid for the dice shaker so it becomes a carrier too!

Captain_K wrote:At $33 a book its well above what I assume sales price will be, but I assume I'm helping the game, the author, the Trolls, and I assume will be rewarded if others kick in with little cool bits and things... maybe a nice form fitting lid for the dice shaker so it becomes a carrier too!

Its $33 for print and PDF, plus whatever add ons make it in. So I look at it as $25 for each book, and $8 for each PDF, with anything else added on as gravy. Since we already have some add ons, we already have gravy.

Yeah, I guess I viewed the pdf as "free with the book"... but they really are two different things and both have value, I'm willing to pay for both... that view makes the deal even sweeter. The three sisters has been well with the investment, the extras are great.

Aside: How bad is "book theft" in pdf format? I like print format as it keeps folks honest. Once that pdf gets out there folks it seems to go all sorts of places for free and the authors and publishers get screwed... is our group of CnC folks pretty good about buying their copies?

Well, since I don't follow the pirating communities, I have no idea. I do know that when I put in a search to see if a given book has a PDF version available, torrent links get offered, so it appears as if the Pirates are very thorough.

That was my fear, I would assume hard cover books would be out longer and pdf only for out of print, but it appear the trolls are a trusting lot.

Captain_K wrote:That was my fear, I would assume hard cover books would be out longer and pdf only for out of print, but it appear the trolls are a trusting lot.

I think they are just realists. Refusing to make PDF's available punishes their paying customers, and those who Pirate are one of two types, those who will never pay, regardless, and those who like to try it out for free, then buy products to support the system, author, musician, etc...

Plus, going print only doesn't stop the pirates. They know how to do OCR scanning, and do so.

Steve Jackson Games did lots of studies on their products when they started releasing PDFs and found that having PDFs available does not impact their sales of physical books.

mmbutter wrote:Steve Jackson Games did lots of studies on their products when they started releasing PDFs and found that having PDFs available does not impact their sales of physical books.

Yeah, that is the findings one tends to see outside of claims by the big music publishers, etc... In fact, I have seen people like Gaiman say that pirating helped increase his book sales. So the big profit mongers claim pirating hurts their profits, the small guys and independent studies find that they do no harm, or even help with sales. I tend to not believe the big profit mongers, so...

That makes me feel much better. They work so hard, all kidding aside, they have dedicated their lives basically for our "fun hobby", a big risk on their part and I'm happy to support.

Thanks for the detailed and factual info. I will use it very personally with my book.

Captain_K wrote:Aside: How bad is "book theft" in pdf format? I like print format as it keeps folks honest.

You can see the evolution of Steve Jackson Games over PDFs in his "Stakeholder" reports:

2005: "One thing you will not see in e23 is PDF versions of our new GURPS books. We know that some publishers are issuing their new books simultaneously in hardcopy and PDF. We are concerned about the effect this will have on the retailers, and unless something happens to remove that concern, our hardback books won't be available in PDF. Support products, of the sort that aren't normally economical for retailers to carry at all, will appear in PDF and not hardcopy."

2006: "Last year, I said, 'One thing you will not see in e23 is PDF versions of our new GURPS books. We know that some publishers are issuing their new books simultaneously in hardcopy and PDF. We are concerned about the effect this will have on the retailers, and unless something happens to remove that concern, our hardback books won't be available in PDF.' Well, over the last year, we saw continued fan interest in buying the new releases in PDFs, and retailers did not report any drastic bad effects from the availability of other publishers' products in both PDF and hardcopy. So we compromised. For now, at least, the GURPS Basic Set will remain available in hardcopy only, but other GURPS hardbacks will be released in PDF three months after they are available in stores. We may tighten or loosen this policy further as time goes on and the market sorts itself out."

2007: "We'll continue to offer PDF versions of our new GURPS books, but only after they are available in stores for three months. This was an experiment in 2006, and nothing bad has come of it."

2008: "The PDF versions of our new GURPS books will now be available after the hardcopy has been in stores for a month. We continue to see no evidence that PDF and hardcopy sales interfere with each other. In fact, PDF releases have created demand for short-run hardcopy editions of several GURPS supplements."

.... Somewhere in here SJG began selling the core GURPS Basic Set in PDF and releasing simultaneous in print and PDF versions, kinda quietly ....

2011: "The market for printed RPG books continues to shrink. The long-awaited release of GURPS Low-Tech, a full-color hardback, saw very disappointing sales. On the other hand, sales of the same title in PDF, and of the supplements in PDF, were good."

So, you can see the evolution from selling products in physical copies to selling them almost exclusively in PDF. Indeed, nowadays for GURPS products, SJG generally releases the PDF first and if demand is high enough will do either a POD batch or a full print run later.

There is one anecdote from my perspective:

If a product is only available in PDF, you'll not sell it to me.

I do know that is somewhat an oddity in the "digital media world."