Yes, I'm rather aware of that. I'm weighing my options, but I don't really have a lot of connections and obviously I don't have money to spend on advertising. I'm hoping to have everything sorted out within a month and be ready to go live. In the meantime, you can check it out if you like.
Aside from having run into a couple of guys who did something like this before--the name of their game escapes me, I spent all of about an hour seated next to them at a convention*--I'm a little bothered by the "statless system" that still has...well...stats. In order for things like a bell curve of success to be meaningful, the character needs to have some kind of recorded statistic that indicates how that bell curve applies to them. If they were a baker before being drafted, then their skill at Bakery should succeed more often than their skill at Archery (which they've never done before). And the only way to model that is through stats. Anyway, you haven't explained how your statless system accurately models medieval combat using the vague mechanics presented. For the roleplaying crowd, this kind of thing is important to them when examining a new system.
On money:
Indicate some rough budget that indicates how the indicated goal value will be used. A "40% of the money goes towards art, 10% towards Kickstarter fees, 25% towards xyz" etc. It doesn't need to be a perfect breakdown, but there are some known costs and figures that can be represented. The rest can be approximated. People aren't interested in knowing that the cover is going to be commissioned for "$600" while interior images will be "$120 each," just that "Y percent will go towards art." People backing a project want to see that you've at least picked a reasonable goal and that the costs you've put forward are reasonable.
Beyond that, you're going to encounter sheer resistance just in the market you're trying to penetrate: Dungeons & Dragons dominates the table-top roleplaying market. Each step down the popularity ladder is something like one fifth as large as the one above it. And there's a reason for this: it is incredibly difficult to get a gaming group to
try a new system and these crowds are incredibly stingy with their cash, unwilling to invest in a system that they cannot or will not play. I've been trying for
months, almost a year now, to get my group to try a game of
Our Last Best Hope.
Yes, you're aiming this for an online crowd, but even so, it is just as difficult to get a group together for an online, realtime, game as it is for an in-person game. As evidenced by the GURPS game I'm a part of. The GM had to cancel for this coming Saturday due to work being a bunch of incompetent morons, several people have issues with next Saturday. It's already been 2 weeks since the last game, going out another week to Oct 4th makes it
five weeks between sessions. If you're aiming for play-by-post, your style of game is not condusive to it: combat in a play-by-one-post-a-day is generally either non existent or resolved in around three posts (attack, counter, cleanup) so that the story--the part everyone's there for--can continue in a timely manner.
*He did explain their hit-location system though, which was pretty cool, and even demonstrated how you could hit someone's lower back using a sword and attacking from their front. It's basically momentum of a 'missed' swing passing over the shoulder and coming down against the back, with a slice as the attacker pulls back to a guard position again.
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Topic: When Kickstarter goes wrong? (Read 681036 times)