Brazer Bulletin — Kickstarter
If you have never heard of Kickstarter let me acquaint you. The basic idea behind the site is that there are a lot of good ideas out there that never get the necessary funding to realize their idea. Unlike Jodie Foster did in Contact, the people that pitch their ideas on Kickstarter do not need millions of dollars but only a thousand. With this smaller amount needed, the creative people with the idea do not need to ask heads of megacorporations, but everyday people. If one hundred people believe in the idea enough to give ten dollars, that is one thousand raised towards the project and no one sacrificed much more than a delivered pizza to make it happen.
In the RPG industry this has been largely been used as a way to pre-order an independently produced role-playing game. In return for their contributions, the creators have done things from allowing the contributors to name locations in the settings to the creator going to you and running a personalized game just for you and your friends.
A little over a month ago I started my own Kickstarter campaign. Unlike previous kickstarters, I am attempting to raise money to for a project that I am not going to make any money on. I want to give a Pathfinder adventure away for Free RPG Day. And while some large companies have the resources to do this with little risk that it will sink their company, that is not so with small companies like mine. However, getting my gaming material in the hands of hundreds of game stores that have not yet heard of me and my company is far to great an opportunity to simply pass up.
It is for this reason that we started the Kickstarter campaign. To date we have raised enough to get one book in every Free RPG Day box, but books in such small quantities tend to be reserved for the store’s regular game masters. So we are coming to you to help us raise more. Our goal is to get to $3000 dollars total. This will be enough for us to get 3 free adventures in every box. This way people that have never heard of Pathfinder compatible publishers can peruse the adventure, realize that it would work in their home game and then seek out additional Pathfinder support from us compatible publishers.
So now I am asking you. Would you please contribute to our Kickstarter campaign. With your help, we can help give people more choice on Free RPG Day as well as help make people aware of the awesome work that is being done by the Pathfinder compatible publishers.
Dale C. McCoy Jr. is President on Jon Brazer Enterprises. Support our Kickstarter campaign to print a Shadowsfall adventure and give it away on Free RPG Day.
December 14th, 2011 7:12 PM
I can attest to the brilliance that is Kickstarter.com! Over the summer I ran a project to raise money for the art I needed to create two books for my campaign setting, Age of Lords. Not only did I match my goal, I almost doubled it! I hope to have another this summer to cover costs on two more setting specific books I wish to release in 2013. Count me in as being on board for this project, I think it’s a great idea.
December 15th, 2011 12:19 PM
I’ve had bad luck with Kickstarter. I think it is a pretty awesome idea, but only when the creators follow through.