Numenera - Monte Cook's new thing

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Sep 26, 2012 6:04 am

I think you missed the point...

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Sep 26, 2012 6:11 am

Emerald wrote:(wait, prices go down instead of up for combo meals!?).

This is something that more games need. I'm not even joking: "here is your standard adventurer kit bundle, containing (50' rope, 10' pole, tent, blanket, bedroll, backpack, chalk, water flask, 1 week of rations, fishingrod, knife/hatchet, bag/pouch, ICBM, partridge in peartree) for (discounted amount of money, preferably some kind of "round down to a clean multiple of 10") would be handy. Along with "Paladin Combo Bundle: Half Plate, Large Shield, Warhammer, Holy Symbol, Lubricated Stick."

(Kind of like how Rifts gives each starting character a huge amount of adventuring items, typically involving a cross, stakes, 1d4 small bags, 1d6 large sacks, a small knife or laser scalpel, salt tablets, purified water, a gas mask, sunglasses or goggles, Japanese puzzle box, a silver dagger and "your choice of a motorcycle or hoverbike, or your MC might let you have a mecha".)

Having sets of abilities offered like that as well could really help people pick thematic groups of powers and also give the "lack of versatility" discount for taking seven different Fire powers. Speeds creation up, rewards taking iconic stuff/stuff that doesn't synergise well but is more just building off the same base idea, but still lets people go and spend each copper separately if they really have to.

Ninja Burger Combo Deals for the win! Do you want shuriken or fries with that?

infected slut princess · Mon Oct 01, 2012 2:09 am

Wow this Numenera Kickstarter is up to $517,000.

K · Post by K » Mon Oct 01, 2012 6:42 am

Yes, Monte has apparently won the RPG business. He really did parlay his reputation and vaporware into mad stacks of cash.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 6:59 am

Stacks of cash which are supposed to go into production of products with promised "sales." I don't know, but I would imagine that he will be held accountable for whatever happens with the money.

K · Post by K » Mon Oct 01, 2012 7:11 am

Prak_Anima wrote:Stacks of cash which are supposed to go into production of products with promised "sales." I don't know, but I would imagine that he will be held accountable for whatever happens with the money.

You don't even get a physical object until you get to the $60 level and that's the Core rulebook. The rest is PDFs.

So he essentially just sold around 2500 copies of his core book he hasn't written for $500K. I expect his print costs are around $30K, his mail costs are at most another $10-20K, and his digital distribution is probably as high as $5-10K. Minus the 15% that Kickstarter takes in, he's probably looking at $350K in pure profit after he pays his artist. That's around $350K for a few months work.

It's fucking genius. FUCKING GENIUS.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 8:10 am

Pity it requires the "I am Monte Cook" reputation.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 8:14 am

So, here are the approximate numbers of products, not including things that he could literally run out of an office printer and fulfill the promise (such as the exclusive adventure).

Core book 3454
Players Guide 831
3 set 32p Aventures 381
Bestiary 381
Sir Arthur's Comp. 195
Numenera dice 195
Vinyl GM Screen 195
Thunderstone (deckbuilding) 100

I'm not sure how all that affects print and shipping costs, but I'm sure there is a good deal less left. There are also other business expenses which he could easily justify using the money for, such as travel costs.

But essentially, yes, he did make a shit ton of money for creating convincing possible vapourware, and trading on his reputation and making a decently hefty promise to people. He has just under a year to deliver on this promise and not lose a bit of rep (latest delivery date is Aug 2013), which implies he's got good headway, especially given that he does have appearances and such to make. Basically what he's done is ensure he can spend the next year working solely on his own stuff and not having to pick up freelance or contract work to pay the bills and buy groceries.

Also, Kickstarter has this to say:

If I am unable to complete my project as listed, what should I do?

If you are unable to fulfill the promises made to backers, cannot complete the project as advertised, or decide to abandon the project for any reason, you are expected to cancel funding. A failure to do so could result in damage to your reputation or even legal action on behalf of your backers.

K · Post by K » Mon Oct 01, 2012 9:08 am

Prak_Anima wrote:So, here are the approximate numbers of products, not including things that he could literally run out of an office printer and fulfill the promise (such as the exclusive adventure).

Core book 3454
Players Guide 831
3 set 32p Aventures 381
Bestiary 381
Sir Arthur's Comp. 195
Numenera dice 195
Vinyl GM Screen 195
Thunderstone (deckbuilding) 100

I'm not sure how all that affects print and shipping costs, but I'm sure there is a good deal less left.

You have to break it down by the numbers of things that are PDFs and the ones that are print. For example, the adventures don't even start to get printed until the $180 level and almost no one took those, so he can actually just run those off on an office printer and staple them together with a cardstock covers like old 2e adventures used to be. It's literally an afternoon to fill all of those couple of hundred orders and mail them off.

As for his PDFs, those have no shipping costs or printing costs and so are basically pure profit minus very small fees for digital delivery (which might just be a server in his house so that people can download them or a small fee to a hosting site). The biggest costs there is buying the art and I expect he's probably paying $1K each for those.

Prak_Anima wrote: There are also other business expenses which he could easily justify using the money for, such as travel costs.

I'm sure he will. He just got seed money to make a whole company for selling a few thousand copies. I'm sure he's going to be keeping receipts for new computers and writing off his apartment's rent as office space and doing all kinds of crap like flying to conventions to hawk his wares and writing it off.

Prak_Anima wrote:
But essentially, yes, he did make a shit ton of money for creating convincing possible vapourware, and trading on his reputation and making a decently hefty promise to people. He has just under a year to deliver on this promise and not lose a bit of rep (latest delivery date is Aug 2013), which implies he's got good headway, especially given that he does have appearances and such to make. Basically what he's done is ensure he can spend the next year working solely on his own stuff and not having to pick up freelance or contract work to pay the bills and buy groceries.

Also, Kickstarter has this to say:
If I am unable to complete my project as listed, what should I do?

If you are unable to fulfill the promises made to backers, cannot complete the project as advertised, or decide to abandon the project for any reason, you are expected to cancel funding. A failure to do so could result in damage to your reputation or even legal action on behalf of your backers.

He's got a year and half a million to spend and he's selling it as an "art-heavy book." There is no question about whether he can produce a product.

It doesn't even have to meet anyone's expectations since no one knows anything about it yet. No one can even say that they were tricked since they agreed to pay sight unseen.

That being said, I think he's probably paid for the next five to ten years of his personal expenses with what is essentially three months of actual work.

I mean, he can do this again and again as long as it looks like a professional product (and we know that he can make those). He honestly only needs to keep a fanbase of 3000 people to keep making mad money.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 10:15 am

Libertad wrote: Yes, but fans of both games are derided and implied to be unintelligent, even though they're having fun playing a game with flaws.

People also have fun with chelation therapy, McDojos, right-wing talk radio, and cigarette smoking.

I wasn't saying that he was wrong in the "hate being lied to," just that the former "stop having fun guy" line had some weight to it.

This is an attempt to cast this as a 'just hit your knees and have fun' argument, but seriously, fuck that. And fuck the people who enable this concern trolling.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 10:42 am

K wrote:He honestly only needs to keep a fanbase of 3000 people to keep making mad money.

To some extent that has an expiry date: he can continue making adventures and splat books and possibly setting fiction or whatever, but they're not going to sell anywhere near as well as the main product.

There will come a time when he needs a new big thing in order to keep getting money, but when that happens, he'll need to decide:
[*]Make a new edition - it worked for everyone else! Note that, by dint of not being a big company (and by apparently trying to sell his game on a ticket of "it's not a complex ruleset, it's pretty art! Storygames!"), people aren't as likely to accept that shit.
[*]Make a completely different game, one that will appeal to different people. This is probably smarter, but does actually involve thinking up a whole new set of stuff - not just "make a new campaign setting", but actually picking the type of game and doing it all from there.

Basically, he's already paid up for his next few years. But if he wants to use Monte Inc. as his primary income beyond that, there'll likely be a lot less in the way of returns.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 12:02 pm

Koumei wrote:
K wrote:He honestly only needs to keep a fanbase of 3000 people to keep making mad money.
To some extent that has an expiry date: he can continue making adventures and splat books and possibly setting fiction or whatever, but they're not going to sell anywhere near as well as the main product.

Not to mention that there's a network effect involved in tabletop RPGs: if no one has the book, then groups are likely to veto playing Numenera in favour of something else.

What surprises me about the Kickstarter is that out of $500K, $150K is coming from people willing to plunk down $200 or more on gaming products sight unseen. That's definitely not me!

K · Post by K » Mon Oct 01, 2012 12:05 pm

Koumei wrote:
Basically, he's already paid up for his next few years. But if he wants to use Monte Inc. as his primary income beyond that, there'll likely be a lot less in the way of returns.

I figure that once he has a real product, he should be able to sell at least 10K more of same packages.

This means he's probably paid up for at least another decade since another 10K customers is like $1.5 million. With Kickstarter guys defraying all his start-up and art costs, the extra PDFs he'll sell are almost entirely profit.

He could also go the Paizo route and do adventure paths. I think there is a lot of traction in that.

[/i]

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 12:14 pm

Not to mention that kickstarter backers are probably enthusiastic enough to advertize for the game among their friends once it is available.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 12:40 pm

Btw. got my Schlock Mercenary game today...

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 3:13 pm

K wrote:
Prak_Anima wrote:So, here are the approximate numbers of products, not including things that he could literally run out of an office printer and fulfill the promise (such as the exclusive adventure).

Core book 3454
Players Guide 831
3 set 32p Aventures 381
Bestiary 381
Sir Arthur's Comp. 195
Numenera dice 195
Vinyl GM Screen 195
Thunderstone (deckbuilding) 100

I'm not sure how all that affects print and shipping costs, but I'm sure there is a good deal less left.
You have to break it down by the numbers of things that are PDFs and the ones that are print. For example, the adventures don't even start to get printed until the $180 level and almost no one took those, so he can actually just run those off on an office printer and staple them together with a cardstock covers like old 2e adventures used to be. It's literally an afternoon to fill all of those couple of hundred orders and mail them off.

That list is actually just print(or produced, such as dice, etc.) products.

As for his PDFs, those have no shipping costs or printing costs and so are basically pure profit minus very small fees for digital delivery (which might just be a server in his house so that people can download them or a small fee to a hosting site). The biggest costs there is buying the art and I expect he's probably paying $1K each for those.

Prak_Anima wrote: There are also other business expenses which he could easily justify using the money for, such as travel costs.
I'm sure he will. He just got seed money to make a whole company for selling a few thousand copies. I'm sure he's going to be keeping receipts for new computers and writing off his apartment's rent as office space and doing all kinds of crap like flying to conventions to hawk his wares and writing it off.

Prak_Anima wrote:
But essentially, yes, he did make a shit ton of money for creating convincing possible vapourware, and trading on his reputation and making a decently hefty promise to people. He has just under a year to deliver on this promise and not lose a bit of rep (latest delivery date is Aug 2013), which implies he's got good headway, especially given that he does have appearances and such to make. Basically what he's done is ensure he can spend the next year working solely on his own stuff and not having to pick up freelance or contract work to pay the bills and buy groceries.

Also, Kickstarter has this to say:
If I am unable to complete my project as listed, what should I do?

If you are unable to fulfill the promises made to backers, cannot complete the project as advertised, or decide to abandon the project for any reason, you are expected to cancel funding. A failure to do so could result in damage to your reputation or even legal action on behalf of your backers.
He's got a year and half a million to spend and he's selling it as an "art-heavy book." There is no question about whether he can produce a product.

It doesn't even have to meet anyone's expectations since no one knows anything about it yet. No one can even say that they were tricked since they agreed to pay sight unseen.

That being said, I think he's probably paid for the next five to ten years of his personal expenses with what is essentially three months of actual work.

I mean, he can do this again and again as long as it looks like a professional product (and we know that he can make those). He honestly only needs to keep a fanbase of 3000 people to keep making mad money.

Well, again, he has just under a year, which, to me, implies that he has a decent amount done currently, and mostly just needs to finish texts and work up stretch goals. It's always possible that he decided to trade his rep for a half million dollars and has run off to some unknown village in South America, it's just highly unlikely. Really the only question is whether it'll be any good. It looks somewhat promising, and I'm fairly certain it will at least be better than MCWoD.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:People also have fun with chelation therapy, McDojos, right-wing talk radio, and cigarette smoking.

...arguing pointless things online...

infected slut princess · Mon Oct 01, 2012 8:47 pm

Screw this Noumerna shit.

I'm gonna keep holding out for GMSarli and e20.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Thu Oct 04, 2012 3:36 am

hogarth wrote: What surprises me about the Kickstarter is that out of $500K, $150K is coming from people willing to plunk down $200 or more on gaming products sight unseen. That's definitely not me!

Two things here. There is randomly a pretty big overlap between people who like Paizo and people who like Monte. So, there is that.

Monte's fans are also ridiculously hard core fanatics. That ridiculously expensive one-off city book (Ptolus) that he did a few years back sold absurdly well around the GenCon it was released for, despite the fact that it was tied to absolutely nothing and wasn't particularly portable, and was bogged down with a bunch of shit imported directly from some of his other one off books (sold separately).

And, really, the fact that Mike Mearls exists in this industry at all is solely because Monte fronted Iron Heroes for him, and the product sold as 'Monte Cook Presents Iron Heroes.' Which directly lead to Mearls getting hired by WotC and D&D taking a bullet to the head (want a laugh? Go look at the D&D product schedule for the next 6 months). And Monte's fans _still_ love him, despite the fact that he was a prime cause in the death of D&D.

So the fact that these people will happily set money on fire shouldn't be a surprise at all.

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Oct 04, 2012 8:53 pm

Voss wrote:the fact that he was a prime cause in the death of D&D.

Your description of his involvement of Mearls' ascent to his position does not justify calling that a fact.

It's not like Monte crafted Mearls out of some eldritch ritual of horrors and then dominated Hasbro and WotC to grant Mearls the continued access necessary to fuck up D&D with lasting harm to its brand.

By your reasoning it seems like Mearls' parents are the prime cause of the death of D&D. Or possibly whatever chance event or prophylactic failure that led to his conception. Or however far you want to wind back the clock.

[edit:] If not for that fucking dinosaur killing meteorite. If not for that they may have evolved into sentient roleplayers and we'd have had millions of years of awesome dino D&D action.

Fucking meteorite.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 3:23 am

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi ... mpaign=all

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 3:47 am

I'd be interested to know how much money a Kickstarter RPG project has made... from people without names like Monte Cook, or franchises like "Shadowrun"

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 4:16 am

Dwimmermount, which is a Mega Dungeon by OSR blogger James Maliszewski brought in nearly 50K. It's slated to actually ship hard copies about a year after the Kickstarter finished, which I think is about standard unfortunately. Adventurer, Conquerer, King brought in about 12K for its core book and another 21K for a player's companion. Myth and Magic brought in around 40K combined for its players and GM guides.

So about 10-40K, depending on how well you market and build your audience.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 4:38 am

Dungeon World made 82k for the core system and some extra crap thrown in on the side. It's about to ship.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 9:33 am

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fir ... ref=search
$70,101

zeruslord · Post by **zeruslord** » Sat Jan 12, 2013 7:53 am

I think breaking 40k needs some fairly substantial name recognition or a golden elevator pitch. Maliszewski is one of the biggest names in the OSR blogosphere, so he has a body of work online, and the OSR guys tend to buy and shill each others books a lot. Heinsoo and Tweet had their names on the front covers of an edition of D&D core books. "Apocalypse World hacked for D&D-style fantasy" is a wonderful idea for a game, even if dungeon world did it in basically the lamest possible way, and Vincent Baker pushed it a bit. ACKS and Myth and Magic are more representative of what random people pitching a generic game can pull in.