Happy new year, folks! I just wanted to give everyone an update on my progress.

Timeline

I am 49 days away from my first deadline: a polished playtest document. I’m halfway through writing it, and I’ve done some more playtesting, including a really fun game with Epidiah Ravachol, Emily Care Boss, Vincent Baker, and Ben Lehman earlier last month. We recorded the session, and it’s been useful to play back and help me figure out how to word exactly what we’re doing. I actually want to have the document finished by the end of the month, so I can get a bound copy printed up for personal use at Lulu– Vincent did that for the MC Guide for Apocalypse World, and it seems really useful to have an easily-portable, take-notes-in version, especially before running it at Dreamation.

That reminds me: we’re running it at Dreamation! There’s a new “Playtest” track this year, so if you want to play, please sign up as a playtester when you register for Dreamation. I think if you playtest enough games, you get in free, just like a GM. So there you go! Comment or email me if you do– if I understand correctly, the GMs choose who play in their games, and I want to make sure everyone who wants to play Blowback can.

Budget

I’ve spent $27 on media for a trailer I’m putting together, $46 on art (including the cover), $14.50 on printing costs, and $20 on JiffyCon attendance, for a total of $107.50, leaving a total of $892.50 for the rest of the project. The next expenditures I see are probably art-related; I’m not sure if I’m going to count Dreamation expenses toward the total or not. Dreamation’s pretty inexpensive for Two Scooters as cons go, since we don’t have to pay for hotel space and GMs attend free. There’s still meals, the gas to get to Jersey, etc.

Game Progress

A lot of good things have been happening with the game. The things I’m most excited about right now are The Agency’s tools, including a consequence pyramid that restricts the GM and allows him to “unlock” new tactics and complications when characters fail rolls. One of the pieces of feedback I’ve gotten the most is that failure needs to happen more often, so I’m messing with probabilities a little. People are always initially concerned that Analysis will drag on too long without a mechanical limit, but when the game begins, the psychological impact of seeing The Agency collect all dice that don’t go to the players seems to limit things nicely. (Emergent details like that make me really happy.) So far the games I’ve played have skewed a good deal darker than Burn Notice, but the stories have been satisfying and each game has ended with players wanting to play again.

Which means the next trick is to get a multi-session game going..

Filed under: Blowback by Elizabeth
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The first real playtest of Blowback went off with flying colors. In fact, you can read an AP report by two of the players over here on The Forge. As I told the players during a break: I’d played through Analysis twice, talked through Mission once, and sort of had an idea in my head of how Blowback was supposed to go. With those things in mind, Analysis and Mission both went extremely smoothly, with only two minor changes that I’d make. Blowback was rushed, since we were running out of time, but it ended on a pretty interesting note. All in all, I’d say it was a success, and my thanks go out to Jim, Chuck, Sam and Kate for taking a chance on the game. I’ll update the text to reflect the changes we made and finish writing up Mission in the next few days, and then release the next phase of the playtest document.

In other news, I got the paper samples from 360digital and I’m extremely impressed. I think I know who I’ll be using to print the game. The only disappointment is that their matte laminate scratches easily– but that’s true of ALL matte laminate, so it’s hard to blame them.

Filed under: Blowback by Elizabeth
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With thanks to Shreyas. You can download it in PDF form here.

Filed under: Blowback by Elizabeth
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Here are the quotes I’ve gotten from various printers, and how I feel about said printers. Unless otherwise specified, the quote is for a 50-page, perfect-bound, full color book, at a quantity of 100 books. My plan is to cover half the cost of the print run with money from the budget, and the other half of the print run with pre-orders. I don’t want to rely on pre-orders for the entire cost of the print run like I did last time: it works when you have a B&W book and can cover the cost of 4 books with a single pre-order. In order to make that happen with this book, I’d have to charge rather high prices, and I don’t want to charge more than I’m comfortable with. The final price point will probably cover printing somewhere between two and three copies of the book.

In descending order of cost:

Blurb.com: has the trim size I want, specializes in coffee-table books. Very high-end paper, a really luxurious feel. Also operates like Lulu; doesn’t give bulk discounts though. Price: a whopping $19.95 a book, and that’s if I trim it by 10 pages. I don’t see this as a viable option.

Collective Copies, Florence, MA: A local company. We use them for Mist-Robed Gate, and Vincent uses their Amherst branch for Dogs in the Vineyard. Our guy there, Steve, is an artiste. He does amazing work with no hassle and a quick turnaround time. No shipping, either! You don’t pay anything until you’ve got the whole order in your hands. Free proof. And he is always really excited about working with us, because our projects are a lot more graphically interesting than the brochures and stuff that Collective usually prints, and it gives him a chance to show off. I’d work with Steve every time I had a project, if I could. They don’t do 8×10″ landscape, however: their biggest landscape trim is 9×7″. I’d be willing to go smaller like that for Steve, but unfortunately, even with a print run of 100, he quoted us an astonishing $16.50 a book. In this case: even more expensive than Lulu. (Who is surprisingly competitive when it comes to bulk pricing on full-color, but we’ll get to that.)

Fidlar Doubleday: I’ve never used them personally, but heard very good things. They never responded to my website query, but a friend set me up with his representative, who was kind and informative and prompt. They didn’t have a problem with the 8×10″ trim size, which was refreshing. Unfortunately, when you divide the setup cost and distribute it through the print run, their estimate is $12.28 a book. However, the representative did email me a few days after the quote and said that if I was getting lower quotes elsewhere, to email him and let him know. Which I plan to do.

Lulu.com: Lulu has a reputation for being overpriced and, in some circles, a fiscally irresponsible choice, only useful if you’re too concerned about whether your game will sell at all to put up any money up front. (Also useful for international publishers who don’t want to hammer US citizens with seriously high shipping costs.) I printed a full-color zine through Lulu a few years back, and the quality was quite high: they use excellent paper, the binding is solid, and the colors seemed surprisingly true, considering the bad things I’d heard about Lulu’s color management issues. They don’t offer the trim size I want, though: their landscape is 9″x7″. However, for a print run of 100 books, their quote is a surprisingly competitive $11.65 a book. Still on the high side, but not THE highest, as I’d expected. Note the nearly $400 difference in total cost between Lulu and the local heroes. It makes me really sad. Even the cost for a print run of one single book from Lulu is only $14.50.

Publisher’s Graphics: Again, I’ve never used them, but people seem to either love or hate these guys. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard complaints about their quality, but I’ve certainly heard it about their customer service and wait times. Their estimate is a tempting $9.50 a book with no setup fee. I’d only feel comfortable using them if I got the manuscript done far ahead of schedule, though.

360digitalbooks.com: I was pointed to these guys by a friend who’d spoken to, but never used them. I don’t know anyone who has, and it makes me nervous, as does the extreme low-ball of $6.76 a book including setup fees. I’d really, really, really want to see a copy of something they printed before I committed my money to them– I’ve learned in the past that you get what you pay for.

Those are the printers I’ve talked to, and their current standings. Crazily enough, I am leaning towards Lulu, but still considering Fidlar. Any suggestions? Places I’ve missed? Ways to cut cost? People who might want to cut me a deal?

Filed under: Blowback by Elizabeth
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For some reason, comments aren’t working for me– I can’t seem to be able to comment, and I don’t know if this is a just-me thing or if it’s something other people are having issues with. (I think it must be a wider problem, because the spam comments have slowed down a lot.) Someone did manage to comment, however! This is what GBSteve had to say:

Do you have to pay for playtesting? I’m sure there will be volunteers for such an exciting project (like me).

Also, unless you think it supping with the devil, you might consider other sources of venture capital, arts grants or support from publishers/distributers. Some of these guys can be very flexible.

Here’s the thing, Steve. What I “pay for” when it comes to playtesting is, honestly, stuff I’d pay for anyway, 90% of the time. I love making a good meal for people when they come over to play. I like going to cons; I always go to JiffyCon, but I’m on the fence about PAX East because the tickets are $50. (That said, I am more than likely going to suck it up and go; it’s a new con, a break-off of one that’s extremely popular, and I want to get my games in front of new audiences.) So I posted playtesting to kind of acknowledge that it’s one of those invisible costs: I do these things to promote and improve my game, and they cost money– but they are things I’d probably still do for fun if I wasn’t working on a game. That said, I will take up every single playtesting offer I get, and hope to have a rough but mechanically complete playtest document ready soon after JiffyCon, November 14th.

As to other sources of revenue: it’s a fine line. Ultimately, I want people to give me money when the game is finished, because it will be more likely to become profit and not sunk into production costs. Also, this is approximately 20 times my starting budget for any of my previous projects, so I feel a bit silly saying “I need more money than this, guys.” That said, there are a couple of printers, etc. that I’m planning to talk to about cutting me a deal, and explaining the nature of my project to them, etc. It’s interesting, because the consumers of indie games are, I feel, far more likely to need the services of a quality POD printer than most customers that buy things that have been printed on demand, so perhaps there’s a promotional thing I might be able to work out with them. I’m going to go over print quotes in my next post, actually.

Filed under: Blowback, Dissolute Games by Elizabeth
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So, a big part of the challenge was that I have one year to make the game: I’ve got to do everything I said I’m going to do by October 31st, 2010. This is going to be a bit of a challenge, but as I’ve already got part of the game written and the rest tentatively mapped out in my head, hopefully it will not be impossible. But, like with the budget, the most important thing in budgeting time is figuring out major landmarks in your timeline and in your production schedule. It’d be nice if some of the landmarks in production intersected with landmarks in the timeline. So here’s my shot:

Polished playtest document: Dreamation (February 18th, 2010) – The game itself may still have some minor bugs to work out, but all the parts will be there, even if they’re not moving completely smoothly. At this point I plan on having the game thoroughly playtested online, and need to introduce it further to face-to-face tabletop groups, especially testing its one-shot capabilities and how easy it is to explain to new groups.

Written “finished” draft: PAX East (March 26th, 2010) – this includes the entirety of the text. I’m not calling it a playtest document, because the playtest document is constantly written and revised as people play it. I’ll talk more about how I like to playtest once I’ve spat out this whole timeline. This is the first draft of the final rules.

Edited draft: May 30th, 2010 – I want to get this combed over a few times for clarity and consistancy, by my editor, by playtesters, and by one person who’s never seen the game before.

Book back from the printers: DexCon (Sometime in July, 2010) – I want to get some copies of the book into people’s hands before GenCon.

Get married (July 24th, 2010) – This part makes me a bit nervous that I might miss some of the spring/summer deadlines. Hopefully I can get ahead of schedule!

Book goes into wide release: GenCon (August 5th, 2010) – I know, it’s trite but it works. I think honestly I’ll want to go to GenCon more to hang out with people and celebrate getting this sucker done than to shill.

Online support finished: October 31st, 2010 – This is the stuff that makes the most sense to do last, since it requires the game to be completely done first.

This is pretty ambitious, and so it requires a little shift in my plans. I’d originally been planning to give a PDF of the game to everyone who posts an Actual Play report on Story-Games, The Forge, or RPG.net. That is no longer the case. For now on, every playtester who posts an AP report will get an actual physical copy of the book. Hopefully this will lead to more feedback, which will lead to more quickly addressing any problems.

First deadline: 121 days

Filed under: Blowback, Dissolute Games by Elizabeth
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So, my “real job” for the last eight years has been running my own photography business. It’s meant good things for me when it comes to designing games: I’m already really familiar with sticking to a budget, how to make that budget, and dealing with vendors. The approach I take to budgeting for a game is very similar, but not identical, to the approach I take when budgeting for a photo shoot.

There’s the total amount of money you have, and the total number of priorities you have. In this case, the total money on hand is $1000. So what are my priorities?

• Game Text
• Printing
• Art
• Layout and Design
• Editing
• Playtesting
• Promotion
• Online/electronic support

My first question is always the same: what here can I do for free or cheap? I’m doing the writing and layout myself, so that’s not going to cost me. Wait: there are two things I’m having trouble with, design-wise: I want to do something more with the cover I have, and I want the tables to look better than they look. I’ll have to allot some money for those two things. There are always minor playtesting costs; I can take any overly-large playtesting costs from my budget, I guess, but that stuff might be best coming from additional sources (more on those later). The good thing about Two Scooters is that we work as a collective, so I’m going to go ahead and assign Shreyas the editing, since he assigned a lot of the writing in Radiant to me. Finally, I’ve been in talks with someone to help me with the online support in exchange for the use of a SDK for iPhone, so the cost there is reduced. Let’s look at that list now:

• Game Text
• Printing
• Art
• Layout and Design Tables and cover
• Editing (assigned to Shreyas)
• Playtesting (coming from additional funds)
• Promotion
• Online/electronic support (negotiating for cheap)

Now I’ve got to look at what’s left and rank them, considering both what’s most important to me and what I know is going to cost the most money. Print costs are probably the first thing, both in importance and cost. Art next, then promotion, then online/electronic support. I’m putting the tables and cover last, not because they’re the least important, but because they’re what I think I can do for the least amount of money. The next step would be to assign them percentages of my budget, but I don’t have a quote I like from a printer yet. I’ve got three printers who still need to email me quotes, so that will be its own post in the future.

So far, this has been pretty much identical to how I budget for a photo shoot. Here’s where it changes: I mention additional funds. Since the thousand bucks is coming from the first DivNull Lark, I’m in a position where I feel it’d be okay to supplement my budget if necessary, or if there are small things that I don’t think should come from the main funding. Examples: I like to throw playtesting dinner parties, but I don’t see the need to pay for the food with my budget. Likewise my admission to JiffyCon next month, where I plan to playtest the game. PAX East? Possibly. Depends on how done the game is in March, and whether I think reaching a new market that large might be worth 5% of my budget (it might). Irregardless, it’s important to identify these possible additional sources of funds, so that I have a good idea of when these funds may become available, what from my personal life they may cut into, that kind of thing.

• Preorders
• Personal money
• 2009 tax return

So, preorder cash isn’t going to come until the end of the development cycle. Tax return won’t come until February or March at the earliest. Personal money always sort of exists, but in low amounts. That means lots of low-cost, semi-regular stuff is best paid for with personal money: that sounds like playtest costs to me. Since the other two sources have specific timeframes attached to them, I probably shouldn’t direct any of my costs to those financial resources until I have a development timeline worked out.

Which will be in my next post.

Filed under: Blowback, Dissolute Games by Elizabeth
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So Les Ward of DivNull.com ran a very generous contest over on Story Games:

This post started with the following hypothetical:

Posted By: Valamir Imagine said benefactor announced “Pitch me your game ideas and the designer whose idea I like best will get $1000 to bring it to fruition”

Other popular game design forums maintain, however, that debate about hypothetical situations are useless and only “actual play” matters. So, let’s play…

As of now, there actually is a benefactor (i.e. me) saying “Pitch me your ideas for how you would use $1000 to either make a new game or improve an existing one that hasn’t been released, and I’ll donate $1000 to the idea I like best to help make it happen”.

Conditions:

• Only pitches made on this thread, publicly, will be considered.
• No pitch made after 15 October 2009 will be considered.
• Donation will be made on or before 31 October 2009.
• If your pitch is selected, you have until the last minute of 31 October 2010 to make good on the idea. At that point, the world will know if you are person of your word, or a failure.
• This donation in no way affects any rights you have to your work. Nor does the donation create any liabilities from your work for the donator. Succeed or fail, you’re on your own.

As you might imagine, it garnered a lot of interest and 11 great pitches were offered up. In the end, I was surprised to be awarded the $1000 prize for my pitch for Blowback:

And true to my word, I’m going to be blogging about the hard numbers and financial information here. In the next few days, my webmaster’s going to set up separate pages (and feeds) for both the game information I post and the nuts-and-bolts financial information I post: when that happens, I’ll make a post with links to both feeds (and a link to a feed with both). Future posts will go over my quest to find a reasonably-priced printer, how I’ve found inexpensive art, and the way I tend to make budgets. I don’t present this information as a mandate: if anything, it’s the opposite. This is how I do things on a $50 budget, and it’s also the way I’ve decided to do things on a $1,000 budget. I’m certain I will make mistakes.  It’s my hope that what is an invaluable learning experience for me can also be a learning experience for you as well.

So again, big thanks to Wordman: his investment in my game is quite an honor, and I’m looking forward to making it worth his while. Yours too, if you read along.

Filed under: Blowback, Dissolute Games by Elizabeth
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This document only contains the information necessary to create characters and do the first phase of a job. After I get some playtesting in, I’ll write the next section! But right now I need volunteers to play with. So please, take a look and let me know what you think– and if you’re interested, let’s play sometime!

Blowback: Playtest Document Part 1

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Though initially I was thinking of Blowback as specifically being “The Burn Notice game,” its influences and inspirations are pretty diverse: Grosse Pointe Blank, My Blue Heaven, The Bourne Identity/Supremacy (haven’t seen Ultimatum yet), and more. The thing that surprises me as I get deeper into the game is noticing the commonalities between things like Burn Notice and the Bourne franchise; both have protagonists who are trying to figure out what happened to them and why, and just want their former handlers to give them what they want. There’s another important thread between these franchises, and that I think also holds true for the other sources of inspiration as well.

You’ll notice that I haven’t listed James Bond as one of the source inspirations. You might think that’s crazy and sacrilegious, or you might assume that it’s so obvious an influence for any spy game that I just chose not to list it. I’m a huge, huge fan of the Bond movies– I’ve seen every single one!– but this is not the James Bond game, unless someone hacks it for that reason. The principle difference is this: in the inspirations I list, and in Blowback, killing and dying are big deals. They have serious consequences. Sure, for 007 some people dying is a big deal; Vesper, Bond’s wife in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, people like that. But it’s still cool to shoot and kill mooks with no repercussions, because he’s Bond and a badass and that’s what he does. But whether you’re John Cusack or Jason Bourne, the people who die matter. If they died because of something you did, or because you couldn’t save them, or because you had to kill them. It’s a huge thing. There are consequences, because every body is another link back to you for the police or the vengeful family or your former handlers and associates trying to get leverage on you. There are consequences because you have to look at your face in the mirror every day.

That’s not to say that there isn’t, or shouldn’t be, killing and dying. But it’s not a frequent thing, and when it happens everything changes. Life isn’t cheap and killing isn’t easy.

Filed under: Blowback, Dissolute Games by Elizabeth
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