Crowd funding

[Groovy]

Some time this year, we'll probably need to look at crowd funding options for the game, and produce material with which to make an impressive presentation. This will include artwork that showcases both game mechanics and lore. If you are still looking to do artwork, Panda, this is one area where it will be sorely needed.

Based on my recent experience of having to change existing factions to accommodate design decisions made for new ones, I don't think it's wise to move into production of the core game until all twelve factions have been designed. The split should be made later, either with lore, artwork or the actual manufacturing of the game. This means that it will take longer to produce something playable, but hopefully what is produced is much less likely to need changing.

[Panda Tar]

Of course. I was more likely waiting factions being defined before doing artworks. Because, mainly, I'll have to do one by one, and you and me both must approve it. Imagine if I would make things that weren't decided to be in the game. Given I have not much spare time, that would be bad.

But I'm up. As soon as you have them defined, I'll get back to work. Problem is that I'm very slow at digital painting. Perhaps, later, we should have someone do that. I can work on the base of artworks, but I'm not too experienced with digital painting yet.

The rest, time will tell.

[Groovy]

I have the themes of all the factions fairly well established, and particularly those of the core factions. Creatures, buildings, etc, not so much. The question, though, is what artwork we should produce beyond what will be needed to play the game. I was thinking of having a poster-type image for each faction, and perhaps one for the game as a whole. It might also be good to have a few images that showcase the game world. Things like that.

You have more experience than me here, so your input would be invaluable.

[Groovy]

I just wanted to clarify that I don't see us running a crowd funding campaign this year. These campaigns require extensive preparation, and I'll probably need the rest of the year just to finish the design. The reason for starting this topic was to get some idea of the assets that we need to produce for the campaign. Artwork especially will probably take a long time to produce, so we would need to start working on them as soon as we have clarity on what they are.

[Groovy]

After browsing through some fantasy board game Kickstarter campaigns, both recent and most successful, it seems to me that they used Kickstarter purely for marketing and covering the manufacturing costs. All the games looked finished or close to it, including the artwork. My only consolation was that most of them were much smaller than Heroic and could manage with a single artist.

[Panda Tar]

I just wanted to clarify that I don't see us running a crowd funding campaign this year. These campaigns require extensive preparation, and I'll probably need the rest of the year just to finish the design. The reason for starting this topic was to get some idea of the assets that we need to produce for the campaign. Artwork especially will probably take a long time to produce, so we would need to start working on them as soon as we have clarity on what they are.

Yeah, I wasn't expecting nothing sooner than that. It doesn't sound good if you start a campaign before having all important things settled just to learn that something is amiss and you'll spend much more time fixing it, checking where all these fixes will impact. I'm personally not in a rush. You are much more inclined to finish it sooner, given that you have spent much time on it already, and it's only natural that you want to see it done, properly done, of course , as soon as possible. I'll be there as long as I can, because I also want to see it done and help as much as I'm capable of.

Poster is a good idea. Regions and landscapes too, although it depends more on the definition of the exotic universe it's being created - that would reflect when doing posters for exotic factions too. Regarding lore, Poster can show and represent the main capital or a symbolic place of each faction. I can create, for example, a Homestead capital, that will be then later inserted in lore if necessary. Will be there things like town screens in Heroic?

And indeed Heroic is a big one and we'll probably have round up few more people to get it done faster, although we'll have to peruse places to find people who have time and who are trustworthy.

[Groovy]

I'd go with a symbolic place or theme for each faction rather than the capital. For example, with the Barbarian faction, I'd rather have a poster depict the harshness of their environment, and their resilience to it, than to show anything resembling a town screen. I guess we should produce rough sketches to begin with, and only refine a drawing further once we hit upon one that captures the essence of the faction.

Two areas where I expect that we'll need more people to get involved are artwork and playtesting. Artwork because there is just so much to do, and it would make sense and enrich the game for each faction to have its own art style. Playtesting because diverse feedback on how it performs could prove invaluable to ironing out the rough patches and creating something truly accomplished. I expect that we'll have to rely on crowd funding to hire the artists, but I don't know about playtesters. I wouldn't expect it to be difficult to find them, but it might be too much to ask them to make their own game print-and-play style.

[Groovy]

After watching the Star Trek: Prelude to Axanar short movie this weekend, and learning about the CBS lawsuit against its creators, it makes obvious sense to me to make the world of Heroic free for other people to use and build on, provided that whatever they produce is likewise free for others to extend. Does anyone have experience in this area, or know of other fully fledged worlds where this has been done?

[Panda Tar]

It's not strange to me, but right now I cannot recall. I suggest you to ask this question at HC. It's more active and there are a broad range of people that might know of this.