Monthly Archives: February 2022
On Education, Experience, and Crowdfunding in the Game Industry
So, let me start with this: My industry opinions are based purely on my experience. I don’t have a writing degree, business degree, or any college degree. I barely passed High School. I lack any certifications or formal training. My only claim to knowing what I am doing is that I keep getting paid to do it. What I do know, I learned over 25+ years being in the industry, doing dumb stuff that taught me not to, and listening to people who were smarter, better educated, and more experienced than I am.
That’s often meant watching changes impact the tabletop game industry, and trying to figure out what they mean as they happen. A great example of that is crowdfunding. While there were forms of crowdfunding when I first got into the industry in the 1990s, it was far less common, successful, or sophisticated than it is today. This often leads people to wonder, why do companies insist on crowdfunding games now, when they didn’t used to have to? In my experience, the biggest reasons for the change toward using crowdfunding are threefold.
First, pre-orders basically do not exist anymore. In the 80s and 90s, you could solicit a game product through the three-tiered distribution channel, and get pre-orders that both paid you for a chunk of your total print run months before you had to make them (especially before you had to pay the printer’s bill), and gave you some idea what the total demand for that product might be. If you were thinking of printing 10,000 copies, and pre-orders were 500, you knew you had way overshot the level of interest. If orders were 9,5000, you knew you should print more.
This allowed you to make s big a print run as you could, driving down per-unit costs, without a serious risk of overprinting. This made products overall more profitable. The profit on selling 100,000 units is very different between one 100k print run, and five 20k print runs.
(As an important aside: Knowing how many copies of a gamebook sold doesn’t tell you how profitable it was. How many copies were in pdf or some other electronic format? How many were direct sales? How many foreign sales? How many print runs did it take to produce the volume sold, and at what economy of scale? Was it priced right to begin with? This, by the way, is one reason some things that were popular and sold out don’t get reprinted. If you needed a print run of 20k to make a reasonable profit, and it took 3 years to sell through, and 90% of your sales were in the first 90 days, you likely don’t want to reprint. Because if you print less than 20k more units, you won’t make enough profit, and if it takes 6 years to sell through another 20k at the post-first-release sale rate, your money is tied up in the print run (and warehousing costs), instead of new things that sell faster. Of course, this can be another place where crowdfunding can be helpful. I suspect it won’t be long before it’s typical for game companies to crowdfund reprints. They can set a minimum level to make a profit, and only reprint if they hit that. That’s win-win for consumers and biz.)
Second, crowdfunding a project creates an opportunity for a major marketing push. There used to be multiple tabletop game magazines. You could buy an ad in Dragon, Dungeon, White Dwarf, Pyramid, (or any of a dozen other options depending on timeframe and market) and put your product in front of tens of thousands of eyeballs. There’s no one great place, or half-dozen good places, to do that anymore. And even if there were, without strong preoders, it’s hard to create a useful call to action for a product that brings in a lot of money for the creator when they need it.
But crowdfunding sites allow you to use mailing lists from old projects to contact new people, and multiple different game sites report on new crowdfunding projects getting you much more attention at no cost. (And if you use Backerkit and similar crowdfunding support sites, you can pay for ads to be put in front of large groups of market-appropriate consumers.)
Third, there’s not much widespread evidence to suggest sales during a crowdfunding campaign reduce sales made later through normal venues. Selling 2k extra copies during a crowdfunding campaign doesn’t seem to mean fewer sales over the life of the product in stores. (There are people who disagree with this claim, and that’s fair. And for a specific store, region, or market, it might not be accurate. But my experience from publisher-side observations is enough to convince me that, as a broad trend, this is true.) And crowdfunding sometimes sells 20k copies (or even 200k rarely) of products that similar ones without crowdfunding sell 2,000.
And, of course, game prices have not kept up with inflation. The vast majority of game companies are strapped for cash. This was true even before the pandemic, and the “Extinction-Level Events” that have come with it. So, maximizing the potential for income while minimizing the risks is not just attractive or an effort to money-grab, in many cases it’s an effort to avoid bankruptcy and having games disappear off the shelves entirely.
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Converting PF1 spells to Starfinder: Absolution
Continuing the week’s trend of converting Pathfinder 1st edition spells to Starfinder, and the next spell in alphabetical is absolution. (You can find an index of the spells that have been converted to-date here).
The PF1 version of this is essentially a lesser version of atonement… which is potentially tricky since Starfinder doesn’t have an atonement spell. But it does have break enchantment, which is in the same vein. Absolution is also designed to help characters who have lost class features from violating a code of conduct… which also isn’t really a thing in Starfinder. But there IS the Divine Blessing feat, which we can work in to at least include a note of the forgiveness concept, which means GMs who like to build their own curses and powers and campaign universes will have this in their toolbox if they need it.
Absolution
Classes mystic 4
School abjuration
Casting Time 1 round
Range touch
Targets living creature touched
Duration instantaneous
Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance yes
You purge impure or artificially implanted thoughts from the target’s mind and fill them with exultant relief at the forgiveness for their failings. This spell acts as break enchantment, except it only functions against enchantments with the charm or mind-affecting descriptors.
Additionally, if you cast this on a target (other than yourself) who has the Divine Blessing feat and changes what deity they worship to the deity you worship, they gain the benefits of Divine Blessing for their new deity immediately (rather than having to wait until they gain your next level).
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Converting PF1 spells to Starfinder: Aberrant Lungs
Continuing the week’s trend of converting Pathfinder 1st edition spells to Starfinder, and the next spell in alphabetical is aboleth’s lung. (You can find an index of the spells that have been converted to-date here).
The PF1 version of this scales is 2nd level and let’s you breath water, but not normal air. In Starfinder, where every 1st level character has access to a suit of armor that has environmental seals, that’s not a spell anyne is going to take. Luckily, we can adjust spells as much as we want in a conversion like this. And, since I want to expand it’s duration and utility, I moved the name away from the water-environment-specific “aboleth.”
Aberrant Lungs
Classes mystic 1, witchwarper 1
School transmutation
Casting Time 1 standard action
Range 20 feet
Targets willing creatures in a 20-foot-radius
Duration 1 day/level
When you cast this spell, each target (and their equipment) becomes acclimated to breath in the prevalent atmosphere it is current in, as long as certain conditions are met, The atmosphere must be one that some unaugmented creature of the same type is naturally able to survive in without taking damage. For example, when cast on a humanoid on a world with a thick, corrosive atmosphere, as long as there exists somewhere some kind of humanoid able to survive in that atmosphere without being harmed by it, the target gains the ability to do so as well. This does not apply to conditions lacking any atmosphere, or to regions so harsh no creature of the same type can survive it unaugmented (for example, no humanoids exist that can survive on the surface of a sun).
While under the effects of this spell, a creature loses acclimation to their native atmosphere (but all their equipment that provides environmental support is also altered by the magic to support their new atmospheric needs). Though the caster cannot dismiss this spell when it is cast one someone else, a creature subject to this spell can dismiss it as part of any other action.
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Converting PF1 spells to Starfinder: Emergency Force Sphere
Still converting Pathfinder 1st edition spells to Starfinder, but rather than grab the next spell in alphabetical order I’m hitting a Patron request (join my Patreon and you, too, can ask for your favorite spell to be converted next!). And that spell is emergency force sphere. (You can find an index of the spells that have been converted to-date here).
The PF1 version of this scales off PF1’s wall of force, and since Starfinder also has wall of force as the same level spell, scaling our converted emergency force sphere off that is fairly straightforward. Mostly the only conversion required is to change it from an immediate action casting time to a reaction, and specify when it’s considered purely defensive.
Emergency Force Sphere
Classes technomancer 4, witchwarper 4
School evocation [force]
Casting Time 1 reaction
Range 5 feet
Area 5-ft.-radius hemisphere of force centered on you
Duration 1 round/level (D)
This spell acts as wall of force, except you create a hemispherical dome of force with hardness 20 and 200 Hit Points. If cast as a reaction to an event that would damage someone within the spell’s area, it is a purely defensive action. The bottom edge of the dome forms a relatively watertight space if you are standing on a reasonably flat surface. The dome shape means that falling debris (such as rocks from a collapsing ceiling) tend to tumble to the side and pile up around the base of the dome. If you make a DC 20 Engineering check, the debris is stable enough that it retains its dome-like configuration when the spell ends, otherwise it collapses. Normally this spell is used to buy time for dealing with avalanches, floods, and rockslides, though it is also handy in dealing with ambushes.
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Converting PF1 spells to Starfinder: Ablative Sphere
Still converting Pathfinder 1st edition spells to Starfinder, and going back to alphabetical order, with ablative sphere. (You can find an index of the spells that have been converted to-date here).
While the original spell works very differently from this, having just converted ablative barrier, I liked how this rewrite ties into it to form a logical family of spells. This isn’t a perfect match for the original PF1 spell, but works well with Starfinder’s combat assumptions and is still a great hook for a spell.
Ablative Sphere
Classes mystic 3-6, technomancer 3-6
School abjuration [force]
Casting Time 1 standard action
Range touch
Area 10-foot-radius sphere
Duration 1 minute/level
Ablative sphere is a force effect that creates an immobile 10-foot sphere of defensive energy centered on one corner of your space when you cast it. It grants protection as a force field to any creature within its area, against any attack or effect from outside of its area. It has no effect on attacks against targets outside its area, even if the attack’s line of effect passes through the spell, nor on attacks originating within its area (even if they target a creature also in the area). All creatures within an ablative sphere share a single pool of temporary HP granted by the spell, which regenerate at the beginning of your turn each round.
The temporary hit points from an ablative sphere do not stack with those from an actual force field or an effect that specifies it functions as a force field (such as ablative barrier). If you have such temporary HP while within an ablative sphere, each point of damage done lowers the temporary HP granted by both the sphere and the force field effect. When you cast this spell, any previous ablative sphere you cast ends. The type of force field the ablative sphere emulates depends on the level of the spell.
3rd Level Spell: Brown force field
4th Level Spell: Purple force field
5th Level Spell: Black force field
6th Level Spell: White force field
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Converting PF1 spells to Starfinder: Ablative Barrier
Still converting Pathfinder 1st edition spells to Starfinder, and going back to alphabetical order, with ablative barrier. (You can find an index of the spells that have been converted to-date here).
Reading the original spell, I was amazed how much it reminded me of how force fields work in Starfinder… which isn’t a perfect match for the original PF1 spells, but works well with Starfinder’s combat assumptions and is a great hook for a spell.
Ablative Barrier
Classes technomancer 2-6, witchwarper 2-6
School abjuration [force]
Casting Time 1 standard action
Range personal
Duration 1 round/level
Ablative barrier creates a force effect that functions as a force field, but does not require an armor upgrade slot, and does not use a battery. The temporary hit points from an ablative barrier do not stack with those from an actual force field (if you have both, each point of damage done lowers the temporary HP granted by each by the same amount). When you cast this spell, any previous ablative barrier you cast ends. The type of force field the ablative barrier emulates depends on the level of the spell.
2nd Level Spell: Brown force field
3rd Level Spell: Purple force field
4th Level Spell: Black force field
5th Level Spell: White force field
6th Level Spell: Gray force field
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Themed Fantasy Tavern Week: The Pixie Ring
The Pixie Ring is a cozy cottage, part-time tavern, small inn, and herbalism shop sitting in a beatific glade just out of site of a major trade road. There’s a small town just another hour or so down the road, but the Pixie Ring stands on its own near the mouth of an extensive, wild valley. With a living thatched roof, multiple ovens often baking sweetbreads and hearty soups, herb trying racks, and a small brewery in back, it’s often said that when the wid is just right, the smell of the place bringing in more customers than any sign or visibility could. It’s also said that despite being isolated and apparently undefended, the Pixie Ring is the last place anyone would want to attack, because it’s protected by the forces of nature itself. It’s proprietor, an ageless-looking woman named Vassilya Darghrace (who seems both matronly and filled with the bloom of spring) just smiles when asked, and says it’s true, without ever going into details if she can help it.
And, indeed, the Pixie Ring is so protected, because Vassilya Darghrave is renowned in the fairy realms as a “Fey Chirurgeon,” a mortal who can solve ailments of the Fair Folk. This reputation stems from her saving a winged pixie from an (iron) bear trap when she was a child, right on the location where the Pixie Ring now stands. The pixie was a favorite of the a major Fey Court noble, who swore to protect Vassilya whenever she was in the field where she saved the pixie. No fool, Vassilya built a small cottage there as a teen, so she had a place to go if ill, moody, or in danger where the fey realm itself would defend her.
What Vassilya did not count on was other fairy creatures bringing her their problems. She has no special powers as a Fey Chirurgeon, just an expectation from sylvan beings that, given her reputation, she can fix any problem they bring her. Over the decades she has soothed a unicorn’s broken heart, stitched a shadow back onto its grig, made peace between warring lilac fields, split 1 keg of honey into 7 equally-large kegs promised to 7 fairy nobles by turning into mead, and nursed a whole host of sprites through winter cold by feeding them herbal soup.
Each fairy problem she has been brought has forced Vassilya to find a solution, which has often meant picking up a new skill. She’s become a master cook, herbalist, brewer, seamstress, woodworker, and painter. While she learned the basics of each skill through hard work and dedication, often travelling for months to reach a master able to teach her what she needed to know, once she used a craft to aid a fey creature, other fey creatures often paid her for her services in secret knacks. Spiderfolk taught her to weave secret eaves. Brownies shared their secrets of brewing morning dew. Tommyknockers showed her their woodworking techniques. As she practiced these arts, her humble shack grew bigger, and grander, and more beautiful.
In time, non-fey began to drop by as well, and being a hospitable person, she tended to feed and house them. In appreciation, most paid her… though she was just as likely to ask them to chop wood, or bring her hard-to-get seasoning on their next time through. Locals tried to keep her presence secret, but once a few traders found her, word of the off-the-path reststop spread. Vassslya slowly expanded her home, trading seasonable contracts with caravans for ceramic stoves in her fireplaces (no iron!), construction materials, labor, and unfinished furnishing she could refine herself.
Vassilya turns no one away. Those with problems are offered solutions if Vassilya can think of one, and given advice on where to get some if she can’t. The hungry are fed, the sick tended to, the tired allowed to rest. Payment is asked only of those who seem likely to afford it. Money is accepted (and tossed carelessly into a drawer, where fey friends carry it off to a more secure location, bringing her coins when she needs them), but trade and service are just as good. If someone just has one spare wagon wheel to trade, Vassilya takes it with the same gravitas as gold or a hand-painted doll. And, in her experience, someone will eventually come along who really needs a wagon wheel.
And, of course, as a crafter, she often turns broken barrels into tables for her garden. Indeed, she often repurposes something just before she or someone else unexpectedly find need for it. Even Vassilya doesn’t know if this is some effect of fairy influence, or is the fates just spun the thread of her life to overlap others’ at useful moments.
The Pixie Ring is now a “common secret,” a place lots of travelers and traders know of, but most people don’t share knowledge of without good reason. Most people never see the fey who come for help, or the ones who have become friends and tend to live in her building. Their presence is sometimes hinted at, when birds help set the table, scuttering occurs in shadows, wolves and bears appear to growl at the unruly, or things get fixed or cleaned when left unattended. Those few people Vassilya consider close friends or family are more likely to be trusted with seeing the fair folk, as are druids, bards, and similar visitors, but only when “outsiders” are not present.
Vassilya does her best to not have to leave the Pixie Ring anymore, and often pays others to find materials or bring crafting manuals to her so she can fins the problems mortals and fey bring to her. In a more extreme case, if she must leave for a short jaunt, she finds someone she trusts (she’s an excellent judge of character) and leaves them “in charge” for a few days or weeks. When this happens, some shy minor fey almost always shows up with a problem they considered too minor to brother the “great fey chirurgeon” with, which may be as simple as needing advice on what to wear to a fairy dance, or as complex as being exiled from their home court under pain of death. Anyone who can successfully deal with such issues is generally rewarded, and often becomes part of Vassilya’s trusted inner circle.
PATREON
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Themed Fantasy Tavern Week: The Wandering Monster
The Wandering Monster is an unusual tavern, in that it literally wanders. A sturdy 2-story wagon (or very small enclosed civilian siege tower, depending on how you look at it), The Wandering Monster is a combination mobile bar, potion and elixir shop, and residence for its owner, the retired gnomish alchemist and conjurer Kykin Dinferthort.
Dinferthort trained to be a guild potion-maker, or possibly a court sage, but found the idea of living in a single location much too restraining to accept any of the standard positions upon ending his apprenticeship. Instead, he allowed himself to be hired by a band of adventurers delving into an ancient cistern complex (or, as Dinferthort refered to it, an “adventure hole”) to guard their basecamp and brew potions for them. This proved lucrative enough Dinferthort was able to buy a merchant wagon, and create a roving elixir business. He began traveling an “Adventure Hole Circuit,” hitting locations where adventurers were trying to clear out ancient labyrinths, long-lost sewers, chaotic caverns, buried cities, and other large-scale site-based sources of danger and wealth. Over time he discovered he could make more money on booze and cleaning or mending spells than potions, and upgraded his wagon to a full-fledged (if compact) mobile tavern.
The lower floor of the Wandering Monster has a single bar with a few casks and stools, though Dinferthort also has a number of leather cushions and tarps to make drinking outside nearby a comfortable option. The gnomish proprietor has focused on items popular with adventurers, including a few simple comfort foods, money-exchange spells (turning copper pieces into platinum pieces or even gems, for just a small cut), communication magic and, of course, healing and curse-removal potions and weapon oils. The upper floor is Dinferthort’s loft, bunk, and personal storage (which is tight, even for gnomish scale, but adequate for his needs… especially since he can conjure extradimensional space if he needs it).
Dinferthort is friendly, but not stupid. He normally only uses his conjuring to provide a few assistants as needed to run his business and creatures to pull the Wandering Monster itself, but always has a fair number of combat and escape-related magics and conjurations ready, just in case. Usually, however, his services are just too useful to adventurers in the field for anyone to dare attack him, or cause trouble for the Wandering Monster.
PATREON
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Owen Explains It All – Warbeasts for Starfinder
Before we get to any OGL content, an editorial aside:
First, this blog has spoilers for the finale of The Book of Boba Fett (and, by extension though less so, The Mandalorian). So if you want to avoid those, don’t read this.
Second, you may be wondering why is this tagged as an “Owen Explains It All” post, when that’s very unlike my normal marketing tone? Well, because this links into a show from the BAMF podcast I’m on, titled “Owen Explains It All!“. We do an episode every two weeks, picking new things from the zeitgeek to use as inspiration for game material, specifically the Starfinder Roleplaying Game.
We have a logo and everything!
So, whatever most people’s opinion on The Book of Boba Fett were (and, personally, I enjoyed all of it, though I always saw it as part of The Mandalorian‘s storytelling, so the tight links between the two shows didn’t bother me the way it did some people expecting each to stand on its own) most (though certainly not all) of the fan reviews I have seen say the final episode is well-worth watching the rest of the series.
And, when they both to say why (which IS a spoiler), it’s because Boba Fett rides a rancor into battle at the end of the episode, which hits the Ruel of Cool so hard I expect it to get its own entry on TVTropes.com someday.
What struck me, as a gamer, was how well that use of the rancor aligns with the idea of mechs in Starfinder Tech Revolution, which are presented as an option to allow PCs to take on encounters otherwise beyond them. The idea that, along with mecha, characters might have home bases, rancors, vehicles, minor allies, and other advantages they could pull out when appropriate spoke to me, and I though it’s be pretty easy to use the mech rules for near-kaiju-like warbeasts.
And all of that leads me to Warbeasts, as OGL content tying into Starfinder Tech Revolution.
Warbeast Rules
Unlike a mech, a warbeast can take actions without an operator. Indeed, often warbeasts without operators attack anything that attacks then, startles them, or attracts their attention. The take actions as a creature when lacking any operator. if you need any other statics, such as skills, treat the warbeast as if it was being controlled by a typical combatant NPC with a level 3 below the warbeast’s tier.
Warbeasts do not have shield points. Instead they have an equal number of Stamina Points, which are automatically restored (up to a maximum of the warbeast’s HP) with a 10-minute rest, or fully restored with a night’s rest. Warbeasts otherwise take damage as mechs (as do their riders, treating the cockpit as the saddle or hourdah of the warbeast).
Warbeasts are considered creatures, and can be targeted by spells and effects that target creatures, including mystic cure. You may wish to give the warbeast a type (often magical beast), which may also impact what abilities can affect it.
Warbeast Options
These are optional itsems you can slap on a mech statblock to change it to be more warbeast-themed.
No Ranged Attacks: If the base mecha has ranged and melee attacks, and you eliminate the ranged attacks for the warbeast, it gains +3 EAC and +2 KAC. If it normally does not have melee attacks, and you switch its ranged attacks to be melee, the warbeast only gains +2 EAC and +1 KAC. (Note that you can leave a warbeast with ranged attacks and just define them as kaiju-like breath weapons, eyebeams, projectile barbs, and so on.)
Exposed Rider: The rider’s position is not as protected as with a fully enclosed cockpit. Creatures may attack a controller of the warbeast directly, though controllers are always considered to have cover as long as the warbeast is active, regardless of where the attack against them originates. However, exposed controllers can also make attacks with their personal weapons without harming their warbeast. A warbeast with exposed controllers gets a +4 bonus to initiative checks, due to their much higher level of visibility of the situation around them.
Expanded Content
In addition to these warbeast rules, I created a simple option for using Resolve Points (or a lack of them) as a way to represent certain kinds of “old wounds,” a concept that developed as Jacob Blackmon and I discussed way to represent things from the show on the Feb 14th, 2022 episode of Owen Explains It All. This is bonus content for my Patrons, and is presented exclusively at my Patreon. You can join for a monthly cost of less than a cup of coffee!
Themed Fantasy Tavern Week: Titan’s Keg
Legend has it that the Titan’s Keg is partially built out of an actual keg of mead once owned by a titan, or at least a very large giant. This idea is reinforced by the fact the Meadhall section of the tavern has a deep, pleasant honey-mead scent permeating its wooden exterior and, of course, the barrel-like appearance of that section of the building.
The truth is more prosaic, though arguable interesting in its own right. The Titan’s Keg sits in a section of town reserved for residential shops and guild offices–places where people both live and work as crafters or representatives for crafters. The only enforcement mechanism for this vague zoning law is that shop signs must be approved by local crafter guilds, and to discourage public houses they don’t allow signs for inns or taverns. To get around this, the owner of the Titan’s Keg bought scrap wood from a shipyard wrecker, and used it to add a room to his home that had a keg-like appearance. The fact the wood came from a ship that had be damaged in a storm and hundreds of mead barrels had broken in its hold and soaked into the wood was a happy coincidence, though now the owner stains the interior wood every year with alchemical compounds that reinforce and restore the honey scent.
In addition to being a tavern and home, the Titan’s Keg is also the guild-independent shop of Ruvald Hain, an alchemist who specializes in food and flavoring. because his arts could be used to mask the taste of poisons (which he never works with), the Alchemist’s Guild and Herbalist’s Guild both insist he should pay them vast sums of money to oversee (and in his opinion, spy on and copy) his work. In defiance he refuses to join or work with either guild, and thus is only allowed to work in, sell from, and buy materials in his own building. The Titan’s Keg brings in most of his revenue (his experiments in flavors often leading to popular, often limited-time, drink flavors such as cheery mead, orange-blossom red wine, and the startlingly popular lime beer), which Ruvald spends convincing customers to bring him alchemical reagents for him to buy without doing business outside his building.
The Meadhall of the Titan’s Keg is kept clean and brightly-painted. A cauldron is always on the fire, though patrons have learned to confirm it’s cooking food before dipping themselves a mug of its contents. The interior arches are lined with shelves that have serving plats and steins, but also various alchemical agents Ruvald doesn’t have room to keep in his residence. In fact, Ruvald’s personal possessions often end up scattered about, and regulars keep an eye on them to make sure no one makes off with anything important. Often, the unmarked bottles simply have flavor essences and preservatives but not always, and only Ruvald knows which is which.
Ruvald has a small, but dedicated staff of halfling and gnome cooks, bartenders, and servers who keep the place running smoothly more in spite of him that with his help. They also double as his alchemy assistants, housekeepers, and bookkeepers. He pays them well, but most work for him as a kind of informal apprenticeship, picking up culinary and alchemical knowledge by observing and assisting him. They keep the Meadhall open most hours, but if Ruvald is sick or sleeping after several days of work, they may insist everyone “keep it down” so he can recover.
PATREON
If you enjoy any of my various thoughts, ideas, and posts, please consider adding a drop of support through my Patreon campaign!, or dropping a cup of coffee worth of support at my Ko-Fi (which is also filled with pics of my roommate’s cat).
Owen K.C. Stephens 