Gary Sarli's page

For what it's worth, I've been sharing my experiences and ideas with the SGG crew, hoping they can learn from what seems to have worked for e20 (and, more importantly, what I think didn't work). By the time all was said and done, e20 ended up raising more than any other game in Kickstarter history, and the second most for a writing project of any kind, so there is a lot of potential for this to change the way smaller publishers make games. (Yes, P20 will completely blow these records out of the water if it hits its goal, but it is definitely going to be a challenge all the way to the finish line.)

Make sure you spread the word via every means you have at your disposal -- tell everyone you know, promote it to your local game store (maybe the owner would become a patron or at least let you put up a flier), suggest the topic to gaming blogs and podcasts, talk about it on every message board you can think of, talk about it on Facebook and twitter (sharing and retweeting things from the SGG crew), make the most of digg, stumbleupon, etc., and just never stop looking for one more person who might be interested.

You still have six weeks to make this happen, and the potential is definitely there. For what it's worth, 92% of projects that reach 25% funding ultimately go on to be successful, so start with that benchmark as a short-term goal; if you can hit that, the project might have the critical mass to make it over the finish line.

I'm not trying the threadjack here, but I have a kickstarter question that relates more to e20 than to P20:

I noticed that some of your higher-level contribution rewards have a "number remaining" (in fact, the highest level is "sold out"). Why did you choose to limit these levels? What did you see as the advantages and disadvantages of doing so? Do you think that your "Kickstarter Effect" final surge might be damped somewhat by the unavailability of higher-level rewards?

It's funny you bring this up -- I just posted a comment about this very thing over on my message boards:

ronin wrote:

GMSarli- is there any chance a couple more of those top slots might be added for those looking to make a deeper contribution?

All the time I spent on this board over the past couple of months you think I would have noticed the limits on each patronage level :D

I've actually been thinking of doing exactly that -- I added the limits a little while after launching the project, mostly because I wasn't sure how hard it might be to coordinate things like development teleconferences via Skype if we have, say, 100 of the $200 patrons. :P

But, yeah, the limit of 20 was just a number I pulled out of a hat -- there's no particular reason for it to be 20 or 25 or 30, but I'm honestly a little shocked that we actually reached 20. Since we still have so many of the $100 slots open, I think I can safely increase the number of $200 rewards available without making it too crowded on the Senior Patrons forums. :)

Ooh! I just thought of a really good reason to increase the number of $200 slots -- I'm going to have a premiere event for e20 at Gen Con (basically a demo adventure I'll run multiple times during the convention), and those would probably be done with groups of 6 players. If I upped it to, say, 30 Senior Patron slots and schedule exactly 5 of the e20 events for 6 players each, then if every Senior Patron decided to come to Gen Con, they would use up all 30 slots. (And if they aren't coming, they can give the tickets away to a friend or have me leave them unsold so others can buy them via Gen Con's website.)

Alright, let's see ... with 30 at the $200 level and 60 at the $100 level, that gives us 90 Senior Patrons. Oh, what the hell, let's round the number of $100 patrons up to 70 and make it an even 100. (It works well in the US Senate, right? ... right?)

So, I just a moment ago increased the limits to 30 and 70, respectively. I'm even adding one higher "VIP (Very Important Patron) Level" on top of that. I told Owen that their $5,000 idea was brilliant, and my equivalent idea is to fly someone out to spend Gen Con with me and my crew for $1,500. :)

I think having limits probably makes them sell more quickly (look at how quickly P20 got the first six $250 pledges!), but you're right that it could very well reduce long-term contributions. (It's really hard to say, though; you might have a lower average pledge but a much greater number of pledges, because the early success attracts more enthusiasm and more people.)

If I were doing it again, I'd probably do something sort of like what P20 did; I think Kickstarter would allow different reward options at the same (or almost the same) pledge level, so I could do something like "6 'limited edition" $250 rewards" and but no cap (or a very high cap) on some more basic $250 reward (like the difference between getting to design an iconic vs. some other character, etc.) so that people can still pledge at that level.

Thanks for helping the Super Geniuses get set up with Kickstarter! I've contributed to both projects, and hope to see both succeed.

Me too ... thanks for the pledge! With my deadline coming up so fast I've been a little preoccupied, but I'm going to make sure all my backers know about the P20 project as well. :)

I'd also be interested to hear from the Super Geniuses about how they came to the opposite decision about limiting the availability of certain reward levels. You've already stated that you would limit the number of locations you would allow at the $250 level, but that you would (understandably) allow any number at the $5,000 level. It's clearly too late for you to place any kind of limits on the number of NPCs, but is there a number of $250 contributors where you would start to think, "Man, how are we going to incorporate THAT many NPCs without short-changing some of them or overcrowding the book to accommodate all of them?"

I'd like to hear their thoughts, too. For the record, though, they can revise the limits -- adding, changing, or removing them -- for given rewards, so they could decide to cap the number of characters if it starts to get a little too large. (They obviously can't cap the reward at any less than the number that have already been pledged, of course, but there's a lot of room for change there.)

Yeah - I hope it gets off the ground, but can't help but be a little nervous, I mean, won't things start of drop off after the initial rush? And $70,000 is more than $1,000 a day!

It'd be nice that those who are joining the FB page goes to the Kickstarter page and do their due diligence. It's been slow the past couple days after the first initial rush. Hopefully it has to do with pay periods. :D

At the moment, I'd say they've got pretty good odds. When I sent him the Kickstarter invite, I warned Owen (and, by proxy, Stan! and Hyrum) to expect two big things:

(1) A big initial rush that will level off quite a bit, but this is normal and nothing to be concerned about.

(2) Surges of pledges will come in around (a) weekends and (b) the 1st and 15th of each month.

In both cases, the apparent drop-off between surges can be VERY disheartening, and more than a little scary. The last couple of weeks of February looked very bleak and I was beginning to get worried that my e20 System project wouldn't make it, but then -- as expected -- I got a big surge right around the 1st that put things a little more in reach. We're still not there (89%, just under 9 days left), but I like our chances right now. :)

Because of that second type of surge (correlating with pay periods), one of the things I recommended to them was to end their project right around either the 1st or the 15th of a month. In addition, I suggested they try to catch at least 2 full months if at all possible. Someone might not have much disposable income in one of their two paychecks each month (e.g. a mortgage payment might eat up most of a paycheck), so you want to give them at least two chances to discover the project when they actually have enough money to make a pledge.

The result: 60 days of fund-raising, ending right as a new paycheck is coming in on the 1st of the month. :)

(Also, when I sent them the invite I asked that they please please please not end their project any less than 1-2 paychecks after mine. I know there's at least some crossover in players who have bid on both -- hell, I've pledged to P20! -- and I didn't want someone to be forced to choose any more than absolutely necessary. :) )

There are also two other tidbits that I've learned since I sent them the Kickstarter invite:

(1) Of projects that reach at least 25% funding, 92% are ultimately successful in reaching their goal by the deadline. (It's hard to know how well this rule holds up at the upper end of the spectrum, but it's still comforting to know once they cross that threshold!)

(2) According to this article, it's very common for projects to get a surge of pledges in the last few days before a deadline: The Kickstarter Effect: Fundraising as Game Theory. Having taken quite a bit of coursework in game theory, I found that to be a really interesting article -- definitely worth the read for anyone who wants to learn more about how this fund-raising system works in practice. :)

mcathro wrote:

So it looks to me like you can raise the money but the "reward" for sponsorship can't be over 10K.

Or am I missing something?

I edited my post within a couple of minutes of making it because I read the same thing. That does not jive with information we got a few months ago, but I don't have that original source. I am now looking into it, to see is kickstarter will meet our needs. That would obviously be much easier on our end.

But I -do- want to thank you for pointing things like this out, we appreciate all the fan (and fellow publisher) input!

Owen,

I've been using Kickstarter for the past month on my e20 System project, and thus far I've been impressed with their system's capabilities. For example, it can handle patron-exclusive updates (which patrons can comment on directly), and patrons get email notification for it so everyone stays in the loop. Also, since they help to promote projects to some degree (e.g. "what's popular" pages, featured selections, etc.), they can help you find people who otherwise might not have ever heard of your project.

As others mentioned, there's no total fund-raising ceiling even if the per-patron reward levels can't go higher than $10,000. Its one down side is that they get a 5% cut -- but, honestly, since they serve a useful "mediator" role (which makes people a lot more comfortable putting their money on the line) and their website provides a solid suite of capabilities, I think they earn it.

(Also, don't forget to account for credit card processing fees when you're doing your budget calculations -- depending on your volume, that's probably 2-3% of your total!)

I still have some Kickstarter invitations remaining if you're interested, so let me know and I'll email you one so you can get set up without having to go through the longer approval process. I'd also be happy to answer any questions you might have, give you some sample screen shots of what the dashboard page looks like, etc. -- just email or call me to let me know, and I'll help out however I can. :)

(BTW, my email and phone # for you might be old -- they're from when we were doing the Saga rulebook together -- but mine are the same if you need to contact me directly.)

Gary Sarli wrote:

If, on the other hand, you actually write material for the book, you get paid for it and get a design credit, just like any other freelancer in the gaming business. (Freelancers typically don't expect to be made a partner and own a share of the company that hires them. :D )

True, but, to jump on pres man's side of the discussion, freelancers don't generally pay to get a writing spot on the projects they're working on.

Oh, that's absolutely true -- I don't want to give the impression that they're paying to be freelancers. Instead, they're paying to be patrons (i.e. for access, input, and copies of the book upon publication).

Then -- as a completely separate transaction -- they can earn that money back if they also want to write content for the book.

I might be wrong, but I've been under the impression that Wolfgang Baur's Open Design projects do the same thing, allowing patrons to contribute actual content to the final product. (I don't know off-hand if he actually pays them, but I'd imagine he does.)

This is actually one of the biggest reasons I wanted patrons in at the very beginning. I've met a lot of people on message boards who clearly have the ability to be talented game designers if only they could get their foot in the door. This project gives them a good chance to do just that -- they get a publication credit, they get an inside view of how the publication process works, and (most importantly) they can get an idea of whether they want to pursue it more seriously in the future. :)

Brian E. Harris wrote:

pres man wrote:

All I got to say is, if I gave money to finance something like this, I would expect to get some kind of share in the company producing it. They could buy me out later, but tossing me a book and saying, "There you go, that's your share." Wouldn't cut it.

That's why it's handy that the terms are presented up front, so you know that you don't get any of that.

If you participate, you participate as a patron, not a partner. That's why it's called patronage.

Funny though, at the higher end, you get to participate more in the actual development. It seems more like the role of a partner than merely a patron. IMO of course.

Just to clarify: If you're providing suggestions and input (e.g. "I'd like to see a game that does X and Y but not Z"), then that's traditional "patron" stuff. The biggest difference in the e20 Project is that you're providing this input very early in the process, helping to shape the core rulebook itself rather than a rule supplement or standalone adventure.

If, on the other hand, you actually write material for the book, you get paid for it and get a design credit, just like any other freelancer in the gaming business. (Freelancers typically don't expect to be made a partner and own a share of the company that hires them. :D )

If you have any other questions, you can check out the FAQ (which I've been adding to steadily) or join the discussions on our message boards, and I'll get an answer for you as soon as possible. :)

Hi all -

I have questions. I've already agreed that I'll do the minimum $50 patron aspect of this project. Of course, I saw GMSarli's work on e20 System Evolved here - http://e20system.gmsarligames.com/faq.html and pledged $50 via kickstart for his project. Sure his is more of a d20/OGL aspect while this is to be a Pathfinder /OGL d20moder future aspect.
But from reading his concepts and his work background and what Super Genius want to it seems like there will be a whole lot of overlap as well as potential competition. While I'm not opposed to it, I am concerned that one might affect the other financially and thus hurt development when they could work together.
Has this subject been broached? A concern? Or are what SG is planning so not connected to what he has planned that they aren't even in the same ball park?
As a potential customer to either both or one, I want to be prepared. With 18 months of jobless-ness...my dead president coupons are limited.
Thanks for taking a look at that project and letting me in on what may or may not overlap.
Be Well. Be Well Future Evolved.
Theocrat Issak

[This is GMSarli, BTW -- Paizo's message boards won't let me change my avatar name until I'm made more posts!]

I can't speak for Owen and the Super Genius crew, but I'd hope we don't end up directly competing too much:

* Their project is, from what I understand, meant to be a modern-era book that's directly compatible with Pathfinder. I've worked with Owen and Stan! on multiple projects in the past, and without a doubt you couldn't find a better set of game professionals to overhaul d20 Modern into the Pathfinder mold. Frankly, whenever they get their machinery up and running, I plan to be at least a $50 patron (and I'd set it a lot higher if I didn't plan to be way too busy with my project, below).

* My e20 System Evolved project is conceived of as "grass-roots game design" meant to thoroughly rebuild the SRD/MSRD to make core rules that work for any genre right out of the box -- and it's definitely not meant to be compatible with Pathfinder (or much of the rest of the OGL books out there, for that matter). Since my project is meant to have very heavy patron involvement from the very beginning (as in "debating and voting on the most basic rules"), it should have a very different feel: I imagine the Super Genius project will be like watching a team of master mechanics rebuild a classic muscle car, but mine will be more like going MacGuyver in a junk yard ... and if you're a senior patron, you should plan on getting your hands dirty. :)

So, in my opinion, any one person could do one, both, or neither, depending on what they're interested in seeing in a game design project.

(One final point: My fundraising period is ending fairly soon -- March 15th -- and the Super Genius guys haven't even opened theirs yet, so hopefully anyone who's interested in both projects won't have to pay for both in the same month!)