I see the number of D&d adventures on kickstarter, but they are all 5e, for the casual player instead of the hardcore player Pathfinder 2e. The campaign would be called Dawn of Mankind. It would be an adventure where early civilizations just began. The heroes start out in a desert far away from any civilizations and their goal is to find civilization. The majority of the enemies would be animals and monstrosities, with the occasional bandits or bad orc tribes. Maybe a few giant sized animals kind of what you’d show la brea. The time period would be around 50,000 bc or even earlier. The setting would neither show Earth or Glorian, as it would be vague on purpose. The adventure would be sandbox mode but not Hex crawl. For example the heroes can start out by moving North, South, East or West. So in a sense they can encounter different things and end up in different civilizations at the end. Picture being in Las Vegas for example but in 50,000 bc. You can move south thousands of miles and find your first civilization in Mexico, or move west and you cross ocean from California until you hit a continent or island that has civilization. You move east thousands of miles and then hit a trail the would force you to go northeast New York or southeast landing in Florida. If you went here turn to this page, if you there turn to that page. Other choices, you see steep mountains in the way, climb them or go around them which could be only a few hundred feet before you get around them or miles. It would be like a choose your own adventure book, but there are no dead ends, and not as many choices. The first choice you make in the game is choosing one or 4 directions. Every path will have exactly one minor choice along the way or one major choice at the end. For Example of minor decision going around a mountain you might encounter an orc tribe of 4. Going up the mountain you might spot a cave and encounter a creature, but you still end up in the same place once you cross the mountain. The setting isn’t Earth, but it is easy to use it as an example as to how it would work. The world population would be at most 50,000 sentient beings. Rewards for backing the project would be a pdf of the adventure. Others would be create small tribe, boss, etc. Ideas on how I can make my project successfully funded.
I should clarify the setting in case people ask about copyrighting. No planet is named and cities are non existent yet. It would be based off Earth not Glorian, but not Earth. For example I would google what Tennessee was like in 50,000 bc and describe what land you are in while not stating it. The you travel west to West Virginia then Virginia. I google what the land was like back in 50,000 bc, whether grassy, hilly, swamp etc while not stating you are in West Virginia and describe the terrain. I’m using pathfinder mechanics only and pathfinder creatures but not any pathfinder unique creatures m.
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While I am also annoyed by the ammount of stuff that is coming for 5e instead of literally anything else
I have to say 2 things before we continue:
1. this might not be the entirely correct forum, but I am not sure because
2. please use a few paragraphs, a wall of text like that is really hard to parse
I had a long day today, but I am sure other people would be more willing to say something if that whole block got split up into a few smaller chunks that are easier to digest
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Thank you for sharing your idea. I'm reminded of advice I once received.
A business with a brilliant idea that can't execute will always be beaten by a business with an adequate idea it can execute.
Writing, art, editing, layout, cartography, and marketing are all professions. Good Kickstarters are invested in, because people believe you have pro skills and have access to all the others needed to publish successfully. Ideas alone are rarely enough to get funded.
First, develop your skills and work on your content. Learn as many of these professions as you can. Then, learn how to put them together to be a publisher.
Thank you for sharing your idea. I'm reminded of advice I once received.
A business with a brilliant idea that can't execute will always be beaten by a business with an adequate idea it can execute.
Writing, art, editing, layout, cartography, and marketing are all professions. Good Kickstarters are invested in, because people believe you have pro skills and have access to all the others needed to publish successfully. Ideas alone are rarely enough to get funded.
First, develop your skills and work on your content. Learn as many of these professions as you can. Then, learn how to put them together to be a publisher.
is it possible to pay a company or well trained individual to do this? My plan was to write the adventure and follow all the rules so I don’t get in trouble with copyrighting. I pay a company to do the artwork for me. I was hoping for an after payment rather than a before payment. My other option instead of kickstarter is writing up the pdf and selling on Amazon. Amazon charges nothing to post it. They can print on demand rather than upfront. If exactly 5 copies in a month, they print 5 copies and you pay the fees for 5 copies. The company doing the drawing for me gets paid when copies sell. Instead of me paying them upfront, they get paid 50% of the profits. I’m not doing this as a business but as a side hustle. I want to only pay fees if copies sell. I can pay a ton of fees upfront and not a single copy sells for over a month and I don’t want that.
There's no chance of succeeding by relying on others to do everything for you. It costs more to outsource that than you can possibly make back from an adventure. No one is going to do that work for an unknown creator on commission either. If you can't invest in your own professional skills to lead the effort, no one will invest in your idea.
To be honest with you, your idea has no value. That's not a commentary on whether it's good or bad. The value comes from editing, layout, art, maps, marketing, and leadership. If you're not providing those, you're not generating value. Ideas are like b%#&~#+#s. Everyone has one, and no one thinks theirs stinks. Now get out there and learn some valuable skills.
Plane is correct that you will likely need to work on at a minimum on how to best self-market your idea. Paying someone to market something that you yourself have trouble marketing would probably be either really expensive, or likely to not get the reception you are hoping for.
And I'm not trying to be harsh, but reading your first post, your idea of Dawn of Mankind was at least a little interesting. But immediately you said, civilizations weren't really around, but the players goal is to explore and find a civilization.
But in the Dawn of Mankind before civilizations, who would be looking for a social concept that hadn't been widely invented yet. It would seem like their goal would need to at least start as something else, even if you can transform that goal into search for civilization through some means. But guess what, you need to have your idea of how you're going to preform that transformation.
Is it a rumor or dream of a great plain of endless grains and wandering herds of meat animals, as the local inhabitants are dealing with a drought in their local vicinity?
Is the goal to find a new homeland, does the tribe follow them, or do they stay, believing their goal is foolish. Thus, in addition to finding this 'promised land' the heroes have to find it, and then get some kind of proof, and then bring it back, and then potentially deal with some challenge that they might have been able to bypass the first time due to being a small band, but will need to confront to enable the whole village to pass, including the elderly and children or such on their second trip back to the 'promised land'.
With that in mind, is this a brand new idea, or have you already run some folks through a 'beta' version of this adventure path. If you haven't, then I'd suggest you do plan to do that. Since you don't have the benefit of an already known name, you probably need to do that before you fundraise. So you have more to show for 'what' people would be backing. So you can describe the 'elevator pitch' for the final full arc of the adventure. It is reasonable to say, hey I want this adventure to have really cool artwork, but to get that, I need funds to pay a good artist to make them a reality, that's what you are funding here in this Kickstarter. I think in your position you need to already have at least a workable draft for your story and encounters at the start.
This way you can tell people what levels it is set for. What subset of species allowed (is it all human). What classes are allowed. (seems hard to imagine Wizards without civilization, same for gunslingers, for instance) These are all things that your target audience would likely need to know in order to get them to buy in, that they would want to get to run, or be a part of this adventure.
You might inquire with some of the prior authors of commercial adventure paths, either Paizo or others, and see how much it might cost to have them do a once-over editing pass over a draft. That might be able to be a cost that could be tied to getting to a tier in your Kickstarter. But keep in mind, the more future development, the longer the time to final product, and the more stressful your Kickstarter will be, both for yourself and for your backers.
You should be clear at the start of the Kickstarter of what you have done, about what you need to develop still, and what is waiting on the funds coming into the Kickstarter, and how much you need to make those things a reality for the project.
All that said as someone who hasn't ever run a Kickstarter myself, although I have backed several, including some that ran into.... troubles. Not at a scale of a Kickstarter, but I had done some impromptu card production projects at a small scale, that I had to juggle some of the above elements to have people understand what the end product was going to be. With those I had to have something already in had that was an example or prototype of what the end was going to look like, for people to be interested in participating.
Good questions Loreguard, and it something that will be explained in the adventure. Civilizations do exist, but they are spread out hundreds of miles. The Pathfinders could have been in a small civilization of say a dozen or two dozen people but it died off or they wen to seek out a bigger civilization. Like any Pathfinder Adventure path, there will be custom backgrounds and suggestions for players can come up with their own ideas as to why they want to find one. One player might want proof they aren't the only sentient beings on this planet. Another player might want to find so he can work together to build a permanent home. Another player want to find one to improve mankind and build things for his future children. Maybe the civilization they live in of a dozen people consists of elder people that they estimate have less than 5 years to live. How they know other civilizations exist depend upon background. Maybe their god/goddess told them in a dream or spoke to them directly. Maybe they encountered a random traveler or pack of travelers that told them of this. Maybe they don't know about it but they think, well we have a tribe of a dozen people, maybe there is a tribe out there of several dozen people, so I'll leave my tribe in search of a larger one. Another background is historian from the future, when you are from the future but you landed here by accident and you can't get back. So you look for civilization because you know for a fact they exist. As a historian you might not know exact locations but you might know somewhere in the Northeast and Southeast corners of the country early humans lived there. So you know you have to travel in that direction.
I'll get rid of the Kickstarter idea, but Amazon and Drive-Thru RPG work. I have two goals with this. One is to make small money on this, ie side hustle. Goal number two is to provide people with options, 3rd party Adventure options for Pathfinder 2e. Marketing will be done in a way that people will find it on Amazon if the search the key words Pathfinder 2e Adventure, pathfinder 2nd edition Adventure
I'm working on a rough draft. The title and what levels this is for, 1-10 and the words An Adventure Compatible with Pathfinder Second Edition will be on the cover page. I know what kind of encounters I want to run. Since I can't pay artists, I'll do my best. It will be pay what you want on drive-thru RPG, or buy a on print demand on Amazon. I might not sell a single book copy or make donation money, but if it is free, and it provides people with more 3rd party Pathfinder 2e adventures. Pathfinder 2e lacks 3rd party adventures, I only see Jewel of the Indigo Isle, Aegis of Empires and a few one shots written by Legendary Games when I search Amazon. And I'm searching under multiple things. There is Pathfinder Infinite but I don't count that.
Species that exist: Common races are still common. Half-breed like half elves are considered uncommon. Uncommon races are considered rare. Rare races are considered unique. If a player really wants to play an Android for example he can but is the only Android that exists on that planet and player number 2 cannot play an Android, but can play a Automation if he wants. Gunslingers only exist if you pick from the future background. Somebody had to be the first wizard. The first wizard could not have had a spellbook or have learned from another wizard. Sorcerers are born with magic, wizards are not. So I could say in this game the first Wizard learned from Sorcerers. Heck maybe he came from a tribe of Sorcerers but wasn't born with magic so he found a way to learn it. Maybe he wrote his spells down in a book once he spent days practicing magic. The first Wizard always knew the other spells, so when you level, it is he always remembered the Invisibility spell or always had it written down in your book but still need several more days to practice it to get it right, hence learning the spell when you level up.