Feedback wanted on the next Hrothgar's Hoard project.
about 8 years ago – Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 01:46:17 PM

Backers, I'm here to ask for your help.

I have been working on my next Kickstarter project and am at the stage where I need a little feedback. 

 The short version: The next project is going to be two decks of cards for Critical Hits and Critical misses. I have the design work done, most of the cards finished, and a prototype deck being printed. 

What I'm looking at from my previous backers is for input on whether the wording on the cards is clear, to the point, and workable within your campaign. The decks are designed for 5E, and to be honest, I've only really played 1st edition and 5th edition. So I'm also interested in knowing if, as they stand, they are able to be used with other editions or other RPGs for that matter.

 If you are interested in helping me with this, send me an email at [email protected] with the subject line "Card Tester". I will send you a jpg of 2 of the cards. Take a look, and give me an honest opinion of what you think. 

 The project preview can be found at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1658949603/1768456858?token=c2020ad7

Prototype Critical Hit decks will be available at GaryCon March 3-6 

 Projected launch date is late to mid March. 

 Thanks for your help 

 John

Not much new here
about 8 years ago – Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 04:17:14 PM

The weather continues to f-up my schedule. I tried to spend some time in the shop a couple days ago, but only lasted about 15 minutes with the temp in the low teens. It is supposed to get back above freezing next week, so we'll see.

I did ship out a few more packages. I'm at 13 shipped with 28 mostly ready and 10 who haven't completed their surveys. 

I put in an order for more exotic wood. I ran out of Padauk, so if you ordered Padauk cases, that is the reason for the delay. The B&W Ebony I got previously turned out to have a large fault in the middle of the board, so I got some new wood. Maybe I'll get some seconds out of the first batch, but I wasn't going to send those cases out the way they were.

Just as an FYI, I'm going to be at GaryCon the first week of March and Cleveland ConCoction the week after that. Because of that, anything that I don't get out before then will have to wait for my return to get out. There is a good chance that I won't be able to update during that time as well.

Saw Deadpool last night. Great movie, but don't take the kiddies to see it. It EARNED that R rating.

Finally, I have an announcement regarding the next project(s). I'm going to be launching two projects here in the near future. Neither of these are woodworking projects, so they will not interfere with this project being fulfilled.

The first is a novel titled Fractured Starlight.It was written by my daughter and will be released under the Hrothgar's Hoard brand. Fractured Starlight is a story written in the FRPG theme with many of the characters and elements coming from our personal D&D campaign. This will be her fourth book, but really the first one that we hope will have broad market appeal. She won the Power of the Pen district competition, and placed 10th in the state in 2014. If you have interest in fantasy fiction, take a look at this project.

The second project compiles two decks of cards for Critical Hits and Critical Misses to be used for most RPGs. Most gamers use house rules for when natural 20s and natural 1s are rolled, and these decks give you the opportunity to draw a card for that roll. The card will have on it all of the effects of that attack/fumble printed on it, along with flavor text that you can use in your game to describe the effect. The results are weighted so that there are more chances of a player drawing a "maximum damage" type card than an "Instant death" type card.  The cards themselves were professionally designed by an award winning book designer.

I'll be posting links to these projects soon. The first will probably be launched within the next two weeks or so (maybe sooner.) The second will probably be launched around April. I hope to be taking some of the decks to GaryCon and the Cleveland ConCoction so if you want to take a look, come visit me there.

That is all I have. 

John

Friday update (on Saturday)
about 8 years ago – Sat, Feb 06, 2016 at 08:58:08 PM

I'm trying to think of words to describe my week....

"Fiasco" comes to mind

"Frustrating"

"F'ed up beyond all control" probably comes closest.

The weather wasn't half bad. I expected to get a lot done at the beginning of the week. Then the cnc went down. Couldn't figure out what was going on and sent an email to the manufacturer. We narrowed it down to the power switch. Easier to bypass the switch, so I taped a few wires and I'm back up.

I boot the computer up and get a message saying "hard drive failure imminent." computer is 10 years old, so not too surprising. I backup all my files. Computer goes down soon afterwards.

Bring my desktop PC to the shop to get the machine back up. CNC runs off a parallel port. Hmmm....newer computers evidently don't have a parallel port any more. Crap.

Look on craigslist for an older PC. Find one and go pick it up. Guy who selling it says it hasn't been fired up in years. I give him $10. He also mentions he is into D&D and we talk shop for a few minutes. Get home. Computer won't boot. Pull the hard drive and drop it into another system. Still won't boot. Hard drive is trashed. *sigh*

Talk to a guy who runs the local computer repair store. Know him from when my daughter played rec softball (he runs the local league). He has  a couple old computers laying around that are scheduled to be scrapped. Says he will reformat the hard drives so his old client info isn't on there and let me have one. Will take a day or two.

Three days later, I call to see if he has done it yet. He hasn't. Promises to get it to me later in the day. End of day I pick up computer.

Hook it up. Load all the software on it. Boot up old computer to get some settings from the old system. Old computer refuses to boot. Good thing I backed up the files. Check old email to find settings and license numbers for the software. Transfer everything over. Looks to be running OK.

Two hours later: blue screen of death. (haven't seen one of those for a while). Break toe kicking table saw (not really). Reboot. Won't boot. Reboot again. Boots. Run diagnostics. Computer says that everything is hunky-dorey. Start software. Hangs for a few minutes just to let me freak out some more and then starts. 

Start production. Managed to get about 40 cases made in a day and a half. Still need to finish them, but it looks like I'm back in operation.

Got to bed. Tell wife I'm going to lose weight and that, as a reward, for every 10 pounds I lose, I'm going to buy a new tabletop game. "Wow," she says. "That's a lot of games." 

*grumble*

On the bright side of things

I did manage to get 5 more orders out this week and finished several of the cases I need to ship some more, so while I didn't get as much out as I had hoped, they are slowly getting out. 

thanks for the kind emails I've gotten recently on cases that have already shipped. I really think that this project  has some of the nicest cases I've done thus far. 

John

Friday update
over 8 years ago – Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 06:06:37 PM

Pretty productive week, overall. It stayed warm enough that I was able to get to work on finishing earlier than expected and I now have several dozen cases awaiting felt and foam and they will be ready to get out. 

I put four orders in the mail this morning. Weather looks good for the next few days, so I'm planning on spending the weekend and early next week in the shop and then trying to box things up starting on Wed. or Thurs. with another shipment of Friday. We'll see how far I get, but I'm hoping to get at least half out by next week.

Fingers crossed.

John

Friday update (on Saturday)
over 8 years ago – Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 03:00:36 PM

Well, a very disappointing week as far as getting things out goes. The weather only broke freezing one day (and only for a few hours) this week, so I wasn't able to get any finish work done. Next week doesn't look any better. I can probably get some finishing work done starting on Thursday...things are looking pretty good after that.

So, the bad news is that I certainly won't get anything out this weekend, and there is a good chance that next week will *mostly* be a bust. If the forecast continues to look good, I can start finishing on Thursday which means I might get a small shipment out on Saturday and more out on Monday. After that, we'll have to see how things play out.

John