created by Howard Tayler and Alan Bahr, and set in the universe of SCHLOCK MERCENARY
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
We have crossed into the six-figure zone, earning a Core Upgrade to a 224-page book. And here, for your viewing pleasure, is an early draft of one of those pages.
With most book projects we don't worry about layout until much later in the process, but Kickstarter encourages transparency, and that puts a few things out of order. We're digging into layout of this page spread and refining it much more than we ordinarily would at this stage, but it's still just a draft. Everything—every last thing—on this spread is subject to change. Mostly we wanted you to see what a page will probably look like. We don't need proof readers at this point.
Our design guidelines are summed up over here, if you're interested.
We're shooting for a high level of refinement in the finished product. Every paragraph we write, every piece of art we commission, and every page we lay will be allowed to "bake" for quite a while. It's amazing how much better these things get when we take our time.
That, by the way, is exactly how our schedule is built. We will be taking the time necessary to get this right. This is one reason our stretch goals have remained so narrowly focused. Nobody thinks a free t-shirt is a fair trade for a bunch of errors in the book.
And speaking of stretch goals, our $125k target is company pins for Strohl, Phubar, Planet Mercenary, and perhaps others. We've listed these as add-ons, but it's likely that we'll be able to drop them into the Extended Mag. At $150k we drop the Seventy Maxims book into the Extended Mag. But what about beyond that?
Howard hasn't built a graphic for these yet, but the $175k stretch is probably custom RiPP tokens as an add-on. We're waiting on a bid and some samples. We want "affordable and attractive, with some heft," and we've been doing a lot of research on that front.
What about $200k? How about another 16 pages? As of this writing we think that would be four more playable races, four more pages of weaponry, and eight more pages of places for these races to deploy their weaponry.
Many of you have suggested that we add pledge levels between the unlimited $100 Commodores and the sold-out $500 Rear Admirals. This illustrates a lack of foresight on our part, because a Commodore is, in a broad sense, the equivalent of a Junior Rear Admiral, so we don't have a good name ready for this one. We also do not have a good product offering for that space. All we can say right now is that we are listening, and we are thinking about it.
Given the choice, we would prefer to see the arrival of lots more Sergeants, Commanders, and Commodores than to have our current Commodores dig deeper. Sure, it's more shipping work, but we like the thought of all the additional happy people enjoying this thing we're making.
Dearest backers: THANK YOU. It's humbling and gratifying to have hit the 200% mark just seven days in, and to have cleared half our posted stretches in only eight days. I'll post another backers-only update with a cool wallpaper link sometime in the next couple of days, and it might even feature one of our High Admirals.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Planet Mercenary's backers have now pledged over $75,000 in support of this project, enabling us to create not just the book and the cards, but also dice and a challenge coin. Thank you, everyone!
This is the first public update we are posting to the project. The private ones have had links to wallpapers for backers, and we'll be posting another private update soon, but we felt it appropriate to post an update that anybody can read. Role play is neither exclusionary nor elitist, and our communiques shouldn't make anyone feel like they're being left out of something important.
Backer-only updates are locked down not because we're saying something only the backers are allowed to hear. They're locked down because we want to reward the backers for their pledges, and we feel that those rewards should be exclusive.
The next update will be a private update, and it will include a link to a ZIP file with some reformatted wallpapers, some of which will have bragging rights built right into them.
You only get the thumbnail for now. Final versions will be 1920x1200 and 1920x1080, and the full download will probably be several megabytes of industrial-ish things like this. If you have a color printer, you might print these out and use them to decorate a GM screen like the one Alan used during one of the play-test videos.
It's going to be a day or two, though. Howard has the source files ready for nudging and rendering, but he also needs to make some comics this week. Kickstarters are very distracting.
Our next Stretch goal is at the $100k mark, and we can reach it with another 555 "Sergeant in Motion" pledges. Those charging sergeants will benefit directly from this one, as will Air-Dropped Grunts and anybody else getting books and/or PDFs, because it's a Core Upgrade. At $100k we will be adding 16 pages of content to the book, and that content will be all maps and deck plans. Because these will be in the PDFs, they'll be easy to print out and consult at the table.
When this project hit the $45,000 funding mark we knew we were going to get exactly enough money to pay the Kickstarter fees, commission the artwork, hire the editors, and print and ship the books and cards. At the $75,000 mark the project begins to pay Howard, Sandra, and Alan for their work. The project is still a couple of stretch goals away from paying them more than minimum wage for that work, so if you've got friends who would enjoy this thing we're making, please tell them about it. Also, that $150k stretch is going to be really cool.
Backing this project does not mean you've given us permission to fill your mailbox with marketing information. We'll try to keep the updates relevant rather than rah-rah-rah, and we shall endeavor to include things in these updates that make them worth opening. If you want more information than we're posting here, or if you want things more often, the Planet Mercenary development website at schlocktroops.com has that kind of stuff, and is a good place for the crunchier sorts of threaded interactions that Kickstarter's interfaces can't provide. Also, there is a Planet Mercenary twitter feed, which their marketing department thought would be a good thing to connect to the CEOs handbrain. There is in-universe entertainment happening there every couple of days.
We'll probably be saying that a lot. We don't want to desensitize you to those two words, but we also can't say anything about this project without including them. So they get their own header, and hopefully they will continue to convey how grateful we are, and how humbled we are by the extent of your support. Thank you!
— Alan, Howard, and Sandra
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.