Thought's of a Mad Scientist: Other Mad Scientists

THIEVES!

CHARLATANS!

CONDEMN-ABLE ACTIONS!

My Ideas have been stolen from me!

The very thought of it all is maddening.

What happened you may ask? I was watching the evening news and it turns out some other Mad Scientists have been creating Gamma Juice and Grunts! How exactly do I know you might ask? Well isn't it obvious? When the headlines are "The White House, Kremlin, Blue House and British Parliament have all been attacked by ogreish monsters the first thought might be OH!, we're in a "Fantasy World" that must have been dreamed up by some guy and his partner to make and sell a game. WELL YOU'D BE WRONG!

The only way this could have happened is if someone used gamma juice to create Grunts! MY DESIGN!

OOOOOHHHHHH THOSE OTHERS WILL RUE THE DAY THEY STOLE MY DESIGNS!

Muahahahahahahahaha.

Simple Manufacturing and Shipping

We covered some preparation info in our previous post, Kickstarter 101 but now it's time to cover how manufacturing works. There are a lot of companies to consider but I'll start with what's important to think about. This is not the end all be all to how it is for everyone but these are the things that we've had to think of thus far in our game creation journey.

If you're looking to stay in the United States and want to print off smaller batches of games, one of THE BEST options for you is The Game Crafter. They have a ridiculous amount of tools that they use to make small publishers successful and go above and beyond to make sure people are satisfied. They even have podcasts and blogs that help give advice about how all of this works. I've spent every day listening to their podcast and have listened to hours of content that has been filled with some of the best advice I could've asked for. Seriously, consider these guys for your shipping if it's in your cards. (pun intended) Even if it isn't in the cards, utilize these guys and check out what they put out.

As for everyone else, I can list off quite a few manufacturers that do great work but I won't. There are people who have larger lists that are definitely more complete than I could manage. For instance, check out The Hitchhiker's Guide To Game Manufacturers by James Mathe. It separates everything by cost and quality. Whatever matters most to you depends on your situation and your game. What I will go over is what we've considered with everything:

1. If your game has cards, think about the thickness of the cards ahead of time. Try to get some games with varying thicknesses to reference but I'll save you some work. The standard for a lot of games is at least 300 GSM (grams per square meter). Anything less is not practical for playing over time. That being said if you have less cards in your game, going as high as 350 GSM might be an option for you. You'll be the best judge of this but no matter what you do, make sure you research it ahead of time. In addition, consider whether you want them to be uncoated, glossy, or made out of linen. These are all very important for you to know ahead of time.

2. With manufacturing, another thing to think about is what size your components will be. The companies who you work with might be able to help with this but it's good for you to think about this ahead of time. Go to your game shelf and try to find a game that's similar to yours. If you don't, then you should look up games that are like yours online to see what they did. Most of the time you can find photos of the inside of the boxes when you search for them. When you find them, consider what their game includes and think about whether you like how they packaged their product. Then you can plan accordingly when you tell the manufacturer what you're expecting.

3. Contact manufacturers ahead of time so you can get quotes. Quotes are free and are very helpful with your decision making. Some of the best manufacturers out there are expensive if you are printing a small run. One thing to mention before we go further is what the term, "Landed Cost" means. It literally means the cost per printed product for it to arrive to wherever you need to ship it out from. It's the printing cost plus what it costs to ship it to you. So, if you're printing 500 copies through Company A, the landed cost could be $15 per product whereas if you go with Company B, the landed cost could be $10 per product. If you just go with Company A without first contacting Company B, you could be out extra money.

4. Always remember to plan around the Chinese New Year. This year, companies were shut down from 2/7/18-2/23/18. That means over two weeks where you can't get anything done with your manufacturing companies. If you are manufacturing outside of the US, this is most likely going to affect you and you should just plan around it.

This may seem simple but when it comes down to it, it's important stuff to consider if you haven't come across it yet. There's loads more to consider but check out James Mathe's blog to narrow it down.

The last thing I'll mention is to think about how you're going to ship everything. If you don't want to manage all of the shipping yourself and spend hours upon hours fulfilling your orders, think about going with another company. A great company that handles storage and shipping combined is Ship Naked. They are also really nice folks and have warehouses around the country to fulfill whatever your company's needs are. These are just great tools for you to consider depending on how successful your campaign is.

What are you looking for in a manufacturer? What is most important to you when trying to find someone to print your games?

What is Tabletop Flow?

As you may have noticed, we changed the name of the blog. There are loads of reasons why we wanted to do this, but I figured I'd go over the primary reasons we changed the name and what our purpose will be with this blog. So here are a few of the reasons we changed the name in no specific order:

1. "Tabletop Flow" is our goal as game designers and creators of content.
What is Tabletop Flow, you ask? I went to school for Psychology and when I was thinking about tabletop gaming, I thought the closest thing I could relate it to was meditation.  It's that feeling when you're playing a game where you are just existing without negative thoughts and/or feelings brought about by the external world. You're so focused on the problems you're solving that you clear your mind. That sensation is what I'm calling Tabletop Flow. One of the greatest positive feelings in the world is when you can clear your thoughts and just enjoy the game you're playing. The same can be said when you're reading a great book or watching a movie so that's the focus of our content. We want to make people forget the things of this world when they read our content or play our games.

2. "Kickstarting Gamma Grunts" seemed self-serving. 
What I mean by self-serving is it's not focused on what we, as a company and individuals, want to be focused on. The name was focused on what we're doing and what we think and not focused on the tabletop game community. This isn't how I want to live my life let alone run a business. So when we're creating content for this blog, we want it to be focused on the reader. What information is helpful or interesting for the reader? What is our purpose in creating this content? These are the questions that "Kickstarting Gamma Grunts" didn't seem to focus on by it's role as a blog title.

3. We think the explanation of our process will help make your process easier.
Creating content can be hard but aspects of developing, manufacturing, and publishing your content is harder. That's why we want to make it easier for people to know what goes into every step of the process of tabletop game design and publishing. Our mistakes will decrease your mistakes and our research will quicken your research. That way you can focus on your game more!

4. We want to include you in our process. 
Even if this means us researching/answering your questions or giving you an outlet to share your opinions/process, we want you included. This is your blog, not ours. We want you to be the driving force of our content.

Let us know if you're liking this new direction or if you're interested in sharing content on our page. We'd love to hear your thoughts!

Thoughts of a Mad Scientist: Gamma Juice

Ah, Gamma Juice.... 

The sustenance of life in a bottle. The source of power I will use to make a force the world has never seen before. My gang....no... My ARMY of Grunts will be made out of Gamma Juice!

It's so brilliant yet simple and elegant. Only a paragon of my stature could ever achieve such greatness. Gamma Juice is so simple to make it is insane that no one else had thought of this before. Seriously, all you really need is luciferin, luciferase, oxygen, Plutonium, neodymium, nobelium, liquid Argon, Bromine, and a dash of Gamma Radiation(15 MeV).

Thankfully these ingredients are ooh, so common. Who doesn't have a few hundred pounds of each of those? Almost nobody...that's who, AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA. That makes it all the much more simple to generate great supplies to keep for myself. Only through my brilliance could anyone have amassed these level of resources. In the worst case scenario  I've got my atom smasher just laying around. Even if that breaks down I could use some cosmic radiation in place of the gamma rays. It's easy enough to channel.

I've got a mind on how many different molds I should use to create my Grunts. At least two maybe three.... or four....seven....teen. Variety is the spice of life after-all. I have always had an affinity for ogres and goblins with the occasional orc. merging them together should be a fun task to accomplish. Maybe I can add some cybernetics to them occasionally as well.

Terror will be wrought upon my enemies. Grunts will crash through the countryside and bring woe to who oppose me.

Gamma Juice for the win.

Kickstarting 101

We're going to be at Concoction Cleveland for Protospiel this weekend but I definitely wanted to share a small portion of what we've researched for this.



So, how does Kickstarting a tabletop game work? Well, to be honest it's a pretty complicated thing but I figured I'd give you some really surprising things about the process that helped us along the way. It's also interesting to know the process because it's interesting to see how this stuff works. This won't include the details of manufacturing because we'll cover that later in a separate blog post but let's talk about what needs to happen before you actually launch Kickstarter. Also, be sure to remember that this is just what we've had to consider so your experience may be very different. This is purely just what we've had to deal with.



1. It's obvious but you need to create and playtest your game over and over until you have something that you know front and back. This may not seem that important but the reality is that in order for you to be successful, it's important to have backers set up on day one to back your game. So you playtest the game and make sure it's wonderful. Then you make sure you get as many people to play it as possible in order to ensure that it's what they want and it's not sloppy. Do this enough and you will be able to work out all the kinks before launching on Kickstarter.



2. While you're playtesting, you also need to set up a decent amount of artwork to be completed months before you launch. You need to have a product that looks good because a huge portion of what people are going to be attracted to is the art. The big reason why is you need to have people do Kickstarter Previews prior. For instance, prior to us going to Kickstarter, we will have about 50% of the art made so people can get hyped about our project. When we send out our games for Previews, having that much art will really make it so they have something to show in their videos.

One other helpful thing we learned regarding design to include on pieces that are not completed is, "FPO" which is an industry standard that means, "For Placement Only." All reviewers need to have is enough art to show off in their videos so including "FPO" on cards that don't have the art will make it so you have a professional product to show off.



3. Kickstarter Previews/Reviews are videos done by people who's whole goal with what they do is to share games with the masses. Games from large companies, small companies, and even individual designers/publishers. Some of these people have a few hundred views on each video while others have thousands. There are some who only do it for the projects they like while others charge for each video. There's also a great group where industry people can find reviewers called the Board Game Reviewers and Media group on Facebook.



4. You need to work out the cost of your product before you launch your Kickstarter but what's most important is to figure out accurate shipping prices. The first part to consider is that 10% of your incoming funds are going to go to Kickstarter and Stripe (the credit card processor for Kickstarter). Whether you include the cost of shipping in pledge amount or if you add it afterwards, it needs to be accurate. This is where the majority of cost issues come into play. Definitely remember to account for the cost of the boxes too. Not a big deal but if your game requires a $2.00 box to ship and you only charge for the actual shipping cost, then that's money out of your pocket.



5. Plan out the cost of your stretch goals. This is another place where you can lose money fast. Always make sure what you're promising is reasonable. For instance the CMON extras that came with last year's Rising Sun Kickstarter each had separate costs that, because they're a larger company, they were able to deal with. For instance, each plastic miniature has a separate mold needed for them, which some companies can charge around $2,000 for them. If they wouldn't have planned for this individual figure in their estimates, they could be out quite a bit of money. Mind you this $510,000 goal shows they planned for this. But mess this up a few times with multiple stretch goals and your successful Kickstarter could be the catalyst for potential bankruptcy. So if you want to have awesome extras like this, make sure you it's in your financial planning.

6. Promote your project. Start a Facebook, a Twitter, a Google Plus page, or heck, even a blog. *cough, cough* What people might not think of however is to get email sign ups! This is far more key than you may think they are. Every time someone signs up for your mailing list, they are making a small commitment to you. They are expressing their interest in your product and showing that they believe in what you're doing to some degree. The more people you get to sign up, the better it's going to be for you. Just start it and don't be afraid to ask your friends for their emails.

Create your audience and enable you to keep in touch with them. After all, you're not just Kickstarting a single game, you're Kickstarting your company. If you already have a successful company or have already Kickstarted successful campaigns, you probably already know these steps but this is definitely something you could share with someone who doesn't this already.

These aren't the only things you need to do but these are a few of the things that really are helping focus our efforts. Hope they help you too! As always, more to come but enjoy!