Kickstarter Training Wheels - Pt 1
I have this crazy notion I should start designing games. Or rather, I should take the games that are bouncing around inside my head and put them out where anyone (who isn’t a G’Dar telepath – but I digress inside my head) can also play with them.
Kickstarter seems to be a good way to get that done.
The drawback is that I have never conducted a crowd funding campaign, Invoke (a card game now inside my hard drive, not my head) is almost ready to publish but a three deck game with over 100 cards and nearly 20 original acrylic paintings as foundational art seemed an awfully big mouthful as a starter campaign. I really should start with a smaller scale project, to test both the crowdfunding waters and the limits of my wife’s patience (she is after all my editor, administrator, treasurer, project manager and IP attorney)
We decided to start off with a smaller game. It would be easier to manage, and cheaper to produce so a smaller amount of money would be needed to launch the project.
Introducing …….. Role vs. Roll
Role vs. Roll is a mini card game that can be integrated into any existing RPG system as a character development tool. The rules are really simple. You would think that 30-40 cards with simple rules would also be simple to design. Not if you want to do it right.
Like most of my ideas it came to me while I was on public transport in Sydney. Getting the idea is easy for me. Making it happen is a different story. I gave myself two months to design the game. Artwork is not challenge, its therapy. I am an artist. Painting, drawing and digital design are how I relax from my day job.
Finding most of the software needed to design the cards is also easy being that I run Linux and most of the software needed is open source. All the legal, administration copyright and content editing is also no problem (though it does require a lot of breakfast in bed services – and flowers) I am married to a copyright lawyer and legal publisher.
Finding the time to develop this game...well there is the problem.
So far I have spent 87 hours on this game working nights and weekends and - very rarely - on my hour lunch at work when I am at the park. My wife has put in an additional 30 or so hours editing, creating document management processes and outlining project management and administrative structures.
I figure that I have about another 30 hours to go before it is ready.
My biggest roadblock is my dyslexia.
Writing anything takes forever to do it correctly and I can't see spelling errors. Even special software like the one I am using right now has its limitations and will not withstand the onslaught of the grammar Nazis. My lovely wife does help when she can with the editing, but it's still a long process and she can only manage bite sized editing sessions – as her day job pretty much has her editing and content managing for 7 hours straight its not fair to expect more than an hour or so of her evening or weekend time.
Once we are done with the editing we will start play testing. Even though the idea behind Role vs. Roll is extremely simple I would like to get feedback from people so I can make the game better.
