April Monthly Update (Patreon)

So apparently I managed to miss posting March's monthly update entirely 😬. But now we've reached the end of April, and big things are afoot! So let's get on with it.

Full-time! Here's the big piece of news, and the one that'll really matter to everybody. As of next week, I am working full-time on creating D&D content! That's the book, mostly, but also everything else. In my worst-case financial projections, I can do so for 6-12 months without being accused of terrible financial decisionmaking; in my best-case financial projections, your generous help and support makes this a legitimate career choice for me. So if you've been on the fence, now (or June 11!) is a great time to chip in with a couple dollars, to help me give this project the effort it truly deserves.

Kickstarter! Launch date is set for June 11, and the team's now in the home stretch as far as pre-campaign preparations go. We're up to about 850 pre-launch followers, which on the one hand is plenty, but on the other hand the sky's the limit. That should be enough to give us a healthy start on day 1, but more would obviously be amazing - getting to full funding on day 1 or 2 would be the sort of thing that really snowballs. For those who haven't followed, I'm going to be creating a hardcover book, containing all three of my classes, a whole pile of subs, a couple hundred spells, full rules for seafaring adventures, and at least 3 mini-settings you can just drop into your game world.

Patreon: A little bit of downward churn here, but nothing I'm too concerned about - I might be to blame, having fallen down a bit on Patreon updates.

Troubadour: V1.2 includes a fully copyedit pass and one small-but-significant nerf.

Swashbuckler: Another feedback month for the Swashbuckler.

Bloodrager: I've been working on the v0.7 changes for awhile, chewing on lots of feedback and thinking how to properly address. And as of today, it's live and public - with significant base-class changes, and the addition of the Celestial Bloodline and Mystic Discipline!

Subclasses: 1/1 (so far). Last month's poll-winner was the College of the Quiver bard, which I haven't quite finished up yet but I'm hoping to do so tonight or tomorrow. I did finally get a draft out for the Stormborne Sorcerer, which is book-exclusive content currently visible to supporters.

Misc: The Seafarer's Manual is huge! I've been working on that for about 4 months, cleaning it up and revising it. It's in the wild, it's getting playtests, and I'm really excited for where it goes from here.

Spells: Omega and I have started noodling some on the successor project to Spells That Don't Suck - placeholder title Spells That Are Absolutely Legal. It'll be a redesign and reimplementation of ~every non-SRD spell in WotC's corpus, intending to add to our corpus of CC-BY spells for anyone to use. Not sure on an official start date for the project yet - he and I are both a bit burned out and taking a little time to rest from SDS.

Discord: Just about up to 350 members.

The plan for April:

Kickstarter: The cover is finalized, the KS sample is edited, and we're currently going through layout, graphic design, and a sensitivity read. We're going to do one more pass on the campaign itself, making that pretty, and setting the final schedule in place for stretch goals. And lining up marketing outreach - if you have any channels you think would be effective to cross-promote in, please reach out and let me know! We want to get the biggest, splashiest campaign we possibly can.

Troubadour: Going to revisit getting this up on DTRPG as pay-what-you-want, as a way of learning that platform and starting to build an audience there.

Swashbuckler: The last subclass before the campaign starts! The poll closes tomorrow, with the Aerialist and the Graceful Fist currently neck-and-neck.

Bloodrager: I'm aiming for some more changes and one more secret subclass this month!

The Seafarer's Manual: I'm hoping for 1 or 2 small bumps here, to start chipping away on the expanded features.

Subclasses: The public March subclass poll has 19 hours left to go! The Circle of Fang and Claw seems like a lock, but monthly updates often make a significant bump, so that could still change. With my newly-expanded schedule, I'm also hoping to get several more book pre-work subs done.

Species: Some really cool art coming up, I still need to catch up on the design.