FIVE YEARS! / New Pledge Tiers (Patreon)

As I published my most recent adventure, I realized that I've been doing this for five years. Stellarium of the Vinteralf was published in January 2014! There are now 48 illustrated adventures in total.

This wouldn't have been possible without your help and support—your encouragement, generous donations, and not least spreading the word on social media. These have all made this project grow way past what I imagined when I started.

Hitting the five year mark means it's time for some reflection!

Making everything freely available was a leap of faith, but in hindsight it was absolutely the right call. The adventures do a much better job at marketing themselves than I would have done trying to sell them.

Apart from some limited experiments, I've had only one tier the whole time. Even so, looking at the pledges you've made, that one tier doesn't really match what happened. For whatever reason, many people chose to make up their own amounts! After years of this, I'd like to make the tiers match what you're are actually doing.

Lean and Mean Wins

I've been wrestling with how to structure the tiers for a while now, then I realized: the other reason this made it to five years was keeping things simple. 

Like Kickstarter projects, it's so tempting to load up with stretch goals and produce tiers that collapse under their own weight. This project has been like a Kickstarter without stretch goals.

Everything is free; there's no forum, no t-shirts, or stickers, no physical perks. That stuff is fun, and I'd love to do it, but I know it would jeopardize what's been working so well: every month I publish the best adventure I can come up with, straight from the core of my inspiration.

On the other hand, going the opposite direction, and walling off my content behind higher tiers is also a non-starter.

So, here's what I'm doing. I'm making three new tiers, which line up with the higher pledges that people are already making: $2, $3, and $5. They look like this:

Seree Automaton — $1

The $1 tier is exactly like it is today: I put free adventures on the blog, CC-BY-NC text and art.

Vicious Imp — $2

This tier will also have WIP sketches and peeks at the map bin on those occasions when I can get ahead of my map-drawing schedule.

There will also be occasional polls asking about preferences for upcoming adventures.

WIP sketches will still show up on Twitter and whatnot (they help me get the word out, too!), but if you want a Patreon notification email whenever I post sneak peeks, this is how you get it.

Nuss Envoy — $3

Those of you pledging at this level are obviously already convinced, so all that's left for me to do is say thank you even harder. In addition to the adventures, WIP glimpses and polls, Envoys get a shout-out on Twitter as they sign up.

Beast — $5

Everyone who has given money or time to make this possible will be listed in the compilation, but Beasts will get special thanks as well as everything else.

What To Do:

If you're happy where you are, you don't need to do anything!

If you're pledging $2+ and want to jump onto one of the new tiers, you can do that. (I can't move you myself, I've asked.) You can see them down the right-hand side of my Patreon page.

Final thanks

Once again, thanks so much for your support, whether in dollars, kind words, questions, your play reports, tips for improvement, or spreading the word! It's been fantastic.