Kickstarter!

Kickstarter. You know it.  You love it.  And you hate it.  As do I.

I'll give you a run-down of my Kickstarter activity, because I know you are riveted to your seat to know what I put my money into.  It's like voting.

First off, I have a 100% success rate.  Meaning, I've not gone into a project and had it fail.  They all got successfully funded; many of them much more so. I'm not going to bore you with a list of them - oh wait, I am. But I'll try to entertain you with some colorful commentary of the cooler projects, and my take on them.

Let's try a cut and paste... frelling hell, it worked.  Yay, Blogspot! Aaaand after some HTML editing, and reversing the order... Ok, here we go...

Deadlands Noir
First ever to join... Still waiting on the printed product and some physical rewards.  This was fun because several from my game group joined as well.  This was the hook. 

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No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression
I felt this was a great kickstarter; the guy wants to release his game scenarios for free, to everyone. Backers get bonus bits. Most of these have already been written, and I even got my limited edition mini!  And the scenarios should be usable in Realms of Cthulhu!!

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Nightmare Magazine
One of Meran's.  She's getting them in her email and has been enjoying them. 

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Dwarven Adventurers Box Set
These were cool, watching the designers show the new designs and such.. The actual product was nice; I have painted a few of them.  They come in handy for my monthly HellFrost game. 

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OUYA: A New Kind of Video Game Console
This was the coolest, I thought.  An Android-based gaming console... So small I can travel with it!  Currently, they are shipping as I write this, but I haven't gotten any notification that I will get mine soon.

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Reaper Miniatures Bones: An Evolution Of Gaming Miniatures
This was a big one.. We went in balls deep on this one, getting almost all the extras / stretch goal minis. We are expecting over 300 miniatures - some not so miniature: a few of those dragons are pretty big!

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Wild Card Creator
Because I am a Savage Worlds whore, I supported this. I use Hero Lab, but I wanted to see how this guy was going to support importing PDFs of the product I already owned. He's still working on it, and I'm still using Hero Lab.

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Deadlands: Raven Graphic Novel
Again, Savage Worlds related, and a comic!  Best of both worlds.  Issue #3 (of 4) should be released soon. 

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tremulus: a storytelling game of lovecraftian horror
Because I liked Fiasco, and because I generally like everything Reality Blurs (Sean Preston) does.  This looks great, but we need to find someone to run it well to understand it better.  Currently waiting on the printed product, which should be soon according to updates.

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Cthulhu Playing Cards
This was the first deck of cards project.  I have Savage Worlds "Realms of Cthulhu" and thought this would be a great deck to use for it.  I was right. 

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Savage Outfitter - Savage Worlds Has Gone Digital
Another Savage Worlds software product.  It was cheap and comes with online tools to manage your stuff from anywhere... I actually don't have high hopes for this one - they still don't have the Character Creator done.  Hero Lab to the rescue!

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Hellfrost Land of Fire - Arabian Nights RPG Fantasy Setting
Savage Worlds Whore..  I love HellFrost, and now they have added a continent.. I guess it's like World of Warcraft (which I don't play); add a new continent, and everyone will jump to it.  We'll see. 

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Fearful Symmetries: An Anthology of Horror
Ellen is a FaceBook friend of Meran's and I met her in New York when I was there.  We like her stuff and wanted to support her.  It should be good readin'. 

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Mine Kafon
This is just cool... A tumbleweed landmine finder / detonator. We jumped in and got some lights made from the end disc bits.  Should be cool over our wet bar!

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The White Rabbit Playing Cards
Another deck.. the art is pretty cool.  Haven't received it yet, but it should be close to shipping. 

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SEED: The Untold Story, Documentary Film
Got it, and I haven't watched it, but I think Meran has. 

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Interface Zero 2.0: Full Metal Cyberpunk
Savage Worlds whore part... 4 or 5 depending if you count the card decks, because SW uses cards.. Anyhow, 1.0 was good but I never bought the book - we got the PDFs for free! 

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Dicecards: The World's Geekiest Dice Bag in a Deck of Cards
I got the 'print it yourself' option and there should be an Android app, too.  This was just interesting. 

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Achtung! Cthulhu - The WW2 Keeper's & Investigator's Guides
More source material for gaming... Realms of Cthulhu again...

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The Tomorrow Girl: Dresden Codak Volume 1
Meran wanted this one; I think it'll be pretty cool. 

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Albino Dragon's Synthesis Cyberpunk Playing Cards
Another deck of cards, to go with the Interface Zero 2.0 - even though I got the stretch goal deck of cards in that one, too... too many decks of cards? Not possible! 

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Harry Palmer: Starstruck - or "Old Proldiers Never Die"
This looks great! and Lee Moyer is coloring it.  He's a neat guy and a great artist. 

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FlashCity Stories, a Cyberpunk Flash Fiction e-Book
More Cyberpunk!  Source material for Interface Zero.  And only a dollar! 

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The Name of the Wind Playing Cards
Because we seem to be supporting all these guys' projects... We love card decks and Patrick's books, too.

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TRAKLINE: A new kind of belt for men
Pretty cool... no more holes, it's a slick (as in good design, not friction) slider grip track... if that makes sense..
There's the link; go look for yourself.

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Girl Genius Volume 12 Printing and Reprint Frenzy!
Because it is fricken' Girl Genius!

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Low Life; The Rise of the Lowly, Core Rulebook
As I said before, I am a Savage Worlds whore. I bought this book already, and he's redoing it a bit.. so I am just in it for the PDFs.

So there you have it: My Kickstarter Habit. By the way things look, I'll be doing this for a while...

Stumptown comic fest

Portland, Oregon!  Stumptown Comics fest!

Meran and I decided to go.  Mostly because Meran found out that two of the guests were two of her favorites in the comic book universe.  We went to get books signed by Phil Foglio (Girl Genius, Myth Adventures) and Bill Willingham (Elementals, Fables).  We also met quite a few new artists, new books and met some folks that we knew about, but didn't catch our eye in the original guest list.  Christopher Herndon is one of those folks - great guy, great artist and a lot of fun to chat with.

We prepared for the worst.. We've been to a few local comic / book / self-publishing shows here, but with these big names, it's gonna be crowded.. I mean not SDCC-crowded, but I made sure we padded our time to prepare to wait in lines for book signings and prioritized all the books so that if there was a limit, we knew what we were willing to forgo.

Well, seeing as how this was in Portland, OR, and not San Diego; there were virtually no lines, and no limits!

First stop was Phil Foglio (We walked past Bill's spot as he hadn't showed up yet).  In preparation for this, I had drudged up an old TPB of the Myth Adventures Volume One for Phil to sign, and dammit, he had a hardcover of volume one AND two.. So, we bought that, and a pin [awesome!], and 2 novels.. and probably something I am forgetting.. [a Girl Genius bag] All in all, Phil got a good sale and we got all our books signed.  He was fun to talk to as well.  I forgot to get a picture...

Next, we backtracked to where Bill was sitting and started chatting with him. We started pulling books out for him to sign, and he was happy to do it.  Meran had a good conversation with him [fangirl!!], while I was managing the books, plastic covers and the 'to do' and 'done' piles.  We had quite a few for him to sign.

With those two main stops done, we started walking the aisles of exhibitors.  We took way too much time with Christopher Herndon, but I think he enjoyed the time as much as we did. We found Evan Daum of webcomic Rice Boy fame; Meran almost squee'd!

That was our day.  We had fun, and got some good books signed by some good folks.