A New Year: Looking Back
almost 8 years ago – Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 10:52:05 PM

First a quick check

By now all of you should have your concept cards. In fact you should have received them several months ago. If you haven't got them then please let us know.

What went wrong?

We delivered late, and you deserve an update explaining why. The new year (it's still January, the year's pretty new!) seems like as good a time as any to look back. I don't want to make excuses, but I do want to consider where we went wrong and what we can do better, and we feel we should that openly.

There were three main reasons for things going wrong: 1. We promised too much; 2. Ste (and Amy) had to move house twice; 3. and I got ill.

We promised too much

Not only should we have seen this coming, we did see this coming. Ali told us as much several times and me and Ste both dismissed her concerns about writing four decks, plus the extras we promised. We were wrong. Despite experience, it turns out that there is only so much creativity one can pour out of a brain in a day before it turns to mush! Not being willing to compromise on quality, this doomed us to a late delivery from the start.

If nothing else had gone wrong we would probably have run about a month late from this alone.

We didn't mention this when it was happening because we didn't accept it was a problem until far too late

Moving house

With what can only be called dreadful timing, three days after the launch of the kickstarter, Ste and Amy received notice on their flat. This meant that time that could have been devoted to working on the project had to instead be devoted to house-hunting. This had less effect on the timing of the project that it could have done, but it was a big blow to its promotion. There was less of a buzz about this than the previous decks, and we got far fewer new backers on this kickstarter than on previous ones because Ste was not able to promote it as much as he usually does, and I am absolutely dreadful at marketing! Still, they managed to find a flat at a good price, and closer to our house than they were before.

To rub salt in the wound, just as we were preparing to deliver, they received notice on their new flat. It turned out that it needed a lot of work doing on it and the landlord didn't think it could be done with them living there. Eventually they found somewhere, even closer than they were before - so close that we actually share a wall, and we are hopeful that it will be for longer this time.

The day of moving came, and the agents were dragging their heels getting the keys ready. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because the boxes turned up at our house when we were sitting around cursing the agents. Had the agents been on time we would almost certainly have been at the other end loading boxes onto a van. Plus the people who had volunteered to help lift things were at my house when the boxes arrived and it gave them something to do other than drink all my tea!

I know we mentioned the second incident, I cannot remember if we mentioned the first.

I got ill

Shortly before the kickstarter was launched I went to the doctor because I was physically tired too much of the time. The doctor told me I was just unfit (I am, the error was in the word "just") so I started trying to eat better and get some more exercise. That didn't work and things started getting worse, so I went and got a second opinion.

To cut a long story short, after over a year of tests and many possibilities with worryingly long names, I have a diagnosis of fibromyalgia. That basically means I am physically weak and in pain all the time. Some days are worse than others - it ranges from being fully mentally capable so long as I don't move too much (that's fine for writing) to being unable to focus for more than a few moments on anything because of the pain (that's not). There is no cure and little hope of remission, but now it's been diagnosed I have some drugs that help give me have more good days than bad, and I'm receiving help to live with it better.

How much this delayed us by is difficult to quantify because it did not just delay me - if I couldn't do things at the right time, or couldn't do them to a high enough quality, they either didn't get done or someone else had to do or redo them, and that meant other things got delayed, causing stress which is itself a delaying factor! The joys of being self employed!

This was mentioned in passing, but we didn't dwell on it because we didn't want to look like we were making excuses.

The boxes turned out wrong

Despite our perfectionism the final product was imperfect. I'd love to say that the flaw in the boxes wasn't our fault, but that wouldn't be entirely accurate. We wanted the largest side of the box to open, allowing easy access to all the decks, but a miscommunication resulted in them opening onto the largest side instead. Despite that, we do think they are attractive, and they will protect the decks, so they're not a complete loss.

The simple fact is that it only happened because we were already behind schedule. There were checks we could have made to ensure that the boxes turned out exactly as desired, getting more prototypes delivered along the way, but those would have added at least a fortnight to the delivery date - and as we were already so far behind we chose to trust that things had been understood correctly, which we now know they hadn't.

What can we learn?

First and foremost we need to better judge what we are capable of, and not dismiss it when we are told we are being overambitious! This has always been a problem for me - I always want to do more than I am capable of - so when we get excited we need to take a step back and have a reality check. Doubling our workload in stretch-goals was, frankly, stupid and we won't do it again! We also need to make sure we have far more of the writing done before we launch a project like that again.

On the second point... um... there's not really much we can do about things like that! We did discuss cancelling the kickstarter and reopening it when they had a new place, but we decided not to for a variety of reasons. I still think that was the right decision, It was just dreadful luck. We have said after every kickstarter that we need to allow more scope for unexpected problems, and every time we are surprised by something even more unexpected.

As to my illness, I am better able to cope with it now than I was at the height of the project's workload, and while bad days remain unpredictable I at least know what is happening! I have no doubt that I will miss the odd deadline by a day or two in future because of this, so we need to build more slack into my parts of future projects to mitigate knock-on effects.

With regard to the boxes we need to learn the importance of communicating clearly with suppliers, proofing, and more specifically, ensuring prototypes are absolutely as we want them before we buy 200 of them! The decks have been proofed in pre-print pdfs sent back to us to ensure everything is right, and we were not asking for anything outside what the printers usually do in terms of the physical shape of the product. With the boxes we were - the manufacturers make wine boxes so these ones were a different shape than they normally deal with. That is where the scope for miscommunication was introduced.

I hope that helps you understand some of what was happening behind the scenes.

-Loz

P.S. Our reluctance to give excuses may have resulted in insufficient communication. So we'd like your input - should we be sharing more of the non-business challenges we face, when we face them?

Artemis Games Latest Project - Jigsaw Fantasy
about 8 years ago – Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 09:14:04 PM

Postage finished a week ago, so if you're in the EU and haven't got everything yet, shoot us a message. If you're further out, give it until the end of this week, then let us know.

As the vast majority of you should have received your parcels by now, we feel it's a good time to talk about where we're going from here. 

Jigsaw Fantasy

 

Jigsaw Fantasy is in many ways a continuation of what we've been doing for the past few years with Concept Cards - it's a tool for GMs and writers who want a little inspiration to kickstart their imagination.

But Jigsaw comes at it from a different direction. Unlike Concept Cards Jigsaw is not intended to be used primarily during a game session, as an instant idea - instead Jigsaw is meant to provide frameworks for building your sessions, to help you plan for things A, B, C, D, E and F - on the occasions where 7 comes up instead, Concept Cards will still be there.

To fulfill this role rather than a large collection of relatively short concepts Jigsaw is a smaller number of much larger pieces - a minimum of 18 pages per month, with one primary piece making up the majority (sometimes the entirety) of that, and a second smaller piece fitting in any gap.

Why Jigsaw?

Jigsaw Fantasy differs from other setting elements you may find in three key ways:

1) Each Jigsaw Piece has a set of "Jigsaw Links" studded throughout it detailing how to tie it into a variety of other setting elements - some of them ours, some from myth, and others from classic fantasy settings such as Eberron, Middle Earth or even Discworld.

2) You can vote on what we make. Each month we'll have three pieces prepared, and you will be able to vote on which of those three pieces you want to see. The winner will be finished [templating, copy editing, and art production] during that month, and released as the next piece.

Last, and possibly least:

3) We're making it. If you enjoy using Concept Cards, and find the ideas within interesting, then Jigsaw Fantasy is likely to also suit your style.

We prepared an extra sampler of Jigsaw specifically for our Concept Cards backers, in the form of Valdis.  

 

Patreon

We're taking a short hop away from Kickstarter to its neighbour Patreon. Patreon is a subscription model of crowdfunding, and we're using it to produce Jigsaw as a series of monthly releases. With shorter timescales, and no physical production, we can avoid the schedule slippage that has plagued our Kickstarter projects.

For more details on Patreon, check out their explanation.

As a little nod to our origins, we've added a Kickstarter-style goal to the Patreon page - if we hit $250 in backing within the first month of the project we'll release a special piece at the end of September, detailing a world-shaping element known as The God's Plague - a setting concept that twists the meaning of divinity and provides some new takes on many standard fantasy tropes.

So, join us there, and Be Well

-Ste

Everything is on its way
over 8 years ago – Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 06:03:43 PM

You read that right, all the postage has been done. We took the last fifty-odd parcels to the post office this morning.

They should all be with you within a week or so. To allow for postal services being interrupted by war, famine, plague or death give it two weeks (we did once have postage delayed by the Ukrainian civil war, so don't rule the others out!). If you haven't seen, heard or tasted them by then then let us know (n.b. we don't recommend tasting them - we know a printer who uses edible soy-based ink but they don't do cards…)

Those of you have ordered a box and 11 or more decks will be receiving two packages. Weirdly it's cheaper to send two parcels below 2 kilos than one over 2 kilos. Thanks to carrying capacity some got posted on Friday and some today, so if you get one package containing only some of your order, don't panic, we haven't forgotten!

When we first started this, with character cards, Ste asked me what I wanted from the project. I said “enough to cover our costs, and maybe enough left over for a pork pie each”. In honour of that, here is a picture of the pork pie I am about to eat in celebration!

 

-- Loz

An update and two, no three announcements
over 8 years ago – Fri, Aug 12, 2016 at 02:07:37 PM

We have several things to say in this update, and several pictures, so lets get straight to it

An update on shipping

First and foremost you want to know where your decks are. We have been I'm afraid, somewhat disorganised in the postage department this time. Sorry about that. Rest assured they are on the way now though. About 75% have been posted, and another batch, taking up over 90%, will be going out after I click send here. Everything in the UK and the EU has left our hands and should be in yours in a few days. The rest of the world will take a little longer to reach you because we unfortunately don't have a teleporter yet (maybe a stretch goal for next time?), but most of them will be in the post by the end of the day. The remaining few - ones that were more complex for one reason or another - will start their epic journeys next week (hopefully not via Mordor). They are going in batches because Ali is wrapping them all. Alas i am still too ill to be of much use wrapping parcels, so it falls to Ali - she's downstairs doing so as I type this, and she can only go so fast!

Filling Your Boxes

A few of you have mentioned difficulty getting your Who Needs A Campaign Setting Anyway boxes filled properly, due to the handles protruding into one of the sections. This is not something we'd expected to be a significant problem (as mentioned, the box was meant to be laid out a little differently) but we've taken a look into it, and we think we know the best way to make full use of them, and it makes the handles much less of an issue.

Placing the decks in horizontally like this means that there are six readily available (rather than only two) and simultaneously allows a convenient gap for the handles internal section to occupy.

On a related note, some of you have been backing us so long that you still have 80 card Character Card decks. They won't fit with everything else in there, sorry. Nothing we can do about that, Bag of Holding technology is out of our price range. There is however a reasonable solution to that problem available - if you empty the bonus tuckbox, and replace its contents with the 56 cards of the base characters deck (doing as you wish with the remaining 26 cards that you have duplicates) you can then fill the 12th space with the inserts, which need much less protection than cards.

If you prefer, you can instead take out the bonus box entirely, and fit the 80-card deck in that way, filling the remaining space with your favourites from the bonus content.

We are now Artemis Games

We are changing the name of our company from SteC Games or "Those People Who Make Concept Cards" to Artemis Games. Click on the logo below for our website, and then if you click on the "Blog" link, you can read a bit about who Artemis is - Ali has written something in what should be first in a long running weekly series, in between wrapping all your parcels!

Speaking of Ali, her and Amy will be taking a larger part in the company in future. We have grown from a tentative "Is this really a good idea?" to a games company we can be proud of. Ali and Amy (our partners) were always supportive behind the scenes, but they will be stepping into the well-deserved limelight of their own accord.

There are several reason for this name change (not least that it's a better name*), but one of them is that we no longer just do Concept Cards. On that note:

Our next project: Jigsaw Fantasy

We would dearly have loved to left this announcement until everyone had recieved everything, and we had had a chance for a bit of a rest, but alas circumstances have forced our hand.

After Concept Cards we are moving on to Patreon to launch Jigsaw Fantasy. It is a series of small interconnected setting elements, designed to slot into pre-existing worlds or click together with each other to build a piecework campaign setting.

These setting elements include people, places, cultures and races, among other features.

Each Jigsaw Piece has at least two potential points of connection called out - with possible links drawn from many established settings as well as our other Jigsaw Pieces and Concept Cards.

Jigsaw Fantasy is released in an ongoing manner through Patreon, wherein we are releasing 4000 words of setting a month. Patrons also get the opportunity to vote on what Jigsaw Pieces they want to see next

It is akin to Concept Cards, but longer and more focussed and (for the time being at least) purely digital (That'll help with shipping issues at least!) We're going to distribute via DrivethroughRPG in order to make use of their Library function, as we intend to update past pieces as newer ones fit with them.

We have an exclusive preview for you - an expansion on Valdis, the character hinted at in the Elemental cards of the Epic Treasures deck. Click here to download it.

Click the logo below to be taken to our Patreon page and maybe even become a patron!

"But what is Patreon?", I hear you cry! Patron is another crowdfunding platform, akin to Kickstarter but with a different focus. Essentially rather than funding a spcific project (the intended purpose of Kickstarter) it's more like a subscription model, where you pledge to fund an ongoing project and we pledge to keep producing content for it.

Find us at Nine Worlds

This is what has forced our hands**. Nine Worlds is a large "geek fest" convention in London, and Ste and Amy will have a stall there this afternoon on the Pop-up Market - go and say hi! We really wanted to launch there, as it was too good an opportunity to miss  - there should be so many people there who are our target market. I'm not entirely happy about the overlap but I was outvoted. Still, you are the first people to hear about Jigsaw Fantasy, even if only by a few hours!

As well as Concept Cards, Ste and Amy will be selling various things created by fellow small gaming companies, such as R4D4's rollable d4s, a party game called Escape the Nightmare, and the beautiful Baby Bestiaries in digital format (on shark-shaped USB sticks!)

I don't have a good picture to put here as my camera doesn't take pictures of the future. It's annoying like that!

--Loz

*[people kept calling us Steck Games - Ste]

**[aside from the whole "needing money to live" issue - Ste]

Shipping has started
over 8 years ago – Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 12:28:50 PM

Just a quick note to say that we have started shipping. People should start to receive their packages in the next day or two. We will keep you updated, probably when the last ones leave our hands within two weeks.

Loz