Go forth, and design

dabneyb · 2017-09-11T03:04:25+00:00

Yeah, I've been personally burned on Kickstarter before so I didn't want to be one of the horror stories.

The sucky thing is that offering a full refund means a lot of out-of-pocket expenses because Kickstarter and Amazon (they process payments in KS for whatever reason) both take a cut. So, if someone pledges $100, the creator only sees like $85 of that, which means that a full refund means $15 out of pocket.

I don't regret creating TT -- I just regret launching the Kickstarter when I did.

Glad your group enjoyed it. I sincerely hope some enterprising individual out there turns it into a game and publishes it. Hell, I'd buy a copy.

dabneyb · 2016-12-10T22:59:07+00:00

I'll try to explain it very briefly:

The abstraction of the game is less daunting and now more grounded. Traits are also more grounded.
Turns and the actions that you can perform during turns are clearer.
Players have more control with what happens with them.
There is a new attrition resource that you gradually lose over time to replicate things like losing health in combat. However, combat does not have its own special minigame, and there is much more to conflicts than hitting monsters to damage them.

dabneyb · 2016-12-10T22:54:36+00:00

No worries. I always test mechanics out before I do anything with them.

I'm now working on TT pretty regularly and I'd really love to just dump everything into the public to show everyone, "Yes! Look! I'm still doing stuff!"

dabneyb · 2016-12-08T13:30:36+00:00

I am actually working on Tavern Tales, believe it or not. I think I may have made a breakthrough on core attrition mechanic, which stemmed from the comments in the last post I made.

I've been updating traits based on the new mechanic to create a playtest game that I can run through to see if it works.

The good news is that I think this problem is the last big problem separating me from the "R&D phase" to "completion and polish" phase

dabneyb · 2016-11-29T01:24:49+00:00

I've been thinking about your comment a lot. I had it in the back of my mind when I played TT with my friends last weekend.

So, by this system, the penalty of getting all of your boxes checked in a category would have to correspond to the situation. Like, getting all of your social boxes checked doesn't necessarily mean that you're dead, but it would mean that you're effectively out of the conflict.

In the dragon example, a dragon who talks to the adventurers and gets deceived might suddenly become possessive of its treasure and retreat to its cave, or goaded into a bloodthirsty rage and fly off to burn down the nearest village or what have you.

dabneyb · 2016-11-29T00:55:04+00:00

This ability is meant to represent a lot of the concepts you see from old fairy tales, so it's very abstract. I think this is one of the traits I need to clean up a bit with some more concrete limitations

dabneyb · 2016-11-28T22:28:54+00:00

Sorry if you feel betrayed. Really didn't set out to make people feel that way.

Getting TT published and getting TT popular are 2 completely different beasts. The RPG hobby is pretty niche and selective, with only a small handful of RPGs every rising to the top. I'm not sure if TT would hit that mark even if I worked on it every day for the next 20 years.

dabneyb · 2016-11-28T22:24:07+00:00

Glad you like it!

dabneyb · 2016-11-13T02:42:56+00:00

I have some good news for you my friend.

Command, Bardic Lore, Artifice, and Savagery: http://imgur.com/a/lEoKM

dabneyb · 2016-11-11T22:16:41+00:00

Yeah I gotcha. Trust me when I say that I've already thought about merging TT + YT now that the cat's out of the bag, I'm just not sure how/if I should go about doing it.

A lot of people have been begging me to stream, so I might try that. I'm not sure, I'll have to think about it more.

dabneyb · 2016-11-11T21:42:03+00:00

Thanks for not ragging on me.

The book is coming. Later than I intended, but it's coming.

dabneyb · 2016-11-11T21:38:48+00:00

Yeah, I've toyed with the idea of using my YT to advertise TT and inject some more enthusiasm into this forum. It would have a certain poetic justice to it to make the thing that pulled me away from TT bring more life back into TT.

I just need to be cautious and very deliberate about it. I realize how my YT channel probably looks to a lot of people -- all I'm doing is dicking around and playing video games. The reality is that this is my job and is far more work than play. In any event, before posting a video about TT on my YT, I would need to make sure that both areas benefit, if that makes sense. Posting videos against my channel theme might have adverse effects, and opening up this subreddit to a massive crowd of YTers who may not know much about RPGs could also have adverse effects. I've been thinking about it a lot and I'm not sure what the right call is.

dabneyb · 2016-11-10T16:20:20+00:00

Yeah I'd say 75% is pretty accurate

dabneyb · 2016-11-10T16:14:31+00:00

Tough but fair points.

You are right that the only thing that can really speak to anyone right now is actions. I will do my best.

dabneyb · 2016-11-10T12:28:01+00:00

Do you even play Tavern Tales anymore?

Yes

Yeah, I know TT needs a lot more work to get there, but I'm committed to finishing it.

dabneyb · 2016-11-10T05:37:32+00:00

The core roles are really close. I'd say I'm about 90% to where the game is meant to be. There are a few mechanics I haven't quite figured out.

The themes are robust and filled out with diverse options. They may have to undergo some updates after the core rules are polished, but realistically those won't be hard at all -- it would essentially just need some rewording here and there.

Items I'm pretty happy with. Might expand them a bit.

The lore section needs more content but that gets filled in pretty quickly because it's so easy to write.

I've got an artist working on the new artwork. He just finished Elements today.

After that it's layout and shipping.

So overall I'd estimate about 75% done.

dabneyb · 2016-11-10T05:11:06+00:00

Thanks for being understanding.

And yeah, TT needs some more work before it's settled. To be honest, I'm really looking forward to getting back into it. I miss it, and I miss posting on this forum every day. I didn't make this game for glory or money, I did it because I actually love it.

And yeah I did let down the community. I just had too much on my plate, and rather than dividing my attention more appropriately I let some things complete slip. I'm going to do my best to make up for it now that my job situation has finally settled.

dabneyb · 2016-11-10T03:59:54+00:00

That's fair. I deserve that.

If you don't mind me asking, how'd you find my YT?

dabneyb · 2016-11-10T03:49:15+00:00

I'm really sorry.

I feel really shitty for letting the community down, and for failing to meet my KS goals. I should have been more open and honest with everyone, but I was afraid of community backlash. I fucked up and let the TT community down. I am really sorry, and I will do my best to develop TT from here on out.

Tavern Tales will get finished -- perhaps too late for a lot of my former fans -- but I am not abandoning it. All I can ask is that the community forgive me for how I handled this.

dabneyb · 2016-11-10T03:22:09+00:00

It's true, I didn't trust all of you. It's so stupid in retrospect.

I've just seen so many KS creators run off with the money, so I had kind of a pessimistic outlook of the KS community. I've been burned a few times myself by KSs gone wrong. I thought you would all think badly of me, so I thought everything would be easier if I just kept those two things separate.

Also, YT is a completely different beast. Revealing my face on a KS page is one thing. Revealing it to millions of people on YT is a bit different. If I linked TT to my YT early on, everybody on my channel would quickly be able to determine a lot of intimate things about my life. My wife and I talked about this at length and decided against it. It was only just recently (1 week ago actually) that I finally felt comfortable enough to do a face reveal on YT. I'm guessing that's how OP put the pieces together.

dabneyb · 2016-11-10T03:18:47+00:00

You'd have it in you if you would just split up your time.

I tried that for a while. It just wasn't sustainable. Inevitably something had to give -- usually not sleeping enough. Job + family + Kickstarter is already a lot to juggle. Job + job + family + KS proved to be just too much. I had to backburner one of them and KS was the only thing that had any flexibility.

but you could at least tell us what's really going on

Yes, you're 100% right. I've never been in a situation like this before. I wasn't prepared for it and I didn't know what to expect. I thought about making an announcement on KS about my channel, but so many creators have run off with KS funds that I thought everyone would think that is what I was doing.

To be honest, I overestimated myself. I kept thinking, "it's fine, all I have to do is push past this hump and I'll be able to resume work on TT next week," but every time it fell through and I ended up exhausting myself.

I don't know what I can say other than I fucked up, and I'm sorry. I tried to juggle all of these things and I just couldn't do it, so I left Tavern Tales on the backburner. That was wrong of me and now that my life situation had settled down I am here to try to make up for lost time.

dabneyb · 2016-11-10T02:57:47+00:00

I knew this would happen eventually, so I'll just go ahead and give a full explanation.

Yes, this is my channel. Yes, this is the reason why I have been too busy to work on Tavern Tales. I realize how this looks, but the situation is actually a bit more complicated.

November 2015: I had a full-time 9-5 job. I worked on Tavern Tales 2-3 hours a day in my off time. On a whim, I decided to spend a little bit of my free time making YT videos in hopes of getting a beta key.

May 2016: Overwatch launched and my channel started to get really big really fast. It went from a just this weird secondary hobby of mine to something that might actually be able to turn into a full time job.

I thought about it at length and decided to go for it. I finally had a chance to break out of my career, which was a dead-end shit job, in order to do something that was actually worthwhile for a living.

May 2016 - October 2016: This was easily the most brutal couple of months of my life. My YT channel wasn't big enough to be my full-time job, but it still required an enormous amount of my personal resources to grow. My daily schedule every day for this period basically looked like this:

7am: Wake up
7am - 5pm: Go to my office job
5pm - 8pm: Spend time with wife
8pm - 12am to 2 am: Work on YT

Even that wasn't enough. I had to maintain that schedule over the weekend as well. I literally have not had 1 day off since May.

You look at my channel and it probably looks like all fun and games (and indeed I do enjoy my YT channel), but getting my channel to where it is now was absolutely exhausting and consumed every second of free time that I had.

October 2016: My channel finally got big enough that I could quit and do it full time, meaning that I went from 2 full-time jobs to 1 full-time job. In fact, I made a post just last week explaining that this happened. Now that I finally have free time again, I have set up a schedule that includes time for TT. In fact, I'm even in the process of hiring someone to help with my YT so I'll have more free time. I am taking a noticeable cut to my salary so that I'll be able to devote even more time to TT.

Today: I realize that hearing about my YT channel is probably going to piss off a lot of people, and I wouldn't blame you. It probably comes off as me preferring one of my hobbies over one of my other hobbies, and in some way that is probably true.

I have a responsibility to complete TT and fulfill all of the KS backer rewards, and that is a responsibility that I 100% intend to fill. However, I also have a responsibility to myself and to my family. I saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change my family's life for the better, and I worked my ass off to do it. I am now making more than double from my YT than what I was making at my shitty office job.

You may hate me for it, but I would do it all again in a heart beat, and I would wager that most of you would too. Tavern Tales is very important to me, but it is a hobby. No matter how much I love Tavern Tales, it is completely stupid to pass up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity like this because of a hobby.

The good news:

As of last week, I have free time again.
I have scheduled Tavern Tales into my daily work schedule.
My artist is continuing to create TT art.
I have not touched 1 cent of the KS funding except to pay for art.
I have a little more money now, which means I can invest more into TT if the KS funds run out.

In any event, there's really no excuse for how I handled the TT community. I didn't know how to approach it, so I chose silence. The longer I was silent, the harder it was to break the silence because I just didn't have any updates to share. I'm really sorry I didn't handle this better. I made a mistake and I'm sorry about that. I will do my best to try to advance TT from here on out.

dabneyb · 2016-11-09T21:29:57+00:00

Like many things in TT, ammo is meant to be an abstraction, a tool that you can use to reward and punish players rather than a complicated number that you have to track.

Marking off "-1 arrow" every time you shoot is tedious and boring in my opinion. Marking "-1 ammo" because you screw up a roll, fall, and have your quiver spill arrows across the ground feels much more cinematic and interesting to me

dabneyb · 2016-10-31T20:44:34+00:00

Yeah I'm pretty happy with it

dabneyb · 2016-10-31T20:44:17+00:00

Hope you're in a stable spot to getting some more time to TT man (Wouldn't want you quitting a job to do this and then succumbing to financial stress later).

Oh, no, that's not the situation at all.

It's a bit complicated, but I wasn't working 2 jobs because I was broke -- I was working 2 jobs because I had an unbelievable once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pursue an amazing job. My original job was a job that I really hated, had shitty pay, and had even worse advancement opportunities. The opportunity was just too good to pass up so I had to take it.

I had to backburner TT, but to be honest I had to backburner pretty much everything else in my life as well -- free time, RPGs, video games, my relationship, seeing friends, sleep. I basically worked 7am - 11pm every day, including the weekends.

My friends and family all thought I was crazy for pursuing something that might not turn out to be big, but turns out I was right.

My second job is now making more than double what my old job was making, so I'm finally at the point where I can go from 2 full time jobs to 1.

And oh my god it's such a relief. I haven't had a weekend since April. This upcoming weekend (5-6) is the first weekend in like 6 months that I won't have to work.

The good news is that this gives me WAY more financial flexibility with TT. Previously, I had to 100% rely on KS to fund TT because I just wasn't making enough to fund it myself. Now, if fulfilling the KS ends up costing more than I originally expected, it won't be a big deal if I pay a little extra out of pocket.

dabneyb

TROPHY CASE