Dude, multi-quote is your friend.

Quote from: One Horse Town;582499Dude, multi-quote is your friend.

Dude, I answered them as I read them.

IRWS

Quote from: I run with scissors;582500Dude, I answered them as I read them.

IRWS

Cool start of a dungeon on your blog. You are going to keep this up?
Add maps and stuff too at some point?

Quote from: Benoist;582515Cool start of a dungeon on your blog. You are going to keep this up?
Add maps and stuff too at some point?

Yeah, I am writing Dwimmerdust as a stream of conciseness. I am trying to knock out a room a day, and so far I think I have ideas for 10 levels. Maps for the levels will be put up as I draw them. In short I am just tapping the vein and I am curious where I can take this without any real plan.

I do have a two sentence long plot, and I think I will mention it this weekend.

The dungeon started as a joke, as well as a dare from a poster at another blog, and I sort of just went with it.

I think the best way to look at Dwimmerdust, at least on the blog, is as a rough draft. This is just me, knocking out the words, and putting down the rough plan. Once I have the rough draft down, it will be collected and edited.

I will readily admit that the dungeon is rough, but in this case, it is sort of done to prove a point. That point? Creating content is not hard, simply let yourself write and see what happens.

In short, what started out as a middle finger to Jim the Scam, is now becoming something more. It is a running commentary in large part to the OSR cut-and-paste crowd.

As for maps, there is one map now for Level 1 (http://dwimmerdust.tumblr.com/maps). It is crude, but that is sort of the point. I simply just sketched it as it came out. Level 2 is a map I need to scan and clean up.

Thanks for the kind words, the blog is here to stay. I am shooting for at least one posting a day, and one room a day. Some days there may be more.

IRWS

PS. I realized I have not cursed yet. Fuck. I feel better

I'm still trying to figure out how he got such a big following. Was it because he posted at such a prolific pace when he started his blog? The stuff he posted in the early days was much better. I found myself reading that. I skim over most of his newer material.

That's a big part of it. The early stuff was actually quite good, including his session write-ups for Dwimmermount. The last year or so, it's dropped off quite a bit.

Quote from: Endless Flight;582520I'm still trying to figure out how he got such a big following. Was it because he posted at such a prolific pace when he started his blog? The stuff he posted in the early days was much better. I found myself reading that. I skim over most of his newer material.

I think at the time, he was doing something no one else was doing. Then he turned into a ponderous a-hole.

I will freely admit, when Jim the Scam is on, he can writer some really good things. Yet, when he is not on, forget it.

If anything, I think he would do well to take a break from the blog. No one can keep up with that much posting.

IRWS

Quote from: Benoist;582496What happens when/if someone brings that up on James' blog? Does he delete comments or something?

He's very thin-skinned, and prone to pearl-clutching, so I'm sure they get deleted.

Quote from: I run with scissors;582531I will freely admit, when Jim the Scam is on, he can writer some really good things.

LOL. I'm glad JaMal has your money. You deserve to get ripped off.

Maybe you should send him some Star Wars figurines or whatever he's blegging for this week while you're at it.

Quote from: Benoist;582156Anybody funded the project here?

I funded when it hit the "you get to see Maliszewski's original notes" stretch goal.

I think posting updates saying (paraphrasing) "this was originally scheduled for 8/29" and "we've caught up to our original schedule" when you originally claimed it was going to be delivered in June 2012 makes you look really, really bad.

By contrast, Legends & Labyrinths is also running way behind my original delivery hopes. But I've been open with my backers about the production problems I've run into and, with one exception (where someone posted a request for information as a comment on a random post on my blog, I didn't see it, and they got upset at a lack of response), people have been understanding and even supportive. (Even if I, personally, feel like a sack of shit about it most of the time.)

But if I were to post something that said, "Well, here we are in September 2012 and we're currently hitting all of our internal deadlines for this project!" I'm pretty sure my backers would say, "Fuck you, Justin."

With that being said: Digging a little deeper, we discover that the "internal deadlines" that Scissors is bitching about were actually set at the beginning of August in order to get the project back on track. This is not only clear from Tavis' reply to Scissors, but is also obvious if you actually read the project updates on Kickstarter.

Conclusion: Scissors is being fundamentally dishonest in his complaint. (Which doesn't mean people don't have something to complain about; just that Scissors isn't exactly exemplary in his conduct.)

QuoteLots of details about deadlines and the development of the project shared by Tavis who's doing a great job of trying to keep everyone informed.

As a backer, this would be my take-away: They've been feeding us material and I've been generally satisfied with the experience. OTOH, this was never something I had a real burning passion for. Maybe if I had felt the burning pang of "I want it right now!" I might have less patience.

Or maybe my reaction would be different if my reaction to the material we've seen as backers wasn't "meh". There's simply nothing interesting, original, or, IMO, valuable in Dwimmermount. It's a generic dungeon with generic maps and generic content.

Quote from: Endless Flight;582520I'm still trying to figure out how he got such a big following.

I'd guess a combination of factors:

(1) There were fewer voices competing for the OSR ear when he started.

(2) He was an established RPG author and had a pre-existing rep.

(3) His earlier material was better, largely because he was making fresh observations and had a unique point of view.

At this point, I find his blog is generally just regurgitating the same points he made years ago. I end up skimming or skipping most of his stuff.

Quote from: I run with scissors;582491Another question that has not been answered: why no finished manuscript before taking money?

Yeah, that strikes me as pretty sketchy. It's not like he needed the money to WRITE the wretched thing.

Quote from: Endless Flight;582520I'm still trying to figure out how he got such a big following.

Train wrecks attract attention.

Kickstarter goals are considering binding, although Kickstarter itself suggests requesting a refund or legal action only if there is no good-faith attempt to fulfill goals.  ((Actual enforcement is a different matter, especially given the low investments.))

You can get around the "complexity increasing geometrically" issue with great management, although I'll admit it's more common for bad management to cause complexity to increase the exponential growth instead.

Quote from: Melan;582166Also, one way to avoid that kind of thing is to start the Kickstarter with a completed or close to completed manuscript.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;582396Then i would agree that kickstarters should come to the table with at least a manuscript/draft complete.

That's viable if you're intending Kickstarter to take the place of a publisher, or of distributors.  There's a lot of folk for whom that's a very reasonable goal; publishing is a cut-throat and out-of-touch industry that's highly prone to tedious intervention, since that's kinda their jobs when they hire editors.  The Order of the Stick reprint drive base goals are a good example of this matter.

For garage-style development, though, a complete draft represents a pretty sizable amount of energy and manpower and costs, which an expert can reasonably estimate but not want to commit without certainty of sales or payment.  While a lot of the 10,000 USD estimate probably would go to delayable matters, like art, playtesting, and infrastructure, under everything else it's still a nontrivial time investment for the base manuscript.  Without knowing the level of interest of potential paying customers, there's little reason to refine a matter into a manuscript from complete notes.  The relatively low cost of the Kickstarter goal likely reflects more of an interest in estimating desires of the potential purchasers, rather than grander or riskier goals.

That said, there's a lot that can be done for such idea-guys.  The lack of demonstratable milestones -- or better, deliverables -- isn't a great sign, especially from someone with an industry background.  Those sort of task lists turn a freelance hobby into a job, but that's kinda the point: this is a job once you've taken that much money for it.

Quote from: Endless Flight;582520I'm still trying to figure out how he got such a big following. Was it because he posted at such a prolific pace when he started his blog? The stuff he posted in the early days was much better. I found myself reading that. I skim over most of his newer material.

There are only so many posts you can write about Keep on the Borderland. After a while, it feels overexplored, so you either find an interesting new take on old school (which people have done), or you start writing posts like "The ads of Dragon, part VIII" or "Ares Magazine, Issue 12". That's when you should start doing something else.

Quote from: Justin AlexanderAs a backer, this would be my take-away: They've been feeding us material and I've been generally satisfied with the experience. OTOH, this was never something I had a real burning passion for. Maybe if I had felt the burning pang of "I want it right now!" I might have less patience.

This is where I'm at. I enjoy reading about other peoples' homebrew adventures, and was curious how James would make a megadungeon. I have already gotten the picture from the backer updates, sort of. Then again, I spent $10. I might feel differently if I went for a $1000 reward tier (it amazes me when people drop that much cash on a Kickstarter).

Quote from: I run with scissors;582488Why am I being a dick? Because I dare to poke my finger in the eye of Jim the Scam and his Dwimmerfail?

All my points were never refuted, instead I was attacked for being a troll. A troll is someone who does not bring anything. So I choose to swear, fuck that.

In the end, Tavis never answered any of my questions. Jim is a scammer. He is a lazy creator, and the hypocrisy is ripe. Yeah he had family issues, but the m-fer had no problem summarizing Ares magazines and dicking around on his ponderous blog.

Whatever.

Lets go back to playground 101 and being critical about another person.

You want to get them to do something (or stop) that they should be doing.

Or you want to make the rest of the world what this person is doing (or not) so they have all the information.

Jim the Scam
Jim is a scammer
His is a lazy creator
the hypocrisy is ripe

In my opinion these type of statements do nothing to achieve any of the above goals.  In fact they are counterproductive. Either they make the author and the people (like Tavis) so jaded that they quit or deliver a sub par. And/or  people ignore your further statements regardless of their truth because they don't like reading missives by assholes.

Given that you repeatably posted like this, ignoring what been achieved to date, being inflexible about tavis' and James posts (both at Autarch and Kickstarter) along with assuming that you are a reasonably intelligent human being.

My most charitable conclusion is that this is a form of entertainment for you.  This all public and the backers, including myself, are seeing the same things as you are, except you are the one being a dick about it.

Quote from: gattsuru;582587For garage-style development, though, a complete draft represents a pretty sizable amount of energy and manpower and costs, which an expert can reasonably estimate but not want to commit without certainty of sales or payment.  While a lot of the 10,000 USD estimate probably would go to delayable matters, like art, playtesting, and infrastructure, under everything else it's still a nontrivial time investment for the base manuscript.  

While all true, I would say it more important to have it nearly ready when it is a garage-style development. Time is the one thing that doesn't require the outlay of money. And time is typically in short supply at the garage level. So if you go into a kickstarter without a nearly completed project then you are betting that nothing else in your life will interfere with its completion. And just about every garage level kickstarter I been on has something come up. Most minor thank goodness.

For me that not a risk I am willing to take. If others want to, fine, but I am going have what I can done. For me this means the writing finished and edited along with the maps (because I draw my own maps). The kickstarter will fund everything else I can't do. I might miss some opportunities because of this conservative approach but since at my level much of the business is based on personal reputation, I am willing to be that conservative.