Aeterna Noctis is a cool game. Sometimes flawed execution but many neat ideas and the combat feels really good once you have it figured out. Also it's huge. Finished hard mode 109% in 69 hours. Nice.
Trying out this new fangled thing after facebook is trying really hard to X itself out.. Here's a photo from a fancy sunset from a Trader Joe's parking lot, and an uprooted tree!
Hmm... no way to explicitly add alt text to images other than writing in more description I guess? And the "preview" while editing plain text does not look like the final post.
Satellite images show the extent of devastation from multiple wildfires burning in Los Angeles County after one day. The fires have killed at least five people and destroyed thousands of structures.
Finishing out 2024 with my third and final game of the year, I published I want to get off MR BONES WILD RIDE today on itch! It’s PWYW and I’ve submitted it to a couple of game jams that inspired me.
I have backed 631 crowdfunding projects over the past 13 years (in all categories, but primarily tabletop games). Of these, 45 of them have not fulfilled in a timely manner, for a total of approximately $980 in unfulfilled projects. Of these, a couple I have marked as "still hopeful," meaning the creator hasn't updated in a bit, but they have some goodwill from the community (but tide might be turning).
The ones I have marked as "not going to happen" or similar (one is literally marked "shitpost") are down to 22 projects, with only two being >$80, for a total loss of $591 (I might have just misplaced one $30 project, though.) Most of the dice-only projects I've backed have failed-- the exceptions being the FATE dice from Evil Hat, and the Wild Earth cyberpunk dice (which are currently sitting on my desk, about 12" from my keyboard). I also backed the Pixels dice, but that hasn't fulfilled yet, and I am waiting patiently. I backed for Fudge dice from them, so I know it will be a long while, yet (the Fudge dice are last to be fulfilled; they had the fewest orders for them.)
I will absolutely not be tallying the total I've spent on crowdfunded projects, because I really do not want to know.
I back a LOT of projects by POC as my way of supporting them (I'd have to do an analysis of all my projects to figure out what percentage, but it's pretty high, considering I'm a white lady). Of my projects that I've given up on, only the one I probably misplaced is from a POC.
Several of the "not going to happen" projects are from disabled creators. This isn't surprising; disabled folks operate on a thinner margin of energy and resources than non-disabled folks, and it's very easy for even one small health issue to derail a project. A good thing for "the industry" to discuss and maybe try to tackle might be how to build a support network for disabled creators (and not just of other disabled creators) to help them get their project over the finish line-- and then how to get those creators to actually ask for that help.
On the platforms: My favorite for crowdfunding is still Kickstarter. It's easy to get updates and to go back and see the updates later. There's a lot of transparency, there. Backerkit is second place, largely because the funding side and the fulfillment sides aren't integrated-- there is no link on the campaign pledge page to the survey/fulfillment page. I have more successfully fulfilled pledges on Backerkit, but it came in late to the crowdfunding platform game, so it learned a lot of lessons from Kickstarter's success.
My favorite for fulfillment is Backerkit. It's easy to understand for me, and it does a decent job of being transparent about communication. I am not a big fan of the fact that, once a project is "closed," you can no longer access anything-- I think they removed that feature, but I still have old projects that closed and the digital files are no longer available.
My least favorite is IndieGoGo. Project closed and you want to know what you pledged at? Go find it in your email, because you can't find it on the project page. Because of this, I just don't back anything on IGG that I really want to receive-- if I back, it's a supporting level for a few bucks.
As a creator, I use Kickstarter almost exclusively because I like the experience as a backer, and it's been good for me, although I think it's a bit saturated, and I really hate what the former head of the gaming category did to it. I haven't tried out Backerkit yet, though I might for a future project.
I'm running a ttrpg by text-only in Discord (Fabula Ultima, if you're wondering). Not play-by-post, but live chat. Gotta say, I kind of love this format. It doesn't require a whole lot of effort on my part-- no voice or video. It's slower, but everyone in it signed on for that. When I need to look up a rule, I have the time to do so without feeling like I'm making people wait. And I don't feel pressure between sessions to check in and keep up to date on a garrulous group of RPers.
With everything going on I have been moving all my social media to the fediverse and getting away from the billionaires.
Married, father of 2 boys and papaw to 3 granddaughters. Over worked Facility Manager. Love Camping, metal detection, coin collecting, love to cook, bbq and making pizza in my homemade wood fire pizza oven.
All that is with civilization just as animal agriculture has such a great environmental impact. We should see how we would be involved with what has almost no environmental impact, with simple living along with others away from civilization, with what we produce there ourselves, that we can do that. wsp.com/en-us/insights/lcas-af…
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