Book of Hidden Paths: Random Encounters for Pathfinder RPG

An update, in which I can report that there is progress
over 2 years ago – Tue, Dec 28, 2021 at 10:48:55 PM

I hope you are all having a happy holiday season! Around my neighborhood, the grandstands for the Rose Parade have been up for weeks now, which is a sign that 2021 has at least been better than was 2020. Here's hoping that 2022 will be a better year yet for all of us. Most the regional gaming conventions are advertising that they'll be back in the physical world next year, and Pacificon just announced what looks like a tasty new RPG-oriented convention in San Diego, set for early May. I hope to be at a few of the spring conventions with books (and maybe a couple of t-shirts from Ramen Sandwich Tees) for sale.

Before then, however, there is work to complete, and we're working on that. After much labor, I shipped Book of Hidden Paths off to layout just before Christmas. As noted in the last update, our experience with Book of Chance Meetings demonstrated that I am just not comfortable working with long digital documents when it comes to reviewing my own work. So, in the name of delivering cleaner copy to layout, I turned back the clock and did something I had not done in decades: I printed out the entire manuscript, double-spaced to leave room for handwritten corrections:

Then I went over it with a red pencil in hand:

It took a long time — even longer than I'd expected — to finish a second pass that way, but I'm confident that the extra time I just spent will save us time next month, as it will cut down on the number to times we have to pass PDF files back and forth because of all of the typos that I missed when I first sent out the manuscript, and that I continued to miss even while reviewing proof versions of the laid-out book.

When you get your copy of Book of Hidden Paths, remember that a FaberCastell Col-Erase red pencil gave most of its useful life to make it happen. That pencil must be at least 20 years old.

I estimate that Book of Hidden Paths will hit 350 pages once it we add on the index, making it substantially longer than Book of Chance Meetings. So it looks like we're putting in more work on Hidden Paths for considerably less return than we got on Kickstarter from the 5E peeps for Chance Meetings, but as the author I can't help but feel that both deserve equally to have a proper job done on them. The die is cast. So be it, regardless of whether or not it makes sense as a business decision.

Just a reminder: We're going to keep the Backerkit store open for another couple of weeks, but not much longer than that. There's no need to close off pre-orders until we're ready to go to press, but we're not going to drag it out just to snag a few more pre-orders. So there's still time to add to your pledge and to talk anyone who missed the campaign into getting in on the fun, but it won't be infinite. Thank you to everyone who has supported this campaign, and add-on thanks to all of you who purchased add-ons through Backerkit!

Monsters follow you everywhere
over 2 years ago – Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 08:45:27 AM

Been a while since I put out an update, but I've been neck-deep in getting Book of Hidden Paths ready for layout. In fact, I'd say that you know you've been cranking away on a project when you can't even pass the craft beer section at Whole Foods without being reminded of it:

So... it's a beer that rips your heart out and keeps it as a trophy? I see; good to know. Has the FDA reviewed your product, by the way?

I did not include perytons in Book of Chance Meetings because they're not in the 5E Standard Reference Document, so they're not covered by the OGL. I'm guessing that this is because perytons appear in a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, so there may be some concern that copyright would come into play if it was included. I'm glad that Paizo fears not the copyright strike, or at least they realize the peryton also appears in Greek mythology and Hesiod hasn't been filing DMCA complaints lately. If you like perytons, note Chapters 5 (Hills) and 7 (Mountains) of Book of Hidden Paths.

Book of Hidden Paths is close to ready for layout. I did not do a very good job of proofing and editing Book of Chance Meetings before sending it off to layout, which caused problems when our art director and I went through too many rounds of shoving PDFs back at each other because of mistakes that had been missed earlier. I realized that, at least when it comes to working with files this big, I am not comfortable proofreading a digital document, and it shows.

So, in the spirit of measuring twice to cut once, I did something I have not done in over 20 years: I printed out the entire draft of Book of Hidden Paths, double-spaced to leave room for hand-written corrections, and went over it with a Faber Castell Col-Erase red pencil in one hand. I'll post a photo or two to demonstrate the full implications of this decision in my next update. It's something to behold, but I hope it will be well worth the bother.

I hope the holiday season finds you all well. I'm pleased to report that Ramen Sandwich Tees has been doing record business, between the conscientious buyers who did their holiday mail-order shopping early this year, and those who are treating this as a normal year. Bless both groups. And thank you to all of you who have completed your Backerkit surveys, especially those who added a little something to the tip jar. We'll keep the store open for a few more weeks, so there's still time for anyone who missed the campaign to join in. Book of Hidden Paths is shaping up as a fine piece of work. After all, how can it miss? It has perytons!

Into the post-campaign
over 2 years ago – Sat, Nov 20, 2021 at 12:43:45 AM

Hello everyone, and thank you in particular to those who left feedback on my gripey last update. I appreciate having your perspective on this problem. I will say that getting our message out has always been a problem for Ramen Sandwich Press. We have a Twitter feed and a Facebook page, and I post about crowdfunding campaigns and product availability on rpg.net and EN World and, this time, on the Paizo forums. But getting people to notice is another thing entirely. That being said, in situations where people are already kind of looking for what we have to offer — like Kickstarter and conventions — we tend to do quite well. So it really was a great help, those of you who helped spread awareness of this campaign and brought new people here.

I just wanted to let you know that there is now a live link to the Backerkit store on the campaign page. Feel free to look around and look at the add-ons from our backlist. A clarification for those of you new to our Places by the Way and Found by the Way location modules: The PDFs are of special versions of the module that we offered exclusively to Kickstarter backers; they include a little extra content, like an extra location, that is not in the version currently on sale outside of crowdfunding/Backerkit. However, the print copies don't have that extra content, as our printer no longer has those files. To save on ISBNs, we swapped out those Kickstarter exclusive versions once the rewards were all printed up. With the PDFs, of course, we still have them on our own hard drives and can distribute them to you.

Feel free to spread the word about the Backerkit store; I admit it will take some doing, but I haven't given up on the stretch goal. We'll keep the store open at least through the end of the year, maybe slightly past New Year's. Your turn, of course, will come when the surveys go out. I'm always irritated by Backerkit's insistence that we wait the full 14 days while Kickstarter collects pledges, but in this case there are a few folks who still need to update their credit card info, so it's probably best to give them a little more time. A handful of you may get your surveys this weekend from Backerkit's smoke text, and the rest early next week.

I also just launched on Indiegogo, so we'll see if anything comes of that. I'm still working on Game Found — I kind of like the site, but the process of getting set up as a creator is just a bit obscure to me and I'm feeling my way along. Bottom line is that I don't want to write off the stretch goal without giving it the old college try.

That's a wrap — or a warp, depending on how you look at it
over 2 years ago – Tue, Nov 16, 2021 at 12:08:18 AM

The curtain rings down on another Kickstarter. Thank you to all of you who supported this campaign. As to what comes next, I'm sure many of you know the drill: Kickstarter collects your pledges, I set up the Backerkit store and by the end of the month, you'll get a survey that gives you the chance to add more items to your order. At that point, you'll have access to every title from our backlist at a discount to the cover price — Book of Chance Meetings, all of the Places by the Way/Found by the Way location modules, and a few more odds and ends. Please make sure your credit card info is in order, so Kickstarter can deal with this with a minimum of fuss.

My main tasks this week will be setting up the Backerkit store, and also setting up on Indie Go-Go and Game Found to try to squeeze out some supplemental funding. We still need 170 print copies pre-ordered to get to the stretch goal, but I'm not giving up on it yet. And, oh yes, I'll keep working on Book of Hidden Paths in the time I have leftover from those chores. I finished the second pass through the manuscript yesterday, as I predicted. One more pass to get the details polished, and it will be ready for layout.

Normally, when a campaign ends, I feel relieved and eager to re-engage with whatever I'm working on, buoyed by the support from the campaign. This time — NGL — my reaction is mixed, depending on whether the quantum fluctuations in my brain tell me to see the glass as half-full or half-empty.

On the one hand, we funded. And I am grateful for and impressed by the enthusiasm that some of you showed in spreading the word about this campaign and helping to bring in more backers. As it turned out, your help was crucial to getting Book of Hidden Paths over the finish line. I've never seen in anything like it in any of my previous Kickstarters. So: Thank you! It's a positive sign that you folks were willing to help as much as you did, and it gives me a reed of hope and optimism to grasp as I finish up the book.

On the other hand, Ramen Sandwich Press is going to need more of you over the long term if we're going to keep turning out Pathfinder-compatible products. The bad news is that even with your extraordinary help, we came very close to failure here. Frighteningly close. If you dig into the numbers a bit, you can see that if we subtract the D&D 5E backers — the ones who signed on for leftover rewards from our Book of Chance Meetings campaign — we get to 95 backers and $2,414. In other words, you could also say that without the D&D people picking at the edges of this campaign, it fails. It would have been my first true failure on Kickstarter. That's a sobering thought.

By comparison, the campaign for Book of Chance Meetings — a book for 5E that is equivalent in function, but much shorter — drew 380 backers and raised $9,059. Not trying to shame the Pathfinder community here, just stating facts. You can weigh those facts against each other just as easily I can.

We'll see how well Book of Hidden Paths does in Backerkit and on the other crowdfunding venues. Then our team will gather and discuss what do going forward. Based on this campaign (and, truth be told, the past performance of our Found by the Way location modules on Kickstarter), a dispassionate observer might make the case that we're better off investing our limited time and resources in more 5E products and dropping Pathfinder all together. I really don't want to make that call; I enjoyed playing and writing for D&D 3E/3.5 and I'm glad Pathfinder is carrying on its spirit. I would take any excuse to be talked out of it. But I also have to start making good business decisions sometime.

However, that wrangling over the future of Ramen Sandwich Press will wait. For now, thank you again! I'll be back in touch soon.

Funded!
over 2 years ago – Sat, Nov 13, 2021 at 05:07:10 PM

A quick update to make it official. Thank you, everyone!

Now, I will spend the rest of the weekend editing and revising, so I can report, when the campaign ends, that I have finished the second pass through the manuscript.