Just lost my Kickstarter virginity: Carnival - A deck and dice game.

That's what I posted in the "What boardgames have you been BUYING?" thread. The next day it occurred to me that it's probably worthwhile for F:AT to have a dedicated Kickstarter thread.

So, Carnival. I saw it a while ago, no impulse pledge, but kept checking back to see if there were updates. Clearly, something about it had attracted me: there aren't many games with a circus setting, it's a filler and non-gamer friendly, has lovely art, and Circus Train has been talked about a lot here on F:AT so that must have made me more aware of the game. I liked the thought put into the design, e.g. the cards you remove for 2-3 player games are indicated by white tipped ribbon flags, the ones you keep are uniformly coloured. It's subtle, needs no separate icon because it's part of the illustration. That's great design.

I also liked the rules, you can discard with limitations or roll the dice to determine what actions you can perform. then build cards to your play area to start making sets. You have some tickets that allow you to alter dice or block a player. Rules are here.

What's also interesting about Carnival is that Dice Hate Me Games - now there's a name any Ameritrasher can appreciate - set a goal of $5,000 and it's currently at $28,000 and I have no doubt that it'll hit $30,000 soon. What do you do when your project makes six times what you'd budgeted or? The first update states $5,000 would cover the cost of 500 games. The second update, as funding approaches $10,000, adds a tote bag for the dice. Update nine adds an extra custom dice. However, it strikes me that a bag and a die isn't going to soak up five-sixths of the budget. Let's say you up the component quality, assume that economies of scale balance the extras (the tote and die). That leaves increasing the print run as the main way of using all the money. But if you originally expected to sell 500 and you have six times this, would you print 3,000? Alien Frontiers only near-tripled it's goal and we all know how that went. So I would predict that Carnival can safely print as many copies as possible and be confident that they'll sell. All in all, an amazing start for a new company's first game.

What's your Kickstarter story?

I want to do a kickstarter campaign for this: www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/75813/beyond-the-fall

Man I'd love to get this to market. I've had 9 people play this, and of all of them, 1 was "Meh" (we'll call him Dominionhead) and one hated it because it was too sinister. There's a choice in the game where you can either save a baby and deliver it to a place for a reward or eat it and gain a food resource and a victory point.

I like the idea of funding a game's production a lot. That's basically what TITAN was for Valley Games and I didn't have as much of a problem with this as others.

I am in on:

CARNIVAL -- noted in Notahandle's post. This is getting annoying, as I feel they are flogging for more $$$.
DICE AGE -- Guy is making custom cool dice. Not a lot of game there yet, but hey, what can ya do.
GLORY TO ROME -- I am a graphic design snob and I hate the shit out of the original version. I am glad to fund anything that makes it better.
FEALTY -- Looks like a decent FEUDAL replacement. My daughter likes FEUDAL, but I don't, so I want to sneak this into rotation.
ANGOLA -- This thing would have been better as a KickStarter than a p500.

jeb wrote:
First of all, jeb, thanks for your support since day one. It's been a good campaign, and our early backers have really helped us out immensely. I'm sorry if you feel as though we're being annoying, but our updates and encouragement serve two purposes: 1) To maintain enthusiasm among our current backers and provide production information throughout the campaign, and 2) to demonstrate to potential backers that we are dedicated and passionate about Carnival and what we're trying to do as a company.

In regards to the money issue brought up in your comments, Notahandle was on the right track with distribution of funds already gathered, but there probably needs to be some clarification and transparency. First up and honestly, yes, additional funding is not an unwelcome thing. We are trying to start a company, and we can't do that without seed capital; we're straight up about that in our Kickstarter video. However, what we have received so far has been amazing and has far exceeded our expectations, and if our campaign ended today, we would walk away grateful and extremely humbled by the support.

As far as the distribution of funds, Notahandle is mostly correct in his breakdown, but here are further details: Our initial goal of $5,000 would have covered about half of what we had hoped to be our initial print run of Carnival. The rest would have come out of my personal savings that was invested as starting funds for Dice Hate Me Games. Had we not reached our goal, we would have had to decide whether to invest more, save more and wait, or simply abandon the project. After those first few days when the goal was reached and we got above $10,000, it was clear that we could proceed with printing, and consider a larger print run with upgraded components. We had to go on faith that we might receive more funds to help cover these expenses, but if not, we decided that we were willing to make up the costs in any way possible so that Carnival could be of the quality that we expect when we buy games. Eventually, we decided on a 2,000-print run of Carnival with the best card stock and punchboard components available to our printer. The Ticket Tote and Wild Die were added and factored into the overall available funds we would receive after the campaign.

Again, thanks to you and Notahandle for your support of Carnival - Cherilyn and I truly appreciate it. This experience will enable us to share a great game, and hopefully many more after; an example of what we have felt the mission of Kickstarter embodies since its inception.

SuperflyTNT wrote:
Wow, it sounds cool, and judging by the cards, it's highly thematic. There is this "Dog" card, that needs to be fed each turn, but helps you in combat; it can be discarded any time for two meat. It reminds me of the fake "Puppy Planet" Battlestar Galactica card.

SuperflyTNT wrote:
"I want to do a kickstarter campaign for this: www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/75813/beyond-the-fall"
Never figured you as a guy with premature ejaculation problems, Pete. Or to put it another way, pull your finger out and go for it.
(I like the card layout, by the way, nice stylistic contrast between flavour text and game info.)

Jeb: Dice Age sounded too wacky and more toy than game; I missed Glory to Rome and Fealty didn't persuade me. The Manhatten Project sounded interesting until I got to the worker placement crap, such a turn off for the setting.

dicehateme: Hi, welcome, glad you followed my link and decided to register.

dicehateme wrote:
"Had we not reached our goal, we would have had to decide whether to invest more, save more and wait, or simply abandon the project."
I'm curious about the latter two. Do the Kickstarter rules allow you to wait or abandon once the project is successful? Surely there's an obligation to proceed? But presumably their rules are predicated on the goal covering all the costs. From what you say yours didn't, so would that put you in an awkward position with them?

"This experience will enable us to share a great game, and hopefully many more after; an example of what we have felt the mission of Kickstarter embodies since its inception."
Unlike Hiatts shamefull perversion of the system.

Notahandle wrote:
The latter two are in reference to if we did not reach our initial $5,000 goal before the 45-day campaign ended. If that happens, a Kickstarter project is not funded and no backers are charged for their pledges. This would simply mean that we'd be left trying to completely the fund the game ourselves or regroup and try for another Kickstarter campaign at a later date.

At no time would we ever consider backing out of the project once we reached our goal - in fact, Cherilyn and I are dedicated to the game enough that we would have likely found a way to make it happen even if the Kickstarter campaign had failed. Thankfully, it has been quite the opposite! There is no going back - Carnival is at the printer right now, and, barring any printing delays, we hope to have copies into Kickstarter backers' hands before the holidays (cross your fingers).

Excellent news! I'm looking forward to it more and more.

Reunion - a horror film by Cryptid, cause it sounded neat
Rolling Freight - by Ape Games (cause I am a train whore)
Oh My God, theres an Axe in my Head - someone here reviewed it and gave it a good value
Glory to Rome - cause I like the game
To Catch a Dollar: Muhammad Yunus Banks on America - a film about Kiva and I have been a member of Kiva for about 4 years. It makes sense to me to loan money to people that need it to build themselves a better life.
Carnival - I just read about it and it looks non gamer friendly enough for me to teach to newbies

Zombies, Run! I already like doing fitness crap all the time, seems like it would be a fun thing to run with for a while and is also just an awesome idea.

I backed ZOMBIES RUN as well. I need something to motivate moving my fat ass around. Flesh eating zombie hordes should do nicely.

Miskatonic School for Girls.

I'm keeping an eye on this. Amusing premise, looks great, but no rules yet. (Sorry guys, it's a deckbuilder, but with a unique mechanism.)

At the moment I don't own a deckbuilder that gets played, just the original Dominion which I'd gladly sell trade. Basically, I've yet to find one that seems compelling enough to buy.

Angola is on Kickstarter?

S.

No, I just listed it there because p500's work like a shitty KS campaign, I swear.

jeb wrote:
Dude, quit getting my hopes up. People on Kickstarter actually print games. From now on if you're going to do that tap your nose or something.

S.