Looking Back, Looking Forward

It’s been a great 2013, with our two Kickstarter projects doing well, thank you everyone!  We’re still shipping out the Tinker Decks and the Tinker Dice, but we’re also looking forward to what else we may be able to do.  To that end, we’d like to get some feedback from those of you who might be interested in what we’re plotting.  (And if you’re one of the kind souls who come here for my other assorted posts about gaming, game design, art and photography, I’ll do more of those, too.  I’ve been itching to do some “regular” blogging.  Lots of ideas rattling around here.  This Kickstarter stuff might just be static, sorry, but we’ll get some more signal in here, too.)

So, first and foremost, we’re planning a new campaign just for the Gearchips that we offered in the Tinker Deck campaign.  We do have a few leftovers, but there is some interest in more.

These Gearchips are poker chip sized, ready for play with the decks… or whatever else.  My kids just love playing with little metal gears, and they can serve well as tokens in a variety of games.  They are 39mm, so they can even stand in as wreck markers in WarMachine for 40mm base units or the like.  We’ll fire that up in the next month or so, since a lot of the groundwork is ready to go.  We need to run a campaign because we still have to make sure we have enough interest to get a “print run” of the coins.  We’re not yet far enough ahead of the curve to just go get more coins and hope the demand happens later.

Secondly, we’re planning a set of Gearchip-like game coins.  Specifically, they will be gear-edged coins, all built to mesh with each other, no matter which denomination.  They will have square holes in the center for use either as driver gears with a square axle, or to be able to turn freely on a round axle.  They can function in any game or situation that calls for coins or chips of different denominations (say, 7 Wonders, Race for the Galaxy or Magic the Gathering), or as parts to a machine, albeit a simple, low powered one.  These won’t be highly hardened, tempered, true machine-ready gears, just toys.  Still, that’s enough to have fun with.

We have some questions on these, though.  What sort of metal finish?  How to simplify the sale of them in batches, while still allowing some customizability to allow for use in a variety of games and situations?  We’ve been very impressed with the Gearchip coins, and we want to see how we can riff on the idea.  If you’ve a moment, we’d love some answers to this survey or comments down below.  (For all the surveys, you can select more than one option if you wish.)

Third, we’re looking at producing another deck.  We had a lot of fun with the Tinker Deck, and have other ideas we’d like to experiment with, if it’s worth it.  We’re not at all sure that we’ll go with Bicycle as the printer again, though.  They do good work, no doubt, and they are really good people to work with, but the print run of 2500 or so decks is a significant monetary hurdle.  It’s not impossible, to be sure, but there are other options that we’re considering.  These, of course, don’t carry the brand name or the instant quality assurance and recognition, which can be a different sort of barrier.  If you’ve an opinion (or recommendation) on printers, please let us know.

Also, while we’re brainstorming, how about these options?

We’ve also considered making the Tinker pair of decks available in plastic, though that will definitely mean going with a different printer.  We’re not seriously looking at Kem custom cards, as their prices are prohibitive.  We’re looking at non-US printers for this (unless someone in the ‘States can compete).

Speaking of reprints, we did order some extras of the Tinker Dice, but if there’s enough demand, we may well do another campaign for those to get another batch going… though we’d spice it up a bit by offering new finishes.  We’d simplify the ordering scheme, though, since it was overly complex this last time.

We’re also seriously considering rebooting the initial, failed, plastic Tinker Dice campaign, though we acknowledge that metal dice just seem to fit the theme better… and are in some ways, just plain cooler.  Still, plastic dice have their charms, and are less likely to destroy your gaming table.  They would be less costly, too.

There’s also a temptation to do some sort of token set for wargaming… but we need to figure out the best approach for that.  Some of those templates are big, and might get prohibitively expensive to do in metal.

So thanks for chiming in, and for your support thus far!

…and we’ll get back to a game design post here in a little bit.  There’s this one on worldbuilding I’ve had in mind for a while now…

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Tinker Dice in hand!

We now have the Tinker Dice in hand!  We’ll be shipping them out to those who ordered only Tinker Dice.  The Gearpunk Dice are still in processing (I emailed the company again last night to get a timetable and photos… we’ll pass along what we learn), so we’ll send those out later, along with the Tinker Dice for anyone who ordered some of each.

Thanks for your patience!

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Tinker Dice Photos: Getting There

This morning we received some more photos of the Tinker Dice. We’re still not quite sure when we’ll have them in hand, but we’ll let you know as soon as possible. We also haven’t heard from the Gearpunk dice production team yet, but those dice are more complex. Again, when we see news, we’ll let you all know. Thanks!

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Tinker Gearchip

It’s not final, since we’re asking them to make the edge gear teeth mesh with neighboring coins, and a couple of other tweaks on the perimeter, but I’m pretty happy with what we’re seeing on these so far.  It almost makes me want to make a bigger range of coins…

These are 39mm in diameter, 3.5mm in depth.  Poker chip size… but with teeth.  Literally.

 

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100/1000 Leather Pouches

So that’s what 100 pounds of leather pouches looks like.  All 1,000 of them.

Yes, things are starting to come together.  These babies will each hold about 20 dice, so I guess I overestimated the need for them by a bit… but I can live with that.  Better to have too many and too much room in each pouch than too few and not enough room.

…and yes, sharp eyes might well detect a few oddball colors like pink and purple.  We’re still not making promises that we can fill everyone’s color requests, but it looks like we should be able to get close for most people.

Thanks!

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Tinker Dice Production Photo 1

We received an email this morning from the company producing the Tinker Dice.  They sent us a photo of the first Tinker Pentagear Fudge dice, hot off the press, as it were.  These are plated in nickel.

The funny thing is, the Tinker Pentagear Fudge dice main production run will be entirely in antiqued bronze.  We consciously limited their finish to bronze because they were a  promotional design to coincide with the Mechanika campaign, not our standard dice that we wanted to offer in multiple finishes.

So… these are an oddity, a rarity… something that may never really see the light of day for sales.  (The Mechanika guys may do another print run someday using these, but for now, if I understand the production company correctly, there are only these four and two others in existence.)

But they are still pretty cool, and I wanted to share the photo to show you what they are doing with the designs.  I’m quite happy with their work, and I’m really looking forward to getting all of the dice made and shipped out to everyone.  I’ll share more prototype photos as they come in.

Thanks!

Oh, and as a reminder, we’re approaching the main goal on our sister project, the Tinker Deck, and we’re really looking forward to going for the stretch goal of the Rusty Tinker deck.  Thanks to all of you who have joined that campaign, too!  If you have a minute and the interest, please spread the word about the cards.  We’d love to get them out to as many people as we can, too!

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Tinker Deck!

It’s been a long time coming.

The Tinker Deck steampunk playing card Kickstarter campaign is live!  (With some Tinker Dice for spice.)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tishtoshtesh/tinker-deck-steampunk-playing-cards

Here’s a preview of the court/face cards:

I’ve been working on this for pretty much the whole year thus far.  It’s kind of like a good sneeze, getting it out there.

…OK, maybe that’s not the best metaphor.  Still, the Tinker cards are finally stepping out into the wild!

Thank you to everyone who has been supportive of this mad, crazy idea!

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Tinker Dice Cleanup

The Tinker Metal Dice Kickstarter campaign is over, but there are miles to go before we sleep.

One thing that we need to get cleaned up and sorted is the spreadsheet of who ordered what, and where to ship things to.

To facilitate that, there are the Kickstarter surveys that I sent out, but there are a few oddments here and there, like forgotten shipping for those unfortunately expensive international orders, or people who wanted to add something on but just didn’t get there in time.  Kickstarter doesn’t have a mechanism for this sort of last minute, post-project tinkering.

Thankfully, PayPal will suffice.  This is hooked up to my Project Khopesh PayPal business account, which is where the campaign funds will be going, so we keep it all together.

So, for a little while, we’ll have this PayPal link to catch these last minute concerns.  Also, since it has come up, we’re also going to allow last-minute orders for the next several days, until September 4th.  So, please go check out the Kickstarter page for reference, since that’s the pricing and structure that we’re maintaining, including the limit of one “tier” and the add on limits of one of each Add On.  I’m sorry, we’re offloading the research to you on this one, since we don’t have a proper storefront set up.  This is a quick, short term fix.

We are looking into longer term solutions, including an Etsy shop or something else, but that’s something we’ll do after we get all of this squared away.

If you’re adding on to an existing pledge, please let us know your name over there so we can keep things together.  If you’re doing something new, please let us know what dice designs and finishes you’re ordering, and what sort of bags you want and colors if relevant.

Yes, this will mean a bit more work on our end, and we’ll be in touch with everyone who goes through PayPal to make sure we’re all squared away, but we think it’s worth it.

Thank you everyone!  This has been a wildly successful project, and we’re very grateful for your support!

Tesh and the Project Khopesh crew

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The Final Spindown

It’s the last 24 hours of the Tinker Metal Dice project, and we’re rolling out another last minute stretch goal.  I know, I know, it’s yet another choice to keep track of, but we think it’s worth it.  You all have been surprising, especially in these last few days, so it’s our turn to surprise you a little.

Pretty soon, we’ll most likely be unlocking the Gearpunk D20 Spindown die.  It looks something like this:

We’ve also added two new pledge tiers to honor the last 24 hours of the project.  Specifically, a tier for 24 Tinker Dice and another for 24 Gearpunk Dice.

It’s been awesome so far, many thanks, everyone!

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14K and Finishing (POLL)

Many thanks to all of you for your backing on the Tinker Dice project!  We’ve crossed through the $14,000 number!  It’s all kind of crazy and surreal, humbling and flattering at the same time.  I’m really glad that people are liking the designs, and I’m looking forward to getting them out to everyone.

I didn’t have anything planned, but I did, on a whim, go ask some local jewelers if they could make solid or hollow 14 karat gold Gearpunk Dice.

I’m pretty sure they thought I was kidding, since I haven’t heard back.  I wasn’t… but then, it’s also highly unlikely that such dice would sell.  Just like “plastic isn’t steampunk” (as cheerily noted by Kimberly Babb in the comments over here), gold seems a bit too… rich.  Sure, it’s metal, and gold wouldn’t have been unknown to an alternate history steampunk era, but it seems to be that brass, bronze, and steel would have been far more common.

Anyway, I tried.  I’m sure someone, somewhere got a laugh out of it.

Speaking of different metals, though, we’re entertaining the idea of a new stretch goal.  I didn’t want to commit to one earlier, but the numbers will work out, now that I’ve pestered the production companies a bit more.  (I think they are getting tired of me, but since this campaign has been a success, I’ve been able to promise them business, and they are looking forward to making the dice.)

This will mean some more work on our end, come shipping time, just making sure everything is perfect, but if we get to $15,000, we will offer a second choice for a finish for every die design except for the Pentagear Fudge dice.  (We’re keeping those in the antiqued bronze to honor the exclusivity of the Mechanika crew and our production collaboration with them.)

The trick is… what now?  We’re only going to be offering one different finish.  I’m partial to having the second option be the pure zinc dice, which is a nice silverish finish.  I’m willing to be convinced that antiqued copper is a better choice.  The former allows for a greater difference in look between the two, the latter is more steampunk, and allows for a different set of post-production patina experimentation.  (Like the recipes found here… though I’m not at all certain how easy or safe any of those are.)

So, what do you think?

If you’ve a minute and care about such things, please note your opinion below.  We’re going to go with mob rule on this one; the finish with the most votes by midnight my time (UTC/GMT-7) Thursday the 22nd will be the one we produce as an alternate, so if you have a strong opinion, lobby for votes!  If this seems like throwing you all to the democratic wolves… yes, yes it is.  Let’s call it an experiment in rudimentary democracy.  That’s steampunky, right?

This alternate finish will be available in any pledge tier, for any dice but the Pentagear Fudge design.  You won’t have to do anything special except let us know what finish you’d like on your dice, and we’ll ask that in the end-of-project surveys.  As with the designs themselves, you can mix and match.  This is even true on the SEEING DOUBLE tier, so you can use that tier as a sort of “super collector” tier if you want one die of each design and each finish (excepting the Pentagear Fudge, of course).

Sample coins from the company making the Gearpunk Dice with relevant finishes… noting that these are coins, not dice… but it should give some idea of what the end result will be.

Thank you again everyone!  These are exciting times for the Project Khopesh crew!  (To be fair, at this point, it’s just me running the show, but there are others in Project Khopesh that are excited for the project.)

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