Audio EXP: #7 – Woah, How Much Money?

Welcome home.

This is Audio EXP for the 31st of August 2019, and the title of this episode is Woah, How Much Money?

[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #7]

If you’re an early adopter – a brave explorer – and tuned in last week for Geek Native’s Audio EXP, you would have heard about DM Clockwork Dragon’s naive and blatant attempt to make money with piracy.

We’re sticking with the money theme this week and starting with comic books on Kickstarter.

Joshua Saxon was kind enough to write us a guest post. Well. Yes, he was kind, he is also Kickstarting the second issue of his comic Milky. I reviewed and really enjoyed the first Milky last year. It’s a story of a geeky milkman caught up in what seems to be an alien invasion! What’s not to like? It looks like Milky 2 is being successful on Kickstarter so check it out.

Anyway, thanks to that need for a bit of visibility, Joshua researched and wrote-up the five most funded comic book Kickstarters of all time.

Here’s the list!

In 5th position is ✔ Check, Please!: Year Two which raised $398, 520 from over 5,000 backers. That’s a story of a baker and vlogger who struggles to fit in at college.

In 4th position is Penny Arcade Sells Out. They raised $528, 144 from over 9,000 backers. The money helped fund their site.

In 3rd position is The Tomorrow Girl: Dresden Codak Volume 1 which raised a little bit more. That comic hit $534, 994 from only 7,500 backers. The success allowed five years of the webcomic to become a hardback.

In 2nd position is Ctrl+Alt+Del 1.0: The Box Set. They made $665, 725 from 5,553 backers.

Are you ready for a jump?

The most well-funded comic book Kickstarter of all time is The Order of the Stick Reprint Drive. That project had nearly 15,000 backers and made $1,254,120. Woah!

Check out Saxon’s full post to uncover the honourable mentions which include Lady Death and the Girl With No Name.

I know this may have been a foregone conclusion, but it’s nice to see gaming titles doing so well in that list.

Let’s stick with gaming as we move on to our next money story.

How much do you think a battered woodgrain box containing a mixture of first and second printing original Dungeons & Dragons material is worth?

$9,000 and counting according to the live auction currently on eBay.

The woodgrain box has seen better days. It’s pretty beaten up but the odd mix of first and second print run material inside is in better knick.

$9,000 is far too expensive for me and, I imagine, most listeners. We’re into the realms of collectors here.

Is there something odd about a single box having both first and second print run material inside it?

I can see why people ask. I guess it would be odd if the boxes and contents were printed at scale like a modern D&D book.

Somehow, though, I doubt that was the case for original D&D. I bet these were printed professionally but then but together in someone’s living room.

That’s just a guess, but it illustrates the challenges of being a D&D collector.

Catalyst Game Labs have a non-D&D book that you might want to splash the cash on. Shadowrun 6 is finally taking pre-orders.

Do you want the Executive Edition? It’s not cheap. It comes with a slipcase, a fancy cover and two ribbons – not one – but two, to mark your place. It’ll cost you $199.99.

There’s also a nine-page errata which means that’s $200 for a book with quite a few errors!

The default book is a quarter of the price coming in at $49.99.

I want to be a Shadowrun fan, but Catalyst are not making it easy for me for my wallet.

Okay, that’s been a lot of money spending. Let’s look at some money-saving options.

You’ll have to be quick for the next two options as they expire over the weekend.

The first is Pelgrane Press’ The Black Book. This isn’t a book. This is an online character sheet tool. It’s in beta and free to join. If you take part now and find a bug or make some other useful discovery, then you’ll secure a free upgrade.

If not, there’s a coupon anyone can use to secure money off the very cheap annual subscription fee, if they use it this week.

The tool supports Trail of Cthulhu, Night’s Black Agents and The Fall of Delta Green. More titles are being added in.

The virtual tabletop Astral is a browser-based solution that lets you play tabletop roleplaying games online. You can manage character sheets and move characters around virtual maps.

This weekend, all Astral users will get a free upgrade to Pro, and that’ll last until PAX West finishes. There’s also a coupon to give you 20% off annual membership if you decide the free tier isn’t good enough for you.

Kings of War have two sets of free material too.

Kings of War is a war game from Mantic, and they’re now branching out into RPGs. Red Scar Publishing is making the tabletop game, and there are two free quickstarts for it.

It’s an interesting time. We’re starting to see quickstarts and beginner boxes going for $10, $20 or $30. We’re also still getting quickstarts for free.

Kings of War is the latter. The two quickstarts won’t cost you a penny. The first quickstart is for the TriCore system. That’s what Red Scar Publishing uses and what, I imagine, they would like us to use with Kings of War.

There’s also a D&D 5e quickstart. That’s a conversion that the Kings of War RPG makes easy.

This week we saw Funko reveal some D&D Pops which include a mind flayer, Minsc and Boo. Game Salute finally got their Princess Bride game “I Hate to Kill You” ready for retail. We should get it in time for Christmas.

As it’s the end of the month, though, I’m going to wrap up this episode of Audio EXP with a mention of Raging Swan Press. They’re the publisher in Geek Native’s RPG Publisher Spotlight this month. They also give away a lot of free material and so fit well with this week’s theme of money.

Next week, Geek Native’s Patreon backers will get to vote on the October spotlight, and we’ll reveal who won the September vote.

Thanks for listening!