August 22, 2019: Kickstarter Reports, August Update

Four different campaigns – The Fantasy Trip Adventures, Bag of Bags, Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2, and Three Munchkin Mini-Expansions – landed in Detroit earlier this week. We are making arrangements to move the container to a fulfillment warehouse in Austin, where everything will be broken down and some of the games shipped to Warehouse 23 in Austin. In order to divide the fulfillment load, we are going to use two different warehouses: U.S. rewards first, then international rewards.

And speaking of international Kickstarter fulfillment, we continue to expend more resources on fulfillment of international Kickstarter rewards than is sustainable. Regardless of which approach we attempt, the cost is always high and our backers are frequently discouraged and upset by the expense and amount of time that delivery requires. And when a project is technically late, it is often the international rewards that shift us from on schedule to behind schedule. For those reasons, we are not offering international rewards for our current and upcoming campaigns. We hate to disappoint some of you, but we cannot continue to lose money and time delivering international rewards. We will continue to search for an answer to the problem.

Our current projects and the status of each:

Munchkin Pathfinder 3

• August 19 to August 23
• Now funding. Join today! This is a "Quickstarter" campaign and running for less than a week. This is an experiment in accelerating delivery to backers, and we'll know soon enough how well the experiment performs.

The Fantasy Trip: Decks of Destiny

• April 29 to June 3
• 1,172 backers and on schedule
• BackerKit surveys and preorders are now closed. The project is at print, and we are waiting for tooling samples.

Three Mini-Expansions for Munchkin!

• March 25 to April 12
• 1,331 backers and ahead of schedule
• The project landed in Detroit earlier this week. We expect to start shipping rewards next month.

Bag of Bags

• March 31 to April 1
• 287 backers and on schedule
• Landed earlier this week, shipping from Warehouse 23 in September.

Powered by GURPS: Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 & Game Reprint

• March 4 to March 22
• 1,019 backers and on schedule
• Arriving in Austin next week, we will start fulfillment in September. And don't miss the upcoming Dungeon Fantasy Magic Items 2 campaign (info here)!

Pocket Box Games of the Eighties

• January 30 to March 1
• 1,974 backers and behind schedule
• Scanning continues. We are not yet ready to move into full production, but those of you following the project have seen the pics of the tooling samples and understand why we are behind schedule. It will definitely be worth the extra time that the project is requiring from our factory partners.

The Fantasy Trip Adventures

• January 2 to January 14
• 1,375 backers and behind schedule
• Landed in the U.S. earlier this week, shipping starts next month. We estimated an August delivery for the U.S., but September is more likely.

Ogre Battlefields

• December 5 to December 28
• 1,401 backers and behind schedule
• Shipping is underway! Many U.S. supporters have their rewards; the packages are still being prepared and mailed out for those who do not yet have them. We estimated a July delivery; roughly only 50% of the rewards shipped in July.

Munchkin Steampunk: Girl Genius

• November 1 to November 21
• 2,195 backers and behind schedule
• International rewards are still being handled. U.S. rewards were delivered early, but as mentioned above, the international rewards have been a constant drain on our resources.

That's a total of 9 active projects:

• 1 now funding.
• 2 now mailing to backers.
• 4 start shipping to backers the first week of September.
• 2 at the factory.

Kickstarter is becoming a more important part of our plans. We are finding that in today's crowded market, Kickstarter is the most reliable way to measure interest in a new project and guarantee a success. We will continue to take projects to Kickstarter for the immediate future; to keep close track of our efforts, we recommend following both the Steve Jackson Games and Warehouse 23 accounts, as well as liking and following our Facebook page.

-- Phil Reed