June 27, 2019: Kickstarter Reports, June Update

It's been a slow month for crowdfunding here at Steve Jackson Games, relative to earlier months this year. We've spent a lot of June handling existing projects and making sure that everything is moving forward. The team also applied energy to wrapping up international shipping on a couple of projects; international fulfillment continues to be a challenge that slows down our ability to quickly complete open Kickstarter campaigns. We continue to look at the situation and won't stop seeking a workable solution to international shipments that accelerates project delivery to those supporters outside of the United States.

To keep close track of our Kickstarter efforts, we recommend following both the Steve Jackson Games and Warehouse 23 accounts, as well as liking and following our Facebook page.

The Fantasy Trip: Decks of Destiny

• April 29 to June 3
• 1,172 backers and on schedule
• The campaign unlocked over 30 stretch goals and led to a big, hefty box of accessories that any TFT game master will find valuable when planning and running adventures. We managed to send the project PDFs to backers ahead of schedule, and we're set to open the BackerKit survey very, very soon. Going well! 

Three Mini-Expansions for Munchkin!

• March 25 to April 12
• 1,331 backers and on schedule
• Now in the final stages of manufacturing at the factory, this project is set to ship to our fulfillment warehouse next month. If all goes according to plan, the finished expansions will reach the Michigan warehouse in August and start mailing to backers ahead of the original delivery estimate.

Bag of Bags

• March 31 to April 1
• 287 backers and on schedule
• Another project set to ship from the factory next month. Going great!!!

Powered by GURPS: Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 & Game Reprint

• March 4 to March 22
• 1,019 backers and on schedule
• In July, the factory will wrap the manufacturing and package the expansion and the game. This is expected to ship in early August, reach the fulfillment warehouse in early September, and start shipping to project backers just as fast as the team can manage.

Pocket Box Games of the Eighties

• January 30 to March 1
• 1,974 backers and slightly behind schedule.
• As we reported last month, scanning continues. So much scanning. So very, very much scanning. We are going to start seeing the physical tooling samples soon; as those come in, we'll snap pics and post them to the campaign page on Kickstarter.

Hexagram #1, an Old-School RPG Zine for The Fantasy Trip

• February 1 to February 13
• 961 backers and on schedule
• The project has shipped out and, except for any stragglers, is officially completed. It will not appear in next month's report.

The Fantasy Trip Adventures

• January 2 to January 14
• 1,375 backers and on schedule
• As with some of the titles discussed above, this hardcover book is scheduled to leave the factory next month and start shipping to project supporters in August.

Ogre Battlefields

• December 5 to December 28
• 1,401 backers and on schedule
• The completed expansion is either at the fulfillment warehouse right now or arriving in a day or so. The shipment is arriving a week earlier than we expected – good news we will happily take!

Munchkin Steampunk: Girl Genius

• November 1 to November 21
• 2,195 backers and on schedule
• U.S. rewards are delivered. International rewards are in transit and expected to reach backers over the next month.

That's a total of 9 active projects:

• 2 now mailing out to (international) backers.
• 1 either at the warehouse or arriving in a day or so.
• 5 at the factory.
• 1 in final checks and heading to print next month.

One of the things we're learning as we expand our crowdfunding efforts is that our ability to create and track projects exceeds the limitations and restrictions of the tools we've been using. For that reason, we're exploring other crowdfunding and direct-to-you options for funding some of the projects that we have in the works. We've made no decision on what tool best complements our Kickstarter presence; we continue to look at our options and we'll very likely experiment with a few different ideas before finding a Kickstarter companion that works best for us.

-- Phil Reed