Month: August 2016

Press Release for Sun Spots — Kickstarter Launches Sept 15

New Stand-alone Horror RPG Book Launching on Kickstarter Sept. 15th — Sun Spots

Scenario Hearkens Back to Old School Cthulhu Gaming

Dave Sokolowski, author of 2014’s successful Kickstarter scenario He Who Laughs Last, and contributor to both SixtyStone Press’ Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion and Golden Goblin Press’ Tales of the Caribbean, is launching his second Kickstarter to seek funding for his Roaring-20s era Call of Cthulhu® scenario, Sun Spots. The Kickstarter will go live on Thursday, September 15, 2016, and seeks a funding goal of $5000.

This scenario was written under the guidance of long-time Call of Cthulhu editor and writer, Keith “Doc” Herber, before his untimely death in 2009, and brings multiple elements from older Cthulhu games, including long-time artists like Jason Eckhardt, a period-accurate layout and design by Gregory G. Geiger, and the guiding philosophy of Herber, who worked with Sokolowski to make sure the scenario was unique in its approach of the Cthulhu Mythos.

“Dave Sokolowski’s Sun Spots harkens back to the classic Call of Cthulhu scenarios that we all love and dials up the danger with a number of intriguing twists including a new take on an old god,” said Stuart Boon, author of the award-winning Call of Cthulhu book Shadows over Scotland. “Detailed, multi-layered, and engaging, Sun Spots shines with interesting characters, nefarious plots, and ancient evil. Sokolowski has another winner on his hands.”

The scenario has a storied past, with the original draft being written in 2007-09 under Herber’s guidance as it was prepared for Misktatonic River Press’ The Outer Gods book. Although the first draft was approved by Herber with a “I think we have a winner here, and one with a lot of fun possibilities. Nice job…,” Herber sadly died in March 2009, leaving The Outer Gods to never see the light of day. And while both MRP and SixtyStone Press aimed to publish Sun Spots at some point, it was only recently that Sokolowski regained the rights to the scenario and decided to publish it via Kickstarter.

To bring this scenario to life, Sokolowski has collaborated with two key artists who will provide a unique look and feel to the whole project. Both Jason Eckhardt (artist for multiple Call of Cthulhu books, including Escape from Innsmouth, which was edited by Herber) and Reuben Dodd (More Adventures in Arkham Country by GGP, among many others) will provide multiple drawings to help bring life to life to the scenario. The cover was illustrated by Chris Huth (Pelgrane Press’ Ashen Stars and Night’s Black Agents), while cartographer Jake Coolidge has completed large and small-scale maps for the scenario, including a hand-drawn map of the town’s many locations.

Sun Spots has been play-tested multiple times, and it will launch on Kickstarter September 15th with the scenario, cover and many art pieces complete. The Kickstarter campaign will feature the PDF available for $10, a softcover print copy available for $30 and a deluxe and signed hardcover for $70. The Kickstarter page is available in preview now:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/davesokolowski/1336129788?token=faed937b

 

About the Game:

Fans of traditional Lovecraft scenarios will find that the extended scenario has an unusual take on one of the Outer Gods that will challenge both players and game masters with a broad, sandbox environment for investigating myriad unusual occurrences. Originally designed for the 6th edition of Call of Cthulhu, Sun Spots will be updated for the recently released 7th edition of the CoC rules. The story drops a group of investigators into the middle of a New England snowstorm in 1925, where a local banker seeks help retrieving his daughter, Susan, from a remote resort town. Things just get weirder from there.

Nearly 28,000 words have been written for this scenario, allowing for a long and satisfying exploration of the resort town of Red Valley, which is hiding rival archaeologists, ancient magics of the Hyperboreans, and a sun that may never set. Herber had this to say as the first draft was finished: “Lots of characters, and I think you did a really good job with them. A lot of writers can only come up with a handful of the usual cliches. This place seems to be populated by real human beings, and lots of them. Kudos.”

Are you willing to take the case and see why Susan refuses to leave Red Valley? Find out what ancient secrets lie at the heart of Sun Spots.

News Sites for Tabletop RPG Kickstarters

I’ve been doing a ton of work to prepare for my upcoming Sun Spots Kickstarter (Sept 12!) and one of the biggest efforts has been around organizing a more concentrated PR campaign. Just getting the word out, sending press releases to more places, and engaging with more people and sites as my Kickstarter project ramps up — it’s a lot of work.

So I wanted to share a list of sites that I’ve discovered and vetted as places you can send press releases for your projects. This list is by no-means complete — please suggest additions!  This list is specific for tabletop RPGs:

Preparing Sun Spots Kickstarter

Well, it’s official — I’m gearing up to launch the Sun Spots Kickstarter on Tuesday, September 13th! Right now, I’m busily running around behind the scenes, getting all my PR in place, writing press releases, finding play-testers, reading online resources, and basically just trying not to freak out about the whole thing.

Because now there are expectations. Expectations! I’ve already had one successful KS project, and I really want to outdo that one in many ways. Furthermore, I started working on this book nine years ago (2007! that’s BEFORE Obama was elected!), and to have it see the light of day and be finished will really be a significant event in my life. Like I said, lots and lots of expectations.

As I’m going around reading different resources for how to run better Kickstarters (these and these have been particularly helpful), I realized that I had written my own lessons learned at the start of 2015, when I thought (incorrectly) that I was gearing up for Sun Spots early last year. You can read about it here, and as I’ve been working on this project anew, I’ve come to understand more about what I was talking about:

  1. Prepare Stretch Goals Ahead of Time: Absolutely. This is perhaps the most important lesson of them all. I still feel bad for Ben Patey, purveyor of the infamous Masks of Nyarlathotep Props Kickstarter. See, Ben contacted me before his project went live; I had purchased his props directly from him, he was thinking about doing the KS and had seen how my project was successful, so he reached out to me for a phone conversation. My most important lesson was to WATCH YOUR PROJECT SCOPE, specifically your stretch goals, because this is where most projects fumble the ball — they don’t know how to scale their projects, end up committing to way too much, and ultimately fail. And then Ben went and had too many goals and wasn’t able to scale, ultimately failing. So this is a huge lesson and one I’ve taken to heart. Fortunately, due to all these problems, backers are less eager for stretch goals, and I’ve been prepping just a few, key goals to add to the project.
  2. Be Very Clear About Int’l Shipping: I’m not sure this ever got better, but I did look up the rates for DriveThruRPG POD shipping and found this chart to be extremely helpful. Fact is, international shipping is still a drag, and will be until the technology for shipping overseas radically changes. The key, then, is just to be clear about how much it costs you, how much it costs your backers, and what you’ll be charging them.
  3. Find Collaborators Ahead of Time: This is a great idea, and something I’ve already thought about. But I’ll want to wait until I’m a little closer to launch before finding active KS projects to collaborate with. I found this great link, which easily sorts the active RPG games live on KS for you. So that’s something to always be checking.
  4. Shorten the Project Length: After some back and forth, I’ve decided to run my project from Sept 13 to Oct 9, which is 27 days. I think this is the right amount, and the start and end days line up with best practices suggested by Jamey Stegmaier and Fred Hicks. And it’s shorter, which aligns with my own needs and observations. While it’s not a lot shorter, I’ve been thoughtful in my planning and am happy with it.

So that’s it! The Kickstarter is getting primed behind the scenes, and I’m running around like a busy little bee. I really can’t wait to share the book with everyone — the art, production, design and maps, not to mention the writing itself — are really top notch and will be amazing once put together. I can’t wait for you to see it!

Stranger Things is Honest in its Love of the 80s and D&D

Finished watching Stranger Things. Loved it, but I’m pretty much the ideal audience. It’s not for everyone, but like True Detective Season 1, it rises above and entertains better than most.

But hey, some people are sticklers and parse everything out, looking for every possible fault before deciding from on high whether something is good or bad. Some people need to make their opinion bigger and more important than the art they are commenting on. Here, cruising along in the 21st century, everybody thinks they know better than artists who pour everything they have into a project.

Me? I want to be entertained. But more importantly I want to be entertained honestly. I want to see clarity of vision, risk taking, and art with boundaries. I want to see love and passion for a project, brought to life with care and creativity. And while I loath both laziness and complacency, I mostly hate those who compromise a vision because they refuse to be honest. With themselves. With their characters. With their audience.

You may find fault in Stranger Things because it’s not perfect. You may not like it because you can’t relate to the characters. You may think its horror-SF trappings cliche and dated. And that’s fine. Good for you.

But I liked Stranger Things. A lot. Because it was written for me, and not just 12-years-old and playing D&D in the early 80s me, who is basically a composite of many of the main characters. But also the me who is a father who loves his child and would do anything for her. And also the fanboy me who likes to be entertained.

And finally for the writer-me, who wants people with my upbringing and interests to be successful and create more cool stuff. The show is honest with its characters, its setting, and, most importantly, its audience. It gives us everything it’s got and asks for little in return. So yeah, I liked Stranger Things. A lot.

I hope you do too.

What the Hell is a Social Media Strategy?

Let’s say you’re, oh, I don’t know, an aspiring writer with a project (or two or three) under your belt, and you’re looking to expand your readership, as well as grow interest in your future projects. I’m asking for a friend.

Then you look around and read stories like this one and this one and this one, and maybe good books like this one, where everyone talks about how writers need to have some sort of “social media strategy.” And because you live in the 20th century and are at least mildly interested in new technology, you think you know what that means. It means to have an idea why and how you’re going to use the various social media tools to communicate with your loyal and ever growing fan base. And hell, you’ve got a blog, a Facebook author page and Twitter account, so there you go! You’re set for life! Now you can just sit back and let the Benjamins drop on your lap.

But then, as you sit back and stare at your empty lap, you realize that you really don’t have any idea what do now that you’re past the point of no return. You’ve got the tools, now what do you do with them? Let’s figure this out together, you and me, right now. Because it ain’t gonna social media itself and I need to make some progress on this before I launch Sun Spots next month.

So the first thing we need to do is figure out the WHY — why do I need a strategy? Well, when I look at some of my favorite authors, they all have used the internet quite successfully to interact with their readers, and I want to put the infrastructure in place to best enable that (notably, Hugh Howey is awesome at this). Even if you can’t currently tell, I have a whole lot of writing to get done, and with my upcoming Kickstarter, I want to use social media to: a) get the word out about my projects, and b) talk to my readers and engage with them, find out what makes them tick, and share cool stuff with them (because that’s what I want from my favorite writers).

The next thing we need to examine is the tools I am using, as well as those I am not (yet). For instance, I really need to get a YouTube channel going, because I have a lot of ideas for cool content, discussions, stories, lectures, etc. But I’m going to start today with those that I have at hand: Facebook, Twitter, and my blog (which you’re reading). Furthermore, I have two Facebook pages: a personal one and an author one. I recently reached out to a couple of my favorite authors who don’t use an author page, and they answered: “Too lazy, basically. If I had an Author page I’d have to update two FBs…” and “I think facebook should be fun and an author page is just a bit too formal for me. And even at the 5k limit, people can still follow me if even they aren’t my friend, since my posts are public.”

But then I see other authors who clearly use both (Christopher Moore comes to mind) and I go back and forth on which I should be using for what use. At this point, I’ll just list what I’m trying to do, and list the various tools I have, and see where things match up.

Here are the actions I would use social media for:

  • Create and share content, both long and short, whether writing on music and games, excerpts from projects, or just writing cool stuff
  • Update on what I’m working on, whether my own self-publishing or when I’m a contributor
  • Share stuff I like, as in links and posts of other cool people
  • Interact with like-minded folk, sharing ideas and having conversations
  • Place people can contact me for whatever reason

I’d really like to put this in a table, but I’m now just realizing that WordPress doesn’t allow that. Hm. So here’s a list of how these social medias could best accomplish my actions:

  • Blog: Create and share larger content (gaming, music, writing, kickstarting); project updates
  • Twitter: Share stuff I like; Create and share micro-content
  • Facebook Author: What I’m working on
  • Facebook Personal: Just stuff about me and my life

 

So you’re really stuck again, and go and do more research. You read this writer, and understand that your Facebook author page is a great place to produce more content. Well, that makes sense and falls in line with my overall goals. The other point she makes it to fully lock down my personal page, and hide it completely from anyone not specifically a fan. Hm. That also makes sense, as I have some privacy concerns with my family and other items. Finally, she says I don’t have to do this until I have hordes (even small) of followers.

I do think it’s a good idea to figure how whether I’m going to keep my personal FB page totally private or open it up for others. And I should figure that out before I start my next Kickstarter, so that, if and when backers want to find me on FB, I am easy to find and communicate with.

Maybe I’m putting the cart before the horse here. Maybe I need to focus on creating more content before I worry about a strategy. It would certain do me well to be creating more, more often. As a middle-aged adult (I hate saying that) with a family and career, that’s my challenge — not enough time to write. I would love to write more, publish more, and share my crazy ideas with everyone.

But this exercise has taught me a few things and I hope sharing them will help as well. First, you need to know what you want out of your social media. For me, I really just need to know what I’m using each platform for, and this exercise helped me figure that out. Second, each platform is used for different things. It’s good to know the strengths and weaknesses of each of the platforms and how they can help/hurt your overall readership. You need to use the platforms for specific things, and not expect the same results from each. And finally, as mentioned, it all comes down to content. If you’re pumping out new content on a weekly or daily basis, sharing new ideas and writing all the time, then you really have the opportunity to optimize your various platforms. But until that time, you’re just another dreamer.

I’m going to keep things the way they are right now, but I am going to work harder at generating content to share. And I’ll share my content through specific channels. I am also going to drive people to my Facebook Author page and see how that works. Finally, I need to make a decision about how to use my personal FB page.

And you — it’s time for you to share some content! Get to work!