Books & Boxed Sets, the future-past of the T2k hobby

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Gentlemen (and possibly Ladies?),

A few years back I emailed the guys at farfuture.net just to say "thank you" for their efforts at keeping .PDFs of T2k materials in print.

At the time I half-jokingly asked what the cost of doing a print run of the 1e boxed set would be, and the response (sadly, I don't have the exact email) was "sure, send us $17,000 and we'll be happy to do a print run!"

Obviously I don't have seventeen grand lying around to spend on that...however, maybe I do. Or we do. Or something.

The reason I bring this up is I'm a huge fan of that other, more famous role-playing game (*cough*AD&D*cough*) - the community of guys who play original D&D and Advanced D&D is huge, and they have gotten in to Kickstarter in a huge way.

For those not in the know, Kickstarter is a way by which small investors can pitch financial support into a product or project that requires some capitalization to get published. For varying amounts on a scale, contributors can "buy in" and get certain perks (like, just blue skying, let's say you did a T2k kickstarter and said $25 donations got a Teeshirt, $100 donations got a copy of the boxed set, Ruins of Warsaw and a wall map of the Polish/German campaign area, etc. etc.)

All the heavy lifting for T2k is done. What needs to be done to get it back in print is to get any negatives, proofs, etc. to a print shop and have it printed and boxed.

Obviously, I'm not a GDW/FFE employee. But...I'm wondering if approached if they'd consider this?

The reason I bring it up is this: four of the last Kickstarter projects for home-brewed 1st edition AD&D fan-made products have brought in nearly $100,000. A hundred thousand bucks!

Surely there's enough fan support for Twilight:2000 to get whatever was needed to see at least some of it back in print, yeah?

So let's hear some infield chatter. What do you guys think? Should we approach FFE?

[boogiedowndonovan]

If any of you are fans of the Steve Jackson wargame Ogre, some people got together and did a kickstarter campaign. Their goal was $20,000, but they raised over $900,000.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...igners-edition

I think there is talk of doing a kickstarter campaign to for Car Wars.

it would be interesting to see what interest is for T2k, not just on this board but the yahoo groups and other boards.

-bdd

[Cdnwolf]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2

They raised over $2 million.

I wonder if maybe we can resurrect TWL2013 too.

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by Cdnwolf

I wonder if maybe we can resurrect TWL2013 too.

Honestly, I'd rather not see that happen.

- C.

[Jason Weiser]

Teg,
If you don't mind my asking, but why? If it's not something you want to discuss privately, PM me please. I promise not to share unless you clear me to do so.

[M-Type]

Here's a Traveller one.

I'm currently going to school for Video Game Design and Development (Yeah, it's a real major, much to the shock of my parents ), and Kickstarter has been quite the big deal for a lot of Indie game companies (And Wasteland 2, which is a big deal IMO).

It's a great way to get a community together and really get some money rolling in for projects and whatnot. So I could see a T2k Kickstarter working.

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by Jason Weiser

Teg,
If you don't mind my asking, but why? If it's not something you want to discuss privately, PM me please. I promise not to share unless you clear me to do so.

Naah, there's nothing I can say in PM that I can't say here.

I think the Twilight: 2000 fan community's response to Twilight: 2013 has done a thorough and vigorous job of pointing out its many and varied flaws. With those in mind, and knowing that the game wasn't financially successful on its first go-round, I can't see it garnering any better reception or sales figures after a resurrection. While I appreciate the fact that a handful of fans still have enthusiasm and warm feelings toward it, well... I'll just repeat myself here:

Originally Posted by Tegyrius

It is an unfortunate geek tendency for individual fans or small local (or online) groups to project their own personal enthusiasm for a property onto the overall global population of potential customers, then make sweeping (and erroneous) generalizations about the commercial viability of their personal visions for said property. In some cases, this failed understanding goes so far as to drive catastrophically bad business decisions.

I have enough doubts about the ability of a resurrected Twilight: 2000 to turn a profit for a publisher, let alone do anything truly revolutionary in the "alternate Cold War post-apocalyptic military survival gaming" genre. I simply can't see Twilight: 2013 being any kind of success, and it'd tear me up to watch it fail again.

Having said all that, I think Twilight: 2013 did some things right, though not right enough. I still believe the removal of exclusive focus on military PCs and the military side of the global events is necessary for success in the survival RPG genre, especially if you want to position a rules system as a toolkit for gaming in different post-apocalyptic settings. It lends itself to a more inclusive game for players who don't (for whatever reason) want to engage in mil-spec gaming. I think there's enough Cold War grognardism in the fan base that a future timeline, rather than yet another rehashing of Fulda Gap fantasies, is a necessary dodge to keep from getting nitpicked to death over differing interpretations of historical minutiae (or over whatever historical liberties are necessary to achieve the desired setting). And I think some of Reflex's core mechanical concepts (particularly the concept of the team as an entity that's mechanically separate from the individual PCs) are worth revisiting in a more professionally-designed game engine.

- C.

[headquarters]

Originally Posted by boogiedowndonovan

If any of you are fans of the Steve Jackson wargame Ogre, some people got together and did a kickstarter campaign. Their goal was $20,000, but they raised over $900,000.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...igners-edition

I think there is talk of doing a kickstarter campaign to for Car Wars.

it would be interesting to see what interest is for T2k, not just on this board but the yahoo groups and other boards.

-bdd

there are other T2K boards????

I think its a positive initiative - I am willing to pledge some dough.