dmdave
patreon
Is DMDave a crazy person? (Yes, but I can explain...)
🕑 Added 2019-03-29 09:27:54 +0000 UTCI recently got some pretty good feedback in an exit survey. I sent them a reply, but I thought I'd share it all with you, too. As you know, there's been a number of changes to the format here on the Patreon over the last couple months.
Here is the feedback:
Sorry Dave. You seem to jump from project to project, you make promises then change them at a seeming whim (forget Wonderossa, GoW, monthly pdfs, and the initial offer of Braodsword pdfs for all tiers... we'll go this way) . I wish you luck with Broadsword, but honestly from what I've seen on your patreon page, I have to wonder what will happen when the next great idea hits, and you drop it.
Here's my reply (name redacted):
Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it. Sorry for what seems like chaos at times. A lot of the patreon has been testing what works and what doesn't with my brand. In tech we call it "lean testing" haha! Basically, ideate, test, iterate.
Monthly PDFs are still on. Kelly's doing the monster book (which will have 50+ monsters) and I've got the magic book that I'm working on, mostly made up of stuff that came from the last adventure conversion I did. Plus, there's the "more or less" daily stuff. This is all the primary focus of the Patreon moving forward and seems to be the chief reason a lot of people sign up anyways.
As much as I loved GoW, there were a few people who made it extremely difficult. And it was a MASSIVE time sink for me, which was stressful, since I never saw my family and never got to work on the projects that I wanted to/was supposed to work on. While a select few were happy, a vast majority of folks weren't.
Requests, like GoW, just are not sustainable; at least, not at the rates I'm charging on Patreon. It's something that made sense when I had 30 followers, but impossible to do when I've got 150+. I love doing requests. It's how I got started. But it's something I just had to make the decision to cancel.
Finally, for BroadSword it just doesn't make sense to charge $10 for PDFs on the Kickstarter and then turn around and give them away for less than half that on Patreon. I don't remember saying I'd give the PDFs that low--I might have--but that just seems like bad business sense, especially when it's more than just me working on the project. Pro-artists are expensive AF LOL
BroadSword more or less was always the plan, even before the Patreon. JD and I started working on it back in November with the Secret of Forsaken Peak. However, the art was a bit slower than expected, so I started the Patreon to bide my time. Well, the Patreon took off! Haha
The magazine is a lot easier to do for a number of reasons: 1) I only have to write that content each month; 2) I can accept submissions; 3) worse case scenario, I can always loop in what I've already got made.
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I know that a vast majority of you are fine with everything going on. But for those of you who might be "what the hell?" over there, I felt an explanation was owed. I can't promise that I won't stop tweaking and changing, but at least now I've found a little area of comfort with the project.
If anyone has any questions or concerns, hit me up on the Discord Channel or message me direct on here.
Thanks!
Comments
DM Dave
I’ll take a look at it. Like I said, the biggest challenge is that there’s other parties involved. But I’ll see if I can’t work something out
this is sort of unrelated, I absolutely love your content, so I was disappointed learning that silver tier doesn't get Broadsword magazine, I was wondering, could silver and copper tier get a small discount for purchases to broadsword magazine? I'm not sure if I'd be willing to pay full price for both the magazine and the patreon, no matter how excited I am for it
