Gaming Ballistic Report for May 2020

It’s been roughly 18 months since SJ Games asked Gaming Ballistic to publish for The Fantasy Trip. Since then, the cooperation between the two entities has been wide and deep. From brainstorming on projects to coordinating product releases (mostly Gaming Ballistic moving around the larger publishing schedule of SJ Games, and for good reasons!), I continue to be supremely pleased with my collaboration with a company I’ve been supporting as a fan since 1989.

What Has Come Before
The short version is that there are currently five released products from Gaming Ballistic for TFT, comprising one solo and four GM’d adventures . . . two of which are the beginning of a substantial campaign arc. I won’t call it an adventure path. In the words of Buffy Summers (technically Faith): “Because it’s wrong.”

But at the present time, we have

·         Ironskull Castle (by David Pulver)
·         Crown of Eternity (by Christopher R. Rice and J. Edward Tremlett)
·         Citadel of Ice (by David Pulver)
·         Curse of the Pirate King (by Christopher R. Rice and J. Edward Tremlett)
·         Vampire Hunter Belladonna (the solo adventure by David Pulver)

As part of the Four (Five!) Perilous Journeys campaign, Gaming Ballistic also produced a limited number of NPC/Monster cards compatible with those produced in the Decks of Destiny campaign, as well as die-cut 1” square tokens.

More on those later. But the first Perilous Journeys campaign was Gaming Ballistic’s best. Most backers, most funded, most product offered in one campaign.

What Comes Next
Gaming Ballistic isn’t done with The Fantasy Trip, or perhaps I should say TFT isn’t done with Gaming Ballistic. What’s coming? “More Perilous Journeys,” another multi-book campaign by the same authors as the first Four (really Five) Perilous Journeys above.

I have read and provided feedback on three continuing adventures by Christopher and J. These escalate and bring to a close the “Jok Sevantes” adventures begun with Crown of Eternity and Curse of the Pirate King. The concluding adventure is pretty epic, and all of them have options to pick up in the middle rather than begin with Crown of Eternity . . . but you really ought to play ‘em all. The final chapter is going to wind up being perhaps double the length of the first several, perhaps 32 pages.

David is currently working on finishing up the first of two solo adventures targeted for the same campaign. Thanks to a better supply chain, length isn’t fixed at either 16 or 32 pages, so the adventures can find their own length as needed. One of the titles? “Dragon Hunt.” What could go wrong there?

The campaign will proceed in two phases: “books” and “stuff.” I fully intend to offer all of the prior adventures plus the new ones in hardcopy and PDF. From there, the artwork produced on the first campaign will be used to generate a “stuff” campaign, which will reprint the Decks of Destiny cards and counters from Four Perilous Journeys, as well as produce more based on the new More Perilous Journeys campaign. The supply chain for that, as well as dealing with VAT for international customers and CE Marking and other requirements for “stuff” that doesn’t exist with “books” is complicated. Even more so due to COVID-19 disruptions. So the books come first, the stuff second.

I hope to launch the More Perilous Journeys “Books” campaign mid-May on Kickstarter.

What Comes After That?
An excellent question!

I’m already talking with David about more solo adventures – these have been very popular and well-reviewed. Perhaps a sequel to Vampire Hunter Belladonna? Also building out the implied setting of Ironskull Castle into something more. No promises – life is complex – but things are still in the hopper.

Turning it around, what do you want to see?