I can not tell you how hard it was to stay objective in this video and not try to influence the vote. Because I know which one of these I’d choose. In preparation for this video I needed to come up with a thumbnail for both of these kickstarter projects. Partially because I expected I’d be making Kickstarter landing pages for them. And while I was able to fill out some of the thumbnails with assets that I already had from other projects, I wanted to create something original to stand front-and-center for each of the projects. A mascot as it were.
For the chess project I sculpted a unicorn knight. This could be the start of what would eventually be a whole fantasy themed chess set for the campaign. I filled out the thumbnail with the previously unreleased Bird cage chess set in the back of the render, and was set. And if I can be honest, that knight was some of the best 3D sculpting I’ve ever done. Not to brag, but I impressed myself with it.
Chess mascot done. I can move on.
I turned my attention to PrintAQuest and things quickly ballooned. First of all, I had assets for the thumbnail. The PrintABlok Landcraft tiles to could be used to make a board well enough for a thumbnail. I also had some minis I modeled for a commissioned project that I can’t use in the final game, but I had permission to use them for promotion like this
But then I needed my mascot. I spent 3 days and made a mohawked dwarf with a dwarven blunderbuss. This was a challenge because it needed to be fancy enough to look good in the render, since that’s what sells kickstarters, but I was also concerned with it being printable at scale and without supports.
Of course I succeeded brilliantly at both.
But I quickly realized I was going about things the wrong way. When designing a board game you don’t start making the assets before you have a game. Of course I could just say “for playing DnD with”, and these assets could be used for that. But I felt it would be good to have a proper game to test these assets on as I go, so I wrote rules for PrintAQuest, ran a couple of test game, adjusted the rules, balanced the characters, starting planning expansions, and even started planning the video for this campaign.
In other words, if the vote is not a landslide for PrintAQuest, it is going to be yet another on the list of projects I am determined to do one day that I don’t have time for.
Don’t get me wrong. Chess sets are fine. In the end it’s probably going to be less work. But my choice would be for PrintAQuest. We’ll see what you decide.
