I think most of us will be fine with that - we just are anxious and excited to get our loot!

The first package has been sent - to Cindy A. of Sterling Illinois.

The Auld Grump

Also possibly of interest is a kind of "help us get to the finish line and add content" campaign by the guys who make the Divinity series:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lar ... iginal-sin

I liked them mostly because their design style is very Ultima VII-esque.

As far as I can remeber they had already mentioned they were going to take that time off.

This has popped up everywhere I've looked regarding ReaperCON, and the official line is that ReaperCON was planned a significant amount of time prior to the Bones kickstarter, and it would require significantly more work and generate a much greater amount of ire overall if they tried to reschedule the Con, or you'd end up with several backers with inaccurate product if they tried to keep up pledge fulfillment during the Con (which, whether or not you like the delay, would probably really tick you off if you got your package to find that four or five of the extras weren't there, or you got two or three of the products you didn't want instead). And that's not even considering the amount of space that both the Con and the Bones Packing line take up.
Overall, this has been a hugely successful kickstarter on all counts. At minimum, I imagine that this came in at LEAST thrice as successful as they had expected (heck, most KS projects only generate about 10% of what this one pulled in). The fact that they are shipping out 18,000 packages is going to take time, no matter how efficient you are at it or how many workers you throw at the problem (these things do take up space, you know?), and the fact that they got their product back and ready to ship out, within the originally stated timeline (by the end of March), is downright miraculous if you ask me (of course, I say that after getting a KS pledge two months early, but still waiting on a couple that were due back in December).
So sit back, relax, and take the time to ponder up schemes of what you will do with all that plastic. For me, I will be dreaming of Nethyrmaul + Party VS Nethyrmaul + Cthulhu, as the armies of Light and Madness battle it out around them.

I agree with Magius. They have been up front from the beginning about everything.(When shipping would START, not end, status of mold casting, paint filling etc.) I have tons of figures from them and have never had anything but good service. They are one of the few companies with an excellent customer service record and they actually seem to care what the customer thinks, unlike some big companies I know(GW). Frankly, for this kickstarter to have gotten as big as it did and still be run so successfully, it is a tribute to their organizational skills. I spent a heap on the kickstarter and am fine with how they are working it. I'm not picking on Genghis Ska when I say this, so please dont take it that way, because it is indicative of our society as a whole and not just one person, but I also have seen a ton of this kind of thing in the different forums and feel bad that we live in such an instant gratification society that people are getting upset about a company that has kept its promises. (Said they would start shipping in March and they started shipping in march) Some people from other kickstarters are still waiting for things that should have been delivered last summer. Everybody just kick back and dream about the mountains of bones coming our way.
This is what I have coming!

Vampire x1 $100
Fire Giants x1 $10
Ebonwrath x1 $10
Frost Giants x1 $10
Orcapocalypse x1 $25
Mind Your Manors x1 $10
There Be Dragons x1 $15
Demons x1 $15
Deathsleet x1 $10
Undead Giant x1 $10
Mythos Monsters x1 $10
Clockwork Dragon x1 $15
Red Dragon x1 $10
Spider Centaurs x1 $10
Fire Giant Warriors x1 $10
Forces Of Nature x1 $15
Frost Wyrm x1 $10
Jabberwock x1 $10
Deep Dwellers x1 $7
Nethyrmaul x1 $25
Hydra x1 $15
Griffon x1 $4
Mummies x1 $5
Haunts x1 $6
Fire It Up! x1 $5
Kaladrax Reborn x2 $20
C'thulhu x1 $10
Dungeon Attack x1 $15
Undead Horde x1 $10
Dungeon Dressing x1 $6
Swamp Things x2 $10
Owlbear x1 $3
Vermin x1 $10
Mister Bones x1 $1

$487.00 give or take

(edited for spelling and to add the list)

My stand point isn't from "instant gratification", it is from buckle down and do the job you said you would do.

They knew both of these events were comming up, plan for it with out shafting a percentage of the 17,744 consumers that you haven't gotten to yet. Reaper con seems to happen every year, plan ahead if you know both of these events are comming up at the same time. Work extra time or hire extra help, to finish the job you started. Don't take 11 days off in the middle of one of you obligations to do another, with out covering the other one.

To emergencyoverride i think this is indicitive of how people just don't have a decent work ethic anymore. I work at a small compay too (10 people) and I (and others) have come in on weekends for a number of weeks for the past month, we have worked late with out requesting comp time to get a big project done becuase we care about getting it done on time.
Reaper got 3.4 million dollars and they can'tfind a way to cover this time? They can't plan ahead? They know two events are comming up and instead of covering all that time, they go eh, we will skip one.
Grab some interns, or some part time help from the U of N. Texas (in Denton) to cover Reaper Con (if you are so worried that they are too incompetent to figure out the shipping methhod and screw things up have your help work the Con) do some thing to meet all of your obligations not just some of them.

They have done what they said they would. They said they would START shipping in march and they have. They never said when it would be done. They ESTIMATED that it would take 3 weeks and have revised that to 5. Still dont see a problem. You are right about society's work ethic in general though. People feel entitled to everything with little to no work, and no regard to doing a good job.

<Warning> <Warning> Incoming wall of text. <Warning> <Warning>

Something else to keep in mind, that I had stated before, is the scale of this. 18,000 distinct orders, with anywhere between 1 and 60 vampire levels each, most with a gobsmack of options and extras on top, will take more than a couple of extra weekends and a herd of temps (don't forget, they'll need to be supervised and trained on Reaper's systems and setup) to cut through before time comes for their ReaperCon obligations. Right now, if they didn't take a single day off until the project finished, they'd have to ship out a thousand pledges a day. To be perfectly blunt, that's not happening.

Which, of course, says nothing for the amount of space that all of these palates takes up. IIRC (working from memory, this could be quite wrong), they received 17 containers of miniatures as a direct result of this project. That's 17 shipping containers, each one the sized of a Semi truck's trailer. That takes up a lot of room, so it's not simply a matter of throwing additional workers at the problem (as you are suggesting), but actually finding the space to put together the orders and ship them out (which is exactly why they are starting with the simple orders first, because those have a relatively small footprint of all of the common miniatures from this project).

As for the project running into ReaperCON, I can easily see why this happened. With their original plan, and accounting for average backer levels for this sort of project, they would have easily been able to get everything done and shipped out by now, and would currently be relaxing before the buildup to ReaperCON. However, the amount of product that they ended up producing and the number of backers that they gathered far outstripped what they had planned (and nearly hit the end of what they had planned for - IIRC, they had a loose plan for what to include up to the 4 million dollar mark). The fact that pushed things back from (probably) starting at the start of the month to barely getting the first order out before the end of the month. This also puffed up the amount of time that it takes to ship everything - if they had gotten the 1-5 thousand backers that is more typical for this kind of project, it wouldn't be a problem. But they didn't. They got 18 thousand backers, which is going to take time to ship out - even giving them the most generous timeframe possible given what they've most recently told us (started shipping on the 27th, continue shipping until May 31 without taking a day off during that entire time except for ReaperCon and a few days around it), they still have to average over 300 packages shipped out a day. Given that, they have to make a decision about ReaperCon - do they ship out what they can before it, and finish up afterwards (their choice); do they cancel/delay ReaperCon and deal with the fallout from that; or do they continue to try to ship out packages while simultaneously running ReaperCon, and run a much greater risk of orders being mispacked? Given the options, I think they went with the right one.

I do understand where you're coming from with this, and I understand how frustrating it can be waiting for a product you've dropped a lot of money on (I myself dropped $500 on this one), but I do think that you are failing to grasp the sheer scale of what they have done (over a million miniatures for kickstarter backers alone!), and what that means for their schedules.

Genghis,

You're overreacting.

First person got their order.

I'm looking forward to mine. Considering its 2x Vampire, plus 3x paint sets and a horde of other singles ($511, all told), I figure I'll see mine in ... May.

I've been a long-time fan of TableSmith, which is a (n easily) programmable downloadable generation program. They've started a kickstarter to produce an online version. I'm about to kick in mostly in thanks for my many years of happy tablesmithing (I bought two copies of the shareware version for the same reason).



It's by the author of DM's Familiar. The kickstarter is just getting started, with only a few backers, but the requested amount is low too so I'm optimistic.

Unfortunately the video feels more like an ad for TableSmith, and I fear some people may not watch to the end to see that it's a legit kickstarter to make an online version -- which will make TableSmith easier to use (e.g. from your smartphone, mac, or tablet).

Steve

[Edit: Changed GM's Familiar to proper name of DM's Familiar]

I have several of the offerings from this group and they are pretty cool. They have them for several different situations. Check them out, you can audio preview all of them. Lonely Graveyard is especially cool!

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/76419/Pro ... music+loop

Dwarven Forge is redoing their core line in plastic via Kickstarter (no link as per forum rules). Interesting, but still fairly pricey.

If Mr. Brown doesn't approve I'm not supporting it.

I believe I heard someone mention that there is a "sweet spot" that works out to about $1.00 a piece. That still seems rather pricey to me...