Happy Hour #12 - The Soapbox Race (Patreon)

Owning your own small business can feel a bit like being in a soapbox race. You build this "car" with your own two hands, though of course you probably enlisted the help of friends, family, business partners, investors, consultants, etc. to lend a helping hand. You do your best to make it strong and stable, but also to make it stand out against the competition. That might mean sacrificing some stability for some flash, some flare, something fun that will get the spectators caring about what happens to your car when, inevitably, you give it a gentle nudge over the lip of the hill and it begins careening down toward whatever goal you hope to hit next. In my case, I feel like we are rattling down these hills at shocking speeds and each finish line—Paizo Con, Gen Con, Dragon Con—leaves no flat ground for a pit stop before the hill just continues down and down and down to the next thing. I could lean on this analogy all day because I'm just laughing my ass off picturing Troy, Matthew, Skid, Grant, and me in a homemade Glass Cannon soapbox car yelling at each other to avoid the hay bales. And there's that one ramp that comically bounces Matthew four feet out of his seat and nearly out of the car before Grant reaches out with a meaty claw and snatches Capodicasa out of the air and sets him gently back in the grinder before—BAM—live show in LA. Alright, I'm done. I promise.

I guess I'm just trying to illustrate my shock at how I spent most of this summer so focused on Gen Con and in the blink of an eye, it's two weeks behind us. The last two weeks for me have been a mixture of closing out Gen Con (analyzing both the financials and the intangibles) and looking ahead to some major plans for the Network: Dragon Con, Glass Cannon Live! in Atlanta, building a set, and starting an Emerald Spire campaign. 

When I first landed from Indy at 8:30am on Monday, August 5th, I went straight to the office and got busy closing out the books for what turned out to be a blast of a weekend with the guys and the Naish in Indianapolis. This was the not-fun part, though. How much did we spend to be out there, how much revenue did we generate, how did the meetings go, etc. I've also got to place an approximate dollar value on a series of intangibles so we can decide how best to approach these major conventions in general, and that doesn't come easily at this stage of our business. The Glass Cannon Network is not only a young enterprise just in terms of time since creation, but it's also a new type of business that doesn't have a lot of hard data out there for us to evaluate where we are in the grand scheme. This is a good problem to have, though. It's new and exciting and risky. I love it. 

Rather than go down a rabbit-hole of cost-benefit analysis theory, though, I'd like to just update you guys what's actually been going on at the office in my last two weeks since Gen Con. As I mentioned before, I wasn't only looking back, I was also looking forward. We've had positive developments in both the set design—which we first discussed in Cannon Fodder 93—and the lighting design. Troy was with the lighting designer in the studio yesterday, going over several design proposals as well as timelines for when we can get this done. The set design itself is basically done and we are currently shopping around to find the right builders to take what's on paper and make it come to life in our studio. Troy has been spearheading this whole process and I know he's really excited for you guys to see the finished product.

Moving on to Emerald Spire: the conversion has been challenging but really fun. Last week I converted three different important NPC/Enemies to Second Edition and it was a ton of work. Really interesting, though, because now I feel like I know these characters so much better. I can't simply tweak some numbers, generate a statblock, and be done with it. I have to re-build these characters from the ground up, literally using the 2E character sheet. As for other non-NPC elements of the conversion, it's time-consuming, but overall going really well in my opinion. Jason Bulmahn recently released a brief, six-page Pathfinder Second Edition Conversion Guide, which has helped me in some respects—especially in the area of magic items—but as the guide itself admits, there is a lot of work that's on your shoulders since the two systems are very different. As more and more elements of the conversion are left up to me to interpret, an interesting conundrum arises. There are two ways to think about doing this conversion: a) doing the conversion for myself, for my game, or b) doing an actual Emerald Spire conversion that could be used by other people in their own home games. There's a big difference between the two. Option A is less work and probably better for the show, Option B is much more work, but truer to the module-as-written and would make for a nice contribution to the community. I absolutely want to contribute to the Pathfinder community if I can and have the work I'm doing anyway benefit other people that simply don't have the same amount of time to devote to the project. So far, my conversion has been Option B, but as I get a little deeper and things get more complicated, it's going to be more efficient (and probably better radio) to convert with an eye toward my players and the experience of the show, rather than a general, all-purpose conversion. I haven't made a decision one way or the other yet. This is something that's been knocking around in my head over the last two weeks and I'd be curious to know what you guys think. Let me know in the comments below if you'd like to weigh in.   

The conversion aside, it was in the studio this week, actually, when the most exciting Emerald Spire developments happened. On Monday, August 12th, we did yet another round of casting as we continue to search for new and interesting NY-based performers and players to join the GCN team. That casting went really well and we met some people that have serious potential to be the next members of the team. These brief meetings (we could only talk to people for about 15 minutes each) were followed up with a round of callbacks that actually happened today, and this is one of the reasons I'm chomping at the bit to write this post. The callbacks in this case were actually just two back-to-back one hour scenarios/encounters where we brought it three new players to play with us for the first hour, and then two additional new players to jump in for the second hour. All in all, five new performers, all playing Second Edition, and all really digging into the mechanics too. Guys, I have never been more excited for this show than I am today. Trying to decide the players that will join us from this mix of five will not be easy. Again, it's a good problem to have, and with any luck we can quickly get past the hurdles of negotiations and scheduling and actually start recording these shows in a matter of weeks! That would be amazing, and it's legitimately possible. I should know more by next week.

All of the time in-between over the last two weeks was packed with the not-sexy stuff. Even as I write the word packed, I twitch a bit. We released the tour t-shirt and of course the first official Glass Cannon dice sets and d20s! It's so awesome to finally release these things to you guys, but on the flip-side, it's folding and packing and shipping madness for a brief period while all of these orders are processed. I hope everyone likes their GCP dice. We talked to several different dice companies about a variety of forms that the final official sets could take. Eventually the choice was Norse Foundry and the four-color aluminum precision series. We kept coming back to Norse Foundry because of the quality of the product, the integrity of the way they do business, and the simple fact that they've got members of the Naish in their ranks. It was a really good fit and I'm happy to say that we've already ordered another batch and they should be in by Dragon Con!

Well, I've got to wrap it up here even though there's more stuff I wanted to discuss, like Patreon fulfillment for the higher tiers, even more new merch coming to the store, and a great meeting I had with Blackmagic Design last week (the folks that make the equipment we use for streaming), but we have run out of time. The soapbox car continues plummeting down the slope: only two weeks until Dragon Con! For now, I've got just enough time to run out for a quick bite before coming right back in to play Giantslayer tonight. Friday night gaming! What a way to end a great week. 

I hope you all have a great weekend and I look forward to meeting some of you in Atlanta!

For Highbury,
Joe