Intro
I'm joined by Jeff Stevens of Jeff Stevens Games. He's a one-man-outfit writing and publishing materials for several games, including Draw Steel. Currently he's crowdfunding Threats of the Timescape, and has previously published Weapons of Lore and Weapons of Legend.
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.
Interview
Jon de Nor: Welcome to Goblin Points, Jeff Stevens!
Jeff Stevens: Yes, thanks, Jon! Thanks for having me.
Jon de Nor: We need an introduction of who you are, and also how you became aware of Draw Steel.
Jeff Stevens: I am Jeff Stevens. I own Jeff Stevens Games, which I started a few years back. And primarily I focused on writing 5e adventures. Published on the DMs Guild, doing some Kickstarters for those. Then I found Shadowda — no, then I found Draw Steel through Spencer Hibnick. Spencer is a playtester for MCDM, and he helped me write a couple of my 5e products, Weapons of Legend and Weapons of Lore. And Spencer said, "Hey, we've got these weapons and this artwork, and why don't we convert these to Draw Steel?" And I was like, sure, let's do it. And that's how I was introduced. You know, I knew of Draw Steel before that, but I hadn't, I didn't look into the rules really like that.
But Spencer had the idea, and we ran with it. And those two projects have been really good, I think they've been received well within the community, and they've been used at tables. They were a lot of fun to produce. I don't produce anything that I don't think will be fun or useful. I try not to. It's not a money grab for me. It's more or less, like, what is going to be useful for Directors and characters and the heroes, through any aspect of the publishing side.
But that's that's how I got into Draw Steel. And then I started getting into Shadowdark, because that is just a fun system to write for. Making the move from 5e to Shadowdark took a little time, because Shadowdark's writing is really concise, a little bit less descriptive, mechanics are more open for the GM to kind of interpret it on their own. But it's been really good, and a lot of fun, and a great community.
Jon de Nor: Have you found that any part of your existing...I don't know if we should take "community" or "customers"...have followed you across systems?
Jeff Stevens: There have been, yes, yeah. I don't know how many, though. I don't keep track of that. But I do know people who have who have purchased both Weapons of Legend for 5e and Draw Steel. And other people have moved from 5e to Shadowdark and then picked up some of my products that way too. So yeah, I think once you've got a consumer base or a fan base, however you want to say it, and they see you doing other things, if they're interested in the game, they're going to check it out.
Jon de Nor: Recently, you've — well, actually at the time of recording, it's just launched — the most recent crowdfunder you're doing for Draw Steel, which is &Threats of the Timescape*. Can you tell us a bit about what that is about?
Jeff Stevens: Yeah. So this was another project that someone pitched to me. Dan Kahn had this idea for this book of Draw Steel threats based on science-fiction, you know, statblocks or monsters. We decided to roll with it. And, you know, they're designed for 1st- and 2nd-echelon encounters. The ideas just kept growing. We have mechans, which are like mechs, Sunsworn, Voidcallers who deal with black holes...terrorariums, which are plant creatures that live in glass domes that terrorize the planets. And so much more. There's thermophages which are insectoid like creatures who live off heat. A couple of solo bosses and other things in development, like cosmic whales and stellar sharks. And some secret stuff behind the scenes here that we're still developing too.
Jon de Nor: Because I noticed on the BackerKit page, you provide some price estimate for the anticipated cost to print. And in the text you give estimates for anywhere between 30 and 80 pages.
Jeff Stevens: That's because you know, we're doing this the way Kickstarter was meant, or you know, crowdfunding was meant to be. It was meant to help creators basically create their project and to fund it. And so we've got some stretch goals on here that if we hit those goals, the page count is going to increase, you know. And we don't have layout completed. While most of the writing is completed and editing is underway, we are still commissioning art. Our artists can only do so much at a time, which is why we have 4 to 5 artists working on this project. You can't give one artist 50 creature statblocks to to do the art for and expect it to be done quickly and without their hand cramping or them just deciding that they don't want to do art anymore. You know, you don't you don't want to overwork your artists. So we've we've got five people working on this, possibly six. We may add more.
Yeah, that's why the supplement page count could increase. Because I'm using print codes, that allows me to set a base price, and then the backer receives a print code which they use through DriveThruRPG's print-on-demand services to print the supplement at cost, which allows me to give you a bigger discount. So if I'm offering a print code at $15 and the cost to print is like $6, that's 21 bucks for you to get the book, whereas I'm going to probably sell it for $27. So you're saving money off of that. The higher the page count goes, yes, you're going to pay more to print the book, but I'm also probably going to increase the retail price of it because it's a larger page count, and it costs more to produce, you know.
For this, I'm not writing. For Threats of the Timescape, I am the project manager, I am the owner of the IP, basically. I am hiring writers to write the content. And you know, we've got multiple people on here. Let me get to the list of names. So Dan Kahn, Spencer Hibnick, other writers who are contributing to Toni Winslow-Brill, Teos Abadia, Donald Schepis, Jonas — I'm going to ruin this — Tintese...
Jon de Nor: Tintenseher, yeah.
Jeff Stevens: Yeah, yeah. Which is a familiar name, I believe, with with one of the other companies. And Jacob Schwartz. You know, we may add other writers as we as we reach goals. All those people are getting paid to write for this. And I'm also paying artists, you know, for their work, and Sabriel Mastin who is doing the editing. You know, this is a pretty good team of developers here. They're getting paid to write and produce the content. And so, you know, we don't know exactly what the layout is going to look like until all this content is turned in. Which is why, again, for the varying page counts.
Jon de Nor: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And speaking of art. Because I've noticed, at least from Weapons of Lore and Weapons of Legend, there's a lot of art in your products, at least the ones I've seen for Draw Steel. Yeah. It sounds like this is continuing with Threats of the Timescape?
Jeff Stevens: Yeah. Well, I'm looking...I want to do a piece of art for each statblock.
Jon de Nor: (impressed laughter)
Jeff Stevens: So we're looking at 50 pieces of art, you know, for the base supplement. If we had stretch goals and we add on five more stat blocks, that's five more pieces of art. All of this, you know, it costs money, and I'm happy to pay people to do this. I don't use AI, or "super intelligence", but I prefer to call it artificial intelligence because it generates things. And that's just the term that we've been using for quite some time. But I don't use it. I understand other people do. I don't. I prefer to support human creators who are trying to live the same life I am, pursuing their dreams and, you know, trying to hold a career in the RPG industry.
Jon de Nor: Hear, hear. (chuckle) In the campaign, you're also listing, as a part of the pledges...what should we call it? Like digital versions of the product, for Forge Steel, the Codex, and Foundry. That's an impressive level of support.
Jeff Stevens: I reached out to several people. A couple of people reached out to me about, "Hey, I could create a Forge Steel version of this for you." I said, "Well, you know, what would that cost?" They gave the estimate, and I said, let's do it. You know, I want to provide this to as many people as possible and make it as useful as possible. Same thing with Codex. I had been...so Codex, I know, is really useful for Draw Steel Directors. And there's always been the want for more Codex material.
Now they don't have a marketplace yet, which is why Weapons of Lore and Weapons of Legend haven't been converted for that. But, you know, recent communication with them said there's a way to create and distribute like gift codes so that somebody can unlock that on Codex for them. And so that's what we're going to do with this. And eventually, hopefully, if MCDM or Codex gets a marketplace for the Draw Steel side of it, we'll put it up on the marketplace so that other people can get it. But, you know, as far as like continued sales of the Codex version, that might have to come through itch.io. I don't know yet. I'm still working that out. But we know that we're going to have the ability to give the rewards to the backers right now.
And the Foundry VTT, I did that for Weapons of Legend and Weapons of Lore. And those both went over really well. I think people enjoy those too, so. Yeah, all these different virtual tabletops, or digital tools, are things you just have to kind of consider when you're looking at things. Like, what do people want, what's going to make it, what's going to be useful for people? And so I'm excited to be able to offer all those options.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, it's really impressive. (laughter) Really impressive. Codex support is something that's only been recently offered by third parties, even. I think the first custom class dropped yesterday or the day before, maybe, for the Vampire class from Triglav. So you're on the bleeding edge. (laughter)
Jeff Stevens: Yeah. And actually, my Codex conversion specialist, they developed a sample on Codex. So if you're in the Draw Steel side of Codex, you can search for Sunsworn, and it should pull up the Sunsworn Absolute, which is kind of our free teaser for this. So anybody can do that and check it out.
Jon de Nor: I'm looking at the image from the BackerKit page. And it looks really cool to have it in the Codex. I play regularly in the Codex, so that's of real interest to me. But part of the reason that I wanted to have you on, and we spoke a bit about this before we started recording, is that you are a person that publishes across a lot of different systems. You mentioned 5e, I saw that you've published for both 5e and 5.5e, for Shadowdark, I saw some supplements for Pathfinder, and now also Draw Steel for the past year or so. What has been...what's what's like the reason you even started? Because it sounds like you started on 5e, on D&D, and then you decided to kind of branch out. What was the reason behind that?
Jeff Stevens: When I branched out...I'm getting my dates mixed up here. But I think the first thing I did that wasn't 5e or D&D was the Draw Steel Weapons of Legend. I think that's when Spencer came to me and said, hey, we've got all this, let's do this. And so I said, let's try it. And so, you know, I had somebody who knew that system, who could convert the weapons to another system, and that, like I said, that worked out very well. Then we did Weapons of Lore for 5e, which includes a lot of cursed stuff, and we converted that to Draw Steel. So there are cursed items within there. And both Weapons of Legend and Weapons of Lore are leveled weapon treasures, or...leveled weapon...leveled treasure...I'm getting my terms mixed up in my head now.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) They're leveled treasure, yes.
Jeff Stevens: Yes, leveled treasures. Which is what the original 5e versions were, and so we just converted them over, making adjustments to make it fit Draw Steel. That went well. And then I found Shadowdark and read that, and enjoyed it, and then started writing things for Shadowdark, which is...I think the first thing I did was Treasures from the Dark, which is similar to Weapons of Lore and Weapons of Legend. There are Shadowdark weapons that progress as the character gains levels or does certain things. And so, you know, they don't always have to go and find a new weapon if they perform an act or if they reach a certain level, it automatically increases with them, just like your leveled treasures in Draw Steel. So that's what we did for Shadowdark.
And then I had a lot of fun doing that so then I did Allies and Enemies, and I hired writers for that, to kind of create NPCs that you can drop in your game. And so I did that because I was primarily focused on 5e. I love...I grew up in the 80s, love D&D, that was my game, although I played like Champions, Shadowrun, all kinds of games. But that's always been my go-to. But then there are so many crowdfunding campaigns going on for that, and it just became a constant battle. And people get tired of seeing D&D ads on Facebook or whatever, or, you know, the Kickstarter, the promos, and I just wanted to branch out and try something different to see how it would go.
And it's done fairly well for me. It's a lot of work, maintaining three systems, or four systems, because of the Pathfinder side. I had someone else convert several of my adventures to Pathfinder and, you know, those have also done well and been received well. But yeah, trying to maintain that many, as well as working with like your VTT conversion specialists for Foundry, Roll20, Shard, Fantasy Grounds, now Codex and Forge Steel, there's a lot to maintain in the background and keep your head wrapped around all aspects of the systems and the back office details of all of this.
It's been a lot for one person basically. You know, I'm a sole owner of my company. I'm the sole employee. I contract writers or artists, cartographers and editors, to help me out. And I appreciate them greatly, because I wouldn't be here without them. And I really wouldn't be here without the support of consumers and customers who enjoy the products. So thank you to anyone who has ever purchased any of my products.
Jon de Nor: It sounds like you've mostly ended up in a in a publisher role. Is that right to assume or say?
Jeff Stevens: For probably half of my company, yes. I do still write and produce. I've done contract writing, or freelance writing, for like Kobold Press and Ghostfire Gaming. I do have a lot of ideas in my head, a lot of stories that I've started and stopped because another project came up or another idea happened, which I'd like to get back to those stories to finish them, because I, you know, I am a writer at heart. My mind is always coming up with stories or ideas or that type of thing.
And I have recently been thinking about, you know, 2027, and what that's going to do for my company. What do I want to focus on? And, you know, this past year, 2025, 2026, basically, I've been focusing on larger projects, you know, like Weapons of Lore, Threats of the Timescape. I've done several larger Kickstarters for Shadowdark. One of them was The Savage Arctic, which was basically a campaign setting with hex maps and all this, you know, new monsters and stuff.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Wow.
Jeff Stevens: Yeah. So the larger projects eat up a lot of time and a lot of mental faculty. It's just, you know, you just think about, like, is this going to get turned in on time? When am I going to release this? I gott meet this deadline so I can get this PDF to the backers. You know, that kind of thing. Really, you have to think about, is the time investment worth it, as well as the money investment, based on the amount that I get back? So I might Kickstart something. It funds. I need to make a little bit more off of that in order to survive, because this is my full-time job, and some of those larger projects that take six months are going to eat up a lot of time and a lot of money.
Whereas if I could create a smaller product, like just an adventure or a 20-page book of some magic items or something like that, that I can produce on my own, except for the editing, layout, art...because I can't, I'm a horrible artist. When I send my briefs off to artists, I often send a stick figure with little arrows that say, this should be this, this should be this, or holding an ax or something. And so that's one skill that I don't have, that I wish I did. Because the more skills you have in this industry that you can apply to a product, like the layout, you know, the editing, the artwork, the basic knowledge of the product so that you can write it, the cheaper it is to produce. I think, you know, some of these companies who are able to write and do their own artwork have such a big advantage, compared to a company like mine where I can't do any of that on my own. You know, I could I could probably learn InDesign to learn my own layout, but when I'm talking about all the time that I'm spending doing other things within the project side, it's like, I don't have the time to do that.
And so 2027, I might try to cut things back a little bit as far as the large projects go. I say that, but I don't think that's going to happen, because, you know, we've already been we've already been discussing about another possible Threats of the Timescape. You know, this one is Scourges of Space. You know, we may look at a different type of a timescape environment that we might be able to write for. There's also been discussion about another weapons or leveled treasure book or implements book or something like that for Draw Steel. And I love these ideas, and it's so hard to say no to some projects, which is why I put a lot of things on the backburner that I'm just working on myself.
Jon de Nor: Right. I asked a bit about this before we started recording, but I want to ask it on — I was about to say "on record" — at least during the recording, because to me the it sounds like you ended up in the *Draw Steel& sphere almost by accident through Spencer. Because my initial thought would have been to branch out to Daggerheart, which seems like a much, or at least a bigger community, or a bigger customer base.
Jeff Stevens: Yeah. And I had considered that. I spoke with Alan Tucker, who did...I'm sorry, I can't remember the name of it right off the hand, Alan. I think it was like, Incredible Creatures for Daggerheart or something like that.
Jon de Nor: Sounds familiar, yes.
Jeff Stevens: Yeah. And that one did really well. And I spoke with Alan. Alan actually does a lot of my layout for my projects, and I'll be seeing him at Gamehole Con this week, actually, in Madison, Wisconsin. So if anybody's — I don't know when this goes out, but if anybody's at Gamehole Con, say hi. But, yeah, we were talking about Daggerheart. You know, I considered, like, creating a treasure book for Daggerheart based on the the images that I have for Weapons of Lore and Weapons of Legend. At the time, it just didn't seem like it fit right, you know, because Daggerheart was brand-new. The people I talked to said, "I don't think this is going to work."
But I may look at it again going forward. Because, you know, the game — all these games start with like the bare bones, the basic rules, okay. And then the community or home GMs come up with their own ideas for homebrew content and stuff and they say, "Okay, well this is a cool rule. I'm going to share this with people." And, you know, they might talk about it on social media or something. But you can expand on that and actually produce something that more people can find, or you can make, you know, some money off of, in order to feed other creative ideas and build off of that. Because a lot of the advances to several games are built off the community. It's ideas from others.
Jon de Nor: I noticed...I don't know if this is an intentional theme — I've been caught almost inventing themes for other people's creations before (laughter) — but in your supplements, when I look at the product page on your website, I feel like there's a underlying, like...I'm not sure if I should say, like, dark theme to your supplements? Is that something that just speaks to your taste or...?
Jeff Stevens: It does. Yeah. Mostly I am a big horror buff. I enjoy horror, I enjoy thriller, dark themes. That's the kind of writer I am. When I'm also writing stories, I'm kind of writing the supernatural stuff, or I'm kind of writing the horror, suspense, that kind of thing. I do have a several roleplay adventures like The Night of the Rise, which is one of my favorites ever to run at conventions, heavy in roleplay. In that adventure, the adventurers come across, or encounter a group — they're supposed to go take care of a bandit who has a toll booth set up and is making money off people going back and forth. And so one of the towns says, go take care of this bandit, and, you know, we'll reward you.
Well, they do that. It takes two days to get there. In the middle of the night, they're sleeping, and then they hear like words being said. They hear the bandit's name mentioned. And so it turns out that, usually — typically it involves some kind of confrontation with this other group that the adventurers are encountering during the night. And they're actually a group of traveling performers who have been hired to perform a play for the bandit during his birthday party. Prior to the interaction, they hear them rehearsing the play, their lines for the play, and one of them's like, "I say we kill them in their sleep!" And so, you know, "Oh, they're going to kill us!" You know?
Sometimes it involves the characters slashing through fake plate mail armor, or, you know, making somebody cry because the wizard is not a wizard or something like that, you know. And then they find the script and they find the contract, and so 90% of the time, the characters then take on the role of the performers, and they go in, they sneak into the bandit camp, they perform the play, and after the play, they get a private meeting with the bandit, in which case the ending has always been different no matter who's playing it. Like, I've had one group that coerced the bandit into living his dream and becoming a performer of his own, leaving the bandit camp and taking on, you know, the thespian role. I've had other people who have, like, killed him so that the second-in-command could then take over the bandit camp, and then he promises to leave if that happens. You know, there's so many ways that the ending can go, and I just run with it. I'm like, whatever the the characters and the players want to do is fine with me. You know, there's no right or wrong way to play that adventure.
But I love roleplay. I love interaction with characters and NPCs, which is also why I try, with a lot of my horror adventures, I really try to...it's not all combat. There's clues, you know, there's riddles, there's stories that unfold within there. And to me, that's what makes a good adventure, is first., you need a reason for them to be there, for the characters to be there. You need a hook, something that's going to draw them in. You need a reason for them to complete the adventure, and then you need to tell the story of what's going on within there. It just shouldn't just be a bunch of rooms that they encounter with no idea or no reason. There needs to be something that gives them a reason for being in each room, or something that tells more about the story of what occurred prior to them being there.
Jon de Nor: You mentioned that your familiarity with Draw Steel is somewhat limited with having Spencer doing most of the mechanical work or technical work around the products. But I was wondering, do you think those adventures would be suitable to convert to Draw Steel, too?
Jeff Stevens: That's what I want. I want to look into that. You know, like I mentioned, I'm not...I don't know, I'm not deep into the rules of Draw Steel. I have the PDFs. I'm more of a tactile reader. I want the books. I just haven't had a chance to get those yet. And I want to dig into it because I do enjoy the community of Draw Steel. I do enjoy what we've been creating, and I want to dig into it. And I do plan to write some threats for Threats of the Timescape. I've got several ideas. I just don't know which one I want to bring to the table. And the team there, Spencer and Dan both said, hey, we'll look it over for you, we'll help you create it, you know? But I want to try and do as much as I can.
But yes, I would love to write some adventures for Draw Steel. And I've read through the...is it The Delian Tomb? I've looked that over, and I just need to play more and experience more of Draw Steel before I can actually commit to doing that. But yes, I would definitely write something for Draw Steel.
Jon de Nor: I still have the product page open and there's a product here called something "Santa", and despite that it looks so dark! (laughter)
Jeff Stevens: Yeah. There's Something Wrong With Santa is what that is.
Jon de Nor: Oh, okay! (laughter)
Jeff Stevens: Yes. Yeah, and on the cover, Santa is a vampire.
Jeff Stevens: Yes. Santa has been bitten by a vampire, and his whole mission that Christmas is to convert souls, or instill fear into people, and then take them back to his vampire leader. You know, if they're happy and joyful, their blood doesn't taste as good. They're scared and frightened, their blood is better. So that's his whole thing. And so the characters go in and have to deal with Santa in vampire form.
Jon de Nor: Interesting. See, this is part of what makes me think that these adventures could work well in Draw Steel. Because from the core rules, or rather, the core rules kind of state in the introduction that the game expects the player characters to be heroes, to be heroic and have heroic motivations, and not necessarily be motivated by greed and treasure, but more by just doing the right thing. And when you introduce these horror aspects, I'm immediately thinking, well, these are ripe for heroes. (laughter)
Jeff Stevens: Yeah. That Something Wrong With Santa was just an idea I had. And I've also got another one called Figgy Pudding Steals Christmas. Which, Figgy Pudding is a thespian, a jester who runs around and steals all the presents, and has them locked up and demands a ransom in order to get the presents back so the children have presents in the morning. And during the final — and that's built like a puzzle adventure. There's little things within there that the characters have to do in order to make it to the next room.
Like they have to bake gingerbread cookies, and so, you know, there's skill checks in order to make the batter correct, and, you know, they put them in the oven. And when they put them in the oven, there's a beep, and the gingerbread cookies are gone. Where'd they go? We don't know. Well, they encounter the gingerbread cookies that they created later in the adventure, but they're giant gingerbread golems, and they're decorated, just like, you know, the gingerbread cookies that they created. And so that's a lot of fun.
And there's some questions that...the spinning pole with elf faces on stops and ask them questions, and there's really no right or wrong answer, but, you know, it just kind of kind of leads into roleplay on the character side, and that type of thing. And then last, in the final confrontation with Figgy Pudding, while she's up there with her Coal Smudge Gang, her minions are defending Figgy Pudding, and she's back there pulling presents out and smashing them on the ground. So children are losing presents the longer it takes to defeat Figgy Pudding and her gang. So yeah, it's a fun one to play.
Jon de Nor: Is there anything else you want to have mentioned about? Well, I guess specifically Threats of the Timescape.
Jeff Stevens: Four of the main threats are mentioned on the page and on the BackerKit page, you know. We give some details as to what they are. We're working on some other things, like, you know, thermaophages, the insect creatures that live off heat; the cosmic elementals, a science-fiction interpretation of the seven elementals of the timescape; cosmic whales and stellar sharks; and then Teos Abadia wrote a couple of solos for us, and we've got some other things in the background that we're working on, too, so I'm excited about it. And when you think about science-fiction monsters, there's all kinds of ideas because, you know, there's like Aliens, The Thing, you know, when you think about movies...I just watched Underwater last night, which is — I like that movie a lot. It's very Lovecraftian, I feel.
You know, you've just got all these different kinds of sci-fi creatures that you can create. And, you know, I'd love to be able to do more funding. A lot of that depends on the funding of the project.
Jon de Nor: Right. As add ons to the campaign, you're offering Weapons of Legend and Lore, the kobold ancestry, and the Humans and Goblind Reinforcements by Spencer. What's the thinking behind including these other products? Or, like — (laughter) in the simplest terms, why are they here?
Jeff Stevens: Why are they here? So there are several reasons to include add-ons. One, it increases your campaign funding, so you make a little bit more money off of it. Another is to reward backers, because a lot of these are reduced to a level that they aren't usually on sale for on DriveThruRPG or DMs Guild or whatever I'm selling them. You know, I try to aim for a 25% to a 35% reduction on most of the add-ons that we include on my Kickstarters and my BackerKit campaigns, something like that. So it's kind of like an extra reward for like, if someone were to come in here that didn't know about my other products, they can say, "Oh, this looks really cool. I'll pick this up at a discounted price too." So, you know, yes, it acts like a marketplace of some sort. But it's also a reward for somebody coming in and saying, "Hey, I'll back Threats of the Timescape. I'll also pick this up at a discount." It's a way to just add value.
Jon de Nor: I think some of these might have passed people by with...well, part of it is just the internet being incredibly big. (laughter)
Jeff Stevens: You know, and that's one of the things about, you know...I don't spend a ton of money on advertising. Some of these companies spend thousands, tens of thousands of dollars on advertising for like Facebook posts or Facebook advertising, Reddit advertising, you know, wherever you want to advertise, it costs that much money. They might double their amount, or triple or the amount that they invested, but I don't have that in my pocket to do. I don't have $10,000 sitting around to invest in an ad campaign. So I rely a lot on word of mouth, on people sharing the product, on people talking about, "Hey, Jeff Stevens just released this cool thing." I just can't sink that much money in, even $1000 or $2000, into an advertising campaign without knowing it's going to actually pay off.
Jon de Nor: Right, yeah.
Jeff Stevens: I can't just throw a thousand bucks at an advertising campaign and say, okay, if it doesn't bring any money, I'm alright. Because I'm a I'm a small company. Which is another reason why we, you know, we talked about the print options for Threats of the Timescape. I do print-on-demand. I do the print codes, meaning that I will not be shipping you a book, you will use that code to redeem it and purchase it for the same amount that it would cost me to purchase it and ship it to you. It's just that by you doing it, you're not paying up front for it. You can wait as long as you want to pay for that print version and then you also pay shipping and handling. So I'm not collecting all this money ahead of time, having to track it, you know, and then apply it to the purchases of those products and pay for shipping and everything like that.
And also, if I'm not using an overseas company or a larger company in the US to print the books, which a lot of companies do, you know, they'll order thousands of books and then they'll ship those individually to the backers — that typically involves, you know, extra containers and shipments to be shipped to several different locations, packing, packaging. It saves on that. So I feel like, you know, my use of print codes also saves the environment a little bit, because we're not using multiple transports. We're not having to repackage and package and repackage, you know, in order to get this to you. It ships directly to you with a print code.
And some companies like that, some don't. It works well for a small business. Now, if I ever became larger, you know, to where I knew I could invest that much money and provide, you know, something directly to the person, great. But this seems to be the quickest way, because, you know, when the print version of this is ready, it'll take me 2 to 3 weeks to get the proofs from DriveThruRPG. Once they're approved, I can ship out the codes.
If I were to do it from an overseas printer, that would take, you know, several weeks to several months to get that proof. Once I approve it, then they'd have to print the books, ship them to me, which could, you know, be a month to three months to six months, depending on everything. And then I'd have to then, you know, either send them to a distributor or package them myself. It's really so much quicker to just do the print codes with something like that, you know? And I'm also avoiding tariffs, you know, on things.
Jon de Nor: Ah, right, yeah.
Jeff Stevens: Because people can just print it. If you live in the UK, I think there's a printer in the UK, so you can just — I think it goes right from there. Yeah. Typically your turnaround time once you, once you enter that redemption code for the print side or the print version, it's like 2 to 3 weeks before it's in your hand, which is so much quicker, I think, for some of these instead of some of these other campaigns. But that's my business model. May not be the best, but it works for me.
Jon de Nor: Right. I always ask my guests to bring a recommendation, so I'm hoping you've brought us something to check out.
Jeff Stevens: I am really proud of The Savage Arctic for Shadowdark. That one just released a few weeks ago. I did the majority of the writing for that, but I did have several people contribute short adventures for it, for several locations that we put on the hex map. Just really proud of that, really proud of a lot of things that I've done as a collaboration or hired freelancers for. I just really enjoy being able to support other people with those projects.
I have a board game group also, that we play on Monday nights. We've played The Unconscious Mind two nights in a row, or two weeks in a row, now, That's a really heavy game, in my opinion. It's been a lot of fun. You're basically a psychiatrist trying to work people through some of their the troubles that they're having. I have not mastered it at all. I was in last place last night. (laughter) But my mind was on the Kickstarter or the BackerKit campaign for Threats of the Timescape launching today. So yeah, I was a little bit preoccupied.
Game-wise, or RPGs...what is it called? There is an RPG out there, I think it's on DriveThruRPG...The Quiet Year, is that what it's called? Basically, it's a prompt, and it's a prompt based on cards. It's a cooperative map-building game. And I've played it twice. Really loved it. Just a lot of fun because, you know, you draw a card that says this thing happens. So then you kind of have to describe it and then put it on the map. And you just need to get a big sheet of paper and you draw it on the map. And so then the next person gets a card, or somebody else, or you talk about it, you openly discuss it, and then you kind of say, well, how does this impact us, or our map? It's been a lot of fun to play.
Yeah, definitely. That's a great one. I mean, it has 11 reviews, 75 ratings, and it's like 4.7 out of 5 stars. Mithril best-seller, so that means it's pretty good. Pretty darn good. Yeah, a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it when we played it with our group. It is an in-person game instead of like an online game. But yeah, just a lot of fun.
Jon de Nor: Those are some solid recommendations. Thank you so much for coming on, Jeff. It's been interesting both to hear about your crowdfunder, but for me, also hearing about just how you run your business and the practice of working across I would say so many systems.
Jeff Stevens: Yeah, it's definitely, I'm glad I'm full-time with this and not trying to do this as a part-time job, having a full-time job. It's a struggle going full-time. I'm not going to say you're making a lot of money if you go into this. Some people do. Some people have outstanding Kickstarters or crowdfunding projects, you know, and they make a lot of money. Mine allow me to get by and work on the next project, you know? I'm hoping for that blockbuster that just allows me to, like, put so much effort into something. But yeah, it's not an easy job. If one were to do this or want to do this, I suggest somebody start small, like a small book of encounters or a small book of items or a short adventure.
And it doesn't have to be — you don't have to put a lot of money into it. You can just start out by putting it on DriveThruRPG or, doing a short crowdfunder for it, you know. And then learn the process, learn what you're missing out on, learn from the comments and discussions that people have about your projects, and then just keep building off of that until you have a solid foundation to do something larger. Because you don't want to invest a lot of money into something — you know, this project right now, I've already got $3000 invested in Threats of the Timescape. I estimate I need another $5000 to finish the layout, editing, artwork, and pay additional writers. That's eight grand, you know, that's eight grand for a book that I'm going to sell for like $19 for the PDF or $24 or $27 for the physical version. You know, my margins on this aren't very large.
I make a little bit of money off of it. But you know, because if I'm selling on Amazon, DriveThruRPG, or other places, they take a commission, they take a cut of it. So I don't make, you know, 100% of that income or that profit. And so, you know, you don't want to go and invest a whole bunch of money into your first project because you don't know how well it's going to do. Get your feet wet, you know, test the waters, see if you even enjoy doing it first before you get into something big.
Jon de Nor: Even more good advice and recommendations. (laughter) Again, thank you so much for coming on, Jeff.
Jeff Stevens: Yeah, certainly. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Outro
Thank you so much for coming on Jeff. I loved the advice Jeff dropped in at the end of the interview. How he got started and how he recommends others get started if they want to start publishing.
I want to thank Tabletop Nonsenseverse for submitting questions for Jeff.
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Next episode is on the 5th. That's the news roundup for October.
See you next time. Snakkes.