Harry funded the Beast of Borgenwold. You can find my original interview with him here.
Question. First off, did your project fund?
Answer. Yes! The Beast of Borgenwold funded mind-blowingly, humblingly well. We hit 100% in under four hours and by the end we ended up raising more than £8,000 from more than 660 backers.
Q. What, if anything, did you learn from the experience of running a ZineQuest project?
A Firstly, I was super pleased to learn that this community is even more generous, cool, and enthusiastic than I could have possibly expected. This was my first project and I went into it very much with the mantra "Keep it small. Keep it simple. Maybe you can trick a few people into giving you money for your art, the idiots." The response was wholly overwhelming and has taught me that next time round I could probably trick a buunch of people into giving me money for my art. And second, next time I'm going to sit down and do my budget properly before I set all the prices and hit launch on the campaign. I honestly eyeballed a lot of stuff I shouldn't have, not to mention threw out some pretty blue sky ideas for stretch goals which would have been laughably unfeasible. It all worked out great (so far), but it could have been really embarrassing and expensive. So yeah. Next time I'm going to do a proper budget.
Q. Are you planning on doing something for next year's version of ZineQuest, whatever it looks like?
A. Uh maybe? I hope so. The energy of it all, the attention, the general hype between all the creators in particular backing each other and bigging each other up was really great. Whether I'm ready for the next whatever whenever it is depends on, uh, I guess my ability to make it. I really really liked going into the Beast of Borgenwold campaign with the book 90% finished; it really took the pressure off promoting it because I knew exactly what I'd made and could show it off rather than trying to sell something that might not even happen. I want to get the next project at least more than halfway there (the writing should certainly all be done) before I ask for money for it, so we'll see how organised and motivated I am.
Question. As a creator, is there anything in particular the ttrpg community can do that you think would help with your next project?
A. Exposure, positive attention, engagement with the project are all fantastic on just about any channel in the space. I'd love to maybe run a bit of the next thing I make for people as a guest DM on a podcast or livestream at some point, or just see people play my stuff.