The Double-Edged Swords Reverse-Sale

Posted on by Epidiah

Experiment time!

While fiddling around on the backend of Itch.io as I was trying to set up a bundle for the first 11 issues of Worlds Without Master I happened upon two intriguing features.

The first was the ability to set up a “reverse” sale, where you can make your projects temporarily more expensive.

Reverse Sale

The second was the ability to set a public goal for your sale, where you can keep your customers abreast of how much you’d like to earn with this sale.

Reverse Sale Goal.jpg

I must discover how these work! So, for one day only, I will be running the Double-Edges Swords Sale!

For the next 24 hours you can purchase issue 3 of Worlds Without Master, the very same issue that includes the critically acclaimed sword & sorcery roleplaying game Swords Without Master, for just twice the usual price!

And I fully intend to see a sweet century of games this way. Or fail trying!

Update!

This is why we experiment, folks! The two features I wanted to test here, namely the reverse sale where the price is increased and the progress bar that reflects the sales made so far, don’t seem to be functioning.

When you click on the issue to buy it, you’re offered the issue at the regular price.

Thus far, folks who have bought the issue used Itch.io‘s tip system to honor the sale. My hat’s off to these good folk! But their purchases don’t seem to count against the sales goal.

So here’s my deal! Until this gets sorted on the backend, if you manually add the reverse sale’s extra 100%, I’ll manually update the progress bar with my awesome drawing abilities!

PBar03

So far, we’re at 3%!

Andy Teaches Eppy About Contact Juggling

Posted on by Epidiah

If learning is the process of failing until you don’t, then this next episode is all about Eppy “learning” to juggle a ball.

Andy Berdan joins me for the latest installment of Person Teaches Eppy About Thing wherein I giggle a lot as I drop my ball and root around for it on screen.

Behold, Andy Teaches Eppy About Contact Juggling!

Despite all the balls flying around in the video, this is not the sort of juggling where things are typically tossed. This is a style more fitting for a Goblin King, a style where the ball never appears to lose contact with your body.

I had a lot of fun recording this and I’m actually looking forward to getting home this evening so I can practice more, which is not what I expected. And when I shared this video with my co-working friends at Another Castle, I didn’t expect so many other folks to know what contact juggling was. I have been oblivious!

At about 42 minutes, this is the shortest Person Teaches Eppy About Thing I’ve done thus far—followed by Shel Teaches Eppy About Merch at around an hour forty and then the two hour opus that is Tyler Teaches Eppy About Playwriting—and it was quite a bit more physical. My horizons are broadening!

Person Teaches Eppy About Thing

I’m looking to record more of these. If you’re a person who knows about a thing, I’d love for you to teach me about it. Let’s hang out and record it! Hit me up in the comments or on my Twitter or wherever else you may find me. It doesn’t matter what your thing is, if you’re passionate about it, I bet I’d dig it.

Cover photo by CláudioM used under the Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0) license.

Tyler Teaches Eppy About Playwriting

Posted on by Epidiah

Today, Tyler Crumrine teaches me about playwriting! And, not surprisingly, we spend quite a bit of time talking about that intersection between playwriting and game designing.

Behold, Tyler Teaches Eppy About Playwriting!

Tyler is a dramaturge skilled in the eldritch arts of the theater. We talked for a little over two hours about the differences and similarities between playwriting and other forms of fiction and verse—in particular short fiction and game design because I am a creature of habit.

There’s a trove of intriguing concepts and thought exercises in the video, but the one that still burns in my brain is devised theater—a collaborative playwriting technique that shares a kinship with playstorming.

It only takes two points to define a line. Last week Shel Kahn taught me about merch. So here we are, on point two, looking at a path forward. Expect more Person Teaches Eppy About Thing in the future, folks!

Person Teaches Eppy About Thing

I’m looking to record more of these. If you’re a person who knows about a thing, I’d love for you to teach me about it. Let’s hang out and record it! Hit me up in the comments or on my Twitter or wherever else you may find me. It doesn’t matter what your thing is, if you’re passionate about it, I bet I’d dig it.

Shel Teaches Eppy About Merch

Posted on by Epidiah

Recently, I had the great pleasure sit down with Shel Kahn upon these here internets and talk about making, producing, shipping, and promoting merch. And folks, I am so very pleased to tell you that we recorded our talk!

Behold, Shel Teaches Eppy About Merch!

Shel is an artist and merchwright with a penchant for the swords and the sorceries, and long time Worlds Without Master fans will recognize her art from “One Winter’s Due” in issue 2, Worlds’ very first illustrated cover on issue 4, and her comic Wolf Neighbours which appeared in issues 9 and 11.

If it’s not obvious, I’m a fan. Dabbling in publishing the way I do affords me wonderful opportunities like this to work with and just hang out with some talented folks. When Shel offered to tell me about how she handles merch and agreed to recording our conversation, I jumped at the chance.

The video is just under 1 hour and 40 minutes long, and it is packed full of practical how-to instructions and generally helpful advice, covering:

  • Storefronts
  • Print-on-Demand
  • Drop Shipping
  • Experimenting
  • The dazzling array of products available
  • Hawking your wares
  • Seriously, hawk your wares

And it lit a fire in my brain! Expect some merch from Eppy in the near future!

Person Teaches Eppy About Thing

I have a hankering to record more of these. If you’re a person who knows about a thing, I’d love for you to teach me about it. Let’s hang out and record it! Hit me up in the comments or on my Twitter or wherever else you may find me. It doesn’t matter what your thing is, if you’re passionate about it, I bet I’d dig it.

Speed Runs of Swords Without Master

Posted on by Epidiah

It has begun!

On Sunday, April 29th, over on the ActualPlay Twitch channel, we had our first of several Swords Without Master speed runs. You witness the glory for yourself!

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Worlds Without Master & More Up on Indie Press Revolution

Posted on by Epidiah

Time & Temp has been up on IPR since, well, since Time & Temp has been a thing. And Dread before that! But I’ve been embarrassingly slow at getting the rest of my catalog up on the Indie Press Revolution. That is, until now!

Thanks in part to my New Year’s Resolution to find a new venue for my games each month, I’ve dedicated April to bringing the Dig a Thousand Holes catalog to IPR.

The Indie Press Revolution Logo

It’s a pleasure working with IPR. They’ve got a hands-on approach that sets them apart of some of the other sites I’ve join so far this year, which is both helpful and reassuring in a way that automated systems simply can’t be. They’re also really big on con support, and since I’m inching my way back to print products, that’s something I think I’m going to appreciate.

So here it is, Dig a Thousand Holes at Indie Press Revolution!

Go dig in!

Dig 1,000 Holes on Gumroad

Posted on by Epidiah

As part of my New Years resolution to find new horizons to litter with my works, I turn now to Gumroad.

I’m not overbrimming with opinions about Gumroad at the moment. It was easy to set up, but it doesn’t seem to handle VAT and there isn’t a whole lot of structure for cross-pollination, so right now I’m a bit more enamored with Itch.io.

That said, I’ve not done a deep dive on all the features offered by Gumroad. If you’re a Gumroad seller with an opinion to share, tell me what you’re digging!

In the meantime…

Behold, the Dig a Thousand Holes Gumroad store!

And as always, to keep up-to-date on this and other projects in the works, sign up for my monthly newsletter. There’s a special treat coming in the very next one.

 

Digging 1,000 Holes on Itch.io

Posted on by Epidiah

Finally, a post that isn’t about a calculator!

As part of my New Years resolution to find new horizons to litter with my works, I turn now to the much vaunted Itch.io.

My first impression, reading through their FAQs, is that I going to dig this site. It’s got a ton of features that I can make use of, including:

  • VAT support, because VAT is something I never want to deal with.
  • Bulk download keys, which can help with crowdfunding fulfillment and perhaps Epimas?
  • Patreon integration, which is still useful to me, even though ill-made decisions at Patreon set me on this path in the first place.

One drawback for Worlds which haunts me everywhere is that folks rarely have a way to classify a magazine that includes stories, games, and comics. They really want to pigeonhole you into one or another of those three categories. Itch.io does not seem to be an exception. But I’m learning to live with that.

What impresses me that most about Itch.io is how they let you set the percentage of your sales they get to keep–from 0% to 100% with a default at 10%. I. Dig. That.

Right, without further ado, I present to you the Dig a Thousand Holes itch.io store!

And as always, to keep up-to-date on this and other projects in the works, sign up for my monthly newsletter.

Step-By-Step Anachronometric Solutions for Your DM42/Free42/HP-42S Calculator

Posted on by Epidiah

Warning: The Ansari Anachronometer program found herein is provided “as-is” and subject to change at any time. The author and publisher offer no warranty of of any kind with regard to this keystroke program, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of fitness as a temporal stress calibration tool. Dig a Thousand Holes Publishing shall not be liable for errors, anomalies, or paradoxes that arise from the use of this program. Do not meddle in the causal streams of time without proper training.

Though the patents for the actual Ansari Anachronometer are still held by the historically litigious Browne Chronometric Engineer, Inc., we’ve managed to reverse engineer its functions in a—as far as we can discern—unique keystroke program for your HP-42S (or DM42 or Free42). This is not a true emulation of the anachronometer, but rather a simplified simulation, based on observed behavior and the few materials from Browne Chronometric that have been made public.

The DM42 calculator featuring clip art style business people artwork on its screen.

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The Calculator’s Game Design

Posted on by Epidiah

This blog has seen more traffic in the past 48 hours than all of 2017, and it’s because of a little post about my other hobby, RPN calculators. When I made that post last week, I didn’t even have my DM42 yet. It was ordered it, but still in transit. Now that I’ve had a few days to play with it, and now that I see I have an interested audience, I thought I might say a bit more about it and why I find it so captivating.

But before I do, a brief introduction for all my new readers. Hello there, I am Epidiah Ravachol, author, tabletop roleplaying game designer, and calculator enthusiast. I have written and designed quite a few games over the years. Many of these can be found at the Dig a Thousand Holes Publishing store where until the end of February you can get them for 25% off using the coupon code DM42. You can also get back issues of my sword & sorcery magazine Worlds Without Master—packed with comics, games and weird tales about forbidden sorceries and high adventure. One game you won’t find there (because I published it through another company) is perhaps my most well-known: Dread, the horror game that uses Jenga instead of dice. Finally, I talk about these games, other favorites of mine, game design in general, and my love of calculators and math all over the Internet—on Mastodon, on Twitter, on Google+, on Instagram. I also co-host a podcast about The Rockford Files, for those of you who also happen to love 70s detective shows starring James Garner (which should be just about all of you).

And if you really want to stay up-to-date on my bullshit, sign up for my monthly newsletter!

Right, now on to the gorgeous DM42!

The DM42 calculator as it arrives to you in the mail.

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