Making Board Games with Chris from TinkerHouse Games - Interview 33

Thank you. All right, here we go, here we go. Welcome to Nerdpreneur, where we have fun conversations with people making money with their nerdy passion. My name is Chris, and as always, I'm joined by my co-host, Frank. And today we have a very special guest for you. He's the co-owner of Tinker House Games. Chris, welcome to Nerdpreneur. Hi, how are you, man? Great. So Chris, what is your nerdy passion? I would have to say that my nerdy passion falls directly in the form of building things.

Building and constructing and creating physical things. What things do you create? Because that could be a lot of things. There's a of things in the world. For example, our current offering at TinkerHouse Games is TinkerTurf, which is an engineered sci-fi terrain for RPG war games. Cool, so just for people who may not know in case RPG war games like say Warhammer or Necromunda 40K those kind of things we've had a few.

actually interviewed a few 40K influencers before, so some of our people might be aware of what they are, but you make the terrain in which people would play on. I guess right in the actual game. Cool cool. what is unique about the terrain right off the bat? Like what makes this terrain unique to say like I don't even know the other names of brands right now.

Well, our unique thing is that we create a lightweight board stock pre-printed terrain that you just put together with a PVA glue, a white glue, Elmer's glue type thing. It breaks down relatively small so you can store it and transport it. Doesn't go all the way flat pack yet, but it does, you know. break down enough that you could put it in your closet in a bin and take it out to play. So it doesn't take up like an entire basement of terrain.

Yeah, because I've seen some terrain before of people who are trained builders and they have entire workshops full of like proper terrain because it takes up a lot of space. So you're you a flat very like we met you at PAX West. And so when you were there, you guys were selling packs that I thought people could actually like pack in their bags to take home even. Yeah, it is, I mean, we sell like a little block of wood, you know, kind of, it's heavy.

It's dense, yes, it's a dense compact little block that you take home, punch out, glue together and put on your table. No need to paint, it's all pre-printed. So that makes it an easier hobby lift than a painted terrain that you would have to glue together already. So, you know. last time, you actually mentioned some of the challenges that go along with this product. And I look forward to us diving into that and some of the challenges around manufacturing something like this.

before we get there, I'd love it if we could start just at the beginning of how this company or even maybe before then, how did you get into this world? How did you start pursuing this nerdy passion? Oy, my nerdy passion being like building stuff, know, when I was in grade school, I loved arcades. I'm a kid of the 70s, 80s, right? So like going to arcades was my big thing. And I liked arcades so much that I used to build tiny little arcade games out of like, know, lined notebook paper.

They'd be 3D. You know, I'd fold a piece of notebook paper together into a little game box and I'd have a couple of pencils with a long piece of paper and I'd draw the artwork on it and scroll through this video game that would have like moving pieces with the controller. I'd build these little technical things just so that I'd have this neat little video game that was, know, about eight inches high. You know? But, What? That is, that is mind-blowing.

So you were using your imagination to create a video game with paper and pencils. Yeah, yeah. I would, you know, I'd take the paper and fold it up so I'd have a little tube box, like an arcade game, you know, unfold the front, cut a hole in it, use a couple of pencils with a long strip of paper that I would draw the game on, roll it up on one pencil and then unroll it as I played with the little, you know, paper clip guy on the inside. So could create a little movable scrolling game out of them.

Yeah, or, you know, my favorite game back then was Tron. So I love Tron so much, I built a little light speed bike, know, out of paper, it like a paper clip, you know, it was just fun building and creating a three-dimensional thing that was, you know, part of my passion of love. nerd at all? Like, did you get into Lego when it came out to be able to build or? Legos, but I wasn't really a big blockhead back then. I don't know what it was that didn't drive me into Legos.

I had all sorts of other toys that helped. I don't know if you guys remember. I'm pretty old, so I'm going to be dating myself a little bit. There used to be a battle tank that you could program. It was like a tank thing that... had a bunch of accessories for it as well, but it was like a T9 keypad on the top. And you could program the directions and the distance that this thing would travel. And it'd make sounds and lights, and it'd shoot and it'd turn. And I loved that.

It was kind like an introduction of programming for me, which sparked my adulthood programming things for Arduinos and LED lights and building things like that, engineering electronic devices. um yeah so like those types of toys are more like one of the, you were kind of a nerd from the beginning, I guess, right? Right. In the time and the golden age of nerds back in the eighties and seventies with like, I'm thinking stranger things, kids and that kind of thing, going to arcades and doing that.

into Dungeons and Dragons when I was a kid in the 80s. like, you know, the idea of like drawing these creatures, like I was an artist, and I've always been like an arty kid. like, you know, ever since I was little, like drawing in kindergarten, the teacher said, you know, he puts fingers on his hands and bodies when he's drawing, you should probably push him towards art.

So I kind of went that direction and I was involved, you know, I got heavily into like D &D and I drew an image for a toy store up in, I grew up in Alaska, up in Anchorage. And I won like a contest, a drawing contest where I then bought, got all of the Dungeons and Dragons, like player's guide and monster guide and all of the stuff for that. And I used to love drawing these fantasy creatures and drawing my character on character sheets and stuff.

But then shortly after that, had the, I don't know if people kind of remember the panic around the satanic panic of the eighties. Yeah, so that happened and all my stuff disappeared. So I kind of stopped doing that. And I just kind of fell off of that train and here I am like. You know, one of our newest products at Tinker House Games is called the Vault of Many Things, which is a Dungeons and Dragons, you know, Pathfinder kind of like toolkit for fantasy, you know, fantasy role playing.

we have like, you know, over 850, you know, characters in the base set and, and, uh, props and, and terrain items for playing Dungeons and Dragons games. So I'm like back into this. thing that I kind of left behind my 12, 13 year old self left behind, but I still remember. So building that has been exciting. I'm bad. I bet. Especially if you had to give it up as a kid, I it's, one of those things where you think back and it's like, man, it was so ridiculous.

What happened during that time period where, where everyone was freaking out about Dungeons and Dragons being satanic. And, you know, I can imagine all the Christian parents and stuff out there just saying, my God, we got to get rid of all this. And now it's having such a resurgence. no, there's already not that much to do in Anchorage. So like you would think they would want you to just have something to be able to use your imagination.

So like, but you, your product is for war games, which is not quite the same as, as D and D. Did you get into like war games and modeling and all that kind of stuff? Was that like a passion for you later or? my entry into the TinkerTurf world was through one of my good friends and my partner, Lane Daughtry, at TinkerHouse Games. he was really into Necromunda growing up. And I was invited as one of the friends to come and start playing tabletop war games with them.

And our goal was to... build a tabletop RPG, a fantasy RPG game, and then create our own characters and systems and dice systems, and publish a game. And that happened, and we started building this game out. And then we decided, OK, we should have a terrain offering with this game. So we went down the path of starting to build terrains for the game. And it quickly became very obvious that this terrain that we were building could be for any setup.

Why don't we just pivot to just building terrain that people need for all of these games? And then anybody can use this game. You know, like you want to play five parsecs, you could play with our tabletop terrain. You want to play, you know, necromunda, you can play with our tabletop terrain. You know, you want to play 40K, play with it. Kill team, play with it. You know, it works for all these different systems. Why pigeonhole ourselves into our own thing?

Why make the public buy our game to get our really cool terrain? Let's just make the terrain. And also isn't the game, I guess, industry kind of hard to get into or break into? Because because like, like, I don't know, like terrain seems like a very useful thing for hundreds of games, any game, right? And people all have their game they like to play. And so but if you're coming up to me and it's like, I love Warhammer and you're saying, no, no, you love Warhammer, but you got to try my game.

Check this out. It's like a whole it's pretty heavy lift to get them to leave their thing. It's a niche industry too, right? Like, tabletop wargaming is, you know, and people have their game that they play, that they like to play. And like, why try and pull somebody from what they like? Why not just give them something that they can integrate with what they are doing? It's a much better business model, you know? Build something.

build something great that people don't have access to and give it to them at an affordable price, then you're gonna have a happy customer, right? Like I have happy customers for Tinker Term. Very rarely do we get people dissatisfied with our product. And maybe they aren't talking to us, but we're not, I do support as well as the other hats and I don't see a lot of it. When people have a hard time with stuff, you know, like I've had an issue with somebody was unable to get some parts together.

They emailed me, I shipped them new parts, you know. But that's like a rare thing, you know. You're not. I of wanted to ask, you had mentioned about this other TTRPG that you and Lane were building. Does that just put on the shelf for now or are there plans for it? no, just, we kind of just like put it aside and like, mean, it's, Lane's probably mulling it about some more, you know, but, um, you know, doesn't, doesn't make sense for us to, to pull that to the front right now, you know.

you're kind of focusing on the terrain at the moment and leaning into the vault of many things. yeah, the vault is taking up like all of my children in the vault are taking up all of my time. Yeah, yeah, well, I'm curious because like you, it's like. Have you did you always want to get into the industry and be like a business serving the the kind of nerdy industry or the tabletop industry?

Or was that sort like have you always been an entrepreneur or like like what what kind of pushed you in that direction to want to do? Because you could just enjoy the games and play them right? Why take this step to getting into the business side and starting your own thing? Okay, so this you know tap back, you know a I Went to school to be a graphic designer.

I went to trade school to be a graphic designer and I became a graphic designer And I started working in industry where I realized very quickly that like the skills that I have are what sells people on products Like people buy things because they look cool. And you know They are marketed in a way, and that's kind of what I do is market and design things.

So I went from being an in-house designer at a software company to a front-end developer at a software company to an independent graphic designer working for clients to help them build products and sell their own stuff. So I've been in this world of creative problem solving for a long time, starting my own business. many different stages. You've seen it in like the building, the nuance to the how to make it look aesthetically pleasing to help someone actually launch this.

sounds like, sounds like you've seen it all. yeah, yeah. Exactly. Okay. The other thing is, I started doing businesses where I thought like, you know, why can't we do something like this? Why can't we build something? What are the barriers to entry to build a specific type of business? You know, you need to have some acumen. You need to have some passion for that. But you also need to sell your idea, right? If you're a nerd, you're definitely out there.

If you're a nerdpreneur, you're definitely looking at this idea of like, this is my thing, how do I make my thing available to other people? Do other people want my thing? And then if they do want my thing, how do I make it so that they understand or the people that may not know they want my thing will want my thing? So how do you do that? it like because OK, because I think there's a lot of people out there listening who are just like I have a thing.

I don't know if anyone wants it or I think it's cool. But how do I get people to know how cool it is from my perspective? Right. How do you think through something like? Yeah, okay. You have to know kind of like what your audience is, right? Like if you know yourself and know what you like, you're gonna have to look for people like you to sell to.

If you think that this is a thing that you're gonna do for other people, how do you engage with other people to see like, hey, what do you think of this? Like asking questions, right? Ask questions. introduce it to many people and ask them, you without a lot of, you know, upfront... If someone knows kind of what terrain... Like, people come up to us at shows. They have no idea what...

Like, you know, we go to PAX West or we go to PAX Unplugged and we have families that go to these shows because it's four games and they want to introduce their kids to four games. They come up to us and they're like, all right, what game is this? Right? And we explain to them, well, it's not a game per se. It's a tool for other people to use in their games. It's a toy that you can use. For anybody else, it's just like a 3D model. You build these things, it's a 3D model that you put together.

We use it to play games where our little guys need to be in specific sections to like, attack the other little guys and this stuff provides us that visual reference and cues so that like, okay, let's protect our little guys in cover. So explaining them it's not a game but a part of a lot of games is an interesting thing. So knowing how people approach that, knowing what people think of your product without a lot of general input to them, how do they discover?

it. And how do you use that discovery to then message that to other people? In that case, in that context, how important are these kind of live events where you really get to confront the the person you're trying to market to? Right. Like is when you guys started, I did you start by going to an event like was that sort of the first step into in terms of trying to sell this product or did you have an online component? How did you actually get that first? so I could tell you that story.

So our first event was, I think either the first or second Pax Unplugged. We went to Pax Unplugged with a box of laser cut pieces that we built ourselves. We put it all together and brought it to Pax. We got a couple of tables in the tabletop area and put out our terrain for people to check out. And we did that and we got a lot of interest from people. We got feedback on some stuff. We put it in play on other people's games where they played it, live streaming games that they had.

And then, We did a Kickstarter for it. And we launched that Kickstarter at the same time that we went to PAX South, which is no longer running. PAX South was in Texas, not Austin, but I forget, San Antonio, I believe. Anyway, and when we were there, we kind of ran the Kickstarter and got people excited about it and showed off the terrain again. Yeah, I lost my train of thought there.

But then the Kickstarter had I'm assuming it was successful from from this sort of buzz that you created from it, right? So we had a pretty successful Kickstarter. I had done manufacturing and procurement type stuff in my previous business. so being a graphic designer, I've had print production experience. So this next step was finding a manufacturer that we could build our stuff with.

You know, and our original plan was, hey, we'll just print stuff, glue it to cardboard, and laser cut it out, and package everything, and ship it. So we'll sell all these products, and we'll laser cut and build it all ourselves. So like, I looked at that from an outside point of view going, that is not efficient. Like, we would spend... at all. We would spend like thousands of dollars on laser cutters and try and build this thing ourselves and package this thing ourselves.

And I just, looked at that and I was like, Oh, you know, already I, I smell like campfire when I touch the prototype that we make. Like, you know, then we have, have the same problem that MDF has for their terrain. Like it smells like campfire. How do you get that to go away? Like what, like what, you know, what's the. What's the better way to do this? And I looked and it's like, mean, we're a tabletop game thing.

mean, this cardboard from a tabletop game is the perfect material to punch this stuff out of. That gets printed. Why can't we just do that? So I looked into manufacturers and I ran up on Panda manufacturing. And so... I spoke to them and they were excited about us. And so we, you know, we produced our first run of product out of Panda. And it was great. So when you're doing something like that, mean, obviously, this is sort an international manufacturer, I'm guessing, since you.

so a majority of the board games that are made are, I believe, made in... I mean, the majority is made in China. All of the board games that you see will most likely say made in China. There's a few outside of China. I mean, there's other game manufacturers out there, like Billy Poland and Germany. like have game manufacturers as well. The US has game manufacturers that, know, they do, Delano Games does game manufacturers, manufacturing in the United States and they do, you know, my...

Tan Jr. and stuff like that. There's a place, but the majority of that game manufacturing is done in China. So I've used multiple manufacturers over there to produce stuff. a guesswork in terms of like, like when you get into say dealing with an international manufacturer, there's gotta be some logistics there that you're worried about or hoping they can deliver or whatever, like, and the quality and all those sort of things. What are the things you're considering in terms of, yeah, yeah.

manufacturing brings with it, like, okay, what, what are the headaches I'm going to have now? Or what are the challenges that am I going to be faced with here? Like I did liquor before I did this. Like before, before getting into table, I didn't just get into tabletop games. Like, like I was into like board games a little bit, you know, was we were playing Catan at home and doing stuff like that. But I mean, this really jumped me in. like Tinker House really jumped me into the tabletop industry.

And having come from liquor prior to that, I was in a position where I had left the liquor industry and was like looking for a different thing to do, a thing that made me feel good, because liquor did not make me feel good. that industry is, you know, it's not, fun in terms of like the feeling you'd get from it. And I'm sure some people are just as, you know, they're happy about it. They're into cocktail culture. They're into, into that idea of alcohol.

But for me, it just became this thing that I was making that hurt people. And I didn't want to be in that position again. So Tabletop came along and was like this very inclusive, very, you know, fun and happy and welcoming environment. I want like that. That's what I was desperately seeking after coming from liquor.

But liquor taught me, you know, making tequila in Mexico and tequila and Jalisco was like, you know, we're dealing with an outside company where we have to, you know, make sure that like, when we're dealing with glass, we're buying like large amounts of glass from China or France. or Mexico where glass is made. And so you're dealing with the same kind of like procurement stuff. And that's also something that I really enjoy.

I really enjoy figuring out how to deal with manufacturers and like put all the pieces together to build a thing. So that kind of, you know, gets into my like little spreadsheet nerd part as well. And I'm like, I love it. Love it. I totally get that. I love that game, Factorial. You guys play Factorial at all? I love that game. Like, I get into that. is pretty doggone fun too.

It's got that same like, get your assembly lines lined up and you know, make sure, you have to manage the output from the resource to the, you know, inputs of the assemblers and construct. Yeah, totally. I get it. how do I, you know, that's kind of one of my favorite things is how do I, how do I put all these pieces together in different, you know, quantities I need to get to where I need to be, you know, manage that. with the items that you have. What you're making makes sense.

I did want to kind of circle back on a question that we had just touched on of what is a large hurdle in the industry of manufacturing that, say, probably is very common and maybe one that you had to navigate? And how did you navigate? For example, perishable goods, right? You've got to figure out shelf life, you've got to figure out how to preserve the product for as long as possible.

But with manufacturing something that isn't perishable, with manufacturing something that has these stages, I don't know them very well, but you got to get the art on it, you got to cut them out, you got to then package them and ship them. Is there something in this process that is that was a really big hurdle that a lot of other people have dealt with and how did you navigate it? You know, first step in all this is finding a manufacturer, right?

You touched on something earlier, like how do you feel comfortable with doing this? I'm sure you're familiar with Stonemaier games. Are you familiar with that? Yeah, so Jamie put together like this list of manufacturers and it's like rated and you know, had this stuff. And I came across that and used that list to figure out, who are these sources or trusted sources of manufacture that I could go to to quote out what I'm doing.

I kind of knew how to talk about this stuff from a manufacturing standpoint because I'm in the print industry and it's basically the print industry. So that was a thing. that I was able to do. do you do you is it like, I found them online and I got a phone number and you call them or is it like just like you have to get to a sales rep to figure this kind of thing out or is it? Yeah. Email just like sending a message, say, hey, I want to build something.

Yeah, I'm interested in getting a quote for a product that we're building. This is what I've got. And then have a rep. Usually they have a rep that'll speak to you. A lot of the big game manufacturers in China have English-speaking reps that will reach out to you or contact you. The language barrier is not... not such a hurdle, like that's a solvable thing.

Yeah, communication can be difficult sometimes, or describing your ideas, so be prepared to napkin sketch things, or make sure that you understand what you're getting into. A lot of people that do tabletop games already know materials, what they want to use for materials, but...

You know, all these game manufacturers have like their sales kits that they send out that have all of the, you know, dice or injected minis or playing chip, paper stock and box stuff that they have listed their materials on them. So you can kind of figure out, okay, I want this to be this thick of a playing card. So I need this thickness of a thing. So I mean, that's a big one. So do you get like a sample of what they're going to design and create for you before you kind of invest?

Cause it sounds to me like if you're doing this in your manufacturing, you're not at manufacturing one. If you're dealing with one of these companies, right? You're, you're, you're probably doing like, I dunno, a thousand of them or something, right? Like, I I don't know what, what are the numbers that way, but, when you're doing that, you, do you just get them to send you a prototype and then you go from there? Yes, no. Or is it kind of like we have how this process works.

That would be helpful to people too. sure. Let's see. Yeah. I'm curious what that really looks like. if you're designing a game, you're going to build the game yourself. You're going to make the game yourself. You're going to put it together. You're going to game test it with people. By the time you're ready for manufacturing, you have kind of an idea of what the components in your game are. I'm going to have two dice. I'm going to have 50 cards. I'm going to have a board.

So you know kind of what your components are by building a game. There are companies out there that you can hire that will build like one to 50 of your game. It's not gonna be cheap and they're gonna do, they're doing prototype versions. So they're probably doing digital print on stuff and laminating it. They have the tools and the machines to do the bigger work, but they're doing the one-off ones. And those are great. Like if you're a game designer or a... an entry into game design.

Those are great companies to make use of to kind of put something together that you can send to like a media person or bring to a show to showcase or use to take pictures of to do a Kickstarter or crowdfunding event. Then you have kind of a list of components that you want. Game manufacturers that you contact have kind of like a sales kit that will give you their kind of basic show off like any foils or glossy coatings or paper stock or card stock or the cardboard chip board thicknesses.

They'll provide you with their sample box essentially so that you can spec out what you want. Now I do like spreadsheets and try and, you know, This is the component name. This is the file name. This is what it's made out of, and this is how many I need type thing. And I send that off to get a quote. And I'll get two or three quotes from different manufacturers and figure out which one's going to work best for me.

Now, in choosing a manufacturer, you can look at the ones in Europe and check with them. They're a little more expensive. The ones in the United States are going to be, you know, price a little bit higher, but they don't come with shipping, right? And then there's the ones in China, and there's a lot of them in China, and they're constantly adding more.

And those ones are less expensive, but they come with a shipping logistics, which means that when you're finished with your product, you have to put it in a container on a boat and ship it to yourself. And that takes like three months to get across the water. So you're adding three months to your manufacturing time. in China. And then, you know, potentially here in the US, we're, you know, after the election, we're going to be hit with possible tariffs.

We don't know if that's going to happen yet. You know, the game industry is kind of like freaking out right now that the tariffs are going to come in on Chinese goods and we're going to get annihilated or at least, you know, games that were, you know, 30 or $40 are going to be 80 or $90 to purchase. We're all scared about that. But That's not happening yet. We don't know what's happening with that yet. We'll figure out what happens when it does. But there's no big alternative.

There's a lot of the finer quality pieces getting made in China. So we get a quote back. We choose a vendor. And then that process is a multi-tiered process. You provide them with the files. You provide them with You know, they should have the specs of everything already. And then usually what they'll do is they'll put together a white sample. So it's like a blank of everything. It shows you the knife cuts of all the punched out pieces. It'll show you the cards packaged up.

And that kind of gives you the, okay, this is the form factor, how everything fits in the box and stuff like that. And then they'll give you a kind of middle tier, like, digital print version of your game. So for all intents and purposes, it'll kind of look like the final game, but there might be like, you know, color issues or brightness from digital press that you get better quality of from offset press in to look at. And that's called your manufacturer sample.

Manufacturer sample means you've printed everything, you've signed off on the digital stuff, they've printed everything and they've put one together for you and then they ship it off to you. So I have... You know, you can choose to have one to as many. They cost extra to get more manufacturer samples. But you've got this manufacturer sample in your hands, and that's the final game. So that's the one that will go into print.

So anything, you know, if there's anything out of ordinary, like if there's pieces missing from it or something like that, that's the time you can say, okay, there's, you know, we didn't have this right thing or this wasn't in the right place or the, you know, we're missing something. the final chance for you to make anything. And then they go into manufacturing and produce everything. How long would that whole process take? you think because it sounds like, okay, you're in communication.

You're having to make it. They're shipping it. They're doing it like and is that like a is that like a month process? Is it a six month process? Is it like a year like? I mean, it takes a while. Depending on how complex your product is, it takes a while. So, with our vault, it's been a long process. Yeah, there's a lot of pieces in that product. The main set itself has over 1,800 individual pieces. And so, we're back and forth.

on quotes for a while and, you know, getting things right, making sure that everybody's on the same page with a quote is right, is good. There's an industry term, know, industry thing of like, you know, you're gonna get a quote, you're probably gonna wanna add 20 % to that quote. Usually what's gonna happen. So you get a quote, add 20%, see if you can do it, and then, you know, pull the trigger.

But from quote, I'd imagine there's a lot of I'd imagine there's a lot of times where you have to go back and forth on a sample, maybe not a physical sample, but like a digital one that you get. There's a lot of like, hey, you this needs to be changed. You know, this this like this attention to detail on this card supposed to actually look like this. Like, I'm sure there's a lot of human error that happens in the process that requires a lot of back and forth. That takes a lot of time.

I do the print production for our stuff. a lot of times it's a me as the human, as the error. So we do a process where we print everything locally so that we can tell. I print everything with the die lines on it so I can tell if there are any major issues. mean, especially with the vault where I've got sheets and sheets and sheets of standees that everything needs to align right. If you get a misalignment, you're going to have an unhappy customer with a dwarf with a cutoff axe.

And I don't want that. So I got to make sure that that process is a smooth process. And if I go back and forth and make changes in pre-production in China, that's going to take me a lot longer. Because they'll send over digital proofs of everything, and you can look through it and it's not the same. You get a hard proof from a digital proof and you can find those tiny little things that kind of, you know. So I'm by no means a perfectionist, but it happens that you'll have some issues.

And if you can catch them before you go across the water, you're going to be better. Hmm. do a lot of printing before we send off files so that we can double check in physical form that things look great. There is a back and forth, but you're not going to want to do a ton of back and forth. I mean, if it's a glaring issue, you're going to want to fix that glaring issue. And that's the back and forth that you get. is this like a six month process or is it more of like a year or like?

our Terrain products took a fairly long time like we quoted I couldn't give you exact numbers now, so I'm gonna kind of Glad hand this a little bit, but we took about a month or two for quoting back and forth and then When we actually got files in their hands, we got a bunch of samples back, and a lot of times it was great. A lot of times we had to reconfigure stuff. So one of the major loopholes with that was we had a material that was spec'd at 2 millimeters. They call it 2-millimeter board.

But it's 1.6 to 1.8 millimeters is really what it is. So when I'm building 2-millimeter slots, and I've got a 1.6 or 1.8 millimeter board, the stairs that should fit snug in the rail of the stair don't fit snug. They fall out, right? And so there were back and forths on the tooling part, which is all in white board. that we had to go through. that took a while. we would send them, they'd have the dye tools, they'd build the tooling, and then they'd have to rebuild the tooling.

And one of the other things was that we put everything together in different sheets. as well. So like, if there was a small problem with one aspect of this, there were a lot of other things on that sheet too that needed to get, if that tool needed to get rebuilt, that cost came to us to rebuild that tool. So there's a lot of little back and forths that happen there.

So those are kind of some pitfalls too, is like have your materials beforehand so that you can, you know, put a caliper on it and find out exactly how thick it is. Yeah, cause it could be a cascade of, of extra expenses, right? And failures, because if one, if one thing doesn't fit in one, you know, cut out, then all of a sudden everything else on that cutout doesn't fit either. And so it becomes a real, real issue. I could see that. And then you just mentioned something around costs too.

And that's another thing is like, if I'm a nerp, and I'm thinking, you know what, I want to build my own board game or I want to build my own terrain or do these kinds of things that you guys are doing work with an overseas manufacturer. I want to, uh, do this. How much money should I budget and save to be able to even start this process?

Because I think that, you know, I don't know that I could do this for a thousand bucks, but like, is this like, should I have tens of thousands of dollars ready to invest to be able to do this? Is this kind of, that's the level of investment you need. you know, this is not, this is not a thousand dollars things. This was like 20 or 30, you know, you know, more complex stuff that we're doing.

and then the question on that is like when you're thinking about this from a business perspective and you know you're going to be investing tens of thousands of dollars into this venture. How do you think about going out there and making it happen after that? Is it all through like we gotta build this kickstarter to this amount so that we can know we're making kind of that investment back? Or is there like we're going to price our product? Like how do you think of the economics of this after?

it's been decided you're gonna go forward with it. Right, so we like to think about the economics before we decide to go forward with it, because that's kind of important. You don't want to get yourself into a problem where you have an unreasonable bill, right? Don't say, I'm going build a big, big game with a bunch of plastic minis and and start a Kickstarter at five grand and think that if you got six, you're gonna be okay. You gotta go out there and quote stuff first.

You gotta go out there and build your thing first. You gotta have that kind of sample that you're doing understood. I mean, that goes with anything that people build, right? If it's not board games, it's something else. If you know you wanna build a thing and create a thing, whether it's a toy, a game, you know. food, product, whatever it is, you have to understand what that cost is to you up front and what the levels of that cost is.

mean, when you're manufacturing stuff, the more you get, the less it costs. So if I'm doing 500 of something and I have the option to do 1500 or if I'm doing 1500 and I have an option to do 5000, it's like you look at that exponential cost. You break things down as if you were going to do the lower product, right? Most board game manufacturers have a minimum quantity requirement of about 1,500. So you're going to do 1,500 games.

So everything gets quoted out, 1,500 minimum, and then you can step up. And as you step up, the cost goes down. So if you try to get 1,500 people to back your crowdfunding of your game, you should know how much that game costs you, and then factor in at least 20 % for how much overrun you're going to have on that cost, and then how much is it going to cost to ship? Generally speaking, a pallet of a 40-foot container of product will ship for about five grand from China to the US.

Sometimes it goes up during the pandemic. mean, container costs these days are sometimes I've seen them in the, you know, during the pandemic, it was like 14, you know, it was, was nuts. were quoted at one point. we had, you know, during the pandemic, we had our second Kickstarter shipping and we had to sit on that product because there was no way that we could afford shipping.

And thank goodness Panda let us sit on that product in the warehouse for as long as they did, you know, because we just, they were quoting us. like $50,000 to ship. We had two different containers. One had to go to the UK and one had to go to us in the US. And it was just an unreasonable amount of money. And that was a perfect storm of the Evergrande block in the Suez Canal. We had a strike at the port in LA.

We had a tariff war going on where our products were no longer being imported into China. So China had no containers. So LA's port was filled with containers that nobody was putting on ships to get back because nobody was buying anything. They had a dead head or ship empty containers back to China. And then shipping was just backed out because of demand from all of that stuff. So what happened?

We ended up like there's no way you're gonna ship out soon, A. B, we don't know what the price is gonna be next week or next month. So it's like you're just sitting on this stuff going, can't, I could air freight this cheaper than I could ship it, but I can't afford to ship it. So like, what do I do? know? Take out a big, take out a big loan from a partner company and pay it back over four years.

Yeah. Wow. I mean... on kind of like there was a there were a few things I backed during actually just before the pandemic hit and it was super unfortunate for them, know, one was like another terrain company another one was like a starter box set for some D &D 5e content, but one of those D &D 5e boxes that shipped was from a small company up in British Columbia and on Vancouver Island And they had such a cool product and it was a cool idea.

You had some like resin minis, you had an adventure, you had some homebrewed rules in it. And when I finally got the product, it was like much later of course, like most things. But also the really sad part was that that company went under. And I tried to find them and reach out just to tell them, thank you for what you made. Like this is really beautiful. I really appreciate what you did. And really sorry to hear about how costly it was. But I couldn't find them. couldn't even find their email.

I mean, which was an odd thing, even in their packaging. They didn't have any way to get in touch with them, which I thought was odd. But maybe they had received so much negative feedback because of the delay. Because this was in the beginning, you know, when delays like this were just kind of delays to this extent were new and it was it was unheard of. And so maybe they just wanted to disconnect from everything. But I still haven't seen them anywhere else.

And it just goes to show with like the dangers, the kind of pitfalls. mean, sure, the pandemic was an extreme example, but I'm sure maybe you could speak to this. Some other examples of, you know, times where you've seen companies that they don't plan. They don't plan accordingly. They don't build in that 20 % additional budget. They don't sample locally if they're going to be manufacturing overseas. And people that fall into these pitfalls.

Maybe, maybe, have you seen any examples that have come up that have been good lessons for yourself? um examples of other folks that have been good examples of us i you know i i don't i don't i can't think of any off the top of my head um Are there any left? Maybe I can phrase this more in terms of. What are some of the hard one lessons you may have experienced yourself that other manufacturers or people looking to get into something like this could learn from your experience or mistakes?

Okay, um. Yeah, definitely shop your stuff to different shops. Because pricing could, you know, the big thing is like, your pricing on your products could change drastically between one manufacturer to another. We, you know, we used Panda to start off and they're a great company and they make beautiful board games, but they are expensive. You know, we went to long pack games with some of our stuff and the pricing was a much better and their product is still very beautiful.

So I mean, definitely shop around and don't be afraid to use multiple manufacturers. I mean, there's no reason why. I mean, the biggest concern with using multiple manufacturers or even between runs of printing a product is game consistency. You want. your artwork to look the same. And for us, we have a product that, you know, if a run doesn't look the same from run to run, then someone that buys one part from an earlier run and a part from the second run, it has to match on the table.

You have to be able to put it together and it look the same, you know, not have a different print quality. And that's a hard thing to hit because, you know, when printing, have to take into consideration all the environmental issues that come with printing. Moisture in the air, humidity, if it's a climate-controlled print shop, those things matter to ink, it goes on paper. Quality of paper matters. All that stuff matters to match a thing to another thing.

That said, if you're doing a game that's just a game and you want, you're producing a bunch of them, it doesn't hurt to shop it around or to split it up between multiple manufacturers of one manufacturer. If you wanna do 20,000 units, you could put 10,000 at one shop and 10,000 at another shop and you should get the same quality of product at the end.

Well, the other thing to consider, guess, is, you know, if you're spending more with one company, you mentioned that the company you work with is a little more expensive. I'm imagining that means that they're good and their quality and all the other things are are higher than maybe if you had gone to the cheapest company you could have found. And if that were the case and like, does that make sense? Yeah, like. Can you say that again, Chris? I lost your feed there for a second.

Sounders, can you say that again? Whoop. Try again. I didn't hear what Chris said. having two Chris's. Chris Marshall, you try saying that again? Right, what I was saying was good or, you know, sorry. What? Pause here for a second. That was a question. Chris, I didn't hear most of your question. That's all right. Let me just rephrase it. You could, you know, if you're looking at sort of the higher quality, you mentioned that the people you work with are higher quality, right?

And so if you were to say, you know, go to the cheapest person, you're probably not gonna get as good a quality. does it make sense to, like, I think a lot of people who will maybe go into this first time will be thinking, well, let's just. do the cheapest thing potentially, then there are probably issues around that too.

And is it better to just get, go to something where you know you're going to get the quality and then maybe you do charge more for your product, but that also allows the product to be just something that people love. And then they come back for et cetera, like targeting the high end or the higher end of the market is something I've heard works better for business. instead of trying to get as many people as possible at the low end where the quality is maybe, maybe not as good.

How do you think about that balance of needing to get the highest quality for the best value for your clients and people who buy it? So, that's a good question. know, quality is, a lot of times you can go overboard, mean, not overboard, but you don't need to be the most expensive to get the best quality. It doesn't necessarily translate like that. Sometimes the more expensive is the busier company, right? Like I'm too busy to take on so many clients.

If I raise my rates, I get less clients and a larger, you know, there's different reasons why things cost different things. and it's not necessarily quality based. you know, the lowest quality of something, or the lowest price of something might not necessarily be the lowest quality. When you vet your manufacturers, look at the things that they've done before. A lot of games out there have multiple manufacturers. You'll find the same game done by one manufacturer done by another.

There's a second printing or ... Whatever.

mean, I know that Everdell was printed at multiple different print shops, you know, you can look at these things and say Here's the quality of this one print shop Here's the quality this other by just looking at the bottom and look by the UPC It has a little logo usually of the company that printed it I mean that's part of that deal you can look for yourself to see what the quality is and and not necessarily go by I want to be the cheapest out there I mean because you can go with a high

in a really expensive company and still get the cheapest quality product from them. And that's definitely not a thing that I look at when I'm looking at this stuff. Our goals at TinkerHouse are to create a quality product that people want to buy. I'm not going to produce something that even I wouldn't want to buy. I don't want something that's going to fall apart. I wouldn't want that, so I'm not going to sell it to somebody else.

we look at this idea of what can we afford to build with what we've got. When we do a crowdfunding campaign, we quote our products out first. We put the numbers together and say, hey, this is what we need to get to where we are. And then we start adding stuff after. Can we do something more? Can we get a better quality board stock? Do we need a better quality board stock? Is it necessary to get there? What kind of finish are we putting on this? Is it necessary to do that?

Yeah, we have a minimum viable for us in mind when we do stuff. It needs to be something that's sturdy, something that's engineered well, something that holds up to play for a while. Because I don't want someone to play with our game or our terrain and then it break and then they don't play with it anymore. want it to be sturdy or a capable product, right? So, so is your model generally like the Kickstarter start a mile?

Like you said, that was how you started with it and you kind of build the hype, go to the events, get a bunch of people on the Kickstarter and then you fund it and then have it have it happen. Or do you guys have now like, because I see you have a website where you sell this stuff, right? And people can just go there and click a button and buy it. Is there just stock that you have or is it like you've got an on demand type thing? How does it all work now for you? Yeah, so it's stock basically.

we have a, let me address the first part. The first part is what's the model? What's the business model for us? We currently, we kickstart or kickstart, we crowdfund, because we use BackerKit as well for crowdfunding. So we will crowdfund a product with the people that have, you know, backed us before, so we have an audience. The important part about crowdfunding is you have to have an audience.

You have to create an audience or you have to build an audience, because if you don't have an audience, you can't really crowdfund. when we built our audience, we went to shows, we introduced things, we got people signed up on newsletters. We built an audience before we crowdfunded our first product. So building that audience, then we crowdfunded it. We've always wanted to get to a point where we can build the thing that we want to do and then crowdfund it and then push it out. Right?

So like that's the goal. Right? The goal is I want to build a product. You know, we have, um, you know, some internal discussions about additional products that we're putting forward for our Tinker Turf line. And our goals for that are more, more often. We want to a turn of additional products more frequently than we have in the past. I mean, we've been hamstrung by the COVID pandemic. Our business has been limping along because of that, trying to get past all of those things.

If we were to have started yesterday with all of our stuff, it would be a completely different story. Mm-hmm. In your business model, what are some of the outlets that you use to get product in front of customers? Like, what are some of the methods that you use? So our big thing is shows. Shows are great. They provide us with the best opportunity to reach folks that want the stuff that we have.

Because it allows the consumer of our stuff to look at it on the table and touch it and play with it and move it around. It gives them the best idea of what the quality of our product is. Because when you see our stuff at a game store, it's Flatpak, right? We've got pictures on there and we try and provide game stores with samples of our product to put out on game tables if they have them.

Like here in Seattle, you know, we have Mox Boarding House and they have our terrain available for play on their in-house tables. Zulu Games also has our stuff available to play in-house on their tables. Like, so people can go in. play on that stuff and then decide they want to get that for their home table. When they go to shows, they see it, they decide to do that. We have some videos online on our shop along with photos.

I don't think it does the same that it does in person, but that kind of gives them a sense of what they do. The channels that we're available at, I mean, we have a wholesale distributor. that sells to friendly local game stores. we get, know, game stores can get us through Alliance or other distribution partners. So you have ways of a mix right there that you've mentioned about getting it in front of businesses, distributors, but also getting it in front of an end user.

So you mentioned the convention and we touched a little bit on crowdfunding and having an audience for that, also, so tying into both of these of how you build demand for your product, but also how you build an audience. I'm wondering what you do for maybe advertising for your brand and product. A lot of times we will do, like, watch it played, does paid reviews, like the, there's communities of YouTubers out there, they'll do, like, kind of paid videos.

Me, myself and Dai was pretty cool because he does solo gaming and he did some stuff for us. It's a great name by the way, me, myself Dai. As a solo gamer playing solo war games, it's pretty fun. Check out his videos, they're really cool. But we use that. We've done Facebook advertising. We've done... YouTube advertising, we put our stuff out there in those places. Do you find that some of those platforms are better than others? Like which ones do you feel worked pretty well for this industry?

you know what I really want? I really want Facebook from 2019. That's what I really want. all. That was so much better for ads. 100 percent. mean, Facebook 2019, we did gangbusters. Like we'd get to people, I don't know, something changed along the way, but like I can't bring myself to advertise on those platforms as much as I did before. I'd rather just post to them and because the advertising doesn't really translate the way that it used to.

And maybe it's... actually I think happened there with Facebook. One is Apple decided to make the data protection law for their own people. And so now almost every iPhone user can opt out of data tracking, which was Facebook's bread and butter.

so now, and that's like at least a third of the market, maybe 45 % of it, you know, like a large, large portion of people on smartphones are using that are no longer able to, to, collect data on them or very significant portion of them are no longer doing it. And so then because it's less targeted, because there's less focus and there's less people, all the ad costs went up back, back in 2019.

Plus there was some price gouging going on at the time when everyone was captive and there was a huge amount of demand for people to do online advertising as every business in the world through 2020 through 2024 went online and tried to figure out how to get clients to come to them. I mean, there was a whole whack load of macro factors that raised rates in online advertising right through 2020 to 2022. In my day job business industry, we work in digital marketing and so it's not niche.

It's the most competitive market in the entire world to advertising. And so we saw the ad cost go skyrocketing and it was a difficult couple of years for a lot of businesses, real businesses. $10 would net us $1,000, right? Yeah. Yeah, you to get so many leads and it was so easy. And I mean, it's just Yeah, it's just no longer that way. Yeah, just isn't. Yeah. I mean, I think that there was a big a lot of scare around like, my god, Facebook's harvesting data and everything.

But at the same time, I don't know, we can get into the ethics of this or not. It was annoying that they didn't tell anyone that that was really what they were doing. But this is but but but the idea of having the algorithm work for you. is not a bad thing, right? Like, cause then you do get better products suggested to you, you know, or you get more things you actually want in your feed versus the other way.

So I think it's an interesting philosophy debate around like data and whether you should allow them to track or not. So. Yeah, I think we'll fit. We're going to find that out again soon too with the advent of AI and what it's bringing, you know. that's collecting a lot of data too, right? And like, how much do we want that collecting things and you know, what's, what's allowed to be used in it?

What's not allowed to be used in a people creating their own GPTs of things, just inputting stuff that, that, that they don't even own into it to make something pro pro it works for them. It's, it's a real wild, wild west of AI right now. is. And that brings us back to the tabletop industry too. I see a lot of people post in games where they're using AI-generated content and the backlash of that. There's a huge backlash of that. when it first came out, there's Mid Journey and stuff like that.

I'm a graphic designer. Concepting stuff with Mid Journey is like a different world. Like you can generate things that, you your idea, but, you know, like if I want a photo for a, you know, a beach magazine, I can call up Mid Journey, get a photo for a beach magazine, and then send that to a photographer and say, hey, look, this is my idea. You know, like having that idea realized is a thing. But using that idea as the final thing is not great. That comes back to that ethical thing.

Like, can't... I mean... love the idea of AI helping us with, you know, all the medical problems that we have and like, you know, coming up with, uh, know, conglomerates of, of data and all that sort of thing and freeing up time for us to be able to do the things we love doing, which might be creative work, right? What we don't need is AI to like write all our books and do all our art and to make all our stories for us. Like, cause that's, that's like the stuff we want to do as humans.

Uh, or I think a lot of people want to do. nerdy stuff, right? Stop taking that away from us. Yeah, we don't want AI to be taking away the nerdy passions. That's a big thing. What? scripting my Adobe tools so that I could do layout stuff faster for the vault of many things. So being able to, to, to have it write me a script that I can use an InDesign to flip all the artwork in the right way and, and save myself hours and hours and hours of manually. doing all that. That came in handy.

The, the programming capabilities for people who like don't know anything about programming to be able to say, Hey, write me some script to do this. That is super powerful. Cause you see people now like me who have no idea how to program or write HTML or do anything that way. Right. And I can be able to come up with something functional that can be input that will create the results I want.

And that's, that's crazy to think about now that anyone can be a, a decent programmer, like not pro level or understand it all, but you could actually do stuff, right? Right, right. That's so nuts. I want to I think the the other thing I wanted to, I guess, dive into with with this is all of the things we talked about sound pretty hard. Like we've talked about, you know, how much money do you need? Tens of thousands of dollars probably to do something like this. How much time do you need?

You need a lot of time to figure it out. You need a lot of logistics to be going back and forth to manufacture. Why? Why do you do this? Like what? Why are we building this business? Why not just play the game? You know, for me, it's the whole, you know, creative problem solving, I get to build a thing, thing. I love that. Like, that's what it is for me. I like, you know, the challenge of bringing something into the world like that. So that's why I do it.

You know, I also play the games because that's fun too. Do you think it's something that you were just born with that you're like, I've got that spirit. want to create stuff. Or is it something that you like cultivated in yourself because it was satisfying? for me, it's definitely, I think I was born with it. Like I used to build stuff all the time. I don't know how many things that I destroyed in my father's garage growing up.

But, you know, I'd see, I'd see, I'd see, I'd watched Goonies and you know. make the shoes that squirted goo out the back of them when I was a kid. I would recreate props from Hollywood movies in my dad's garage. That was super fun for me. If I would have been pushed in the direction, I probably would have gone that route of prop making, building starships for movies and TV. Like anything to, you know, tinker around. Is Mythbusters your favorite show? I mean, I've watched Mythbusters.

I wouldn't say it's my favorite show, but... Okay, yeah. I just want to, it just makes me think of like Mythbusters attitude of like, well, we got to go create some stuff, right? And like, figuring it out. Yeah. Like, they built Star Wars. Those people built the things that we watched as kids. I mean, that's great. I so you're what you're saying is you're not doing this for the money. You know there are buckets and buckets of money in board games right.

It's not, you know, it's not like, um, yeah, we're, not in the, the black yet. We're, I mean, or in the red. What is it? Which one is it? I forget. It's the black. We're not in the, we're not, we're not, we're not hugely profitable right now. We're, we're allotted the ability to do the things that we're doing, but we're not handover fisting it. Like I don't have employees that I pay.

don't have, you know, out of the people that are in this company, I'm the only one that's the kind of day-to-day guy. My other two major partners have other jobs, like, you know, at other companies that, you know, this is, that allot them to do their things, you know. I have this and the occasional freelance work that I do for other clients. into my design world. But for the most part, it's this and I take care of my kids.

That's how we afford this, really, is I take care of my kids, which is not something that's, you know, should take care of your kids, but I don't send my kids to daycares or things like that. Daycare is outrageous. I mean, we're both in Seattle and daycare here is like between a thousand and $3,000 a month per kid. Yeah. have a full-time job, you know, and then have daycare or, you know, my wife is a nurse in Seattle and she works Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you know, 12 hour days.

So like I'm able to watch the kids on Monday, and Friday. And I get to work on Tuesday, Thursday and the, and the occasional Saturday, Sunday, you know, when it's not family time, but you know. It touches on such an interesting point that what I find super interesting. you know, coming from the acting world, there are, you know, people who find partners who have jobs or lifestyles that are complementing whatever it is the other person does.

So like what you just said, it sounds like it complements your wife's work schedule really well. I've heard of actors that are like, well, I need to be available a lot of the day. So, A, I need a job that's flexible, but also I honestly need a partner who brings in a lot of money. And so finding that mix as a nerdpreneur, there is a little bit of that too. There's like, hey, I can do this. An entrepreneur of any kind really. You usually aren't rolling in cash.

And that's one of the things that makes this so special is that we kind of sign up for that. We sign up for the fact that we may not be rolling in cash, at least for a little while. Someday, the hope is... Yeah, or forever, but the hope is usually that that big old boat of cash will someday come in along with whatever we've been working on. Yeah. I, I strive to be like catalyst, you know, catalyst labs. my goodness. Yeah. So like they are a Northwest company.

They're up in the Everett here in Washington. Um, great people by the way. Um, but they, I mean, they did that battle tech a couple of years ago. Uh, Deficon, they were like $7 million or something like that in, in crowdfunding. They took an old IP, blew it up. I mean, it's a very interesting story that I look forward for us. We met with one of the product developers there. And so we plan to talk with him a little more and hear about that story. Yeah, Randall's great.

Yeah. He was an awesome interview. We interviewed him on PAX as well. And it was a, it was a lot of fun cause there's this, uh, you know, we met a lot of entrepreneurs, but we also met him who's kind of an intrapreneur, right? Through being in a company and moving all the way up and been in the, in the actual, uh, IP and game for, know, since it was inception, basically, right? Like way back in the day he'd been playing it.

So, um, Yeah, very, cool to see that and maybe look forward to that in a future interview as we continue to to find these these stories, you know, and I just want to go back to the money thing because I think that, know, we do we we don't do this. Nobody's a nerpner because they want to make a ton of money, right? I mean, it's nice. We could make money, but.

Yeah, well, but I don't think that's the driving force all the time, like, and I think the idea is that, you know, And I think there's like, if you want to make a ton of money, like go, you can be a stockbroker or go into sales or do that. Like if you need to have, you know, millions of dollars or hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars every year that you're doing like, but you know, I think it's Gary V who says this, like you can make a great, a decent living.

If you're making $70,000, $6,000 doing the thing you love doing, and you can have, you know, the lifestyle that is fine for that, but you love every day what you're working on or you love the challenges you're getting to do. Like, what is that worth versus going to a job that maybe pays you a hundred grand a year and you hate it every day and you're trading time and dollars and money for that thing.

And I mean, that's part of the reason why, uh, we decided to move into this direction was, you know, we, we didn't want to be like the hustle culture, like how to grind making, you know, let's get you to your first six figures, like, you know, uh, two more white boys with a, podcast talking about how to make a million dollars. Like that's just not what we wanted to create here, you know? So it's, it's more about the idea of like, can you find the thing you love doing?

And are there ways to be making enough money to love your life while working in the thing that you're super passionate about and do? And yeah, you don't have to have like, you know, a 70 foot yacht to be able to justify why you're doing this job that you hate. Yeah, I don't think I'd want a yacht like that. Well, that's just, it's a hole in the water that you just throw money in. I mean, there's people that really... the days they buy it and the day they sell it.

I don't think I love the sea that much. No. It's hard to play board games when your table keeps tilting side to side anyway. Let's get one of those like cruise ship pool tables. Start your own container ship, then ship your stuff over yourself. That's the... Imagine the logistics on that venture. Well, we've definitely dove, dived, divin into a lot of the manufacturing aspects. talked a little bit.

I would love, maybe we'll have to have a follow up conversation, but I would love to hear more of your story about the Vault of Many Things, the crowdfunding journey there, how conventions are really super helpful for you. I'm hoping maybe we can do a kind of quick just You know, for you, what was a key takeaway? What was a lesson about your crowdfunding experience that just after after it all and you know, you're still wrapping up the vault of many things.

What was it in that that was like, you know what? This was a great lesson for me that somebody else could benefit from. I mean through all of them, like through all of the crowd, I think we've done like three or four crowdfunding experiences. So we've had some bad crowdfunding experiences that did not go well. But I would have to say the thing that you could fall into a problem with is not having clear communication. You really want to be super transparent about everything you're doing.

Your crowd fundees, the people that are backing you on crowdfunding, are the most important people. you should be able to tell them everything that you are doing. Because at the end of the day, they are your partner in this. And they will, when you give them the tools, they will communicate on your behalf. We have at times had backers that don't quite understand that ecosphere. Right? Like don't quite understand, oh, this is a, I'm not buying a thing from you.

I am, I am helping you bring something to, you know, to be in the world. And if you're good to your backers, if you're communicating with your backers, they'll step up and they'll say to other people like, Hey, look, you know, this is not their intent or, you know, you, you have it wrong. Right? Like they're doing for us and that's great.

So like, you know, when you're doing crowdfunding, you know, the most important part is transparency and honesty and, you know, give the backers all the information. really bring them on board it sounds like. Make sure that they really know and are a part of the team. And don't probably hide all the challenges too, because I hear this from backers too is sometimes they're like, Hey, just so you know, we are still working on this. We are actually doing work things and we haven't forgotten you.

We just have logistical issues that we're dealing with. Like some of the ones we've already talked about today, but, but not being afraid to be transparent with people so that they're just like in any, I mean, relationship advice, by the way, if you also do that with your partner, you will be in a way better position than trying to hide things. And then all of a sudden, they're questioning why certain things are arising in your relationship, right? Or why things are wrong?

Like, you know, if you're gonna run late, just tell them you're running late. Don't try to like, hide or like, oh, and or lie or fix up, you know? Yeah. thing for us in this crowdfunding. We've partnered with Marshall Short to do the artwork for The Vault, and he's great. He has his own Patreon printable heroes. You should check that out if you get a chance. But the lift of art that we ended up putting on his back for this... was heavy.

And the amount of time to finish production of that was a lot. And so it took us a lot longer. we were planning. I was planning on having this product ready to go in two weeks for packs unplugged. I thought we were going to have this thing landed by then. I thought now we'd be landed and this would be shipped out to consumers. It's been a while. But along with ArtLift and back and forth with print vendors and manufacturer shifts, there's been some delays.

And we've had to say to people, hey, look, we're not going to hit our mark, and we're going to be late on this. But it's still coming. That's the big thing. It's still on its way. You're probably not going to have it for your campaign at Christmas time. I'm sorry. I really wanted that to happen. I think we all really wanted that to happen. you know, we're having delays in this and it's not catastrophic delays.

It's not like, you know, major things are happening that we can't produce this project. But there are delays. Yeah. sure. And being able to be transparent about that and having our backers on board, you know, when you get the one or two people that are like, yep, you know, it's late, it's going to be late again, like that's the thing. You've got other backers that are there to stand up for you as a creator, you know?

So I have to say, again, the backers are, you know, when you're doing crowdfunding, your backers are the most important people. They're not just customers, they're partners. So. be HR, they could be social media partners, they could... you know, can rely on them to tell you they're interested in your thing. And if you provide them with information, they're willing to help give you feedback on those things that you're doing.

You can make your product better with these partners of yours as well, if you listen. Yeah, they're not adversaries, right? I think sometimes people, especially when there's complaints or there's challenges or there's things like that, you can, you can create this adversarial relationship with people who are there actually because they want the thing you're creating to be the best possible thing that you could make.

And they're on the same side, but it can often not feel that way when you're in business because you're stressed out or you're dealing with fires that you have to put out. And so it's really important to, to, yeah, like you're saying, Remember that you're on the same side. Best advice, listen. All anybody wants to be is heard. Amen. Well, yeah, yeah, let's go ahead and jump into it. Let's, so we're going to go over to the random rolls. Do you have a D 100 available screen? That's okay. dice.

I forgot about the dice thing. That's okay. There's online D D 100 so we can just send you a link or I'm sure you can grab one. Da da da da. And if you have trouble finding one, we can send you one. the dead space, don't worry. We'll cut out this. All right, you want me to roll? 82. 82. is it? What is something that is really popular now, but in five years everyone will look back on and be embarrassed by? Oh God, President-elect? I like that. That's that is a great answer.

Timely in our world right now. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. one. 76. Okay, if you were to turn a fairy tale into a Black Mirror or X-Files episode, what fairy tale would you choose? that'd be Hansel and Gretel, I think. Ooh, that'd be interesting, right? I wonder what the X files version of that would be, right? two kids abducted and then they have to escape. I feel like it's actually done a fair bit. base, that's probably got it.

Yeah. Or maybe there's like, yeah, like just kids lost in the, in the forest and they, they come across like a house, but then it slowly becomes apparent that everything about the house is disturbing and they're actually being, you know, prepped for, for something awful. So yeah, I could see that work and there's this slow horror that to that whole fairy tale that people don't realize. fairy tales were all super dark, right? Grim. Yeah, for sure. Nice, go ahead and do one more.

35. What's the best Wi-Fi name you've ever seen? Oh man. Um, I can't think of one off the top of my head. I know I've, I've seen some really, really, really great ones, like, but I can't, I can't place, I'm really bad at remembering. Let's do another one. Yeah. yeah. I'll just. know I you know my personally I use my Wi-Fi name is FBI mobile That's good. That's good. That's good. Actually, I one of my favorite is Wu Tang Lan. That one's Yeah, that was pretty fun.

I had another one that I saw which was it was it's an old meme reference, but it was like Erma Gerd Weirfear. Remember that meme the Erma Gerd girl? Yeah. the girl with the goosebumps. Yep. That dates us pretty good. I know, for the Wi-Fi thing, I've seen some really clever ones, like, you know, Nacho Wi-Fi. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that one's good too. 30. Am I reading this one? Yeah, okay. Sure. right, one sec. What's a movie or TV show you would pay lots to have a studio actually reboot?

Oh, I think Firefly. Really? a classic one, I mean, I loved Firefly. It was very fun. It definitely ended too soon. it was just a really fascinating universe to like the way that they had actually created because there's the sci fi universe there was was deep. had a lot of great. Yeah. have a good a good a good second to that because he brought that to my mind like in terms of universe building it's it's it's most recent show on HBO I believe it was cartoon, I'm to think about it.

Ah. Alright, let's see if we can find it. Let me just do it quick. Yeah, I know. This slipped my mind. It's not Duckman or something, my God, Scavenger Reign got canceled for season two. So I think a good second for mine would be Scavenger Reign. Scavenger Reign was an amazing world building show. Was it like post-apocalyptic? No, it's, mean, without too much given away to the audience viewers, it's about a crew of kind of like a shipping company spaceship that crashes on a planet.

And that planet, you know, is not. hospitable to their life. I highly recommend it to anybody that's like into sci-fi. It's the world that they built in that show is like nothing I've ever seen before in television shows. And it's massive. And the interpersonal relationship struggles that these characters go through are are hard hitting and real. Just check it out if you haven't seen it, Scavenger Reign. Maybe we can get enough people together to watch it.

They're looking for another studio to create season two, but that show or the show runners running that as a serial where there's something else different happening each time, I would pay lots and lots of money to see. Nice. Well that's awesome. That's a great show. I didn't even know about it so it might be one of the problems. Yeah, wasn't, I don't think it was marketed that well. I mean, it's a hard one. Did you guys see the... was Hangar 11, I think it was, or? No, I've heard of it though.

It's kind of like an X-Files, I think, where the hanger is where it's like this top secret group of some kind. else. Maybe I'm thinking of something else. Station 11, sorry, Station 11. Mmm. No, I haven't heard of that one. Station Eleven was also a really great TV show to watch. There's only one season of it, I believe, because it's a limited series. But it's like a post-apocalyptic show that follows a bunch of different people. Highly recommend it. Okay, nice. Station 11. All right. Eleven.

It's got the girl from Halt and Catch Fire and she was in The Martian as well. Yeah, no, it's a great show. it's really good. Yeah. Cool. have to check that out. Well, let's real quick get two more on random rolls. Okay. 47 and 42. I rolled a 42. Oh 47, ooh, you get to take one excellent adventure back in time with Bill and Ted. What historical figure are you learning about? my goodness. Is it just learning about? mean, to go hang out with? with them, yeah.

about is just because they did it for their history project. So they had to learn about these people. I don't really have a history project to do right now, so. Maybe there's some terrain you want to go visit. Let's see. I know that there's one there. Give me a second. This is a hard one. Huh. It's the same question of like, who would you want to have a dinner party with, essentially? Basically, yeah, any any any old Bill and Ted, so they're gonna have their shenanigans. excellent!

What's up, Socrats? Ugh, I don't know, I- I don't know why this is so hard for me to think about. can't think of anything off the top of my head right now. Because I think of historical places that stand out to me like, you know, the Coliseum, know, Rome's Coliseum way back in the day. Like that would be, I mean, that was a work of art. You know, the big circus maximus, know, those those kind of those locations were just phenomenal and they would be beautiful.

mean, nowadays they still stand up with a lot of help, but. Yeah. that art. It's almost, I mean you can't bring it with you, but you can definitely look at it and just appreciate its beauty. Yeah, yeah. I don't know, maybe, uh, like early America, Sacagawea, you know, like the untouched lands of our past, even here, right? Like that kind of, that, you know, the natural environment of things. Before we cut all the trees down to make games. Mm. to make games specifically.

So our 42 is what is the question of the universe? What is the question of the universe? Uh... I did. Yeah, he did. That's why I was excited about 42. The light level. Yeah, I like the meaning of everything. Uh, what is the meaning of everything? Right? What is the meaning of life? Well, we like to ask the important questions once in a while. Yeah, just be happy. Don't try and kill everybody. Sounds like a great answer. Great question.

All right, let's do rapid fire and we'll do a few of these and then we're all finished up. Okay. Yeah, these are rapid fire is quick and silly questions. For example, and you may be right or wrong and we'll figure it out, but what is better Star Trek or Star Wars? Trek Wars, right? Star Wars? Which is better? Oh my goodness. Okay. Dr. Evil's panel and your chair flies back and flames shoot out. Yeah. gosh. Yeah. Okay. Which one? He doesn't want to pick sides, man. His business depends on it.

science fiction, right? My young me wants Star Wars, my old me likes Star Trek. It's just about... you know? There you go. That's good. a psychotomy of like, you know, what my core beliefs are, right? Like Star Trek fits better with my old me, but Star Wars was my young me all the way. Well, what is the best munchie? best munchie? Take five. Reece's take five. Cool, I wish we had those in Canada. There's so many Reese's varieties we don't get in Canada that's frustrating. But yeah.

Which is better, the Game of Thrones books or the TV show? Oh, I mean, the TV show is easier to digest than the books, but, you know. The TV show all the way up to the last season. Yeah, I would say that too honestly because I don't even know what the end of the books is Yeah, let's find out Yeah, let's find out. How many cats is too many cats? Immediate answer, I love it. Boom, monopoly or risk. risk. Predator or aliens? Aliens. What super power do you want? None of them. You wanna know why?

All of the superpowers have problems. If I was invisible, I couldn't see, because light wouldn't reflect off my retinas. Mmm. That'd fun. like you can go and turn invisible anytime, but you go blind. problematic, right? All right, what are your three favorite pizza toppings? God, they're gonna hate me for this. Pepperoni. I love Canadian bacon and pineapple, or ham and pineapple, Canada, right? Ham and pineapple. yeah.

Well, actually, I would say Canadian bacon is absolutely good way to refer to it. Well, I think I think that's just because of that Canadian bacon movie. If you ever watch the John Candy movie, which is hilarious, but it does make fun of Canadians a lot. I have not. I have not. it's a great one of the classic everyone in Canada knows Canadian bacon because it is just sort of like it's the like not anti-canada but it makes fun of Canadians all the whole time.

That's why it's partly really funny there it's it takes place in Niagara Falls and it opens with like it's on the American side of the of the falls and they're just there's just like they're always talking about all the Canadians over there and stuff and you know there's I don't want to spoil it. I'm not gonna say that. It's great. I'll just say watch Canadian bacon if you want to laugh about Canadians because they do go across to Canada in that movie and and hilarity ensues.

So hey, let's do this question again. My favorite toppings on a pizza? Yeah, what are your favorite toppings? Does it, is it, is it on one pizza? On one pizza. I mean, think three toppings on a pizza. I would go with Canadian bacon, pineapple, and feta. Ooh, that was good. it's a good saltiness. Yeah. What's the difference between a nerd and a geek? um... persuasion? persuasion, like their charisma level?

I think like a geek wants you to do what he wants, what he's doing, and a nerd kind of does it for himself, maybe. I geek out on something, it's like I'm geeking out on something because I'm telling it to somebody else. Like I'm geeking out on something because I'm trying to get other people, like if I'm nerding out on something, I'm doing it internally. Like I'm nerding out on this, I'm doing it. I would say persuasion. I like how you're verbing those words. That's cool.

Turning them into actions that we live into. That's cool. All right, Dune or Mad Max? Correct answer. or cats? That's... Best Christmas movie. Die hard. BASS, there we go. Who is more evil, Dolores Umbridge or Voldemort? Dolores Umbridge. 100 % DC or Marvel Marvel. this one's controversial. Apple or PC? Apple. Nice. See, Frank, see, I love when things go my way. My work computer's an Apple. It is very good. I mean, we had, I, you know, I was an Apple kid when I was a kid, right?

Apple was big in the education when, mean, they kind of like put it in us in the eighties. Like you went to school, you had Apple, like I played Oregon trail on Apple. played like all those other games on an Apple. Like it was hard. Yeah. and then they'll buy our product when they're older. computer I programmed on was an Apple 2C. Mmm. All If you could spontaneously learn to play an instrument, what instrument would it be? I know. Nice. Who is cooler, Indiana Jones or Lara Croft? Indiana Jones.

If you could work with any artist on a project, what would it be? Or who would it be? Banksy? That's awesome. Sorry, who is Banksy for me? For... I'm sorry, you know, maybe I do and I just can't think of it right now, but... Edgim- Edgimicate me. exit the gift store. Yeah, exit to the gift shop. Um, so Banksy is a, is a, is an artist that, um, does like street artist. does like stencil tagging on stuff. yes, I did see that come up in the news.

Yeah. does, he goes all over the world and does works. I mean, he's like, persona, look into it. Like he's great. Political commentary as well. Cool. very much elevated the street art genre in and of itself to like high art status and then also plays off the ridiculousness of high art status in and of the creation of his art, because it's all temporary too. he's a pretty, I think you'll see some stuff and be like, that's Banksy.

It's like, yeah, he's seen it culturally everywhere because he's super, super impactful, but it's a but also you'll be like, hmm, interesting. Cause like this was only on a wall for like, you know, a few days or a week or something at one point and still had this huge impact. Anyway, yeah. Highly recommend exit through the gift shop. It's like my favorite documentary of all time. I would say cause it's a great. So I love that answer. Great answer. Correct one. Now, do you collect anything?

I have a collection of comic books, some comic book trading cards. Yeah, that's about my collection. I have a collection of Apple computers. They do collect. It's a hard thing to throw them out. old original Macs. I have a couple of those, you know. The old tan boy, yeah. And when you play any sort of tabletop game, do you have an alignment that you like to play? I do not. I go into everything fresh, I think. Yeah. What's a book that you're reading right now?

I'm reading a book about anxiety and OCD. Yeah. Well, right, what's a key takeaway from that? Is there a key takeaway? and parenting. So I'm learning to help my kid. Great. If you were going to cosplay any character at like a Comic-Con, what would you choose? Um. Man, that's a tough one. I like Wolverine. Wolverine is a good one. Classic too, right? I think that that that one. Yeah Would you do like the Logan version or do think you would go like the classic blue and yellow suit?

I don't know, Old Man Logan is pretty dope. It's pretty awesome. a lie. Logan was like my favorite Marvel movie. I think it was just so great. Yeah, yeah. I'm not a huge Marvel fan. In general, I just got burned out on the movies. like Logan brought me back into it a little bit because it was just like, well, it was actually violent. Yeah. you know, the Deadpool versus Wolverine was also another one of those. they had every version of Wolverine in that movie.

Pretty, not every, almost every version. And it was great. Super fun. I did see that in theaters and I was like, this was kind of the best summer movie. I'm not gonna lie. Yeah. Awesome. Well. I do the old man Logan from that, like the cowboy hat and the western, the slash Clint Eastwood Logan. Love it. Hmm. I don't know how to transition from that, but I'm just going to ask, do you believe aliens are real or conspiracy? That, you know, that's a, I think that's a trick question.

I don't, yeah, you're asking the hard questions here like that. I think it's incredibly naive to think that we're the only thing in the entirety of it. Hmm. I wouldn't say that they're here, but I would say that, you know, there's probably life out there that's considered alien. Yeah. and zombie apocalypse weapon of choice. is my last one. Zombie apocalypse weapon of choice. I'm pretty good with a shotgun. Good one, that's a classic.

You're pretty good with it, so you have experience with the shotgun. yeah, come on. Any American, any American worth its salt. You Canadians vacation to shoot guns, right? Like you guys just live that. I assume everyone has a shotgun and a pistol. my God, left neck. Let's not get too deep into this, because then we got to bring schools into it. Yeah, yeah. Oof. Let's see. My last question would be.

OK, OK, if you were in the Star Trek world and you were going to go to Starfleet Academy, which discipline would you go into? know, command. OK, engineering. That makes total sense. Building things. gonna build that stuff and take it apart, put it back together. hell yeah. and toothpicks. Yeah, totally. O'Brien all the way, by the way. Yeah, he really did a good job with him in the later seasons, like making him into the soldier background. That's so good. I love that. Well, this was awesome.

Thank you. so, so much fun. And, you know, we always like to finish off our, uh, interviews with, you know, a lot of people are thinking about their ideas and saying, could this be a business? Should I go into business? Should I make this nerdpreneur journey? And I always like to ask our nerdpreneurs, like, what do you think? Should people, what advice would you give people if they're looking to become a nerdpreneur like yourself? Yeah, um, you know what? Life's too short not to take chances.

I mean, do it. Go out there on a limb and do it. I mean, get your ducks in a row first. Like figure out, you know, is this, you know, potentially something that's gonna destroy my life, you know? But you can, you know... There's levels, There's grays, right? You don't need to quit your job to be an entrepreneur. You don't need to spend all of your time to be an entrepreneur. When you're actually an entrepreneur and you're doing this as a living, then you're gonna be spending a lot of time.

But if you want to make your dreams realized, Take that leap and make them realized. Work nights, work weekends. Take the time that you have sitting around doing other things and put it into your nerdpreneurship, you know? Like, just go for it. There's no reason to not do something, right? that, I mean, time is the reason to not do something. If you're working two or three jobs and you're just sleeping and eating, then I'd say probably not. Probably not, you know, like that.

But if you've got time and you're just doing other stuff, you know, like take some of that time that you've got and put it aside for your, your passion that you want to do. Do your research, look, ask questions, ask people, ask me, hell, reach out. Like if you got questions, I'm happy to answer them. I mean, I don't have a ton of time, you know, but, um. I definitely find resources. That's how I started out with this stuff, finding the resources.

Other people are there to help, and other people like to help. Yeah, we found that so much in our, in our exploration of this whole thing is that people are so much more willing to help and share what they've learned and the lessons. So hit that subscribe, click that follow button. So you don't miss any other nerdpreneur updates as well. Cause yeah, if you're thinking about it, we'll be here as a resource for you. Well, Chris, thank you so much for coming on and being a part of this.

Where can people go and support you guys get some. Tinker terrain or Tinker house games or anything else that you sell, where can they go? You can visit us at TinkerHouse.com, TinkerHouseGames.com, excuse me. We do have Facebook and we do have some other social stuff. I just got a TinkerHouse Blue Sky social network set up and I'm trying to figure all that out. So look there as well. But I mean, you can find us at TinkerHouseGames.com and yeah, there's our store.

You'll be able to, you know... pre-order the Vault of Many Things still if you're interested in that. But check us out and ask for us at your friendly local game store if you're looking for terrain and you're out in the wild because they'll be able to bring it in. Awesome. Amazing. Amazing. you. This was wonderful. Chris, Frank, thank you so much for doing this. This is great. And I appreciate you both for elevating our industry. We're doing our best, doing our best.

Appreciate you for just educating us all on this process in detail. I mean, it's been elusive, so really grateful to have someone like you on the show that can really shed some light in this direction. Thank you. Yeah. And as always, nerdpreneurs, thanks for listening. And as always. Keep it nerdy. That's how we finish off. Keep it nerdy. I love it. All right, we're gonna finish that up and then.