Fish and Cherries Productions

Hey, folks. Here’s what I’ve got on my mind today: Kickstarter. But funnily enough, I have two campaigns to talk about. One is exactly what you think it is, but the other is a new topic. Let’s dive in.

Folks, we’ve done it. Flight of Fire’s new album has been successfully funded. These amazing ladies are going to make their next album and they have all of you donors to thank. I also want to thank every single one of my fans who donated to them. Maverick and I have been talking and she’s super grateful to all of us. And so am I. I hope that Flight of Fire goes on to rock the world with all their hearts, ideas, and glorious, glorious shreds.

My second story involves a tabletop roleplaying game. Yes. I’m geeky. Deal with it.

Back in college, I played a game with my friends called 7th Sea, involving a fictitious version of 17th Century Europe involving swords, sorcery, and swashbuckling. It was honestly one of the best systems I’d ever played, if a little underrated in the tabletop scene, and I was bummed out when I learned that the game had kind of died out in the publishing world. But as of recently, the winds of fate have shifted direction.

In the past week, John Wick, the game’s original publisher who had recently reacquired the rights, went to Kickstarter to fund a second edition of 7th Sea. The goal for funding the project was $30,000.

It made that goal in seven minutes.

While I could be bitter that it took so little time for this to reach its goal while Flight of Fire had to break their backs and lament how it’s easier to fund familiar things rather than something new, I’d actually like to marvel at how the Internet has been an incredible force. The 7th Sea games I played did not have actual physical books, just pdfs and scans that other people downloaded. My local game store didn’t even carry copies because the books had been out of print for several years. I am entirely convinced that if it weren’t for the Internet and the ability to spread information so quickly, 7th Sea might have gotten lost in the sands of time or barely made its goal.

Likewise, the Internet has greatly helped spread Flight of Fire around. In fact, I’m pretty sure YouTube significantly helped grow their fanbase. On top of that, the band and I reaching out to people through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and my Fish and Cherries posts helped them make their goal when it got so down to the wire. Our elders may joke about us spending too much time on our devices, but this constant connectivity clearly has its benefits.

We’re in the midst of a new age, folks. Information is now instantly at our fingertips and because of that, word of mouth about practically everything gets spread farther and faster. It’s also allowing people who don’t always have a leg up in the entertainment industry to get themselves out there and be heard, just like Flight of Fire, 7th Sea, and even yours truly. You all better brace yourselves, because change never rolls backwards.