News Update - August 2022

Hey everyone!

First of all, I'd like to thank you for your support and patronage! I thought it'd be nice to give a little news update about what happened in the last months, what I'm currently working on, and where Bonus Action is headed.

Last Months.

University. As some you may know, I started working 20hrs a week as a teacher at my local university in September 2020. I spent way more than 20hrs each week for the last 2 years and struggled managing my time and stress levels at times. I did not like it, but Bonus Action kind of faded to the background as my creativity went into teaching. I can now say that I feel like things are going to be easier from now on out and the balance will be better in the coming year. Less survive, more thrive!

Content and Planning. I decided to do 12 items each month as a baseline a few months ago, and in the last few weeks I've started making a better planning to accommodate for other content as well. I like magic items, but I can create so much more to make your games unique and fun. Incidentally, this leads me to my next point.

Today.

Worldbuilding. I've been working on a bunch of worldbuilding for WorldAnvil's Summer Camp, You can find all my articles in the sidebar at this link. I've found worldbuilding inspires me to make interesting items and creatures that have some more weight to it in terms of culture, history or religion. I definitely plan on continuing that trend of connecting all those dots so to speak.

Vacation! Another thing I'm doing today, is packing for my first proper vacation in 5 years. Even before the pandemic, I haven't been going on vacations for a while and I'm super excited to be going on a 10 day trip to Croatia from Saturday 13th. I'll be back at home in the Netherlands on Wednesday the 24th. Any messages I'll probably answer after I come back.

Coming months.

Updates. After I get back, the new academic year will start again but I'm planning some new stuff for Bonus Action as well. There will be some changes to the tiers. I'm still working out the details, so the information below is definitely not set in stone or in any way final. I'm honestly very interested in what your thoughts are in advance, as I won't be making any changes before the start of 2023.

Silver and Gold tier. Right now, any new patron can download the entire archive of hundreds of items and then unsubscribe. Before, this was not a problem because the archive was not that big yet, and it was a nice value - price ratio.
The plan is that every month, the new items as well as part of the archive will be made available for the lower tiers. I still have to figure this one out because patreon is not the easiest platform to use when it comes to spreading out rewards or making them available for limited times.

Platinum. I want to move access to Sea of Starlight to a higher tier. Right now, I have to upload lower resolution images to the Sea of Starlight, because the high resolution is only available at the Platinum tier. Changing it to platinum allows for more creativity in some places on the Sea of Starlight. I plan for existing long-term Gold patrons to keep access as long as they remain a patron. 

Sapphire Tier. I'd like to make (large) compendiums of content and make those available at the Sapphire tier (like the entire content archive, 520 item pages compendium, themed sets, perhaps even adventures and the like). I feel the price of this tier is great for the complete and polished products that i have in mind.

More content, more problems. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love making all sorts of stuff and want to allocate some time to make more creatures, random tables, traps, potions, poisons, spells, maps and of course, lore! But as stated before, patreon is pretty bad when it comes to navigating all that content, so I've always been struggling with that and putting it of. So in January 2023, I will probably be restructuring the posts and the index here on patreon. This of course depends on the changes to the tiers, but I can imagine that I will group posts similar to how the item cards are grouped now as well. In any case, it should make it easier for you to find what you are looking for, and easier for me to add and update posts and products.

Marketplaces. I'm planning on researching how and if I want to get my content out on the roll20 and foundryVTT marketplaces. These will most likely be themed sets so people can instantly use them for a certain campaign or story arc. I'm not sure yet how and if this can be connected to patreon, It'd be nice if I can offer discounts for patrons but that is part of the research I got to do.

General Business Update. In conjunction with the tier plans, a little business update. As you all know, I'm just one person pulling this Bonus Action cart. I do everything from brainstorm, to writing, illustrating, posting and publishing. I've managed quite well to do this all, but I haven't been able to do much marketing for my patreon. I want to showcase what I do and get more people on board! I'm currently talking to some guys here in the Netherlands who might be going to help me out with that. This would hopefully lead to more patrons, which allows for me to spend more time on Bonus Action and/or hire someone to do some of the work that I don't need to do myself. After two years of personal growth as a teacher in the academic world, it is time to work on Bonus Action again, and I'm super excited about that!

If you made it this far along, thanks for reading! Again, I would like to express my gratitude for your support. If you have any questions, remarks or ideas about this entire news update, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message in the discord. I'm especially curious to hear your thoughts about the tier updates/changes . Perhaps you know of other patreons and how they handle it? Or perhaps you just want to tell me that this is a good/bad idea. Whatever it is, I'd love to hear it!

as always, Enjoy!

-Tim (Bonus Action)