The Kickstarter campaign for Donning the purple and its expansion, Votes & Virtue is almost over and I thought it was once again time to “interview myself” about the lessons I have learned so far on my third campaign. You can read about my lessons from my previous two games here and here.

Tell us a bit about yourself and the Votes and Virtue expansion for Donning the purple.

My name is Petter Schanke Olsen. Im a board game creator in Tompet Games from Norway. In 2016 I Kickstarted my first game, Kill the King. After that small and humble success I wanted to make a bigger game and thats when Donning the purple was born. I ran a bigger and more successful campaign in February 2018. The game got good reviews and sold out fast so I decided to run a new campaign for a reprint and expansion now in September 2019.

Donning the Purple is an asymmetrical king of the hill game with a bit of worker placement. Each player leads a powerful family in ancient Rome, trying to get the most victory points during 4 rounds. If your family member becomes the emperor and manages to hold the position he can earn lots of points. However he will also become the target of the other players, as they will try to dethrone him and become the new emperor themselves.

The Votes & Virtue expansion includes lots of new content that will create new headaches to the ruling emperor.

A new role, called the General. If he becomes too popular among the legions they will proclaim him as the new emperor.

A 4th player that starts the game as the General.

A senate phase. Where all players uses their senators to vote over important things that affect the empire.

An extra player mat for the heir with a unique action.

Lots of new cards and other cool stuff.

What did you do to build up a following before you launched?

I did the same thing as before and continued to work on my existing following after the Kill the King and Donning the purple campaigns. This time I also tried a new tactic. When I decided to do a reprint + expansion campaign I had somewhere between 50 and 100 games left of the base game. I then contacted probably 100 reviewers online and asked if they were interested in reviewing the game. I contacted revieweres from all over the world. It did not matter if you were a big or small reviewer.

That resulted in maybe 50+ reviews of the game over a period of 3-4 months. Those reviews really got the word out and helped create a buzz about the game in general and the upcoming expansion. It also helped sell out the remaining few copies I had of the game.

When did you launch the new campaign and why did you choose that exact moment?

Every week of the year has several big launches so you will end up launching among a lot of campaigns no matter what you do. The most important thing is to launch when you are ready.

We decided to launch on September 10th. We felt that gave us enough time to build up buzz and at the same time create everything we need.

This time you are having multiple products in your campaign. What is the main difference from just having one product?

Yeah, this time we are having lots of different products. The base game, expansion and both of them in spanish + a neoprene mat add on.

More products certainly makes things more complicated, both in regards of economy and logistics. But we have done a lot of planning so we should be well prepared for most scenarios.

Doing multiple language editions can fool you a bit in regards of the funding amount if you are not aware. If a backer backs the spanish version, it means most of that money goes to the spanish publisher and not you. That is important to remember when you look at your total funding.

How did you decide to have info about the base game on top of the page and not the expansion?

I thought a lot about this when I built my KS page. In the end it basically got down to this simple thing. If you had bought the base game before and visited the KS page you probably were interested in the expansion already and therefore would accept to scroll down a bit on the page to find the info you needed.

If you never have heard about Donning the purple before you will probably understand less if you mainly see info about the expansion on top of the page. And if the stuff on top of the page does not interest you, you most likely will leave the page.

If there was one thing you wish you knew before you launched, what would it be?

The kickstarter editor has improved a lot over the past year. I was not looking forward to use it again but I was pleasantly surprised when I opened it to start this project.

What do you think is the most important element of a Kickstarter page?

The most important thing is the top image and everything else that you see during your first 2 seconds when you visit the page. Those things must capture the interest of potential backers and make them stay on your page and scroll further down or leave the page. If it does not do that you won’t convert any visitors on your page.

Anything else you would like to add?

Please visit the kickstarter for Donning the purple and the Votes & Virtue expansion!