Kickstarters Thread

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So still no word fir those of us who backed at the physical level for the Ghost Ops solo game, but in the Ghost Ops Facebook group today we were informed that we can buy the second edition of Ghost Ops on DTRPG that was Kickstarted after the solo book….
 
So still no word fir those of us who backed at the physical level for the Ghost Ops solo game, but in the Ghost Ops Facebook group today we were informed that we can buy the second edition of Ghost Ops on DTRPG that was Kickstarted after the solo book….
The Solo book wasn't from him, was it? And did they ever release the final PDF for the solo book?
 
The Solo book wasn't from him, was it? And did they ever release the final PDF for the solo book?
I believe it was him. I don’t have my notes handy, but he rar-rahed all of them on the Facebook page like he was doing them himself, even though he puts stuff out under multiple names on Kickstarter.

I received what was to be the final version of the deluxe version with the bonus scenarios. I hadn’t heard of any issues of the final version of the standard edition; were there fulfillment issues with that one as well? I had to poke him with a stick to send me the PDF add-ons I paid for, before he went silent on the physical deluxe solo book.
 
I believe it was him. I don’t have my notes handy, but he rar-rahed all of them on the Facebook page like he was doing them himself, even though he puts stuff out under multiple names on Kickstarter.

I received what was to be the final version of the deluxe version with the bonus scenarios. I hadn’t heard of any issues of the final version of the standard edition; were there fulfillment issues with that one as well? I had to poke him with a stick to send me the PDF add-ons I paid for, before he went silent on the physical deluxe solo book.
I just checked, and the name is the same on both accounts Jayson Lesarde. And the reason he might have created the second account is because of complaints on the last one (I was one of them) because he tried to run two campaigns for that one also.
 
I believe it was him. I don’t have my notes handy, but he rar-rahed all of them on the Facebook page like he was doing them himself, even though he puts stuff out under multiple names on Kickstarter.

I received what was to be the final version of the deluxe version with the bonus scenarios. I hadn’t heard of any issues of the final version of the standard edition; were there fulfillment issues with that one as well? I had to poke him with a stick to send me the PDF add-ons I paid for, before he went silent on the physical deluxe solo book.

So I just pinged him and got this response:

PDFs were sent out as well as Hard Copies to everyone that paid postage.

Checking the updates, I see that he said you'll need to pay postage, but no where was that communicated, i.e. sending messages to backers letting them know this.

I replied with this info... we'll see what happens.
 
How is their version of a robotech rpg? Is it hackable for generic space mechas?

I am completely ashamed to say that even to this date I still haven't been able to do much of anything with it beyond what I call test scenarios (little minigames where I and sometimes my partner experiment with the rules). So, take everything I'm about to say with a whole container of salt.

I like it. It's damning with faint praise to say that I like it more than either Palladium iteration of Robotech as well as more than what I've seen of the Savage Worlds version of Robotech (the original unrevised Macross book).

It's really a narrative style system. The core mechanic is very much about describing the stylistic method of doing something and then chucking some dice and describing what happens.

My opinion is that it's fairly hackable for a good deal of "real robot" style mecha anime. Anything with the same general drama and mecha tone as Robotech/Macross would be adaptable. Adapting the Macross franchise shouldn't be too much trouble, nor would a UC style Gundam.

But it's really not so much the details of mecha combat. The nearest RPG I can compare the combat system to is Tunnels & Trolls, and even that is a poor analogy. But it does get the idea of mooks correct while making main characters more survivable and Max being able to do some serious shit, all while major characters are still threatened and not feeling like they're invincible.
 
So I just pinged him and got this response:

PDFs were sent out as well as Hard Copies to everyone that paid postage.

Checking the updates, I see that he said you'll need to pay postage, but no where was that communicated, i.e. sending messages to backers letting them know this.

I replied with this info... we'll see what happens.

Much appreciated!
 
Much appreciated!
So, In my case, what happened was sort of understandble. With the postage fees, he'd asked on the survey to send paypal to an address for postage, or to get a POD coupon. I guess I was one of the only ones who requested POD (I hate sending money after the pledge via paypal after experience with Far West and Machine Age Productions) and he forgot to send the POD out. He sent it out, and I'm ordering it from Drive thru.
 


anyone know what “newton nitro’s +2d6” system is?

Basic core mechanic is that each Skill has a linked attribute and one tests:
Attribute + Skill + 2d6 vs Target Number

Typical normal difficulty target number is 10. Typical Skill + Attribute value is about 5.

Double 1 on the 2d6 is a fumble and Double 6 a crit.

It was designed by a Literature and Linguistics professor in Brazil and plenty of Brazilian and Portuguese homebrews and RPGs use it. I've seen most major settings rendered in it. Maybe our T The Butcher has some experience of it.

The Kickstarter above looks cool, but I actually think the black and white art looks better than the full colour art stretch goal.
 
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Basic core mechanic is that each Skill has a linked attribute and one tests:
Attribute + Skill + 2d6 vs Target Number

Typical normal difficulty target number is 10.

Double 1 on the 2d6 is a fumble and Double 6 a crit.

It was designed by a Literature and Linguistics professor in Brazil and plenty of Brazilian and Portuguese homebrews and RPGs use it. I've seen most major settings rendered in it. Maybe our T The Butcher has some experience of it.

The Kickstarter above looks cool, but I actually think the black and white art looks better than the full colour art stretch goal.
I just posted that I've been out of the hobby loop for quite a while, but frankly I haven't been into the local hobby loop for some 20 years. Brazilian RPG fora mostly have terrible signal-to-noise ratios and re-enact ages-old arguments from English-language fora (including, you guessed it, politics).

So that's the first I've heard of it and I'm actually intrigued. I have half a mind to hunt down a Portuguese-language copy; I like the system and setting premises.
 
I just posted that I've been out of the hobby loop for quite a while, but frankly I haven't been into the local hobby loop for some 20 years. Brazilian RPG fora mostly have terrible signal-to-noise ratios and re-enact ages-old arguments from English-language fora (including, you guessed it, politics).

So that's the first I've heard of it and I'm actually intrigued. I have half a mind to hunt down a Portuguese-language copy; I like the system and setting premises.
This is the generic core system:
 
I just posted that I've been out of the hobby loop for quite a while, but frankly I haven't been into the local hobby loop for some 20 years. Brazilian RPG fora mostly have terrible signal-to-noise ratios and re-enact ages-old arguments from English-language fora (including, you guessed it, politics).

Most English language RPG fora have terrible signal-to-noise ratios and re-enact ages-old arguments as well.
 
The Strange Machine Games Robotech: Homefront RPG Kickstarter is now active.



This is a supplement to their previously released Robotech RPG. This book will cover the Southern Cross and New Generation chapters of Robotech.



Thanks for the heads up. I pledged for the Dana Sterling cover, and added on the Miriya cover of the Macross book while I was at it. Got to keep it in the family, or something.
 
Thanks for the heads up. I pledged for the Dana Sterling cover, and added on the Miriya cover of the Macross book while I was at it. Got to keep it in the family, or something.

Cool. I hope you end up liking the Macross book at least as much as I do. I'm not trying to be a shill, but if you're jumping in feet first, I'd also recommend going ahead and adding a GM screen if you haven't already. The screen doesn't have any extras or adventures or anything. It's just a really sturdy reference screen.
 
I'm annoyed with the Girl Genius Kickstarter. SJG appears to be going away from including PDF's with physical books in recent Kickstarters I've seen. It's a one or the other deal. Personally I'd even pay extra if it was an option but it's not. Read through comments on that Kickstarter and you'll see quite a few backers annoyed by that lack. One guy is backing it twice, once at the pdf level and once under his wife's account for the physical book.
 
I'm annoyed with the Girl Genius Kickstarter. SJG appears to be going away from including PDF's with physical books in recent Kickstarters I've seen. It's a one or the other deal. Personally I'd even pay extra if it was an option but it's not. Read through comments on that Kickstarter and you'll see quite a few backers annoyed by that lack. One guy is backing it twice, once at the pdf level and once under his wife's account for the physical book.
Yeah, I messaged them, and they said get the PDF on the shop and back there for the book. Seems like they're leaving money on the table. I just wasn't about it, so decided to skip because of that.
 
Yeah, I messaged them, and they said get the PDF on the shop and back there for the book. Seems like they're leaving money on the table. I just wasn't about it, so decided to skip because of that.
Yeah I'm thinking I'm going to pass too. When I've tried to leave feedback in the other instances it was clear that they're not receptive to taking the feedback serious by how they've reacted to me and others.
 
Even though it is 547% founded, it may be that this Girl Genius kickstarter underperformed.
I mean, I thought it would have garnered more than 70K$ total. Maybe it's the geek in me, but I thought Girl Genius was one of the most popular web comics out there (and for me it's one of the best written, in 19th century episodic tales style).
 
My kids enjoyed the issue of Girl Genius they have but I don't know if it has enough legs to be a stand alone RPG. Thoughts?
 
The setting of Girl genius is huge : an entire not-19th century Earth precariously balanced on total chaos, with local powers surrounded by mutated monsters in an hostile wilderness.

The politics of the game world is byzantine, with many factions : the baron Wulfenbach, the Other, the noble families of Europa chafing under the baron's thumb, Albia the Queen Goddess... and every other spark (mad geniuses of Weird Science) dreaming insane schemes to conquer the world "for the glory of SCIENCE !"

Add to this pirates on the seas, dirigibles in the air, ancient underground civilizations lurking under the earth, and the ultimate wilcard : the Girl genius herself, Agatha Etherodyne, good-hearted and fierce (formerly shy) teen heiress of an evil lignage of power mad bon vivant Weird Science morally dubious nobles, romantically involved with the aforementioned Baron's son (a complicated relationship)...

Yeah, there is a Hell of a game ready to spring up to life for the enjoyment of RPG gamers. Which is why I find strange the mixed feelings we receive about this kickstarter among the fans (to be clear, I doubt that the fans are to blame).

So I definitely believe that the comic series would have benefited from a game system all by itself.

Ho, and I forgot to mention that the authors of the web comics themselves were a fixture of Dragon magazine in the times of yore.
 
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Ho blimey - I noticed that the kickstarter mentions "a stand-alone game powered by Gurps".

What I meant to say vis-à-vis the system is that maybe Girl Genius would have benefited from an original brand new game system.

...

Well, maybe that would have been a terrible idea commercially speaking : developing an entire system to serve one niche* IP.

*One niche but as big as the Universe, because "The Etherodyne will always triumph with superior SCIENCE !"
 
That Planegea setting looks potentially kind of fun, but I don't want it for 5E so I'll pass.
Between it being 5E and the way the Feng Shui 2 Kickstarter went it’s an easy pass for me.
 
Between it being 5E and the way the Feng Shui 2 Kickstarter went it’s an easy pass for me.
What was wrong with the FS2 Kickstarter? I was in on it and didn't have any problems.
 
What was wrong with the FS2 Kickstarter? I was in on it and didn't have any problems.

Spoiler so my wall of text doesn’t disrupt the flow of this thread.

Off the top of my head:



-Seemingly not wanting to listen to backer feedback. I didn’t pay any attention to it, as honestly I had stuff come up in my life that didn’t let me follow along. But I kept hearing stories, and one that I heard from multiple people was that someone brought up the point of all characters of a certain archetype would start out exactly the same; I believe this was even before the design of the archetype character sheets with the staring abilities printed on them were shown. Someone asked the question “What if two players both want to play a Killer?” and the response was “Make one of them play something else.” Very helpful.



-The Archetype Sheet debacle. For $30 you got hard copies of the character archetypes, printed on high-quality, full-color boards. After their production it was found that several never had errata applied to them. Initially Atlas said they would replace the incorrect sheets. Presumably they crunched the numbers and realized it would be costly, and decided they would just put errata on their website and players could download it and tape it to the boards.



So it was bad enough we weren’t getting actual replacements, but then they spoke as though they had never said we would get replacements. At one point comments were made to the effect of “Why would we ever say something like that?” Several times Cam Banks posted on RPG.net when the topic cake up to fall on his sword and take the blame. Somehow this was to mollify us and ignore the fact that we’d paid for a messed-up product. I felt like I was living through a real-life version of the following.





-I backed at the $400 level, part of which included “You'll also get to work with Hal Mangold to co-art direct 1 illustration for use in the Feng Shui 2 rulebook!” I got a message asking what my idea was, I responded, and never heard from anyone about it again.



When I got my PDF of the book I found the art had changed in two different ways. One felt like a slap in the face, in a “Didn’t word the wish to the genie in exact enough words” kind of way. But the other…



I had a job for many years, my favorite job I ever had. I asked for something to put in as a nod to what were the happiest years of my work-life. The artist put something in that not only wasn’t what I asked for, but brought back memories of a time that a customer screamed at me that I didn’t know what I was talking about, because she saw it on the Martha Stewart Show, and how could someone who. had a job for years on end in his field know more about it than Martha Stewart? They changed my idea so it barely looked like what I requested, and I never was spoken to along the way about it.



-After the fact, but when the Kickstarter was underway and they were revealing stretch goals, I commented on a forum that I was unimpressed with one of them. I had someone who tore into me relentlessly about my daring to speak ill of the Kickstarter. They only shut up after they said I was clearly the kind of person who backed at a dollar to complain about a game, and I noted in a previous post I’d established I had backed at the $400 level…$430, with the Archetyoe packs; I can’t recall if the other stuff I git came at that level, or if I paid more for them as add-ons. After that they shut up.



A year or so later I was told the person who harangued me was someone who’d worked on FS2, a fact they never mentioned in their posts.





So yeah, they managed to kill my love for what was one of my top-five favorite games in its first edition.
 
Anyone backing this? I have some of the decks given to me as christmas gifts but I'm not sure I want to get more. Thoughts?


I'm considering late-backing this and getting four decks. The Pulp one seems fun, maybe the Modern, the Lovecraftian and the Pirates one.

They're ok. I was given the Arcane Academy deck
That the only one you got?
 
Spoiler so my wall of text doesn’t disrupt the flow of this thread.

Off the top of my head:



-Seemingly not wanting to listen to backer feedback. I didn’t pay any attention to it, as honestly I had stuff come up in my life that didn’t let me follow along. But I kept hearing stories, and one that I heard from multiple people was that someone brought up the point of all characters of a certain archetype would start out exactly the same; I believe this was even before the design of the archetype character sheets with the staring abilities printed on them were shown. Someone asked the question “What if two players both want to play a Killer?” and the response was “Make one of them play something else.” Very helpful.



-The Archetype Sheet debacle. For $30 you got hard copies of the character archetypes, printed on high-quality, full-color boards. After their production it was found that several never had errata applied to them. Initially Atlas said they would replace the incorrect sheets. Presumably they crunched the numbers and realized it would be costly, and decided they would just put errata on their website and players could download it and tape it to the boards.



So it was bad enough we weren’t getting actual replacements, but then they spoke as though they had never said we would get replacements. At one point comments were made to the effect of “Why would we ever say something like that?” Several times Cam Banks posted on RPG.net when the topic cake up to fall on his sword and take the blame. Somehow this was to mollify us and ignore the fact that we’d paid for a messed-up product. I felt like I was living through a real-life version of the following.





-I backed at the $400 level, part of which included “You'll also get to work with Hal Mangold to co-art direct 1 illustration for use in the Feng Shui 2 rulebook!” I got a message asking what my idea was, I responded, and never heard from anyone about it again.



When I got my PDF of the book I found the art had changed in two different ways. One felt like a slap in the face, in a “Didn’t word the wish to the genie in exact enough words” kind of way. But the other…



I had a job for many years, my favorite job I ever had. I asked for something to put in as a nod to what were the happiest years of my work-life. The artist put something in that not only wasn’t what I asked for, but brought back memories of a time that a customer screamed at me that I didn’t know what I was talking about, because she saw it on the Martha Stewart Show, and how could someone who. had a job for years on end in his field know more about it than Martha Stewart? They changed my idea so it barely looked like what I requested, and I never was spoken to along the way about it.



-After the fact, but when the Kickstarter was underway and they were revealing stretch goals, I commented on a forum that I was unimpressed with one of them. I had someone who tore into me relentlessly about my daring to speak ill of the Kickstarter. They only shut up after they said I was clearly the kind of person who backed at a dollar to complain about a game, and I noted in a previous post I’d established I had backed at the $400 level…$430, with the Archetyoe packs; I can’t recall if the other stuff I git came at that level, or if I paid more for them as add-ons. After that they shut up.



A year or so later I was told the person who harangued me was someone who’d worked on FS2, a fact they never mentioned in their posts.





So yeah, they managed to kill my love for what was one of my top-five favorite games in its first edition.

I guess I didn't back at a high enough level for that to affect me. I never back at the really high levels, no matter how much I like a game. Because it's usually filled with stuff they don't know how to do or effectively execute on, so it will be a disappointment most of the time. And when it's not, at least I saved a chunk of change.
 
I'm considering late-backing this and getting four decks. The Pulp one seems fun, maybe the Modern, the Lovecraftian and the Pirates one.


That the only one you got?
I have that one and the Magic Item Card Catalog
 
I guess I didn't back at a high enough level for that to affect me. I never back at the really high levels, no matter how much I like a game. Because it's usually filled with stuff they don't know how to do or effectively execute on, so it will be a disappointment most of the time. And when it's not, at least I saved a chunk of change.

What’s funny is that my all-time favorite series of Kickstarters were for Feng Shui’s brother CCG Shadowfist. I always point to them as an example of Kickstarters done right.
 
And did you back, or are you going to late-back?
I did not back. The magic items are not bad for solo play but the arcane academy cards don't impress me. I have some others in pdf I should explore more. I'm just not excited to spend on much right now.
 
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