Kickstarters Thread

[David Johansen]

That could be anything from presin to vinyl to hard styrene and probably a dozen things in between. Naturally I'm hoping for hard styrene, that might even be enough to make me buy a Mongoose product. Wouldn't support them on kick starter though.

 

[Trippy]

Each to their own on Kickstarter, but that will be where it starts. I appreciate the need to be judicious about that platform.

Mongoose have actually done several Kickstarter campaigns this year, with pretty quick turnovers. Even if you don't go for Kickstarter, therefore, it should be made available for retail sometime in early 2019, I guess.

 

[Bunch]

I don't see where it says what the miniatures will be made of. They'll need to be nicer than Battle Field Evolution. That's for sure. I'm not fond of the art and I have no idea what an "accelerator shotgun" is supposed to be. In Traveller "accelerator" weapons are gyrojet style rocket launchers that are used in zero G situations because of their low recoil. I'd like to see more Traveller miniatures out there. I'd prefer 25mm or 15mm to go with what I already have. The choice of boarding actions calls back to Snap Shop and Ahzanti High Lighting buy I'd like to see something more open ended come out of this eventually.

What was wrong with Battlefield Evolution?

 

[David Johansen]

Bad sculpts and paint jobs in a market where you can buy painted Dragon 1/72 modern stuff for about half the price.

 

[Trippy]

Bad sculpts and paint jobs in a market where you can buy painted Dragon 1/72 modern stuff for about half the price.

Well, we are seeing some of the minature sculptures already, and Battlefield Evolution was a few years back, and without any licensing agreement for quality control, as Mongoose would have now with Marc Miller (which apparently was part of the renewal contract).

My advice, honestly, is don't back the Kickstarter (as I'd say to anybody who isn't 100% sure, as they are risky things). However, I would suggest you follow it - see what the products are like, and wait until they become available to the wider public (as they inevitably will). If you like what you see, you'd still be able to buy in without any risk). If you don't, well, you lose nothing.

For me though, I can't wait.

 

[Atelerix]

They kind of have history though, so you need to go in with your eyes open.

They lost the ADB licence for their version of Star Fleet Battles for putting out uncured resin ships with the consistency of cheese.

They lost the license for B5 after an argument with JMS. Minis were good.

Starship Troopers licence withdrawn (probably to do with upcoming movies, not Mongoose's fault this time). Some good stuff in there, some bad stuff. Poor QC, inconsistent art direction so some minis were tiny, some were huge, some were just ugly.

Lost the RQ licence for churning out crap books (the minis were good, I loved their Ducks).

Noble Armada. Who knows what happened there, minis just vanished one day...

Judge Dredd minis Kickstarter. Many pledges left incomplete. Inconsistent art direction and multiple sculptors, all sorts of weird and wonderful mini sizes and sculpt quality, Sold licence on to Warlord Games. Some nice stuff, some awful stuff, a lot of "meh".

Rogue Trooper minis Kickstarter. They were doing well, with nice minis, but they managed to sink their own Kickstarter by previewing work "from a new sculptor". Only KS I've ever seen where a company made their total, then everyone withdrew their money...

The inevitable failure will start with hype and promises that they've learned their lessons from the last time, then things are not quite to plan, then news from customers of bad stuff. Mongoose promises to fix them, then the promises are taken down from their site and forum, then you get nothing, then they don't have the licence and the minis are no longer there.

A couple of positives for this KS - first, they have kept the Traveller licence for ages. Second, they're keeping it small-scale. But something has gone wrong for Mongoose very, very often.

This isn't an anti-Mongoose rant, I have a lot of their stuff. When they make good minis, they fly off the shelves. Gangs of Mega City One, Starship Troopers plastics, Judge Dredd starter box - when Mongoose makes a decent product, I'm in line to buy it. Rebel Minis have bought many of their decent figures (the ones that are not obviously licensed product anyway).

I have a ton of Battlefield Evolution minis, from when they cleared the warehouse. In the end, they were OK minis, and I still use them. They're OK for the tabletop,and I applaud Mongoose for trying something new.

Back it if you like, it looks a decent game. I have history with them though, from the very start, and I'll take a "wait and see" approach.

[Edited to de-escalate the tone]

 

[Trippy]

They kind of have history though, so you need to go in with your eyes open.

They lost the ADB licence for their version of Star Fleet Battles for putting out uncured resin ships with the consistency of cheese.

They lost the license for B5 after an argument with JMS. Minis were good.

Starship Troopers licence withdrawn (probably to do with upcoming movies, not Mongoose's fault this time). Some good stuff in there, some bad stuff. Poor QC, inconsistent art direction so some minis were tiny, some were huge, some were just ugly.

Lost the RQ licence for churning out crap books (the minis were good, I loved their Ducks).

Noble Armada. Who knows what happened there, minis just vanished one day...

Judge Dredd minis Kickstarter. Many pledges left incomplete. Inconsistent art direction and multiple sculptors, all sorts of weird and wonderful mini sizes and sculpt quality, Sold licence on to Warlord Games. Some nice stuff, some awful stuff, a lot of "meh".

Rogue Trooper minis Kickstarter. They were doing well, with nice minis, but they managed to sink their own Kickstarter by previewing work "from a new sculptor". Only KS I've ever seen where a company made their total, then everyone withdrew their money...

The inevitable failure will start with hype and promises that they've learned their lessons from the last time, then things are not quite to plan, then news from customers of bad stuff. Mongoose promises to fix them, then the promises are taken down from their site and forum, then you get nothing, then they don't have the licence and the minis are no longer there.

A couple of positives for this KS - first, they have kept the Traveller licence for ages. Second, they're keeping it small-scale. But something has gone wrong for Mongoose very, very often.

This isn't an anti-Mongoose rant, I have a lot of their stuff. When they make good minis, they fly off the shelves. Gangs of Mega City One, Starship Troopers plastics, Judge Dredd starter box - when Mongoose makes a decent product, I'm in line to buy it. Rebel Minis have bought many of their decent figures (the ones that are not obviously licensed product anyway).

Back it if you like, it looks a decent game. I have history with them though, from the very start, and I'll take a "wait and see" approach.

[Edited to de-escalate the tone]

They lost Babylon 5 because the license came to an end, and at the time Mongoose were the only B5 licencee still left in the world. They let it go, basically, as they did with the Judge Dredd license.

They lost the RuneQuest license, but the evidence is that they never got on with Issaries/Moon Design anyway - I actually thought a number of their books were quite good. Loz and Pete took over with The Design Mechanism, which produced superior books, but also lost the license when Chaosium under new management took over.

I've not really bought into miniature lines with Mongoose (or any other companies really), but they did have a bad reputation for producing goods at such a high rate that quality was compromised. 10 years ago, or such, they compounded this with attempting an in house printing system - which was disastrous for them.

However, they worked well with the Traveller license and renewed it. One of the agreed terms of the renewal, and a policy statement from Mongoose, is that they would produce products at a more deliberate pace and ensure better quality.

As I say, Kickstarters are always a risk - but over the last year or so, Mongoose have delivered on several of them, efficiently and in good faith.

 

[Atelerix]

Please come back and tell us if it's good!

 

[David Johansen]

And as I've said before , I really dislike Mongoose Traveller. My reasons are my own, this thread isn't about that but I felt I should put a fair mention of where I'm starting from in so as to not unduely bias people with my bias.

 

[Belle Sorciere]

So Handelabra Games is doing a kickstarter for the Aeon's End cooperative deck builder game. It's about mages fighting off invading big bads and a fun tabletop game. I'm terrible at selling this, so here's the link. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/handelabra/aeons-end-digital-tabletop-game?ref=user_menu

 

[Ladybird]

Haven't played Aeon's End, but Handelabra know their stuff when it comes to card game conversions and IB&C do good work, so this could be good.

 

[Belle Sorciere]

There's a demo (on a webpage) linked in the kickstarter, too, so you can get a taste of how it plays.

 

[Charlie D]

I think this fourth RPG for Mutant: Year Zero sounds really interesting. I like the idea of four houses duking it out as Rome burns.



From Free League:
Get ready for the end of the world as you know it! One week from today, on Tuesday the 20th of November, Free League Publishing will launch the Kickstarter for MUTANT: ELYSIUM, the third and final major expansion to the award-winning Mutant: Year Zero RPG.

MUTANT: ELYSIUM, with art by acclaimed sci-fi artists Simon Stålenhag and Reine Rosenberg, completes the Mutant: Year Zero quadrilogy of roleplaying games telling the full story of the postapocalyptic MUTANT universe.

MUTANT: ELYSIUM, fully playable as a standalone game, tells the story of the final survivors of the end of the word. In the huge underground enclave Elysium I, four powerful Houses struggle for supremacy, oblivious to the looming threat that could bring humanity’s last bastion on Earth to its final downfall.

 

[Lessa]

Totally excited for this (something I was not for the furries and robots books). Thanks for the heads up, Charlie.

 

[Charlie D]

Totally excited for this (something I was not for the furries and robots books). Thanks for the heads up, Charlie.

You're welcome. I think we're going to see cybernetics this time around.

Genlab Alpha was also not for me. But Mechatron was really interesting. I haven't gotten to run it yet though.

 

[Atelerix]

A reminder: the Kickstarter starts today at 4:00pm GMT.

I will at least take a good look at where Mongoose are with the development of the rules and minis.

 

[Trippy]

So…..it got cancelled. It was priced too high, without an easy buy in for backers and couldn;t raise the total needed.

Apparently it's not been totally shelved, but put back as they reconsider their options. In the meantime, we'll see some more Traveller RPG books moving ahead.

 

[David Johansen]

That's disappointing. I wonder why they couldn't just offer rule book only and miniature sets as lower buy in points. I also think they were off base in thinking that a miniatures game would be what Traveller players wanted most. Also, using Vanguard as a title as Mantic just brought out King of War Vanguard. Lastly, it may just be that we couldn't see the quality through the paint jobs but personally the miniatures were ugly. The imperial marines in particular should bulkier and have tear drop shaped helmets. I was hoping to have money to back it later on because I've wanted more Traveller miniatures for decades.

 

[Trippy]

That's disappointing. I wonder why they couldn't just offer rule book only and miniature sets as lower buy in points. I also think they were off base in thinking that a miniatures game would be what Traveller players wanted most. Also, using Vanguard as a title as Mantic just brought out King of War Vanguard. Lastly, it may just be that we couldn't see the quality through the paint jobs but personally the miniatures were ugly. The imperial marines in particular should bulkier and have tear drop shaped helmets. I was hoping to have money to back it later on because I've wanted more Traveller miniatures for decades.

Fans had requested a miniatures game some years ago when Mongoose petitioned fans to come forward with ideas for products, as they were working through their new license application for Traveller 2nd edition.

Certain things, like the Starter Set, for example were part of their contractual obligations with Marc Miller. I'm not saying the miniature line was necessarily, but recent years have seen a push to have Traveller sold in more mediums - we have a card game for example now, and a novel and character generation software.

In any case, they'll go back to the drawing board and have a look at what they could have done better, I'm sure.

 

[Lunar Ronin]

So…..it got cancelled. It was priced too high, without an easy buy in for backers and couldn;t raise the total needed.

Apparently it's not been totally shelved, but put back as they reconsider their options. In the meantime, we'll see some more Traveller RPG books moving ahead.

Priced too high seems to be the status quo for miniature games. The few I've come across on Kickstarter that interest me all cost $350 or more to get everything, not including shipping, and only one included prepainted miniatures.

 

[David Johansen]

I wonder if the $50k was lowballing actual costs. They were a good quarter of the way there with a month to go. I also wonder if the figures shown were 3d prints.

 

[Trippy]

I wonder if the $50k was lowballing actual costs. They were a good quarter of the way there with a month to go. I also wonder if the figures shown were 3d prints.

I dunno, but I'm glad that the business decision to pull it was made now - rather than two years after the 'estimated delivery time' that we see in other Kickstarters.

 

[David Johansen]

A couple years ago I asked Wargames Factory and they quoted me $10k to cut the moulds and $30k by the time you produced figures and packaged them. That's probably gone up since, though it's hard to say, the technology keeps getting better. That didn't include designing the figures.

I'd probably have put in a lower point of entry and made the figures stretch goals. One of my dream products is a sprue or two of figures with a lot of synergies so the weapons and are interchangeable to increase the potential variety. The objective would be to really knock the price per figure down while having a lot of possibilities. The idea would be to sell a lot of the single sprue rather than broadening the range. The figures would be pretty plain and clean so you could paint a zillion of them in a reasonable period of time.

 

[Higher Grounds Publishing]

But, no more!

With the beautiful Book of Elves, the secrets and mysteries of the Elfen Court have been revealed and the gates of Tir Na Nog cracked wide open. With this Modern RPG setting guide and supplement, you will gain new knowledge, role playing opportunities, hooks and lore, access to Unique Elfen subspecies, new feats and mechanics from this ancient species.

Click Here To Visit The Book of Elves Kickstarter

 

[soltakss]

It looks very pretty as a book, so I've backed the PDF, as I don't buy hardcopy books any more.

I think it would suit followers of the Irish Myth thread. Either that or will drive them mad.

 

[Ladybird]

It does look very nice, but your art seems to be... lacking in variety, shall we say. Do you have anything to show us other than pretty lady elves?

 

[Séadna]

I think it would suit followers of the Irish Myth thread. Either that or will drive them mad.

Lord no, since the myth is sort of preserved (politically motivated) fan fic itself, it'd be daft to be purist about it.

Fair play on the spelling of Tír na nÓg Higher Grounds Publishing , often incorrect.

 

[Higher Grounds Publishing]

It does look very nice, but your art seems to be... lacking in variety, shall we say. Do you have anything to show us other than pretty lady elves?

Heck yeah. And you're right, now that I'm looking at it. It is one-sided. I'll add some variations to the page soon. Thank you for pointing that out for me.

Lord no, since the myth is sort of preserved (politically motivated) fan fic itself, it'd be daft to be purist about it.

Fair play on the spelling of Tír na nÓg Higher Grounds Publishing , often incorrect.

I appreciate you noticing. I often misspell it, myself. The capitalization of the O in the middle throws me off a lot!

 

[Ladybird]

Heck yeah. And you're right, now that I'm looking at it. It is one-sided. I'll add some variations to the page soon. Thank you for pointing that out for me.

I was kinda hoping to see what sort of mechanics or ideas the book has, more than the artwork. I'd have thought the same thing if it was pretty male elves.

 

[soltakss]

Personally, I bought it as a picture book. The mechanics are incidental, as I wouldn't use those mechanics anyway, I'd use it for ideas.

 

[AsenRG]

From the link's description:

Rule System(s)

• Storyteller / Storytelling
• Pathfinder-OGL

Now I'm trying to imagine a PF game running on d10 dicepools. It's a hugely entertaining exercise!

 

[Higher Grounds Publishing]

I was kinda hoping to see what sort of mechanics or ideas the book has, more than the artwork. I'd have thought the same thing if it was pretty male elves.

Elves are pretty but I plan to add a nice slurry of ugly ones (mechanics for them, too!) as well.

Mechanics will include new Elfen spells, feats and a few class specializations and a lot of other stuff.

Personally, I bought it as a picture book. The mechanics are incidental, as I wouldn't use those mechanics anyway, I'd use it for ideas.

Thanks for the pledge!

From the link's description:


Now I'm trying to imagine a PF game running on d10 dicepools. It's a hugely entertaining exercise!

I've seen the math for those and it's an interesting concept. 2d10 is one I see a lot, but it winds up skewing toward the middle rather than the 5% chance on each side.

 

[Belle Sorciere]

The long-awaited and promised Ogre Battlefields kickstarter has started today. This is meant to add on to Ogre Designer's Edition and Ogre Sixth Edition, adds two maps (G3 and S3 from the original Battlefields expansion), and lots of counters.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sjgames/ogre-battlefields/description

 

[3rik]

Low Fantasy Gaming - Deluxe Edition by Pickpocket Press — Kickstarter

I checked out the free pdf of the current edition and decided to back this.

There's some free stuff available on the publisher's site: Low Fantasy Gaming

 

[under_score]

I'm not familiar with Low Fantasy Gaming, but I checked out the free adventures and am pretty impressed with the quality. I love the old parchment and b&w line art aesthetic, and the adventures are efficiently written. I think I'm going to slot the Halls of the Dwarf Lord into my current C&C campaign.
I'm not sure I need another ruleset right now (I don't!), but the Midlands setting (low magic, "points of light", medieval fantasy sandbox) and the 46 $1 adventures might be worth grabbing.

 

[Mankcam]

I dont need any more rpgs, but I liked his Fast Talk roll, plus he's on this continent, so I may have to take another look at this

 

[under_score]

Well, I decided to check out the free rulebook cause I'm a sucker that way.
The game's slogan is "Low Magic. High Adventure." on the free version and "Less Magic. More Grit." on the kickstarter. It promises fast, dangerous, gritty combat, a realistic human-centric world, and dangerous magic. The presentation is quite nice, with the same parchment and B&W line art that the free adventures feature. It's minimalist but easy to read through.

Character Creation
Attributes
Starting with attributes, this diverts from the usual D&D-like by turning Wisdom into two stats, Perception and Willpower. I think Perception is coming from 5e, which, if I recall correctly, uses Wisdom as a passive perception skill or something. Willpower handles the saving throws typically associated with Wisdom, but also "governs the capacity to rally between battles". Do PCs have a morale score in here?
Otherwise the stats are pretty standard, with modifiers between -3 and +3 for the human range. The default attribute generation is roll 4d6, keep highest 3, 6 times, and get an automatic score of 15 for the 7th stat. This raises the average state to 12.63, compared to 12.24 from a 4d6 drop lowest without the extra 15, or 10.5 for 3d6. It's only a slight increase but does set the expectation that a positive modifier in any attribute is the norm.
There is also a Luck stat which appears to be a diminishing resource for rerolling failed checks.

Classes
We've got five classes to choose from: Barbarian, Bard, Fighter, Magic User, and Rogue. The inclusion of the Bard is surprising, while the absence of the Cleric I assume reflects the grittier world - the gods won't save you here. All classes have a list of gear they can use, standard skills, attack bonus, and new abilities at various levels. Hit points skew higher here: rather than a typical hit die (d10, d8, etc), all the classes have small hit dies with a bonus equal to the max roll, so a Fighter gets d5+5 HP per level, Magic User gets d3+3, and so on. Con modifiers apply.
All of the classes get a Unique Feature at levels 3, 6, 9, and 12. This can be pilfered from another class or devised at the table. It's an interesting idea to allow some flexibility, but neither the classes nor the skill list are really that robust, so I feel like it would turn into clear powerbuilds.
There's a table for generating party bonds to determine how characters know each other. It's a d20 list with pretty specific examples, such as "Guards or Militia patrolling the merchant quarter of Neferai City, when the violent Silk Riots reputed". It's a good source of inspiration and provides some insight into the assumed world of LFG, but too short and too specific to be used more than a couple times at the table.
The default is for all PCs to be human but it does include options for Dwarves and Elves.

Equipment
The equipment list is about the weirdest thing I've seen. It breaks down equipment into Common, Uncommon, and Rare categories, with examples of each, and everything has a randomized price based on category (1d6 gp for Common up to 5d10+50 gp for rare). So your Chalk might cost 6 gp while a Lantern costs 1 gp and a bag of Caltrops costs 20 gp. The book also has variable prices for animals, a mix of standard and variable prices for vehicles, but all standard prices for services, buildings, weapons, and armor. This whole section is bizarre to me.
The list of melee weapons is interesting. Every weapon has some unique property, which is a nice idea, although the properties chosen are sometimes odd. For example, a longsword disarms enemies on a natural 19. A great sword dazes the opponent on a natural 19, imposing disadvantage on their next initiative check. I don't really understand these choices.
Armor is just light, medium, or heavy, with examples listed and AC bonuses of +1, +3, or +5, respectively. Shields provide a +1 AC and "may be used to negate a single directional attack, be it a sword strike, lightning bolt, or dragon bite." Essentially, the player can use a shield to ignore any one attack and must repair the shield before doing so again, although the shield continues to provide the AC bonus. It's kind of like the popular Shields Will Be Splintered houserule, without all that splintering.



Alright, that concludes creating your Low Fantasy Gaming character. Character creation takes up 33 pages of the book and then it moves into System. Other than the assumption of humans, I'm not seeing much so far that says "Low Fantasy". I'll try to get into the system later today. Scanning through I see rules for Major Exploits, Rescues, Madness, and Chases. And I need to find out what makes magic in LFG "Dark & Dangerous".

 

[Voros]

Patrick Stuart (DCO, Veins of the Earth) and Dirk Leitchy (Troika) and Christian Kessler (Swamp Fever) doing layout. Printing is being handled by Jacob Hurst of Hot Springs Island. An OSR supergroup of sorts, kinda like Blind Faith minus the tastless album art.



Some pretty amazing art on this one and it sounds pretty trippy as usual for Stuart.


Wir-Heal itself is a time lost peninsula built on the tangled and comatose bodies of world-destroying trans-dimensional titans and suffering under a curse which slowly reduces its inhabitants to the status of wild woodwose.

On top of that, what government does exist is arguably not the finest, being dominated by an obese, cunning and rapacious feudal lord obsessed with extracting taxes and keeping out the kingdom's near-mythical enemies.

The player characters fall through reality under Mysterious Circumstances™ and end up in Wir-Heal, the plughole of the metaverse.

Their only real problems are that they are lost in time, cut off from the rest of reality, dirt poor and that the Titans themselves are waking up and going to end the world.

As well as that, they have pissed off an evil Pig.

To prevail and escape Wir-Heal they must brave its nightmare-haunted shifting realities, find ways beneath the land, break into the Titans' sleeping minds and steal their golden thoughts. This will put the Titans back to sleep, shift the realities back to something more closely approximating normal, and you get to keep the gold.



What about the rules though? The rules are based on the first edition of Chris McDowall's Into the Odd ruleset. Character generation is integrated into the adventure/game. Players are given specific, named characters to play, though a lot is left open to their interpretation (an idea I stole from Chris Himself).

The opening adventure is a classic 'in media res' Patrick-style opening which brings the players directly into the first dungeon and gives them stuff to do right away.

Silent Titans was designed to be simple and clear enough that a new Referee and new players can pick it up and start playing without needing any other books or experience.



Here is Patrick posting about the project on his blog with loads of links about it as he worked on it. This lot is out to ruin D&D and I approve.

I ordered the pdf, the hardcover is outside my Canuck budget currently although if I find it in a FLGS I probably won't be able to resist it.

 

[Ladybird]

Oooh.

I liked Veins of the Earth, even if it did get into weird-for-the-sake-of-it territory in places.

 

[The Butcher]

Oooh.

I liked Veins of the Earth, even if it did get into weird-for-the-sake-of-it territory in places.

I am actually curious about Veins of the Earth, though to be honest “weird for the sake of it” describes much (or at least a very noticeable segment) of the OSR these days.