The Gaming Den

Not shilling, but we don't have a Kickstarter mocking thread.

I just received an email from the people who did the partly successful (they made a game) Shadowrun Online game that Catalyst has a Kickstarter for the Shadowrun Sprawl Ops board game. The tie-in with another failed game really sells it to me.

Last I knew, the board game was ready to be released during the "Year of Shadowrun (2013)."

I understand they have a good board game (The Duke), a game that feels like a good thought but poorly-executed (Zero Day), and a pretty okay half-deckbuilder half-puzzle game that was abandoned and they didn't do all of the work on (Shadowrun Crossfire).

Are they a terrible company? Probably. Do they fuck up every deadline? Yes. Do they at least make mediocre games that should be better? Yes. Should you give money to people who can't make games on time or particularly well, and don't understand how money should work, but fuck you for calling them on it? Hahahahaha.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/17 ... ying-game/

Just saw something about an Expanse RPG kickstarter. They have a free quickstart rules to download, so I did...and it's pretty disappointing.

Most of the quickstart rules center around personal combat, and nothing around ship travel/ship combat/etc. Yeah, personal combat does make up some part of the Expanse universe, but just as much/moreso is there stuff about ships and travel and all that.

The base mechanic is 3d6 +/- bonuses to hit a TN. One die is a "drama die", which seems one of the worst ideas, as it's a MTP kind of thing and also introduces "success at a cost" kind of ideas (your roll succeeds but the drama die is a 1 so your success is tainted...).

Josh_Kablack wrote:Goddamnit:

I gotta plug this small cute indie RPG in its last day on KS

Laser Kittens

And the sequel / expansion is now live:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/13 ... bFEOdrcIpk

Even if you're not into lite storygames, there's gotta be somebody in your life who would love the all cartoon-cat deck of playing cards at the $10 level.

My brother has a board game that he made that I playtested a little bit with him and it seemed pretty fun. This is a 2 minute youtube video pitch that I heard he wants people to see, so here is me putting it before other people's eyes.

I have another Kickstarter. This one is for Petals and Thorns II: Heroes of Ramshorn. A lot of people from this forum backed the first Petals and Thorns. I don't know how many of them actually liked the adventure when they got it, and I guess I'm gonna find out in the next couple of weeks. As a direct sequel to the first one, this is a 5e adventure about various fantasy factions having a philosophical disagreement about the purpose of government communicated through the medium of homicide, with a Pathfinder conversion as a stretch goal. Unlike the first one, this one has a high standard of quality to live up to which necessitates a higher base goal, but the Pathfinder conversion stretch goal is still barely half of what the first one brought in, so I anticipate we'll hit it. Reminder that the Kickstarter algorithm only cares about total pledges, not total money, so a $1 back helps get my project in front of more eyeballs exactly as much as a $100 back.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/re ... ws-trailer
And as soon as i saw JM Hardy in there i lost even ironic interest . .

Stahlseele wrote:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/re ... ws-trailer
And as soon as i saw JM Hardy in there i lost even ironic interest . .

Are the special effects 50% makeup and 50% MSPaint?

I dunno, looks like it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/45 ... n-invasion
this is insane . .

Wow, so many people who still belive catalyst could find their own ass on the toilet.
Is their track record better on Battletech than on SR?

So many people willing to give hundreds or thousands of dollars to a Kickstarter which is 13 000% oversubscribed. Have none of them heard of the problems associated with Kickstarters which get too much money?

@Korwin
yes, Battletech is the Tall good looking Blonde blue eyed Quarterback while Shadowrun is basically the redheaded stepchild of a nerd.

Orca wrote:So many people willing to give hundreds or thousands of dollars to a Kickstarter which is 13 000% oversubscribed. Have none of them heard of the problems associated with Kickstarters which get too much money?

I'm sure that such things can be issues, but not sure if it tends to be true with mini development. I've participated in the Reaper Minis Bones kickstarters, and they add more and more content as they get 'over subscribed'. More money means more product.

On this one, it looks like it is more of a retail pre-order than a strict development funding cycle, but that happens in Kickstarter a fair bit, and it tends to work. If they had said something like 'and if we get $14 million we'll launch a real Battletech prototype crash program' I'd expect they couldn't deliver.

This is an interesting project. Maybe it's someone's thing here?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sx ... eur/posts/

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ne ... er-battles

It's a monster war game that uses basically play-doh to mold your monster figures with little "necromold tomes." It looks pretty cool, and has eight days left, and is almost 200% funded. Check it out if you have fond memories of making up war games with Monsters in My Pocket figures or something.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/he ... o-forge-20

Color? In my Heroforge? I already thought posing was ambitious enough, but they're really going for it. I haven't backed it myself, but I am considering it. Heroforge minis are cool, but expensive.

I have pledged for it because that is something particularly cool.

https://gleam.io/competitions/Bucxo-dd-book-giveaway
Doing a giveaway on twitter for a bunch of 5th edition D&D books. I'm planning on launching a kickstarter later in the month, so building a follower base would be nice.

It's a a book called "Spirits and Songs: A Tavern Handbook" for D&D 5e. We'll be doing new subclasses, plus food and drink recipes, expanding some rules... But more importantly, we'll be including a number of sample inns with notable NPCs, various quest seeds, and perhaps even a couple campaign hooks. Plus their specialties for food and drink (which I'll hopefully tie into my recipe book).

Ed Greenwood is onboard if we get funding, and Cham has already done the Jester subclass for it. We're also importing Eiji's Homunculi into it as well.

Entered and followed and retweeted. Don't let Ed Greenwood know I've compared Biden to him for an analogy.

I also just backed a kickstarter for a 5e cooking themed book, so... apparently next year I might have to do some 5e.

Prak wrote:apparently next year I might have to do some 5e.

We're all sorry to hear that, and hope things get better for you soon.

I'm curious as to why someone would back a cookbook for a game they apparently don't play...

It's more like... you've got two cars. One is old, and pretty reliable, the other is newer, but has kind of shitty performance. So usually you use your older car, but occasionally, you find a reason to drive the newer one.

Apparently Frosthaven won't be just an expansion to Gloomhaven, but all characters will be compatible with both versions.

... as of this writing, it has raised over $4.5 million. Pretty incredible.

Yeah, they didn't quite manage 10x what they were going for within 24 hours.