The Gaming Den

... is a stealth-focused tabletop RPG currently on Kickstarter. I figure with all the Shadowrun love around here you might be interested.

That hipster seems pretty good at racking up the backer numbers.

Josh_Kablack wrote:That hipster seems pretty good at racking up the backer numbers.

Wow. Sure is. I'm jealous and a half.

I am very interested in stealth mechanics in ttrpgs but I don't know this man and thus have no faith in him. If anyone has any concept of the stealth mechanics he is advocating or evidence that he is capable of designing an innovative system to allow you to tell stealth based stories in an RPG then I would be much more likely to pledge money to his project or investigate his creation.

Who is The guy? Im on The road and cant open The ks page.

The first thing I thought by reading The title was Thief The Dark Project.

The guy is Will Hindmarch, and here's his list of stuff. There's a few free things on there if you want to look some of it over deanrule.

Ok, Im at home and just looked at the kickstarter page. Its a very interesting premise (again it reminds me of the Thief games from PC), and the 2 settings available sound really cool (one fantastic and one cyberpunkish), but the system per se is very opaque at this point. The only clues we have is that it combines dice and cards, and that it looks simple (by the size and layout of both the char sheet and the gm leaflet).

Color me reservedly optimistic. If more information is revealed, I can see myself pledging it.

Cards are either a good or a bad sign depending on whether they're a game deck ala Arkham Horror or actual playing cards.

I would certainly hope that if they include specialty cards, that they provide a standard deck conversion. But I'd rather have cards that are explicit so I don't have to refer to a lookup table. Unless it is something simple like 'high card = good' in which case just plain playing cards would be best.

Further down the page he reveals that he's using standard (if fancy-looking) playing cards, but he doesn't say how--that is, if there's a look-up chart or anything. Multiple numeric randomizers a la Deadlands is usually a sign of a disunified resolution system, so that's a strike.

I'm actually more interested in the fact that the two-player version might be immersive enough not to leave both GM and player feeling like idiots who should be playing co-op video games instead. So, base hit?

Thing that comes to mind is that none of the backers have sufficient information to even guess whether the game is garbage or not. Thinking about kickstarters in general...are they all gambles? I generally don't read/watch/buy/play anything until a year or three late, when people can tell me that it was not a waste of my time.

Ikeren wrote:Thinking about kickstarters in general...are they all gambles? I generally don't read/watch/buy/play anything until a year or three late, when people can tell me that it was not a waste of my time.

Sort of, and so do I. Here are the three scenarios in which pledging to a kickstarter makes sense:

- You want a physical product which is slated to be made in limited quantities, the creative part is done: a written but unmastered song collection, a book ready for reprinting, etc.
- You want a product that is not yet made but you're 100% sure you're going to like the end result.
- The product is not yet made, but it's extremely difficult to fuck up the production, assuming everything on the page is close to the truth.

Even then you can still get screwed. I pledged $80 to a science book illustrated by one Angela Mele (who would surely benefit from a well-placed google hit, the fucking scammer) aaaand she made a poetry book instead. I'm still waiting for my money back. (Asshat.) I have pledged for exactly two well-publicized videogames, them being Divinity:OS and The Banner Saga, everything else I either backed out of before the campaign ended or had the good sense not to pledge for in the first place.

On the other hand, as an example of a typical positive kickstarter experience, here's Unwoman, Uusi playing cards, and the already mentioned Ukiyo-e Heroes. As an example of an atypical kickstarter experience, my first successful pledge ever put my name in the credits of a videogame, which later got me a place to live, a job, and free professional training. Of course, that campaign was back in 2009 and all this kind of money will accomplish in 2014 is maybe bring your name to the attention of a project creator for all of two seconds while he's signing your sad fanboy nerdling's "exclusive" copy.