The DEATHBRINGER RPG Kickstarter, err, Backerkit is up and running

 

Can't rally argue with that art ...

Sure, I'll hype it because it looks interesting, I've been hearing about it for years, and I like what I see of the guy running it. It feels a little like Spaceballs - it's Deathbringer: The Crowdfunding!

I like a lot of what Professor DM puts out there. He's a YouTube guy but don't hold that against him. He's of a similar vintage as some of us who have been doing this for a while and he's not just there to hype the latest thing for D&D - he may be big on hyping his own thing now, and he's definitely a D&D type game guy, but he's not a big WOTC guy, and he also doesn't push everything OSR as the one true way. 

I know guys who used to draw stuff like this in high school

I was already interested in this one but I will say that playing Dungeon Crawl Classics for a while now has me even more interested. Taking the old school basics and customizing them in some significant ways is far more interesting to me (and rewarding to play) than just re-editing the same damn rules we were all playing 40+ years ago. I have that already - do something new with it! I think we have a great example here.

His whole approach is less rule-mongering and more doing things in the game. I appreciate that. There is a lot of stuff that has built up over the years in D&D type games  - and others too - that is mostly there because it's been there in prior editions and more rules and clutter are hung off of these parts with every update. One great example of clearing a section is the combat zone/"Ultimate Dungeon Terrain" thing he uses:

He typically shows this on a lazy susan in the middle of a table so it can be rotated by players as needed. Notice the change here from modern D&D - we're not counting squares. It's a simple question of "how close are they?" with three possible answers. Now this is not the first game to use abstract distances, range bands, etc. but it's presented here as a concrete physical representation that facilitates play in a big way. To me that's useful. For some games I like counting my squares or hexes and drawing my maps but sometimes this approach would save a lot of time. Mutants & Masterminds, to get away from the dungeon for a minute, uses a similar concept when it comes to ranges and I could definitely see using a diagram or layout like this the next time I run that game. Would I use it for a 4th Edition D&D game? No. Traveller? Maybe. Champions? Not sure. It's a useful concept that's easily ported to other games.

Some other points I liked:

• You get three "death dice" to use during a session to add to rolls. They're d6's, they refresh every session and there's no carrying them over. This is clearly very bennie-like ala Savage Worlds but I like bennies so  I like this.
• Initiative: Straight from the KS page - whoever started the fight goes first, then their side; players declare actions clockwise, then everyone rolls at once. Simultaneous fights resolve as chaotic mass rolls. We've been playing around with ideas on initiative here so I like seeing a set of rules - especially a D&D type game - that doesn't get hung up on individual initiative. It's become a very "set" element in games these days and I'm convinced there is a lot of room to experiment. 
• Death: it can happen a lot in a combat-heavy D&D type game so why not do something fun with it? Here he spells out 3 stages:
• First time dying gets you a scar and something called a Prestige Talent which buffs your character
• Second time means you're "maimed" and get another talent
• Third time, well, you're about to be dead but you get one final action that's an automatic crit success. 
  
  Awesome! I like these a lot!

So I see a lot to like here with multiple concepts that distinguish it from Yet Another B/X Game. I also see a few things some people may not like:

• It's a class and level, armor class and hit point system, d20 based. It's fine by me but I know that's not attractive to some. I see that it goes to level 20 and my feeling is that 10 would probably be enough but the ridiculous over-the-top vibe here probably demands 20 levels.
• The contributing writers for the adventures at least are all YouTubers. Some of them have a track record of published material but some of them ... I don't know.
• The rewards are ... also ridiculously over the top. Shirts, jackets, posters, dice (multiple sets), pins of the class archetypes (?) ... yeah that's a red flag for "Crowdfunding Success" as it's a bunch of crap no one actually needs to play the game but pads out the KS $$$ figures. I get it, I won't begrudge someone making money but these are the kinds of items that tend to get delayed or screwed up in some way that tarnishes the whole effort and to have that many of them ... it's not great. 

Finally there's the timeline: They state Spring 2027 to deliver final PDFs and Summer 2027 to ship the printed material. Well, I'd love that to pan out - but I wouldn't count on it. PDM has been running Deathbringer for people for years but now they're going to be putting it out for playtesting to backers and I suppose we will see how that goes. 

Now I don't want to seem all down on this - one of the things I do like about it that I haven't mentioned is that there is a definite point of view here. From the tone - which you can detect from the art alone I would say - to the philosophy of make it faster and make it more exciting and action-oriented - I like it when a game designer has a well-defined concept of what they want a game to do. I am excited to see this coming out and I will probably back it at some level and I will try running it for my crew with whatever version of the rules I can get ahold of. It looks like a lot of fun and I hope the whole thing goes well and in a year I can say "wow what a great effort  and a great game.

Mutants & Masterminds Campaign Catch-Up

 

The M&M campaign is still going, I have just been slow to post about it here. We have six sessions in the books and are about halfway through the Time of Crisis. I will say the system familiarity does start to come back faster as we play more so I'm feeling way less rusty in sessions 5 & 6 than I was in the first few. I am really enjoying it and I think my players are too.

I am also feeling way more proficient with Hero Lab. This has been helpful with both running the game and with helping my players tune up their characters and spend their power points. This is the only game where I use Hero Lab since the demise of our Pathfinder campaigns years ago so if we are not playing M&M the rust accumulates. Coming at it with fresher eyes I do see where some of the complaints about it come from as it is not a modern "app" - the way powers are listed is not really intuitive in-play and sussing out what a power actually does can be a little tricky if you have no descriptive text. I will also say the tool tips help in some circumstances yet add very little in others. A lot of these issues come from them presenting generic, standard game information not a customized description based on the powers and modifiers particular to this character, but I suspect that kind of dynamic information would have been tough to do when this version of Hero Lab was created. Regardless, I can work with it and it does help me run the game better than if I did not have it.

We have had to miss a few weekends so beyond a massive 40K effort (I'll discuss it in a separate post) I have been trying to catch up on other RPG books that have piled up over the last six months or so. It's a weird habit but I do tend to pick up multiple large rulebooks at once and then let them sit on the shelf for months while I read other things. Then I look at the shelf full of unread rules for different systems and decide I need to read them all at once. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I do not as the drive to dive into a game I am not running, especially a dedicated rulebook and not an adventure, dwindles. I've added the Tales of the Valiant Player Core 2, some of the D&D 5.5 books, a couple of Pathfinder 2E books, some stuff from Savage Worlds, and then various Kickstarter tomes. What I need to be doing is going back through some of my M&M 3E books to brush up on those - since that's what we are actually playing - and I have been ... some. At times I do feel pulled in so many directions that it's tough to focus in on something long enough to knock it out but I am working on them. 

On a final note the M&M 4th Edition Kickstarter did wrap up with over $300,000 taken in. I'd say that's an encouraging number. It is a reminder of how niche the whole superhero RPG market is - the million dollar kickstarters are big D&D-related projects or have a well-known author behind them. The Deadlands kickstarter running at the same time took in a similar amount so I suppose I like the niche games. M&M had twice as many backers for a very similar amount of money which is interesting. Maybe I can take a look at that in a future post. I'm happy these both funded. The downside is that I don't want to look at any more 4th edition M&M rules stuff as it causes edition bleed for me as I try to "expert up" on 3rd edition. When the physical books come out months from now and we are well into our campaign then it might be time to look again. 

Campaign reports will resume soon ...

Mutants & Masterminds - Converting Between Editions

 

A lot of the stretch goals with the new M&M Kickstarter are 4th edition conversions of 3rd edition adventures. I get why they are doing this - it's easy to do and they're already written so, sure, and you're getting them for free but they're only 6$ PDFs anyway so ... I don't know. 

Back to that "easy" part - how easy is it to convert something between editions of this game? Well ... most of the time it's pretty straightforward. One key item: the difficulty chart is the same for every edition of the game!

This one is taken from the 4th edition playtest document but it is the same for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and now 4th edition:

• 1st edition: Page 147
• 2nd edition: Page 7
• 3rd edition: Page 13 (Deluxe Hero's Handbook)
• 4th edition: Page 15 (Playtest Origin Edition)

Outside of combat and individual character powers that chart up there has the numbers you need and the amazing thing is that regardless of edition you don't have to update them! 

So you might go through the text, find anywhere that "DC" is mentioned, and check what it's referring to - typically a skill, possibly an ability. These do change from edition to edition but most of the time it's pretty obvious what you need to change to. A DC25 "Computers" check in a 2E adventure becomes a DC 25 "Technology" check in 3E or 4E. In 1E it would likely have been a Computers or Repair. In some editions the right "Expertise" skill is a good substitute, at least when I'm running. 

The abilities do change with every edition but they are always centered around the six D&D type abilities and they are on the standard d20 scale that we've been using for the last 25+ years, sometimes with a score, sometimes with just the modifier, but an 18 in 1st edition is still a +4 in 4th. 

Attacks and Damage work pretty consistently across editions so there's not usually much to worry about there.  

The area with the most effort required should be translating characters. Assuming we are talking about the NPCs from an adventure or some setting guide then it's not really that bad. The biggest thing here is the Powers - those change every edition, sometimes dramatically, from how they are built to how they work in-game. You might get a character with a complicated build that relies on mechanical tricks that don't translate to a different edition. If you want to stay consistent with what the character used to do then you may have to rebuild it from the ground up, possibly using a completely different power to achieve a similar effect. If you run into this a lot it could eat up some time but there are alternatives:

• Assuming it's an NPC villain of some kind, well, despite the edition change this guy's powers work like they did in the other version - here's his hit bonus with it, here's the target # to resist it, have at it! It's not the most elegant solution but sometimes it's the best solution and since the mechanics of the game system are so similar across editions it can still work. 
• Look at the general effect of what the character does in that edition - don't worry about all the tricky details and add-ons, just look at the main impact it has on the game. Find a power in your edition of choice that does something similar - it may not be as complicated, it may not be as flashy as the old version, but if it let's Think Tank mind control innocent bystanders then you're good even if it doesn't specifically account for some of those details. As you work through it in the new version you might find some new tricks that are still cool and fun for the GM to impose.
• Archetypes: I see Chimpanzoom has a writeup in 1st edition Time of Crisis. I see he has one in 2nd edition ToC. To run it in 3rd I could go back through one or both of those and try to re-create him as closely as possible ... or I could just grab the Speedster Archetype, maybe tweak it a little in some way to make him a little different, and run that instead. Remember that the mechanics give you the numbers but the way the character acts, speaks, and reacts are largely outside of those. You were going to have to decide on those anyway regardless of edition. Whether he has a 14 or a 15 Dodge isn't nearly as important as the personality and the look. 

These guys know ...

When translating also keep in mind that the points don't matter. It's good to have a Power Level in mind for your character - maybe it's the same as the other version, maybe it's not depending on what you want to do - but the points are more for PC's than NPCs. Archetypes are an incredibly useful tool for anything like this. 

So yes, it's not difficult to modify things to work in different editions with this game. That's part of why I'm a little disappointed with this part of the Kickstarter. The first four were all this kind of thing and there are two more down the road if it keeps going. The latest achieved goal is the Earth Prime Gazetteer which is at least not a simple update of an existing thing ... wait ...

Ah ... right. Now Steve Kenson has said they are revising the setting with this edition - the Freedom City setting specifically. That's probably smart after 20+ years of building it out and advancing the timeline so I don't have a problem with that plan and I'm looking forward to seeing what they do. Buuuut ... this is still an intro type document for the world, not a new version of the complete thing. So it's better than the adventures at least, to me, because it is going to cover some new ground. 

The next goal is a new character record folio. It's a big character sheet. Once a new builder is out these won't see much use and let's be honest here, "Character Sheet" as a crowdfunding stretch goal is ... well it might be a new low as far as effort required. These are things that are typically a free download on the company website or at DTRPG. No one should be particularly excited about this.

The final other type of stretch goal that we know about right now are Alternate Archetypes. Now I was excited about this when I saw the name as I was a huge fan of the Archetype Archives and Instant Superheroes in 2nd Edition that added new archetypes and more options to the existing ones. They were great for GMs and for players too. Well, it's not that. It's the archetypes in the game at PL8 and the other one is at PL12. I am assuming there will not be radical re-conceptualizing of each concept and that this will mainly be a math exercise. Well ... OK. I mean I can use them - the PL12 versions will make for handy drop-in villains but in Hero Lab for 3rd edition that's two clicks on "Scale Up" or "Scale Down" for the basics and then some tweaking on what else I want to enhance or downgrade. It's not a whole lot of effort if that's all that it is. 

So yeah, I love Mutants & Masterminds - I'm running it right now! I think the people working on it are good at what they do and I hope the KS hits a million dollars. I know there are constraints on what they can do right now with the Diamond situation. I'm just a little disappointed at the low effort on the stretch goals for this one. That said I am looking forward to the new edition even if I'm not going to run it until next year at least, after we get through a nice long run with 3rd which will no doubt end with another Crisis of some kind and turn things upside down for a new era and edition.

Mutants & Masterminds - New Edition Ups and Downs

 The Kickstarter appears to be going very well (over 1,000 backers, over 100K $ as I write this) which is a good thing for the game and its future and I am glad for that. 

It's a little weird that there are a fair number of questions that are asking if one can do various things in the game or will be included in the game that are already in 3E M&M so yes, I think it's safe to assume powers and options included in the current edition will be included in the new one. I'm guessing a lot of the people asking don't play the current game but I don't know. Since they announced the new edition a few months ago there have been all kinds of helpful suggestions made including things like "you should add in a hit point system" which ... yeah, I don't know. How has no one thought of that in the prior 20+ years of the system? "No hit points" is a feature of the game, not a miss that needs to be corrected.

That does lead into another point I see made: "It's easy for D&D players to learn because it uses a d20 for everything like combat and skill checks". That is, in my experience, really not the case. Sure, the Abilities are mostly similar, skill checks and hit rolls are familiar, but for people coming over from D&D 5E there are 3 massive hills to climb:

• Power Level in M&M is not the same as Levels in D&D. They're just not, experience points do not work the same way and "levelling" is just not a thing here, or in most superhero games. This is a pretty big shift. I wouldn't change it, it's just a thing new players have to work through.
• Powers and the construction thereof just blow people's minds. It's not intuitive if you're coming over from D&D. Explaining effects-based power design is a challenge and while many people can pick it up quickly once you've walked them through it using known examples of superheroes there are a lot of people that have a really hard time making that jump. A lot of combat ability comes from either the "Damage" effect or the "Affliction" effect and while they are extremely flexible getting this through to a new player is a lot tougher than sword/bow/axe/magic missile. 
• Finally there is the damage system: it's a huge change from any version of D&D and a lot of D&D-only players hate it as soon as they see it. Some will come around if you can get them to persevere, but in my experience it is the single biggest deal-breaker for new recruits. I would never want them to change it, but it is the biggest obstacle I see. Sometimes that's just the way it is. It's a different game, parts of it are going to work differently, and that's a good thing, not a negative. Not everything needs to use the same mechanics. 
  (It's also very similar to Savage Worlds' damage system and between the two I've played enough that I like them better than hit points for a lot of games but it's an issue for new players there too.)

Other regular requests include a new character creator and a VTT. I agree on the character creator - it makes things a lot easier for the GM to track, build, and update. The VTT ... well, sure, but while maps are still useful in a superhero game tactical grid maps are ... less so. I am using the combat manager option from Hero Lab quite a bit in our game but that's mainly because I can see all the opposition's powers and drop conditions on everyone with a click here and a click there. If a VTT module includes something like that then I'm more interested. If someone thinks they're going to get special effects like visuals and sound effects for everything you can think up for a superhero game I just don't see that happening quickly and a partial effort is just going to be frustrating. 

How about we let them get the core book out the door before we start piling on the requests? I mean I am not really looking forward to having all of those wonderful 3E books (and Hero Lab files) pushed into the "old category" anytime soon so no need to rush this. Take your time, make it good, minimize the errata, get it out, and I'm sure the support and the tools will come.

Mutants & Masterminds 4th Edition Kickstarter is Up and Running

 

Well it's here and you can see it here if you haven't already. They hit their goal in about 6 hours yesterday so that's good and I'm hoping this is one of those realistic goals for what it would take to actually get it done and not a lowball goal like we see sometimes in this arena. I'm wishing them all the success in the world with this - and yes I did jump in on it - as I'd  like to see Green Ronin get a win right now, particularly with what I would say is the best-supported superhero RPG of the last two decades. If you like superhero roleplaying I hope you will take a look.

I do have a few concerns here. 

Personally I've cut back my crowdfunding participation as publisher after publisher puts everything out as a funding campaign. Some of them are not good at it and that spills over, fair or not, into the whole system. I've only done one other recently and that was for the new version of Apocalypse World as I want to see what the creators of it do with that whole thing. I see things like the Savage Worlds team having something like 5 of them in-flight now at various stages and I wonder how long that kind of thing can continue. 

• Crowdfunding just feels less awesome than it did ten years ago, for whatever reason. I hope that's just a me thing  and doesn't limit or cap off GR's ultimate success here. 
• In the fall of 2022 they ran a Kickstarter to reprint some of the core books of the M&M 3E line and it barely made the goal - less than half of what they've achieved in a day with this effort - and made zero stretch goals. Now that was a reprint of a known game, not a new edition, so it's not exactly the same thing, and they have done much better this time already, but I do still wonder how many of us are there out there ready to jump on a major superhero game line update? They're doing well but as I write this it's less than 1000 backers. Are we so few?

Speaking of stretch goals ... these are weird. Those first four are 4E updates of some 3E adventures that have come out over the last 5 years or so. Then we get to what looks like an update of  Atlas of Earth Prime but I'm going to guess a limited version, not the full book? I think these are good stretch goals in the sense that they are updates of things that already exist (and so easy to make) but I have to say they aren't exactly inspiring ... at least to me. There's not a lot of "new" here. Stretch goals rarely make any difference to me as to whether I'm going to jump on board something but I've seen some cool ones and these just seem kind of routine? Expected? How about a new villain team, or some exotic new location? I know 3E has a ton of supplements so that any general thing has probably already been covered in one of the books we have but that's why I was thinking something new would be good - show us there are frontiers yet to be explored with this system and not just updates or rehashes of things we already have!

How about "The Book of Omega: The Ultimate Guide to the Ultimate Villain"? We have pieces and parts scattered around different books but let's see an updated, comprehensive work on the guy who killed Centurion.

Alright so there's my negativity addressed and some ideas on how to improve it from my point of view. This team has been making it work for over twenty years at this point so they probably don't need my two cents but I've been right there alongside them and I'd like that to continue for a good long time. I'm looking forward to seeing where this new effort takes us.

Kickstarter Catch-Up: 2023

 

I made a post in April that talked about Kickstarters I had backed in 2023 and how those had gone. Now that we are nearing the end of 2025 I thought I ought to follow up on that and share some updates. Here is the list from that earlier post:

For 2023 here's what I backed in rough chronological order:

• Cities Without Number - Sine Nomine cyberpunk (Hardcover Book)
• Battletech Mercenaries - Their third big boxed set (Boxed Set)
• Pew Pew No Disintigrations - Fainting Goat's light RPG of space bounty hunters (Softcover Book)
• Stickman Battlegrounds - a card game of fighting stick figures (Card Game)
• Tome of Essential Horrors - OSE monster book from Necromancer Games (Hardcover Book)
• Comic Crawl Classics - superhero game based on DCC (Softcover Book)
• Tales of the Valiant - alternate 5E rules (Hardcover Book x2)
• Dolmenwood - OSR game and setting from the OSE people (Boxed Set)
• Dragonslayer - OSR game from Greg Gillespie of Barrowmaze, etc. (Hardcover Book)
• Worlds Without Number (Reprint) - Sine Nomine fantasy (Hardcover Book)
• Deadlands Night Train - An update of a classic Deadlands adventure (Boxed Set)
• MicroDungeons Halloween - a set of small 5E adventures (PDF only)
• Necessary Evil - an update to the classic campaign run through Pinnacle's "Game Changer" (Boxed Set)
• Old School Tactical Vol IV Italian Theater - An expansion for one of my favorite wargames
• Fever Swamp - An OSR big adventure (Boxed Set)
• Scientific Barbarian Magazine #6 - An ongoing supplement series for MCC (Softcover Book)
• Adventurer Conqueror King 2E - An update of an OSR game I liked a lot (Hardcover Books)
• Reaper Dungeon Dwellers - Reaper Miniatures' OSR RPG rules (Boxed Set)
• How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox - A supplement on D&D style fantasy campaign building (Softcover Book)
• Dungeon Domains Riven Catacombs - another set of small adventures (PDF only)

Bold means I had received it when I posted, italics means I had not. Progress since that post?

• Dolmenwood 
• Fever Swamp
• Scientific Barbarian Magazine #6
• Adventurer Conqueror King 2E 
• Reaper Dungeon Dwellers 

So out of 20 projects I backed that year 15 had come in when I posted about them. Out of the remaining 5 ... 2 have come in since: 

• ACK 2E arrived pretty quickly after that post so it was about six months later than its Estimated Delivery of November 2024. 
• Dolmenwood arrived ... last week. So more than a year after its Estimated Delivery of September 2024. Beware KS campaigns for games with a lot of extra trinkets added on that have nothing to do with the game - they do not help with completion.

What about the other three?

Fever Swamp - This has just been a fulfillment disaster netting out to "I have received nothing" when it was supposed to deliver in March 2024. I have zero trust in the Melsonian Arts team now and I doubt I will ever see what I pledged for with them.

I mean, it looked like fun ...

Scientific Barbarian Magazine #6 - Originally supposed to deliver in February 2024. Yeah. Here is a screenshot of one of the three most recent Updates:

So in April it was, in the creator's words in this update, "99.5% complete".

In May we got an update that Tariffs were not going to be an issue for this campaign, dispelling one of 2025's great Kickstarter bugaboos for this effort at least. Of course if it had fulfilled anywhere close to it's original promise, say within a year, they wouldn't have been an issue anyway.

In September we got an update - the most recent update as of this writing - that the creator had a health issue that started back around the time fulfillment was originally supposed to begin and this was why he had a) been unable to finish the work and b) gone silent for 4 months. He did mention that he was on the mend and had returned to part-time work. 

Since September we have heard nothing.  It's incredibly disappointing as I have multiple Jim Wampler books on my shelf and this was the sixth issue of an ongoing product line so I figured there was no real risk here. Having missed the prior issues I went ahead and jumped in for the first 5 as well and even though those 5 exist and some of us signed up for Print & PDF versions of all of them none of them have been sent out, not even PDF's of the first 5 issues.

Once it finally fulfills - if it ever does - I won't be doing any more Kickstarter/BackerKit/Pre-Ordering from Jim and Mudpuppy Games.

Title does not lie ...

Reaper Dungeon Dwellers - Estimated delivery July 2024. The campaign mentioned their experience and success on prior Kickstarters and seemed legit because I was very aware of those and while there were some delays they did seem to come through in the end. I knew that delivery date was probably too optimistic but how off would it be? Well ... we still don't know. At least 18 months now and this is from people who know what they are doing!

I wrote about the major issues on the prior post. Since then they have been posting updates at least monthly, so that's something, The content of those updates has been debatable. An update in September: At this point, all books are near the finish line, with tables of contents to be added and just some cleaning up to do. All books will be printer-ready within the next 1-2 weeks at the most. An update at the end of November: Books are at the printer! Just waiting on a file check from them to see if we have any problems (fingers crossed).
In between we had updates about ReaperCon and how they would have pre-print samples to see if you were going to their in-house convention. They also hoped to have the books at the printer by the end of August which clearly didn't happen.

The miniatures do appear to be on track so that's a plus. I mean they're still way late but Reaper is a miniature company so I would expect them to have a handle on that part at least. The major stumbling block here appears to be the rules/books themselves.

As you may have picked up I have really soured on this one. Reaper is a local company to DFW, they've been around for a long time now and have had a fairly decent reputation but this whole effort has been just so poorly executed that I have zero interest in any future crowdfunding/pre-order efforts from them. 

Tales of the Valiant Kickstarter for Player's Guide 2

 

Well they have finally gotten around to a new book of major interest. I know monster books are a Kobold Press signature but I was hoping the first add-on to the line would be a character supplement, not a monster book, but at least now that is being corrected.

The preview PDF looks pretty interesting:

• More subclasses - I mean, this was pretty much a given and I would say necessary given the ridiculous number of subclasses in 5E. It looks like we are getting at least 3 new ones per class giving everyone 5 subs per class which should be enough variety to keep multiple campaigns fresh for a long time. Good.
• More Talents - good, they need to expand this area to some degree
• More Boons - this is an area I assumed they would expand in my initial review and I am glad to see it happening.
• Base building - My players are specifically interested in this as they are contemplating building a base in or near Hommlet (yes possibly pushing Rufus and Burne aside) and so this has direct relevance to what they are doing in-game. This is also a potential good outlet for all of the gold coming out of their temple-trashing expeditions so yes, please - bring it on.
•  New Classes: looks like we are getting the Theurge, the Vanguard, and the Witch. I haven't seen much about the Theurge yet but from one of their other 5E magic books:
•  "... the new Theurge class, an Intelligence-based spellcasting class capable of casting both cleric and wizard spells!" and I believe that was the point of the class going back to the 3E Mystic Theurge so sure, OK. Will this mean it gets to pick from both the Arcane and Divine lists? That's a lot of flexibility if so.
• Looks like the Witch is going to be the new second Wyrd caster which is fine - might as well even that out. I don't have a Warlock in my campaign so I don't have much experience with those spells.
• The Vanguard is the most interesting to me - a ToV take on the 4E Warlord, a martial leader/support type character. I had one of these in my 4E campaign and it was a real eye-opener. I've hoped we would get one of these for some newer version of D&D and it looks like we finally might be there. There was a lot of granting another character a free move or a free attack with the 4E version and it looks like that is continuing here. The banner thing also feels a lot like the Pathfinder 1E Cavalier which had a similar ability so this is definitely one I will be watching.

So yes I'll be backing this one and hoping for an early draft of the thing so we can use it in the campaign this year. We might finish out the Temple with just the existing material then if we move onto a new adventure open it up to the new stuff. Not sure and it doesn't really matter until it's available in some form anyway but we will be crossing our fingers here.

Kickstarters These Days - The 2023 Report

 

In 2023 I backed 20 Kickstarters/BackerKit efforts by game companies. Some were bigger, some were smaller, but all of them were things I was interested in enough to lay some money down in advance. Most of the time it works out. In fact it almost always works out ... eventually. There are hazards however and some red flags that can inform decisions in advance. I've been doing Kickstarters since 2013 so I've seen some ups and some downs. Since it doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon I thought I would walk through these last two years and present my thoughts on how my tabletop game crowdfunding experience has gone lately. 

For 2023 here's what I backed in rough chronological order:

• Cities Without Number - Sine Nomine cyberpunk (Hardcover Book)
• Battletech Mercenaries - Their third big boxed set (Boxed Set)
• Pew Pew No Disintigrations - Fainting Goat's light RPG of space bounty hunters (Softcover Book)
• Stickman Battlegrounds - a card game of fighting stick figures (Card Game)
• Tome of Essential Horrors - OSE monster book from Necromancer Games (Hardcover Book)
• Comic Crawl Classics - superhero game based on DCC (Softcover Book)
• Tales of the Valiant - alternate 5E rules (Hardcover Book x2)
• Dolmenwood - OSR game and setting from the OSE people (Boxed Set)
• Dragonslayer - OSR game from Greg Gillespie of Barrowmaze, etc. (Hardcover Book)
• Worlds Without Number (Reprint) - Sine Nomine fantasy (Hardcover Book)
• Deadlands Night Train - An update of a classic Deadlands adventure (Boxed Set)
• MicroDungeons Halloween - a set of small 5E adventures (PDF only)
• Necessary Evil - an update to the classic campaign run through Pinnacle's "Game Changer" (Boxed Set)
• Old School Tactical Vol IV Italian Theater - An expansion for one of my favorite wargames
• Fever Swamp - An OSR big adventure (Boxed Set)
• Scientific Barbarian Magazine #6 - An ongoing supplement series for MCC (Softcover Book)
• Adventurer Conqueror King 2E - An update of an OSR game I liked a lot (Hardcover Books)
• Reaper Dungeon Dwellers - Reaper Miniatures' OSR RPG rules (Boxed Set)
• How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox - A supplement on D&D style fantasy campaign building (Softcover Book)
• Dungeon Domains Riven Catacombs - another set of small adventures (PDF only)

I included some non-RPG games in there to show how some other options have gone in comparison. Bold means I have it in hand. Italics means I do not have it yet. More on that in a minute.

First up a few things about me we can draw from this:

1. I have 7 of these that are directly related to some kind of D&D style game. Sure. That's a lot of what we play here.
2. I do tend to be more interested in new things from people I already know. Two of them are Sine Nomine, 1 Necromancer, 1 Greg Gillespie, ACKS 2E, OST v4, 2 Pinnacle, 1 from Fainting Goat, 1 from Jim Wampler for MCC - these are all things I have some version of already or companies/people I have done business with before and I am confident they will deliver. There is a risk in any crowdfunding endeavor and track record matters.
3. Some of these were fairly pricey as far as gaming items. ACKS, Dolmenwood, and OST v4 were all up there in the $200 range with 3 others in the $100 and while I get the "it's not a preorder" clause I am expecting to get something for my money - these aren't charities and I am not making a donation.

A couple of kudos:

• Kevin Crawford's Sine Nomine campaigns are the gold standard for RPG Kickstarters. he delivers on-time-every-time and the books are great games and tool kits for running a campaign in a given genre even if you use a different set of rules.  One of the ways he does this is by limiting stretch goals. His runs are typically one nice hardcover book with maybe a supplement of some kind - one supplement. No miniatures, no bags or t-shirts or mousepads, no multitude of adventures that need to be written by freelancers ... he is a one-man operation who runs focused consistently successful crowdfunding campaigns and more people running their own should look to his as an example. He is in the "I will back anything he starts up" club and that's a pretty small group for me.
• Pinnacle - the Savage Worlds people - continue to knock them out like clockwork. I admit I am not really a fan of crowdfunding almost every book they release but they do get them out consistently and without drama so they are doing a good job. I don't back everything they do because they do some licenses or genres I don't care about but if it looks interesting I am in.
• If you're interested in board wargames the Old School Tactical team (Flying Pig Games) gets these out as promised and pretty much on-time and also drama free. They make big, nice games and have several lines going from WW2 to Vietnam to ACW to an occasional foray into SF or alternate history. 

The less happy stories:

• Dolmenwood: Estimated delivery date Sept 2024. Considering it funded in Sept 2023 that was a year to get this one out. Exalted Funeral, the creator, had been doing Kickstarters for 4 years and had at least ten prior projects under their belts including Old School Essentials which is one of the big dogs of the OSR scene. So this is not a case of someone new to the process being overwhelmed by success. No, this is a case of too many add-ons. Extra books. Maps.  Dice. Miniatures. A record album. Some of the main books were described as 99.9% complete in March of 2024. They didn't even start printing the books until November of 2024. 
  
  Now sure, the PDFs have been available in draft from since early on and final - as much as an RPG PDF gets to be final - since late last year. But I didn't pay what I paid for PDFs - I paid for books and those are still not here 6 months after the projected date. 
  
  The good news is that according to the latest update they are shipping the things to the U.S. now - the containers are on their way at least. So maybe by June we will have this stuff in hand. So yes, many of those "estimated dates" are simply anchors of potential disappointment. People have to keep waiting, updates become less frequent, people get frustrated, companies start to get defensive - it's a fairly common story. This team has done a good job of keeping their cool but it has still dragged out a long time.
  
  
  

• Adventurer Conqueror King 2E: Estimated Delivery November 2024. I am not as upset with this one as shipping has begun on it and so it will not be as late as Dolmenwood. There were not a lot of add-ons here though the one obvious indulgence - a wooden slipcase at the higher pledge levels - did hit a snag late when it was cut to the wrong size. Extras that add nothing to the actual game are just a hazard waiting to be tripped. This one still took too long.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Reaper Dungeon Dwellers: Funded November 2023. Estimated delivery July 2024. That was probably way too ambitious but a) it was implied that the rules were already written in some form as they were showing beta playtest videos and b) IT'S REAPER! They do huge miniatures kick starters every year! Well even if they've gone well in the past these things can fail. Let's play Kickstarter Bingo:
• Illnesses? Check.
• Death in the family? Check.
• Facilities change? (Warehouse or factory or something)Check.
• Other obligations? (ReaperCon) Check.
• Prior Kickstarter Entanglements? (Had to finish shipping Bones 6) Check.
• Had too much material so the books got bigger? Check.
  
  The only thing missing there is "Depression" which comes up on a remarkably high number of Kickstarters. Thank goodness for that at least. 

 The March 21st, 2025 update declares the Players Book "done". That's good. Considering that July 2024 original date it really should be. 

Then it mentions work to be done on the adventure(s), the GM Book, the Monster Book, some other text they want to include ... and then they mention hoping to get it all out the door by the end of the month. March, presumably. 

At some point you need to stop digging. Stop writing new material, stop expanding the adventure, stop the proofreading cycle and ship it! 

Anyway that's probably enough for today. We can take a look at 2024 in another post. Please feel free to share your KS war stories if you're so inclined.

One of the winners!

 

 

Kickstarter for D6 System Second Edition

 

Link is here if you're interested. I'm a fan of these mechanics and have been for a long time. It's been a while since I ran it but it's always on the list. Primarily this is because of Star Wars for me and I suspect for most other people that would care about a new edition of these rules but I can totally see it usable for a variety of campaigns. Any pulp-ish type game would be a decent enough fit. Savage Worlds fills a lot of this niche for me but a cleaned up and refreshed set of rules could mix in nicely.

As far as that Second Edition part I'll let their own words cover it:

Why "2e"?

Wow, that's a good question. When we were talking with WEG regarding this project, for a long time, we struggled with the name. D6 System books often were just defined by "eras" or the systems they supported. 

Finally, we realized that even though numerous iterations and previous publications had existed, few (or none, really) of them had consistently presented themselves as an "edition", but more as an evolution or iteration on previous releases. 

Together, the teams felt that calling this corebook "2e" would mark a new era in the game's publishing line, and would help to codify and communicate clearly where we are aiming to take the game line in the future, while also using language that existed in the tabletop rpg spaces common vernacular. 

Works for me!

There is about a week left for the KS as I post this so if you're interested give it a look! I have no vested interest or connection to these people - I just like the prior versions of the game in its best-known incarnation.

Rifts Savage Worlds Kickstarter - Atlantis!

 

Well it's time for another Savage Worlds Kickstarter, in fact another Rifts Savage Worlds Kickstarter. The first run was in 2016, then another one in 2019 to expand the books with Magic, Coalition, and regional stuff books, plus an upgrade of the original to the new Adventure edition of Savage Worlds. 

This time it's for Atlantis for this version of Rifts. I always thought Atlantis was one of the cooler areas of Rifts and one of the cooler books for it as well - magic items, races, tattoo magic, plus all of the worldbuilding and backstory that came along with it ... it was a very strong early entry in making Rifts Rifts. 

Now I never did much with it in my games as far as the region. It seemed horrifically dangerous for most characters to approach, much less enter, sort of like going to the Nine Hells in a D&D game. It was more an "aspirational" destination than a likely one at low to medium levels. With the Savage Worlds version of the game levelling the playing field a bit I can see where it might actually get used at some point. 

The short version is that the original Atlanteans look very much like humans but they were driven out or enslaved when the Splugorth invaded a long time ago.  The city magically TARDIS-d out when magic diminshed on Earth but it returned when the rifts opened up and magic flooded the world again. This is one of the major evil powers of the setting so it's a dangerous place but there is a sort of underground rebellion of True Atlanteans active there as well. Oh and it's also full of dragons. 

It's awesome but deadly. I've used Atlantean slavers several times as a campaign opener so maybe next time they won't go somewhere else - maybe they will go back to the big island.

The good news is that Pinnacle knows how to run a Kickstarter and I am absolutely sure this one will run smoothly and deliver what it promises pretty much on time. 

The part that bothers me a bit is that Pinnacle has a ridiculous amount of KS experience because pretty much everything they publish these days is done via Kickstarter. I know I know, it's rough for small publishers out there these days and doing it this way makes sense. Doesn't it seem like today, though, with 5E doing this record business for several years now, that the RPG market should be better? There were a ton of smaller publishers in the 80's and 90's and early 2000's who supported game lines for years before crowdfunding ... shouldn't it be easier now? Shouldn't an experienced, respected, well-liked company be able to sustain their main game line without having to crowdfund?

Who knows, maybe they could but they know this is just better - more predictable at least. 

The downside of doing it this way is that you can't just buy a $30 book like you can with many other games. No, you are going to get the book, some character cards, and a poster map. Now the basic digital-only version is pretty reasonable but if you just want a printed Savage Rifts Atlantis Book you're in for the $45 package. If that's all you want your best bet is to wait until after the campaign, whenever it's printed and shipped and you can buy it at the FLGS or online for the cover price or less. 

The other stuff in this campaign include a set of cardboard stand-up pawns, like Pathfinder pawns apparently, and a couple of map packs along with the book and the cards and the poster map. It's all cool stuff, it's just the forced bundling that itches just a bit and granted that is a temporary state that will only last until it's all released separately, likely early next year given what they are saying on the KS page.  

So yes, I will probably back it at some level - Rifts is a great setting and Savage Worlds is a great set of rules that works well for it. I like a ton of what Pinnacle does so I try to support them directly like this when they make something I like. If you have some similar inclinations then go check this one out. 

 

Terminator RPG

 

So there's a kickstarter running right now for a Terminator RPG. It is past its goal so it should happen but it got me thinking about the whole concept. I was playing RPGs for years before the first movie and I don't remember a Terminator RPG before now  - how has it taken this long for someone to make a game out of this concept and universe?

First up, I have loved the movies since the beginning - the concept, the look, the hows and the what-if's ... it's a great idea. Loved the first and the second, really liked the third (and it took them around 20 years just to make 3), was not as big a fan of the 4th, was OK with the 5th though it had some problems, and I'm roughly ok with the 6th though it has some problems as well. There was a TV series too and it was interesting.

Now it appears they only have the rights to the first movie and the ... comic books? In the comments they mention that each of the movies is a separate license which probably explains why no one has tried this before. Sure the first movie sets it all up but for an ongoing RPG not being able to use the other 5 movies seems pretty limiting. I've never read the comic books so I have no idea where they take the story and I bet most of the people interested in the game haven't either. That said I like the approach:

In ‘The Terminator RPG’, you play resistance fighters struggling against the machine onslaught of Skynet in an alternative and post-apocalyptic version of today—the once "far future" of the 2020s. You can take the role of rebel time travellers sent back to various points in time to stop Skynet from altering history. You can even play natives of any historical time period, targeted by Terminators and trying to stay alive as a future hell is unleashed around you. 

The book is designed as a toolbox to allow the Director to create their own campaigns or one-shots, including detailed multipage campaign arcs, campaign seeds, mini-missions, NPCs, weapons, detailed locations, and enemy characters.

You have the option to play either pre-generated characters or to create your own—tailored to your preferences, weapon choices, and role within your team. If your character is killed, a new one can be brought in from the future, past, or present. That new character can be many things—including even an alternate you from a divergent timeline.

They are using their own in-house system which I have not read or played but I'd bet it will be perfectly fine if they're betting on it for a very visible game like this. 

Thinking about what I would actually run with this, well, I think it would be tough to run a long term campaign here. Between the one-way time travel, the lethality of the terminators, and the high-stakes nature of the source material - I mean, they either kill Sarah Conner or they don't - I would be aiming for a limited run, finite goals type of campaign. Something like a plot-point campaign in many of the Savage Worlds books and even there I'd be aiming for 6-12 "chapters" that would not take all that long to play through. 

Think about the basic scenario: Skynet sends a terminator (or three) back to Time Period X to eliminate someone important to the future. Are the players playing resistance fighters who are also making that one-way trip back? Are they playing "natives" to the destination time period? Does a mix of the two make sense?  

At this point it effectively becomes a Superhero scenario: The villain has a plan, the heroes must become aware of this plan, figure out the specific goals or targets, then they must undertake various actions to stop it. Unlike a superhero campaign though, once you stop it, that's pretty much the game. I suppose you could come up with some kind of Torchwood-style organization to deal with future time-traveling threats but that seems out of step with the source material where it's left to the crazy people and their therapists to watch for a return.

This is why I think it's best as a limited campaign and while you could play through a few different incursions - as happens with the movies -  I don't know how many times your players are going to want to play Man vs. Machine. You could certainly change up the time periods and the scenarios to keep it interesting ...

• A Terminator drops into Germany in 1945. How does the basic scenario change in an active warzone? Plus, maybe this time he needs to keep a particular scientist -alive- to ensure the future goes a certain way. Could give your party a nice moral dilemma.
• Maybe Skynet decides someone's grandfather is a better target and drops a cybernetic Austrian into the 1960's ... in Vegas ... and the target is a celebrity ... or a mob boss ...
• Change up the location and make it more of a fish in a barrel scenario by having a T-whatever target someone on a cruise ship. Maybe it comes on board at one of the stops, or maybe your players think they are playing an entirely different kind of game until they find a spherical section of the ship is missing and things start to get dangerous ...
  

Those are just a few ideas for running something like the traditional Terminator movie scenario. 

I think a more practical use in a lot of ways is dropping a T-scenario into another game. 

• One night the Super-base sensors pick up a temporal disturbance downtown and investigating heroes find a naked human fleeing the scene ...
• Hanging out at a club in Night City gets a lot more interesting when a big guy walks in and triggers all of the security scanners then tosses the bouncers aside with ease ...
• A group of people who normally wear primary-colored uniforms are doing some field research on the life of an important scientist via the Guardian of Forever when BLAM! A new mission to preserve the timeline ensues. 

I'm mostly ignoring the ridiculous 80s-centric crossovers you could have here too with Robocop, Predator, Transformers, GI Joe, and all of that ... then throw in a Stargate for good measure. I mean, once you make time travel a thing you open up a lot of possibilities.

The final main way I could see to running a Terminator campaign is the one where you might be able to do a long-term game: Human Resistance Wars. It's pretty much Twilight 2000 with robots ... shiny killer robots ... with lasers ...

Anyway I felt a need to ponder and ramble on this topic - more to come. 

Sentinel Comics RPG Kickstarter

A lot of you probably already know about this but just in case the RPG based on the Sentinels of the Multiverse card game has a kickstarter that wraps up in a little more than a week. The campaign is here and it looks pretty good to me.

There are a couple of things I really liked about the original card game:

• Each hero has a set deck and expansions add new heroes and villains, not new cards for existing ones. So it's expandable but it's not collectible. This keeps it a "game" and not a "hobby" - or an "investment".
• It's based on a fictional comic book universe including a fictional history of the comic book company and it ups and downs over the years.
• It's a cooperative game. You team up with the other players to defeat a villain who runs off of his own deck. So everybody can win but it doesn't feel like a "gimmie" game - everybody can lose too.

The thing I like about the RPG (having played the starter kit last year) is that it's an evolution of the Marvel Heroic / Cortex+ system with more tightly defined mechanics. I've played multiple sessions of the Marvel game and had one try-out session with the starter kit and it went well as the players got familiar with the mechanics.

Here's a pretty thorough review of the Starter Kit that explains some of the mechanics.

Anyway it looks like fun and I thought I would help get the word out.

Steve Jackson Games - Part 2

Steve Jackson Games recently put out their annual report to stakeholders and I saw some things I think are problems. Yesterday I talked about the problems I see with GURPS. Today let's talk about Kickstarters. From the report:

The 2012 Ogre Kickstarter project is still not completed. We made big steps forward on all of the various commitments, but we're coming up on five years after the project closed, and we are still sinking time into the project. The good news, though, is that we're seeing real progress; several outstanding pieces of the project are finally coming to a close. Whew.

Wait, what? Five years on and they still haven't finished this thing? Damn! This is the kind of mistake that hurts a company's reputation, especially when they plan to keep doing other kickstarters! Clearly that project was beyond their capabilities to handle. I would add "at that time" but they are still struggling to get it done from what I see there. I'm glad they didn't just walk away like some other problematic Kickstarters have seen but this is still not a good situation.

Their KS profile shows 5 projects (oldest to newest):

• Ogre
• Car Wars Arenas
• GURPS Dungeon Fantasy
• Ogre Miniatures - Set One
• Munchkin Shakespeare

(note: I did not back any of these)

From the GDF "Risks" section:

Risks and challenges

The greatest risk of all is completing the artwork, layout, and manufacturing of the game. The text for the box set is 100% complete, and artwork and layout have started, but there are always opportunities for things to go sideways during a creative project.

None of the stretch goal PDFs have been written yet, because whether we even get to do them depends on you! However, we've produced high-quality PDFs every month for years, and we feel confident in our ability to deliver on our stretch-goal promises in a timely manner.

We believe we have taken all of the steps necessary to bring the game to completion and ship on schedule. Our last Kickstarter project -- Car Wars Arenas in 2015 -- delivered on schedule, and we think this game will also ship on time. As always, we will update backers throughout the entire process and deliver as close to on time as possible.

First paragraph, fine.

Second paragraph - that was a red flag to me because the KS projects that seem to do the best are the ones where the material is written and basically what it needs is editing and art. Once you make those stretch goals that stuff becomes a commitment  just like the core stuff and stretch goals are where a lot of KS efforts hit the rocks.

Third paragraph - I think there's a fine line between "Marketing" and "Deception" when you mention that your last project went great even as you're still trying to finish the one from before that - three years before that! I don't like that at all.

Now from the report:

Ogre Miniatures Set One - This expansion to the new Ogre Sixth Edition game was another Kickstarter project last year, and we've again caused delays that have pushed the release back later than we had planned. The problems here are less disruptive to our schedule than Dungeon Fantasy's ongoing "Destroy all deadlines" crawl to the finish line, but the lateness of the project is a source of frustration and many sleepless nights. Lesson learned: Finish all CAD work and miniatures tooling before launching any more Kickstarter projects involving minis. This is risky -- what if a project fails to fund? -- but it is worth taking the risk.

Really? There's more:

Dungeon Fantasy - Our Kickstarter project to create a GURPS introductory box set has run into more troubles and derailments than we would like. A game that was meant to go to the printer before the end of 2016 is still clogging our pipeline and causing constant distractions. The project was not as far along in the process as it should have been, and miscommunication regarding the game components ballooned our costs. At the moment, barring a miracle, what would have been a profitable project is rapidly turning into a loss. This is becoming an ongoing problem for GURPS projects (see Discworld and Mars Attacks, below, under Failures).

Sheesh. I like these guys. I've bought a lot of games from them. Besides all of my Car Wars, Ogre, and GURPS stuff there are at least 7 different Munchkin games floating around the house. That said this is not a great place to be. Out of your first 4 Kickstarter projects (over a span of 4 years) three of them have had problems and you are still working to complete them! How is that smart? Why do you keep doing it? Why are you making these same mistakes? How much is this impacting your non-crowdfunded projects? And what about that "the core text is 100% complete" yet somehow "the project was not as far along in the process as it should have been". That's not good.

They keep talking about doing a Kickstarter for the new edition of Car Wars when it's ready and I would normally be an hour one backer on that but now after looking thru all of this ... I don't know if I can. I think my first question will be "are you done with the Ogre Kickstarter from 2012 yet?" and the answer will have a big impact on what I do.

I've been worried about other companies biting off more than they could chew with multiple open Kickstarters, mainly Pinnacle. They like to run several Kickstarters a year but they haven't fallen behind on any that I've been a part of or that I have heard of and they seem to have the whole thing figured out.  That said I think it is a huge risk for a small company to have multiple simultaneous unfinished Kickstarters in play. The failure of one could cascade into the others as your talent is exhausted and it could impact cash flow severely, not to mention your reputation.

Business-wise a Kickstarter is an unusual situation in that you're getting paid for the product before creating, printing, and shipping it. That helps with cash flow but it does mean you have a fixed pile of money associated with the project. If costs go up, you're eating into the margins and you have zero recourse like you would with a more traditional project - say, raising the price or just cancelling it altogether because it's not economically viable given the costs. No, once you've funded, you have committed and you have to produce it or else face the lovely scenario of refunding 100% of what people paid with only 90% of the funding - KS keeps their cut regardless of your ability to produce.

So I am worried about one of my favorite game companies. One reason they might keep doing the KS thing is that their structure has become dependent on it. I hope that's not the case but I wonder about it. That would be bad, because if they keep overloading themselves and running into delays and ongoing problems then at some point people are going to stop spending money on them and the whole thing will fail. I hope that doesn't happen. I also hope they don't start any more KS efforts until the ones they have are complete.

They do end the report on what I think is an appropriately somber note:

  A Brutal Year

We expect 2017 to be a difficult time for our team. We must complete our Kickstarter commitments; every day that the Dungeon Fantasy and Ogre projects run late is another day of stress for all of us in the office. (Fortunately, our team has the Munchkin Shakespeare project humming along wonderfully, and there's a strong chance that the project will deliver on schedule.) We will get through the year, we will complete the projects that are weighing us down, and we will do all we can to close 2017 on a high note and set everything up to make 2018 a year that makes us proud.

I hope they do, I hope 2017 is the year this sh*t stops, they clean things up, and set the company up for a solid 2018. We don't want to lose you, and we don't want to see your name tarnished! Please set things in order and lets move on.