I see a few new Kickstarters of interest popping up so I thought I would share them here.
I thought 13th Age had some interesting ideas but I admit I've never run it or played it because it was always squeezed out by something else. I like it but I couldn't get a consensus to run it at the table. Now it's been a while since we've had a fantasy game as our main thing and with a shiny new edition coming along it might be time to finally give it a chance.
Some of my earlier takes on the system are here and here. How has it been over a decade since I wrote those?
The most significant line from the publisher link above is that "The Kickstarter campaign begins on May 7th and runs until June 6th." if you are interested.
The article on ENWorld mentions a coming Kickstarter campaign and discusses the plans for the game in some detail. It sounds like a good approach and it is good to see someone making an effort to get this wonderful system back in print and in the public eye. It's a legendary system that's been left by the side of the road for years in my opinion.
I'll say the same thing I've said for a while now - a generic system needs a compelling setting to really make it stick, both as a draw to new players and as an example of what can be done with the game. Savage Worlds has this with Deadlands and a fistful of additional options from Pathfinder to Rifts to Necessary Evil to 50 Fathoms and has been thriving for the last decade. I feel that d6 as a system should be doing at least as well but its two best settings were licensed and when the license ran out the game just died. I know they tried to make it generic in the early 2000's but it felt directionless and just never took off. Honestly it was probably too soon because most people knew it as the Star Wars system as that's what it had been for more than a decade. Now maybe they have a chance to make a fresh start with a newer audience and establish as its own thing.
This is a superhero RPG that takes the old FASERIP system and adds some interesting things to it - namely things from the MWP Marvel Heroic system of a decade ago, in particular the Milestone system. This was originally done in Astonishing Super Heroes and has been carried over here - with the blessing of that author - where it is the "Calling" system. You pick a "calling" at character generation which is a set of conditions or action that can grant Karma - an example:
Beast Within – Your hero has a savage side that must be kept in check. He or she must struggle to control these feelings or give in and lose control.
• +5 Karma when you first declare a character as your emotional ally, and when you assist or gain assistance from them.
• +5 Karma when you power creates unforeseen consequences.
• +5 Karma when you first describe losing control in a scene.
• +10 Karma when you start trouble by punching a bad guy in the face or inflict Stress on a hero who is over-thinking his problems to convince them to get over it.
• +10 Karma when you do something in the presence of your emotional ally that you already know they do not approve of.
• +15 Karma when you decide that your emotional ally has helped you all that they can, or you believe they have rejected you in terror, and either way you move on from this stage of the relationship.
I like the potential for this mix.
Another important change is that Karma is strictly the Bennie/Fate Chip/Force Point mechanic. Advancement is handled via a separate system which on first glance looks workable.
The rest of the system is very much the system you remember with percentile dice rolled against a particular column looking at color-coded results with column shifts as modifiers and specific outcomes often tied to achieving a specific color result. It works.
It's interesting that all of the games catching my eye at the moment are updates of older systems - but not all of them. D&D 5.5 (or whatever we're going to end up calling it) doesn't really excite me yet and Star Trek Adventures v2.0 doesn't either. Regardless, I'll keep an eye out for The Coming Thing and probably talk about it here.
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