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.
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| 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 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.
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| Title does not lie ... |
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.
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