RPGs and Crowdfunding

Have many of you gotten involved in crowd funding games on sites such as KickStarter or Indiegogo?

I’ve been late to the game, I think.  I’ve only recently started looking at this (last 6 month or so), but I see that more and more small press and indie games are being funded this way.

From 20th (or 10th, or Xth) anniversary copies of older games, to expansions of more recent games, to variations of the latest indie darling – there is a variety of things being put up for crowd funding.  Given the contraction and consolidation of the game market through the latest recession it seems more and more individuals and companies are using sites such as Kickstarter to not only judge the interest in their product, and fund it, but also to solicit feedback and playtest comments that are then incorporated into the final product.

 

Planning Ahead

I’m beginning to toss around thoughts on my next game after my current one (D&D 4e converted to 13th Age) wraps. I’m pretty firmly settled on some kind of historical fiction. I’ve never really done that before but I work better either in a licensed setting or when stealing someone else’s intellectual property.  I’m a better synthesizer than I am a wholesale creator; I know this about myself and it’s where I have more fun. And history gives me that.

13 Deadly Venoms

It’s been a few weeks since I went on and on about 13th Age…

So early in the playtesting there was a Monk class in the core rulebook. There were rules up to about level 5 Rob and Jonathan decided to pull it out because they felt it wasn’t ready for prime time. It will be included in the Kickstartered (and awesomely overfunded) 13 True Ways supplement due out next year.

But here’s the problem: I’m switching my campaign over from 4e to 13th Age, and I have a Monk in the party. Because my characters were about to enter the Epic tier, we converted over at 8th level.  And as I noted above, the draft stuff only went as high as lvl 5, and even that wasn’t complete (it is a beta document after all).

Which meant it was up to me to homebrew some extra stuff. I present it here in case anyone else finds themselves in the same boat, wanting to run an epic tier monk and not willing to wait until 13 True Ways drops to satisfy that itch. It’s not a full-on expansion to bring the class up to full options, but it’s one Epic tier Talent and a 7th level Form, and a handful of feats. It was all I needed for my campaign at present but I may make some other things up later.

Feel free to swipe,  but if you do please add a homebrew talent, feat or form of your own here.

(and no, I won’t post the partial Monk stuff from the earlier playtest.)

Terraclips: Adventures in the Third Dimension

A confession: I’ve always loved looking at miniatures dioramas and terrain. I don’t play any tactical miniatures games (partly due to cost and partly because I completely lack any tactical sense), so I’ve always just admired from afar. But I always admired the setups at cons, and the first time I saw some Dwarven Forge stuff I needed new pants. But I knew that was more of an investment than I really wanted to sink into a hobby (pay no attention to the sagging bookshelf of games I haven’t ever played!!). And I’m just not crafty enough to do papercrafting.

Recently I came across some the sets of Terraclips at a local store and fell in love all over again. Configurable heavy cardboard terrain. They had a set of Buildings, Streets and Sewers out, and 3 Dungeon based sets dropping in late August (some really awesome pictures and info here). I liked the first 3 sets but didn’t love them – I thought the usefulness of streets and sewers to my personal game was limited, and the buildings were all wooden inn-like structures. But the “Vaults of Ruin” set from the new Dungeon Rise line really caught my eye. The “Dungeon Essentials” had a lot of the basics but was heavy on traps and such. The “Prison of the Forsaken” was full of torturey goodness but seemed a little specific. but Vaults had lots of crumbling walls and archways and I could see using it either for dungeons or as an outdoor ruined temple or a dozen other things. To my eye it had the greatest versatility, so I started there.  I ordered a set from my Friendly Local Game Shop, and here’s what I got.

A couple more 13th Age things

1. Session 3 of my one-shot went very well. It was an evening of almost entirely combat – 2 encounters plus some stuff in the middle. The encounters went very nicely and there was some sweet improvised stunting.

At one point the characters were on an airship that was plummeting to the ground, out of control.

Len (whose character had taken the ship’s helm and was looking for a place to crash land): “Is there a body of water nearby? or some woods?”
Me: “Well, there’s the Queen’s Wood…”
Len: “Do you think she’d mind?”

Next up for us is converting the characters from our 4e game!

2. Support the Kickstarter to fund the first supplement (which will include the Monk, Druid and Chaos Shaman classes as well as some really sweet setting stuff like Living Dungeons, which are awesome).

3. One thing my players didn’t like was the character sheet. The defenses are on the front (or page 1) but the basic attacks are on the back (or page 2), leading to constant flipping. So the redoubtable John O’Brien cut and pasted up a one-page version from the one that was provided. Since it was directly derived from their sheet I checked with Rob Heinsoo before posting it, and he said okay, 13th Age- New Sheet!

4. Dan – you remember Dan? From the last post? – played a demo at GenCon. Here’s his report:

[Descent] Pixels iactae sunt

Yes yes, I know it’s all Descent and 13th Age all the time here lately. They’re my 2 current obsessions. Give it a week. And this is useful for other games as well, so get off my furry feathered ass. (also, I’m totally stabbing in the dark on the Latin up there.)

ANYWAY, Descent second edition uses different dice than the first edition. Which made me a sad owlbear, because I’d bought a bunch of extra sets if 1e dice. Also, FF isn’t selling extra sets of 2e dice (yet.  If there’s a penny to be sucked out of my pockets, FFG will find a way to do it).
So I poked around online and the folks at the Board Game Geek forum had the answer, at least for a digital replacement.

13th Age Seminar at GenCon

Friend of the Blog and general sexy beast Dan went to GenCon last weekend and files this report…

My time at GenCon was very limited this year, so I was reduced to the following two humble hopes:

1. Leave GenCon with the same exact number of diseases as I had when I walked in (CON CRUD!!)
2. A better understanding of 13^th Age

The jury is still out on #1, but my understanding of 13^th Age is much, much better after I sat in on a seminar, and then subsequently played in a demo run by Rob Heinsoo.

Descent (Second Edition) Actual Review

Last night I did something I’d long though impossible: I played a game of Descent to completion in about an hour.

Now, this was the introductory scenario for the Second Edition and it is designed to be a pretty quick encounter.  The board is tiny – only 2 “rooms” and some connecting “hallway” pieces.  And there aren’t many baddies to deal with – 2 ettins and a handful of goblins. But still, an hour. And it was fun.

Here then are my observations (aside from “it runs shorter”) on the second edition of Descent:

Changing Horses Pt 4, 13th Age part 2

We ran our second session of 13^th Age this past week.  The overall verdict was very good. Everyone had a better handle on the characters and the rules this time around and things went much smoother.

I decided not to record this session for a couple of reasons, primary of which being that recording made me incredibly self-conscious the first time out.  Another big reason was that this session tied in very strongly with some stuff in the overall 4e campaign, and without that context I think the listener would be pretty confused.  Lastly, I knew this session was going to be a lot of talking/planning/thinking things through which would only barely touch the system at all (with some background tests and relationship checks) and although we are wildly entertaining I didn’t think that would have much interest for the half dozen or so of you who are reading this but not actually in the game.

Interlude – Descent: Journeys in the Dark, Second Edition proto-review

(Changing Horses will return this coming week, when I run the next 13th Age session. In the meantime…)

Descent is probably my favorite boardgame, although I always found it flawed in a number of ways. A session could easily run 4-5 hours, the rules required extensive FAQing and clarification and boy howdy were there a lot of bits and pieces, both physical and informational, to keep track of.

All that said, I still didn’t hesitate long before ordering the second edition of the game.  The rules are posted on the Fantasy Flight Games website so you can take a peek. I liked what I saw there enough that buying it was a foregone conclusion.

The big changes between first and second edition: no glyphs or going back to town, no money to manage (except in the campaign rules), no treasures or chests, no threat or conquest tokens, characters have classes that determine their abilities instead of random card draws, combat is now done with opposed rolls instead of static armor value.  Other than that last one, these all sound like great ideas to speed up and streamline the game. That last one, I don’t know. It feels like it might slow things down but who knows. One of my other favorite boardgames (Star Wars: The Queen’s Gambit) uses opposed combat rolls and I feel like it makes things more exciting there so I’m not completely “opposed” (I’m so very, very sorry) to the idea.

The rules claim a 1-2 hour playtime. Between the simplification of the game and what looks like simplified, shorter scenarios that looks about right to me.

This pseudo-review is based on reading the rules and looking over contents of the box. I haven’t had a chance to play yet but will post a follow-up when I do.