Like many gamers in the past couple years, I have committed to a number of
Kickstarter projects. It seems like this October is the month for my rewards to roll in. For those unfamiliar with it, Kickstarter is way for developers and artists to raise funding from their fans and potential fans. While this has morphed to a certain extent into a ground floor pre-odering service in many instances, overall the result has been very successful. Thus far I've been very happy with the results.
Fully Completed
Only one of my supported projects is fully done (at least from my perspective). And it wasn't even a roleplaying game.
RPG Music Moods, a project done by motion picture and sound, is a collection of background music for roleplaying games. The kickstarter ended in mid October and the team has already delivered all the promised tracks and then some. For the price of $7 I got over 50 minutes of ambient music. I've
mentioned elsewhere that I love using mood music. For those interested in obtaining the tracks (which are great by the way), they can be found on
their site.
Main Project Completed
Mummy: the Curse, the second project I backed, finally delivered the main product a couple of weeks ago, a print copy of the book. This was a project that suffered more than its fair share of delays, though in the Onyx Path team's defense, this was more of issue with the printers than their work. The book is beautiful and you can see a
video review by Darker Days Radio here.
I reviewed the text early in the year. I've also received several of the extras for the game including the digital wallpaper in March and the ready-made characters and story seeds (also in October).
There are more bonuses in the pipeline include a fiction anthology, Dreams of Avarice (a manifesto by a major NPC of the setting), and some city books tied to Mummy. Still plenty to look forward to.
Incoming
Several other projects are nearing completion, at least for the main product.
Hillfolk was the first project I backed. By game designer Robin Laws, this game promises to be about social conflicts covering action like the emotional struggles of a soap opera.
I've discussed this product before but only recently did I get the finished pdf. The success of the kickstarter bloated the final product to two books which required extra time for writing, editing and layout. This is another game that suffered a number of delays on the physical product. I received the finished in July and was supposed to get the physical book soon after. Then GenCon happened and mistakes were made in shipping. The backers should be getting their products soon at least in the United States. Overall I'm happy with the product though the print delay was frustrating.
In March I backed,
Obsidian Portal Reforged whose goal was to redesign and improve the
Obsidian Portal site. Obsidian Portal is a great site as I have
discussed before. Some aspects of the kickstarter have already been delivered: a lifetime membership, access to the beta servers, and a few odds and ends (the T-shirt was nice). From what I've seen the end result will be really nice. There is still a lot for the team to do but the main site will update around the 27th of October. We are also supposed to get custom URLs for our game websites something I eagerly look forward to.
Lastly this summer, I chipped in on a new game called
Kingdom, designed by Ben Robbins the creator of
Microscope. I received the playtest version of the book very soon after the kickstarter and I look forward to the final version of the PDF version at the end of the month. It looks like the physical book won't be out until the end of the month. Hopefully I get a game of it in the next few weeks and get a review done soon. It looks like a fun game of struggling personalities and their influence over a community.
Ongoing
And then I spent some more money.
Monte Cook, who I already many books by, and
Bruce Cordell, who at one point was my second favorite developer, are collaborating on a game called
the Strange using Monte's Cypher engine (the same one used by
Numenara). The Strange involves a strange machine that create worldlets based on will and personal belief. The characters explore these world and face opposing forces bent on manipulating Earth and thus the Strange. The concept seems very interesting. I missed getting into the Numenara kickstarter so this is a second chance of sorts. They are already well along in terms of stretch goals, though I'm pleased to see nothing that will hold up the main product.
The Future
From here on, things get interesting for me and my wallet. I might up my contribution to The Strange if another book is added to the mix. The
Demon: the Descent kickstarter should begin soon which is a game I've been waiting for months now.
Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition should also begin next month and eat some of my spare cash. And who knows what other great projects will come up.
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