I recently finished reading through the new campaign book for Heart, the City Beneath. Dagger in the Heart from Rowan Rook and Decard was written by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and illustrated by Sar Cousins and came after a very successful crowdfunding effort last year. I backed it because I back everything from RRD but also because I was curious about how they were going to go about constructing a campaign for a game like Heart. In my experience, A campaign for Heart is something best dealt with one session at a time. Looseness and improvisational ability are qualities you will benefit from when GMing this game. The character beats that drive the events and the plot and the characters forward might have one PC searching for someone to kick off a tall building while another might be looking to get into a situation that’ll garner them some major Echo Fallout. So, maintaining any sort of direction can be a challenge. This is one of the game’s great strengths, of course. It makes it feel quite organic at the table and allows your players to feel as though they are the focus of the evolving story.
So, how to you translate that style of play into a coherent campaign? Well, you get Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan to write it for you, obviously. What he has done with Dagger in the Heart is provide the GM with a trio of inspired villains that I can imagine the PCs will love to hate and built the campaign around their plots and goals. In the introduction, he also gives you a guide on how to use these villains, depending on the length of campaign you want to run and some other factors. You don’t need to use them all, and, indeed, you are encouraged not to. Importantly, the campaign will work no matter which ones you use. They mostly act as foils to the PCs plans and actions and you are given suggestions, throughout the book, on how to use them in each area and during each major event. In Dagger in the Heart, the villains have their own beats they’re working towards, which helps in keeping track of what they are doing most of the time.
After the intro, you get seven chapters, each of which focuses on the areas of the Heart (or, indeed, the City Above) that are important at different points in the campaign. A chapter features an overview section which briefly explains what is contained in it and what the PCs are expected to be doing while they interact with the places, people and events contained in it. After that, you have a Staging section, which gives you options on how to get the PCs to move the overall plot forward while they do the usual Heart stuff of delving and hitting their Beats. This might include descriptions of major NPCs or stat blocks for enemies. After this, you get your Landmark and Delve descriptions. There are so many Landmarks in this book. I am pretty sure there are more Landmarks in this than in the Heart core book. But the delvers are not required to visit all of them. Instead there are just a lot of options. Indeed, because of the very loose nature of the campaign, the Landmarks can occur in any order, within any given Tier of the Heart, at least. In fact, they can mostly move quite freely between Tiers as well. So, despite the plot focusing so heavily on the occult and defunct underground train system known as the Vermissian, Dagger in the Heart is anything but Railroady. What it does, is provide you and your players with a plethora of options for how the story of the campaign could play out at your table and, indeed, how it might end, taking into account what your delvers might do.
After reading it, I was energised and inspired. I wanted to get some players around the table and send them back into the Heart as soon as possible. It will have to wait a little while, though, while other games come to an end. In the meantime, I get to read it again and prepare something really special.
Heart GM Screen
I also got the new Heart GM Screen from the Backerkit. It’s exactly what you would expect from RRD. Very high quality and totally over the top. There are no useful tables or common rules on the screen itself. Instead it comes with a booklet that you can rip the particular pages out of or, I suppose, photocopy and attach to the screen as you like. That way you can switch out the items you most need, when you most need them. It’s a nice idea and I think it will be useful.
It might be hard to believe but I have another six, no seven entries in the list of projects I’m backing on Backerkit. Now, absolutely all of these are fully funded, their pledges have been called in and they’ve charged my card. I’m just waiting on their delivery at this stage.
So, let’s get into it:
Caverns of Thracia Legendary Adventure 5E+DCC
The Expanse Roleplaying Game: Transport Union Edition
The Between
Welcome to Night Vale Roleplaying Game
Stay Frosty REMASTERED
321RPG 5th Anniversary Expanded Rule Book + Encyclopedia Monstergoria
Terror from the Underdeep: A Giant Box of 5E Adventure
If you’re interested in seeing what I have currently backed on Kickstarter, click here.
1. Caverns of Thracia Legendary Adventure 5E+DCC
Goodman games produce some of the highest quality books and other products in the TTRPG industry. Anyone who has glanced admiringly at the Doug Kovacs covers of any of their five million adventure modules for Dungeon Crawl Classics will know what I’m talking about. They’re also incredibly interesting artefacts that look like they were first published in the seventies but have a modern OSR sensibility when you get into them usually.
Anyway, last year, I was beginning to build a small collection of DCC books and other paraphernalia when this project was launched on Backerkit. Their timing was impeccable if they were specifically looking for my support. I didn’t hesitate. Since they were bringing out both a DCC and a 5E version of the boxed set, I went with the DCC one.
The Caverns of Thracia is a remake of an original and iconic module by Jennell Jacquays. It was a Greek myth-based scenario and it was published by Judges Guild in 1979. The Goodman Games version promises you a year long campaign from the boxed set, at least. It should take DCC characters from level 1 to level 5 and it contains a whole mega-dungeon along with all the new monsters, magic items, spells etc. that you might expect from something a big as this.
I splashed out on a dice set and a few extra books when it came to my pledge so I am expecting something very special when this arrives at my door in a month or two! You can check out the campaign page here. Also, if you’re interested you can go and pre-order it from a store near you if you look it up online.
2. The Expanse Roleplaying Game: Transport Union Edition
Get ready to decelerate towards the Ring. And maybe charge your rail guns while you’re at it. You never know what Inaros and his Free Navy might have in store for an inners’ freighter on a mission of peace out past the Belt.
I got into the Expanse with the TV show. It was a relatively hard sci-fi look at how our solar system might look in a couple of hundred years but with an alien mystery at its centre. Unfortunately, the TV show got cancelled, so I started reading, nay, devouring the books by James SA Corey. There are 9 Behemoth sized books and they take our heroes, privateers aboard the Independent freighter, Rocinante, across more about forty years and from lowly jobs on a gas hauler to the centre of the greatest events across three wars and dozens of solar systems.
It gets big.
Which is a cool premise for a sci-fi RPG. You know?
Green Ronin produced the Expanse Roleplaying Game a few years ago, but it was brought out before either the TV show or the books were finished so it did not include rules or details to cover some of the most important and universe-defining events, factions and tech that turns up in the latter half of the story. The new version sets the action in the thirty year gap between the sixth book, Babylon’s Ashes and the seventh book, Persepolis Rising. This is a very convenient gap for an RPG writer to place a lot of major events. These will be based around the activities of the newly minted Transport Union, established to take care of trade and exploration across the solar systems recently opened up by the activation of the Ring Gate Network left behind by an enigmatic and lost civilisation.
It uses the same AGE (Adventure Game Engine) as Dragon Age so should be familiar to a lot of gamers already. I can say, it is very easy to learn and pretty intuitive. I’m excited to see how it has been modified for this setting.
They’re also producing both character and ship minis for this campaign! I doubt it is something I would use in this sort of game, but it would still be very nice to have.
I have written a bit about some of my favourite RPG related podcasts and actual plays in the past. But I don’t think I have mentioned Ain’t Slayed Nobody’s current run of the Between on the blog before. I love this show. The players are great, as always, the production values are exceptional, the GM, also the game’s creator, Jason Cordova, couldn’t be better, and the game itself is entertaining and dark and creepy and fun in equal measure. It is one of those shows that I queue up and listen to as soon as it drops.
This game has actually been around for a while too. The Backerkit campaign was to fund the production of a physical version. If I’m honest, it’s not really the type of game I would usually be drawn to. Victoriana, rarified conversations in drawing rooms and illicit trysts in haunted houses are not really my thing. Or at least, I didn’t think they were until I listened to the actual play of paragraph-before-this-one fame. Turns out, I enjoy those things quite a bit. It reminded me, unsurprisingly of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by the late, great Kev O’Neill and Alan Moore (not the dreadful movie of the same name.) And I love that comic book.
Not only that, its based on the same ruleset as Brindlewood Bay, also from Jason Cordova and the Gauntlet, which I have discussed to some small extent here. And though I still haven’t had the chance to play it, I would love to. I think it’s one of the greatest innovations in RPG mechanics in the last decade and deserves all the plaudits it gets.
Anyway, the game looks great, the book looks great. You should go and order it when it’s possible to do that. In the meantime, go and check out the campaign page here.
4. Welcome to Night Vale Roleplaying Game
Silence is golden. Words are vibrations. Thoughts are magic. Welcome to Nightvale
The cold open Welcome to Nightvale, episode 8, “The Lights in Radon Canyon” seemed an appropriate way to open this one.
I have been listening to Welcome to Nightvale for almost as long as it’s been around. It hooked me, originally, with its unique blend of weirdness, horror and humour. It kept me coming back as the desert town grew and changed along with its residents, like Cecil Gershwin Palmer, the Voice of Nightvale, John Peters (you know, the farmer?) and the Almighty Glow Cloud. I love the writing so much. The podcast’s co-creators, Jeffrey Craynor and Joseph Fink have been so prolific over these last 13 years, producing the podcast, related books, live shows (one of which I have even been to see. I got to meet Jeffrey Craynor there!) and lots of other Nightvale stuff. So it was about time we got a roleplaying game, right?
The game will use the Essence 20 system, which I am not even a little bit familiar with. It seems to be a system developed by Renegade Game Studios who are publishing this game. But, it looks like you roll a d20 to resolve actions, while adding another die depending on the skill you’re using and the proficiency you have with it. This all seems fine. But it’s not the mechanics that worry me here. Much like the Discworld game that I mentioned in the last post, I am just not sure how the RPG will retain and exemplify some of the core aspects of the podcast, its weird and uncomfortable hilarity, for instance. You do get something called “Weird Points” to effect situations in particular ways, apparently and according to Becca Scott in this How to Play Nightvale video and I’m sure they will have other mechanical and character options to keep it strange. I’m still not fully convinced this will come together in the right way at the table but I am obviously willing to get it and find out later.
If you’re interested in picking this one up, I believe there is a link to pre-order on their campaign page.
5. Stay Frosty REMASTERED
Look, I’ll be honest, I didn’t know much about this game before backing it. I have heard Tom McGrenery on the Fear of a Black Dragon podcast mention that he used a previous version for several of the modules that they reviewed on there. It’s a pared down, old school ruleset for running Aliens style sci-fi games and Tom has used it in some unlikely but interesting scenarios. That, along with the fact that it was launched by the Melsonian Arts Council was enough to get me to back it. This is another company I would always back. Well, except that I won’t need to anymore now that I have become one of their subscribers. They recently launched this initiative, which means you pay them £10 a month and you get everything they publish along with special editions with limited covers and that sort of thing. This might mean they never have to run another crowd-funding campaign again!
This is a small snippet of the blurb from the Stay Frosty Backerkit page:
The system is perfect for point-crawls and dungeon-crawls where clearing rooms, blasting bugs, descending into hell, flying through space, and defeating hordes of monsters is on the table. Supports campaign length play and one-shot horror-tinged bug hunts.
You can find the original by Casey Garske here on DrivethruRPG for a steal. And you can find the campaign page for the new version, also by Casey Garske, here. If you become a Friend of Melsonia, it is one of the books you will receive from them this year, also.
6. 321RPG 5th Anniversary Expanded Rule Book + Encyclopedia Monstergoria
Yet another one I am not terribly familiar with, 321RPG is something I backed on something of a whim to support John “Hambone” Maguire, of the Vintage RPG Podcast and his creative efforts.
This is the yet another one that’s not brand new. In this case, it’s an expanded edition, rather than a 2E or physical print edition. This is in celebration of the fifth anniversary of its original publication. The original game was designed to be flexible. They wanted it to be of use to any table in any genre and any play style, which are all incredibly difficult and lofty goals. Here’s what the campaign page says about the new version:
This expanded rule book is the culmination of four years of growth, a lifetime of gaming, and the incredible enthusiasm of our players. If there’s one rule for DMing that always holds true, it’s that you can never anticipate what the players will do. And that’s precisely what makes it all so exciting.
It’s also going to come with four new adventures, and an “Encyclopedia Monstergoria.”
7. Terror from the Underdeep: A Giant Box of 5E Adventure
I think I fell for the marketing with this one. I am not really one for backing purely 5E based projects. If I had my druthers, I would probably move away from 5E altogether and maybe, someday, I will. But today is not that day.
I basically backed this Goodman Games project because it looked really really nice. Also, it’s massive in scale with more than 450 pages of content, new monsters, spells, magic items, fold-out maps and really exceptional artwork.
The version I decided to go for also comes with a bunch of DCC modules converted to 5E as well.
Here’s what the main adventure campaign for PCs of levels 8 to 16, is about, according to the Backerkit page:
The giant clans have allied – and no one knows why. Hill, stone, frost, fire, cloud and storm giants now work together to collect electrum. Their tracks lead to an abandoned city of the UnderDeep. In these lightless caverns, sinister cultists give the giants’ offerings to a misshapen kraken lord. Can your adventurers uncover the secrets behind this wicked alliance before it’s too late?
Having covered each of the projects I am currently backing, I have come to the conclusion that I back too many things. There are, undoubtedly, a couple of these that I could have done without. I mean, I’m quite sure I will never even get to play most of them. But, as the old saying goes, playing games and collecting games are two different hobbies.
What are you backing right now, dear reader? Do we have any of these in common? Which ones are you most excited about? Get in the comments!
It’s been a little while since I did a list. It’s a good format to use when you are not totally sure what you want to write. And, yep, that’s how I’m using it today.
So, what’ve I been backing and kicking? Since the last one of these sorts of posts back in September 2024, quite a lot, actually.
On Kickstarter
Here’s the list. I’m going to write a bit about each of them down below.
Solarcrawl
A Perfect Wife: TTRPG Adventure + Fundraiser
Glumdark
A Feast for a Sphinx
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld RPG: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork
Royal Blood – A Tarot Heist RPG
1. Solarcrawl
Let’s start with the one that is still available to back on Kickstarter. Solarcrawl is an OSR exploration game set in a fantastic space age. It’s created by Galen Pejeau, an “illustrator and occasional game designer” according to their itch page.
I absolutely love the look of this one. The artwork seems to suit the subject matter so perfectly, its’ clean lines and definite, scientific style give it the right sort of vibe for a planet exploration game. I am excited to try it with the Death in Space rules but it is designed for any OSR game.
The idea is that your homeworld is dying and you are needed to go out and explore beyond the gravity well. So off you go to try to find new planets to explore and help you to revive your own.
The game is split into two phases, Mission Phase and Homeworld Phase. Mission allows you to go out and find planets, explore them and hopefully avoid their unique dangers. Afterwards, you have the Homeworld phase, when you do research, build and improve your ships, “regreening their world.” That sort of thing.
Take on dual roles: as the astronauts journeying forth to the other worlds within their solar system, and as the heads of the space agency that builds their rockets, chooses their destinations, and hopefully, work together in hopes of rekindling their fading world.
It funded very fast but I am sure the creator will appreciate any and all further backers. Go check out the campaign here. There’s still 10 days to go.
2. A Perfect Wife
One of the big Zine Month projects, this one caught my eye almost immediately. The project was created by David Blandy of Eco Mofos fame, but the creators of this scenario zine are Zedeck Siew, Amanda Lee Franck and Scrapworld.
It’s another OSR project. One of their stretch goals was to make it specifically compatible with the Liminal Horror RPG but, as I understand it, it should still be easily useable in any other OSR game.
The adventure is described as “urban horror” and explicitly involves a Malaysian mythical creature known as the Pontianak. This is the spirit of a woman who died in childbirth. According tot he wiki I have linked to, the spirit seeks out her victims by sniffing out their drying laundry. Apparently this is why Malays will not leave clothes out to dry at night.
This one is very interesting since the main aim of it was to pay the airfare and living expenses of the creators on a trip to Nottingham, England.
The purpose of this campaign is twofold. It seeks to fund:
1: The publication of a tabletop RPG adventure zine in print and PDF. 2: The air tickets and living expenses for Amanda Lee Franck, Scrap World, and Zedeck Siew to spend one week in Nottingham.
With the former, we hope to entice you to help us with the latter.
You get: a complete mystery- and horror-themed adventure with evocative art based on an iconic-but-underrepresented Southeast Asian monster.
We get: an opportunity for three TTRPG designers to cross oceans and meet their peers, and each other, for the first time.
This will give them the opportunity to attend the Weird Hope Engines art exhibition, focusing attention on indie game creators, in Nottingham. They will be exhibiting works there themselves.
Curated by Dying Earth Catalogue (David Blandy, Rebecca Edwards, Jamie Sutcliffe), running from March to May 2025 at Bonington Gallery, Nottingham, UK.
In fact, you can already get the online version of the scenario published by Zedeck on his blog.
But the campaign was a success and it should fund both the publications and the trip. I can’t wait to get the physical object.
I’m sorry I didn’t write a bit about this one a lot sooner as it is such a worthy campaign but I am glad to see they were completely successful and I would even hope to get over to see the exhibition in Nottingham during its run between March and May this year.
3. Glumdark
You know, there are a few companies/creators that I would probably back no matter what the project. In the case of Glumdark, it wasn’t the creators themselves but the company, Exalted Funeral. I’ve gotten a few things from them in the past, although I don’t buy from them much because of the shipping. They published Between the Skies, for instance, and I think it’s pretty clear that I like that a lot. So, when the Glumdark Kickstarter was repeatedly slung at my face from Instagram, I paid attention. I knew nothing about it but I took a punt. I am quite glad I did.
Glumdark started as a website. It was built as a resource for GMs running dark fantasy games. It’s got a plethora of useful tables . You can go and check them out right here, at glumdark.com. What’s nice is that you have tables for GMs, of course, but also for players.
As a dungeon master, you may choose to punish your players with some fresh doom, or just amuse yourself with the joy of randomness. As a player, you can expand your backstory or seek inspiration for new adventures.
It’s system-agnostic, making it equally useful as a resource to players of D&D 5e and Troikans alike.
Here’s a few of my favourite things from the site:
The Location Generator is probably the best bit for me. You can click on a location name such as, “A Mysterious Tower,” and you will get three paragraphs about such a place under the headings of “The tower,” “The access,” and “The occupants.” If you are not a big fan of any given paragraph, for instance, if you don’t like the description of the tower itself, “A tower built from stacked round stones in a dense, loamy forest,” then you can just click on it to generate a new one. Or you can just click on the Location name again to generate a whole new tower. Go and try it out!
The “Bad Omens” table starts with this entry at number 1: “A black cat starts to cross your path, but is crushed by a falling ladder.”
Number 13 on the d20 “Defining Life Events” table is: “You bear the mark of Goonfun, the savior.”
So, now they’re making a book with similar goodies in it, along with some art that is very pretty indeed, in a nasty sort of way. It’s also going to come with a soundtrack! Here’s the Kickstarter page.
4. A Feast for a Sphinx
I just really like Evelyn Moreau’s art style. I have been following her on Instagram for a while and now on Bluesky and I’m always delighted by the work she shares. And she has been pretty prolific. Just go have a look at her itch.io page here. The only piece of TTRPG work I knew, though, was Goblin Mail, for Troika! And it is a really original work with a fun premise and beautiful design elements. So, when she announced her new Kickstarter project with the same collaborators, Sofia Ramos (writing) and Luna P (layout,) I obviously backed it.
A Feast for a Sphinx is an adventure for Mörk Borg. Now, I have yet to run a Mörk Borg game but that didn’t stop me. It is a revamp of a dungeon formerly published on itch and the promise is that
Everything was rewritten, balanced or added to make this the best version of the module while keeping the central idea the same.
It is going to be produced in a zine format of 30 to 40 pages (which is on the long side for a zine.) It will describe the dungeon and deliver some new creatures, adventure seeds and a bunch of tables for randomly generating encounters, rumours, etc. Go have a look at the campaign page here.
5. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld RPG: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork
So, I was very suspicious of this one, I’ll be honest. I’ve read most of the Discworld novels, and I know the irreverent, comedic, satirical tone Terry Pratchett set. I never felt like you could really replicate that at the gaming table, exactly. No, that’s not true. It’s one of my favourite ways to play RPGs, in fact. I like to have fun with them. Puns come as second nature on dungeon crawls, silly NPC names are my bread and butter. My worry was more that it would seem somehow forced or unnatural if that’s what the game was explicitly trying to get you to do.
As the campaign went on, though, I began to think the creators understood that worry. To prove it, Modiphius did one of the bravest things I have seen in some time, they made an actual play to show off the game. It couldn’t have been in any sort of finished format at the time they released the video, but clearly they had enough to make a fun and funny one-shot. Now, they had some of the more recognisable faces on the RPG actual play scene involved, which helped. Quinns of Quinns Quest was the GM and the players were Josephine McAdam, Abubakar Salim and Liv Kennedy. Go and check out the video on Youtube here. They really managed to highlight the ways in which the rules encourage play that will generate genuinely comedic moments without it feeling like you’re being fed a bunch of “hilarious” prompts.
Anyway, that got me to back this one. And I wasn’t the only one to back it, dear reader, oh no. They raised almost two and a half million pounds! Whew! Can’t wait to get my hands on it in the summer. In the meantime, go take a look at its Kickstarter page here.
6. Royal Blood – A Tarot Heist RPG
I wrote that I would back almost anything from some creators. This is another one of those. It’s Rowan Rook and Decard. I’m an unashamed shill for Grant Howitt and don’t really need any reasons to buy something he’s involved with. But this game looks so beautiful as well. It’s a tarot based game.
Royal Blood is a tabletop roleplaying game about heists, tarot cards, magic, fate and desperation. It uses a deck of tarot cards to build characters, plan a heist and determine opposition, and to resolve every risky action the players make in an attempt to claim power.
This game has actually been around since 2016 but it was not crowdfunded or given much support by RRD either for that matter. This time, the kickstarter campaign did really well so they have some money to throw at it and they have a partnership with Mana Project Studio, the Italian TTRPG creators who are responsible for some of the best looking games out there, including Cowboy Bebop.
As for all of these projects but Solarcrawl, the Royal Blood campaign is over but you should still go and check out the Kickstart page here. You can actually pre-order it there now too.
There is a special sort of feeling when one of the things you were backing turns up at your door. Like, you might have been keeping track of it and the creator has maybe been telling you, if you’re lucky, where they are in the fulfilment process but when the physical object is in your hands? It’s like someone sent you a present. It’s like opening up a gift from a stranger. It makes you feel something for that person, gratitude, wonder, amazement. You know what I’m talking about.
Anyway, I got some stuff that I backed! Just look at the photo up at the top there! Go on!
The Electric State
I backed this one in December last year because I love Simon Stålenhag’s artwork and imagination, as you will know if you have been around the blog for a while. The Electric State is the latest in a line of RPGs from Free League that explore the world that never was. It started off in the eighties with Tales from the Loop, where you play kids scoobying about the wilds of suburban Sweden (or Nevada,) getting into trouble and investigating the weird shit that local scientists had unleashed on the world. Things from the Flood took us into the nineties that never were. You played teenagers in that, in a world much less full of wonder and much more full of uncertainty and dread. The Electric State takes us into the late nineties in the state of Pacifica where the countryside is riddled with he remains of busted battle-bots and everyone’s addicted to some sort of cyber-helmet device. It’s a road-movie game! I have not yet played either Things from the Flood or Electric State (I mean it just arrived on Monday) but I can’t wait to. I loved the slightly eerie vibes of Tales from the Loop seen through the eyes of kids who had literal plot armour. I am looking forward to experiencing something similar through the eyes of older, more jaded or just more experienced characters. I am sure the horrific elements of Stålenhag’s work are likely to come though much more starkly. I’ll let you know how I get on with it, dear reader!
Here are a few photos from the core book and of the extras that came with it, including some very tasty custom dice.
Oh, I also got the artbook with this Kickstater. It’s not new, it came out in 2017, but just look at it!
The Price of Apocrypha
@drunkndungeons is an instagram mutual with a D&D podcast, which, I confess, I have not yet listened to. Anyway, up until relatively recently, I thought they were just into posting things about 1st and 2nd edition Ad&D on their account but then they revealed that they had a kickstarter on the way back in August. August! Let that sink in. They kickstarted a D&D/OSR adventure module in August and I now hold it in my little paws (OK, fine, I don’t. I’m typing right now. But, if I stopped and reached over to my right, I could just pick it up, you pedants!) Quite the turn around. By the start of September the Kickstarter campaign was done and I ordered up my copy from Drivethru RPG POD service, which was cheap and efficient and looks great, honestly. I have had no time to read this one yet but it I’m looking forward to digging in. I love the look of the map and the monsters and the general idea of an interplanar arena of some kind. Gravity Realms produce it and you can get it here.
Bump in the Dark Revised Edition
Bump in the Dark is another game set in the 90s. It has spooky Scooby vibes again as well. But in this case, you are more Buffy and the gang than the Famous Five. One of the touchstones Jex Thomas, the author, lists in the book is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in fact. I don’t know a huge amount about it, to be honest. I backed it on something of a whim. I know that you play hunters in it who are sworn to protect the people of Iron Country from the monsters and the beasties out in the darkness, along with your team of found family and friends. It’s based on a Forged in the Dark Ruleset but rather than the heists of Blades in the Dark, you go on Hunts. And this Backerkit pledge level came with a bunch of hunts in the form of little leaflets! I didn’t know what the heck they were when they arrived in a little white envelope that had a fluorescent sticker on it saying “Do Not Bend.” Even after I opened them up it still took me a while to figure out they were Bump Hunts. But just look at them! Aren’t they cool? I think I would like to try one for the season that we’re in, you know? Anyway, go and get it here!
That’s all I have for you for today, dear reader, just showing off my goodies. See you again soon!
I mean that’s what it was all about, yeah? Just, like, getting things started? Kickstarter might have changed its policies enough that more and more creators are jumping ship to Backerkit but it doesn’t change the impact it has had on the RPG scene (as well as many other indie scenes.) Many, many projects would not have existed without Kickstarter connecting their instigators with people who wanted them to instigate. I think we can all be grateful for that.
Swedish Machines
This is not the first Free League product that I have backed on Kickstarter and it probably won’t be the last. Right now, I’m waiting for the Replicant Rebellion Blade Runner boxed set and, another Simon Stålenhag project, the Electric State Roleplaying Game, for which I am rather excited.
But Swedish Machines is not an RPG book at all. In fact, if it is anything like the Tales from the Loop art book I received as a Christmas gift a few years ago, it is going to be a loose narrative related to the artworks presented in it. Together, in Tales from the Loop, at least, the art and the text tell the story of this strange, alternate 1980s where technology developed in a very different way than in the real world. That fact leads to some fascinating and terrifying occurrences that appear in a kind if vignette consisting of art and short fictional pieces.
I have every reason to believe that’s exactly what it will be. And I can’t wait to see what his mind has come up with this time.
Here is a short extract from the Kickstarter page to give us an idea:
Stålenhag’s most personal work yet, Swedish Machines explores masculinity, friendship, and sexuality in a queer science fiction tale about two young men stuck in the past – and in each other’s orbit. Their story spans decades, as fleeting moments become defining memories, and they set out to explore a mysterious forbidden zone together.
Set in his native Sweden and based in an alternate version of Mälaröarna outside of Stockholm, the place where he grew up, and still lives to this day, Swedish Machines juxtaposes giant futuristic machines and vehicles against the inner turmoil of the characters facing a social dystopia.
It makes me think Tales from the Loop and his other books must be related to this one. The setting, Mälaröarna, is also the setting for the Tales from the Loop RPG if you set your game in Sweden, rather than Nevada (the other option from the core book.) And, as well as that, the existence of giant futuristic machines makes it sound like this is in the same universe. I think it’s also really exciting that the book is focusing on this queer couple and their story. I have not read all of his books, but, certainly, Tales from the Loop had a much more ensemble tinge to its cast of characters.
And let’s just focus on the art for a moment. I don’t have the vocabulary to fully do it justice but I love how Stålenhag goes for realistic depictions of the world at a very specific time and in a very specific place but inserts the impossible into them. These impossible things, like the huge cooling towers with blinking lights in Tales from the Loop, or the giant cat mascot collapsing an overpass in Electric State are ignored or, at the very most, treated as mundane, by the characters in it. And the characters? Almost all have their backs to you, encouraging you to see the world through their eyes or to take their place in it. It’s great.
I believe that, once again, I am just a day too late posting this as the Kickstarter campaign finished up on September 5th. Still, it’s worth keeping an eye out for and picking up a copy when it is released more generally.
Kal-Arath
Slaps the roof of Kal-Arath This baby’s got everything your average OSR gamer could ever want or need. You want to drive Kal-Arath solo? No problemo. You want a co-driver, just you and them out on the open hexes? Kal-Arath’s got you. You want to take a group of four or five passengers out on a road-trip to who-knows-where with no preparation and hankering for some adventure on the highway of fantasy? DONE!
I became aware of Kal-Arath as a project by following Castle Grief on Instagram. And it is one of the projects I am most excited to receive. It has a wonderfully indie, hand-made quality to it and it’s telling us it’s going to do a lot of the work for us at the table:
Oracles, Starting Adventure Seeds, Points of Interest, Encounters, Settlements, NPCs, Dungeons, Items – all of these have their own tables for generation, and combined together create a setting flavorful setting that emerges from the tables themselves
That was actually an extract from the Castle Grief itch page, which you should also go and check out, dear reader!
The rules are purportedly a combo of elements from a number of other games. It uses 2d6 and employs at least some aspects from two games I have played before, Mörk Borg and Black Sword Hack. I am a big fan of both of these OSR games and really enjoy a 2d6 system in general. I know the actual dice you chuck don’t really make that much difference at the table, but 2d6 just feels good. OK?
Also, it’s got a lot of gnarly hand-drawn art too. It fits the idea of this game so well. I love it.
Anyway, Kal-Arath is definitely still live so go back it!
And, if you’re interested in Simon Ståhlenhag’s art, you should still be able to pick up a copy of Tales from the Loop.
Some friends bought me Troika as a birthday present several years ago. It took me a long time to get around to reading it and even longer to get around to playing it. Honestly, this was nothing but a scheduling problem. I was intrigued and delighted by it from the start. The absurdity of the character backgrounds, the looseness of the setting, the unhinged art style, even the strangeness of the initiative rules; it just tickled me the same way a Monty Python sketch does. In the intervening time I have been building a decent little collection of Troika books. The Melsonian Arts Council summer sale really helped with that. I have a number of PDFs that I picked up in various bundles over the years too. But I really love the quality of the physical books. They’re mostly hardback, they have beautiful art that is about as far as you can get from the polished style you get in 5e books, for instance, and they are not too pricey, normally. I recently picked up Whalgravaak’s Warehouse in physical form and, even though it isn’t hardback, the quality of the printing, the texture of the paper and the form factor are all so pleasing that I couldn’t fault it (except for the double-page spread maps that are much easier to see and use in the PDF version. Lucky I have both I suppose…)
Get it at Sutlers: A Troika Adventure Generator is the third project from the Melsonian Arts Council I have backed this year. The first two were Swyvers and Fungi of the Far Realms. Neither of these are Troika related. In fact, Swyvers is its own brand new game that I will get into in another post, while Fungi is system-agnostic. Anyway, I was excited to see a Troika product come out on Backerkit and very happy to back it. It seemed like I was not alone either; it funded in about twenty minutes!
The blurb they added to the Backerkit page for this one says a lot in a short sentence:
An enormous retail adventure generator for inclusion in sandbox campaigns within the city of Troika. Get a job! Meet the locals! Don’t die!
So, you’re going to play characters who work retail? Doesn’t sound fantastical or exciting. If you have ever worked retail, though, you’ll know there is a certain draw to the idea of being a shop assistant with access to lethal spells and weaponry.
Also, here’s the other thing: I know from experience that Troika scenarios can make the most mundane of situations into an adventure. I won’t give anything away but “The Blancmange and Thistle” from the Troika core book is an excellent example of that.
I’m also really intrigued by the description of this book. They call it an “adventure generator.” I’m expecting to see a boat-load of tables for the most ridiculous things. I’m hoping that it will allow you to create and run a Troika adventure sans-prep, on the fly. I would love that. Part of the description on the Backerkit page has this to say:
The book starts with a structured adventure to get the party hired and serving their first day at work, and then it opens up into hundreds (!) of random encounters and micro adventures
So I’m rather hopeful. Can’t wait to get my mitts on this one.
SYMATYOV
Have you ever played one of those solo journaling RPGs? They are somewhat de reguer, don’t you know. It seems like every other ad I get on Instagram is for another solo journalling RPG. I never really imagined that this type of game might be so popular. After all, for many people, the singular attraction of RPGs is the social aspect, getting around a table (or at least a Zoom window) with your mates or even some strangers to act out situations that would, frankly, be absurdly dangerous or embarrassing in real life together. And for those moments when you want to immerse yourself in a different world all on your own, there are computer games. So, it was a long time before I tried one out. I believe the first one I played was actually The Treacherous Realm by friend of the blog, Isaac Wilcox. It uses the Wretched & Alone system to create an immersive and fascinating journey where you are being hunted through some labyrinthine fae realm. You will probably die but it will be fun getting to that point!
That opened the doors for me and so I tried out Thousand Year Old Vampire, by Tim Hutchings, which I had picked up in a Bundle of Holding and forgot about. I believe this caused a bit of a stir when it first came out. It was a hit amongst people who, otherwise, might not have played this sort of solo game and, I believe, was the game that opened the floodgates for all of those that have proliferated in the years since. That was only just in 2020 so, we’re not really talking that long. But man, have they proliferated.
Now, here’s the thing: Thousand Year Old Vampire is designed for essentially infinite re-playablity but I have only played it a couple of times. Once again, scheduling. It does take a while to play, although, I suppose you could set aside 15 minutes a day or something. I was left with a few main impressions:
the prompts you use to build your game and your vampire’s story are perfectly written to provide just enough detail to set your imagination aflame but not enough to seem as though it is rail-roading you in a particular direction
the mechanic where your vampire is forced to rid themself of memories due to their unwieldy long life is clever and leads to some fascinating outcomes
it’s a really great tool to get you writing if you are in a slump
I learned a lot about the Kingdom of Breifne that once existed where Counties Leitrim and Cavan in Ireland now lie along with some of their neighbouring counties. I did a lot of research about the area and the era and that was fun in and of itself
the design of the book is gorgeous and evocative. Go and check it out.
So You Met a Thousand Year Old Vampire is the sequel I don’t think anyone expected. But it certainly got plenty of attention. It’s at about five times its original goal at this point on Backerkit, so even if you don’t back it, it’s probably going to happen anyway. If you do want to get in on the ground floor, though, as they say, go back it anyway. Buy Tim Hutchings another fountain pen or cravat.
Here is an extract from the Backerkit page:
Congratulations, you’ve made a friend! A mysterious friend with a complicated past. That friend is a vampire and might be a thousand years old, but you probably don’t know that yet.
Interestingly, although the character you play in this game seems to be a pretty regular person, it seems as though a lot of the play will revolve around the creation of your vampire companion. Not so surprising, I suppose. If I had a vampire friend, they would probably be the most interesting thing about me too. So, I’ll be intrigued to see how this works and how it differs from its predecessor.
OGA
Ultra-Violet Grasslands is an absolute beaut of a book. It got two editions and it is full of incredible artwork and fantastical ideas all brought to you from the mind and pen of Luka Rejec. It’s also filled with tables and tables and tables that allow you to build a game at the table, as it were, using intriguing, fun and challenging results:
Encounters on the Steppe of the Line Nomads”
Vornish Birds (L0, stalking) with glass recording eyes and metal innards, otherwise indistinguishable from the regular kind. Mind-burned megapede (L8 , alien) shaking the ground on its odd journey, corundum encrustations glittering on its massive segmented neural nodes
And there is so much more in it. I just picked those entries out at random. They’re just so unctuous!
Our Golden Age (OGA) : An Ultraviolet Grasslands RPG []equel is big. And the first book was already pretty big. This time they decided to bring us two books for good measure. Here’s what they have to say about it on the Backerkit page:
Experience fantascience roleplaying at the end of time. Escape the end of history. The eternal civilization is perfect. So say the gods, the machines. Will you defy the endless circle of awakening and forgetting? Can you kick a hole through the sky?
I don’t really know what a “[]equel” is but it’s ok. Just take my money! They have already taken a lot of people’s money. As it stands they have raised $489,412 on Backerkit out of a $50,000 goal.
Anyone else backing these products? Are you maybe excited about any others right now?
In Business Studies class we learned that market research was crucial to the successful launch of a new product or service. Back in those days that meant doing a lot of time-consuming leg-work. Methods of market research included surveys posted to homes and businesses, cold-calling people to find out what type of toilet paper they used or which newspaper they read, talking to supermarket customers, that sort of thing. The results of your market research could very well determine whether or not your idea got to market. If it was received poorly by a majority or respondents, forget it!
Of course, the internet has made all of this work a lot easier and quicker. Not only that, with the arrival of platforms like Kickstarter and Backerkit, it feels like the process is reversed to some extent. What I mean by that is that now, you can launch your idea on Backerkit and see how popular it is. If it makes enough money for you to be able to make the thing, you know that, at the very least, just enough people want it. If it fails to fund, back to square one. There is the other possibility that you end up with a run-away hit on your hands, of course, and that seems to lead to its own problems sometimes. I think we have all been stung by a campaign that promises so much but drags on for years with little or nothing to show for it.
Do take my words with advisement, dear reader, I have never launched one of these projects so I am merely an interested observer.
The topic of this post, though is the projects I am excited to have backed and the ones I am most looking forward to seeing come to fruition.
Golden age
There is no doubt in my mind that we are living through a golden age of indie RPGs. In large part, this has been made possible by the existence of Kickstarter and similar sites, where indie gamers can go and geek out about the incredibly niche story-game or gnarly OSR module that they never knew they always wanted, even if there are only 237 of them. Those 237 people will get something that would not have been produced without their excitement, their enthusiasm and their money.
Of course, it’s not just your independent gamers using the service. You see Free League and Goodman Games using them to launch products even when it is probably fair to say they would have been perfectly successful without them. But what a way it is to build hype for the launch! When you sign up for one of these things you are getting communications from them almost every day as they hit stretch-goal after stretch-goal. They get to big-up their new thing to a captive audience of people who they know want it. What a perfect way to be able to flog you some more addons! Dice, tote bags, t-shirts, entire other games and supplements… I don’t necessarily feel great about this. Mainly because I am so susceptible to it. But I do feel very good about being able to support truly independent creators for whom this is the only way they would be able to produce the games they do.
Anyway, here’s a list of the stuff I have currently backed that is still live. These are things I can’t wait to get my hands on and that I would recommend others support:
On Backerkit
Get it at Sutlers: A Troika Adventure Generator. The first adventure/sourcebook/something to provide any real detail on the fabled city of Troika itself, in particular, a department store that your adventurers can get jobs at in between jaunts into the hump-backed sky.
So You’ve Met a Thousand Year Old Vampire. The sequel to the incredibly popular “Thousand Year Old Vampire” solo RPG. I’m not usually big into solo games but the original really grabbed me.
Our Golden Age (OGA) : An Ultraviolet Grasslands RPG []equel (This one might be over by the time I post this. Sorry!) This “[]equel” has done incredibly well in its campaign. As the follow up to a book that I heard about on a podcast and immediately bought but have not read yet, this was a pretty speculative back for me but just look at it!
On Kickstarter
Simon Ståhlenhag’s Swedish Machines. I have been fascinated with Stålenhag’s art for years. It tickles a little part of my brain labeled “This Could be Real.” I love the Tales From the Loop RPG and I have the art book for that too. I held off backing this one for a while but eventually decided I had to have it.
Kal-Arath: Sword and Sorcery by Castle Grief. Kal-Arath is a truly independent game and setting being made by a mutual I discovered on Instagram. It looks fun and old school as all get out.
Back up
Like I said, all of these are still live (or if not, they just finished before I posted this.) Over the next few days, I’m going to go into detail on some or all of them and give you a reason, dear reader, to go and back them like I did. For now, why not go and have a look at their campaign pages to see if they can tempt you!
What are you backing right now, oh reader? Or what is a project you are so glad or so sad you backed?
The Dice Pool 