Quote from: TheShadow on September 02, 2023, 09:02:57 PM
Why not judge each Kickstarter on the merits and track record of its creator? I've backed a couple of dozen, and apart from a few mild delays I've never had a problem.

Nah, that's ok.  I have all I really need and I don't need to buy any more.   I have my game collection paired down to (almost) 1 small shelf.  Just games I play and get my money's worth from.  If a game doesn't get used and won't it's sold.

I have no need to impulse buy and I can wait for whatever the item is to hit the market.

If someone cannot produce an RPG in digital format without outside funding they are idiots or scamming. 

Gentlemen ...


It exists.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on September 08, 2023, 01:07:31 PM
Gentlemen ...


It exists.

Miracles do happen.  Anyone have it?  Is it any good?

Wow.

I checked my Kickstarter backing list. I have an actual redemption link to download a PDF.

I clicked it.

It downloaded.

I opened the download, and it wasn't an April fool's joke. It seems to be legit.

*edit*

Well, so far... The three page (!) forward by GMS is the most GMS thing I ever read, waxing still about "transmedia", and claiming that Far West was the hardest "seven" years of his life.

Quote from: Bruwulf on September 08, 2023, 01:16:58 PM

*edit*

Well, so far... The three page (!) forward by GMS is the most GMS thing I ever read, waxing still about "transmedia", and claiming that Far West was the hardest "seven" years of his life.

Maybe the other five years wasn't hard.   

I would love to hear a review of it when you are done reading it.

Is incredible time we live in. Far West exists in finished form.

Interested how the story continues to develop.

Quote from: GhostNinja on September 01, 2023, 11:05:56 PM

Quote from: Bruwulf on September 01, 2023, 05:48:27 PM

Quote from: Bruwulf on September 01, 2023, 10:08:58 AM
I haven't backed a kickstarter in over a decade. I think my last one was Golden Sky Stories. Got burned by a few too many. (Where's my fucking game, Skarka?).

Me, just a couple hours before you posted this.

Still waiting for 6 years for The Great Kingdom D&D documentary to show up.   Still waiting and because of it I will never back a Kickstarter again.

Still waiting five years on for Chronicles of Future Earth. Far West is out (saw a link on Reddit and checked) so maybe there is hope before 2030, although at this point I'm not sure I'll care when it gets here and has turned me off from the company as a whole.  They announced and produced a whole new and separate game already this year (in a year) as a way to get back to writing.

Quote from: Effete on September 02, 2023, 02:20:00 AM
From their website:

QuoteImagine: A fantasy world, but not one based on Medieval/Dark Ages European culture and myth, but rather one based on the tropes of the Spaghetti Western and Chinese Wuxia. Add steampunk elements. Mix well.

So Deadlands?

Except Deadlands predated this by decades. By at least a decade and a half if not two before the KickStarter.

Quote from: TheShadow on September 02, 2023, 09:02:57 PM

Quote from: GhostNinja on September 01, 2023, 11:05:56 PM

Quote from: Bruwulf on September 01, 2023, 05:48:27 PM

Quote from: Bruwulf on September 01, 2023, 10:08:58 AM
I haven't backed a kickstarter in over a decade. I think my last one was Golden Sky Stories. Got burned by a few too many. (Where's my fucking game, Skarka?).

Me, just a couple hours before you posted this.

Still waiting for 6 years for The Great Kingdom D&D documentary to show up.   Still waiting and because of it I will never back a Kickstarter again.

Why not judge each Kickstarter on the merits and track record of its creator? I've backed a couple of dozen, and apart from a few mild delays I've never had a problem.

I have two people I pretty much always back if I can: Kevin at Sine Nomine Games and Greyhawk Grognard to BRW games.

Both have done one thing consistently now. At least a first draft or more of the writing is done (minus any KS specific writing...several times for SNG that has been things I requested). They are coming to KS for art money (and maybe editing...usually SNG has layout done and you get the no art version once funded).

SJG or Ballistic does something for Fantasy Trip and I'm on it and either for GURPS gets a look.

Others it is case by case. Several have been late but I've been okay (Deluxe T&T and The Guide to Glorantha come to mind).

The Gossamer Worlds book was late, but the author died two months in and his wife got it finished. Since then I figured if you're over 18 months late you'd better be dead because that was roughly the timeline there.

Only Chronicles of Future Earth has been late enough to make me angry.

Quote from: PulpHerb on September 08, 2023, 03:10:52 PM
Both have done one thing consistently now. At least a first draft or more of the writing is done (minus any KS specific writing...several times for SNG that has been things I requested). They are coming to KS for art money (and maybe editing...usually SNG has layout done and you get the no art version once funded).

This is what I am talking about.  If you cannot pull this much together without outside funds you should get to work before asking for money.

Quote from: Scooter on September 08, 2023, 03:25:33 PM

Quote from: PulpHerb on September 08, 2023, 03:10:52 PM
Both have done one thing consistently now. At least a first draft or more of the writing is done (minus any KS specific writing...several times for SNG that has been things I requested). They are coming to KS for art money (and maybe editing...usually SNG has layout done and you get the no art version once funded).

This is what I am talking about.  If you cannot pull this much together without outside funds you should get to work before asking for money.

SNG also puts the no art finished version free to download AFTER delivering the goods to it's funders.

I agree, if you don't have a finished game (minus art and maybe editing) you have no shame if you're asking for funds and I'll say nothing about those who fund projects that don't.

I'm going to start this with a bit of math. 278-2-1-3-5-1-2-8-9-1=246

278 pages

- 2 cover pages
- 1 advertisement page
- 3 forward pages
- 5 index pages
- 1 page with two random character portraits
- 2 pages OGL licence
- 8 pages of kickstarter backers
- 9 pages of character templates
- 1 page explaining what a character template is

246 actual pages of "content". And that's before I get bitchy about the amount of art and random tables and stuff taking up more space. Buckle up.

*

There are a /lot/ of random tables. They're all 2-axis D6 tables - roll one D6 for each axis. I've seen it before, but it's still a neat way of doing it, but... there's a lot of them. Anything that they could think of to make a random table for, they did, it feels like. It really starts to feel like filler after a while.

I'll include a sample of what I'm talking about:



Similarly, the index. It's a personal preference, but the index is double spaced, yet has no lines or anything of the sort. It actually makes it more obnoxious to read than it has to be, and between the double spacing and the fact that there are no less than four pieces of art /within/ the index, and it feels like they stretched a 1 page index out into 3 pages. The index is meant to be functional. Art doesn't belong in the index.

The system is... fine. It's a fairly basic D6 dice pool system, rolls are expressed in terms of number of dice + bonus, so 5d6+3, etc. There's a tagging/compelling aspects system lifted almost whole cloth from Other Games. There's a sort of narrative "this, but also this" mechanic called Joss (Get it, get it? Joss, get it?) where if you roll doubles the GM (called the Narrator) is supposed to introduce additional twists - high joss rolls (Double fives and sixes) are supposed to be good, low joss rolls are supposed to be bad. There's also the wild dice - one die out of every roll has to be visually distinct (different color, for example). This die, and only this die, explodes - you re-roll it on a six and add that result as well. But also, if this die, and only this die, rolls a 1, the GM either cancels out the highest roll, or does a "succeeds, but complication" result. Narrator's choice. It's not immediately clear how this intersects with a joss result.

There's a rank system (Novice, Initiate, Master, Legend) which is sort of a power setting for the game, which has different attribute starting points and so forth. There's backgrounds and occupations for character creation. A good bucket of skills. An edges-and-flaws system. Nothing here you haven't seen a lot of times before.

The art. Hooboy. What can I say about the art. It's no surprise. We've known virtually since the beginning that he art was... unique. It's no better or worse than we've been expecting. But there's a lot of it. I think this is because he sold so many "we'll include your character portrait" packages. Because he shoves character portraits everywhere (Including the aformentioned 4 in the index).

There's a (VERY) few pages with some monsters and generic NPC templates.

I don't have time to really delve into the more setting-specific mechanics like kung-fu. Maybe at another point.

The setting occupies a good chunk of the book. It's poorly organized, and the map is a nearly useless mess. The setting itself seems interesting enough. Despite the comments earlier in this thread: This isn't Deadlands, western with a bit of wuxia. It's very much wuxia, with western trappings like six shooters & cowboys. It takes place in a very Chinese-inspired setting that just randomly has western frontier towns with saloons, sometimes. And lots of white people in this wuxia story, from... somewhere. Be interesting to see what some of the usual suspects have to say 'bout that now. Also, they took the Firefly (natch) route of having a stand in for the US civil war, but just like Firefly, the stand in for the union was the "bad guys" and the confederacy stand in were the "good guys".

I mean, let's be honest. There was no way it could live up to the wait. In that sense, this game was doomed 10 years ago. But it's "fine".

I may or may not post more at a later date.

Thank you for the review.