To hell with Dwimmerdork.
It's wrong for the bung nugget who screwed over people in a Kickstarter to get boundless press when there are plenty of RPG Kickstarters which delivered on their promises. The repeated message from the Dwimmerdork Debacle is to avoid RPG Kickstarters and I don't believe that should be the message.
So let's talk about RPG (or other gaming related) Kickstarters that rocked. Let's talk about the guys and gals who delivered a great game, even it was a bit late. Let's talk about the people who kept up great communication and were honest with their patrons and who gave them something that validated the patronage model.
So who are the RPG Kickstarter heroes?
I fucking love my random dungeon generator poster map (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2040314005/random-dungeon-generator-as-a-dungeon-map)!
Graham Walmsley delivered great (and on time?) with Stealing Cthulhu - a fantastic tool for kicking new energy and ideas into Cthulhu rpgs.
And even though it came rather f*cking late, I must give it to James Raggi and Vincent Baker, that Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions is a great book. And as it went from a suggested 32-page softcover to a 160 page hardcover I can forgive the lateness. This time. In general I think that KS-projects should just strive to deliver what they promised on time, instead of way late and bigger/expanded.
Here's a couple standouts:
Guide to Glorantha: This one is quite late, but very understandably. The reaction to the kickstarter was so great, they added enough content to require a second book. All that content had to be drawn, written, proof-read, edited, laid out, and that takes time. In the meantime, they've sent out the full text of the guide (repeatedly, as they've added new content), many of the maps, and several pieces of art. I don't have the physical product yet, but based on the PDFs this is already my favourite RPG release of the year.
Spears of the Dawn: Kevin Crawford delivered an amazing book and he did it early. He did a couple things that were very smart. First, he had the text completed before the kickstarter even launched. Starting out a few steps from the finish line leaves much less time for something to go wrong. Second, he used OneBookShelf for fulfillment. Many of the RPG publishers that wound up stepping on their own dicks after the kickstarter did it during fulfillment.
Reaper Bones! Holy mother of god Reaper Bones!
(http://geek-news.mtv.com//wp-content/uploads/geek/2012/08/ReaperMinisSet.png)
Loved these guys since I used to order the black and white Ral Partha catalogues in the 80s. Their bones kickstarters are amazing. Want populate an entire megadungeon for under 200 and get figures better looking than Games Workshop's? Goddamn mother-frelling Reaper kickstarters. There's another on right now iirc.
Link?
I feel the obvious one is FATE.
The Traveller one delivered but there is a lot of doubt about the quality of what was delivered, but hey.. Mark Miller did what he said, and you can't complain about the quantity.
Robin Laws did a Dramascape one that delivered, although I am 'meh' about the game, it's lovely and met all it's targets.
Guide to Glorantha will be awesome, I game with the cartgrapher and the output is vast and scarily wonderful.
Spears of the Dawn, hands down. In time and everything (including artwork and layout templates!!!) put under an open license? Crazy, just crazy.
Tenra Bansho Zero and Golden Sky Stories. Great communication and updates, awesome physical product. (I have not the faintest doubt that GSS will be a great physical book when it becomes available.)
Quote from: tzunder;690193Link?
Looks like I was wrong, new one was announced at Gencon on Aug 16th and is supposed to happen "in the fall" sometime, so prob in the next 6 weeks. Highly recommend it.
I was pretty happy with the Blacksand Kickstarter, so happy in fact I went ahead and contributed to Maelstrom Doomsday.
Yeah, Spears of the Dawn had a realistic plan, good communication through the process, and delivered a kickass product in a timely fashion. Money well spent.
I would think Numenera would be listed here as one that rocked.
Does Order of the Stick count?
FATE ramped up a lot in scope, thanks to stretch goals, but had realistic deadlines on each of those, and has delivered. Very well done.
You can totally rely on Kevin Crawford to deliver - Spears of the Dawn to start with. The Tenra Bansho Zero kickstarter has delivered, Golden Sky Stories is going well, and Graham Bottley can be trusted.
Spears of Dawn flew under my radar. I'll have to pick it up at some point.
Reaper Bones and Fate are both awesome. I did the pdf option for Fate and got a ton of content for $10.
Wicked Fantasy by John Wick and Gillian Fraser came out on time, is professionally done and 300 pages of good content.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2006204732/wicked-fantasy
I really enjoy my DungeonMorph dice and cards by Inkwell Ideas - the guy who makes Hexographer and a bunch of other cool mapping tools. Delivery was a bit slow but he communicated constantly so there was never any doubt that he would deliver.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inkwellideas/dungeonmorph-dice-dungeon-geomorphs
It's hard to not just repeat what everyone else said, but let's see.
- 2009 One Page Dungeon Codex - I really like this book. One page dungeons are neat to review even if just for ideas, and having a bunch of them in a book is neat.
- Gaming Paper Adventures, Gaming Paper sequel - The Gaming paper folks provide their paper, graph ruled, with a dungeon printed on them - one side with rooms, the other with rooms and furniture.
- Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple. Probably not your cup of tea if you hang out here, but a lovely book.
- Astonishing Swordsman & Sorcerers of Hyperborea
- The Sense of the Slight of Hand Man - it was a bit late, but it's also bigger than originally expected, and although I haven't gotten around to reading it yet I'm sure it's going to knock the socks off.
- Deadlands Noir - On time and lovely - Pinnacle has their stuff together. I got a ton of pdfs for my $10.
- Savage Worlds Rome - Also by Pinnacle, and I think the pdf arrived in my hands a week after the kickstarter closed.
- Dungeon World - Yum. You may not like the game, but the kickstarter went well.
- Tremulus - Also got this in a decent amount of time. Still waiting on stretch goal goodness.
- Nova Praxis - Cyberpunk/post-singularity roleplaying using FATE. Fantastic pdf.
- Ehdrigor - Also FATE, haven't read the pdf yet, but I've _got_ it.
- Arcana Rising - I think I just got the pdf for this, but I"ve been busy this week and haven't downloaded it.
So, there you go. And that's not every rpg kickstarter I've done, either. I seem to generally have a good hand at picking and backing decent ones... there's just a few that get comically off the tracks.
The Lamentations of the Flame Princess hardcover Rules & Magic came out quite late but with an excellent presentation. Its mostly a fixed version of Grindhouse, with better graphics and firearms rules.
Nice touch - red fabric built in bookmark!
Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. The game was ready (written) the day the kickstarter was launched, the issue was production, to be able to have a box and two booklets and a map and dice inside and it worked great. The final product does justice to the game. The communication was great, there was diligence and hard work going into it... and it reached my doorstep unscathed.
Robotech RPG Tactics looks pretty good.
The funding was around: $1.5 million; not too shabby.
I was wondering if this makes it the highest funded tabletop game?
Anyone?
You can easily see the most funded games from this link.
http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/games/most-funded
This includes computer and board games as well, but the list starts with the highest funded and then goes down--I think it lists the top 100 funded items.
It's bizarre: I wouldn't consider the kickstarters that rocked the most to be automatically the ones that funded the most. For me, when you're asking me whether a kickstarter "rocked", I'm thinking of the overall experience, the communication, the bang for the buck, the production values, the timing of reception, all these sorts of things. I think raising too much money can spoil a kickstarter and get to one's head. I mean, it's obviously great for the people who raised the money, at first, at least, by validating your ego or whatnot, but it's not necessarily a sign of quality, for me. It basically raises the stakes and expectations across the board, not necessarily in a good way.
Quote from: jcfiala- Arcana Rising - I think I just got the pdf for this, but I"ve been busy this week and haven't downloaded it.
I just sent out the playtest draft this week, yeah. It's still rough, but so far feedback has been good and helpful.
Quote from: Spinachcat;690180So who are the RPG Kickstarter heroes?
Eclipse Phase: Transhuman: Delivered right on time. Exactly the type of great supplement with high production values you'd expect from Posthuman Studios.
Numenera: The extras haven't delivered yet, but everything so far has been right on time. The fact that I've been getting a dollop of awesome in my e-mail inbox every couple of weeks is simply delightful. And Cook was clearly able to take the extra money from his astounding Kickstarter success and pump it into both fantastically high production values and a long-term plan for providing support for the game.
Reaper Bones: I have no idea what I'm going to do with all these miniatures, but they're awesome.
Dungeon-a-Day: A bit of a disappointment when it comes to the stretch goals (which are way behind schedule), but I backed it for access to the website and the wealth of material it contained. I'm very satisfied.
Monster Stock Art & Minis: Great art. Great price.
Order of the Stick: Another fabulous bargain. Some of the bonuses and stretch goals have fallen behind schedule, but the actual books were speedily delivered and this is another project where the constant drip of extra awesome over the long-term provides a constant reinforcement of my deep satisfaction with the project.
Quote from: Benoist;690296It's bizarre: I wouldn't consider the kickstarters that rocked the most to be automatically the ones that funded the most.
I don't think anybody said that at all. Somebody asked which RPG KS made the most money and I provided a link.
Quote from: Black Vulmea;690181I fucking love my random dungeon generator poster map (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2040314005/random-dungeon-generator-as-a-dungeon-map)!
I am addicted to the free online game (http://blogofholding.com/dungeonrobber/) version of it and it makes me want to buy the poster.
Quote from: Benoist;690296It's bizarre: I wouldn't consider the kickstarters that rocked the most to be automatically the ones that funded the most.
Yeah; the amount of money is interesting as a high score, but the only question that matters is "did you hit 100%?". As much as people like to harp on that "kickstarter is not a store", every pound raised on kickstarter funds come with obligations, it's not just a sudden large payday for a lucky developer with some nostalgia behind them.
Quote from: Ladybird;690336Yeah; the amount of money is interesting as a high score, but the only question that matters is "did you hit 100%?". As much as people like to harp on that "kickstarter is not a store", every pound raised on kickstarter funds come with obligations, it's not just a sudden large payday for a lucky developer with some nostalgia behind them.
True, I see a few there that are likely to be problematic--for Computer Games, I see trouble for both Yogventures and Homestuck Adventure Game, since in those cases guys who never made games themselves are gonna have a lot of trials ahead.
It is however a pretty good gauge to see what KS are more popular.
I notice that most of the Tabletop ones that did big are mostly existing properties. CoC, Exalted, etc. Out of the Tabletop RPGs I think Numenera is the highest one done based on the name or reputation of the author alone rather than a pre-existing concept that had its own popularity.
I was very pleased with Starships and Spacemen.
Good book with some nifty extras delivered on time.
It was indiegogo but whatever.
Also FATE core.
Another Indiegogo one, but OpenQuest 2 has just distributed the pdfs and I'm expecting my actual book next month. d101 games are doing some supplements including a free rules intro "OpenQuest Basics" off the back of the campaign.
Outside of Order of the Stick, which I missed, the one I've been most impressed with was FATE Core. They've delivered what they said they'd deliver and they've kept everyone appraised of the situation.
I've also liked Triple Ace's Hellfrost - Land of Fire setting. They were a bit hamstrung with the shipment coming to them via a cargo ship, but that's wasn't something they could control once the ship left the dock. But the print run was very professional and I've enjoyed reading the setting material.
Once Lone Wolf's RealmWorks software is released, that'll probably join the other two. I realize that the were able to hire some extra programmers and they had more eyes looking at the architecture that they had to redo things for the long term. That they were honest about it is fine with me, as I'm an ex-coder myself. Better to get it done right rather than rush it out and then have to fix it later.
Not a tabletop RPG, but the Shadowrun Returns (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-returns) computer RPG delivered pretty much what I was expecting, an enjoyable framework with a decent starting adventure.
I've been pretty happy with the ACK Players Companion. Great book, so very glad I funded it.
ICONS: Great Power was a welcome addition to ICONS.
Monster Hunter International RPG. I spent a lot on this kickstart, more than I probably should have. But, I love my Unit Patches and Dice (I even got the ammo clip pouch dice bag!).
We'll see how awesome Robotech RPG Tactics, M&M 10th Anniversary, Tunnels & Trolls Delux, ACK Domains at War, and Mekton Zero are once I have them in hand.
The most I have ever spent on a Kickstarter was Robotech RPG Tactics... I've got 350+ minis coming my way when it launches...
I wish I'd known there was a Kickstart for a Hardback RQ6, and Space 1889 when I actually had the money. Really sad I missed out on both, moreso the latter since Space 1889 is one of my all time favorite RPGs and settings. Finally getting the Ubiquity edition from Germany is awesome! Just wish I could have funded it.
Quote from: JRT;690291You can easily see the most funded games from this link.
http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/games/most-funded
This includes computer and board games as well, but the list starts with the highest funded and then goes down--I think it lists the top 100 funded items.
Thanks for the link!
Tenra Bansho Zero and Golden Sky Stories, as mentioned above.
OVA could be going a bit faster or send updates more often but I love the way they organized the kickstarter and have high hopes for it.
The Hellas and Conspiracy X Kickstarters were good to me. As was Early Dark, Esteren, Fate of the Norns, Magicians, Spears of the dawn, openquest2 , barrowmaze2, starships and spacemen...
Crowdfunding has been a very exciting way to support the kinds of products I'm interested in and I'll certainly back more. I am interested to see when someone will come up with a good solution to the spiraling shipping costs problem.
Yeah, there are a few projects taking longer than they should, but I pledge to projects with the understanding that they'll realistically be later than planned.
I kind of cringe at the thought of what such a hugely successful kickstarter is going to do to Kevin Siemieda's mind.
Quote from: RPGPundit;691256I kind of cringe at the thought of what such a hugely successful kickstarter is going to do to Kevin Siemieda's mind.
Maybe he can finally buy a computer to do layout on?
Quote from: RPGPundit;691256I kind of cringe at the thought of what such a hugely successful kickstarter is going to do to Kevin Siemieda's mind.
No more worse than what the Ogre kickstarter did for Steve Jacksons already morbidly gross obese ego...
Quote from: YourSwordisMine;691433No more worse than what the Ogre kickstarter did for Steve Jacksons already morbidly gross obese ego...
Oh great. I can't wash THAT one out of my mind.
I guess this'll have to do instead:
(http://www.movoto.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/23.gif)
Warbirds delivered on time and with competently executed chrome.
Neither RQ6 nor Lords of Gossamer and Shadow have shipped yet, but they're on track and the communication from the developers has been exemplary. At this point, if they're delayed it will clearly be due to exigent circumstances.