From what I hear, "The Mountain Witch" RPG is a game where you play samurai who don't know each other, and don't trust each other, trying to get up a mountain to kill a witch. That sounds fun.

I came upon it in a Mythcriants podcast I was listening to today. (For reference: https://mythcreants.com/blog/category/podcast/) The Mythcriants made it sound like an exciting game, so I tried to hunt it down, but it's only available from Indie Press Revolution as a pdf.

Then I found a failed Kickstarter for a second edition, last updated in August of 2018. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/timfire/the-mountain-witch-samurai-blood-opera-in-mythical although there are people up to a few days ago making comments on how the fellow bamboozled them.

The Kickstarter asked for $10k, and got nearly $70k, and the fellow - Timothy Kleinert - appears to have taken the money and ran.

You'd think that if you already did a first edition on your own it wouldn't take much to clean it up into a second, especially when he claims it was already written and the art was done. My suspicion is that he did the math too late and it dawned on him that a rulebook and 18 cards with a case and shipping would to cost more than what he asked the backers to pay, he'd lose money, so he just didn't do it. And felt sad about it, I guess.

Does anyone have any idea what happened?

//Panjumanju

Maybe nobody heard of it? It certainly is news to me.

You'd think a "print it yer damn self" DTRPG coupon wouldn't be all that difficult.  They do cards, too.

There's an update in the KS in january 2019. Are you sure it's dead? *EDIT: oops, I saw the comments section. Yes, it seems the guy ran away.

Mountain Witch is a great little game, by the way. I have the 1st edition here. It kinda invented the whole "trust play" that a whole bunch of Forgite games copied.

Kickstarter is just such a bizarre concept:  Being able to just run away with the money without any recourse should not be an option but yet it is.
Feel bad for those who got duped.  Reminds me of the old-western image of the miracle tonic salesman.  They promise the world, get the money and then get out of town before reality sets in.

I've only ever backed one KS:  The recent Old-School Essentials KS and that was after a lot of research on the company's previous ability to follow though.  Of course that is a second edition release too so I guess I'm still taking my chances.  Fingers crossed heh.

The Second Edition is the Kickstarter.  He's taken "trust play" to the next level, that's all.  Anyone who pitched in to the KS got the game, it's the ultimate one-shot.  They trusted and got betrayed, now they get to tell their story about it.

Kind of a shame.  The original was kind of cool, for a Storygame.

the KS *was* the game! It was greatest version of high-risk hardcore performance gaming ever pulled! It's the birth of a new genre!

Is there really no legal recourse to a failed KS or is it simply to much trouble to bother with for $50-100? I've assumed that the relatively small individual losses just make it hard to pursue, 500 individual minor charges at $50 each vs one charge of grand larceny $25,000 that requires a coordinated group effort / class action kind of thing which just doesn't happen out of apathy.

Big picture I realize it is the same thing because they get away with taking the money, but it seems like it would at least be technically illegal without at least going through the motions of filing for bankruptcy or similar.

Well, congrats to this guy. He's worse than Skarka. At least Skarka gave some refunds.

I always wanted a traditional RPG version of The Mountain Witch. It's got a great premise, but I avoid storygames due mostly to its fanbase. Back when 1e came out, a good friend of mine ran it repeatedly and we talked about how to convert it into a LARP. That would have been interesting. I've dabbled with the idea of perverting it as a boardgame as well. If anyone is cool with narrative RPGs, I recommend taking a look at Mountain Witch.

I feel bad for the backers of ANY failed KS, but the irony of a "trust game" on KS becoming its own "trust game" is at least good for a laugh.

Of course, we all know why the KS failed. Trump did it!

I've laughed hard on you guys bringing the irony of the "trust game" on the KS.

*for those who don't know, the Mountain Witch rules uses a currency called "Trust", that each player assign to others and is used for them to help each other out (getting significantly increased chances of success) OR to betray each other. The catch is: it's the only way to power-up your rolls so you get what you want in crucial moments. But in so doing you also open yourself for betrayal. And as PCs have different goals regarding the Witch (sometimes conflicting directly - the game comes with a set of 7 Dark Fates cards, distributed in the beginning) it's almost guaranteed betrayals will happen.

So its Betrayal at House on the Haunted Hill, without the board?

Interesting that he scammed them after a success. But the first red flag was that this was a Forge related game. We all know how dishonest some of them can be, and have been in the past. Too bad this one apparently was too. Apparently.

As for the costs being too much. Unlikely. They were asking about 3x what it would cost to manufacture so they should have had a wide margin of error. So it is unlikely they dropped the ball there. And they would have been able to refund backers.

Red flag on the Forge folks, what's that? Do you have a more concrete basis for that?

 I know a lot of ex-forgers who delivered a bunch of KS and products. See the PbtA crowd for eg.

Quote from: Itachi;1095762Red flag on the Forge folks, what's that? Do you have a more concrete basis for that?

 I know a lot of ex-forgers who delivered a bunch of KS and products. See the PbtA crowd for eg.

1: Based on how some of the Forge members have acted in the past? What do you think?

2: Time will tell if this one is a bad egg or not. It feels too early to tell for sure to me? Ive seen designers clam up after a KS before so this could be such a case. (And seen a few where the designer really should have kept their mouth shut too ahem.)

Least this isnt a blow up like Golden Bell is having recently. They are the posterchild for a publisher who should shut the hell up as they have taken to threatening backers and several KS projects have gone bad with them now on various levels. Including one I was a playtester for. They seem to be trying to outdo Game Salute for pissing off people.

On the flip side Deep Space D-6 faced some delays due to factory changes and the designer clammed up for a while. But the game finally shipped just fine. Just a few months late.

Quote from: Omega;1095753And they would have been able to refund backers.

Everyone seems to assume mass refunds are a viable option after a project fails, but I can't imagine that ever being true.

Right out of the gate Kickstarter takes their cut of about 5% of total as soon as the closing date successfully passes.

Then, just about any situation that requires a refund involves the developer making an effort to complete it first before it fails. That means money spend on whatever freelancers were commissioned, material costs, and maybe even up-fronts - we're not even talking about time spent. Swaths of the budget can be legitimately allocated and gone without the situation being as dastardly as "I paid my rent with it".

Good faith or bad faith, wise decisions or poor, the money is always gone, or at least enough of a chunk to make refunds not a viable option. Any Kickstarter I've heard of where they gave refunds it was out-of-pocket, and almost always wasn't the pocket of the person who screwed the project anyway.

//Panjumanju