Welcome back to our weekly look at tabletop roleplaying game, and accessories, crowdfunding projects roundup! Each week we'll be looking at a few campaigns currently running that have caught our eye. If you have anything you'd like us to cover, or questions about anything we talk about, please don't hesitate to leave a comment or contact me directly.
[h=3]The Dread House (Pathfinder/5th Edition/Call of Cthulhu) by Danny O’Neill – Hammerdog Games[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Saturday 29th October 2016; 19:00 UTC)
The Dread House is not only a book of adventures, which we’ll look at below, but also offers a range of floor tiles and miniatures (both figurines as well as scenery) and even a musical soundtrack to complement and enhance the game. Additional extras also include fiction and a GM Screen.
The Dread House, itself, comes in three flavours – Pathfinder, 5th Edition and Call of Cthulhu – and (before stretch goals) is a 128 page full colour hardcover book (or PDF for those wanting just an electronic copy). Contained within are four adventures covering Medieval, 1920’s, Modern and the Near Future time periods, all centered on the Dread House – a massive mansion spanning over 200 rooms plus grounds and information on the nearby town of Sorenton.
The adventures, before any additional stretch goals, are as follows:
The Dread Wedding: The bulk of the book and the primary storyline. This is a lengthy and challenging adventure that will take multiple sessions to complete. (Medieval: Pathfinder/5E, Level 3-5)
Beyond the Veil: A short Call of Cthulhu adventure that will form the first part of a campaign if stretch goals are reached. The group enters the house to participate in a séance and end up releasing a group of spirits that had been trapped Beyond The Veil. (1920’s: Call of Cthulhu)
Stay the Night: The group hears about a contest based around “The World’s Most Haunted House” and decide to enter. They must stay 1 night without fleeing. If they manage it, they win the house itself. (Modern: Call of Cthulhu)
Geist in the Gears: In a futuristic safe house, things go terribly wrong when a virus infects the control software, truly trapping the players inside. The group must solve The Dread Wedding to escape with their lives. (Near Future: Call of Cthulhu)
[h=3]Salt in Wounds Tabletop Setting for 5th Edition & Pathfinder by J.M. Perkins[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Thursday 27th October 2016; 18:03 UTC)
Salt in Wounds is a detailed dark fantasy city setting created for Pathfinder and 5th Edition. The campaign offers not only the Campaign Setting but a number of adventures, highly detailed maps, a Players Handbook and more.
“Upon approach to the city of Salt in Wounds, the first thing a traveller will note is the sounds of the Tarrasque – the unkillable, mountain sized monster that terrorized the world in the last age – screaming as it is butchered – again – to feed a hungry city. Its roars echo for dozens of leagues, and the ground occasionally trembles as the beast thrashes against the immoveable harpoons that hold it in place.
Past the massive carved-bone gates, the city continues its assault o the senses as merchants bark their wares, gore splattered laborers drunk on blood wine gamble & brawl, and every manner of vice is offered up for sale. Fortunes are made here… as are adventures. The city holds a place for everyone from mercenary warlocks, to scheming Binder-Lords & dour God-Butchers obsessed with their holy mission, to covert paladins & fanatical druids (executed whenever discovered), to mutants & Marrow Miner orcs: all manner of hero, villain, and all those who fall somewhere in between. But there is perhaps no more dangerous metropolis in the world than this place where the ground water itself can monstrously twist your flesh, where citizen ghouls doff their hats in salute even as they smile with their overlarge, over-sharp teeth, and the Tarrasque still strives to free itself even after two centuries…”
Salt in Wounds is a city whose culture, economy, and existence is beholden to the reality of the giant, regenerating kaiju called the ‘Tarrasque’ who is imprisoned within the city center so it can be butchered over and over again, feeding the population and fuelling the economy of this sprawling metropolis.
[h=3]Crypts of Indormancy by Daniel Sell[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Tuesday 18th October 2016; 16:11 UTC)
Crypts of Indormancy is an evocative location-based adventure compatible with Lamentations of the Flame Princess and most other Dungeons & Dragons clones. The final book will be a saddle-stitched 40-odd page A5 affair with a gloriously coloured cover and black and white internal illustrations.
Features include:
· Set in a quasi-Polynesian island chain
· Dungeon fundamentals done fresh and right, evil wizard and all
· A backdrop of postcolonial elves digging through their imperial past
· Optional rules to help more fully and easily engage with the peculiar background of the world by incentivizing culturally specific behavior
· Five memorable and perplexing new monsters
· A confident and distinct literary voice
[h=3]Letters from the Flaming Crab (2017) for the Pathfinder RPG by Alex Abel[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Thursday 20th October 2016; 16:09 UTC)
Letters from the Flaming Crab is a bi-monthly release for Pathfinder that explores a variety of different topics, some familiar others strange, to enhance your campaign. Each Letter has a different crew (writing team) and is about 15-20 pages long (@ 10,000 words). Topics for 2017 are ‘The Puppet Show’, ‘Gremlins’, ‘Libraries and Research’, ‘Imaginary Friends’, ‘Religious Communities’, ‘Dangerous Spores’ as well as three personal letters whose topics and dates are yet to be announced.
In addition to helping fund the 2017 roster, print compilations of the 2015-2016 Letters, as well as the eventual 2017 compilation, are also available in the campaign.
[h=3]Rothaen: A Dungeon World Compatible Setting & RPG Audio Set by Wes Otis[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Sunday 16th October 2016; 03:00 UTC)
Rothaen is a dark pulp fantasy setting, compatible with Dungeon World. The campaign is aiming to produce a 300-page core book (The Realms of Rothaen_, a 50-page monster book (which with stretch goals goal hit 100 pages), 30 ten-minute fantasy audio tracks and 40 digital maps.
Wes Otis is an Emmy-nominated sound designer and started Plate Mail Games, who have run a number of successful Kickstarters, producing over 600 audio soundtracks for RPGs over the last three years.
Rothaen allows your group to influence the world for everyone, not only the stories that unfold in your own campaign, through The Rothaen Register, where groups can submit their adventures to be published in a free quarterly PDF which will become canon and shape the world’s destiny. One of the ore principles behind the game is that ‘Your’ group is the centre of all stories. As the campaigns ays, {hq]”there are no right or wrong stories in Rothaen.”[/hq]. A lot of the world has been left unexplored so the GM and players can help create stories based upon the maps received. What is the ruin marked on the map? Who are the denizens of this city? Etc.
The book details a number of nations from Acum (Holy wardens of the Doomlands prison) through to Yulima (Heavily fortified city states trying to defend against the Molati Horde) as well as races (from the Mountain and Ice Dwarves through various Elves, Gnomes, Humans, Eslia and Halflings to the Rincrin) and offers a number of new compendium classes such as the Arcvane Inventor, Pirate Nation Sea Dog and Black Marked Halfling.
With only a few days left of the campaign to go it’s worth checking it out now before it’s too late!
[h=3]Era: The Consortium – A Universe of Expansion! By Shades of Vengeance[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Tuesday 1st November 2016; 14:59 UTC)
Shades of Vengeance have been developing their series of ‘Era’ roleplaying games for the last few years, with a number of successful Kickstarters already having helped develop a variety of settings for the game across several genres. With this campaign they are looking to enhance their sci-fi versions, Era: The Consortium, with up to eighteen new expansions covering a wealth of topics.
The initial offering is for 3 expansions (plus the option of getting hold of the core rulebook for those who might not have a copy) with further expansions being added through stretch goals.
”Each [book] brings a new dimension to gameplay: from psionic abilities to rules for trading cargo, from information on sub-factions within the Resistance to an explanation of what really happened to the Orion’s crew in the Albiorix system and from memory sharing through cybernetics to the ability to construct a support system for growing forces. We are also offering source books for each race, which will bring not only a history for that race and how they reached the Consortium, but new and unique equipment for each!”
[h=3]The Zombie Squad by FeralGames[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Tuesday 25th October 2016; 17:29 UTC)
The Zombie Squad is a sci-fi RPG set in the distant future where humanity has reached the stars and, predictably, managed to annoy pretty much every sentient being we’ve met out there…
Now adrift in space far from home, the Human race fights a never ending battle to survive. But war takes its toll and resources are low, so the people in control decide they need a new strategy and turn to those criminals awaiting execution in military stockades.
You are an ex-military prisoner, yanked from your cold stone cell on death row and offered the choice to die by firing squad or die redeeming yourself for the good of humanity. With the worst equipment, the worst missions and a survival rate so ow you are termed the walking dead, because officially you are. Your unit designation is Penal Squad 113, but with those Death Heads on your lapels you are known simply as THE ZOMBIE SQUAD.
There are two versions of the game available on the Kickstarter. The first is a slightly tweaked version of the original which was available in PDF in 2015 and uses a D20 system. The second will feature all new art and use the Powered by the Apocalypse Engine rules set.
[h=3]Project Biomodus – A Transhuamn, Post-Apocalyptic Action RPG by Joseph ‘BEAR’ Thompson - TAPM Systems[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Wednesday 2nd November 2016; 06:06 UTC)
Project Biomodus is an action-heavy, semi-classless tabletop roleplaying game, set nearly a millennia in what we would call the future. Humankind had made so many technological and medical advances that immortality was possible; in the form of an artificially implanted organ called the Bioforge. This innovation backfired in a way that caused humans to be born with naturally occurring Bioforges, resulting in a conflict of ideals, economics and eventually outright discrimination and violence. This led to the rapidly adapting race of new humanity – with the genus Homo biomodi – to react back.
The final and most defining reaction was by that of a figure called The Engineer. Born a Homo biomodi and self-evolved into one of the first Biomodus, The Engineer released a powerful nanite plague on the planet – a gift as they saw it – in an attempt to uplift all of humanity into Homo biomodi and end the conflict.
Things did not go as planned.
The Nanite ‘gift’ was altered and mutated, resulting in the uplifting of every living organism. Every plant, fish, mammal, insect and bird was forcibly adapted and given a Bioforge. The ripple of death from biological shock was enough to tear up the ecosystem and cause huge holes to appear in the Earth’s fragile defences from the Sun.
Everything was poised to die, but then the survivors – people, animals, fish and plant – began to adapt.
Fast forward eight centuries or so. Humanity is dead, or at least as it once was. Homo biomodi (collectively called Munsi) are the surviving descendants of humanity, however they are not the apex predator on the planet anymore. Towering trees of wood, obsidian and metal act as oxygen scrubbers where rain forests once stood. The creatres who survived the change are all horribly twisted amalgamations of machinery and flesh, capable of terrifying destruction.
Humanity’s descendants are scattered, diverse and altered now. Some are tribal wanderers, fulfilling a living by hunting these terrifying creatures. Others live in vast Arcologies, set in their own system of governance.
Everything has changed, and none more so than the characters themselves as they carve out a way to survive the horrors around them.
If there were an analogue or thematic comparison for Project Biomodus, the game could be loosely described as Ghost in the Shell, set in a Mad Max world, with essences of Monster Hunter, Fallout and Fist of the North Star, wrapped in a messy, ash-and-concrete byndle of violence, survival and impending dread.
[h=3]Agents of G.A.I.A. (for Pathfinder, 5e, and Savage Worlds) by Battlefield Press Inc[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Friday 4th November 2016; 11:22 UTC)
Battlefield Press’ new game, written by Alan Bahr and Jonathan M Thompson) has been inspired by TV shows such as Warehouse 13, The Librarians and Kolchak: The Night Stalker. The game sees the characters become agents of the Government Antiquities Investigative Agency (G.A.I.A.) which was founded in 1939 by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to protect the world from the wealth of weird and strange things that happen every day, and keep that knowledge away from the general public.
There will be three versions of the book using different systems – Pathfinder, 5e and Savage Worlds – but all will contain the secret history of the world since 1930, details on the various organizations and secret societies, a selection of items either found in the storerooms of G.A.I.A. or that need to be hunted down and retrieved, as well as information on the various character types from agents to wizards.
**********
If you like what we do here at EN World (the Forums, Columns, News, ENnies, etc) and would like to help support us to bring you MORE please consider supporting our Patreon. Even a single dollar helps Thanks!
**********
If you have a forthcoming Kickstarter, or see one that excites you, please feel free to drop me an email on angus.abranson@gmail.com You can follow me on Twitter @ Angus_A or on Facebook where I often post about gaming.
Until next week, have fun and happy gaming!
Angus Abranson
[h=3]The Dread House (Pathfinder/5th Edition/Call of Cthulhu) by Danny O’Neill – Hammerdog Games[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Saturday 29th October 2016; 19:00 UTC)
The Dread House is not only a book of adventures, which we’ll look at below, but also offers a range of floor tiles and miniatures (both figurines as well as scenery) and even a musical soundtrack to complement and enhance the game. Additional extras also include fiction and a GM Screen.
The Dread House, itself, comes in three flavours – Pathfinder, 5th Edition and Call of Cthulhu – and (before stretch goals) is a 128 page full colour hardcover book (or PDF for those wanting just an electronic copy). Contained within are four adventures covering Medieval, 1920’s, Modern and the Near Future time periods, all centered on the Dread House – a massive mansion spanning over 200 rooms plus grounds and information on the nearby town of Sorenton.
The adventures, before any additional stretch goals, are as follows:
The Dread Wedding: The bulk of the book and the primary storyline. This is a lengthy and challenging adventure that will take multiple sessions to complete. (Medieval: Pathfinder/5E, Level 3-5)
Beyond the Veil: A short Call of Cthulhu adventure that will form the first part of a campaign if stretch goals are reached. The group enters the house to participate in a séance and end up releasing a group of spirits that had been trapped Beyond The Veil. (1920’s: Call of Cthulhu)
Stay the Night: The group hears about a contest based around “The World’s Most Haunted House” and decide to enter. They must stay 1 night without fleeing. If they manage it, they win the house itself. (Modern: Call of Cthulhu)
Geist in the Gears: In a futuristic safe house, things go terribly wrong when a virus infects the control software, truly trapping the players inside. The group must solve The Dread Wedding to escape with their lives. (Near Future: Call of Cthulhu)
[h=3]Salt in Wounds Tabletop Setting for 5th Edition & Pathfinder by J.M. Perkins[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Thursday 27th October 2016; 18:03 UTC)
Salt in Wounds is a detailed dark fantasy city setting created for Pathfinder and 5th Edition. The campaign offers not only the Campaign Setting but a number of adventures, highly detailed maps, a Players Handbook and more.
“Upon approach to the city of Salt in Wounds, the first thing a traveller will note is the sounds of the Tarrasque – the unkillable, mountain sized monster that terrorized the world in the last age – screaming as it is butchered – again – to feed a hungry city. Its roars echo for dozens of leagues, and the ground occasionally trembles as the beast thrashes against the immoveable harpoons that hold it in place.
Past the massive carved-bone gates, the city continues its assault o the senses as merchants bark their wares, gore splattered laborers drunk on blood wine gamble & brawl, and every manner of vice is offered up for sale. Fortunes are made here… as are adventures. The city holds a place for everyone from mercenary warlocks, to scheming Binder-Lords & dour God-Butchers obsessed with their holy mission, to covert paladins & fanatical druids (executed whenever discovered), to mutants & Marrow Miner orcs: all manner of hero, villain, and all those who fall somewhere in between. But there is perhaps no more dangerous metropolis in the world than this place where the ground water itself can monstrously twist your flesh, where citizen ghouls doff their hats in salute even as they smile with their overlarge, over-sharp teeth, and the Tarrasque still strives to free itself even after two centuries…”
Salt in Wounds is a city whose culture, economy, and existence is beholden to the reality of the giant, regenerating kaiju called the ‘Tarrasque’ who is imprisoned within the city center so it can be butchered over and over again, feeding the population and fuelling the economy of this sprawling metropolis.
[h=3]Crypts of Indormancy by Daniel Sell[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Tuesday 18th October 2016; 16:11 UTC)
Crypts of Indormancy is an evocative location-based adventure compatible with Lamentations of the Flame Princess and most other Dungeons & Dragons clones. The final book will be a saddle-stitched 40-odd page A5 affair with a gloriously coloured cover and black and white internal illustrations.
Features include:
· Set in a quasi-Polynesian island chain
· Dungeon fundamentals done fresh and right, evil wizard and all
· A backdrop of postcolonial elves digging through their imperial past
· Optional rules to help more fully and easily engage with the peculiar background of the world by incentivizing culturally specific behavior
· Five memorable and perplexing new monsters
· A confident and distinct literary voice
[h=3]Letters from the Flaming Crab (2017) for the Pathfinder RPG by Alex Abel[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Thursday 20th October 2016; 16:09 UTC)
Letters from the Flaming Crab is a bi-monthly release for Pathfinder that explores a variety of different topics, some familiar others strange, to enhance your campaign. Each Letter has a different crew (writing team) and is about 15-20 pages long (@ 10,000 words). Topics for 2017 are ‘The Puppet Show’, ‘Gremlins’, ‘Libraries and Research’, ‘Imaginary Friends’, ‘Religious Communities’, ‘Dangerous Spores’ as well as three personal letters whose topics and dates are yet to be announced.
In addition to helping fund the 2017 roster, print compilations of the 2015-2016 Letters, as well as the eventual 2017 compilation, are also available in the campaign.
[h=3]Rothaen: A Dungeon World Compatible Setting & RPG Audio Set by Wes Otis[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Sunday 16th October 2016; 03:00 UTC)
Rothaen is a dark pulp fantasy setting, compatible with Dungeon World. The campaign is aiming to produce a 300-page core book (The Realms of Rothaen_, a 50-page monster book (which with stretch goals goal hit 100 pages), 30 ten-minute fantasy audio tracks and 40 digital maps.
Wes Otis is an Emmy-nominated sound designer and started Plate Mail Games, who have run a number of successful Kickstarters, producing over 600 audio soundtracks for RPGs over the last three years.
Rothaen allows your group to influence the world for everyone, not only the stories that unfold in your own campaign, through The Rothaen Register, where groups can submit their adventures to be published in a free quarterly PDF which will become canon and shape the world’s destiny. One of the ore principles behind the game is that ‘Your’ group is the centre of all stories. As the campaigns ays, {hq]”there are no right or wrong stories in Rothaen.”[/hq]. A lot of the world has been left unexplored so the GM and players can help create stories based upon the maps received. What is the ruin marked on the map? Who are the denizens of this city? Etc.
The book details a number of nations from Acum (Holy wardens of the Doomlands prison) through to Yulima (Heavily fortified city states trying to defend against the Molati Horde) as well as races (from the Mountain and Ice Dwarves through various Elves, Gnomes, Humans, Eslia and Halflings to the Rincrin) and offers a number of new compendium classes such as the Arcvane Inventor, Pirate Nation Sea Dog and Black Marked Halfling.
With only a few days left of the campaign to go it’s worth checking it out now before it’s too late!
[h=3]Era: The Consortium – A Universe of Expansion! By Shades of Vengeance[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Tuesday 1st November 2016; 14:59 UTC)
Shades of Vengeance have been developing their series of ‘Era’ roleplaying games for the last few years, with a number of successful Kickstarters already having helped develop a variety of settings for the game across several genres. With this campaign they are looking to enhance their sci-fi versions, Era: The Consortium, with up to eighteen new expansions covering a wealth of topics.
The initial offering is for 3 expansions (plus the option of getting hold of the core rulebook for those who might not have a copy) with further expansions being added through stretch goals.
”Each [book] brings a new dimension to gameplay: from psionic abilities to rules for trading cargo, from information on sub-factions within the Resistance to an explanation of what really happened to the Orion’s crew in the Albiorix system and from memory sharing through cybernetics to the ability to construct a support system for growing forces. We are also offering source books for each race, which will bring not only a history for that race and how they reached the Consortium, but new and unique equipment for each!”
[h=3]The Zombie Squad by FeralGames[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Tuesday 25th October 2016; 17:29 UTC)
The Zombie Squad is a sci-fi RPG set in the distant future where humanity has reached the stars and, predictably, managed to annoy pretty much every sentient being we’ve met out there…
Now adrift in space far from home, the Human race fights a never ending battle to survive. But war takes its toll and resources are low, so the people in control decide they need a new strategy and turn to those criminals awaiting execution in military stockades.
You are an ex-military prisoner, yanked from your cold stone cell on death row and offered the choice to die by firing squad or die redeeming yourself for the good of humanity. With the worst equipment, the worst missions and a survival rate so ow you are termed the walking dead, because officially you are. Your unit designation is Penal Squad 113, but with those Death Heads on your lapels you are known simply as THE ZOMBIE SQUAD.
There are two versions of the game available on the Kickstarter. The first is a slightly tweaked version of the original which was available in PDF in 2015 and uses a D20 system. The second will feature all new art and use the Powered by the Apocalypse Engine rules set.
[h=3]Project Biomodus – A Transhuamn, Post-Apocalyptic Action RPG by Joseph ‘BEAR’ Thompson - TAPM Systems[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Wednesday 2nd November 2016; 06:06 UTC)
Project Biomodus is an action-heavy, semi-classless tabletop roleplaying game, set nearly a millennia in what we would call the future. Humankind had made so many technological and medical advances that immortality was possible; in the form of an artificially implanted organ called the Bioforge. This innovation backfired in a way that caused humans to be born with naturally occurring Bioforges, resulting in a conflict of ideals, economics and eventually outright discrimination and violence. This led to the rapidly adapting race of new humanity – with the genus Homo biomodi – to react back.
The final and most defining reaction was by that of a figure called The Engineer. Born a Homo biomodi and self-evolved into one of the first Biomodus, The Engineer released a powerful nanite plague on the planet – a gift as they saw it – in an attempt to uplift all of humanity into Homo biomodi and end the conflict.
Things did not go as planned.
The Nanite ‘gift’ was altered and mutated, resulting in the uplifting of every living organism. Every plant, fish, mammal, insect and bird was forcibly adapted and given a Bioforge. The ripple of death from biological shock was enough to tear up the ecosystem and cause huge holes to appear in the Earth’s fragile defences from the Sun.
Everything was poised to die, but then the survivors – people, animals, fish and plant – began to adapt.
Fast forward eight centuries or so. Humanity is dead, or at least as it once was. Homo biomodi (collectively called Munsi) are the surviving descendants of humanity, however they are not the apex predator on the planet anymore. Towering trees of wood, obsidian and metal act as oxygen scrubbers where rain forests once stood. The creatres who survived the change are all horribly twisted amalgamations of machinery and flesh, capable of terrifying destruction.
Humanity’s descendants are scattered, diverse and altered now. Some are tribal wanderers, fulfilling a living by hunting these terrifying creatures. Others live in vast Arcologies, set in their own system of governance.
Everything has changed, and none more so than the characters themselves as they carve out a way to survive the horrors around them.
If there were an analogue or thematic comparison for Project Biomodus, the game could be loosely described as Ghost in the Shell, set in a Mad Max world, with essences of Monster Hunter, Fallout and Fist of the North Star, wrapped in a messy, ash-and-concrete byndle of violence, survival and impending dread.
[h=3]Agents of G.A.I.A. (for Pathfinder, 5e, and Savage Worlds) by Battlefield Press Inc[/h]
(Campaign Ends : Friday 4th November 2016; 11:22 UTC)
Battlefield Press’ new game, written by Alan Bahr and Jonathan M Thompson) has been inspired by TV shows such as Warehouse 13, The Librarians and Kolchak: The Night Stalker. The game sees the characters become agents of the Government Antiquities Investigative Agency (G.A.I.A.) which was founded in 1939 by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to protect the world from the wealth of weird and strange things that happen every day, and keep that knowledge away from the general public.
There will be three versions of the book using different systems – Pathfinder, 5e and Savage Worlds – but all will contain the secret history of the world since 1930, details on the various organizations and secret societies, a selection of items either found in the storerooms of G.A.I.A. or that need to be hunted down and retrieved, as well as information on the various character types from agents to wizards.
**********
If you like what we do here at EN World (the Forums, Columns, News, ENnies, etc) and would like to help support us to bring you MORE please consider supporting our Patreon. Even a single dollar helps Thanks!
**********
If you have a forthcoming Kickstarter, or see one that excites you, please feel free to drop me an email on angus.abranson@gmail.com You can follow me on Twitter @ Angus_A or on Facebook where I often post about gaming.
Until next week, have fun and happy gaming!
Angus Abranson
