Welcome back to our weekly column exploring some of the tabletop roleplaying games currently available on crowdfunding sites. This week we have a couple of new 5th Edition books - a fey-themed campaign setting and an exotic weapons guide - as well as a new Starfinder/5th Edition campaign setting, new superhero, diesel punk and viking RPGs, a campaign to reprint the brilliant kids game No Thank You, Evil! and some sci-fi stock art!
The Runewild – A Fey-Themed 5e Sandbox Campaign by Matthew J. Hanson
(Campaign Ends : Thursday 21st June 2018; 20:00 UTC)
Beyond the kingdom of Aruanda, there is an untamed land. It is a place where witches walk, where goblins cavort, where the borders between the realms of mortal and fey grow thin. For some, it is a place of unspeakable wonder; for others, only madness and death lie within its trackless depths.
It is the Runewild, and it is both beautiful and cruel.
The Runewild is a dark fairy-tale sandbox setting for use with the 5th Edition of the world’s most popular roleplaying game. Designed for character levels 1 through 10, it provides locations, encounters, and NPCs to support a campaign lasting months or years, or to be adapted into other campaigns. The 160+ page book includes:
Interbellum RPG – War Adventures in a World of Technomagic by Studio Ludens
(Campaign Ends : Wednesday 6th June 2018; 23:22 UTC)
Interbellum is a tabletop roleplaying game that allows players to take the roles of soldiers, adventurers, deserters or even spies in a world of conflict and the symbiosis of magic and technology. The setting takes inspiration from the aesthetics of the First World War and interwar period.
The system is designed to capture a sense of close combat in trenches, ruins or even whole cities swept away by the total war. Be a small cog in the war machine, survive in military operations with tens of thousands of losses a day. Face the horrors of modern mechanized war, deadly, never-before-seen tanks, the airborne terror of biplanes, the experimental weapons of the future of warfare, forged in constant conflict.
However, this is not the world you know - It is a world of myth and magic, progressed to the diesel age. In other words, your squad can be composed of different fantasy races, where your sergeant can be a formerly enslaved orc or your comrade can be a cursed goblin marauder. In search of a means to break the stalemate of trench warfare, science returned magic from oblivion and tamed it. It changed everything.
The game locations are not limited to trenches on the frontline, this setting allows many types of adventures: be deserters and treasure hunters in the colonies, fight in city ruins or the shadow of tanks the size of a mountain, wage “rat war” in sewage networks and subways, or even be the hero of your assault squad in a suicide mission to destroy enemy secret weapons. Your fate is yours to decide: try to survive in war zones, on the frontline or behind enemy lines.
Interbellum is a fantasy dieselpunk setting. or rather technomagic. What if the usual fantasy world met the era of the first mechanized wars? A world where magic was forgotten for hundreds of years, rediscovered and used to break the positional stalemate, this led to an arms race that spawned 1000-ton steel beasts on land and in the air, make fortresses airborne or devastate whole cities with a few bombs. A world that replaced typical Evil Lords with dictators, knights with armored vehicles, and guilds with corporations. In this world fears of a trench war can materialize, your neighbors can be werewolf infiltrators, and the ghosts of your fallen comrades in no-man's land terrorize the enemy.
Unlike other similar settings, here dieselpunk is dominant, but the fantasy elements serve to deconstruct stereotypes. Of course, magic can be used to create fireballs, teleport and other cool stuff, but the main difference is that magic is used for creating new technologies and machines. In fact, magic used as justification for the typical attributes of a dieselpunk - weird tech, giant vehicles, mutants, etc.
On Jule 7, in the year 1404, the Great War began. Beginning for trivial reasons as a conflict between the two superpowers and their satellites, in 9 years of hellish warfare it grew into a global slaughter between four geopolitical blocs. Hundreds of millions of people were involved, many of them died.
While the three superpowers were competing in the race for technical advancement, the fourth superpower collected magical knowledge bit by bit and united them with its own. From the very beginning of the war, the Sidhean Empire was able to surprise everyone by putting hundreds of combat mages on the battlefield. What was considered lost forever, had returned.
After centuries of oblivion, magic and many other fragments of the Old World rose again. Technology tamed the magic and this created a new leap in scientific and technological development, making the previously impossible now possible.
The playable period in setting will cover almost 30 years, including the Great War for lovers of epic conflict, and local wars in the post-war period. Your character can begin his story as cannon fodder in a world war, and after it become a revolutionary or a mercenary, if he survives on the battlefield.
World of Alessia Campaign Primer for 5e D&D & Starfinder by Jaye Sonia
(Campaign Ends : Monday 11th June 2018; 22:38 UTC)
The World of Alessia is a high-fantasy campaign setting that combines Wuxia, science-fiction, and magic-driven technology from Finnish designer Jere Manninen. It is a massive world where magic and technology coexist peacefully, impacting every aspect of life, from the Healing Houses of Sillias to the Great Towers of Xin. It is a land where Fyrean Genies meet with Asrian Wardens and The Gangs of Khatu push their Drifters across the desert sands, seeking resources and victims of every kind.
The World of Alessia Campaign Primer is a comprehensive introduction to Alessia. The primer includes details on the world of Alessia, its threats, the factions that drive its politics, and the many people who walk Alessia's streets.
Beautifully illustrated with full-color art, the World of Alessia Campaign Primer will inspire GMs while providing players with a host of new options to take their 5e or Starfinder game to the next level.
The World of Alessia Campaign Primer brings you:
While many of the traditional fantasy races exist in Alessia, some do not. Moreover, the humans of Alessia are not the dominant species on the planet. The humans share that position with their cousins, the Djinnkin, and Terrans. Compared to the Yökai and all their lines, the humans are a small line indeed.
The World of Alessia is a Wuxia-inspired campaign setting with over two-dozen intelligent, bipedal species united together against the encroaching darkness - which Alessia now faces on multiple fronts. On the planet itself, heroes battle extremists, cultists, and stand watch against incursions from the Spawn of Galgaræ.
In the skies above Alessia, brave Skyship Captains and Imperial Marines work in tandem to keep the Ring of Heaven functioning, so that Alessia remains shielded rom the void beyond.
With more advanced magic and technology, the people of Alessia must confront old problems in new ways.
The Steel Road: Exotic Weapons for 5th Edition by W.S. Quinton
(Campaign Ends : Thursday 21st June 2018; 22:59 UTC)
The Steel Road is a 5th Edition sourcebook looking at over 50 exotic weapons and 50 enchanted weapons – each fully illustrated in the style of a sketchbook. The book has been created to resemble the sketch book of a travelling weapons merchant. Each weapon is described from the point of view of the narrator, and the descriptions include statistics for use in game. Each weapon also comes with an enchanted example of the weapon, making it a legendary version.
The book details exotic weapons from Africa, East Asia, Eastern Europe, India, China, Japan and across the islands of the Pacific.
SuperAge Role Playing Game by mechlinski
(Campaign Ends : Friday 8th June 2018; 16:05 UTC)
SuperAge is a new 200+ page super hero RPG that is inspired by the Powered by the Apocalypse rules system. SuperAge uses its own rolling and mechanical system called Advantage 6, or AD6 for short. “It is supported by several concepts developed by the Powered by Apocalypse system. These concepts have been inserted in key areas to help players get the most out of their heroes, help GM run games efficiently and enhance cinematic action.”
SuperAge is a universal supers RPG that allows you to create any superhero you want through customization of the rules, powers (of which there are over 80 in the core book), and quirks. In addition the core rulebook also details the extensive history of San Martine, the home of the largest population of Supers in the game.
Vikingr: A D6-based Viking RPG by Graham Bottley
(Campaign Ends : Sunday 10th June 2018; 19:50 UTC)
Arion Games latest Kickstarter takes us plundering across cold seas to the coasts of Europe from the 8th to 10th centuries with their new Vikingr RPG, using the popular D6 System.
The Vikings (as we now call them) have held a huge grip on the imaginations of writers, film makers and in fact everyone for many hundreds of years. This makes the Vikings (or Vikingar as they were originally known) a rich source of inspiration for RPG's.
Some people prefer a strictly historical game, others a semi-mystical game similar. Yet others desire to run a game styled after Beowulf or maybe even a game set in a fairly standard fantasy world but in the northern "viking-like" regions.
Whatever your preferred Viking game, this is the ruleset for you. Based on the free D6 ruleset from West End Games, we give you all of the rules needed, Hero creation, Ships, Warbands, Gods, Omens and Runes, Scandinavian monsters and myths and much more. Fast and cinematic, this game will see your Heroes pillaging, cleaving and rampaging in no time!
No Thank You, Evil! – A Game So Nice We’re Making it Twice by Monte Cook Games
(Campaign Ends : Wednesday 6th June 2018; 01:00 UTC)
No Thank You, Evil! is an award-winning tabletop game of creative make-believe, adventure, and storytelling. In No Thank You, Evil!, each player creates a character based on a couple of cool, descriptive, imagination-firing traits. The Guide (a special role often played by a parent or older sibling) presents a dilemma, and the players set off on an adventure of the imagination. Along the way they use their character’s special skills, companions, and equipment to overcome obstacles—perhaps fighting a slime monster, winning over the suspicious mayor, or beating a rabbit at a race. Whereas conventional board games constrain players’ actions, No Thank You, Evil! sets kids’ imaginations free: Their options are limited only by what they can think up. Together, the players create a story as they work together to make their way through the adventure.
No Thank You, Evil! contains everything you need to play, all in a beautiful, sturdy box designed to be easy for children to use. It includes:
No Thank You, Evil! was released in March 2016. This Kickstarter campaign is funding a reprint of the game, as well as some additional products.
Choose Your Own: Sci-Fi Stock Art by James Shields
(Campaign Ends : Friday 15th June 2018; 04:59 UTC)
James Shield has been providing art for game companies for years, and has also released a lot of Stock Art (as well as running a Patreon producing Stock Art) for some time. His latest Kickstarter is here to create a ton of sci-fi stock art that individuals can use in their games and companies can use in their commercial products.
The campaign will create over 250 inked and coloured pieces across five categories… weapons, ships, portraits, characters, and scenes. All pieces will be available in color as well as in black and white, and backers can also suggest ideas for images they’d like to see included.
Some of James’ clients have also donated PDFs of their books and games to give away at higher reward levels, so in addition to getting some cool looking art you can also snag a new game or more!
**********
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
The Runewild – A Fey-Themed 5e Sandbox Campaign by Matthew J. Hanson
(Campaign Ends : Thursday 21st June 2018; 20:00 UTC)
Beyond the kingdom of Aruanda, there is an untamed land. It is a place where witches walk, where goblins cavort, where the borders between the realms of mortal and fey grow thin. For some, it is a place of unspeakable wonder; for others, only madness and death lie within its trackless depths.
It is the Runewild, and it is both beautiful and cruel.
The Runewild is a dark fairy-tale sandbox setting for use with the 5th Edition of the world’s most popular roleplaying game. Designed for character levels 1 through 10, it provides locations, encounters, and NPCs to support a campaign lasting months or years, or to be adapted into other campaigns. The 160+ page book includes:
- A history of the Runewild and its surrounding settlements.
- 100 detailed encounter areas for player characters to explore.
- New optional rules for exploring and resting
- Advice for running a sandbox campaign
- A new feat: Fey-Touched
- 13 unique magic items (like witch embers and the staff of clarity and confusion)
- 32 new monsters (including clockwork dwarves, fey lions, giant forest sloths, and the terrifyingly beautiful Golden Bodach).
- Detailed descriptions of the histories, motivations, and weaknesses of the witches of the Runewild, including the Whitebone Sisters; Missus Switch, the swine hag; Korthsuva, the Witch of Hours; and the hag-queen Griselda, Mother of Ogres.
- Dozens of random tables designed to help GMs make the Runewild campaign their own.
Interbellum RPG – War Adventures in a World of Technomagic by Studio Ludens
(Campaign Ends : Wednesday 6th June 2018; 23:22 UTC)
Interbellum is a tabletop roleplaying game that allows players to take the roles of soldiers, adventurers, deserters or even spies in a world of conflict and the symbiosis of magic and technology. The setting takes inspiration from the aesthetics of the First World War and interwar period.
The system is designed to capture a sense of close combat in trenches, ruins or even whole cities swept away by the total war. Be a small cog in the war machine, survive in military operations with tens of thousands of losses a day. Face the horrors of modern mechanized war, deadly, never-before-seen tanks, the airborne terror of biplanes, the experimental weapons of the future of warfare, forged in constant conflict.
However, this is not the world you know - It is a world of myth and magic, progressed to the diesel age. In other words, your squad can be composed of different fantasy races, where your sergeant can be a formerly enslaved orc or your comrade can be a cursed goblin marauder. In search of a means to break the stalemate of trench warfare, science returned magic from oblivion and tamed it. It changed everything.
The game locations are not limited to trenches on the frontline, this setting allows many types of adventures: be deserters and treasure hunters in the colonies, fight in city ruins or the shadow of tanks the size of a mountain, wage “rat war” in sewage networks and subways, or even be the hero of your assault squad in a suicide mission to destroy enemy secret weapons. Your fate is yours to decide: try to survive in war zones, on the frontline or behind enemy lines.
Interbellum is a fantasy dieselpunk setting. or rather technomagic. What if the usual fantasy world met the era of the first mechanized wars? A world where magic was forgotten for hundreds of years, rediscovered and used to break the positional stalemate, this led to an arms race that spawned 1000-ton steel beasts on land and in the air, make fortresses airborne or devastate whole cities with a few bombs. A world that replaced typical Evil Lords with dictators, knights with armored vehicles, and guilds with corporations. In this world fears of a trench war can materialize, your neighbors can be werewolf infiltrators, and the ghosts of your fallen comrades in no-man's land terrorize the enemy.
Unlike other similar settings, here dieselpunk is dominant, but the fantasy elements serve to deconstruct stereotypes. Of course, magic can be used to create fireballs, teleport and other cool stuff, but the main difference is that magic is used for creating new technologies and machines. In fact, magic used as justification for the typical attributes of a dieselpunk - weird tech, giant vehicles, mutants, etc.
On Jule 7, in the year 1404, the Great War began. Beginning for trivial reasons as a conflict between the two superpowers and their satellites, in 9 years of hellish warfare it grew into a global slaughter between four geopolitical blocs. Hundreds of millions of people were involved, many of them died.
While the three superpowers were competing in the race for technical advancement, the fourth superpower collected magical knowledge bit by bit and united them with its own. From the very beginning of the war, the Sidhean Empire was able to surprise everyone by putting hundreds of combat mages on the battlefield. What was considered lost forever, had returned.
After centuries of oblivion, magic and many other fragments of the Old World rose again. Technology tamed the magic and this created a new leap in scientific and technological development, making the previously impossible now possible.
The playable period in setting will cover almost 30 years, including the Great War for lovers of epic conflict, and local wars in the post-war period. Your character can begin his story as cannon fodder in a world war, and after it become a revolutionary or a mercenary, if he survives on the battlefield.
World of Alessia Campaign Primer for 5e D&D & Starfinder by Jaye Sonia
(Campaign Ends : Monday 11th June 2018; 22:38 UTC)
The World of Alessia is a high-fantasy campaign setting that combines Wuxia, science-fiction, and magic-driven technology from Finnish designer Jere Manninen. It is a massive world where magic and technology coexist peacefully, impacting every aspect of life, from the Healing Houses of Sillias to the Great Towers of Xin. It is a land where Fyrean Genies meet with Asrian Wardens and The Gangs of Khatu push their Drifters across the desert sands, seeking resources and victims of every kind.
The World of Alessia Campaign Primer is a comprehensive introduction to Alessia. The primer includes details on the world of Alessia, its threats, the factions that drive its politics, and the many people who walk Alessia's streets.
Beautifully illustrated with full-color art, the World of Alessia Campaign Primer will inspire GMs while providing players with a host of new options to take their 5e or Starfinder game to the next level.
The World of Alessia Campaign Primer brings you:
- 11 new races (and more with each stretch goal we achieve).
- 4 new classes - the Marauder, the Psion, the Seer, and the Tecker.
- A system of Stunts and Resolve (for 5e play).
- A garage full of new gear, vehicles, armor, and weapons for your 5e and Starfinder games.
- New rules for attaining unique familiars.
- And lots more awesome options for your game!
While many of the traditional fantasy races exist in Alessia, some do not. Moreover, the humans of Alessia are not the dominant species on the planet. The humans share that position with their cousins, the Djinnkin, and Terrans. Compared to the Yökai and all their lines, the humans are a small line indeed.
The World of Alessia is a Wuxia-inspired campaign setting with over two-dozen intelligent, bipedal species united together against the encroaching darkness - which Alessia now faces on multiple fronts. On the planet itself, heroes battle extremists, cultists, and stand watch against incursions from the Spawn of Galgaræ.
In the skies above Alessia, brave Skyship Captains and Imperial Marines work in tandem to keep the Ring of Heaven functioning, so that Alessia remains shielded rom the void beyond.
With more advanced magic and technology, the people of Alessia must confront old problems in new ways.
The Steel Road: Exotic Weapons for 5th Edition by W.S. Quinton
(Campaign Ends : Thursday 21st June 2018; 22:59 UTC)
The Steel Road is a 5th Edition sourcebook looking at over 50 exotic weapons and 50 enchanted weapons – each fully illustrated in the style of a sketchbook. The book has been created to resemble the sketch book of a travelling weapons merchant. Each weapon is described from the point of view of the narrator, and the descriptions include statistics for use in game. Each weapon also comes with an enchanted example of the weapon, making it a legendary version.
The book details exotic weapons from Africa, East Asia, Eastern Europe, India, China, Japan and across the islands of the Pacific.
SuperAge Role Playing Game by mechlinski
(Campaign Ends : Friday 8th June 2018; 16:05 UTC)
SuperAge is a new 200+ page super hero RPG that is inspired by the Powered by the Apocalypse rules system. SuperAge uses its own rolling and mechanical system called Advantage 6, or AD6 for short. “It is supported by several concepts developed by the Powered by Apocalypse system. These concepts have been inserted in key areas to help players get the most out of their heroes, help GM run games efficiently and enhance cinematic action.”
SuperAge is a universal supers RPG that allows you to create any superhero you want through customization of the rules, powers (of which there are over 80 in the core book), and quirks. In addition the core rulebook also details the extensive history of San Martine, the home of the largest population of Supers in the game.
Vikingr: A D6-based Viking RPG by Graham Bottley
(Campaign Ends : Sunday 10th June 2018; 19:50 UTC)
Arion Games latest Kickstarter takes us plundering across cold seas to the coasts of Europe from the 8th to 10th centuries with their new Vikingr RPG, using the popular D6 System.
The Vikings (as we now call them) have held a huge grip on the imaginations of writers, film makers and in fact everyone for many hundreds of years. This makes the Vikings (or Vikingar as they were originally known) a rich source of inspiration for RPG's.
Some people prefer a strictly historical game, others a semi-mystical game similar. Yet others desire to run a game styled after Beowulf or maybe even a game set in a fairly standard fantasy world but in the northern "viking-like" regions.
Whatever your preferred Viking game, this is the ruleset for you. Based on the free D6 ruleset from West End Games, we give you all of the rules needed, Hero creation, Ships, Warbands, Gods, Omens and Runes, Scandinavian monsters and myths and much more. Fast and cinematic, this game will see your Heroes pillaging, cleaving and rampaging in no time!
No Thank You, Evil! – A Game So Nice We’re Making it Twice by Monte Cook Games
(Campaign Ends : Wednesday 6th June 2018; 01:00 UTC)
No Thank You, Evil! is an award-winning tabletop game of creative make-believe, adventure, and storytelling. In No Thank You, Evil!, each player creates a character based on a couple of cool, descriptive, imagination-firing traits. The Guide (a special role often played by a parent or older sibling) presents a dilemma, and the players set off on an adventure of the imagination. Along the way they use their character’s special skills, companions, and equipment to overcome obstacles—perhaps fighting a slime monster, winning over the suspicious mayor, or beating a rabbit at a race. Whereas conventional board games constrain players’ actions, No Thank You, Evil! sets kids’ imaginations free: Their options are limited only by what they can think up. Together, the players create a story as they work together to make their way through the adventure.
No Thank You, Evil! contains everything you need to play, all in a beautiful, sturdy box designed to be easy for children to use. It includes:
- No Thank You, Evil! rulebook
- Let's Go On An Adventure! adventure book
- Five dice (because sharing is hard!)
- Character sheets
- Cards for characters, creatures, and cyphers
- Game tokens
No Thank You, Evil! was released in March 2016. This Kickstarter campaign is funding a reprint of the game, as well as some additional products.
Choose Your Own: Sci-Fi Stock Art by James Shields
(Campaign Ends : Friday 15th June 2018; 04:59 UTC)
James Shield has been providing art for game companies for years, and has also released a lot of Stock Art (as well as running a Patreon producing Stock Art) for some time. His latest Kickstarter is here to create a ton of sci-fi stock art that individuals can use in their games and companies can use in their commercial products.
The campaign will create over 250 inked and coloured pieces across five categories… weapons, ships, portraits, characters, and scenes. All pieces will be available in color as well as in black and white, and backers can also suggest ideas for images they’d like to see included.
Some of James’ clients have also donated PDFs of their books and games to give away at higher reward levels, so in addition to getting some cool looking art you can also snag a new game or more!
**********
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
