RPG Crowdfunding News 108: Reign, Power Outage, Dungeons of the Dread Wyrm, Oracle Sights, Eldritch

Welcome weary traveller, welcome to our latest installment of RPG Crowdfunding News. This week we look at a superhero game developed for children, an old school fantasy adventure, some great miniatures, terrain and accessories, the return of Reign and Over the Edge with new editions, and a new horror game to haunt your dreams.

Greg Stolze’s Reign, Second Edition by Hal Mangold / Atomic Overmind Press

(Campaign Ends : Tuesday 21st August 2018; 01:00 UTC)

I love the idea of Reign and picked up the 1st Edition when Greg Stolze self-published in back in 2007. I even help publish a stripped down version, Reign Enchiridon, when I was at Cubicle 7. Now Atomic Overmind Press are bringing the game back in an updated and expanded 2nd Edition split into two book books – Reign: Rules and Reign:Realms.

Reign is a high fantasy game where you can give quests instead of taking them. Reign presents a world that isn’t in immanent danger of being destroyed—it’s a world full of complex cultures, old grievances, religions in conflict and sullen old schools of wizardry that can crisp off your arm. In addition to the usual FRPG heroics and enchantment, it has a system for statting up nations, or cults, or secret conspiracies and resolving their broader conflicts, instead of just leaving the fallout of their clashes to GM narration.

Reign presumes you have a “company”—some organization of followers and property that the PCs govern. It can clash with enemy groups in a way that a rag-tag team of heroes just can’t, though the actions of the players’ characters usually offer big boosts (or penalties) to company rolls. If you take a whole adventure to set up your roll to change hearts and minds in a rival country, you’re far more likely to succeed. On the other hand, it also lets you play the kind of game you want by offloading some tasks onto your underlings. For example: Imagine a game with elements of investigation and elements of big hairy fights. One group that lives for detective work could do all their own spying, then have a mighty army for their company. Once they know where and what the enemies are, they just write a memo to the generals and have a lovely dinner on the back deck. A different group might LOVE the combat elements but find the spy stuff confusing or tedious. They could build a company that’s full of spies and diplomats, and use them to ferret out the secrets, which they then dispatch personally.

Reign: Rules
The game part of Reign consists of rules that balance complicated outcomes with simple inputs. Resolution is just one throw of the dice, but each result is rich in meaning, giving you a lot of options and meaningful choices without slow handling time. The centerpiece is a system for statting up your fictitious church, state or thieves’ guild so that the important decisions are played out together, not left in for a Game Moderator to decide.

Reign: Rules will be an approximately 172 page full color book.


Reign: Realms
A sprawling, brawling, world of cultures in conflict and strange enchantment, Realms is the fertile soil from which the ‘role playing’ part of Realms can grow. It’s a setting where even the geography is unexpected, where enchantment and superstition can undermine every social assumption, and where the players are not just the most interesting characters—they can be the most important. Realms gives you enough stories for decades of gaming in a world that doesn’t need to be saved, but desperately needs to be governed.

Reign: Realms will be a full-color book clocking in at roughly 304 pages.



Power Outage – A TRPG for Kids and Adults by Bebarce El-Tayib
(Campaign Ends : Sunday 19th 2018; 04:00 UTC)

Power Outage started out as a personal project to introduce the authors children to tabletop gaming, but morphed into “a kid-friendly, kid-focused Supers game where it’s all about being the hero, taking down villains, and being accessible to the wildest audiences as possible.”

Power Outage does not have classes or races. If your kids want to make a Human, a Robot, an Alien, a Ghost, or an 8-foot tall anthropomorphic zebra girl they can. Powers come from a library of effects that kids get to apply their own characteristics.

Power Outage makes use of a CAPE (Combat, Alternative, Puzzle, Exploration) component technique that allows you to easily build your own adventures, or allows you to choose your own path through pre-made modules.

Power Outage contains player instructions, GM guidance, a compendium of villains, and a complete adventure to play with! You supply dice and an imagination, and we will take care of the rest!

Power Outage focuses on the concept of guidance rather than hard set rules. You take from the book what you need, and build the game as you go. But there is enough guidance built in that you don't need to question how to play. Free resources are also available for characters, powers, and adventures. The mechanics are easy enough to pick up in a half hour, but not boring or overly simplified. You'll constantly find yourself rolling and strategizing.

5 distinct regions allow you to customize a game you want in this safe and wonderous sandbox world. Do you want to create a fantasy adventure? Try The Overgrowth or The Sink! Looking for your classic Super Hero Beatum Up? Turn to the soaring futuristic heights of Shorai City! Looking for a gritty detective story. Try delving into the murky alleyways of the Atomic Punk ever-night Atomnyy Zavod. The entire mythos is built into this single book.

The book will be available as a hardcover and a PDF, probably around the 160 page mark. It will contain information for creating heroes, the world, information on 120 villains, guidance for playing with kids as young as 4 and those with disabilities, and a starting adventure called Trading Spaces for levels 1 to 4.


Dungeon Delve #2: Dungeons of the Dread Wyrm by R. Nelson Bailey
(Campaign Ends : Sunday 19th August 2018; 16:46 UTC)

Designed for use with 1st Edition AD&D, but easily adapted to BECMI, 2nd Ed AD&D and most OSR games, Dungeons of the Dread Wyrm is the second module in the Dungeon Delve series from Dungeoneers Guild Games.

The Dungeons of the Dread Wyrm module consists of thirty-two pages of high adventure, exploration, and mystery with a minimal plot that allows it to fit easily into any campaign world. The genesis of this adventure was the desire to create a dragon adversary that would be challenging and memorable for my gaming group. The dragon featured in this module, and the deathtrap dungeon it created, will test the skills of even the toughest high-level characters to their maximum. The dungeons of the wyrm consist of a maze filled with terrible guardians, wards, and traps designed to thwart bands of adventurers from plundering its immense hoard of treasure.”

Rumors hint that below a barren crag in a forlorn range of hills lies the lair of the great dread wyrm, Felmurnuzza. This dragon has mercilessly tormented, terrorized, and plundered the nearby civilized lands for hundreds of years. However, no one has seen her for many decades. Nonetheless, these kingdoms continue to pay the fell serpent tribute out of fear. Many now say that she sleeps that sleep of death — her legendary fabulous hoard unprotected and ripe for the taking. Of course, if the rumors of her death are not true, a grim death surely awaits those that seek to discover her treasures.


Dungeons of the Dread Wyrm is a high-level adventure for characters levels 10 to 15. In this adventure, the adventurers will explore the deathtrap lair of an infamous red dragon to seek out her fabulous treasure hoard. Set in a wild, hilly region, the GM can easily place the dragon’s dungeons in any fantasy role-playing game world they prefer.



Oracle Sights: Handheld Projection Devices for Tabletop RPGs by Oracle Sights
(Campaign Ends : Sunday 19th August 2018; 16:14 UTC)

Oracle Sights are a really handy handheld projection device allowing you to overlay a range of things – such as area effects of spells, abilities or traps – onto any map surface without interfering with the miniatures on the table or needing to use square-based flooring.

Want to know if your fireball will hit those minions? Just grab your 20' Radius template, pop it into the Oracle Sight and project it directly onto your play surface.


No more painstaking counting squares out for players. No more arguments about point of origin source for spells. No more attempting to use flimsy templates that touch and move your game pieces in the process. No more arguments about where pieces were because they got moved by mistake. Simply project the pattern you wish to display directly onto your game and align the projection to the existing grid on your terrain. Each template perfectly scales to whatever grid size you wish to project onto.

Utilizing our built in alignment squares, it even works ungridded terrain or play surfaces. In these cases, simply put down one to two 1" square onto your game board and align the grid to the squares. Done.



Eldritch Century: Monsters Wave 1 by Draco Studios
(Campaign Ends : Thursday 16th August 2018; 19:00 UTC)

Eldritch Century takes place in an alternative 20th century which starting diverging away from our own timeline at the end of the 19th century. This has led to a world with a very different political and technological make-up by 1984, the year the game is set in. During The Great War, which lasted longer than in our own history, The Miasma first appeared. A strange fog that has since devoured all of Europe and warped the continent into an otherworldly jungle-swamp where monstrous creatures roam and many of the crazed mutated inhabitants worship strange gods. Ancient ruins have been discovered, around the world, hinting at strange inhuman entities and civilizations, and leading to the development of new and dangerous technologies.

The plan for Eldritch Century, by Mexican company Draco Studios, involved a multi-platform approach with skirmish miniature games, board games, fiction and a tabletop RPG (the latter due next year). The first campaign is for a series of miniatures, both of creatures found in the Miasma and some of those who fight them (and each other).

Although I’ve been lucky enough to work on some of the setting of Eldritch Century, I hope you’ll also like he sculpts and setting will interest you enough to keep tabs on the development of the game!


Finishing Soon…

Over the Edge: A Roleplaying Game of Weird Urban Danger by Atlas Games
(Campaign Ends : Tuesday 14th August 2018; 18:00 UTC)

Over the Edge originally appeared at game tables back in 1992 and now, twenty-six years later, is returning with an updated and revised edition with original author Jonathan Tweet (D&D 3rd Ed, Ars Magica, Everway, 13th Age) being joined by Chris Lites (Unknown Armies, John Carter of Mars, Fragged Empire) on writing duties.

The setting of Over the Edge is a fictional, modern-day island, Al Amarja, in the Atlantic Ocean that’s home to the weirdest city in the world, the Edge. All sorts of conspiracies, paranormal entities, mad scientists, secret agents, and more lurk here. It’s the front line for the Last War, a conflict that rages unseen and unknown to most of its inhabitants. You remember Al Amarja, but not like this.

If you’ve played Over the Edge before, you might wonder what’s different this time around. We know you like touchstones and something to connect to, but you also want to feel as if there’s a reason to pick this edition up.

The major conspiracies and characters of the previous editions are still here, but they’ve all been reimagined and rewritten. The new game is inspired by the original material but not limited by or derivative of it.

A few re-imagined concepts include…

  • The police are still corrupt, but now, instead of being paramilitary officers with grease guns, the rank-and-file cops are schlubs with only their legal standing going for them.
  • One district is still patrolled by thugs with baboons, only now the baboons also roam on their own begging for food and sniffing out troublemakers.
  • The poorest neighborhood is still the turf of Lucifer’s Glorious Lords of Passion, a ruthless gang of metal heads, but now the gang is also a bona fide heavy metal band, and they use their music to solidify their hold on the district.

Over the Edge uses a simple, easy-to-understand game mechanic called “casting lots.” You throw two six-sided dice to resolve any decision, choice point, or challenge. This generates both a succeed-or-fail result as well as the possibility for a special result: good, bad, or both.

A single casting of lots can generate the results for…

  • A week of surveilling a shady target.
  • An evening burgling a house for loot and information.
  • A moment of deadly struggle in a big climactic fight.

Dive deep into the action or pull back and resolve only the key choice points of any situation. Over the Edge lets you determine the scope and stakes of any casting of lots and provides tools to tailor any scenario to the expertise of the player characters.



Demon City: The Ultimate Horror RPG by Mike (wrathofzombie) Evans
(Campaign Ends : Wednesday 15th August 2018; 10:17 UTC)

Demon City is a new horror game written, and illustrated, by Zak Smith which enables you to run a games across a wide range of themes – from True Detective-style murder mystery to the Night of the Living Dead.

Murder, corruption, death, whiskey, hate, night, darkness, noise, summoning, possession, car chases, claws, disorder, firearms, glass shattering, bathtubs filled with blood, devoured corpses, tentacles, neon, broken men, fear.

Demon City is Rome, Tokyo, Los Angeles, anywhere, but coming to pieces. No-one gets enough sleep, everyone has three jobs or hasn’t worked in months, the trucks never seem to get where they’re going, the sky always has something in it, elevators creak, cell service sucks, police cars are black, streetlights burn the way an eye burns against an eyelid after staring too long.

A Demon City game can take place anywhere the Host can imagine something terrible happening in the dark, and Demon City players can play anyone doesn’t want it to happen again.



Caverns Deep! By Dwarven Forge: Handcrafted Game Terrain by Dwarven Forge
(Campaign Ends : Wednesday 15th August 2018; 01:00 UTC)

Dwarven Forge are reknown for making some of the best gaming terrain, much of it hand-painted, out there. They’ve been doing it for years and their Kickstarters have all been monster hits. Caverns Deep!, their current campaign which is wrapping up soon, is no exception and is closing down on the $2.5 million mark at speed.

The campaign has unlocked 35 stretch goals, and has a range of pledge levels from a simple dollar all the way up to $6440 (which currently has 79 backers!) and is offering a vast range of painted, and unpainted, that will bring your underground adventures to life!

[hq“Caverns Deep! includes an extensive variety of terrain, features and enhancements. We have crumbling Ruins, a pestilent Mushroom Grotto, perilous Ice Catacombs, reptilian infested Water, illuminated Crystal Caverns, the treacherous Underdoom, and Dreadhollow Forest, a brand new Wilderness terrain system. ”



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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!

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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
 

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