Blade Runner: The Next Million Dollar Kickstarter?

Free League's Blade Runner Kickstarter has just launched, and is tearing through stretch goals after funding in just 3 minutes. It looks very likely that this will be the company's second million dollar Kickstarter (following last year's The One Ring campaign, which raised over $2M). It will also be the third million dollar Kickstarter in the last month, following Matt Colville's Flee Mortals!, and Monte Cook Games' Old Gods of Appalachia.

Blade Runner was voted the Most Anticipated TTRPG of 2022 by readers of EN World right here.

Free League's other million dollar Kickstarter, The One Ring, did $521K on the first day and finished with $2M. Compared to the other million dollar campaigns in the last few weeks --

• Flee Mortals! did $788K on the first day.
• Old Gods of Appalachia did $679K on the first day.
• Only one campaign has done $1M+ on day 1, and that was Avatar Legends with $1.15M on the first day.

Check Out These Bladerunner RPG Previews

Free League has shared some previews of its Bladerunner RPG, which comes to Kickstarter next week on May 3rd and looks very likely to be the third million dollar Kickstarter in the last month.

www.enworld.org

BLADE RUNNER – The Roleplaying Game

Walk the neon-noir streets of Los Angeles 2037 in the official BLADE RUNNER RPG from Free League Publishing and Alcon Entertainment.

www.kickstarter.com

 

[Charles Dunwoody]

The Blade Runner kickstarter is live. Four stretch goals down already.

 

[Charles Dunwoody]

 

[Morrus]

Backed! Couldn't resist--it looks so pretty.

Easy million dollar campaign here. The only question is how long that will take. Any bets on first day?

 

[Charles Dunwoody]

Six stretch goals

 

[Espadadelaaurora]

New stretch goals added!

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Backed! Couldn't resist--it looks so pretty.

Easy million dollar campaign here. The only question is how long that will take. Any bets on first day?

I don't know if the day-one art print is enough to make it happen. Then again, this does seem like a property where fans just haven't had much opportunity to spend money on it. Could be a bit of an Avatar effect--folks buying to buy. If they did enough marketing, they could grab those folks right away.

Not hating on that buying style at all, btw. And if any company's going to give you the goods as a collector, it's Free League.

For me, I'm just really excited that they took the Twilight 2000/Forbidden Lands direction for the dice mechanic. If you did want to use this as the basis for a larger/different sort of cyberpunk campaign--including possibly taking it off-world--I bet you could easily port over combat mechanics from Twilight 2000.

 

[Reynard]

It sure does look pretty but I am still struggling with what an official BladeRunner RPG might offer that most any cyyberpunk game plus a wiki wouldn't provide. It is such a narrow setting to license a whole game for. I guess you could say the same about Alien, although recent films have expanded on that universe (and yes, i know they are sort of the same universe).

 

[John R Davis]

Yeah. Me too. Don't really see the appeal, and their is very little "game in the system". I'm sure it will do amazing numbers.
There books are very nice to look at

 

[Grendel_Khan]

It sure does look pretty but I am still struggling with what an official BladeRunner RPG might offer that most any cyyberpunk game plus a wiki wouldn't provide. It is such a narrow setting to license a whole game for. I guess you could say the same about Alien, although recent films have expanded on that universe (and yes, i know they are sort of the same universe).

I think part of the potential appeal is what they do to mechanically dig into the setting and themes, like Alien did with its rules for panicking, synthetics, and xeno attacks. In this case they've mentioned that pushing rolls has different effects on humans and replicants, and one of the first stretch goals was related to setting up a key memory for your character--a huge part of the Blade Runner movies, at least for replicants.

In other words, I don't think the Alien RPG has been so well-received because it collects Alien setting lore. That game is a master class in aligning rules to setting/themes. It's not just a generic skill system and a combat system, like so many games are.