Did You Back a Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarter? How's The Game?

[Distracted DM]

I backed Strongholds & Streaming and Kingdoms & Warfare. I use a ton of S&F, and a some of K&W- though I haven't used the minis much since COVID :'(

My Shadowdark books are unfortunately sitting alone- I've tossed my lot in with DCC as my D&D-like. I did enjoy reading through them.

I don't think the Monty Python stuff shipped yet? So no go there.

I got Mothership! I have not used it.

I backed the Moria KSer. The preview looked cool. It's been like... 6 or 7 years since I first heard about it, with Gareth Ryder Hanrahan working on it- that's why I thirsted for it in the first place, the man can make a megadungeon fun.

The Deck of Many Animated Spells, Tarot and More... Backed it for my wife. It's joined all the other stuff in her Tarot Collection.

I am good at unintentionally collecting shelfware, though.

 

[overgeeked]

Their main criticism was that advancement was removed and it sort of has a "one shot" feel.

Advancement is still there. It’s just slow.

Not sure why it would have a one-shot feel. There’s a line on the character sheet to track your high score, i.e. how many sessions a PC has survived.

My group is curious about this one. I'm hesitant. Is the GM required to be improvisationally hilarious?

Quite the opposite. The advice is to play the game straight. The mechanics push the humor for you. No need to be a comedian at the table.

 

[JEB]

Strongholds & Followers: Read it, liked some things but overall didn't live up to my (admittedly high) expectations. Haven't used it in a game and not sure I will.
Kingdoms & Warfare: Backed, but haven't read yet. (Suspect I'll have a similar response.)
Flee Mortals: Backed, but haven't read yet.

Didn't back Shadowdark but definitely want to pick it up some day. Ditto The Crooked Moon.

 

[Velderan]

I haven't played either yet, but I backed Shadowdark in the late pledges stage of the campaign once the PDF was out and people were already raving about how good it was. Reading the book, it looks as good as everyone has claimed and it's on my short list of games to put together a one shot for in the near future.

I also backed Dolmenwood, which looking over the PDFs looks like it will be a fun game to run as well.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I backed Obojima, which has recently been pushed back to December/January of this year, but which looks very nice and I expect to use it.

I backed Shadowdark, which I've been running for about a year and which is a complete success. It's the OSR engine of my dreams, running OSR games without old school stuff that I am happy to leave behind like to-hit matrices or seemingly random saving throw tables, etc. It runs like a dream and is amazing to homebrew for.

I wrestled with backing Dolmenwood, but I knew I wasn't really interested in the underlying system. The setting sounds amazing, though.

I also expect to pick up Mothership, Tales of the Valiant's Monster Vault and probably Griffon's Saddlebag (coming to DDB soon, based on his appearance at a Gencon panel about DDB) in the near future. All three were campaigns I waffled on but didn't have the money to back at the time.

 

[Reynard]

I backed Shadowdark, which I've been running for about a year and which is a complete success.

How is long term character survivability. @SlyFlourish indicated that most players had been through 5 or 6 characters over the course of 36 sessions -- which is about a dead PC per session. Is that about what you are experiencing?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

How is long term character survivability. @SlyFlourish indicated that most players had been through 5 or 6 characters over the course of 36 sessions -- which is about a dead PC per session. Is that about what you are experiencing?

We aren't playing a continuous campaign at the moment -- the closest we get is that Temple of the Serpent King is taking us more sessions to complete than expected.

On the first play test runs in five-room dungeons, we normally had at least one person die each time through reckless/"I'm sure my character is as robust as a 5E character" play. But with Tomb of the Serpent King and other stuff I've run in the past six months, we often have everyone emerged unscathed because they all know that combat is very bad and traps can often be deadly.

I would like to run a Shadowdark campaign, but everyone is working adults (except for one person in grad school) and so scheduling that is hard, especially as we're already doing an every other month Radiant Citadel campaign and I keep wanting to do one shots of other stuff, either playtests of stuff I'm publishing and/or run at convention games. Fingers crossed a regular Shadowdark campaign happens in 2025, rather than just endless one shots.

 

[Reynard]

We aren't playing a continuous campaign at the moment -- the closest we get is that Temple of the Serpent King is taking us more sessions to complete than expected.

On the first play test runs in five-room dungeons, we normally had at least one person die each time through reckless/"I'm sure my character is as robust as a 5E character" play. But with Tomb of the Serpent King and other stuff I've run in the past six months, we often have everyone emerged unscathed because they all know that combat is very bad and traps can often be deadly.

I would like to run a Shadowdark campaign, but everyone is working adults (except for one person in grad school) and so scheduling that is hard, especially as we're already doing an every other month Radiant Citadel campaign and I keep wanting to do one shots of other stuff, either playtests of stuff I'm publishing and/or run at convention games. Fingers crossed a regular Shadowdark campaign happens in 2025, rather than just endless one shots.

Thanks.

I just started an honest to goodness SD campaign after running one shots and at cons a bunch. I am curious to see how survivability feels.

 

[CleverNickName]

I missed out on a lot of Kickstarters over the last few years, when they started drinking that NFT kool-aid. Which is a shame; there are some really good ones out there that I would like to be able to support. Every now and then, though, I'll see one come up on Backerkit and I'll be able to help crowdfund it.

Anyway. The $MTTRPG Club Members that I currently own are:

• Avatar Legends^H
• Obojima Tales from the Tall Grass^S
• Tanares RPG
• Old Gods of Appalachia RPG*^H
• The Magnus Archives RPG*^H
• The One Ring RPG, 2nd Edition^H
• The Seeker's Guide to Twisted Taverns*^H
• The Field Guide to Floral Dragons*
• Coyote & Crow^H

* I have played this game
H = I own this in hardcopy
S = Hasn't shipped yet

The ones I've marked with an asterisk are the ones I've played at least one game with, or (in the case of supplements), I've used in at least one adventure.

I'm impressed with the Cypher system (which is used by The Magnus Archives RPG and the Old Gods of Appalachia RPG)--I know it gets a bad rap around here for its Intrusion mechanic, but it works really well in horror games where nothing is a "sure thing" and combat takes a backseat to the tone and pacing.

I'm also a fan of the Powered by the Apocalypse game system, or at least what little I've gotten to see of it (mostly through Thirsty Sword Lesbians and Monster Hearts), and I really want to play Avatar Legends to see how it jibes. I can see it working really well with story-forward settings and games that don't really have a lot of combat scenes.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Coyote and Crow was the only one I backed, and while its an interesting design and concept, I think that even by my standards, they overly hammered certain things.