OGRE Designer's Edition on Kickstarter

[UselessTriviaMan]

(Opening caveat: I do not work for Steve Jackson Games. I just think this is awesome.)

I know that these forums are crawling with dedicated fans of RPG's, but if you have any inclinations towards old school board/war games, Steve Jackson is redoing his first game, OGRE, in a huge way. And by huge, it is a 14 pound box filled with massive geeky goodness! Initially done with a $20,000 goal to gauge interest, and the idea of a single print run of 3,000 games, it is currently north of $630,000 and has almost 4,000 backers (some of whom have ordered multiple copies).

I post this for three reasons:
1. This is my football. I go online to check and see what the score, I mean level of support, the way football fans check on their teams. It is addicting.

2. The stretch goals have been outstanding, and are getting really fascinating. I would love to see them hit all of them, so I just wanted to get the word out. Plus, I'd LOVE to see a new edition of CAR WARS.

3. They are providing an amazing example of the power of crowd-sourcing for games. They confess that even they have been blown away by the support and it may well mean bringing OGRE back as a line of games

You can find it here. There is also a fascinating tracker that shows levels of support in dollars (total and per day), number of backers (again, total and per day), and how it is trending to wind up here.

 

[fireinthedust]

Okay, see, you keep posting in ways that I can't XP until I spread it around. (re: Kickstarter as football)



Kickstarter depresses me because, when mine's ready, I worry folks will have spent all their money on someone else.

That and it's all so neat. There's a publishing project on by this illustrator I may check up on from time to time.

 

[Celebrim]

OGRE is a pretty solid game; I might be interested.

As for CAR WARS, I think that the era when I want to get into that fiddly of a simulation of physics in a PnP game is probably over. Someone should port it turned based to a game platform so that the math is taken care of.

 

[ClashmoreDave]

OGRE is a pretty solid game; I might be interested.

As for CAR WARS, I think that the era when I want to get into that fiddly of a simulation of physics in a PnP game is probably over. Someone should port it turned based to a game platform so that the math is taken care of.

That's actually a very good point about Car Wars. It was definitely one of the more math oriented games that I can recall. I haven't really been doing a lot of gaming in quite some time so I don't know what the current iteration of games even look like. Will the sort of game Car Wars was even fly today? Or would it have to be sped up/simplified in order for people to even have time to play?

It would be interesting to see what SJG could put into a $100 box for Car Wars though! If I had played Ogre in my youth, I probably would have jumped into the Kickstarter support, if only for the nostalgia. Sounds like a cool revival of a game, even if it was more of a one-off.

 

[Argyle King]

In general, I'm liking a lot of the things coming from the folks over at SJ Games. As a customer, I feel pretty confident when I pick up one of their products.

 

[Piratecat]

Car Wars is a go!

I love the memory of Car Wars more than the fiddly game itself, but I want it anyway.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Today, 01:54 AM #15 (permalink)
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[Celebrim]

That's actually a very good point about Car Wars. It was definitely one of the more math oriented games that I can recall. I haven't really been doing a lot of gaming in quite some time so I don't know what the current iteration of games even look like. Will the sort of game Car Wars was even fly today? Or would it have to be sped up/simplified in order for people to even have time to play?

I think you'd have to look at Car Wars as a nostalgia project. I don't think it has a market value now because the sort of detailed real time physics simulation its going for can be done so much better on a machine than on paper. Even as a turn based video game, it's a much better product.

It's the Risk effect. Even for a Grognard like me, if a game suffers from the Risk effect I'm going to be pretty much unwilling to play.

By way of explanation, I used to play Risk. As anyone who has played Risk knows, a six player game can often take 12 hours or more to finish. I found however that a six player game of Risk on the computer, with human players could be finished in 45 minutes. It was the same game, but the computer handled the dice rolling. What this told me was that for every 12+ hours of game play, 11 hours and 15 minutes of it was taken up with the simple mechanical chore of rolling dice and making verbal declarations. Only about 45 minutes was taken up with making decisions, and of that, only about 12 minutes directly involved you. The ratio of mechanical chore to game turned out to be more than 50 to 1. After making that discovery, I pretty much decided to give up any game that demanded more from me as a machine than it did from me as a game player.

Car Wars is an example of a game which would benefit heavily from being ported faithfully to a digital table top. It's a great example of what nerds played before video games. At that point, I think it would become a lot more interesting to play. It has some tactical depth and quite a bit of variaty. You wouldn't need to create something as elaborate as the digital tabletop port of 'Blood Bowl' before I'd be interested in a digital version. However, I think that the profit you'd realize on a turn based game like that in this age of RTS and shallow gameplay is pretty low (indeed negative) so its not like I'm advising anyone to actually go and do that. I'm not sure I'm even ready to fork over $60 for a digital version of Car Wars (though I can imagine more hard core fans probably would be, there just aren't enough of them).

 

[Celebrim]

In general, I'm liking a lot of the things coming from the folks over at SJ Games. As a customer, I feel pretty confident when I pick up one of their products.

Steve has always done a good job of turning out quality products out of a small company and keeping it alive. He's one of the great ones, and deserves recognition not just a guy who runs an RPG company, but alongside the great designers in gaming - Gygax, Garfield, Teuber, Kramer, Knizia, Jervis Johnson, etc. I still think OGRE is his most solid game, and its amazing how young he was when he made it.

It's always struck me that Steve runs SJG primarily to make toys for himself, and he's been fortunate enough that enough people also want the same toys that he can do it for a living. When you are making toys for yourself, you care more about the product than when you are just a brand manager with an MBA. (Hey, WotC, are you listening?)

 

[jasper]

as my last upate. It broke 700k

 

[Argyle King]

Steve has always done a good job of turning out quality products out of a small company and keeping it alive. He's one of the great ones, and deserves recognition not just a guy who runs an RPG company, but alongside the great designers in gaming - Gygax, Garfield, Teuber, Kramer, Knizia, Jervis Johnson, etc. I still think OGRE is his most solid game, and its amazing how young he was when he made it.

It's always struck me that Steve runs SJG primarily to make toys for himself, and he's been fortunate enough that enough people also want the same toys that he can do it for a living. When you are making toys for yourself, you care more about the product than when you are just a brand manager with an MBA. (Hey, WotC, are you listening?)

I think the passion of the people working at SJ Games (including Steve himself) shows in the products.

Ogre is actually a good example. It was quite a while ago, so I'd have to sift through the DI entries to find it, but how the project to re-released Ogre got started was because he wanted to revisit the game now that he had the money 'to do it right.'

The amount of communication between the company and the fan base (which includes me) has always made me feel good about buying their products as well.

 

[JediSoth]

I'm really torn on giving money to this Kickstarter. I'm totally on board with what they're doing and I want to support it, but I don't know that I'd ever play OGRE. I've heard about it, but know nothing about the game.

I generally don't enjoy strategy or war games. If I kick in to get the boxed set, is it something that would just collect dust, or is it something that you can set up for a quick few hours entertainment?

 

[WizarDru]

3. They are providing an amazing example of the power of crowd-sourcing for games. They confess that even they have been blown away by the support and it may well mean bringing OGRE back as a line of games.

Kickstarter has been somewhat transformative for the nature of small-press boardgames, particularly Euro-style board games. SJG's success is far from the first, but certainly very noteworthy in their approach. The continually expanding goals kind of turned the whole thing into an RPG, where backers money was the XP. It's kind of brilliant.

I admit I was sorely tempted to back Ogre...but I realized I'd likely never play it and it's a monster to store. I've got enough games that I don't have time or fellow gamers to play as it is.

 

[Celebrim]

I admit I was sorely tempted to back Ogre...but I realized I'd likely never play it and it's a monster to store. I've got enough games that I don't have time or fellow gamers to play as it is.

I really want to back them, but $100 is a huge chunk of change, and right now I don't know that I know a group that would get into it. I've learned to tailor my purchases to what I know I can get people to play, and unfortunately I don't think OGRE would appeal to any of the gamers I'm in regular contact with right now. Plus, I just invested $60 in a video game and recently invested $130 in blood bowl gear. And I'm running a D&D campaign. My schedule is booked.

It's a great oppurtunity with some terrific swag, and anyone that knows any war gamers or is a hardcore war gamer themselves and has some money to spend should jump on this offer even if they haven't played OGRE (maybe especially if they haven't), because OGRE is a really great at being both approachable and fairly deep.... but I'm just not in the right place right now.

PS: If anyone thinks I'm exagerrating, take a look at the prices that out of print Ogre minatures go for on ebay if you want some idea of the passion this game inspires in certain war gamers.

 

[Celebrim]

I generally don't enjoy strategy or war games. If I kick in to get the boxed set, is it something that would just collect dust, or is it something that you can set up for a quick few hours entertainment?

If you don't enjoy strategy games - for example, you've never liked chess, blood bowl, roborally, battletech, or even Settlers of Cataan - then its probably not a game for you. It's a spatial/tactical game and you have to love placement and figuring out which of two hex tiles something is going to move into and why its important.

On the other hand, like great games like chess, Blood Bowl, Roborally, and Battletech, OGRE has the characteristic of being easy to approach, relatively quick to play, but often quite a bit of depth. It's not going to overwhelm you with fiddly bits ala Star Fleet Battles, or bore you with dozens or hundreds of peices to move in each turn and bookkeeping like traditional hexgrid war games, or require a huge investment in time and materials like DBM. It plays pretty fast, and has a small enough scale to be manageable - traditionally one side plays a single (albiet somewhat more complex) peice (the Ogre).

 

[JediSoth]

I have Settlers of Catan, but I've never played it yet. I like a Euro-games like Carcassone, Ticket to Ride, etc., so I guess I misspoke. I meant that I don't like tactical strategy games like Axis & Allies, Risk, Stratego, etc.

Chess is OK; I'm not very good at it. I often say "I have no mind for strategy; I need the Man in Black." I've never played Blood Bowl, Roborally, or Battletech (beyond the old CRPG The Crescent Hawk's Inception).

 

[vonmolkew]

Dude raised almost $1,000,000 with over 5500 backers
Tells you something about SJ's games....

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I love OGRE/G.E.V.*, but I'm not sure it really warranted a kickstarter program. Bring the game back to it's basic form of a minigame with cardboard pieces & a folded paper map for under $10 and it would sell just fine.

(I'd even buy it at $50+ with plastic pieces and a rearrangeable board like the ones you got with RoboRally.)







* I personally own the original release stuff- along with a host of other Metagames' excellent minigames- as well as the minis version of the game. Haven't gotten around to assembling my OGREs, though.

 

[Treebore]

I love OGRE/G.E.V.*, but I'm not sure it really warranted a kickstarter program. Bring the game back to it's basic form of a minigame with cardboard pieces & a folded paper map for under $10 and it would sell just fine.

(I'd even buy it at $50+ with plastic pieces and a rearrangeable board like the ones you got with RoboRally.)

* I personally own the original release stuff- along with a host of other Metagames' excellent minigames- as well as the minis version of the game. Haven't gotten around to assembling my OGREs, though.

Thanks to this KS we now have a premium version with lots of extra's that would not have happened otherwise, so I am very glad that they did the KS.

Plus I seem to remember an update or two (hard to remember which since there were over 30 updates) mentioning that the basic version was going to exist again. Don't recall a price being mentioned.