OGRE Designer's Edition on Kickstarter

[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.