RPG Crowdfunding News – Vault of Magic, Good Society, Temples & Tombs, and more

In this article, I’ll review RPG projects ending in early March plus one dice project ending in April. The number of RPG crowdfunding projects remains at record levels on Kickstarter, mainly as a result of Kickstarter’s Zine Quest. I can’t cover every project, but this piece touches on a cross section of options. There continues to be standout projects reaching thousands of supporters as they create amazing new material, but every project is worth checking out.

Vault of Magic for 5th Edition from Kobold Press

END DATE: Wed, March 17 2021 9:00 PM EDT.
SYSTEM(S): Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition
PROJECT TYPE: Sourcebook
MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: $49 + S/H for the PDF and hardcover of the book
WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? Kobold Press, creators of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, The Rise of Tiamat, Tome of Beasts 1 and 2, Deep Magic for 5th Edition, and more, is offering a tome of over 800 magic items for 5e, with as many as a thousand total if all of the stretch goals are unlocked. That’s 256 to 336 pages of magic items possible. The list of creators on this project is amazing with some of the highlights including Deborah Ann Woll, Luke Gygax, Victoria Rogers, Daniel Kwan, and more. If you play 5e with any amount of magic, this book has content to offer you.

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Good Society: A Jane Austen RPG - Reprint & New Deck from Storybrewers Roleplaying

END DATE: Tue, March 9 2021 11:00 PM EST.
SYSTEM(S): An original system
PROJECT TYPE: Core rulebook and more
MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: AU$20 + AU$9 US S/H for the Love & Longing Deck in PDF and print
WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? If you’re interested in the surface and subtext of Jane Austen’s work, this RPG lets you game those options. This campaign is funding the reprint of the sold out Good Society while creating a new option, the Love & Longing Deck. If you already own Good Society, the only new content is the deck. If you’re interested in trying out Jane Austen-esque adventures, this project is a great jumping on point.

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Farsight - 5E Evolved Explorative Sci-Fi RPG from Lightfish Games

END DATE: Tue, March 16 2021 6:59 PM EDT.
SYSTEM(S): Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition
PROJECT TYPE: Core rulebook
MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: £69 + S/H for the print core rulebook, GM screen, deck of cards, 3d12, PDFs, and more
WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? This RPG gives you a far future outer space sci-fi setting with a revised 5e system to support it. The setting offers epic space opera, cyberpunk, or post-apocalypse options. Need more? The campaign page includes a free quickstart to test it out.

Temples & Tombs from Gallant Knight Games (Christopher Grey Games)

END DATE: Tue, March 16 2021 12:10 AM EDT.
SYSTEM(S): Year Zero Engine
PROJECT TYPE: Core rulebook
MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: $35 + S/H for the PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and hardcover versions of the book
WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? If you’re looking for adventures that feel like Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Mummy (1999), and Romancing the Stone, this project offers a solid engine with work from the creator of The Great American Novel RPG. This project takes advantage of Free League’s Year Zero Engine OGL SRD, the same engine that’s the core of Tales from the Loop, ALIEN, and more, to create a OGL version of the system to feel perfect for these games. At an estimated 120 pages, this book gives you the tools to play out great, thematically perfect archaeological action adventures.

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REPUGNANT! The worlds most disgusting TTRPG from Terrible Games

END DATE: Mon, March 1 2021 11:08 AM EST.
SYSTEM(S): d2 based Covered in Chit System
PROJECT TYPE: RPG zine
MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: $25 + $5 US S/H for PDF and physical zine, sack of chits, and more
DISCLAIMER: During my recent Kickstarter, Tony Vasinda of Plus One Exp and Terrible Games provided coverage of my project
WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? Do you need gross, immature content for your gaming table? Then this 40-page zine is something you’ll want to check out. Farts, boogers, ear wax, zits, and mutations; something like the nastiness of the Garbage Pail Kids with more focus on gross outs, adventures, and fantasy as you work through your day in the sickness of The Crust. This looks amazing, but it’s not for the weak of stomach!

Lifted - Vault 01 from Mad Jay Zero

END DATE: Wed, March 3 2021 2:06 PM EST.
SYSTEM(S): Champions Now
PROJECT TYPE: RPG zine
MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: $8 for the PDF
WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? Sean Hillman recommended that I check out this project and I’m glad he did. Lifted is a setting for superhero games using the Champions Now system. It’s a love letter to the superhero comics of the 90s and early aughts such as X-Men, WildCATS, StormWatch, Planetary, and Authority. Don’t use Champions Now? In addition of that system, this is a resource with system neutral content to mine from. If those comics speak to you, this might be a good setting to test out for your table.

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One-Page Adventures for D&D 5th Edition from EN Publishing

END DATE: Tue, March 9 2021 5:00 PM EST.
SYSTEM(S): Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition
PROJECT TYPE: Sourcebook
MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: £10 for the PDF
DISCLAIMER: EN World is a subsidiary of EN Publishing
WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? 25 standalone, one-page adventures designed for 5th Edition from the publisher of EN World. The campaign page shares the full list of adventures and what levels they’re designed for. There’s several previews to try out. And, best of all, when this campaign closes, the PDFs go out immediately (within seconds of the ending based on past performance). If you need a quick adventure, this is a great resource for you.

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What We Give To Alien Gods from Lone Archivist (Ends on Mon, March 1 2021 11:00 AM EST.) | Gordinaak from Jeremy Childrey (Ends on Wed, March 3 2021 7:56 AM EST.) NOTE: This one isn’t specifically an RPG zine | The Burning of Carbex: A Mothership RPG Compatible Adventure from T.O. Games (Ends on Thu, March 4 2021 10:00 AM EST.)

SYSTEM: MOTHERSHIP RPG
PROJECT TYPE: RPG zine
WHY SPOTLIGHT THESE CAMPAIGNS? This is a sampling of some of the third party Mothership RPG offerings currently on Kickstarter. If you click on any of these links (and a few I did not include here), you’ll see the strength of these projects in the number of backers and funds raised. These bypass many of the other zines that are on offer. Mothership is a sci-fi horror game set in outer space as you go about a dark trek through the stars. Winner of the Gold ENnie Award for Best Game 2019 for Mothership: Player’s Survival Guide and a Silver ENnie Award for 2019 Best Adventure for Dead Planet, this RPG uses their d100 Panic Engine to make gaming intuitive. But how popular is the game? Over the course of February, Mothership RPG zines and adventures have done excellent numbers and demonstrated the eagerness of that audience to get more Mothership content. Two of these projects (What We Give To Alien Gods and The Burning of Carbex) are adventures while Gordinaak uses the d100 Panic Engine to offer a game of mech warfare on a dying planet. If you need space horror at your table, then take a look at these Mothership offerings.

Choose your Class Dice from Christina Moseley Pinckard

END DATE: Sat, April 17 2021 8:39 AM EDT.
PROJECT TYPE: Dice
MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: $12 + S/H for a full set of 7 dice
WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? There are a variety of dice offerings, and I don’t often feature them, but a friend suggested these: class specific dice, color coded with the “20” of the d20 replaced with a class-related symbol. As they reach new funding goals, they’ll unlock more classes and offer more dice.

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Egg Embry

In Our Dreams Awake #2 is live and past its initial funding goal on Kickstarter. Dreampunk, cyberpunk, and fantasy in a comic book by John McGuire, Edgar Salazar, Rolands Kalniņš, and myself.

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Egg Embry is part of EN World's Columnist (ENWC) program as well as a columnist for Knights of the Dinner Table, d20 Radio, High Level Games, the Open Gaming Network, the Tessera Guild, and GAMA's magazine, Around the Table. His area of focus is tabletop RPG crowdfunding campaigns. In addition, he blogs about Ghostfire Gaming's Grim Hollow setting. His RPGs can be found through Egg Embry Publishing at DriveThruRPG (PDF) and Itch (PDF/Print).
If you enjoy the articles on EN World, please consider backing the EN World Patreon. Every dollar helps to make these articles possible.

Ulfgeir

Hero

Feb 24, 2021

#2

Backed the Good Society kickstarter for the new deck. Have everything else, but still haven't got to play it.

Compared to The Dune Rose, I think Good Society has the advantage on the setting, as I think a Jane Austen-setting is much easier to get into due to films and tv-series than the implied setting in The Dune Rose where the players create important stuff for it in session Zero. The latter also might rub some people the wrong the way, as they do not want to be part of a romance-novel as an rpg (but compared to Blood Feud - a game about toxic masculinity, this is pure vanilla gaming). Both Good Society and The Dune Rose are fresh breaks from dungeon crawling though.