What is the real value of stretch goals?

 Magpie Games just finished up a Kickstarter for a licensed RPG about Avatar. (The Last Airbender/Kegend of Korea, not the ‘let’s see how many ideas we can steal from Poul Anderson’ one) As I understand it, they had a $50,000 goal and raised over nine million dollars. Is that a record? I can’t keep track of Kickstarter anymore.

A good friend commented on how tempting the Kickstarter was with all of the stretch goals. Even though he has never watched any version of the show, doesn’t really have much interest in it and doesn’t see himself running the game.

Which led to two us commenting that the extra value of stretch goals only has actual value if you’re actually ever going to use them.

The older and more cynical I get, the more I feel very cautious about stretch goals. All too often, I don’t even get a game on the table more than couple times, let alone enough to make any use of extra stuff. The Fear Of Missing Out that stretch goals creates is often a reality of missing nothing.

To be fair, there have been stretch goals that have turned out to have had value for me. For instance, the stretch goals for the Pack O Games Kickstarters were additional complete games. Which I did play and got value from.

Still, if stretch goals are the deciding factor me me, I probably shouldn’t back the Kickstarter.

Yeah, this is an unpaid ad for a Kickstarter. Not going to lie about it

 It has been a while since I actually backed a Kickstarter project. However, Radow Ignatow’s A Lot of Games bundle managed to win me over.

And yes, it’s a Print and Play bundle. I’ve had enough issues with getting physical product actually shipped to me that I have resolved to only back Print and Plays. I figure I’m more likely to get the end product if the creators just need to send me an email.

And it’s a collection of one page Roll and Writes. Which admittedly means that it’s less physical content then a lot of Print and Play stuff I’ve backed. However, it does mean that it will be beyond easy to make and easier to convince other people to play since it’ll look close to what a published copy would look like. (I don’t make the prettiest PnP stuff)

In addition to being something that I’m into and the kind of stuff I’m already making (and playing), I’m encouraged by the fact that Ignatow already successfully ran this project in Polish. So both they and the project have a track record.

However, what was the real selling point for me was that each game is offered in   full color, low color and black and white, as well as full page and half page. That says to me that Ignatow understands their audience.

Of course, the real real I’m blogging about this is because I’m hoping more people will get interested and the project will make more stretch goals :D

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/radek-ignatow/a-lot-of-games-bundle?ref=discovery_category&term=Lots%2Cof%20games

Sure, I’ll talk about Kickstarter

A regular thread that seems to show up on Boardgame Geek is folks’ experiences with Kickstarter. So I decided to take a look down memory lane/Kickstarter. 

The first Kickstarter project I backed was the black box edition of Glory to Rome, so I tend to think of myself as being late to the party as far as Kickstarter is concerned. Lets see... I did that back in 2011.

...

Okay. By some folks standards, I might qualify as an early adaptor.

Looking through my Kickstarter profile, I’ve backed about a hundred projects, most of them games. And more than seventy of them have been just at the Print and Play level. And it’s been more than five years since I backed anything for more than around twenty dollars.

You know, I know friends who have backed far less projects than I have and spent far, far more money. 

My move towards almost exclusively sticking to PnP has been for recreational, economic and practical reasons. I like making PnPs. It’s easier on the wallet and shelf space. And I think I’m more likely to actually get the product.

I know that there are literally thousands of games that have passed me by and I’m sure some of them are very good games. However, there are so many games in the world that I’m not never going to get to play them all.

And, while it might not actually be true, if a game is _that_ amazing, I’ll eventually be able to buy it in a store. No, that isn’t always the case but I do try and wait until any game is out for at least a year and survives the initial hype to think about buying it in general.

I have had a lot of fun with Kickstarter but I definitely approach it with a lot of caution. 

First thoughts on the Spiel Press

I've been interested to see what The Spiel Press would turn out to be ever since I first read about the up-and-coming imprint/company on the Button Shy blog. Well, they have their first kick starter going on so I've had a chance to take a look.

Short version, their product is creating roll-and-write books. That's when you have a pencil-and-paper games that are dice driven and you bind the individual sheets in a book. Perforated, of course, so it's easy to rip them out. You know, like you bound a bunch of Yahtzee score sheets together.

It's not a new idea. Sid Saxon designed a bunch of pencil and paper books back in the day and they're pretty awesome. And, of course, these days you can also create PDF versions, which is what I am interested in. I mean, print and pull out some pencils and dice. Now that is an easy print and play project.

OK, so their first Kickstarter is two different books. The first one is called Star Maps and involves a Take It Easy style bingo mechanic and constellations. The other is Blood Royals, a two-player area of control game with special powers.

While they have included print-and-play prototypes of both games, there is also quite a bit that hasn't been included in the prototypes. Quite frankly, I'm kind of curious to see what the final product looks like.

Of the two, I am more interested in Blood Royals. Star Maps uses a core mechanic that I have seen before, albeit one that I've had a lot of fun with. Blood Royals seems more ambitious and pushes the envelope for the medium more.

Of course, I don't know what tweaks they have planned for the final versions. And, yes, it might ultimately be disappointing. But I am backing the Kickstarter and signing on for the ride.

Pocket Ops is clever but is it clever enough?

IMy latest print-and-play project was making the demo copy of the Grand Gamers Guild's Pocket Ops for the precise goal of actually playing it to see if I wanted to back the Kickstarter for the full print-and-play files. Which is kind of the point of demo PnP but I usually don't finish them in time :P

Stripped down to the basics, Pocket Ops is a Tic Tac Toe variation. Before you make your move, your opponent guesses where you will place your stone and, if they get it right, blocks your move. The demo comes with one special piece, that assassin, that can take the place of an already placed stone. The full game will come with other special pieces.

It was a five minute build. Two decks of nine cards for guessing your opponent's moves, a tiny board and I used tokens from my PnP tool box. 

On the one hand, Pocket Ops is much better than Tic Tac Toe. Super simple modifications that are very easy to explain, Pocket Ops definitely achieves its goal of taking a game everyone knows and giving it a designer spin.

On the other hand, we still weren't that engaged by it. A lot of the time, we had blocks of null moves because we were able to call each other's bluff. And the three by three board ultimately felt cramped and limited, part of what made the bluffing less interesting.

I'm torn, really. I think that Pocket Ops is a super clever idea and a take on Tic Tac Toe that makes the game more interesting without being fiddle. But, at the same time, we weren't that excited by it.

Keep in mind, short and tiny games have become a hobby of mine. I have played a lot of them over the last few years. And Pocket Ops just doesn't make the list of ones I would automatically reach for or be jonesing to play.

So we've decided that Pocket Ops isn't for us. At the same time, it is a clever enough design that I do intend to keep on following the company.

Does this mean my PnP habit is getting out of hand?

Does this ever happen to anyone else? I was looking through my PnP files and realized I had not yet downloaded some of the files I had bought through Kickstarter.

I'd say that more than nine out of ten of the Kickstarters I back are at the PnP/PDF level. There's a very good chance that I will only make PnP pledges in 2017 as part of my goal to not buy any new games this year. PnP doesn't count :P

And there are plenty of good reasons I stick to the print and play level. Easy on the wallet and storage space. I like crafting games. And, frankly, I'm more confident on getting electronic files.

But sometimes, I lose track of them :D

Buttonshy turned out to be the one I was the worst offender on. You see, they offer black-and-white demo copies and we have a black-and-white printer. So I use those for the initial beater copies. 

So I'll already have a copy of a game made but I forgot to get the final files :D

Anyway, I just went back and downloaded five or six files that I hadn't downloaded earlier. Often because I had already made the free version :D

Button Shy, Avignon and micro games

And This is a little bit late, since the Kickstarter is almost over, but Button shy Games is kicking off the year with the standalone expansion to the game that they kicked off last year with, Avignon.

Button Shy has been on my radar since they're 2015 kick starter for Cunning Folk but Avignon is what really made me check on what they were doing on a regular basis.

You see, their wallet game line ticks off two of my board game interests. One, they are micro games, hence the full idea of being able to stick one in your wallet. Second, you can get them as PDFs and I like to dabble with Print and Play.

Micro games have long been part of  the hobby. Heck, if you count games that you just need a couple of dice to play, for a very, very long time. However, there has been a definite surge in interest in them after Love Letter.

And not all of them have been that great. I'm not a huge fan of every game in Button Shy's wallet line, even as I'm praising it right now. 

However, one of the things that I like about a lot of their wallet line is they push the line what you can do with just a handful of cards.

Seriously, there are games out there that are just one card. The test for how small you can make a game is a moot point. And Charades beat that test into the ground ages ago anyway. The real test is how much fun a game can be and how deep a game can be. 

Cunning Folk gave me a game that I had been looking for. Something that gave me the feel of playing Coup but I could play with two people. Avignon, on the other hand, give me something that I didn't know I was looking for.

Avignon, at its heart, is a game of tug-of-war. You are trying to pool three of the cards on the board over to your side in order to win. It is themed around the historical schism in the Catholic Church when they had two popes (okay, one of the times)and the theme does work but the mechanics are the real center of the game.

One of the things that I like is how the cards create a board for the game and how playing in dimensions is a definite part of the game. That isn't anything new or innovative. Games like Verrator and Meuterer did that and did that well. Soccer 17, a game I think needs more love, did it with just two cards. Still, when you have that  dimensional space as part of a game, it adds an extra layer of depth and engagement.

Avignon also adds special powers to the mix. There are two copies of six different characters (without only a random five on the board at any time) and they all have a special power to help mix things up.

By far and away the most interesting is the Noble, which doesn't have a special action. Instead, the Noble adds two more game ending conditions. Which adds a lot to the game in general.

Every element of the game is very simple. But when they are all combined, they definitely become greater then their parts. It is a simple game. It is a quick game. But it has a lot of variety and replay value and it keeps you engaged for the duration of play.

The expansion, Avignon: Pilgrimage, adds six more roles so you can play it on its own or mix it in. Come to think of it, there are also expansions for both versions that add a few more cards.

I do like these kind of expansions. They don't make the game longer or make it a different game. They just add variety. (Hence my love of Dominion)

For me, Avignon represents what I like most about Button Shy. Taking the concept of the micro game and pushing it further. Exploring what you can do with 18 cards.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/188181/avignon-clash-popes

Adventure via the mail

The Mysterious Package Company is having itself another Kickstarter.

I have never been a customer of the Mysterious Package Company. Instead, I got to be something far better. I got to be a recipient!

One of my favorite stories by Gilbert K. Chesterton that doesn't involve Father Brown is the Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown (who isn't related to the good priest, as far as I know) The title character finds himself in the middle of a pulp plot and it turns out he was mixed up with the subscriber of an adventure service that hires actors and such to let people live a story.

The Mysterious Package Company performs this service via post. Which is a heck of a lot more reasonable a business model than renting houses and filling them with actors and props.

My experience with them started when I got a crumpled letter in the mail marked up like it had been in the dead letters office for years. I noticed immediately that it made several references to the works of Robert W. Chambers.

My immediate conclusion was that one of my friends from the Midwest had started a game of De Profundis, the Lovecraftian RPG of letter writing horror. Yes, that's a real thing. So I fired off a crumpled and stained letter to the person who I thought most likely to have started the game, using a lot of elements from Chambers' works. Confusion ensued.

When an actual package arrived, I felt like things had gone above and beyond with people could easily get away with with the desktop publishing. A little bit of research later, I found out about the Mysterious Package Company. 

I intentionally did not find out what else I might expect in the story that I found myself in. But now I knew what kind of ride I was in for. And being the dark until that point had been a lot of fun.

Telling a story through letters and newspaper clippings and the like is an age old method. It makes senses, piecing together events through different artifacts. It might not be as visceral as actually walking into a haunted house but looking at real photographs and yellowed news clippings is still more of a gut-level experience than reading a book or watching a movie.

And the Mysterious Package Company does a dandy job delivering that. And the last package is always guaranteed to be a doozy. 

Getting packages from the Mysterious Package Company was quite an experience. And the journey of finding out not only what the story was but what the heck was going on was an adventure. I'm glad they're apparently doing well and stretching their wings with another Kickstarter.

Mint Works - minimalism at work

The Kickstarter for Mint Works is almost at an end and it's been funded well and above the goal. Enough that a number of stretch goals have been met. When a game is that small, even a little bit extra can be a big expansion.

I've kept my eye on Mint Works ever since I first saw it as part of a PnP contest. I've been interested in micro games pretty much since I got into board games but Mint Works manages to be something different from other micro games I've seen.

It does that just by being a worker placement game and a pretty straight foward one at that. The actions are pretty simple. Get more workers, get building plans, building buildings from plans. Whoever gets seven points in buildings first wins.

The original version of the game consisted of two pages of cards, plus whatever tokens you used for workers. I know the Kickstarter version will have more cards but we are still talking tiny. Smaller than any other worker placement game I've come across.

One difference from most worker placement games I've seen is that you don't get your workers back. They as effectively currency and you need to get more through a very limited income or actions or buildings. Still, since everyone is competing for a limited pool of actions so the basic mechanic of worker placement holds true.

The placeholder for simplest worker placement game for me used to be Sticky Fingers. That's a game where you play rival thieves and you have to gather up tools, use those tools to steal stuff and then fence the stuff off for money which is called points in the game.

And I do like Sticky Fingers. While it is simple, it has enough tension and complexity to keep it interesting. However, what it is not is an engine builder. The board is effectively the engine and you are fighting to use it the most efficiently. 

Mint Works is in the running to be my new simplest worker placement game. It is honestly simpler and it is a worker placement game. And, as a micro game, it feels a different role as far as gaming needs are concerned.

And, unlike Sticky Fingers, Mint Works is an engine builder. The powers of the buildings give you are awfully simple but they are there. You definitely have to build up your infrastructure as well as going for points.,What I am uncertain of is how strong it's replay value is. The Kickstarter version, with more cards, does add promise for replay.

Mint Works is definitely a fascinating work of minimalism.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/200077/mint-works

A Kickstarter has me revisit dry erase as a tool

Since I'm on the Smallbox Games mailing list, I found out when they started the Akua Kickstarter. 

What immediately struck me what that Akua consists of the board and four dry erase markers instead of cards and tokens and other bits.

My first reaction as that this was a brilliant idea. It cuts down on storage space and how many pieces you have to keep track of. Between three cats and a small child, it's really easy for little cubes and meeples and cards and cardboard discs to get scattered and lost. Just having a board and some markers, markers you can buy just about anywhere to replace, is a lot easier to deal with.

But then I realized that it wasn't that original or unusual to use dry erase or the equivalent. Crayon Rail games have basically been doing that since the early 1970s. Party games like Wits and Wagers or Say Anything make dry erase a critical part of the of the game.

And there are already games where the board and the markers are the entire game. The latest version of Sid Sackson's Beyond Tic Tac Toe, published as Games of Art, is the first one that comes to mind. The silly little golf game Par Out Golf is another. 

And, now that I actually remember my experiences with board games and dry erase markers, I also understand why this isn't going to replace physical components. In all honestly, dry erase markers create a sloppy and messy looking board, in comparison to wooden or plastic or cardboard pieces. You have an actual mess to clean up at the end of the game. Physical pieces give you a tactical experience and a snazzier look. And, let's face it, chrome is fun.

Which is not to say that dry erase games don't have their place. They are good for travel or playing without a table or playing in a confined space. And, speaking as someone who has cats who like to scamper across boards or lie down on top of them, not having a bunch of parts to keep track of can be a real blessing.

Mind you, the same can be said for using a tablet. Still, it's nice to have options, including options that don't involve electricity.

Akua does bring something new to the table. Almost every dry erase game I've seen or played has either been a party game or an abstract. With an action selection mechanic, area control and what seems to be some genuine point salad, Akua falls solidly into the Euro camp.

I've already backed it on the PnP level. Since we have a laminator, making a playable copy will be a breeze. One of the stretch goals, one that looks like it will be met, will be for a two-player board. A two-player board and a clipboard could see some serious use.

I haven't had a chance to play it yet, although the two-player board will definitely increase my chances. I do hope that it's a good game that I could get a lot of play out of. I don't need to dry erase Euros but one would be really nice.

Lairs, a Kickstarter project that appeals to my imagination

Lairs is a Kickstarter project that checked off enough boxes for me that I ended up backing is on the PnP level. Admittedly, the fact that the PnP level was only a dollar was one of the boxes but there were other reasons it sparked my interest.

At its heart, Lairs is a dungeon crawl, which is a genre which that doesn't lack for games. As someone who spent a couple decades playing Dungeons and Dragons, I like dungeon crawls but I've never found one that I've liked as much as actually playing Dungeons and Dragons. 

Although, now that I don't have time to be in a campaign, there's more appeal. :D 

However, compared to a lot of dungeon crawls, Lairs definitely has a different feel. In fact, it steps away from the traditional, post Tolkien fantasy and explores a narrative that's both more whimsical and melancholy. 

Instead of wizards and warriors, the players take the role of strange beings of power. Between the artwork and the backstories, they look like the cast from a collaboration by Lord Dunsany and Edward Gorey.  

The narrative choices is a big reason why the game interested me. Some of the characters are just very interesting. There is the tragic Stonewrought Senator whose soul is trapped inside an unmoving statue. The Potted Prince takes the idea of a sentient potted plant and gives is pathos and seriousness is actually pretty cool.

I'll admit that the Dame of Catterbury is what pushed me over the edge to pledging. A magical cat locked in war against dogs and who has the most altruistic backstory? Yeah, you got my dollar for that.

They are each building their own dungeon in the same mysterious magic mountain and whoever finishes first gets to be the dungeon master as the others invade their lair. The dungeons are less a serious of rooms full of monsters and more interlocking mini games with a chance of monsters.

Frankly, the mechanics of Lairs reminds me a lot of Betrayal on the House on the Hill, which I played a fair bit of when it came out. The first half of the game is spent building a haunted house. Then someone gets possessed and you play out one of fifty different scenarios with everyone else trying to stop the possessed.

Mechanically, Betrayal had a ton of issues, not the least of which was that that first edition was horribly edited. While the underground lake on the second floor was particularly memorable, it was far from the only error. The errata ended up being something like fifty pages long.

And the random factor was so high that it could nullify any choices a player might make. Any given game could end up being a landslide victory for one side or the other. In particular, I remember the possession going off in one game at the first possible roll, leaving us with a haunted house the size of a one-bedroom apartment full of killer rats. The game ended shortly after that with some very fat rats.

But, as buggy and problem-filled as Betrayal was as a game, it almost succeeded at delivering a story. Heck, the tiny apartment full of rats might have been almost pointless as a competitive game but it did make for a great anecdote. Despite its myriad of flaws, Betrayal did deliver an experience so Lairs reminding me of it is not a knock.

Frankly, I don't know if Lairs will turn out to be a good game. They did a great job with the theme and the mechanics sound promising. But they would have failed Kickstarter 101 if the game didn't sound promising. I'm prepared for the game to be meh or even a tram wreck.

But, getting the art and the backstories will be totally worth a dollar, even if the game is terrible. And I am intrigued enough that I will make that print and play.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/201782/lairs

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10547/betrayal-house-hill

Prince Valiant the RPG might return?

While I usually just look through Kickstarter for boardgames, I do look at the role playing games and was surprised to see that a revised edition of the Prince Valiant Storytelling Game from 1989 is getting Kickstarted.

Over the years, I've regularly heard about the Prince Valiant RPG and been interested in looking at it. At the time, it was a revolutionary design. Unfortunately, it's been really hard to get a hold of a copy so I've never actually read it.

(I also have to admit that I've never been a fan of Prince Valiant, largely because it's never been carried in a newspaper I or my parents have gotten. I have always thought the artwork is pretty, though)

The two goals of the Prince Valiant RPG were to be a simple system that was extremely novice friendly and to still give a rich, thematic experience that reflected the comic strip the game was based on.

Did it do a good job? Since I've never read the book and I don't know anyone who's played the game, I can't tell you. However, the game is still remembered. It may not have gotten reprinted but it hasn't disappeared into obscurity.

Prince Valiant didn't invent the idea of simple rules that would be easy for non-gamers to pick up. The Ghostbusters RPG did that in 1986 and Toon did it even earlier in 1984. Still, in 1989, the idea was still an outlier as opposed to an accepted school of design.

The actual mechanics are dead simple. Characters have two statistics (one for physical stuff and one for social stuff) and access to a fairly small and focused skill list. Add up the numbers between stats and skills and flip that many coins with heads being successes.

But that's not what interests me. How was it presented? What was the GM section like? How was Prince Valiant the story integrated with the game?

The fact that it was designed by Greg Stafford, who also was a major designer of Pendragon, the definitive King Arthur game, as well as a lot of other stuff (including that newbie friendly Ghostbusters RPG I mentioned earlier) is a major interest point. It was made by someone with serious RPG chops.

How well has it aged? I don't know. But I am curious enough that the Kickstarter tempts me.

Pyramid Arcade funded with flying colors

It isn't a surprise that the Arcade Pyramid got funded, seeing as how it matched its funding goal on day one. Additional stretch goals, like reprinting the Looney Labs chess board bandana and thirty extra pyramids (so you can play games like Zendo or Pikeman) were reached. So, it was a smashing success and Looney Labs has a good history as a company so I'm confident in the project getting fulfilled.

I do have to admit that I backed it at a lower level, in part to get the special green pyramids and in part to simply show my support and be a part of the project. I already have well over two hundred pyramids and pretty much every additional accessory for them that had been already produced, including the bandana. :D

In fact, I bought the boxed sets of Ice Towers and Zendo back when they were being produced. Zendo, in particular, has served as a great tool box for the pyramids. (The color contrast in that color set is better for my color-blindness) The Pyramid Arcade is the super-sized version of that.

Honestly, while I have always been a big fan of the pyramid system, the Pyramid Arcade project has reminded me just how much you can do with it. The part of me that loves researching print and play projects loves the system because it lets me explore new games all the time. And I am sure the Pyramid Arcade only encourage more development.

It has even made me end my hiatus on Superduper Games, since there are pyramid games on that site. (I have no issues with the site. I think it's amazing place to play some very unusual abstracts. I just periodically take breaks from it.)

I have had many years of good play from the pyramid system. I think that the Pyramid Arcade is only going to spark more interest in the system and encourage more games to be developed.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/187988/pyramid-arcade

http://icehousegames.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Pyramid Arcade is on Kickstarter

Looney Labs has just started a Kickstarter project called Pyramid Arcade, which is the largest tool kit they've offered for their Looney Pyramids.

I've been playing with their pyramids for so long that Looney Pyramids is the third name that they've had for the system. I first started playing with them back when they were called Icehouse Pyramids. Then, they were Treehouse Pyramids. I have a feeling Looney Pyramids will stick since they finally named them after the company.

Looney Pyramids aren't a game. Instead, they're a game system. Think of them as a tool box, a collection of pieces you can use in different ways to play a wide variety of different games. Just like a deck of cards, only more pointy.

I am a big fan of game systems. Not just because they are a lot of game packed into a small space but because they really let you look at the nuts and bolts of mechanics. When you take away the chrome, you get to see all the moving parts.

Although, having just said that, the colorful stacking pyramids are awfully pretty chrome.

There's a lot of different games you can play with the pyramids, ranging from abstracts to dexterity to deduction to area control to resource management to war games. Okay, light war games. I'm pretty sure that Homeworlds qualifies as a 4X game.

There are a number of reasons I think that the pyramids have become a really good game system.

First of all, the actual pyramids themselves are very versatile. Pyramids that are stackable, come in three sizes and come in a wide variety of colors can be used in a variety of ways. And they make nice eye candy.

Second, the pyramids are really just the jumping off point. A lot of these games use boards, dice, cards or tokens. Alien City uses a whole other game system, the Piece Pack. That does kind of spoil the whole game system standing in its own (Hey, take this handful of pyramids. It's all you'll ever need) but the end result is a lot of fun, different games.

Finally, the pyramids have been supported and nurtured by both a game company and design community. One way or another, it has been supported since 1989. The pyramids are a living system that is constantly being developed by professionals and not-quite-as-professionals. 

I've played about half of the twenty-two of the games that will come in the Pyramid Arcade and eight of them I'm pretty sure are original to this set. Just from what I've played alone, I know it's a good collection.

The one glaring omission to the set is Zendo, which is my favorite pyramid game. Unfortunately, Zendo would require a different distribution of colors. On the other hand, you can still use the set to play Zendo, just not using colors. Really, you can use a handful coins to play Zendo if you felt like it.

And one of the stretch goals is to work on a sequel project that would allow people to play Zendo and other older games that used the older color distribution. 

Looney Labs has already reached their funding goal. I think they might've done it on the first day. The pyramids have been around for decades and they have really proven themselves as a gaming system. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/looneylabs/pyramid-arcade

http://www.icehousegames.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

A Kickstarter that should play well with children

Another Kickstarter which interests me has relaunched, Dice Bazaar. While it is a game, which is what I generally look at when I look at, Dice Bazaar is for a completely different audience than my usual fare.

Dice Bazaar is a very simple, family game with very intuitive rules. There's nothing hard to understand or particularly deep about it. It definitely isn't the kind of game that I would introduce to my old gaming group, who love games like Terra Mystica and La Havre.

However, I think it will be perfect as a stepping stone in between games like Candy Land and Catan while still being fun for adults, even those of us who are a little crazy about the hobby.

Dice Bazaar takes place at a middle eastern bazaar where the players are trying to buy various items, ranging from low value spices to expensive diamonds, all of which will be worth points at the end.

Each item has a stack of cards which are placed on the main board. Below each item are spots for the merchants dice, ranging from two dice for spices to five dice for diamonds. Dice get rolled for each spot, setting the price of each good.

Everyone gets six dice of their own and a player board that has spaces for each type of good. You buy goods by matching the dice with the merchant. If the tea kettle stack has a two, four and five under it, you need to lock a two, four and five on your tea kettle space to get a tea kettle card.

And you don't have to do it all at once. You work up to the price of a good. However, when someone buys a good, the merchant dice get rerolled and any of your locked dice that doesn't match the new rolls get wiped.

On top of all that, you can trade in good cards to place a die on the next highest good without rolling. (Except for the diamond, since it's the highest) There is a cobra card in each deck worth a random number of points at the end. And there is what I consider an essential expansion that awards bonus points at the end of the game for collecting sets of goods.

It's not a complex game by far. But it includes push-your-luck elements with set collection and simple special powers. Its a cute little trading game where you trade with the game.

It's not going to replace Sid Sackson's Bazaar in my collection for my gaming. But I think it will be a good choice for my son and family gatherings in a few years.

This is the second time Dice Bazaar has been on Kickstarter. It didn't make it last time but I hope it does this time.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/183976/dice-bazaar

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fsosnin/dice-bazaar-dice-rolling-card-trading-family-fun 

Campaign for Name of God ends with a ton of extra goodies

The Kickstarter for the Name of God has come to a close and it has passed and flying colors. Tons of stretch goals were met which means that The second addition is going to be light years past what the first edition was.

(I am, of course, taking it on faith that, now that the campaign is done, everything else falls into place. Lord knows that doesn't always happen. Still, I'm willing to trust Piroddi)

Man, for as much as I have blogged about this game, you would think that I had stock in it.

The first edition was a one page PDF that you could cut into eight cards with black and white clip art. And half of those cards were the rules. Which is cool from a minimalist design standpoint (How small can you make an RPG and still have it be meaningful/interesting/any good?) but the second edition is going to have a lot more content.

It's going to have better artwork and you'll have the option of having it either regular card-sized or tarot-sized. (Okay, I really don't care about the different sizes)

And of course, what is really exciting, there are going to be at least eighteen more cards, all designed by different indie designers. (Seriously, I've heard of some of them and I wouldn't call myself an authority of indie games)

If you are coming from an old school, D&D is your RPG of choice, the fetish cards are your classes. If you are new school, they are your narrative direction. At any rate, having at least twenty-two to pick from rather than four is a LOT more content and replay value.

I will be following Piroddi's updates with a lot of interest. I get the impression he will do good job keeping backers up-to-date, which is something I enjoy. (That's a big part of why C. S. Ferguson gets me as a regular backer)

I'm also looking into some of his other designs. Piroddi designed a version of the Fate system that is both GM-free and designed for campaign play. I've got to see how he did that!

After actually reading The Name of God

After enough people asked how exactly The Name of God worked, I wrote to Alessandro Piroddi to get permission to get the PDF of the first edition early and review it before the end of the Kickstarter campaign.

He said yes, so here we go! (Thanks Alessandro!)

In The Name of God, you are a small god who has fallen from power. You are trapped in a mortal body without your name or even money or shelter. You are a homeless outcast in the city. But you have a hope of regaining your divinity. But, of course, there's going to be a cost.

The Name of God is a GM-free system. It's a role playing game that doesn't require any prior set up and everyone has an equal part in running it. The rules take up four cards, unless you double side them. In the original edition, which is what I'm looking at, the rest of the game consists of the four fetish cards. (The second edition will have more than twice times that number of fetish cards, by the way.)

At the start of the game, everyone will take a fetish card. They've got three parts. The name, which is something cool like the Wyrm or the Shadow, that gives an idea for that fetish's theme. Some questions that will help you define your character. And, finally, the ritual action. That is the big deal, how you try and manifest your forgotten divine presence.

On a turn, one player will be the active player. Their lost god/homeless madman will be the main character for that scene. After they describe what urban wasteland they are at, the other players fill in key details. Who else is there? What is bizarre or wrong? What is dangerous?

You then play out the scene, with the other players taking the roles of the other people and the environment. Effectively, everyone but the active player collectively is the GM or the stage manager, if you like the Our Town analogy. (I love it, which is why I drag it out on a regular basis. Hate the play, though)

The scene keeps going until an action is taken that is either difficult OR perilous OR difficult and perilous. One player must call it out and another player describes the consequences of that action.

The active player can either accept those consequences or they can perform their ritual action. The other players tell them what they must do to perform the ritual action, who gets hurt and other details. The active player must then decide if they are willing to pay that cost.

No matter what, after the action is resolved, ritual action or no, the scene ends and the next player becomes the active player.

An individual character journey will end in one of two ways. They will successfully perform their ritual action three times and regain their divine nature and power. Or they'll die. The game ends when everyone finds their final destiny.

Now, let me say I have played a number of GM-free systems over the years. And I have to say that they actually work. Looking over The Name of God, I'd honestly say that it shouldn't just work but it'll be harder to mess up than others I've seen or played.

Part of that is because what everyone has to do is pretty straight forward. The other part is because the concept and setting, which has been used in works like American Gods is both real enough for people to understand and fantastic enough to be safe.

(The concept does remind me of Terry Pratchett's Small Gods, while being completely different in tone and setting. At the same time, I can imagine playing a stray dog or an alley cat who is secretly a god)

Of course, there are still going to be speed bumps for getting into this game. You have to go in with the goal of telling a good story, not to win. The better story might to be to reject the price of divinity and die, unknown and unloved in a filthy alleyway. If you can get into that, awesome!

I thought the idea of the Name of God made it worth backing. Now that I have seen the actual Core System, I'm pretty excited to get the expanded game.

Kickstarter stretch goals that excite me

As I spent more time on Kickstarter, both doing a lot of lurking and backing some projects, I have grown more critical of stretch goals. Well, at least more careful in my scrutiny of stretch goals.

When I first learned about stretch goals, they were the most amazing thing ever. Bonus goodies are so exciting! 

But, as time went on, some stretch goals felt like pieces of the game that had been shaved off and you needed to make the stretch goals to get the actual whole game. Other times, I'm forced to wonder if it's really just bonus fluff.

So now that I have become at all discerning when it comes to stretch goals, when I find some that are exciting, it's really cool for me. Particularly since I am just backing on the Print and Play level more and more, so most stretch goals don't mean a thing to me.

And, at the moment, I'm backing two projects with stretch goals that excite me. So, of course I have to write about them, even though I've already mentioned them before, to try and drum up more support and achieve more stretch goals :P

The Name of God is a nanno RPG, originally consisting of eight cards. Four cards of rules and four fetish cards. In this case, fetish means a special ritual object, not a kinky obsession. Although it's an indie game that lists Apocalypse World as an inspiration so it could end up both in a game :D

The stretch goals are more fetish cards. Since they are the special action/big mechanic of the game, even one is 20% cooler and We are at nine. 220% cooler? Rainbow Dash's head explodes!

What is actually super cool is how every bonus card is being designed by a different indie designer. I really hope they get to card eleven, since I've gamed with Megan and she's groovy.

Of course, the second series of Pack O Games is what really has me thrilled. It's a series of micro games and every stretch goal is another game! (Mind you, it doesn't hurt that the first set ended up being micro games on a Love Letter level of quality. A bag of junk games ain't anything special)

More than that, this time, every time a new stretch goals is announced, backers get to vote on which of two games it will be. I hope they don't run out of play-tested games!

Now, it is nice how the stretch goals in both projects add big content but what is really cool is how they engage the community. The Name of God is making big use of the indie design community and Pack O Games is giving people choices, at least as long as their supply of designs hold out. Both projects having lots of updates and decent transparency helps too.

Honestly, a good pledge experience has become part of the whole backing a Kickstarter thing for me and these guys are doing a fine job. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unplayablegames/the-name-of-god-a-game-of-outcasts-and-urban-weird

http://www.PackOGame2.com

A Kickstarter I'm going to enjoy

One of the most rewarding Kickstarters of 2014 for me was the Pack O Games series. 

Part of the fun was that every stretch goal was a new game in the series and, by the end of the Kickstarter, the number of games had doubled and the last game to get added was the one I was the most excited about. (BUS, by the way. A pick-up-and-deliver game on just thirty cards? I had to see that!)

However, the other thing that was really cool was that we had a lot of fun with the games once they arrived. We haven't played all of them but we have had fun with the ones that we have played. In my opinion, the Pack O Games series has really pushed the bar for the quality of micro games.

So when the second series of Pack O Games was launched, I backed it before I even started looking at what the games were going to be.

Stretch goals or one of those things that can be really exciting in a campaign or you can end up feeling like they added a whole bunch of stuff that you don't really need. Since every goal in this campaign is it's own game, I find that pretty exciting. And, this time, you get to vote on what the next stretch goal will be. That's a great way to engage the backers and keep everyone excited about the campaign.

I really enjoyed the first set in this series and I'm looking forward to what this one brings.

http://www.PackOGame2.com