On May 4th, 2020, Limitless Adventures will launch a Kickstarter campaign for their new 5th Edition adventure path: Journey to Beryl’s Reach (JBR). The three-adventure arc is distinctive because it requires no dungeon master. Take note: this is not a board; there will be roleplay, puzzles, skill challenges, and of course, combat. Our DM-less feels like a standard session. The adventure features unique mechanics that allow for high replay value to ensure that it will be a different experience each time.
“This DM-less adventure is meant to reduce dungeon master burnout, as well as provide those groups that don’t have a dungeon master a way to still get together and roll dice with their friends. We’re not looking to put DMs out of work, but rather give them a chance to play a character for once.” said Andrew Hand, co-founder of Limitless Adventures.
Journey to Beryl’s Reach will be Limitless Adventures’s fourteenth Kickstarter and it will run from May 4thuntil May 29th. JBR will be available as a print and play PDF or a premium box set. Both domestic and international shipping will be available.
Limitless Adventures was founded in 2016 by Andrew Hand and Michael Johnson. Limitless Adventures offers high-quality 5th Edition gaming products. They specialize in DM-friendly products that minimize your prep time so you can spend more time at the table playing and less time writing.
“With our new DM-less product, Limitless Adventures helps you battle the ultimate RPG boss fight… the schedule.” says Michael Johnson, Limitless Adventures co-founder.
(Chenoa, Illinois – June 26, 2019) On July 1st, 2019 Limitless Adventures will launch a Kickstarter campaign for their new 5th Edition adventure path, The Blood Queen’s Defiance (BQD). The three-adventure arc is distinctive because it requires no dungeon master. The adventure features unique mechanics that allow for high replay value to ensure that it will be a different experience each time.
“This DM-less adventure is meant to reduce gamemaster burnout, as well as provide those groups that don’t have a dungeon master a way to still get together and roll dice with their friends. Everyday we hear from DMs on social media who wish they had a chance to play their favorite characters, but that they are the only member of their game group who will run a campaign” said Andrew Hand, co-founder of Limitless Adventures.
The Blood Queen’s Defiance will be Limitless Adventures’ tenth Kickstarter and it will run from July 1st until July 31st . BQD will be available as a print and play PDF or a premium box set. Both domestic and international shipping will be available.
Limitless Adventures was founded in 2016 by Andrew Hand and Michael Johnson. Limitless Adventures offers high-quality 5th Edition gaming products. They specialize in DM-friendly products that minimize your prep time so you can spend more time at the table playing and less time writing.
“With our new DM-less product, Limitless Adventures helps you battle the ultimate RPG boss fight… the schedule” says Michael Johnson, Limitless Adventures co-founder.
Additional information about The Blood Queen’s Defiance and its DM-less mechanics can be obtained by e-mailing Andrew Hand directly at andy.hand@limitless-adventures.com.
Sign up for Limitless Adventures’ mailing list to be entered to win a free copy of Ghosts of Saltmarsh and a copy of the Limitless Pirate Bundle. The winner will be announced on June 4th via Facebook, Twitter, and their June newsletter.
There are a number of excellent RPG Kickstarters that end this week but I want to focus on four of them. From superheroes to fantasy, original systems to Savage Worlds, these four campaigns are worth your time.
“Recovery and re-imagining of first-generation Champions role-playing.
The first wave of role-playing design was its own Renaissance, marked by greatness of all kinds. If you were playing then, you’ll remember. And if you weren’t, you’d be amazed at what that wave held. One of them was Champions, the Super Role-Playing Game.
Hero Games is proud to present Champions Now, to be created by pioneering game designer Ron Edwards, author of Sorcerer and co-founder of The Forge. Ron will revisit the original three editions of first-generation Champions (1981 to 1988), recovering the power of this foundational era of superhero roleplaying.
We know that time and tides went elsewhere. Fourth edition Champions and the Hero System have their own storied history beginning 1987-1989. Steve Long revised and expanded this body of work into the Hero System Fifth Edition in 2001, and then revised and expanded it again in 2009. There were lots of good books, lots of great games, and lots and lots of superheroing.
And that’s fine. Things change. Only… there is one little point, one observation, one wholecreative superhero subculture left back there in the past. One that just happened to rock the hobby to its foundations and train a whole generation of play and design, including a bunch of Big Ass Names who wrote the Big Ass Games you know well.
So our goal for Champions Now? To show you why the original Champions created by George MacDonald and Steve Peterson was actually just that good. To celebrate and recover that explosive quality. The final work will include best practices for the original rules and a new rules-set to bring their strengths forward, as well as practical essays about superhero comics and gaming.
It will also include you. See these people playing this game?
Right here is a very sketchy yet usable playtest document. We’re playing this thing right now and so can you. We want to know what you do with it! Pledging playtesters get serious props right there in the text, saying what they said and what it means.
Halfway there breaking news! Hero Games is providing the PDFs for Champions 3rd edition and for the supplements Champions II and Champions III to all backers at named tiers at the completion of the campaign. The playtest document was written assuming you’d have these in hand, and now you totally will, as of July 1.
That’s why you see that long delivery period – so you can play. This isn’t a pre-order for a prefabricated product that would have been pumped out anyway. The point of crowdfunding is inclusion, and this is how that happens.
Another example are Ron’s short videos, like this one, which initially appear as updates and are archived into a public resource at Adept Play. What you tell us about how you play and what happened – that’s what upcoming videos are made to address. If you want, you might even get to be in one!
Ron Edwards is a wanderin’ Californian who has wound up in Sweden. He is the co-founder of the legendary website The Forge, a creator-owned-game publisher site, and the author of some notions about role-playing. His previous works include Sorcerer, Trollbabe, Spione, and Circle of Hands. He won the second Diana Jones Award for “excellence in gaming” in 2002, and is the author and creator of this project.
Steven S. Long is a role-playing game author and one of the owners of Hero Games. He has written for numerous companies, including White Wolf Publishing, Pinnacle Entertainment Group, Steve Jackson Games, Last Unicorn Games, and Chameleon Eclectic. He has written, co-authored, edited, or developed over 200 RPG products. Steve will be assisting in the development and playtesting phase of this project.
Jason S. Walters is an author, essayist, and publisher best known for running Indie Press Revolution (IPR), a distributor of micro-published roleplaying games. He is also one of a small group of investors that purchased Hero Games in 2001, and serves as its CEO. He is the developer of numerous roleplaying games, including Champions Complete, Fantasy Hero Complete, and At The Hands of An Angry God. Jason is the publisher for this project.
Ruben Smith-Zempel was made in Oregon. He showed his creativity at an early age, charging his 3rd grade classmates 25 cents for paper and cardboard army vehicles (for the G.I. Joe’s, of course). Thus was born an artist who would never shy away from creating things important to his hobbies. Ruben has served as head graphic designer on dozens of RPG projects and will be handling layout and graphic design for this project.”
Egg’s Thoughts:
As a kid, the ads for the historic versions of these games always captured my attention creating a nostalgia for this campaign as much as the game itself. I want to see how this game plays today (and how this campaign plays out).
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPGhere or at the OpenGamingStorehere.
“Everything you need to begin an exciting adventure with your friends that you won’t forget
Quest is the roleplaying game for everyone.
If you’re completely new to this type of game, we’ll have a friendly conversation with you about how to play. Quest is fast, fun, and easy to learn. We hope to show you how intuitive and immersive storytelling games can and should be. And if you’re already an experienced player, you’ll find a surprisingly deep game with a refreshing set of modern rules.
This is a game about becoming an extraordinary person in a dangerous world. You’ll explore wondrous places, meet fascinating and mysterious people, witness magical events, and answer the call to go on an exciting adventure. What happens in this world is based on the choices you and your friends make.
Curious? Excited? Ready?
Let’s begin.
Quest is a way to tell an exciting story with your friends. You don’t have to be an improv actor or a mathematician to be good at it – you just need to open your mind and use a little imagination. The rules of the game are intuitive and help you imagine where the story might go.
These are just some of the ways Quest will help you quickly begin your adventure, and potentially carry it with you for years to come.
The Friendly Guide. Everyone deserves to feel like a hero with their friends at the table, so we wrote a book that feels inviting. It’s not a textbook – it’s a conversation. Along the way, you’ll see a running dialog from a fictional group of players, to help you see how the rules of the game are used to tell the story.
The way it works is simple. Read the left side of the player’s guide to learn the basics, and if you want to learn a little more, see the right side of the book. Here’s what it looks like:
A page spread from the Quest Game Book
The Essential Deck. Quest features a deck of cards with all of the game’s special moves, so that you can reference them at the table without having to flip through a book. The Essential Deck makes it easy and fun to grow as a character. When you begin the game, you’ll start with a few moves that make your character special. As you grow during your adventure, you’ll get to collect more cards that tell you how to do amazing things.
Essential Deck cards showing Quest’s 8 hero roles
The Story Engine. Quest only uses a single (but powerful) die – the twenty-sided die, or “d20.” When the stakes are high in your adventure, rolling the die will help you imagine what happens. Sometimes you’ll use it to walk a tightrope, make a sweet move, or witness the results of an unpredictable spell.
You only need to roll once to see what happens. And if you’re really good at something, you’ll get a bonus. Then, you’ll check to see what the consequences are from an easy-to-remember set of outcomes.
The story engine keeps the game moving fast by letting you succeed a lot. But when you fail, the consequences will be meaningful. Every choice you make matters.
“Quest breaks from the war gaming history of more classic tabletop RPGs to bring a more narrative driven approach both in and out of combat. I love D&D, but it is structurally, by the design and history of war gaming that it comes out of, a game that encourages players into the murderhobo mindset. Quest feels like a game that is trying push back on that inclination systemically. A lot of the spells and skills tend to be a bit more narrative driven which gives a lot more room for encounters that aren’t about just about killing monsters.”
Spells that tell tales. We think everything you can do in a tabletop roleplaying game should be surprising and delightful. So we created skills and abilities with a focus on narrative and fun. Quest’s skills and spells – the special things your adventurer gets to do – are meant to inspire your own silly, dramatic and unexpected ideas. Here are a few examples:
There are over 300 spells and skills in Quest that you can learn and use. Follow us on Twitter to see more examples, where we’ll be posting more previews of Quest’s spells, abilities, and items every day.
Play a little, or a lot. You can play Quest just once, or a few times, with groups of any size. You don’t have to make a long-term commitment to play, and with our first adventure format, you’re not obligated to play every time your group meets; you can easily rejoin the story down the road, if you want. But for groups that want to tell an epic story over months or years, Quest is deep enough to let your character learn and grow over time.”
Egg’s Thoughts:
An easy, inclusive fantasy RPG that has, as of this writing, around 1,200 backers. I think they’ve found the secret sauce and that level of excitement alone is reason enough to check this out. Want more details? Dan Davenport hosted a Q&A with T.C. Sottek about Quest and has a copy here: https://gmshoe.wordpress.com
“5th Evolution (5Evo) takes the wildly popular 5E game mechanics and applies them to new genres: super heroes, WW2, and 80s horror.
What is 5th Evolution?
5th Evolution (5Evo) takes the wildly popular 5e game mechanics and applies them to new genres. 5Evo products are a marriage of comics and roleplaying.
5th Evolution is intended for gamers who enjoy the 5E game engine and would like to use it in other genres. 5E is wildly popular, has been extensively play-tested, and is easy for new players to learn. Many players familiar with 5E are hesitant to learn a new system, and 5Evo allows them to explore new worlds and genres of play seamlessly.
What does this Kickstarter Contain?
This project is made up of three separate graphic novel-sized softcover books in three different genres: WW2, Super Heroes, and 80’s Horror. Each book contains three parts:
Part 1: the comic. Each 5Evo book opens with a comic that GMs will share digitally with their players prior to the gaming session. These comics serve to introduce the genre and setting, as well as to get players invested in the coming adventure.
Part 2: the adventure. The second section of each 5Evo book is a one-shot adventure, complete with pregenerated characters, that picks up where the comic left off.
Part 3: the source guide. Finally, the third section of each 5Evo book is a source guide that gives the GM the monsters, equipment, and characters to create their own adventures in that particular genre.
The Books
World War II – Set in North Africa in 1942, you’ll crew an M5A1 Stuart tank on a special mission during Operation Torch. This book contains the adversaries, equipment, characters, and vehicles to run a WW2 North Africa campaign with or without supernatural elements.
Source guide includes:
4 American WW2 solider archetypes
Period specific tanks and trucks
Meticulously researched, period specific firearms
Customizable enemy combatants
Super Heroes – Set in Carbide City in the present day, you are part of a team of the super heroes trying to stop a gang of super villains wreaking havoc downtown. This book contains the super villains, equipment, and player archetypes to run a supers campaign.
Source guide includes:
13 of Carbide City’s worst super villains
Customizable non-super enemies
Future tech equipment
10 character archetypes
80s Horror Films – Set in the small town of Woodhaven in 1985, you and your friends get in over your heads and uncover a dark plot while seeking a party. This book contains the monsters, equipment, and teen hero archetypes needed to run a horror campaign set in the 1980s.
“Secret Agents of CROSS is a tabletop RPG where Catholic agents protect the flock from supernatural horrors, demons, and terrorists.
CROSS is a clandestine spy agency also known as the Catholic Response Organization to Strategize and Strike. CROSS was created by rogue Cardinal James McDonnell to take the Pope’s prayers and convert them into actions. He and his command staff create missions to protect the flock from evil using cutting-edge technology coupled with saintly magic honed over 2000 years of history.
The CROSS organization was originally created as part of a Champions game years ago. When I decided to create a setting around it, I wanted to capture my vision of an organization that only includes agents that are the best of the best. They are the only people suited for the types of adversaries that they will face. I wanted the players to feel like they were playing competent characters from the start. When I discovered Savage Worlds, I felt that the exploding dice aspect of Savage Worlds along with the bennies system modeled that feeling. After a few sessions at Garycon, I knew this was the system for Secret Agents of CROSS.
Please note, you will need a copy of Savage Worlds to play Secret Agents of CROSS. You can find out more about Savage Worldshere.
You will receive the Secret Agents of CROSS book, a Savage Worlds setting in full color with approximately 170 pages of never-before-seen content. This book is your guide on how the world of CROSS operates, how to make player characters, and how to run CROSS missions that are steeped in secret spy stuff, religious history, modern terrorism, and the supernatural.
For Players and GMs:
A brief history of Biblical events that affect the modern world of CROSS.
A detailed history of the creation of CROSS and the entire command staff.
10 Roles for players to choose from to promote CROSS’s setting feel. Optional rules to expand, create, or change Roles.
New Edges and Hindrances to help capture the setting feel of Catholic secret agents.
Over 40 unique weapons created by the engineers of CROSS.
For GMs:
Suggestions for how to handle the nature of supernatural things and how they are affected by normal and supernatural powers.
Suggestions for the use of CROSS in various genres including Fantasy, Horror, and Superhero settings.
Suggestions on how to provide the best gaming experience for each archetype.
Double-secret-GM’s-eyes-only section of secrets not revealed in the other chapters.
Over 30 powerful relics and artifacts to place into missions.
Over 30 adversaries to interact with your agents. Some good, some bad, some hard to tell.
3 complete missions for your agents to begin defending the flock.
A detailed mission generator.
High-quality color pdf and printing fulfilled with DriveThruRPG in standard 8.5″ x 11″ size.”
Egg’s Thoughts:
Pete Ruttman of Blessed Machinereached out over a month before this campaign began to share his enthusiasm for his game. The concept – literal warriors of Christ – is an obvious idea (D&D Paladins brought to today), yet it has only been lightly explored in the [largely secular] gaming industry. Since the engine is Savage Worlds, the question of deciding whether to back this or not becomes if you like that system and this setting for it.
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPGhere.
Wanna-lancer™ Checklist T-shirt available at Cafepress
Interested in being a wanna-lancer? Start with the official Wanna-lancer Checklist t-shirt or wall clock or ice tea glass!
* * * * * *
Egg Embry wrote comic book short stories, edited comic book series, wrote and drew a webcomic, and contributed to comic book journalism across the 2000s. Now, he buys the opportunity to write for a variety of tabletop role-playing games in the tradition of vanity press. His purchases have been published by a variety of companies:
In this week’s RPG Kickstarter review, not only do we have RPGs for 5e, Chill 3e, White Star, and more, but also a choose your own adventure book, and stock art options. There are a number of free quickstarts, monsters, and samples to test out these products before you invest so lets count these down by end date (after a quick list of the freebies because… free!).
“A book of 100 unique DnD 5e monsters with stats, lore, treasure, and 300 adventure hooks.
Our third Kickstarter project, Limitless Monsters, contains:
100 unique D&D 5e monsters
Dozens of illustrations by Bartolomeo Argentino
Custom cover by artist David Auden Nash
Lore Mechanics to unlock tactical insights through knowledge
Monster Tactics – how they fight, and what others might fight alongside
Harvest Mechanics to gain unique loot
Pre-rolled treasure to reduce DM prep time
300 Further Adventure™ hooks to aid in writing follow-up quests
Available in Full-color PDF or as a softcover print book
Fantasy Grounds VTT Stretch Goal UNLOCKED!
Green Dragon Zombie
Limitless Adventures
Limitless-Adventures was created as a way for busy DMs to liven up their campaigns, and reduce the burden of game prep. We specialize in DM-friendly products that minimize your prep so you can spend more time at the table playing and less time writing. Check out our website, Limitless-Adventures.com for high-quality 5e content and free products posted monthly.”
Skeletal Guardian
Egg’s Thoughts:
Try before you buy with this sampler of five 5e monsters here. Who needs more monsters for the world’s most popular RPG? Everyone. It’s that simple, more monsters = good! Try this out.
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here.
“OM2 is an expanded and updated version of the original Orbis Mundi, covering the reality of Medieval European Life for Role Players.
Orbis Mundi 2
Many Fantasy Role Playing Games are nominally based on elements of historical western Europe as it was during the Middle Ages … but the amount of actual background information they provide is minimal and, worse, mostly misleading, anachronistic or even outright wrong.
The first edition of Orbis Mundi (2006) was written specifically to deal with that issue and has been quite successful on RPGNow, currently being a 4 Star rated Silver Pick … but, at only 112 pages, it only scratched the surface of the realities of the medieval European world.
The original book surveyed the period roughly from AD 1000 to AD 1499, with the Annotated Price List mainly looking at the period 1301-1499 … OM2 covers AD 1000-1400 and the Annotated Price List will make an attempt to look at some of the key changes to prices and availability over those centuries.
The start date is one generally recognised as the earliest there is something that is starting to resemble what would eventually become the institution of Knighthood and a more formalised version of the feudal system while the terminal date was chosen as it is the point at which the importance of individual gunpowder weapons starts to have an accelerating impact on the battlefield and on individual combat.
With another decade’s worth of research under my belt I am in the process of writing a Orbis Mundi 2 – a much more comprehensive work on the period and its quirks.
The first volume, A Guide to REAL Medieval Life is complete and fully laid out and runs to ~450 pages, covering many more aspects in much greater detail of Medieval Life than the original volume and, indeed, most of the limited competition on the topic and a second volume,The Medieval Marketplace: An Annotated Price List is currently in preparation and is expected to run to a minimum of 96 pages, possibly more (the original ran to 60 pages of OM1 … and there’s a lot more material I’ve collected over the years since then, so 96 pages is likely to be exceeded … possibly by quite a lot).”
The Cover for the main Handbook
Egg’s Thoughts:
Try before you buy with two different options here and here. Do I want a detailed account of life in medieval times? Probably for morbid curiosity and that’s reason enough!
You can see examples of their work at RPGNow here.
“In our third sourcebook for Chill 3rd Ed, we explore the Undead, creatures that return from the grave for love, revenge, or hate.
We treat our dead with reverence. We inter their bodies in the ground in expensive caskets, or entomb them in ornate stone monuments, or burn them and keep their ashes in urns. We remind ourselves, in this way, that death comes for all of us, but that even in death we are due respect.
How horrifying, then, when the dead won’t stay contained.
Art by Alessandro Alaia
In Undead, we examine the creatures of the Unknown that animate the bodies of the dead. These creatures aren’t the mindless, hungry, infectious zombies of cinema. They are the spurned and jilted lovers who come back from the grave seeking a mouldering kiss. They are the wronged dead, the unhallowed dead, murdered and shoved into shallow graves or buried without ceremony and longing for the respect they are due. They are the innocent dead, killed before their time and wanting only to taste the life they never really knew.
Pity them if you wish, but put them down quick and hard. They are vicious and violent, and all them want to take company back to the grave with them.
Undead is a 120-page, full-color antagonist sourcebook for Chill 3rd Edition. Like Monsters, our preceding release, it is partially written “in character” by a SAVE researcher attempting to categorize and understand the living dead, and partially written for players and Chill Masters to allow them make full use of this horrifying class of creatures.
Undead includes:
Further insight into the history and workings of SAVE (the Eternal Society of the Silver way, dedicated to investigating and combatting the Unknown)
10 (or more!) new undead creatures, including the grotesque penangallen and the fearsome lich
An in-depth look at how different undead creatures come to be, including discussion of the role these beings occupy in different cultures
New pregenerated characters to be use as support or as PCs
A new campaign-length case written by Morgan A. McLaughlin McFarland, one of the contributors to all of the Chill 3rd Ed line
A brand-new comic by Leonard O’Grady
New Edges & Drawbacks”
Art from SAVE: The Eternal Society by Alessandro Alaia
Wanna-lancer* Reward:
Pledge $100 or more
Witness to the Unknown
You will provide the short witness statement before one of the monster write-ups in the Undead book. You will also received a softcover copy and PDF of Undead. You will work with Matthew McFarland, the developer and author of Monsters, to create this witness statement.
INCLUDES:
Undead PDF
Undead softcover
*Wanna-lancer™ – A gamer that’s pursuing freelance RPG work. Some back RPG Kickstarters that offer rewards to create NPCs, spells, items, adventures, etc. in order to build up their resume, make contact with publishers, and learn what’s expected on assignments.
Egg’s Thoughts:
Try before you buy with the Chill 3e quickstart and character sheets/pregens. It’s Halloween season and this RPG tickles that bone. You get to play a zombie, but you also can help develop the atmosphere of the game with a write up about a monster or a NPC or create a monster. This is the treat for this holiday.
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here.
“50+ Printable Minis and RPG Stock Illustrations created from backer ideas and submissions. Get your favorite character illustrated!
I love creating custom stock illustrations.
I’ve been doing it for years as a way for independent game designers to bridge the difference between stock illustrations and commissioned artwork.
I am now bringing it to Kickstarter.
This project will be creating a minimum of 50 fantasy characters and creatures to be used in roleplaying game products and printable miniatures.
Ideas for what will be illustrated will be provided by YOU. I will first illustrate any guaranteed ideas and then alternate between randomly selecting ideas and choosing those that inspire me.
Miniature Mockup. (Backers will help determine template design.)
The following apply to Stock Illustrations from this project:
May be cropped, flipped, or colored.
Signature must remain in its original orientation.
Must credit ‘Jeshields‘ for any use.
May be used indefinitely.
May not be used in products sold primarily for artistic value.
(Stock art, tokens, posters, etc)
May not be used in works deemed racist, sexist, or sexually explicit.
Printable Miniatures may be used for personal use only. The only exception to this is for business owners who wish to use the miniatures to demonstrate games.”
Wanna-lancer Reward:
For this project, all submitted ideas must be a single fantasy character or creature. Descriptions should be limited to a single sentence or two at most.
Example: Male orc with elephant bone armor and long braided hair. He’s wielding a spear covered in runes.
Guaranteed illustration ideas may choose to include a background.
Egg’s Thoughts:
With this you get fantasy art and have the potential to have your idea illustrated by James Shields. Starting at $10, you get the art and to “submit one character or creature idea to be considered for illustration.” If yours gets picked, it could be a nice bonus to this Kickstarter.
“Continuing the AMP Game Line into Year Four: The Year of the Invasion!
AMP: Year Four is the newest book for the Bampfsies Award Winning AMP: Year One Gameline. If you’d like to check out the AMP: Year One Quickstart, which gives you a rundown of mechanics and setting, check that out HERE.
AMP: Year One is Third Eye Games’ modern supers RPG that drills down into possible timelines when regular people develop superpowers in the year 2015! The AMPs, or people with accelerated mutant potential, discovered their power and struggled with what to do with their newfound abilities. The corebook covered over 54 different powers and laid out a brand new way to look at superhero RPGs. In AMP: Year One, there are no heroes… there are no villains… there are only hard choices!
Each year continues the ongoing storyline with several different characters and groups all attempting to make sense of a senseless world created by the emergence of superpowers. For a year-by-year breakdown, look below:
Now comes AMP: Year Four, the next book in the AMP gameline! It will include the following:
Continued Timeline: A complete breakdown of what is going on in 2018, the Year of Invasion for AMPs. Last year was pretty dark, but left a lot of room for positivity near the end. Finally, central characters will be crossing paths and forging new alliances/rivalries in the face of the Orphan threat.
Worldwide Material: This book will contain information on how the Orphans are affecting the entire world and tactics may differ between nations.
New Affiliations and Player Options: We have four new affiliations, including the Faceless, an offshoot of the UHF bent on even more sinister plots. In addition, we are introducing renegade Orphans as a playable option, those who have broken off from the war to fight beside humans and AMPs alike.
New Powers:AMP: Year Four will include new magical inspired power that span the Strains, including the new Sin power and Mother Nature power. These reflect the magical nature seeping into each AMPs mutations without them having to learn actual magic.
Magic and Aliens!!!!: The biggest mechanical additions to AMP: Year Four is the inclusion of new rules for playing as Orphans, who have unlocked magical abilities on Earth… for everyone! We’ll have more details on these new beings and how magic will work in the world of AMP soon!”
Wanna-lancer Reward:
Pledge $250 or more / $325 or more
Create An AMP / Major Part of the Story
Part of the Story: You receive the GM Starter Pack. In addition, your name will be used for an important NPC in the game world. You could be the leader of the Mystics or even the inventor of the Resistor Suits. There are plenty of others.
Major Part of the Story: You receive the GM Starter Pack tier, as well as the ability to create your own AMP character and it will be made part of ongoing story as whole (combining the Create an AMP and Part of the Story tiers).
Add $10 (per title) for the hardcover version of any of these books.
INCLUDES:
AMP GM Screen
AMP: Year Four (PDF)
AMP: Year Four (Print)
AMP: Year One (PDF)
AMP: Year One (Print)
Pregen Pack
Create an AMP / Create an AMP & Part of the Story
Egg’s Thoughts:
Try before you buy with these PWYW options AMP: Year One Quickstart and AMP: Year One Cheat Sheet. I just reviewed Eloy Lasanta’s Pip System Corebook on EN World and I loved it, so I have full faith that AMP will be well done. Add to that, AMP is Eloy’s magnum opus with a new part of the story added every year for you to play through and I dig the scope of what he’s generating!
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here.
“Support one of the most ambitious gamebooks ever created! Become a dragon master in the dark fantasy adventure: Rider of the Black Sun!
You are an Ugarith, a master of the night, with no recollection of your origin or past life, waking up after committing a disastrous bloody deed… Being a hunted outcast, you now have to fight for your way to freedom. Meanwhile you discover your superhuman powers and eventually fulfill your sacred duty – bringing back the world from the edge of oblivion.
Whether the Ugarith is destined for a happy, neutral or bleak end depends solely on the decisions you make, for this is no ordinary novel, this is a fantasy gamebook!
With more than 1,350 sections, Rider of the Black Sun is one of most extensive gamebooks ever published. It sets new standards with a completely unique approach to section reference and replayability.
Special features include: Finding hidden bonus sections, epic boss fights taking place in their own unique chapters, detailed combats, and complex puzzles!
Sorry, but what’s a “gamebook”?
A gamebook is an interactive novel that allows the reader to participate in the story by making effective choices. The narrative branches along various paths through the use of numbered paragraphs, called sections. Find out more.”
Egg’s Thoughts:
Choose your own adventure! I love those going so far as to buy graphic novel recently that advertised itself as the first choose your own adventure comic. Rider of the Black Sun reads as the next evolution of those books with more art and choices and consequences. It’s worth taking a look at.
“A sci-fi sourcebook and megadventure for White Star: Science Fiction Roleplaying
Heart of Varrul is a White Star: Science Fiction Roleplaying™ campaign setting book that details the aliens, factions, and conflicts of the Rul System, Tathkee Station, and the Planet Varrul. The Rul System is on the brink of an interstellar gold rush and the PCs are poised to get involved on the ground floor. How they get involved is up to them!
Written by Peter C. Spahn and James M. Spahn, Heart of Varrul expands on the foundation laid by the critically acclaimed White Star: Science Fiction Roleplaying™. With illustrations by longtime White Star™ artist James Shields and maps by Just Insert Imagination’s Morne Schaap, Heart of Varrul is specifically designed to give Referees a readymade location to run hours of adventures.
OVERVIEW
“They call it varrulium. A lightweight ore that, when refined, shows a remarkable ability to deflect energy. It can be used to protect everything from circuit boards to dreadnaught hulls. Some say that certain alloys can even resist the cutting properties of the mystical Star Swords.
The ore is found only on the remote gas giant Varrul, which lies deep in the Galactic Beyond, but that’s not stopping anyone. There are too many free credits to be made. Millions. Maybe billions, all just there for the taking.
The big corporations are sending contractors to locate and strip mine the islands floating through the gas giant’s skies. They are hiring mercenaries to protect their workers from the local fauna. A lot of independent miners have also traveled to Varrul hoping to strike it rich.
There’s a catch of course. Varrul’s turbulent red skies are filled with clouds of toxic gases, ion pockets, and storms of superheated plasma that can burn through even the thickest bulkheads, so every trip into the planet’s atmosphere could be your last.
Then there’s the wildlife. Flocks of power suckers descend on anything with an energy signature. Giant flying worms prowl the airways, attacking and consuming survey and mining vessels. And deadly swarms of insectile beasts have already slaughtered more miners than the Trampallan Plague.
I can see you’re not deterred. Safe travels on your trip. When you get there, Tathkee Station is the place to start. It’s an old SkyMall 5000 series that has been converted to a rough and tumble suborbital spaceport. It’s owner, Ingan Tathkee, is an old friend of mine. Mention my name and he’ll set you on the right path to making your own fortune, but watch your back. There are plenty of lawless types at the station ready to prey on newcomers.
You’d best hurry, though. It’s only a matter of time before the Interstellar Upheaval reaches Varrul—if it hasn’t already. Varrulium ore would be worth a fortune to the war chests of the Galactic Consortium or the Restoration. And some say there’s even more to the planet than meets the eye. Talk among mystics and scholars suggests that Varrul’s swirling gases hide a cosmic secret deep in the planet’s core, in the very heart of Varrul.
Of course, these could all just be rumors. There’s only one way to find out for sure. . . ”
Tathkee Station Directory
Wanna-lancer Reward:
Pledge $50 or more
DEEP SPACE EXPLORER
You have come to Varrul in search of riches and adventure.
At this level, you get all of the perks from the previous levels as well as a PDF copy and link to purchase “at-cost” the Rul System Adventure Pack. This adventure pack will contain three (3) new adventures specific to Tathkee Station and the gas giant Varrul.
In addition, Small Niche Games will work with you to create an NPC to be included in “Heart of Varrul”. This can be an entirely new NPC or a former character whose name you’d like to see in print. All NPCs will possess motivations and plot hooks relevant to Varrul. Select NPCs will even be illustrated by a professional artist (likely as part of a scene) and included in the pages of “Heart of Varrul”.
Egg’s Thoughts:
If you need the White Star RPG system, it’s available as PWYW here. This is the second James Shields-related Kickstarter on this list. If your into sci-fi (and I contend that 2017 is the Year of the Sci-fi RPG), then this may appeal to you for the system and getting to create a NPC and see it illustrated.
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here.
Why signal boost this? This is wanna-lancer college! Take out a student loan and join in because Egg Embry will be there! I have some more thoughts about this camp here.
Want to sample the quality of their products for free? Try here, here, and here.
Why signal boost this? Because one of the stretch goals – Sirona Specials Part 1 (Sessions 1-10) – speaks to me. 😉
UPDATE 2017-10-24 at 12:50 EST: I was holding this announcement as a “surprise” but Ed Jowett of Shades of Vengeancemade the gentlest point about integrity, and he’s right, so… Full disclosure, I’m excited about the Sirona Specials Part 1 (Sessions 1-10) stretch goal because I’m writing it. I’ll do an announcement article in the near-future (and push, push, push this product), but let me speak to why I’m signal boosting this – I want it to reach £6,500 so my project goes to print!
Wanna-lancer™ Checklist T-shirt available at Cafepress
Interested in being a wanna-lancer? Start with the official Wanna-lancer Checklist t-shirt or wall clock or ice tea glass!
* * * * * *
Egg Embry wrote comic book short stories, edited comic book series, wrote and drew a webcomic, and contributed to comic book journalism across the 2000s. Now, he buys the opportunity to write for a variety of tabletop role-playing games in the tradition of vanity press. His purchases have been published by:
