Welcome to Crowdfunding Carnival for July! When the majors are away, the indies shall play, and that’s exactly what’s happening right now. The Free Leagues and Kobolds of the world are toiling over their GenCon booths, but we still have some fabulous campaigns going on just under the con circuit radar. For those collectors out there fear not, there’s one big league campaign going on and it includes five alternate covers for the main book. And if you want to take a look back, this month’s retrospective includes a great underdog story and a less-great story of a five year old campaign that was fulfilled only a couple of months ago. For all that and more, read on; your wallet will not thank you.

Major Campaigns

August is GenCon, so most publishers with enough cash flow to have a booth there aren’t putting any resources towards Kickstarter campaigns during this part of the year. As such, there aren’t any new major games starting their campaigns this month. That said, there is one ‘honorable mention’ coming from Pinnacle Entertainment. Savage Worlds 20th Anniversary Celebration is centered on a new printing of Savage Worlds Adventure Edition, but many sourcebooks are available as add-ons to the campaign. If you didn’t back the Savage Worlds Adventure Edition Kickstarter or don’t have a print copy of the game, here’s an opportunity.

Indies of Note

The indies are all over the place this month, and that’s a good thing. First we have Corp Borg, yet another Mork Borg hack that is making me eat my words that this trend is over. Corp Borg takes place within an evil corporation; this is a literal statement, complete with demon summoning and blood sacrifices. Save against middle management, and try to make it out alive.

Apparently great minds think alike, because in a Crowdfunding Carnival first we’re covering two games with playable accountants. Clerk & Dagger is a Forged in the Dark game of “rogue accountants”. While that sounds like it could be truly weird, it ends up more as a jumping off point for a fantasy world built around magical currency, ‘Soul Coins’ which drop from the eyes of the undead Empress of Thieves. While my version would have had way more double entry bookkeeping and actuarial tables, Clerk & Dagger still sounds like an interesting heist game built around greed as much as fantasy trappings.

Continuing along in the Forged in the Dark vein we have Witches of Midnight. Witches of Midnight has all of the classic dark fantasy ‘masquerade’ tropes you’d expect, but is focusing them on witches, an archetype that, as the campaign states, hasn’t seen as much love from White Wolf, Onyx Path, and the like. The game’s setting is an alternate history starting at the Salem Witch Trials, and sees players create both characters and a coven. Combine this with a wild (excuse me, wyld) magic system and some interesting character options for fae bargains, and I’m admittedly intrigued. The campaign is producing a tarot deck but from all indications it’s secondary to the game; while the deck might be a neat accessory to throw some more money in for, it does not make the game a tarot-driven game like some others we’ve seen recently.

Next up is Eco Mofos, a kind of weird fantasy/cassette futurism/post-apocalyptic explore-em-up hacked out of Into the Odd and its cousin Cairn. “Miyazaki meets Mad Max” is not an easy style sell at first blush, but the thematic content and art in the campaign really help cement how neat this one’s going to be. Yet another one it’ll be hard to resist throwing some money at.

More weird goodness? More good weirdness. Daniel Sell, creator of Troika, is Kickstarting a new game, Longshot City. Longshot City uses the Troika mechanics to create a superhero game, taking the weird and wild writing from Troika’s backgrounds and item lists and superimposing it onto a very different genre, albeit a genre where weird powersets and origin stories are de rigueur for the best series and characters. If I’m being perfectly honest, superheroes, where the genre has some very defined structures, tropes, and expectations, could be an even better fit for the spare, evocative, and balls-to-the-wall writing of Troika than the science fantasy that the game started with.

Swords of Meropis is perhaps not that weird or out there, but it’s a solid concept matched with a solid partner, and that’s worth noting. Swords of Meropis is a swords and sandals RPG inspired by Clash of the Titans and its ilk of mythic adventure. The game is coming to us from Gallant Knight Games, producers of TinyD6 and creators of 27 Kickstarters. If you like mythic adventure and/or lightweight, fast-paced trad play, this campaign shouldn’t disappoint.

Coming to us from Gamefound we have Thorgal, a Viking RPG. Now, this might sound straightforward like Swords of Meropis, but it’s not. Thorgal is a Belgian comic book series where the Vikings come from Atlantis, a distant planet, and have access to the supernatural powers of their ancestors. Now if that doesn’t make you pine for the fjords, I don’t know what will. In all seriousness Thorgal is probably a deep cut for most (my own Belgian comic knowledge starts and stops at Herge), but this is a unique twist on Viking mythos, and coming from a trio of Polish designers it’s likely to have a unique twist on RPGs for us Americans stuck in the dark world of Hasbro. 

Five Year Retrospective

Just like it is now, July of 2018 was a relatively light month for Kickstarters, given the same schedule around GenCon. Still, we covered eight campaigns, not including two honorable mentions (a reprint and a board game that sounded cool). Out of those, two failed to fund but the other six all both funded and fulfilled, which is how you’d want Kickstarter to work. Out of all of these campaigns, though, only one really went anywhere. Survive This: Vigilante City has gone platinum on DriveThruRPG, and several other versions of Survive This have since been published, including Fantasy, Scorched, and Zombies. While it’s not uncommon for most Kickstarter RPGs to deliver and then disappear, it is heartening to note that Survive This was done by a small studio and is still chugging along. One sort of honorable (and sort of dishonorable) mention this month goes to Velvet Generation. Velvet Generation was supposed to be an upgrade and revision of an earlier game, the sort of thing that makes for a straightforward campaign and straightforward fulfillment. It was anything but straightforward, as Velvet Generation finally released to backers in this year of 2023. So on one hand, great job for sticking it out and delivering the goods. On the other hand, it took you five years to do it. Hire a project manager next time.

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It’s months like these that remind me why I do this series. Several really compelling games are being campaigned, and if I didn’t sit down and click through Kickstarter, I would have heard about none of them. Whether you want witches, Vikings, accountants, or just more Troika, the indie design community has got your back this month. Make some pledges, check out some games, then join me next month for another Crowdfunding Carnival!

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