Happy day after Halloween! Whether you had too many pumpkin beers, too much candy, or just stayed up too late doing the Monster Mash, it’s time for a little…post-holiday drop, let’s say. Luckily for you, I had no Halloween plans other than finding and cataloging some really phenomenal crowdfunding campaigns to help you start your November. On the big game side we have Southeast Asian tactics, dystopian game shows, and Ninja Turtles. On the indie side, Halloween is clearly sticking around with some witches, ghosts, cute cultists, and a big freaking multiverse to tie it all together.

Major Campaigns

There are three major campaigns this month; one from a middleweight stalwart, one legacy reissue, and then a bit of a moldbreaker. Evil Hat Productions is campaigning Deathmatch Island on Backerkit. Start with the mechanics of Agon, where mythic heroes test their mettle across multiple islands of a Greek-ish archipelago. Now, take out the mythic stuff and replace it with a dystopian last-man-standing game show in the style of Squid Game or Battle Royale. This is the concept of Deathmatch Island, and it’s all tied together with some phenomenal Helvetica-punk layout. As of this writing funding is well into the six figures, and there are a number of talented creators tapped to create additional islands to support the game.

Hot off the Kickstarter presses yesterday is a campaign for reprinting the famed Palladium RPG Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness. The original game was licensed from the comics, and preceded the cartoons, movies, and action figures that made the Turtles a phenomenon. As such, there is a vast gulf between the cost of the license then and a hypothetical license now; even though Palladium has the original artists (Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird) on board, the most they were able to get permission for from the rightsholders was a reprint. This means no PDFs, no new system. However, a reprint and rework is still massive considering that the original game still used typewriters and pasteboards for layout. This campaign is more for an artifact than anything else, but getting these out of print books in print and in full color will be worth it for both Turtles fans and Palladium fans.

The other major campaign is not the typical ‘major’, in that it is from an indie developer. That said, it’s a game that has been out on itch.io for nearly two years to fair acclaim, and is just now campaigning for a print run and finalized first edition. Gubat Banwa is a tactics RPG inspired by the myth and culture of Southeast Asia. The mechanics are built around opposing dice pools, much like the Narrative Dice System though just using standard d10s and d8s. And, as befits a tactics RPG, there is significant detail around terrain, positioning, and the flow of combat; even the quickstart goes deep into maneuvers, status effects, and positional factors. In summary, if you’re looking for something with a bit of crunch and a bit of drama (and a much more interesting setting than 4e D&D), then Gubat Banwa is worth checking out.

Indies of Note

Halloween was only yesterday, so there are still a number of spooky campaigns about. First off we have What We Possess. What We Possess is a GMless card game where players are ghosts who must discover the nature of a secret keeping them tied to the mortal plane. After defining what each ghost is and where they’re haunting, the ghosts gather Terror from the living occupants of their space and even possess them, using their vessels to gather clues to the secret. The game seems structured like Fiasco though not nearly as adversarial, and looks like a fun way to play around with ghost stories and hauntings.

The Witch Who Survived continues the spooky vibes, casting players as witches in the medieval world of Crann. This world has been thrown out of balance by evil forces, and it is up to the witches to return that balance. The game rules seem relatively simple, though there is a 60 spell magic system and a number of core details with which to customize your witch. One interesting choice here is to divide the phases of play into days (roleplay and investigation oriented) and nights (action and danger oriented), and these phases interact with each other in a way that increases the ongoing tension of the game. The Witch Who Survived both looks gorgeous and seems to have a fairly smart economy of rules, so I’m interested to see where it goes.

Back in the Satanic Panic hysterical Christians said D&D players performed occult rituals, and while that was untrue there were certainly some of us who thought it sounded like fun. While I’m not sure if that was the chain of logic that got us Ritual, it very well could be. Ritual is a solo horror game where you are building an incantation to drive away a dark, malevolent being. You build the ritual using cards (either Tarot or standard playing cards), candles, and other ritual items, and the game culminates in your very own occult ritual, helping you defend your mortal soul in the safety of your own home. Now, I’m not entirely sure of the efficacy of creeping myself out or if it’s something that interests me, but I think if that is your jam, Ritual sounds pretty damn neat. Get a copy for yourself, and for every ‘spooky season’ fan in your life.

Still knee-deep in the dead horror, we now turn to indie powerhouse Possum Creek Games, who are campaigning two games by designer Luke Jordan. The two games both build upon Avery Alder’s Belonging Outside Belonging framework, but in very different ways. Harvest is a game about residents of a verdant, fertile island, a paradise, even. Unsurprisingly (given that I already told you this was horror), the island craves blood in exchange for its gifts. Want to play Midsommar as an RPG? You probably want Harvest. Shifting dramatically, Grand Guignol is a Victorian Gothic game, set in London and specifically among the many monsters lurking in the darkness. Grand Guignol leans more into the traditional Belonging Outside Belonging framework of outsiders who band together (the high-level conceit of Dream Askew), so of course you are playing the monsters. The campaign aims to finance both games, but you as a backer can choose to get one or the other or both.

We’re continuing with spooky, but we’re adding some cozy. Our Woodland Gods is a game of cute animal folk living together in a woodland village. Oh, also, the eldritch horror you worship as a god just died, and you need to go into the evil wood to find a new eldritch horror to start worshiping as a god before the heretics destroy your village. …Yay? This is a GMless game, which takes place in three phases split between the (cozy) community and the (spooky) woods. There are gamebook elements here, but the campaign promises a fair quantity of replayability. Besides, I don’t think there are that many other cute horror games out there to compete with Our Woodland Gods.

Moving slightly away from horror we have Warped. In Warped, you’re part of a multiverse, and worse, you’re part of a multiverse that’s falling apart. You may find yourself in a form where you’re a post-apocalyptic wastelander, or maybe made completely out of ice cream. Of course, as the chaos rises (and chaos is a mechanic), you may find that those mobsters you were talking to are now replaced with versions of themselves from a universe where everyone has chainsaws for hands. Does this sound wacky? Yes. Is it going to get silly? Absolutely. Do I want to play it? Hell yes I do.

Finally, as a treat, we have some piracy. Scurvy Buggers is a relatively simple pirate game powered by the Polymorph system developed by 9th Level Games. 9th Level Games has made several Polymorph-powered games, where each character archetype gets one die to play with and there’s little to no math. 9th Level has also done very well with the writing and theming of these; this is the team responsible for The Very Good Dogs of Chernobyl, as well as last ZineQuest’s Pigeon’s Eleven. Scurvy Buggers could have been just another pirate game, but it has taken a definite ‘Our Flag Means Death’ approach to piracy in terms of making the ship a found family and maybe, just maybe, a platform for romance. As usual, doing the thing in a different way gets attention from me, and even if the Polymorph system isn’t new, I like the games it’s being used for.

Five Year Retrospective

While not the biggest month of 2018 for crowdfunding, November came out very strong and, looking back, had a solid number of success stories. The honorable mentions for the month included none other than Savage Worlds Adventure Edition, which made a cool half million and overshadowed most campaigns at the time. Even so, it’s notable how many campaigns went on to become games that actually turned over a few copies! Never Going Home, Spectaculars, Die Laughing, and Nighty Knights (which either after or during the campaign was rebranded as Knights of Underbed) all snagged some sales momentum; Never Going Home even got an ENnie nod for Best Art (up against Ultraviolet Grasslands among others, so that’s pretty cool). Beyond all those though was a surprise breakout. The Thousand Year Old Vampire is now seen as a vanguard for the solo RPG movement, and rightfully so. Back in November of 2018, though, it was just another Kickstarter campaign built on a dream and a game idea. Not every campaign in this update flew as high, though; both Soulbound and Divinity Card failed to fund. That all said, there did not appear to be any ghostings in this batch; every game that funded delivered and, from what I can see, they’re all still available for sale in one form or another.

---

We got spooky, we got weird, we even have turtles. Lots of games out there this November, and some of them are even causing money to fly out of my wallet. There are some other good ones that didn’t make this top ten list, so if you have another campaign worth mentioning, drop it in the comments below. Otherwise, ‘enjoy’ your post-Halloween hangover, check out some games, and come join us in a month for another Crowdfunding Carnival!

Like what Cannibal Halfling Gaming is doing and want to help us bring games and gamers together? First, you can follow me @LevelOneWonk@dice.camp for RPG commentary, relevant retweets, and maybe some rambling. You can also find our Discord channel and drop in to chat with our authors and get every new post as it comes out. You can travel to DriveThruRPG through one of our fine and elegantly-crafted links, which generates credit that lets us get more games to work with! Finally, you can support us directly on Patreon, which lets us cover costs, pay our contributors, and save up for projects. Thanks for reading!