Welcome to Crowdfunding Carnival for March! We’re in the post-zine nowhere zone, where backers and creators alike have a little bit of a hangover. Even so, there are still some interesting games to talk about. March and April have become a key campaign window for larger publishers after zine enthusiasts put them on blast for trying to campaign during Zine Quest (even if such campaigning may have been a net positive), so even in the early part of the month I have a number of campaigns and early campaign notices that all seemed to show up in my inbox exactly on February 28th. This means that even though there’s a smaller number of campaigns this month, we’re still seeing at least two major licensed campaign pushes. It’s even possible one of the two might be worth backing!

Major Campaigns

When it comes to major campaigns, few companies have gone as major as Magpie Games. Indeed, they’re back again with another licensed RPG campaign, this time for a game based on the Failbetter Games property Fallen London. I’m torn here. I’m a big fan of Sunless Sea, and I backed Sunless Skies on Kickstarter. A Fallen London RPG sounds like it could be fantastic, and I’m here for it. That said, I’ve historically been pretty critical of Magpie’s licensed efforts in the past. Root in particular is a good parallel here, where there’s a significant disconnect between the Leder Games original and any of the design direction Magpie took (not to mention physical design that fell short of the board game). I do think Fallen London may be a better candidate for an RPG, especially as the original games were, at least at some level, RPGs. Magpie also appears to be campaigning an original system in lieu of PbtA, to the degree that you can call mechanics using dice pools and degrees of success original. That said, especially as the campaign has already eclipsed $800,000, I’m perfectly happy not backing it and seeing how the game turns out after it gets a formal release.

Indies of Note

The first ‘Indie of note’ is just on the edge of that title. Oddity Press, publishers of the highly successful Grimwild, are taking their Moxie mechanics to the Weird West with The Wild Frontier of Venture. In addition to the new setting, Oddity Press is promising a number of rules expansions over Grimwild, including Lifepath character creation, more detailed combat rules for shootouts, and additional character options in the form of Talents. And, just in case you were on the fence, the campaign is claimed to be the only way to ever get a physical copy of the game. Looks like Oddity Press knows a thing or two about capitalizing on FOMO.

The next campaign is for a pair of games that mirror each other. Cold City and Hot War are two games about the Cold War. In Cold City, characters seek horrors and mysteries in divided Berlin, mixing a dash of Lovecraft with John Le Carre. In Hot War, the worst has happened, and characters must seek their fortunes in a London rebuilding from all manner of dastardly weapons. While these two games were released previously, it has been over fifteen years, and the new editions are seeing refreshed text and mechanics. The games were originally designed by Malcolm Craig, a senior lecturer in Cold War history that should bring compelling historicity to both titles.

Next on the list is Vildheim, a game which clearly isn’t inspired by video game hit Valheim at all. The font choice? Total coincidence. Ribbing aside, the game looks like an interesting Viking-inspired fantasy RPG, and the ‘noblebright’ appellation does frame it in a different context than many Nordic-inspired games. I’m not completely convinced the game will completely stake out a unique space in fantasy RPGs, but the playtester enthusiasm and existing reviews tell me it’s going to at least be worth checking out.

The next game is part of my monthly (or so) bid to make Seamus, notorious mecha game enjoyer, part with his money. Celestial Bodies is a GMless game that casts you as mecha pilots defending the last vestiges of humanity in the form of home-ships. The GMless mechanics see you generating missions with ‘hex-flower’ random generation, and then upgrading and enhancing your home-ship as you continue your journey. I’m getting serious Salvage Union vibes from the mechanics and the gameplay loop, and that is absolutely a good thing in this case.

Next campaign is from small-but-mighty Bully Pulpit Games, called Zhenya’s Wonder Tales. The game contains six different retellings of Slavic fairy tales, each using small decks of 22 cards to guide the journey between you and your friends (or not, the games are solo-able). While the form factor and structure is certainly similar to Desperation, it appears that with more traditional player-character pairing in these games, players may find Zhenya’s Wonder Tales a bit more accessible. The games use 135 cards each illustrated by Momatoes, and overall look to be another ingenious package of capsule roleplaying experiences.

Finally, and with caveats, is another licensed game, the official RPG adaptation of Terraforming Mars. The game is being designed by Ken Hite and Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, two Pelgrane Press alums and, working together, the authors of The Dracula Dossier for Hite’s Night’s Black Agents. Now, the campaign is approaching 200,000 euros, but it’s worth noting that the original designers of Terraforming Mars, Fryx Games, are responsible for some fairly heinous views supporting transphobia and AI art. For better or worse, the campaign is long past the point where any sort of boycott would be effective, but I’d personally think of a better place to spend your money. Given the high profile of the license I’m leaving the link, but it does not imply endorsement.

Five Year Retrospective

Running a crowdfunding article at the beginning of March definitely bleeds over to zine territory, and that was true in March of 2020. I did partial zine coverage in my March article, which was a bit more snarky than the mainline Zine Quest articles but still covered some good campaigns. The half-portion of full campaigns were also fairly substantial, with a couple of heavy hitters. Both Beam Saber and Pasion de las Pasiones came from March of 2020 and both  have remained respectable entries in their publishers’ back catalogues. March of 2020 was also close to the height of my involvement with BOARGADE, or the Boston Area Game Designers meetup. One of the designers I met during my time with BOARGADE (a group which like many in-person meetups took some hard hits from the pandemic) was Kevin Petker, whose Princess World I covered in March of 2020. Kevin taught me a lot about game design, including the notion of a game having a ‘secret heart’, something that’s difficult to put into words after the fact but has resonated with me since. While I’m not sure I could verbalize what the ‘secret heart’ of a game is, I do know that if you’re a designer, you should be asking yourself if your game has one.

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March is a weird time in the crowdfunding calendar, but even so we’re seeing several big campaigns that are generating a lot of interest. There are more in the wings, so expect to see the pace pick up from now at least to the beginning of the summer. The rest of the world may be chaos, but at least the vagaries of RPG publishing have some comforting patterns. Pledge some campaigns, play some games, and I’ll see you in a month for the next Crowdfunding Carnival!

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