Welcome to Crowdfunding Carnival for September! Even though I didn’t get the summer off, I can sympathize with not wanting to go back to school as we head towards Labor Day here in the states. Turns out a lot of game designers weren’t ready to say goodbye to summer either, because the post-GenCon wave is still crashing! Even more major campaigns are kicking off, including at least one which will force me to update my Million Dollar crowdfunding dataset. Outside of the majors, though, we have more indies coming out of the woodwork and continuing to build momentum across the con season. First, though, let’s take a look at those majors. Who’s the newest member of the million dollar club?

Major Campaigns

The answer to the million dollar question is perhaps not surprising; we have MCDM’s new game, Crows. While Draw Steel was meant to double down on the heroic flavor and tactics seen in 4e D&D, Crows is doubling down mechanically on gritty, even horror-adjacent dungeon crawls. While there’s definitely old-school inspiration here, the emphasis on procedures and having the mechanics being impactful makes me think of Crows almost as a midpoint between a more clearly throwback game like Shadowdark and something more original like Torchbearer. It’s going to be hard to stand out in this field, but if Crows leans on having more mechanical heft, it definitely has a chance to carve its own path.

Next up is a new Chaosium game, Time Without Tide. Yes, I said new Chaosium game, though the lead designers (David Naylor and James Coquillat) look to be fairly new themselves at taking the reins on a project like this. The setting is described as ‘faux-Victorian apocalypse’ and the sensibilities seem to align with the setting of Call of Cthulhu…the alignment mostly ends there, though. The dice pool based system is notably lighter than any of the legacy Chaosium d100 games, to the point that Arkham Horror may be a better comparison. While I can’t fault Chaosium for banking on their legacy properties, I’m very happy they’re supporting something new as well.

Speaking of legacy properties, Mongoose Publishing is bringing one back. Dark Conspiracy was originally published in 1991 by GDW, using a modified version of the Twilight: 2000 ruleset. Mongoose is reviving the Dark Conspiracy name, using Traveller as the mechanical basis, and ratcheting down the original dystopian setting to focus more on the conspiracy and cosmic horror elements. The result is a bit more ‘Delta Green’ in its execution, which I think has promise. I’m also curious to see how Mongoose adapts its version of the Traveller mechanics, which have been more and more popular for genericization and adaptation in recent years.

Last up in the major category is Onyx Path, which has brought their new game Jadestorm to Backerkit. Jadestorm is the fourth game in Onyx Path’s Earthbane Cycle, which so far includes The World Below, Monster Kingdoms, and At the Gates. There’s something about Jadestorm, though…something that just looks a bit, well, Exalted. This would follow a trend, of course; Onyx Path recently released Curseborne, but that shift away from branded World of Darkness was predicated by Paradox discontinuing license approvals for Onyx Path Chronicles of Darkness supplements. I don’t think the same thing has happened with either Exalted 3e or Exalted Essence, but it’s certainly a possibility. Beyond that, with both Exalted 3e and Essence out in the world and the difference between the two perhaps not as clear as it could be Onyx Path may be trying to start with a clean slate. Regardless, this is likely worth checking out as both something Exalted-like and the newest entry in the emerging Storypath Ultra line.

Indies of Note

The first indie on our list serves as a kind of funhouse mirror held up to MCDM’s Crows, as well as a solid indication of just what kind of space Crows is going to have to break into. Khthon comes from Heltung Storytelling, and is itself a dungeon crawl survival game, except built on Mork Borg instead of a more robust iteration of D&D. Like most Heltung entries, Khthon is dripping with style, and in an interesting (and rather apropos) twist, the game is beefed up from its Mork Borg roots, including more robust procedures for exploration and survival. While it flies pretty close to the Stockholm Kartell sun with its style, Khthon is aiming to be different where it counts (for some people at least): rules.

While we’re staying in Mork Borg country for the next one, it’s a dramatically different use of those particular rules. Hunt for the Questing Beast is an Arthurian RPG built on the Mork Borg chassis; as a knight of Pellinore you must take an oath to defend the Realm and go hunt for the Questing Beast. It’s fascinating seeing the same thematic threads from Arthurian myth being plucked out for use here as well as another similarly aligned game, Mythic Bastionland. That said, with how different Mork Borg is from Into the Odd, I’m not exactly worried about overlap between these two. Hunt for the Questing Beast is being campaigned by Monomyth Games, Mork Borg experts responsible for other such titles as Castaway.

Next up is another old-school entry, though in a vastly different part of that world. A Bowl of Temporal Soup is a solo RPG that places you in the world of Bigos, an anachronistic mishmash of time periods and parallel realities. Unfortunately, you’re there because of your work with Dr. Bulion (yes, really), and his time portal which has pulled you and three time crystals into a rift. You must find the time crystals, but also contend with the fact that you’ve merged with a parallel version of yourself from another reality. Part isekai, part old-school sandbox, and all random, A Bowl of Temporal Soup should be a good time for anyone who wants games that help them be a bit weird.

For something completely different, we now turn to Galactic Dawn. Galactic Dawn is a worldbuilding game, somewhat in the vein of Microscope but notably more focused. In the game each player takes the role of a spacefaring civilization, and over the course of play plots out a history for an entire galaxy. In addition to a clear theme, the game also has a number of starting scenarios for players new to worldbuilding games to jump in with, including one scenario which is a more complete worked example and easy place to start from.

Pivoting completely, we’re now looking at a new entry in the fairly niche milsim genre. Outside the Wire is a small-unit tactics milsim RPG designed by a retired marine and playtested by numerous groups of service members. While heavily inspired by existing games like Twilight:2000, Outside the Wire aims to give a broader look at its combat theaters, including mechanics for local trust, insurgent activity, and responses from up the chain of command. Now realistic wargaming of this type may not be everyone’s first choice for game night, especially when you’re folding in more considerations that make it anything but mindless. That said, for those who are interested Outside the Wire could really wake up this otherwise pretty quiet subgenre.

Finally we have ERG! Books. ERG stands for educational roleplaying game, and these three books are intended to teach players about their eras: The Golden Age of Piracy, Ancient Greece, and the Jacobean era of England. The mechanics, called the A.N.D. Engine, are relatively straightforward, and that’s not a bad thing for games which are (even if this isn’t stated outright) likely intended for a younger audience. What will make or break all of these games is going to be the material provided: Making a game scenario both compelling to play and educational while you play it is no easy feat, and therefore this is the sort of Kickstarter that would benefit from some sort of quickstart, actual play example, or other third-party review. This is not listed in the campaign (take note, Elfling Games), but if you click through to the creator’s website you can find a playtest version of Bards in a Globe, the Shakespearean game in this campaign. While it should have been highlighted better, it does a good job of showing the care the team put into these games, and that they’ll likely be a good buy if you’re looking for RPGs as educational tools or for a younger audience.

Five Year Retrospective

Back in 2021, September was a time to get out of the shadow of giant campaigns instead of continue to walk under them. All of the featured games from then were relatively small, with a lot of different and interesting premises. Of note here are Tiny Library and Golden Mart, which were the two that intrigued me enough to get me to back. Even though we didn’t really generate any breakout hits that month, every project funded and fulfilled successfully, and some, like Picaresque Roman, were pretty successful in their own right.

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Summer’s almost over, but that means it’s getting easier to stay inside and play games!  The momentum is building, and while we’re seeing more big campaigns we’re also  seeing a wider range of different genres, implementations, and ideas. Have a favorite campaign I missed? Thinking of campaigning something yourself in the future? Let me know in the comments below. Otherwise, keep playing games, support your friendly creators, and join me next month for another Crowdfunding Carnival!

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