Welcome to the Crowdfunding Carnival for April! It’s spring now, which means I’m spending more time outside riding my bike and less time writing. That’s why this post is going up on a Thursday! Okay, that’s…not entirely true (it’s also not entirely false). The post is going up on a Thursday also because I didn’t want to post on April Fool’s Day. Also also, some really cool stuff went live on Wednesday, and if I posted too early I wouldn’t get to talk about it. In addition to all of the campaigns below, Orbital Blues Month started on April 1st on Backerkit, and there are a bunch of neat campaigns supporting that particular game of sad space cowboys. It’s all underpinned by Outlaws and Corporations, a new Orbital Blues first-party supplement.

With that, let’s get into it. The major campaigns section is a bit negative this month; as it turns out money corrupts, and that’s how we get proprietary apps and wholly unnecessary D&D 5e money-grabs. Luckily, Pelgrane Press and The Gauntlet also come to the rescue with two big and worthy campaigns.

Major Campaigns

Lots to talk about this month in the big campaign space. British indie darlings Pelgrane Press are back at it, campaigning Ballad Hunters. I immediately thought of Shanty Hunters when I saw this, and indeed, Ballad Hunters is designed by Shanty Hunters lead Tristan Zimmerman and follows in its footsteps using the Gumshoe system. Ballad Hunters is the first in a series of games called ‘Gumshoe Labs’, which is supposed to take the Gumshoe system and match it up with more narrative mechanics. It’s an interesting idea, though with both Gumshoe itself and the framing of ‘storygames’ as used in the campaign, I wonder if it’s going to resonate. We’ll see if this campaign funds; right now they need some more support to reach their £20,000 goal.

Speaking of funding, this next campaign ‘funded in two minutes’ thanks to the dubious tactic of using a $2000 goal for what was obviously supposed to be a six figure campaign. That’s hardly the only issue with Traveller 5e, which is not Traveller5 (that already exists), it’s the venerable sci-fi game Traveller converted into D&D. I suppose we know what sort of decisions Mongoose has to make to maintain their superlative financial performance.

Moving right along with other questionable choices is Godzilla: The Roleplaying Game, campaigned by comics publisher IDW. While the game and its card-based mechanics do look interesting, I’m never going to be able to find out more because all digital content in the game is released on IDW’s proprietary app. Turns out there’s a reason you’ve never heard of IDW’s games division, and despite the high-profile license this effort is unlikely to change that in the long run.

I am going to end this section on a positive note, though: The Gauntlet is campaigning Public Access, its ‘found footage’ horror game set in the American Southwest. The game is ‘Carved from Brindlewood’, using the PbtA-inspired mechanics which underpin Murder, She Wrote-alike Brindlewood Bay (and to a certain extent an earlier game, The Between). I think the ‘build the mystery’ mechanics work really well for the liminal space, conspiracy-adjacent vibe that Public Access is going for, and I’m looking forward to playing Public Access myself when it’s out.

Indies of Note

We’re kicking off the indies this month with an interesting approach to a game line. Ion Heart was a solo RPG we covered back in August of 2024, and has clearly done well for the creators because they’re back plumbing the same depths with Ion Heart Multiplayer. Ion Heart Multiplayer takes place in the same setting as Ion Heart but 60 years earlier, with the mecha pilots that players create tasked with maintaining the uneasy peace in the galaxy. Creating a ‘multiplayer’ version of a solo game does necessitate creating essentially a new game, and here I’m intrigued that we have something new as opposed to a game that hypothetically supports both one or multiple players.

Next up is a crazy ambitious project that clearly shows that the lead designer is also an illustrator. When Society Collapsed is a post-apocalyptic RPG but with a lot of board game elements, including cards, tracker boards, and maps. The game even comes with a ‘base camp’ that’s essentially a page out of a pop-up book. What really draws your eyes to the game and its materials are all the illustrations, done by animator Luke Humphris and completely human-made. I think this looks incredibly cool, but also worry about the viability of a project with so many physical components being campaigned right when shipping costs are about to go up even more.

The next campaign I looked at was Precious Things, a cozy RPG about dragons. The dragons of Precious Things have treasure hoards, like many fantasy dragons of yore, but they’re also quite small and as such hoard things like buttons, beads, and (appropriately for this audience) dice. The mechanics use both d6 dice pools and cards and are intended to both be fairly straightforward but also give a lot of different options for ‘dragon magic’. Precious Things looks light and fun, and it’s great to see a family-friendly RPG that’s trying to not just be “for kids”.

Moving along we go in a very different stylistic direction with Pact. Pact is an urban horror game about characters who have sold their souls to demons and must face the consequences as they quest for more personal power. Pact comes from a Greek design studio, an area we haven’t seen a whole lot of games from before. It’s also built on Free League’s Year Zero Engine, but twists the mechanics in a very cool way; the YZE ‘push’ system is tied right into characters’ demonic powers and changes the effects of a push in a way I haven’t seen before. I’m always on the lookout for third-party YZE games, and this one has a lot of promise when it comes to expanding those existing mechanics.

Now we’re getting into some of those bigger, more hyped campaigns. Exalted Funeral is campaigning TAVERS: The Meow Wolf Roleplaying Game. For those who don’t know, Meow Wolf is a production company that focuses on immersive art installations. The game is intended to operate at a similar frequency to the installations themselves: bring together disparate worlds and ideas to create one connected creative multiverse. Other than core concepts about finding and creating portals and venturing through this multiverse, the game seems to be trying for the same level of ‘open to interpretation’ as Meow Wolf installations are; that said, the group obviously has a strong resume in that regard. I’m not exactly sure what to expect out of the end product, but I think it’d be worth checking out.

Finally we have Realis. Realis is the brainchild of Austin Walker, a games commentator likely best known for his time at Waypoint and the Friends at the Table podcast. Realis is a diceless game exploring the eponymous Realis, a science fantasy ‘sphere of a thousand moons’. The mechanics involve specific character ‘sentences’, which start out weak and broad and slowly get stronger and narrower as the character develops. Think character statements from Cypher, but narrower. In order to guide this fairly nebulous mechanic, the game defines 55 PC classes and over 150 NPC classes; it sounds like a lot but one could imagine that a fair breadth of structure would be needed to bound the rules. Realis sounds like the product of a very specific vision, and if you’re intrigued but uncertain the campaign links to an introduction, some actual play, and even the pre-existing ashcan of the game, still available on itch.

Five Year Retrospective

April of 2021 was loud on the world stage, with the first COVID vaccines beginning to roll out. In games it was a bit quieter. The one game that made a strong impact here is Death in Space, which while actually not a Borg-alike still helped cement the influence of Stockholm Kartell and the power of Free League’s Workshop publishing wing. Blue Planet: Recontact is likely the closest to a trad campaign in this month, and as the biggest campaign it also came with the biggest delays, with physical fulfillment dragging deep into 2025. There were other issues among some of these games; Fly Softly went silent and although the designer posted a clear explanation, it doesn’t appear that work was ever picked up again. Earlier along in the process Ageless Chronicles also fell off, cancelling the campaign and showing that software can be a lot more difficult to deliver than analog. Most of the other games delivered, and we also had a bonus campaign covered by Seamus of Possible Worlds by Tyler Crumrine, who’s now helping to publish and distribute Realis as indicated above.

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Springtime is here! Zine Month is in the rearview and the end of PAX East means that there’s a few months breathing room before Origins. Sure, some may wait until June for big announcements, but for the indies there’s an opportunity to get some headline space and not get crowded out. And after Origins all eyes are on GenCon, so April to May is a big opportunity space. Today’s campaigns are a solid start, but I’m going to keep looking for more interesting games as we continue through the season. As always, check out some games, support creators, and I’ll see you in the next Crowdfunding Carnival!

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