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.
Welcome to Crowdfunding Carnival! We’re firmly out of con season and we’re out from under the shadow of Wizards of the Coast trying to release a book. More broadly it seems that the rush to be the next d20 has also abated, which has meant more and more interesting campaigns this month! This was a very full crop with new campaigns shooting in almost by the hour as I was trying to write this thing. That also means there are a few solid campaigns out there I wasn’t able to get to; I’m both sorry I’m not able to cover everything but also glad I didn’t have much dross to read through to get up to ten campaigns this month. We’ll start with a dizzying four different major campaigns, representing The Gauntlet, Renegade Game Studios, Onyx Path, and a Youtube channel.
At the end of 2018, The Gauntlet released “Dark 2”, the December issue of their zine Codex. Within that volume was a game by Jesse Ross called Trophy. Trophy was based on Cthulhu Dark by Graham Walmsley, adapted with the dice mechanic from Blades in the Dark. But listing out a series of games which were hacked down the road into Trophy doesn’t give the game quite enough credit. Trophy is, like the best games coming out of the OSR, a reflection and deconstruction of the dungeoneering/ adventuring trope. In Trophy, the adventurers are treasure hunters, following in the footsteps of so many games that came before. In Trophy Dark they are doomed, and their doom comes through a sequence of narrative steps, or rings. In Trophy Gold they are bound by their own debts, and must keep going deeper until they can pay what they owe.
Cannibal Halfling Gaming 