Lark #03: A retrospective

Posted on November 1, 2011 by wordman

One year has passed since the third lark was awarded to help produce Sage LaTorra‘s game Powers For Good. According to Sage’s progress notes on the game, the iOS application he pledged to create is awaiting AppStore approval. This will make his release a couple days late but, since he also produced the totally excellent Dungeon World while making this game, I think we can cut him a little slack.

You may have noticed I’m not running a similar “$1,000 for an indie game” concept this year. This is mostly because I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with running it this year, but also partly for other reasons. Since the first lark, Kickstarter has grown popular for managing the risk of an indie game launch, and it may be a better fit for bringing quality games to market than contests like this one. I have made a point of funding nearly any rpg-related Kickstarter I find. I have to check to see if I’ve spent $1,000 on Kickstarters yet, but it seems like it might be a better use of the cash. Still thinking about it though.

I thought it might be interesting to see what became of some of the other ideas pitched a year ago. Some of these were already close to completion at the time. If you pitched last year, and I get the current details wrong or couldn’t find information about the game you picthed, post a comment to correct me. In the order they were pitched:

A working copy of The Detective Heroes Gods Role Playing Game was offered for free by its author.
A test version of Generic Live Action Simulation System can be found in a free system test document.
The design for Longshot may have found its way to to some of the author’s other games.
The Final Girl has cover art and long list of playtesters, so appears to be nearing production.
Seed RPG is on hiatus, but will likely be Kickstarted as some point.
Peng Lai: Cinematic Chinese adventure! was last seen looking for playtesters.
Geasa is now available on RPGNow.
Hot Guys Making Out is being tested at conventions.
Final Hour of a Storied Age needs beta playtesters.
Rakehell is being internally tested.
A Kickstarter for Shelter in Place successfully funded in mid-October.
I see no mention of Coyote Traffic on its author’s site.
The progress notes for Rulers don’t lists dates, so it is hard to tell where it is. (By the way, its author created a nifty $1,000 contest of his own.)
Cthulhu Apocalypse has been published by Pelgrane Press.
All the references I have for locating Love & Lucky are in languages I do not speak, so not sure where it is.
Googling for symbolic phrases like M20# is problematic but, since the author acquired the rights to the line, I’m guessing that this pitch mutated into the next official version of MicroLite 20.
Can’t find information about Digital, though that was a working title, so maybe it is now called something else.
The author’s blog makes no recent mention of Warriors From the Mystic Mountain.
The author’s blog makes no recent mention of Gunner Rex.
As far as I know, Jared A. Sorensen was able to pay his rent.
Perfect, Unrevised is now available for sale.
I can’t find any recent references to Life of a Fallen Star.
I can’t separate the noise when Googling for Redemption in various ways (+rpg, +author’s name, etc.). So, this either means it hasn’t been published, or that I just can’t find it.
Criminal Element was released at 1KM1KT.
The design notes for Mortar of Utopia don’t mention any progress.
Also not getting much search love for Syzygy.

Kickstarter: Early Dark

Posted on July 16, 2010 by wordman

Anthropos Games is soliciting funding on Kickstarter to print of their new game Early Dark. DivNull makes a point of backing any tabletop RPG that shows up on Kickstarter, especially if the result will be open source or a cut above your average game. Early Dark seems like it has a chance to be the latter, which is why it’s being mentioned here. Its goals are certainly interesting: “Treat gender, race, and human consciousness as progressively as possible; Forge a world indebted to non-European myth and story in addition to common Western fantasy tropes; and Create a dynamic game engine that drives dramatic narrative while reproducing realistic conflict and human limitations”.

This is also a decent opportunity to praise Kickstarter for a feature: making the amount pledged independent of the “pledge tiers”. That is, you can choose the benefit of, say, the $20 tier, but still pledge $100 if you want. Often, I want to pledge a certain amount, but am totally uninterested in the extra crap thrown into that tier.

One the other hand, Kickstarter’s search feature is horrible. It should not be difficult to build a search like role-playing and rpg, but that fails totally. Also, role-playing and roleplaying return totally different results. That could be considered desirable, but only if you also allow role-playing and roleplaying (or, better yet, role*playing) searches. Kickstarter has informed me they intend to fix this, but nothing has happened as yet.

Kickstarting e20

Posted on March 7, 2010 by wordman

Gary M. Sarli, editor and developer of the well received roleplaying game Star Wars Saga Edition aims to create a new generic roleplaying system called the e20 System. Based on the open content d20 system, e20 development uses a patronage model, where the public can pledge funding and, if a certain pledge target is reached ($10,000 in this case), pledges are cashed and the product begins. The patronage project site kickstarter handles the pledges for e20.

The project has a little bit to go to reach their target by the deadline of March 15. To help them, DivNull Productions is increasing its pledge to this project to $500. Two things interest me about this project. First, just like its inspiration, the result will be Open Gaming Content. Second, the design of the system is being driven by feedback from millions of hours of playing the d20 system from players all over the world, a real playground of evolutionary forces. While I’m not the biggest fan of d20, I care a lot about open source gaming, so I wish good luck to this project.

Please consider throwing a few bucks to the project to help them meet their goal. (And, while you’re at it, see if there is anything else on kickstarter that interests you.)