Kickstarter

As you may not know, I'm very fond of the RPG Hellas: Worlds of Sun and Stone¹. Part of it is that I'm such a huge fan of Greek Mythology. Part of it is that Space Opera itch that it scratches.

The first supplement is entitled Hellas: Princes of the Universe, and they are Kickstarting it.

The use of Kickstarter reminds me of Arc Dream using the (now defunct) Fundable.com to get Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity in print. The difference is that Princes of the Universe (if I'm reading the Kickstarter page correctly) will see print regardless of the Kickstarter outcome - the Kickstarter is to get it in full color instead of black & white. I promised my $60 as soon as I saw it (especially because it includes another copy of the core book at that point).

It also reminds me of the 2008 Diana Jones Award-winning Open Design project. (My wife was a patron of one of the Open Design projects, and she loved the end result.) You see, donors to Targets of Opportunity didn't get any input into the final project. Donors to Open Design are able to provide input at every step along the way, starting by providing input into which of several possible projects to pursue. The first ten people who donated $100 or more to Princes of the Universe got to create a character for inclusion in the book.

And these are not the only patronage projects active right now - this one uses the same system as the Amber RPG. And ... um ... it sounds like Amber with the serial numbers partially obscured. Rite Publishing does have the best description I've found of how Patronage works that I've been able to find (and they give credit to Wolfgang Baur and Open Design)

It's yet another fascinating trend in the industry. Something to keep an eye on.



¹ Okay, the game is cool, but I don't think it's $85 cool. There are other places to buy print copies, or you can get a .PDF copy here.

PDF's From Your FLGS, PDF's as Pre-Orders: Is This The Future?

It sure feels like I'm living in the future right now. In the last week, I have acquired four RPG PDF's at no cost above and beyond the initial cost of the book they are electronic versions of.

Two of them are because we pre-ordered The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game. Evil Hat made these available to all preorders through their web store. If you haven't read the books, by the way, you should. At least the first few.

A similar situation happened with the new Delta Green book, Targets of Opportunity. As I was one of the original pre-orders, I now have a pre-release PDF file for the game.

This, by the way, is really awesome. I know have two new games that I like a great deal, and they won't be available in-store for another four months.

I also got a PDF copy of Spirit of the Century from Evil Hat's Brick and Mortar PDF Guarantee. If more publishers had similar deals, I'd order more books. It's that simple.

And it makes me feel like I'm living in the future. I just put the .PDF onto my Kindle DX, and I'm four months ahead of the rest of the world.

Now if only I could get Houses of the Blooded to render correctly. Maybe once that update hits.

The future: It's a scary place. But I think I like it.

UDPATE: In between the time I wrote the post and the time Blogger published it for me, Fred Hicks posted about Evil Hat's Brick & Mortar PDF program and how it works for pre-orders.