I’d love to have a simple hex-and-counter wargame with a nice, modern interface and decent art. It doesn’t have to be Ogre.
But nobody’s making them, so I have to assume the market is too small to bother.
Order of Battle: Pacific?
Mad genius Caleb Stokes, of the RPPR and RPPR Actual Play podcasts as well as the brilliant Better Angels campaign No Soul left Behind, is Kickstarting a new RPG called Red Markets - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/159466030/red-markets
It’s a zombie RPG, but wait, don’t go yet. It’s got a more interesting spin than most. In the words of the campaign:
Red Markets is a tabletop RPG about economic horror.
In Red Markets, characters risk their lives trading between the massive quarantine zones containing a zombie outbreak and the remains of civilization. They are Takers: mercenary entrepreneurs unwilling to accept their abandonment. Bound together into competing crews, each seeks to profit from mankind’s near-extinction before it claims them. They must hustle, scheme, and scam as hard as they fight if they hope to survive the competing factions and undead hordes the GM throws at them.
Takers that are quick, clever, or brutal enough might live to see retirement in a safe zone, but many discover too late that the cycle of poverty proves harder to escape than the hordes of undead.
Red Markets uses the traditional zombie genre to tell a story about surviving on the wrong end of the economy. It’s cut-throat capitalism with its knife on your neck.
There are currently 7 episodes of a playtest campaign that Caleb ran up on RPPR Actual Play if you want a sense of how it goes, and I believe there are a couple other playtest Actual Plays out there as well. For my part, they were more than enough to sell me on it.
I’m completely out the Kickstarter loop these days (still waiting on three more games i backed before getting back in the seat), but this sounds pretty cool:
With some RPS stuff here:
There’s only 32 hours to go, so I’m sorry for the late entry on this one, but the expansion for Mistfall is nearing its final stretch…with a lot of stretch rewards unlocked. And you can order the base game as an add on, although this expansion is a stand alone game as well.
If I had to describe this game, I would call it a cross between Mage Knight and Pathfinder the Adventure Card Game. I wouldn’t call it polished, to be honest. It has a horrid rule book (you’ll need a player aid if you want to avoid frustration during your first few games), there’s one character that seems to be a bit unbalanced (although I’m not nearly a smart enough player to figure out how to exploit him myself), a few of the cards need erratas (not too uncommon a thing with card games), and the tutorial scenario is way too hard for a tutorial. But when you get past all that (if you can), you’ll find a fun brain burner that really challenges you on so many levels. It’s not for everyone, of course (what is?), but the first entry in the series is one of my favorite games of 2015.
Should also point out that the corrected cards for the original game are being included in the expansion. So barring further errors in the actual expansion cards, it should be all patched up once this is delivered. I still need to dig into my copy but from what I’ve played of it, it’s a pretty good solo game.
Pebble 2 and Pebble Time 2 Kickstarter. Anyone?
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It really plays great with 3 to 4 players too. There’s so much interaction as you try to figure out how best to handle the encounters. Like I said, it’s got flaws, but it’s so damn fun that I can overlook them when I’m playing. The campaign system even adds some persistence between quests. And I suspect that the expansion quests can be added to make the campaign mode even more interesting.
Twice is enough for me, thanks. I’ve been reasonably satisfied with both the OG Pebble and the Time, but they really reinforced during their last campaign that they don’t know how to run a Kickstarter. All of the mistakes I chalked up to inexperience the first time were repeated in the second, the main one being lack of communication.
Of course, considering they’ve brought in almost eight times their (admittedly low) goal in the first couple of days, I doubt they’ll miss my contribution much.
I put in for the early-bird Pebble 2 tier, though I don’t know if I’ll keep my pledge. It mostly depends on where I am for money by the time the campaign ends, but also depends a bit on the same for Darkest Night 2E.
I’ve been pretty happy with my OG Pebble, but I’d like the added features like the microphone, and don’t feel like I’d get enough out of the extra money for the Time 2 instead, so vanilla 2 it is.
The Pebble Core seems useless for any of my use cases. It definitely looks like something for the smarthouse crowd.
I wonder how many of the pledges are for the Core. I’m not understanding how it’s gonna get people to pay telco for additional line/sim card just for running? Or are they expecting people to take out their existing sim card from the phone and plug into the core before any runs? That seems pretty tedious to me.
I don’t get the Core at all. I did put in for the Time 2, though. I love my Time Steel, and this is essentially that with a better screen and heart rate monitor. Nobody else out there has a similar balance of features as far as how notifications work, always-on screen, battery life, sleep tracking, waterproof-ness, etc.
Meanwhile, the Arkyd Space Telescope “selfie in space” project was killed, but happily, all $1.5 million is being refunded in full. So I’ll get my full donation back, despite having also gotten a Planetary Annihilation code and a year’s membership in the Space Society. Company just landed $28M in funding for using their telescopes for resource observation.
So, significant Darkest Night 2E update today. In short, they’ve decided to waive all gameplay-related stretch goals and just pack all of that into every 2E box regardless of whether they reach the previously set goals or not (though non-gameplay stretch goals like the organizer and engraved dice, etc remain in play). But the flip side of that is that they are now only intending to print enough copies to fulfill the Kickstarter with some wiggle room for replacements, etc. So if you were planning to wait and pick it up in stores, that’s probably not going to be possible unless the store backed the Kickstarter.
DN2E is up $8K since that update. I guess some people really wanted those extra 53 cards, considering the campaign sat at $137K for days before the update.
I suspect it’s more people that wanted it but were going to wait for retail and now can’t expect it to be available that way.
I think that’s definitely the case. I know I’ve had to start rethinking my plan to wait for retail. I’m a little surprised that VPG sounds like they’re going to allow one of their flagship games (is it their bestseller?) to go out of print, which is what that statement reads like.
The other thing pushing the numbers at this point is going to be speculators. If this really does end up being the last print run for Darkest Night, then those 1,100+ copies are going to be worth something.
The wording makes me suspect there might be a less… deluxe… printing coming later with separate expansions or such.
Yeah, I can’t imagine they’ll let Darkest Night just go out of print.
Personally, I think I’d rather see VPG emulate GMT’s printing model at this point.
These finally came in yesterday, ~11 months behind schedule. I’m not upset about the delay though as they did a great job communicating and made sure to not sacrifice quality to rush them out. Not a huge improvement from S-Video for my SNES, but definitely noticeable and worth the asking price ($35) as far as I’m concerned.
Huh, that’s kinda neat, to be honest. I’d forgotten about the post, but kinda think about trying to hook up my old Genesis sometimes. I have to imagine it’d look like ass at 42"/1080p, though.
Of course, there appears to be no way to buy them right now, soooo. . .