Cast Off - Launching of a Kickstarter Project

I've been pretty quiet on a lot of fronts because I've been working hard on a variety of projects (Veronica Monsterhearts, Rent's Due, Third Life, AIR to name a few) but one of them is near completion.

Cast Off is now live and we're hoping to get some people to be interested by movie trivia and funny voices!

It's the first "big print run" game that I've done. Suitors was a bigger total print run, but this is the biggest game I've ever done and that's why I'm looking for help with the funding. Spread the word!

TAG - Dungeon World (RP)

You know what? Instead of doing an Actual Play thing, I'm going to call it a Remembered Play because I'll be damned if I'm going to record and then type out what everyone is saying and/or doing.

What happened? We played Dungeon World at a local Meetup for the Toronto Area Gamers and had a good time doing it damn it.

The Party:
Human Thief named Sparrow
Human Cleric of the Divine Healer named Constantine
Human Ranger named Emery with Owl companion named Chirpy
Halfling Fighter named Olive with a Spear of Death and Destruction

Highlights:
* Bonds and having two people independently think that Emery was incapable of doing anything right then both of those same characters saying that they were there to protect Sparrow whose response was "Ha, suckers."

* Olive knocking Sparrow out of the way of an incoming Wraith, and letting the Wraith inhabit her body turning her into a Paladin of the Necromancers. With a special move to deal with whose memory was currently on top (Spoiler: Not Olive pretty much the rest of the game)

* Sparrow trying to keep the gate shut so that nothing bad comes down, and then a large zombie-like wolf comes down and licks her hands with a hot breath smelling of rotting flesh, blood aged for years in the darkness.

* Olive manages to get the Wolf to calm down enough to report on what's going on, but Sparrow is having none of that nonsense and sneak attacked the wolf while it was busy about to say something.

* Emery has been 6- every single Ranger like roll in the game. Then brings out the bow and arrow and 10+ the next four rolls and kills all the things.

* Constantine turning undead all the time, and catching Olive the new Paladin of the Necromancer and stunning her too.

* Finding a chalice that the goddess said would heal Olive, and finding a potion that they figured they might as well try since they knew that it was a colour favoured by the necromancers, they tried to give it to Olive who finally figured out that the other three were intruding on the domain. After one massive punch to Sparrow who had the chalice the potion sprayed everyone but Sparrow who threw the chalice up in the air and high tailed it out of there while the others fought over the chalice.

Rent's Due - Residential 1 Character Sheet

Please forgive the look of it. I grabbed some clip art from OpenClipart and put together what is a very rough idea of what I think that the character maps can look like.

Residential 1 - Rent's Due

Feedback is appreciated. I mean someone with far better skills could come up with something a lot better looking, but this is me futzing around and not really paying too close attention to things as I would if this was a final. It's more about seeing if it's workable.

RPG Review Recess - Posthuman Pathways

There is currently a kickstarter going on by Jason Pitre over at Genesis Of Legend publishing who have also put out The Spark.

You can follow the link here to the kickstarter, but if you want you can wait until after the review of the game. I'll repost the link at the bottom.

Posthuman Pathways

This game is designed to be a GMless 3 person game where you talk about the transition from a current era society towards a post-human society. There's some piece of technology that causes a huge change, and you and 2 other people will go through their transitions from the youth of today, to the adults living through the changes, and then as the generation that looks back knowing how the world was different before. Through the game you explore your characters decision about the technology, and what happens on the other side.

It designed specifically for 3 people, where each person takes on a specific role with a specific goal in mind. You have Trailblazer who is responsible for the Timeline questions and setting up the scenes for the other players. The Trailblazer is also the one who can push forward action by asking questions to keep things moving. The Guide is the one who sets up the challenges and is the main source of confrontation for the Voyager who is the person playing their character. You'll switch these roles so that every one gets a chance to play their character in each phase of the game.

Now if you've played, or read, The Spark, you'll see a lot of that in there. The setup, the language, and a lot of the idea behind the game shine through in Posthuman Pathways. That only makes sense because of who is writing it, and it really fits there. This isn't a game where you need a person to moderate what's going on, it's not RPG storytelling in the traditional sense where you've got a bunch of obstacles to overcome. It's far more about the introspection that comes with great change. The Voyager will always win any conflict,  you don't have to worry about winning or losing there. It's all about the decisions that the Voyager makes. What prices you pay for the choices you make. Everything has a cost.

You keep track of all the changes on pieces of paper, cue cards if you have them but they also have downloadable "cards" that you can use in order make things all nice and neat if you're into it. The format is also great because it's a set of pamphlets that you pass around as you take on each role. It outlines what your responsibilities are and gives you the steps for how to go through a scene.

My only personal wish is that there was some way to have the story go off in a direction that even the Voyager couldn't totally expect. I don't know if it fits into the game, and there is enough variation with things like the questions that the Trailblazer puts forth. If the technology first seems to be something the divides and scares people then you'll have to deal with that rather than have it turn into a nice little utopia. However, that's really picking at nits.

There are two really great parts to this. The first is that it's almost at it's funding goal and just needs a little bit more to get it over the edge. The second is that you're looking at 7 bucks to get the game. That's it, 7 whole dollars and you get a copy of a great game that you can pick up and play when your normal group can't make it. Just pull it out of the envelope and play, no setup needed or anything like that.

This was shorter than I thought it was going to be, but if your mouse is down here then you can always click on this link to go and give them your seven bucks.