What KICKSTARTER(S) are you BACKING and WHY?

They aren't being subtle; everyone knows the inspirations and they are owning that. I don't mind it, but I could see how some might get annoyed.

I was ok with the paper thin originality. We play lots of games that are just copied ideas with the numbers filed off. To be honest, that was part of the initial fun...seeing who was inspired by what videogame character.

I'm not ok with theft...which is what tracing is.

Yeah, that Chun-Li pose is dead-on.

Having a hard time not backing this one:

Dark Venture

Thanks Dave! Just backed that. Right up my alley.

Looks neat. I might back. Thanks for the heads up.

Dark Venture does look kinda neat.

However, having not played other text rich games like Tales of the Arabian Nights, wouldn't this sort of thing not hold up so well to repeat plays? How often would one want to re-read the same passages, even if the order is different?

I guess I enjoyed Choose Your Own Adventures as a kid, but thinking about it, I didn't really re-read them often. If at all.

I am wavering on the latest Sierra Madre Kickstarter - for BIOS ORIGINS , PAX TRANSHUMANITY, and a new edition of PAX PORIFIRIANA ( I already have this , won't need again ) .

As usual, the prior one is shipping late. They're on their third different fulfillment partner in as many years. High Frontier shipped like a year late from OSS, with some inferences that OSS that Eklund was as much to blame . Last year, the BIOS GENESIS KS was an utter fucking fiasco as they stupidly chose Ship Naked as their fulfillment "partner" and as a result, not only did Eklund allegedly lose money/barely make any , but due to Shit Naked making so many shipping mistakes, very little made it to retail.

This years release , for North America they used some place in Hong Kong called Floship. These geniuses ran out of packaging materials, so as a result, over 1000 games have been sitting in their warehouse for a MONTH while they get more shipping materials. In addition, there are numerous small printing errors on GREENLAND, which for a third edition is lame.

Despite this, SMG have forged ahead and launched a KS for the next wave of games, once again using Floship, aka Sloship. Shipping charges have spiked substantially since the last one. I think this is a combo of the impending end of the China/USPS shipping subsidy as well as SMG needing to account for both using third party fulfillment as well as ION ( the business/publishing partner of SMG, since Eklund is overwhelmed ) needing their cut as well.

FOMO is real. Not so much for exclusives - SMG thankfully doesn't play that game. Rather, their print runs have always been tight. I think it will be worse this go around, with many gamers deferring both due to Floship as well as the spike in shipping charges . Whatever makes it to retail will be snatched up pretty quick.

Mr. White wrote: Dark Venture does look kinda neat.

However, having not played other text rich games like Tales of the Arabian Nights, wouldn't this sort of thing not hold up so well to repeat plays? How often would one want to re-read the same passages, even if the order is different?

I guess I enjoyed Choose Your Own Adventures as a kid, but thinking about it, I didn't really re-read them often. If at all.

I think you probably did like I did and read them 4-5 times each because you died of dysentery or what have you. If for 50$ you get 3 adventures and play them even 3 times each, you literally paid a 6 pack of Bud Light per play. Seems legit.

Me, I saw “roads with rusting cars being walked upon by orcs and wizards” and that sold me.

I was really interested in Pax Transhumanity until I read the design notes and saw the game concept was quite literally "be the best Elon Musk you can be".

Hard pass.

The Bios games have never gotten their hooks in me, and I'm still totally fine with my 1st Ed Pax Porfiriana.

I saw Chris Farrell online talking about all the issues you mentioned, msample. Sounds like a nightmare.

I'm kind of glad that SMG doesn't have anything I'm dying to get this time. I missed out on the Pax Ren expansion due to slowness but that's about it... I managed to preorder John Company from his actual site and they just sent it to me. I don't trust transhumanity and emancipation not to be ick games.

Just talking about it makes me want to get John Company on the table, Charles keeps mentioning how he plays it more and more on ding and dent and it makes me jealous as hell!

We've quite enjoyed the first two Bios reprints but with the shipping included there is no way Origins is worth spending a hundred dollars on. I'm not even sure the first two were worth the money I paid. What also surprises me here is how terribly butt-ugly this edition is, it doesn't even have the mad over-busy charm of Pax Po it just looks like the old fashioned Eklundian appraoch of chucking royalty free clipart into photoshop. If it isn't representative of the finished product then they really aren't helping themselves by putting it up there.

Gary Sax wrote: Just talking about it makes me want to get John Company on the table, Charles keeps mentioning how he plays it more and more on ding and dent and it makes me jealous as hell!

It's great. Cole's designed two of my top releases this year, and if I had to choose one I would take JC over Root.

From the looks of it Cole is now with Leder games and thus free from the endless logistics clusterfuck that is SMG. ROOT put his name on the map for the Euro crowd for sure.

Not Sure wrote: I was really interested in Pax Transhumanity until I read the design notes and saw the game concept was quite literally "be the best Elon Musk you can be".

I expect no less from Eklund. In the glorious future we all aspire to, you'll either be Elon Musk or work 90 hours a week for Elon Musk. Can't wait to make it there!