Better Late Than Never!

It's been years, but Dungeons Pop has finally delivered! This long-awaited Kickstarter arrived today, and I'm stoked to have this incredibly cool pop-up 3D terrain for use in fantasy campaigns. Here are two of the larger maps...

Each lies perfectly flat when folded up, but unfolds when you open it to display a flavorful adventure site. Nathaniel and I are already talking about how we can weave all the sites together into a campaign. 

The set also includes a couple of blank maps to be used with the dozen or so Mini Pops -- smaller pop-up terrain pieces that stay open thanks to clear plastic sleeves attached to the bottom. Below are two Mini Pops on one of the generic maps.

Great stuff! Well, kids, Merry Christmas from 2023!

Hair Band

I feel like this board game was pretty much made for me...

Dungeons Pop

This is no April Fool's Day joke -- Dungeons Pop is on the way! This Kickstarter ended nearly two years ago, and the product is finally shipping. Can't wait to get my hands on this super awesome pop-up 3D terrain!

Edge Quest

I love fencing. I love board games. Wouldn't I love a fencing board game?

Well...

Enter Edge Quest, coming soon to Kickstarter. It's got cards, dice, and all that board-gamey goodness, but there are also fully articulated action figures representing the fencers. Awesome in principle, but can you imagine having to stop play to adjust the arm and leg positions of both fencers with every thrust, parry, riposte, and whatnot? Fencing is fast, but the manipulation of the figure seems like it would make for an agonizingly slow game experience. I'd be up for static miniatures that enable players to show the position of their fencers on the game board (especially if the arena is more diverse than a simple fencing strip), but fiddling around with the figures seems kind of ridiculous.

Dark Tomb: The Ice Chasers

The third game of the pocket-sized dungeon-crawler Dark Tomb launched on Kickstarter this morning. It was funded in about five minutes! 

The boys and I played through the original Dark Tomb during our trip to New York this past summer. We'll probably dive into the second game when we visit my in-laws for Thanksgiving or Christmas. The third one should arrive just in time for next summer's travel!

Dark Tomb

We'll be doing some traveling this summer, but the boys and I will nevertheless have plenty of game action to occupy our downtime. A recent Kickstarter called Dark Tomb is perfect for travel: It's a cooperative, d20-based game that literally fits in your pocket!

TWD DOA

Sometime this week, we'll be receiving a package that contains various materials for The Walking Dead RPG, which I was glad to back on Kickstarter. It will make for some fun reading material over the Thanksgiving holiday, but unfortunately it won't serve as the rules system for our upcoming zombie campaign. 

Nathaniel and I have spent many hours combing through the PDF version of the core rulebook, and we both came to the conclusion that the system really needs to be used for "theater of the mind" gaming, and is altogether impractical for a fully 3D campaign like the one I've been cooking up. The rules are fast and fun, and -- like its sister game, the Alien RPG -- shockingly lethal to player characters. They are also abstract. Like, really abstract. This is not a game for maps and miniatures, let alone an entirely 3D environment. Nathaniel and I went down some house-ruling rabbit holes but ultimately were rewriting the game. We even explored the possibility of re-skinning Alien for a modern setting, but that don't work out very well either. 

As such, I've landed on the TinyD6 system, which we used for the Tales of the Ternion superhero campaign and then again more recently for our Doctor Who game. I really wanted to make TWD work, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

TWD Inbound!

I received an email indicating that The Walking Dead RPG that I backed on Kickstarter is going to be shipping soon! We'll be using this system (which features the same core game mechanics as the Alien RPG) for a Front Porch Multiverse campaign that is, in some ways, a loose sequel to our recent Tales of the Ternion superhero story. The intrepid heroes of this new game will be trapped by a devastating winter storm in a remote corner of upstate New York just as a zombie outbreak is occurring all around them.

This campaign will also be the first we've ever done that uses entirely 3D terrain. As I've mentioned over the past year or so, I've printed out and painted numerous buildings and countless smaller objects (tables,  beds, garbage cans, etc.). The campaign will feature three distinct settings -- the "downtown" of a small community, a top-secret military base, and a survivalist compound in the wilderness -- that the players will explore. The final task in my long list of preparations is to round up the zombies because, well, you know, you kinda need zombies for a zombie campaign! The minis from the excellent cooperative board game Zombicide are the same scale as the minis we use for our RPG campaigns, so I've pressed them into service. And, yes, I'm painting them. I was able to repurpose fifty-six miniatures from Zombicide, so I'm now in the midst of slapping some color on them. They won't be great, but no two will be the same, and at least they'll look better than flat gray plastic.

Dungeons Pop -- Final Two Weeks

The Dungeons Pop Kickstarter has two more weeks to go. Some great stretch goals still within reach!

Dungeons Pop

In my never-ending search for RPG and wargaming terrain, I love the idea of using 3D terrain, but there are a lot of complicating factors -- cost, storage space, time and effort for painting, etc. -- that make it tough to implement 3D on a large scale. To date, I haven't found a great solution that addresses all of those considerations...until, maybe, now? There's a new Kickstarter called Dungeons Pop, and it offers full-color 3D terrain at an affordable price and requiring very little storage space. How do they pull it off? Well, it's basically like a pop-up book! I'm backing this project not only to get the products shown on the page, but in the hope that the creators eventually branch out into other genres, like sci-fi and modern urban settings. Keep an eye on these folks!

The Walking Dead RPG

The official RPG for The Walking Dead funded on Kickstarter in just eight minutes this morning, and I'm pleased to say that I was one of the backers who jumped in right when the project launched. I'll be using this system (the same ruleset as the Alien RPG) for my upcoming post-apocalyptic campaign. (Even Amy is going to play in that one!) With a delivery date of November, I now have plenty of time to finish painting all those 3D buildings I've printed. Oh, wait, now it sounds like the preliminary digital rulebook will be available next month...

Towns & Taverns

The Dungeon is one of my top two or three favorite Kickstarter projects of all time. Those maps are super-duper useful for any sort of fantasy gaming action. Now the same folks have unveiled their latest Kickstarter initiative, Towns & Taverns. Same ideas as the first one, but oriented around urban environments. First day and it's already funded!

Handy-Dandy Dungeon Maps

Speaking of Kickstarter, we received our copy of The Dungeon today!

It's a two-volume set, and each book is chock-full of maps for use with D&D or any sort of game involving miniatures that fit on a one-inch grid. Shown below are two examples of individual pages, but you can also lay the book open for a double-sized map.

Additionally, by laying the two volumes next to each other, you can create larger maps in a square shape, or in other configurations. Great stuff!

So beautiful...

...but so expensive! Return to Dark Tower looks magnificent, but hard to justify even at the base pledge level ($125) that gets you a copy of the game. And with delivery more than a year away, I think I'll probably sit this one out.

Return to Dark Tower

I missed out on their Fireball Island Kickstarter, but now Restoration Games is working on Return to Dark Tower, and I'm already drooling. I haven't seen anything about pricing yet, but damn, I really need to back this project!

(Side note: If you look back four years on this very blog, you'll find a post where I referenced the original Dark Tower board game and its classic Orson Welles television commercial, and how the game was in need of a comeback!)

The Dungeon

Well, they won't win any points for creative naming, but The Dungeon is a heckuva product that you can check out in its final week on Kickstarter. I'm a huge fan of Pathfinder and Starfinder Flip-Mats, and this set provides tons of encounter space for the price of just a couple of Flip-Mats. The design isn't as detailed as what you see with the Paizo products, of course, but the sheer variety of maps will be a major asset for our D&D-crazed household. 

King Me!

Ages ago I backed a Kickstarter video game called Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and today it releases! 

More Minis!

Need more minis for D&D? Of course you do! Click here for a Kickstarter that needs some extra love as its end date is rapidly approaching...

Pathfinder: Kingmaker

Wow, I just found out about Pathfinder: Kingmaker, a single-player computer RPG in the style of Baldur's Gate and its successors. Click here to see the Kickstarter page -- but there's only a few hours left!

Bears vs. Babies

Our latest Kickstarter purchase has arrived!

Yeah, that's one furry box! From the makers of Exploding Kittens, behold the glory of Bears vs. Babies. The object of the game is to assemble armies of bears and other creatures, like this guy...

...and this guy...

...to do battle against hordes of demented babies, like these little buggers...

The player who eats the most babies wins! Three out of four Suttons agree: This game is a winner!