Incredible Dream

This NFT/cryptocurrency shit is just a reminder that there's one born every minute.

Legomancer wrote: I imagine we'll get a standard adventure game with a bunch of AR nonsense tacked on.

In fairness, that's how I would sum up Descent 3.0, and that title seems to have been well-received.

The whole thing reads like it was written by the same schlub who did that Kickstarter blockchain announcement. I'm not even certain why Kickstarter is part of this discussion. Was the $2,000,000 just to get all these people on the same Zoom call? And what "indie" games are raising over a million bucks on Kickstarter?

Virabhadra wrote:

Legomancer wrote: Was the $2,000,000 just to get all these people on the same Zoom call? And what "indie" games are raising over a million bucks on Kickstarter?

C'MON, surely there are some tiny epic indie game companies out there

NFTs = electronic Dutch tulip bulbs.

Through completely random happenstance, I was curious to see what this incredible life-affirming venture were up to.

Apparently, it's the same tired old shit you find everywhere else. Who knew? (apart from everybody posting on this thread)

Marketing nonsense aside, Kevin Wilson has done fantastic work with Incredible Dream.

Kinfire Chronicles is wonderful and one of the best boss battlers in my opinion. The Kinfire Delve series is excellent as well.

Alongside TMNT Adventures, this is Kevin Wilson's best work since his FFG days.

They reprinted A Gentle Rain and that makes them okay in my book.


Edit: Ha, came across one of Charlies articles while browsing.

www.dicebreaker.com/games/kinfire-chroni...ntasy-world-to-watch

Although I think Terrinoth is a very low-bar setting.

Again, people keep using that perspective of Terrinoth as a "low bar" setting because it's "generic fantasy". But I've always said that the setting is fine because the beauty of the games set there is in the mechanics, not the lore. If you want Lord of the Rings games, there's a million of them out there with roughly four of them being worthwhile (War of the Ring, Knizia's Lord of the Rings (arguably; I thought it was pedestrian), Lord of the Rings: Confrontaton, and the LCG.) Guess what? All of those were produced by FFG; the creators of Terrinoth. No one played Descent because they were fascinated by razorwings or Andira Runehand. They played it because it was a cool game. If you're using the lore as a bar for whether you'd like to play the game, I think you're missing the point.

True, if you want to go by game mechanics alone, then the setting never matters.

I like lots of generic fantasy games. I've even played the shit out of Runebound 2nd Ed. Terrinoth is low-bar because the things that are supposed to make it not feel generic are un-interesting. I never really think about the generic settings in most games because they fit organically, whereas Terrinoth usually stands out like a sore thumb. Probably because the committee designed this setting to be slapped onto so many mechanics is a big part of its issue. Which still leads me to see it as sub-par compared to other generic settings. I'll die on this hill.

I think Terrinoth gets extra grief because FFG lost/gave up/whoever the fuck knows the GW IP, which was a lot more attractive to gamers than Terrinoth .

Msample wrote: I think Terrinoth gets extra grief because FFG lost/gave up/whoever the fuck knows the GW IP, which was a lot more attractive to gamers than Terrinoth .

I mean, there's validity to that in that it's beyond dispute that GW's worlds are miles better than Terrinoth. But I enjoyed the fact that I could run into the same creatures/use the same units in Runebound, Descent, Rune Age, Runewars, and Battlelore, 2nd Ed. Chris is right in that there's nothing particularly attractive about the setting. No one puts Runebound on the table because they want to adventure in Terrinoth in the same way they want to adventure in Middle-Earth. But I thought the later expansions added a lot to the Runebound setting, in that I was often interested in experiencing the story that expansions like Sands of Al-Kalim or Cult of the Rune created. And Battlelore, 2nd Ed. crystallized that for me when it adapted the armies of Runewars into a great game, such that I've had more fun playing B2E as a medium-length minis wargame than I have almost anything else. I love playing Obscenes with the Uthuk and Wraiths with Waiqar and that's a reflection both of the coolness of those units and their presentation within the world.

Jackwraith wrote: No one played Descent because they were fascinated by razorwings or Andira Runehand. They played it because it was a cool game. If you're using the lore as a bar for whether you'd like to play the game, I think you're missing the point.

A surprising take, given that this site was founded on the premise that theme matters! Should we have all just stuck with endless beige games about trading in the Mediterranean, as long as the mechanics were good?

Theme is a huge part of what makes something a "cool game." FFG could've made Descent a pure abstract. No art, no character names, instead of "orcs" and "razorwings," just label all enemies "Foe Type 1" through "Foe Type 30" or whatever. Would anyone have cared about it?

While I've mellowed out in my old age about the Euro-vs-AT thing, I still love the traditional geek genres of fantasy, horror, and sci-fi. And because I love them, I want them done well. Terrinoth has some interesting things in it, but overall it's bland, and the attempts at doing something different are not very creative or noteworthy to me.

dysjunct wrote: Theme is a huge part of what makes something a "cool game." FFG could've made Descent a pure abstract. No art, no character names, instead of "orcs" and "razorwings," just label all enemies "Foe Type 1" through "Foe Type 30" or whatever. Would anyone have cared about it?

I mean, we could do the reductio ad absurdum thing all day but I don't think anyone wants that, not least because it was SOP for many of the more annoying presences at BGG, back in the day. Theme is present in Terrinoth by dint of the elaborate stories and descriptions included with the materials, the artwork that isn't just five shades of brown, and the fact that the game is about the very topics that are of interest to you, rather than sheep farming. But I was never one of the "theme makes EVERYTHING" zealots because there are many, many examples of where it breaks down. Dungeonquest is the one that usually comes to mind. "Oh, the theme is so cool! It's about danger and what would really happen if normal people went into a dragon's lair and... What? You died to a spear trap on your first draw? Oh. Well, we're going to be playing for another hour. There's a TV in the next room." The original premise of this site and the group that created it was that, even if the game isn't constructed on a mathematical theorem or doesn't have the depth of a Knizia masterpiece, there are still good games like Warrior Knights (to use a different GW example of a solid game that actually deserved a reprint, as opposed to Dungeonquest) that are immersed in theme and create stories better than: "Remember that time when I placed my last tile right before you and won by 3 points?!"

My point was that most people are drawn to LotR games because of LotR, not the games (many of which sucked.) They were drawn to things like Runebound because of Martin Wallace (and because it was the first real adventure game of Talisman size since Talisman), Descent because of Kevin Wilson (and because it was the first real dungeon crawler since the 90s), and so on. No one was saying: "I want to play that game because of Terrinoth!" But that's fine because not only was it a perfectly decent fantasy world, it also didn't carry the baggage of all of those worlds that you and others love so much. My problem with playing an adventure game in Middle-Earth is that you either had to be the characters of note playing the same story, over and over, or you were the equivalent of film extras, who couldn't really carve your own path because it had already been carved before you in the narrative that inspired the game. I'm not interested in playing Gandalf the Grey all the time, but I'm also not interested in playing Gibginn the Off-White, whose only role in life is to remind people that he's not Gandalf. I'd rather do something different, even if it's nominally "generic." But that's me and, as with all things entertainment, as long as it's not harming anyone, do what you like.

One of the things I really like about Terrinoth is that heroes come in many different shapes and colours. This was the case in Runebound, but even more so in the new Descent and - though it's a very different type of story - Legacy of Dragonholt. Terrinoth feels sprawling and dangerous, and I kinda like that.

The stylised art of the new Descent gives Terrinoth more personality and identity than the generic fantasy look of FFG's golden years. It bodes well for future games or reskins in the setting. It'll never be LoTR but it could at least become something.