What KICKSTARTER(S) are you BACKING and WHY?

Jackwraith wrote: Do a lot of people just get swayed by the eye candy and totally ignore the actual gameplay?

Yes.

This has probably already been said, perhaps by myself in this very thread, but I'm out. There are a handful of games in the pipeline (mostly for solo'ing), but I think this is it for me for quite awhile. The most successfully received games besides Ra in the past year were all picked up at retail (Brass Birmingham, HEAT, Concordia, Mexica).

At the moment, I'm in on three things on KS: Arcs, because Cole Wehrle; Tiny Epic Cthulhu because Scott Almes; and Mycelia, because I thought my girlfriend might like it, as she's a big fan of mushrooms of all kinds and really liked the documentary we saw a couple years ago that this game plays into (one massive fungus network!)

On top of that, I'm in on two Gamefound things: a small expansion to Heroes of Land, Air and Sea because Scott Almes (also one of my favorite DoaMs ever) and Peacemakers: Horrors of War because it's such a contrast to normal DoaM/wargames (you're actively trying to PREVENT war.)

But, yes, after those finish up in the next few months, that's pretty much it for me. There's nothing else that I know of in the pipeline and I have more than enough to keep me occupied for the forseeable future.

The only exception I made earlier this year was for Earthborne Rangers, which looks remarkable. I'm not into Lovecraft lore (will probably sell/unload EH at some point), so skipped AH:LCG in its entirety even though the game reports from some folks here &/or on Insta were really compelling. I don't mind the format, but the setting/narrative never grabbed me. Solarpunk, on the other hand, continues to hold my interest, so I think I'll enjoy this one.

hotseatgames wrote: www.kickstarter.com/projects/chaosium/ho...ew-more-discovery-p1

Horror on the Orient Express seems like an interesting game, and I have a lot of respect for the designer, Adam Kwapinsky (Nemesis, Lords of Hellas). I also like that it's a single session game. That said, I doubt I will back it, just because it doesn't scream "must have". I am also suspicious of the dollar amounts they have employed for their first two stretch goals. They are enormous divisions. They are also doing daily unlocks as well, but unless they change the amounts between goals (not unheard of), I don't think there will be too many extras.

I've played a few sessions of this via the Tabletop Simulator mod they've put out. I love the Arkham Files games in most of their iterations so this has quite a bit of appeal to me. The game is solid, bordering on good but comparisons to the Arkham Files are not quite right because Arkham Horror and Eldritch Horror use crisis management co-op mechanics to dress up an adventure game whereas this plays things a bit more straight with crisis management being the main focus of the game with a bit of a deduction added to the mix. There are narrative elements but they're short and sweet and mostly used to add a bit of variability. Mechanically there's some fun storytelling through the abilities (e.g. the bruiser will have a "conversation" with a passenger for information; if you fail the test that passenger ends up injured, otherwise they're just angry).

The push your luck mechanic is fun but I don't think the whole package really justifies itself sufficiently for me; the number of optional add-ons has also ballooned out since the campaign has started so it no longer feels quite as appealing.

Agreed, I just saw all of the new cosmetic upgrades. The game seems fun enough but as you said, at its heart it's just standard co-op whack-a-mole.

Neat idea. I look forward to reading Jackwraiths' review.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/coe/tiny-ep...nes?ref=project_link

ChristopherMD wrote: Neat idea. I look forward to reading Jackwraiths' review.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/coe/tiny-ep...nes?ref=project_link

Heh. This is in the same vein as The Last Kingdom release that they did last year. It was designed solely in-house (as in, none of the "rules release and then we'll go back and change some stuff") and is on KS now with a release date of September, which is quicker than most of the TE campaigns (TE Cthulhu was Kickstarted last fall and will be out after Game of Thrones, if schedules hold.) I'm not sure why both licensed properties were out of the same project loop that they normally do (IIRC, The Last Kingdom was presented to them as a finished design and they picked it up.) It looks interesting. Don't know that I'll be writing reviews in the future. I never managed one for Tiny Epic Crimes or Land & Freedom or a couple other things, even though I'd started them. I just lost the urge, partially because I didn't feel like I was saying anything new but also because the feedback to reviews here in the last couple years has been pretty minimal. I usually write stuff to start conversations and the audience here largely hasn't been interested, it seems. And now that Shellie has stepped back from the site, not sure if it would show up even if I did write something.

Jackwraith wrote: I just lost the urge, partially because I didn't feel like I was saying anything new but also because the feedback to reviews here in the last couple years has been pretty minimal. I usually write stuff to start conversations and the audience here largely hasn't been interested, it seems. And now that Shellie has stepped back from the site, not sure if it would show up even if I did write something.

Activity in these forums has definitely declined in recent years. I wonder if maybe it is harder for us to get a conversation going here because of the ongoing firehose blast of new games, especially kickstarter bloatware. We all have a limited amount of time to play these games, with so many more games competing for our attention.

If we had more members, then there would be a greater likelihood of people who've played the same game here to reply. But even when we're hot with quality reviews/articles, the hobby moved to video reviews and infomercials. So we've never really pulled in the current generation. And with "Ameritrash" as a genre no longer relevant, we don't really offer anything different anymore.

Jackwraith wrote: And now that Shellie has stepped back from the site, not sure if it would show up even if I did write something.

Two months since she last logged in.

She just got back from surgery, so this understandably hasn't been her focus, and honestly I'm not really sure it needs to be even longer term. A bulk of the discussion has moved to Discord, which seems to be a natural evolution of these boards.

Frohike wrote: A bulk of the discussion has moved to Discord, which seems to be a natural evolution of these boards.

I tried Discord a few months before the start of the pandemic and found it to be a glitchy app that seemed seemed completely unsuitable for topic-based discussion boards. Maybe Discord has improved since then.

I much prefer something like this over Discord. I think Discord is fine for something immediate and temporary, but not something competitive with a real bulletin board system.

hotseatgames wrote: I much prefer something like this over Discord. I think Discord is fine for something immediate and temporary, but not something competitive with a real bulletin board system.

This. I find Discord a chore to keep up with until I eventually abandon it. But not like I'm contributing much to discussions here, so really my opinion carries little weight. I still enjoy lurking here even with the reduced activity.