It’s a bit odd for me to have a second post about Kickstarter projects in less than a week, but there’s one massive board game that has hit since last week, and on the other end of the scale two indie gothic personal horror RPGs (one of which I briefly linked to last time, but I think deserves a closer look).

Bluebeard’s Bride: This is the one I touched on last week. The concept of this game is based on the myth of a woman to be married off to Bluebeard. On what is to be her wedding night, Bluebeard departs, leaving her alone in his manse. The bride is instructed that she may go anywhere in the house, except one specific room. In the tale, her curiosity eventually gets the best of her, and she enters the room, where she finds the corpses of Bluebeard’s prior brides (things do not go any better for our protagonist). In the game Bluebeard’s Bride, the players together make up the Bride, with each player controlling one aspect of her personality (Animus, Fatale, Mother, Virgin, Witch). The Bride in the game, of course, has more volition and can encounter a different manse, with different rooms, different horrors, and a different ending each time. It’s a gorgeous concept, with gorgeous art, and what aims to be a gorgeous (if small) book (if one gets the physical version). Backer levels range from $10 for a PDF of the core book to $150 for all of the game-relevant swag – the limited edition version of the core book, a physical Book of Rooms, custom dice, a token set, a Deck of Objects, and a Tarot of Servants. Bluebeard’s Bride is well-funded at this point, and wraps up on November 20.

Monsterhearts 2: Given my love of the World of Darkness, it is probably not a shock to learn that I am interested in a roleplaying game about “teenage angst, personal horror, and secret love triangles,” where each character is secretly a monster archetype (referred to as ‘skins’) of one sort or another. Monsterhearts, which uses the Apocalypse World engine, originally launched in 2012, and this Kickstarter is to fund a second edition of the game. As with much film and literature about the supernatural and teenagers (including horror), the supernatural plays a heavy metaphorical role for growing up generally and sexuality in particular. Monsterhearts pushes that element, with the hidden supernatural nature of the characters tied up in queer perspectives. Backing at the PDF level about $10 (US), while backing for a physical copy of the book about $33. The game is fully funded, and the project wraps up on December 1, 2016.

Mythic Battles – Pantheon: At the other end of the gaming scale, Mythic Battles: Pantheons is a miniatures combat game set in a post-apocalyptic mythic Greece, where each player controls one (former) Greek god seeking to regain their divinity and become the new rule of (what’s left of) Olympus. Each of these gods can muster heroes, monsters, and troops to battle. And, of course, all of these become scads of nicely sculpted minis in a big, big box. Players can pick fresh armies each game for skirmishes, or engage in a campaign where the units make repeat appearances and evolve over time. Gods, heroes, and monsters have “dashboards” with their special abilities and a slider to track statistics and damage, while troops have smaller stat cards (but multiple miniatures in a unit, and the possibility of returning after destruction). The core game has 37 miniatures (including larger scale figures for the gods, the hydra, and Cerberus), but as if often the case for big miniatures games on Kickstarter, Mythic Battles has a plethora of stretch goals. For Greek mythology fans, the material you’ll get as of the time I’m writing this (the evening of November 2, 2016) includes Zeus, Ares, Athena, Apollo, Hermes, Odysseus, Atalanta, Leonidas, Achilles, Hercule, Jason (with the Argonauts as the next stretch goal to be unlocked), the Minotaur, the Hydra, Medusa, Cerberus, Arachne, the Nemean Lion, amazons, hell hounds, hell warriors, hoplites, centaurs, Spartans, infernal artillerymen, toxotoi, and giant spiders. Backing Mythic Battles will run you $100 (sorry, the early bird pledges ran out in about 2 minutes). The project ends on December 1, 2016.