Now on Kickstarter – Legendlore, Alice is Missing + More

Now on Kickstarter is an occasional look at some live projects that happen to have caught my fancy. Today I’m highlighting an old RPG being updated for compatibility with Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition, a roleplaying game that forces you to look at your smartphone during the game, an excessive upgrade for a fantastic board game, and (because it’s still June) another set of Pride dice. They all end in the next 3-7 days, so check them out while they last.

 

Legendlore: Stop me if you’ve heard this one. An RPG is getting updated to be compatible with 5E … I know, I know, it feels like about half of the RPG projects on Kickstarter these days are either supplements/accessories for 5E or 5E compatible RPGs. But Legendlore has tickled my fancy. The origins of Legendlore start back with a comic called The Realm, first published in 1986, back when The World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game was still just Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (no bloody 2, 3, 4, or 5E). In a concept already familiar from the 1983-85 D&D cartoon, The Realm (later Legendlore) featured a group of four teenagers who were transported from Earth to a fantasy world, taking on the role of well-known fantasy RPG archetypes. In the roleplaying game, the player characters are similar – fantasy avatars based on the players. The updated Legendlore, from Onyx Path Publishing, adds a number of things to breath new life into this concept. The player characters are not the first visitors from Earth, and they will encounter the legacies of prior visitors, and create their own. The Realm will also change each of the characters, who must fulfill a chosen destiny (“Heir to the Mountain” or “Avatar of Peace,” for example). And, because this is Onyx Path in 2020, the setting is more diverse and the characters are not just translations of the players’s outward appearance, but rather translations of the players as they identify. A traditionally-printed hardcover is $50, with various other options available. Legendlore is fully funded, but still at the stage where more support would make a real difference to the final product, and the project runs through July 2, 2020.

 

Alice is Missing: If you know me, you might think that playing almost an entire game without being allowed to talk would be some sort of nightmare torture. And normally you would be quite right. But there’s something intriguing about this GM-less offering from Hunters Entertainment that plays out most of the game via a text message group chat. The players spend 45 minutes creating characters, how they knew Alice, and how they know each other. The remainder of the game (90 minutes) sends the players to texts as their character try to discover what happened to Alice. Both character creation and the uncovering of clues depends heavily on a selection of cards that come with the game – making the game as much about the relationships between the characters as it is about their search for Alice. A physical copy is $20, or the same price for the Roll20 version. The project is currently fully funded (an order of magnitude above its original funding goal), and ends on June 29, 2020.

 

 

Pride Vol. 1: I know, I know, these aren’t the first Pride dice, or even the first Pride dice project on Kickstarter, but they are on Kickstarter now and $15 (US) isn’t an exorbitant price for a set of 11 dice. As you can see from the image above, there are five sets available, skipping the most commonly available pride rainbow option in favor of asexual, bisexual, pansexual, the updated lesbian flag, and non-binary. The project is fully funded and runs through July 2, 2020.

 

 

Finally, for those wanting a true luxury pickup, there’s the Terraforming Mars Big Box. Don’t let the title fool you, though, this is a component upgrade project, not a Queen-style “big box” with a base game and a bunch of expansions. The core of the project is 90 3D tiles to replace the standard cardboard from the base game. These include sculpts of the normal forests, oceans, and cities, but also unique sculpts for the capital city and other special effects that might be used (e.g., a mushroom cloud for the nuclear zone, a crater for when you play Deimos Down). That’s $80. For another $20, you can get the actual big box, which is designed to hold all of those fancy tiles, as well as all of the existing expansions – with molded trays, a card box, and different cube holders. But beyond that there’s also a first player miniature, nice player boards, translucent domes to cover the cities, trade fleet miniatures, and metal resource cubes, and card sleeves – except everything I mentioned in this sentence is an add-on. Get all of it, and your total will go up another $165. Terraforming Mars is a great game, and if you love it and have money to burn, this is a nice chance to bling out your copy. The Terraforming Mars Big Box is already funded to the tune of $1.7 million, so clearly there are a lot of people in that situation. The project runs through July 3, 2020.

 

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