Maxwell Lord posted:

I get Sage Genesis' complaint: a lot of times I'll read a review of some "Weird Fantasy" or OSR product that's basically "It sure is weird! 10/10!" Like this was the thing about Carcosa, apart from the really sick stuff it's "this hex has 3d10 shoggoths ridden by Purple Men" and this very dry presentation, but the content was strange so it could not be questioned. There's a lot of words-not-the-music in RPG writing.

Jimbozig posted:

Of course, the book doesn't say any of this... A book that made this sort of thing explicit would be a better book, I think. Presenting them both side-by-side in the bestiary makes them seem like the same kind of game element, but I don't think they are at all. They are as different from one another as a magic item is from an NPC.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

As an aside I've been thinking of doing an RPG campaign where everyone is bugs, and I wasn't really sure how to handle the gap between those who can fly and those who can't. My first thought was to restrict PCs to flightless bugs and have bees be the setting equivalent of angels / celestial outsiders -- perhaps the closest to whatever mythic source gave them all sapience.

Really it's just an excuse to stat up Anteater Cthulhu, though.

Leperflesh posted:

Most insects have wings, actually; some only have them at certain stages (e.g. termites) and others have vestigal wings. There are a handful of orders of insects that don't have wings, but you'll be relegating your PCs to for example bristletails, diplurans, proturans, silverfish, fleas, or springtails. Many of these may turn off your players due to the grossness factor. Perhaps your best bet is ants or termites: they only have wings during certain seasons, and only reproductive males or queens.

A lot of insects have wings that people don't realize. For example, almost all beetles have wings and only a few of the winged beetles can't fly. And there's probably about a million species of beetles.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

I've been thinking of doing an RPG campaign where everyone is bugs

Foglet posted:

Have you seen Infestation RPG? It's pretty much exactly what you describe.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

I never said anything about wings, just flight! That's still pretty cool, though.

Either way I'm not going for biological accuracy here, I just really enjoyed Hollow Knight and this classic cartoon.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

What's it like mechanically?

Sage Genesis posted:

Good question. Those Atomic Bees sound lame. It's basically just The Jetsons Effect - you take a normal thing and slap prefixes on it ("space" in the case of The Jetsons).

So first you have some kind of bees, which live in hives and make honey. They pollinate flowers and if they sting you, you die. Now they're some kind of atomic bees, which live in nuclear hives and make atomic honey or whatever. There's also super-flowers and super-death if you get stung. This is basically the very lowest kind of "creativity" you can get.

Here, watch. I'll do it right now. I'll make uh... lunar bees. Sure.

So the moon itself is a giant hive, alright? And every full moon the lunar bees descend from heaven at night to drink deeply from the uh... I dunno, the night orchids which only bloom under the full moon? Sure. And their sting mutates you into a raging werewolf until the next dawn, so people think that it's some curse that repeats once a month and then they hang a guy and the problem doesn't repeat itself. Which is tragic because it was just an insect sting and nobody would've transformed next month (unless they got stung again of course) so the "solution" was just post-hoc correlation, lending my setting irony and pathos.

There. Am I creative enough yet? Do I get money now?

Wait. gently caress, I forgot about the honey. Uh... it's like this stuff which looks like molten silver and it's really great in some unspecified way. Cool, saved it.

Not convinced yet?

Ok, volcano-bees. They're these little obsidian bastards who fly out of the volcano once a century to drink up entire forests (they inhale the smoke, so it does involve burning the surrounding earth for miles around). Lava is actually volcano-honey. Your adventure is to rush into an evacuated town and steal all of its treasure while the volcano-bees get ever closes, a glittering swarm of roiling sparks. But be careful, besides the bees there's plenty of Bigger Animals and Quirky NPCs on your journey to contend with! On drivethru now for $5.99!



There's really nothing to this. Hoplite-bees, dragon-bees, nano-bees, junkyard-bees, chrono-bees, a child could do this stuff.

Maxwell Lord posted:

I get Sage Genesis' complaint: a lot of times I'll read a review of some "Weird Fantasy" or OSR product that's basically "It sure is weird! 10/10!" Like this was the thing about Carcosa, apart from the really sick stuff it's "this hex has 3d10 shoggoths ridden by Purple Men" and this very dry presentation, but the content was strange so it could not be questioned.

Cease to Hope posted:

Halloween Jack posted:

The defense of the spells is that they're meant to be adventure seeds, not necessarily used by the PCs. But they typically involve stuff like gathering ingredients that are spread all over the entire world. So they're more like campaign seeds, and the rules for random encounters are so deadly that the party probably die long before they cross the map.

gradenko_2000 posted:

There was also a lot of gross-out sex stuff in Carcosa.

Halloween Jack posted:

Well yes, it should go without saying that "It's not for the PCs to use!" is not an excuse to write dozens of rape/murder fantasies into an RPG.

Liquid Communism posted:

A lesson the Exalted team never learned.

Halloween Jack posted:

Well yes, it should go without saying that "It's not for the PCs to use!" is not an excuse to write dozens of rape/murder fantasies into an RPG.

Covok posted:

If this is the wrong thread, correct, but I think I'm ready to go to Kickstarter on a Tabletop RPG project.

What do y'all think?

Is this the wrong place to ask?

Ettin posted:

I'm by no means a KS expert, but I did have done a couple campaigns, so:

• How much $ do you need? Did you budget for 1000 USD? IME you should figure out how much you'll need (including KS fees), then add half that again as a buffer in case something comes up.
  
• $1 for the playtest packet is a great idea—I did that for Retrocausality and some people backed for the text, read it, and upped their pledge after. It might be a good idea to also say the $1 tier is for people who just want to see updates for now—I do this all the time so I can get emails and usually up my pledge based on what I see.
  
• This load of KS advice links collected by Fred Hicks helped me, though some of it is more board game related IIRC.
  
• Be prepared to describe how DriveThruRPG's print on demand system works a million times because it is weird. I found that if you make it clear that people still save money by backing they just roll with it since that's the important thing
  
• There are two ways to advertise on RPGnet: Starting a thread in the ad forum, or waiting until someone else starts a discussion thread in the general forum. Starting a discussion thread for your own game is usually viewed as advertising and frowned on these days but if someone else starts it (and they're not obviously starting it on your behalf) you should be fine.
  

Azran posted:

There can never be enough anime in the world, according to my anime-loving friends.

Covok posted:

That's another thing: how much can I say before I invite legal trouble? It's inspired by some copyrighted series. How close can I get? What can I say or not say before I get a throatful of lawyer?

blackmongoose posted:

Anyone who can give you a detailed and accurate answer to this question probably won't do so without being paid. In terms of general non-legal advice, you should probably err on the side of caution since regardless of the actual legality, if a company goes through the effort to send you nasty messages it's unlikely you'll have the money to do anything but shut down your project.

gradenko_2000 posted:

You seem to have covered a lot of the main points, but I will throw in that you want to build an aufience for your game BEFORE you launch the KS, and that you will want to devote the KS period to nothing but marketing for it.

slap me and kiss me posted:

This is sage advice for any project. Covok, if you don't have an audience already, you should delay your launch and spend a few months running playtests on different forums and stuff.

Covok posted:

Hmm, that is an interesting idea. I was thinking of recording either an audio only or video playtest for marketing and, reading over Sandbox #1, I probably should consider doing layout myself so I need some time to learn and master indesign. So, I guess I should try that. That way I can get some free quotes and opinions I can use as well as people who will sell the game for me.

Honestly ,this is a great idea!

slap me and kiss me posted:

Glad you like it. One thing I've noticed when pitching my stuff is that people often ask for examples of play - logs and videos, not concept examples.

If you can manage, try to record a session or two in several different mediums. That'll lower barriers to access and let peeps see your system run in a manner that's convenient to them.