TG Crowdfunding Thread 3: Far West has been released. That's not a joke.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Crowdfunding Thread 3: Far West has been released. That's not a joke.

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That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

StarkRavingMad posted:

No real surprise but it hit funding goal like, instantly. Expect it to hit all of its stretch goals pretty easily. It looks solid enough, I backed at the base level since I'm a sucker for CTG's stuff as well as Elder Scrolls. I'll decide on addons and Valenwood later.

I had added this to my list because it did sound interesting, but then I saw the price tag for the base pledge is $195 (including shipping, although I'm not sure if the fees had already been calculated). That seems like...a lot. I am up for being sold on this if it's good enough though.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2023 21:43

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 15:58

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

CODChimera posted:

yeah same. i'm probably deciding between this and townsfolk tussle...

Since this is a second edition, has anyone tried the first one? Looking at BGG, a lot of people have marked it as "not recommeded" for 2 people and I'm not sure why that would be the case for something that looks like a boss battler?

# ¿ Mar 29, 2023 10:05

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

StarkRavingMad posted:

They did a pretty extensive Q&A and a playthrough/teach stream this morning, so you can always check that it and see if it seems like it's for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTMdjAY8t2A (It's like 5 hours long, but you can just jump around a bit in it or whatever).

For sure it's for folks who are into CTG's particular type of component excess. I've been pretty happy with their games and they've generally been worth it for me, with the exception of Cloudspire which I didn't really dig (but resold for most of the purchase price). The tactile nature of the stuff is definitely a big selling point, and different people are going to care about that more or less.

Having a quick look at the video and it becomes immediately clear why the box is so expensive (considering shipping is included, but VAT is not) when they talk about one of the first stretch goals.

They say "we already had 2 version of each character race (one male, one female) but what if you both want to play the same race+gender???" So you have four copies of each character's material (sheet, token, etc) with different art and identical content otherwise, for each race :v:

# ¿ Mar 29, 2023 18:40

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Kerro posted:

I played it a bunch (and have played most other boss battlers to some extent as well) and I'm guessing it means that it's not recommended with two characters rather than 2 players. You would definitely want to play 2 characters each if you were playing with 2 people as like most of these games, it's really most balanced around having 4 player characters and anything more or less skews the balance and the feel of the game to some extent. In particular, the already high-luck nature of the gameplay would be dramatically amplified with only two characters where a few bad rolls or a bad hit could seriously ruin your game. More characters = more dice rolls = a more even distribution.

If you don't mind doing that, it's a pretty fun game with a super-cool art-style and about the only game of its type that you can play in a single session. I eventually sold my copy because I like the super-deep ultra-crunchy campaign style games for a boss battler and I found that without all the extra gear building and character development, and the simpler boss AI in TT, the game could end up feeling like a lot of just rolling dice and hoping for the best. That said, there's a good amount of variety between the different bosses, characters, gear and terrain to last a long time and I think the flaws would be far less obvious to someone who hadn't put hundreds of hours into other boss battler games.

Thanks! The art style does look lovely, how long does a session take? BGG has a very wide estimate at 40�200 Min. The other thing I'm a bit hesitant about is the fact that the KS does not mention VAT at all, so I'm not sure if the price+shipping is going to be inflated by that. I would be disappointed if I ended up paying �150+ for a $100 box.

I guess I'll have to decide between this and Guards of Atlantis 2nd ed (which apparently has rules for 2P).

# ¿ Mar 31, 2023 09:23

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

^^^^ Thanks!

Has anyone has a chance to see some gameplay/try Galactic Renaissance? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/matagot/galactic-renaissance

It looks like a worker placement/engine builder, from the designer of Inis. The intro video is very light on the rules themselves, though I think it's funny that it mentions that you have to have a "power turn" (by scoring 10VP in a single round) to win the game.

That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Mar 31, 2023

# ¿ Mar 31, 2023 10:00

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Yeah I would assume it would be like playing GH solo or something like that since you end up playing multiple characters, I presume.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2023 09:55

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Jimbozig posted:

Two days left on Hellrunners!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jimbozig/hellrunners

Got it, thanks!

# ¿ Apr 15, 2023 21:27

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

CitizenKeen posted:

What makes it very cool? The art looks slamming, and the layout looks best in class, which are selling points. But nothing about the setting speaks to me that isn't in my head already as a childhood SNES owner. How rules light is it?

From a quick look at the KS it looks lightweight and abstract, which makes the massive page count somewhat weird, even if it's a "one book in three" kind of deal compared to something like 5e. The main items that piqued my interest are:
- opposed rolls: you have to roll below your skill value, but above the opponent's roll to win;
- point-crawl wilderness exploration system;
Everything else seems very simple/already seen, at least from what's described in the KS.

Dawgstar, since the production cycle has been this long, do you know if this has been playtested to hell and back? From a quick glance I'm not sure why I would pick this over Icon, unless I want something less crunchy. There are some quotes from ENNIE winner/nominees in support of it though, so maybe there's more than meet the eyes that just great production values.

Edit: there's some stuff about the game on the official YouTube, haven't watched it yet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtPn4mQhIoM

That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Apr 17, 2023

# ¿ Apr 17, 2023 14:28

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

It definitely feels like something that has been in development for 10 years - as in, some elements feel fresh and new and some a bit stale, and they are sitting side by side. In the chargen video, you can almost carbon date certain rules/design choices to the specific period in which certain elements were popular design choices.

It feels like a work of love, overproduced the way Gloomhaven is (IE: a ton of content in a giant box - almost everything has bespoke art for it), but it also feels like a bit unfocused at times (the way DnD approaches its simulation-adjacent aspects, aka: I had an idea for this specific thing, let's add rules about it) or unnecessarily bloated (IE: one species darkvision has a paragraph to specify that it doesn't have the same penalty for daylight that the other species darkvision has. You can see that this is the result of someone having that question while testing, but you can't just leave this kind of notes in a proer technically written book - you just have the darkvision that gives disadvantage mention it, or you mention it in the other one. Otherwise you get a 500 page rulebook).

That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Apr 17, 2023

# ¿ Apr 17, 2023 18:50

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

dwarf74 posted:

So the Return to Dark Tower RPG pdf just dropped.

Regardless of anything else, I find something about the layout almost hostile, and the font-changing baffling. Like, it feels very amaterish somehow.

Edit - like, here's a page. Maybe it's the worst one? No idea.

That is...definitely a formatting choice.

By the way, regardless of my previous comments, I've backed Break!! at a physical level. It feels like the book is going to be a good item from a production point of view no matter what, so let's roll this dice.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2023 16:32

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Mouzer posted:

Note that they are also charging another 75ish bucks for shipping on top of that. After charging 60 in 2021. The product does not yet exist.

Im on this ride, and while i really really wanted the physical game, they can eat my whole rear end asking for the entire pledge amount again.

This looks entirely like a dine and dash. Looks like im going to have to carve up the tts mod and pnp it myself.

I got the base pledge on a whim and taxes+shipping was already �30+ on a �60 pledge. I haven't been billed for more on Gamefound, nor did I receive an additional request for funds. Happy I ignored that Darkest Dubgeon mail bombing during the holidays, I guess. I think this is only the second time I got burned (and it looks like the unofficial Heroquest 25th anniversary is going to get made in the end) so can't complain given the amount of crap I ended up backing over the years...

# ¿ May 1, 2023 23:00

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

In this specific case, there's also a recognisable name behind the project. Mythic has been around for almost 10 years and they have 13 projects on Kickstarter, all of them big box games like this one.

Companies go broke all the time, especially in a recession and especially if their product is niche, but it wasn't something to be expected as a strong possibility at the time the project was launched - inherent dangers of KS notwithstanding.

# ¿ May 3, 2023 08:08

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Liquid Communism posted:

Not sure why nobody'd consider it likely, we've seen any number of former big name companies in the TTRPG space implode over a bad product dev cycle or two.

What I meant is that there were no warning signs about Mythic, specifically, being on the brink at the time (about 2 years ago). Backing one of their KS now would be rife with red flags instead.

# ¿ May 3, 2023 09:51

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Not sure if there has been any chance to do this at this point, but was anyone able to try the new game from Travis/Indie Board&Cards? It looks like a reimplementation of Aeon's End, which I enjoyed, but I'm trying to figure out what's different and if it's enough to justify buying in.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ibcgames/astro-knights-eternity

# ¿ May 4, 2023 12:05

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

armorer posted:

I skipped the first kickstarter for it because I had (and still have) a bunch of unplayed Aeon's End content. The Astro Knights base game is on Amazon now, and there are several new (last few months) reviews of it on BGG if you want to see more than just the initial reviews. I am interested in it, and may pick it up at some point, but Aeon's End is keeping me entertained for the time being so if I bought Astro Knights it would just sit on a shelf.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/352179/astro-knights

Thanks everyone, it looks like I'm going to skip this. If the base game is already out there are cheaper ways for me to get it if I changed my mind compared to 20-30� shipping on KS. I may try this in Essen later this year, but I also have still leftover AE content to play.

# ¿ May 4, 2023 16:04

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

JoeRules posted:

I passed on the first Kickstarter, but started FOMOing once it started to show up to folks, so I nabbed the game from Boardlandia and the expansion from Amazon.

It passes the test for "AE but quicker setup" with flying colors. But in my eyes, it flips the script a bit - where AE was mostly a 2p game (or 2-handed solo, or occasionally a 3p game), I feel like this game leans a lot on "help your buddies out", and is punishingly short for 2p, so it feels best at 3 or 4.

I really dig the tech ability to spend money to fire a card's effect once, then shuffle to the bottom, as it gives an easy option when otherwise 2 money is useless.

Past that, I'm a little sour that the pitch for Astro Knights was "we learned a lot over 7 boxes of AE, so we wanted to start fresh with a bunch of cool poo poo we learned!" and then the first box is basically JUST the "short setup" and this 2nd box is "here's the poo poo we learned!" There's also not any reason why the expedition mode from years ago wasn't in the first box, but is in this one.

Speaking of Fomo, guess who's banking on that (plus people not knowing what's up right now):

quote:

Enjoy these amazing prices ...

Don't wait too long because some stocks are already very low ...

These products are now officially "limited edition" 😉

We'll be talking to you soon.

All the best my friend,

Mythic Games Team

On an email about 50% sales :v:

# ¿ May 5, 2023 08:46

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

It's time for reimplementations I guess: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/direwolfdigital/clank-legacy-2-acquisitions-incorporated-darkest-magic

What's the thread consensus on Clank: Legacy?

# ¿ May 5, 2023 13:05

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

In surprising news, 6: Siege has received more than 150% of what they were asking for in voluntary contributions.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1162110258/6-siege-the-board-game/posts/3806053

# ¿ May 12, 2023 17:58

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

The Eyes Have It posted:

Sixty-odd bucks for base game seems ridiculously cheap for that campaign. I suppose that's partly why it went the way it did.

Yeah I only backed the base set cause it felt like a really good bang for your bucks. They were probably banking on a lot more people going deep in the very high tiers. I recently backed the Lancer: the Videogame KS and the author had a very detailed breakdown of the whole campaign, including all the nitty gritty details we are not normally made aware of. In her case the higher number of backers was for the base tier, the "veteran" tier had less backer but procured slightly more funding and the very top tiers had a very low backer count but accounted for almost 1/4 of the whole funding.

# ¿ May 13, 2023 18:18

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

I think it was on the Eldritch Lorecast that I've heard about a company doing a $1mil+ on KS and someone commenting ,"that's great, we are ruined" - because of the way the backers were skewed towards certain less profitable tiers instead of the majority going for a digital only pledge.

# ¿ May 14, 2023 11:29

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Echophonic posted:

Anyone end up springing for Break!!? Looked kind of interesting and it's in the last two days. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/576526373/break-a-trpg-inspired-by-classic-videogames-and-anime

I got the physical tier reward. It feels like a good bang for your bucks, given the amount of content/art you get. Tbh, Icon is probably a better Break than Break - and it's free to booth, at least in PDF format, on itch.io.

# ¿ May 16, 2023 14:47

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Mmm Dead Cells is made by Scorpion Masque, so it may be interesting.

# ¿ May 16, 2023 18:27

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Joeno posted:

Considering the RPG cards are $50 for what appears to be a comparable amount of contents, it really does feel like it's there to keep the existing playerbase happy.

Speaking of...I haven't followed the RPG news too much, but as I understand it, you play the classes using cards ala GH. Can you use GH 1.0 cards if you have them (even if I guess the RPG ones use the updated ones), or are the cards a must have to play? I back a shitton of RPG stuff, but it's usually at the digital tier. Not sure if I would have to go for the physical tier for this one not to miss on the default gameplay, though.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2023 09:15

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Joeno posted:

Based on the campaign, there are RPG-specific cards - neither GH 1.0 or second edition cards work, you need the separate $50 set (or the deluxe $90 set) to play. I don't think a digital edition is available.

Can you even play the game without the cards? I mean, is the content of the cards in the digital release so that you can proxy them? I would expect so, given Isaac's generosity with digital files in general, but you never know :v:

# ¿ Jun 21, 2023 09:43

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

dwarf74 posted:

So I'll tell you what - I was super hopeful about Backerkit but it's honestly got a lot of work to do before it's a serious contender.

The biggest issue for me is that it's inexplicably hard to find the newest updates - you have to go to a community tab (which anyone can post new threads on - more on this in a bit) and then go through a filter and a sort to lift the newest updates to the top. Otherwise the top results will be random people asking questions or starting arguments. Imagine if the Kickstarter updates and comments were merged into one tab and that's basically what it is, but somehow worse.

It seems like their priority is to be more social media than crowdfunding. Otherwise I simply can't explain the "Check out these top threads!" digests which contain links to old updates and - potentially - troll posts that happened to get some engagement.

It's rough, goons. Still got a ways to go.

I usually check this https://www.backerkit.com/projects/trending/games?page=1 once a week or so, I miss some indie stuff but I almost always manage to notice the big stuff, including KS projects that are going to be fullfilled on Backerkit.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2023 21:11

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Dawgstar posted:

It was brought to my recollection that Petersen had a friendly chat with Varg Vikernes on Twitter and also followed people like Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager. So just all the rakes.

Not on par of course, but on the matter of personal hygiene I once was at a table where Petersen was mastering a session of CoC and he couldn't stop spitting inside a small water bottle. Non stop, for hours, like it was an old wild west spittoon.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2023 15:36

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

90s Cringe Rock posted:

a lance of urbies could take cthulhu

An unarmed boat can take Cthulhu canonically, so the bar is kinda low.

E: the boat is probably faster on land too.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2023 18:33

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Jarvisi posted:

Jeez. I really want to play but that's pricy as gently caress

Yeah 40$ for a pdf is MCDM rates.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2023 13:01

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Molrok posted:

I've backed Oathsworn, Gloomhaven 2.0, Frosthaven and The Isofarian Guard by now.

I can make myself a home gym once they all get here

Can't speak about the other two, but X-havens are kind of the opposite of the super bloated KS the guy from NPI was complaining about. They are massive boxes, yeah, but they are so dense with actual game that, if Isaac was Fantasy Flight (or almost any other developer, really), those boxes would have been split in a core and like 10+ expansions.

EDIT: to the point that it kind of spoiled me when it comes to big budget/boxes crowfunded games, if you count price in "I could get X Gloomhavens for that amount".

That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 10:55 on Sep 28, 2023

# ¿ Sep 28, 2023 10:52

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

rydiafan posted:

Cohorts Cthulhu Kickstarter is live.. They have a link to download quickstart rules, which is nice.

I hadn't realized until now that Doug Seacat was the writer on this. His world building was the best part of Privateer Press back when he worked for them, so I'm double excited for this now.

Is there any additional info on the 3 extra pdfs? I am wondering how many adventures are included in the 20� and the 40� pledges.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2023 18:51

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

JazzFlight posted:

Boom, you got super close with that one. Why would they name that �Flaming Bite� if all things? So lazy.

Plot twist: the names are also AI generated.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2023 20:07

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Crossposting from the Dungeons and Dragons thread, this is a campaign I have worked on as a freelancer and it is just launching!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lionbanner/hellwatch-rpg-infernal-oath

It's a Tier 1 to 3, 5e dark fantasy campaign and setting; I have helped design and punch-up the monster stat blocks, items, spells and custom classes for it. There is a free pdf sample (and I have asked the author to expand it a bit, so you may get more free stuff soon).

If nothing else, go check it out for a free fun statblock for a small, swarming undead monster that hunts by sound and covers you in toxic drool.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2023 17:52

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

That Italian Guy posted:

Crossposting from the Dungeons and Dragons thread, this is a campaign I have worked on as a freelancer and it is just launching!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lionbanner/hellwatch-rpg-infernal-oath

It's a Tier 1 to 3, 5e dark fantasy campaign and setting; I have helped design and punch-up the monster stat blocks, items, spells and custom classes for it. There is a free pdf sample (and I have asked the author to expand it a bit, so you may get more free stuff soon).

If nothing else, go check it out for a free fun statblock for a small, swarming undead monster that hunts by sound and covers you in toxic drool.

Quoting since it ended up at the bottom of last page right after posting it :v:

# ¿ Oct 10, 2023 20:16

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

dwarf74 posted:

The Monty Python rpg pdf dropped and uh it sure is something. I'm reasonably sure there's an rpg in here among the um... layout.

It's beautiful. The layout fits the theme. It's hurting my eyes and actively hostile to reading. I wish I had a plain text version.

EDIT - Oh seems like the rules parts are laid out more clearly. So far. That's good.

Edit 2 - I take it back. The bulk of the book is fine and perfectly readable. Sorry.

I had originally backed this at a physical tier, but I decided to cancel before the end of the campaign. I was afraid it was going to be some kind of novelty item on my shelf more than anything else...

# ¿ Oct 29, 2023 22:08

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Bumping this as there is only a week left and the author has managed to include a Roll20 Pledge tier that was not available when I first posted about it. I have worked on this as a freelance designer, punching up monster stats, items, etc. I'm not really getting any extra money based on pledges/sales, but I think there's some very nice art/maps/design and I would of course like to see people play something I have helped creating.

That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Nov 2, 2023

# ¿ Nov 1, 2023 12:06

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Leperflesh posted:

So, I'm inclined to believe that someone at Palladium looked at a dusty old psych manual as a source, but I feel like that's a pretty flimsy excuse for what you see here, especially by the 1980s.

Looking forward for the new D&D edition to have a Frenologist subclass for the Artificer.

In actual news, the MCDM still unnamed RPG is coming to crowdfunding soon - about a month from now: https://mcdm.gg/RPG (redirects to the "remind me" page on Backerkit).

# ¿ Nov 5, 2023 09:34

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Leperflesh posted:

There are plugins in photoshop for example that let you fill in background and copy elements and generate them using the built-in AI. So we are now living in a time when artists, doing art, may incorporate AI into their process, potentially without telling their customer/employer. That does not mean I think company did or did not use AI art, but I think we're increasingly going to have these cases where people pore over details in images to try and sus out whether it's all hand drawn or if any of it is machine-assisted. And that kind of sucks for everyone. It would be better for all of these companies to just adopt explicit policies, whatever they're going to be, so that customers can make an informed choice.

Failing to answer questions or make any kind of policy statement will also be increasingly unacceptable to those who care about keeping machine-generated content out of their purchases. Regardless of whether you think the Dragon Eclipse thing specifically does or doesn't use 100% real artist hand made artwork, their failure to respond so far is reasonably suspicious that folks can and will draw conclusions from it.

I think AI powered tools are going to become a standard asset for any digital artists and that there is nothing inherently wrong with them when used in this way - if you go back enough, you get the same discussion with features like auto colour balance or other things that are clearly not possible with a non digital medium. I also think that using AI art as a tool to generate inspiration is going to be normalized, the same way you would now GIS a subject to draw inspiration from.

There is a discussion to be had there, and even more if you go into the gray-ish area of AI generated art being reworked by a human artist.

These examples, though, seem to be straight up AI. Why wouldn't they fix the chain link in the picture above, if they had an artist to work on this? It's an easy fix.

The fact that they own their crowdfunding platform and are still being silent about their policy is a big indicator that, even if they do not use AI art themselves, they at least tacitly endorse the practice.

They are not a small one gamedev indie company on their first project, they are a massive publishing house and they own a crowdfunding platform. I am cancelling my Nemesis backing today.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2023 08:46

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Grey Hunter posted:

I would say, crowdfunding is an example of where AI could be used - but in a "I need money to hire an artist, but I don't want this page to be a wall of text. So here is some AI art to give you an idea." way.

There should be definitely be a stretch goal "if we get enough money I will hire an artist for the project", but of course we are talking small projects (like sub $5k or the like) where there could feasibly not be enough money to cover that expense unless there is - which is a way crowdfunding allows you to provide additional benefits based on the level of funding. That was the basic idea behind stretch goals originally :v:

# ¿ Nov 28, 2023 09:30

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Jedit posted:

The art and graphic design of a game is fundamental and should be part of the initial goal.

There is a joke to be made here about a certain subset of eurogames :v:

# ¿ Nov 28, 2023 10:24

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 15:58

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

The Bee posted:

Most of what I've seen looks rad as hell, but tbh I'm skeptical about this line:

"Certain NPCs can be negotiated with to get them to change their allegiance or reconsider their actions. (Technically, ANY npc can be negotiated with but there�s usually only one per adventure)"

Negotiation does have a bigger role in the game and there more mechanics to support it compared to the "chat+single dice roll" that ends up being how this is handled in most 5e games. I think that line is just there to underline that, even in traditional dungeon crawl one shots, there is going to be room for negotiations with at least one important NPC - aka: negotiation is going to be important in the game and be present in the official stuff for sure.

The exact mechanics are in a state of constant flux - and tbh I expect most of the game to change its face a bunch of times from now to 2025. The combat is really fun so far.

Edit: the real big news is that this is going to come with its custom built VTT like 4e was supposed to. That could alleviate the slowdowns that 4e games used to experience when running higher evel content. Low level content so far is fairly quicker to run compared to 5e, but as players and monsters get more and more options I could see things getting a bit bogged down if you run everything with just pen and paper.

That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Dec 7, 2023

# ¿ Dec 7, 2023 19:50

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Crowdfunding Thread 3: Far West has been released. That's not a joke.

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