DFRPG Monsters 2 and reprint of the Box set on Kickstarter now!

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

For those that Just Won't Do Facebook (and many have told me such explicitly in various places):

I apologize to those people. Nobody I know in the flesh refuses to use Facebook, so I generally assume FB is universal.

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I'd suggest reading this a few times sharing it with your GURPSy friends.

I also made a comment on my own post, which I feel is equally worth sharing:

Even if you're thinking something like "I love GURPS, but not fantasy," "Where's GURPS Vehicles?", "Eh, I mostly liked GURPS Traveller," "Whatever happened to GURPS WWII?", or "I'm a Transhuman Space player," it is in your interest to support this campaign!

Big, thick books . . . costly licences . . . expansive settings . . . These things are expensive. Kickstarter might offer us a way to pay the price.

If a campaign for a game in the single strongest genre in all of roleplaying doesn't take off, though, we're not likely to risk anything else.

Translation: The flaw of generic, universal systems in the current gaming climate is that each part (subsystem, genre book, setting, etc.) appeals to only a subset of the game's customers, meaning it's hard for any one thing to achieve critical mass. Survival of generic, universal systems is contingent on people occasionally supporting even the parts they don't find appealing. Not every fan of a generic, universal system is going to be a fan of dungeon-crawling fantasy, but that is the hobby's #1 genre, so if gamers aren't willing to make an exception for it, then we must assume they aren't willing to make any exceptions.

[Ulairi]

I shared the project on a CRPG forum I participate in that focuses on the old dungeon crawls of yore, think Wizardry, Might & Magic, Eye of the Beholder, Mordor, Demise, Lands of Lore, etc etc. Maybe there will be some crossover with folks that like dungeon crawling CRPGs in addition to table top games.

[philreed]

NOTE: Negative opinions of various sites, forums, and other forms of communication are unnecessary to this thread. If you don't use X, that's great. Please keep it to yourself.

[DouglasCole]

The Citadel at Nordvorn has funded.

Thanks everyone! Like I've said elsewhere, this is a huge relief and now I can start art direction with confidence.

There's enough latent "followed not backed" to make the final total over $24,000 if folks all pitch. So now we're pushing stretch goals.

Also: while this is awesome and we're all superior people with much charisma, don't forget to keep promoting the Boxed Set:

Back Monsters 2. Tell your friends to back Citadel. There are also two more Norðlond adventures coming out from Gaming Ballistic later this year that are already being written: The Dragons of Rosgarth, and Forest's End.

But we need to MAKE this happen. Blow through stretch goals. Hit up your FLGS and get them to order Retail levels. Putting product on shelves in this "all 5e, all the time" environment is rowing upstream, but we can do it.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Ulairi

I shared the project on a CRPG forum I participate in that focuses on the old dungeon crawls of yore, think Wizardry, Might & Magic, Eye of the Beholder, Mordor, Demise, Lands of Lore, etc etc. Maybe there will be some crossover with folks that like dungeon crawling CRPGs in addition to table top games.

Many, many thanks!

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by RPGFan

I posted and share it allready on my FB account.
I also asked my local gaming Store here in Germany and my favourite Online Shop if they would sign the "Retailer Pledge" (?). At least both wants to support the project.

Thank you – especially for contacting shops!

[Tom H.]

Originally Posted by philreed

NOTE: Negative opinions of various sites, forums, and other forms of communication are unnecessary to this thread. If you don't use X, that's great. Please keep it to yourself.

Wow, maybe I missed a deleted post.

I can understand not disparaging another site, but I would have thought it would have been helpful for the community to know where people prefer to "hang out."

[philreed]

Originally Posted by Tom H.

I can understand not disparaging another site, but I would have thought it would have been helpful for the community to know where people prefer to "hang out."

Feel free to say "I'm X at site Y!" No problems there. However, if posting "I don't use Y because blah, blah, blah" . . . then please don't post.

There's a big difference between "check out this thing I posted on Instagram" and "I don't use Instagram because they promote the creation of black holes."

[Stripe]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Translation: The flaw of generic, universal systems in the current gaming climate is that each part (subsystem, genre book, setting, etc.) appeals to only a subset of the game's customers, meaning it's hard for any one thing to achieve critical mass. Survival of generic, universal systems is contingent on people occasionally supporting even the parts they don't find appealing. Not every fan of a generic, universal system is going to be a fan of dungeon-crawling fantasy, but that is the hobby's #1 genre, so if gamers aren't willing to make an exception for it, then we must assume they aren't willing to make any exceptions.

During the late 1980's, early 1990's, my role playing crew—school yard geeks and social castaways—didn't have a lot of friends. I was a "cool kid" back then; I was tall and popular and played sports, chased skirts, got in fist fights out by the bike rack, all that stuff. However, none of the other "cool kids" I hung out with at school liked anything even close to D&D, so I secretly gathered a group of nerds together. This might not make its way into the idealistic, made-for-TV movie version of my life, but we all understood without me having to say it that my "nerd friends" were not to act like my "real friends" in school.

I was friends with them then not because I wanted to be nice to outcasts, but because they were the type of kids who enjoyed D&D.

Together, in our youth, we explored the fantasy worlds of our imagination. Bullies, mean girls, callous teachers, (abusive) parents—those were monsters in the real world and maybe we couldn't always beat them. But, in fantasy, we could win any battle.

Then, the real world threatened our fantasy. The Satanic Panic struck. Almost all of the parents of our lives were reasonable and well-meaning adults. Some weren't. Some were downright abusive in ways that still disgust me now as a 38-year-old adult.

Back then, to those kids, I wasn't just the Dungeon Master, I was their leader. They looked up to me in a way that only kids can look up to other kids.

One of my group had a problem. He was quiet and shy, very socially awkward, tall but overweight, occasionally smelled bad, wore huge tinted pop-bottle glasses, and whereas my parents were rich, his were dirt poor. He wore the same two pairs of sweat pants, one black, one blue, to school way too often.

Because of this insanity sweeping the nation, he wasn't going to be able to play D&D any longer. You can imagine how beside himself he was at just the thought of losing his only friends. We all knew the only reason we hung out was because of D&D. That's all we did together. He asked me to talk to his mom for him. Can you imagine one eighth grader asking another eighth grader to talk to one of his parents on his behalf?

She was white and pasty, smelled weird, nasty black hair, horrifically disgusting woman with way too many cats. That house, I still remember it. Dark and dank. Bare hardwood floors. You can imagine the smell. Two-story Victorian, but no one was allowed upstairs. She thought I was great, but she made my skin crawl. She was over-the-top nice to me (but none of the others) on the rare occasion I was around. It was so cringey. When my friend was at his father's house, I went over and knocked on the door. She answered and invited me inside. I told her I heard my friend couldn't hang out any longer. She did, to her credit, admit that was true and said why: the evils of Dungeons & Dragons. Came right out and said it.

Without agreeing, I told her we would never play D&D again. We were already done with it, in fact. No, we had heard about the Satanic rituals and that stuff and stopped playing. We were now playing a different game entirely: GURPS. It was about space ships and lasers and stuff. Played it on the table with pieces just like a board game. I showed her the book. She was skeptical, but I invited her to watch us play. We'd have the next session on the kitchen table, if she would allow it. She agreed.

Of course, after a quick two-hour BS session that was just for show, everything was right as rain.

I kept my word. We never went back to D&D.

Skip forward more than 20 years and that boy grew up to be a man who let me live with he and his wife and son in the upstairs of his very, very nice house for two years, no charge at all, as I went to college out of state. He's a physician assistant and his wife is nurse practitioner.


GURPS has had a profoundly positive effect on my life.

I'm very sorry to hear that my hobby is once again threatened.

I'll try to get the word out.

Thank you, Mr. Punch, for hanging in there. I hope your vacation goes well and that you return to happily lead GURPS for many more years to come.

[Proteus]

If the campaign reaches $40,000 but doesn't attain $85,000, then we get a book published with the baseline 48 pages... but what happens to the 16 pages of unattained stretch goals?

Do they become the nucleus of Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 3 a year from now? Do they become an additional, short PDF released on the first Thursday of some month along the way?

I'm pretty sure SJ Games will find some use for already-written and -laid-out material, but I'm also somewhat worried that the current funding trajectory may not hit the marks past the baseline.