There’s many interesting items to be found on Kickstarter, but these are the coolest ones this week.
A Woman with Hollow Eyes
The One Shot podcast is launching a dramatic new twitch stream featuring Invisible Sun from Monte Cook Games. They have Darcy Ross on board to GM and have gotten access to some of the IS materials early in order to start this really awesome new project. In order to help the players have the time they need to immerse themselves into this world, they’re planning on paying everyone involved, which is what this kickstarter will help support. What’s cool is if you contribute you can help direct the direction of the story. You also get access to a bunch of campaign information from Darcy and from the ideas everyone helps contribute. I’m really excited to see this project come to life, and you should check it out.
“We’re taking full advantage of Invisible Sun’s player-driven system by inviting some of Chicago’s most talented performers to join us. Fans of our L5R, Mustang, and Dogs in the Vineyard episodes can look forward to being immersed in a rich surreal setting, replete with suspense, danger, and secrets.
We’re working with Monte Cook Games to bring you A Woman With Hollow Eyes. While this is not an official MCG production, we have the company’s permission and support to launch this unofficial series ahead of the release of Invisible Sun. And our GM is none other then Darcy Ross, the Community Relations Coordinator for Monte Cook Games.
In addition to an early look at many of the innovations in Invisible Sun, viewers of A Woman With Hollow Eyes will be our confidants and co-conspirators, learning secrets and receiving materials about this living setting created between the cast and backers. Higher-tier backers also have the ability to directly impact the story of the game with their ideas. These unofficial materials and secrets can be used alongside canon Invisible Sun lore, or may simply serve as inspiration for your own creations! Together we’ll create a truly beautiful, dramatic actual play that will change the way you play Invisible Sun before you even open The Black Cube.”
The Book of Contemporary Magical Places
I love everything that Stygian Fox Press has put out. This book introduces a huge variety of locations into your game, regardless of system. Their layout makes it easy to see what’s important about the location in a glance. I pick up anything they release without hesitation, so you should give them a chance if you want some amazing inspiration for your game.
“The Book of Contemporary Magical Places is 100 pages of modern, seemingly normal locations that hold magical power. Some are barely noticeable; the Graveyard of Whispers acts as a one-way radio to the dead beneath. Some are powerful places like Jim Tang’s Bar which exists in many space/time bubbles at once enabling patrons to visit a 1920s speakeasy, a punk rock club, a drum and bass club, and a booth bar from 2077 all at once, enabling you to drink a Rheingold™ while listening and dancing to Liquidity with flappers from 1923. A few are extremely powerful, such as Tower Bridge in London, protecting the city and the wider world from extra-dimensional incursion. From a single seat on a bus to multiverse shattering monolithic temples, these places are there for you to use as a Gamesmaster in your modern, horror, sci-fi, or superhero campaigns.
Organised into a pyramid format, the places vary in power from many slight and seemingly harmless effects to a few locations of great power, so dangerous that mere mortals should not be allowed near them.
The sections are entirely systemless so you can alter them to fit in with your rules or setting to your heart’s content. Each entry has an image of the location, a small inset map showing where it is (if it has a single location), and its benefits will be highlighted in green, its dangers in red, and its current location in blue, enabling you to pick up what you need from the entry at a moment’s notice.”
Arcane Scrollworks
Props at the table are really cool, and these scrolls are pretty amazing. The art on them is really cool and evocative. I think they’d make awesome decorations as well as a prop. The ones they are kickstarting currently are popular D&D spells like Hideous Laughter, Sleep, Color Spray, Magic Missile, Detect Magic. Even though I don’t play much D&D I want these just to hang up around my apartment.
“At SkeletonKey Games we love bringing depth, detail, and immersion to RPGs. Arcane Scrollworks: First Level Spells brings spells from popular fantasy RPGs into your games as hand-finished props. Include them in your next treasure haul, gift them to spell casting PCs, or decorate your game room with them. This is our first Arcane Scrollworks campaign and we are starting with eight finely crafted scrolls. Once funded, additional scrolls will be added as “stretch scrolls” and the spells used will be chosen with community input.
The scrolls in this collection are designed, illustrated, and hand finished by artist and SkeletonKey Games founder Ed Bourelle. The scrolls are printed on acid free stock and weathered by the artist. Hand-cut stamps and acrylic paint are used to finish each scroll using archival quality materials. Spell scrolls are between 6.5 to 7 inches wide by 10.5 to 11 inches tall. Size varies by scroll. The Key Scroll is approximately 4 inches wide by 7 inches tall.”
