To hell with Dwimmerdork.

It's wrong for the bung nugget who screwed over people in a Kickstarter to get boundless press when there are plenty of RPG Kickstarters which delivered on their promises. The repeated message from the Dwimmerdork Debacle is to avoid RPG Kickstarters and I don't believe that should be the message.

So let's talk about RPG (or other gaming related) Kickstarters that rocked. Let's talk about the guys and gals who delivered a great game, even it was a bit late. Let's talk about the people who kept up great communication and were honest with their patrons and who gave them something that validated the patronage model.

So who are the RPG Kickstarter heroes?

I fucking love my random dungeon generator poster map!

Graham Walmsley delivered great (and on time?) with Stealing Cthulhu - a fantastic tool for kicking new energy and ideas into Cthulhu rpgs.

And even though it came rather f*cking late, I must give it to James Raggi and Vincent Baker, that Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions is a great book. And as it went from a suggested 32-page softcover to a 160 page hardcover I can forgive the lateness. This time. In general I think that KS-projects should just strive to deliver what they promised on time, instead of way late and bigger/expanded.

Here's a couple standouts:

Guide to Glorantha: This one is quite late, but very understandably. The reaction to the kickstarter was so great, they added enough content to require a second book. All that content had to be drawn, written, proof-read, edited, laid out, and that takes time. In the meantime, they've sent out the full text of the guide (repeatedly, as they've added new content), many of the maps, and several pieces of art. I don't have the physical product yet, but based on the PDFs this is already my favourite RPG release of the year.

Spears of the Dawn: Kevin Crawford delivered an amazing book and he did it early.  He did a couple things that were very smart. First, he had the text completed before the kickstarter even launched. Starting out a few steps from the finish line leaves much less time for something to go wrong. Second, he used OneBookShelf for fulfillment. Many of the RPG publishers that wound up stepping on their own dicks after the kickstarter did it during fulfillment.

Reaper Bones! Holy mother of god Reaper Bones!




Loved these guys since I used to order the black and white Ral Partha catalogues in the 80s. Their bones kickstarters are amazing. Want populate an entire megadungeon for under 200 and get figures better looking than Games Workshop's? Goddamn mother-frelling Reaper kickstarters. There's another on right now iirc.

Link?

I feel the obvious one is FATE.

The Traveller one delivered but there is a lot of doubt about the quality of what was delivered, but hey.. Mark Miller did what he said, and you can't complain about the quantity.

Robin Laws did a Dramascape one that delivered, although I am 'meh' about the game, it's lovely and met all it's targets.

Guide to Glorantha will be awesome, I game with the cartgrapher and the output is vast and scarily wonderful.

Spears of the Dawn, hands down. In time and everything (including artwork and layout templates!!!) put under an open license? Crazy, just crazy.

Tenra Bansho Zero and Golden Sky Stories. Great communication and updates, awesome physical product. (I have not the faintest doubt that GSS will be a great physical book when it becomes available.)

Quote from: tzunder;690193Link?

Looks like I was wrong, new one was announced at Gencon on Aug 16th and is supposed to happen "in the fall" sometime, so prob in the next 6 weeks. Highly recommend it.

I was pretty happy with the Blacksand Kickstarter, so happy in fact I went ahead and contributed to Maelstrom Doomsday.

Yeah, Spears of the Dawn had a realistic plan, good communication through the process, and delivered a kickass product in a timely fashion. Money well spent.

I would think Numenera would be listed here as one that rocked.

Does Order of the Stick count?

FATE ramped up a lot in scope, thanks to stretch goals, but had realistic deadlines on each of those, and has delivered. Very well done.

You can totally rely on Kevin Crawford to deliver - Spears of the Dawn to start with. The Tenra Bansho Zero kickstarter has delivered, Golden Sky Stories is going well, and Graham Bottley can be trusted.

Spears of Dawn flew under my radar.  I'll have to pick it up at some point.
 
Reaper Bones and Fate are both awesome.  I did the pdf option for Fate and got a ton of content for $10.
 
Wicked Fantasy by John Wick and Gillian Fraser came out on time, is professionally done and 300 pages of good content.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2006204732/wicked-fantasy
 
I really enjoy my DungeonMorph dice and cards by Inkwell Ideas - the guy who makes Hexographer and a bunch of other cool mapping tools.  Delivery was a bit slow but he communicated constantly so there was never any doubt that he would deliver.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inkwellideas/dungeonmorph-dice-dungeon-geomorphs