Timewatch by Kevin Kulp
Pelgrane Press has come out swinging with another major kickstarter. This time its is Timewatch, the investigative GUMESHOE game of time travelling agents sent into the chronsphere to put right the time-stream and face off against giant, radioactive cockroaches called Ezeru. What's not to love?
I'm a big GUMESHOE and Pelgrane Press fan, so there was never any question about whether or not I would back this. However I'm particularly keen on what seemed to be the slightly simplified approach to the game, which I believe will work really well at cons and the like. I'm already seriously thinking about pitching some for Kapcon in 2015.
You can immediately get access to the Jurassic (playtest) edition of the rules once you pledge, so take a look for yourself. I must confess I have only skimmed through them it to date, but from what I seen, I like it very much.
Tales of the Crescent City by Oscar Rios
Tales of the Crescent City promises dark things with a set of scenarios for Call of Cthulhu set in New Orleans, which I have also backed.
Playing or running a Call of Cthulhu campaign in New Orleans is something I have always had a hankering to do. With it's strong French and Caribbean influence, fascinating hsitory and unique musical sound, it is in many ways the perfect foil to Lovecraft's WASPish New England.
I'm particularly pleased to see a follow-up the The Great Old Ones's 'Tell Me, Have You Seen The Yellow Sign?' which is one of my favourite scenarios from that collection.
I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what kinds of awful adventures I can wreck on my players with this set of scenarios.
Angels and Automatons: a shared-world steampunk anthology edited by Stephen Minchin
Closer to home, I have also backed this collection of steam-punk tales, intriguingly set in the fictionalised town of Angelston on New Zealand’s rugged and remote West Coast.
Featuring writers from both New Zealand and abroad, including some locals connected to the Wellington gaming scene, I'm very interested to see how the standard steam-punk tropes will be applied in a historical New Zealand context. It's also a chance to support local creative talent, which I always try to do.
This project out of all the ones I am backing looks in most danger of failing to meet its target, so get behind it if you can to make this project a reality
I'm using the slightly different Patreon service to provide on-going support to Quinn Murphy's quest to bring interesting RPGs with a strong African-American voice to life.
In Five Fires, the players take on the role of members of a hip-hop crew dealing with the problems of life while trying to make it big. I love the pitch of this game (in the same way I love Umlaut), so I'm very keen to read the play-test document and see what interesting things Quinn has come up with.
I also like the idea of broadening the diversity within our hobby and finding ways to help empower that process.
By using Patreon, I'm also supporting future work by Quinn, which sounds equally exciting:
"Five Fires is in my sites now, but it won't be long before I'm working on an Afrocentric fantasy game, or building a game about Double Dragon."It's very exciting to see so many interesting products being developed. As always, the problem will be trying to find time to play them all.
