Myths of Uttarakuru Status Update

It’s been a long time since I’ve talked about the game, mostly because I’ve been really quietly just working on it and doing other projects on the side as well because I’ve been in a prose kick, love writing prose, and prose helps me keep sane. I’ve been going through some life stuff: car broke down, car is mostly fixed (gaskets are bad and so are the plugs actually but it runs), but I don’t have gas to cook and no money for gas so I went out and chopped wood to burn. It’s been a stressful year already. However, I’m still 100% committed despite all the obstacles to get all of this done. And the plan is still the same: you all get a completely free playtest, and I kickstart for pretty art and layout, and add all kinds of new content, including actual printed cards.

Right now, the game is nearing the home stretch. All of the game parts are basically done. What’s left is to finish up the advanced character content (additional stuff like Perks and Talents for characters to expand), and finish up my thorough Adventure Building section (calling it “the GM’s section” is wrong because I want player to read this too), and then write some introductory content for you to use – plots, critters, NPCs and so on. I second-guess myself a lot on gamey-parts, I really want this to come swinging out of the gate with cool lore, and interesting and easy-to-grasp gameplay. I’m trying to set aside that and not let perfect be the enemy of done, but I’m a huge tweaker, and it’s hard not to find things to tweak.

But it’s near done.

There is one section now that is entirely drafted and that’s the Lore section for the World of Uttarakuru. Here is the dropbox link for you to take a look at that. Hopefully you’ll get some enjoyment from it.

Categories: Campaigns, Fluff/Inspiration, Meta, News, Other Systems, RPG, Uttarakuru | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Kickstarters To Watch: Channel A

Those who have followed me for a long time or who routinely see me on social media services know that I am an anime. I may even be a contender for the biggest anime present in tabletop circles. I have gone so far as to write embarrassing old articles about making your games more anime. It is an influence on any genre-related entertainment writing I perform.

This time around we’ve got Channel A, a premise near and dear to the hearts of a lot of anime fans. I’m pretty sure anyone who has watched enough different anime, and seen the almost absurd breadth of topics they take on, such as the animal-eared people in ancient japanese clan warfare found in Utawarerumono; alternate history mecha rebellions in Code Geass; magical transforming girls in Madoka Magica; and seemingly nothing at all in K-On!; and much more, will have thought about their own conceptual mash-ups and how that mash-up would work as an anime.

In Channel A you do this all the time, because the basic premise is that it is a card-based tabletop game where you get the elements of your anime from cards, and have to put them together into a pitch for the producers. Like Cards Against Humanity it’s a simple concept and derives humor from the combinations and interpretations people put together. Unlike Cards Against Humanity you won’t feel depressed after playing it. The funding goal is $10,000 and they’re at $1500 nowYou can even download the game right now in a basic format so you can take a look at it before deciding whether to pledge.

The basic reward tier is the $25 dollar tier that gets you the game and a series of fun little buttons. Even more fun is the Mystery Box, which includes the game, and three exclusive mystery buttons (mystery may vary) for $25 as well. At $65 dollars you’ll get two copies of the game, the buttons, and a series of five custom buttons with your own chibi (small, cutesy, super-deformed characters) character on them. At $250 dollars you’ll get a special DVD for your own custom-made anime, along with two copies of the game, and the usual set of buttons. The DVD will include a 30 second theme song for your anime, and other goodies.

Stretch goals include a funny video with a cat in it (you know you want this), more exclusive cards at $14,000, more buttons at $16,000, and an exciting expansion set of new cards at $18,000, designed by Ewen Cluney in a livestream with the game’s backers. Ewen Cluney is known for the translation of Maid: RPG and the upcoming Golden Sky Stories, and is the creative force behind Channel A. You can check out his blog here. He’s a pretty cool guy.

So if you’re a fan of humorous light-hearted party card games and anime you should definitely give this a look. You could possibly have a K-On! level success on your hands, albeit only in your own imagination.

Categories: Anime, Funhaving, Humor, Kickstarter, News, Other Hobby, Other Systems, Products, RPG | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Home of the Brave Valentine’s Day Sale

Home of the Brave is on sale today for Valentine’s Day! There’s a Heart on the cover after all, representing the Hippie party of Amera! Free love, green energy, and good vibes for all, maaaaan! Get your copy today and see if you can make the Hippie party win the Presidency at your own table. You can get it for only 1.99 instead of 2.99! That saves you a crisp whole dollar you can spend on candy for your valentines. In addition, as part of the festivities, here’s a special Hippie-oriented Political Issue:

The Legalization of Meteor Grass: Seven years ago a small chunk of space debris struck the backyard of an ASAN researcher in an incredible stroke of good luck (for science) and bad luck (for the expensive pagoda she had built in said backyard). The space debris contained several odd plant lifeforms which the scientist quickly drove over to ASAN HQ. Named Meteor Grass, this alien plant life form was cloned and studied extensively, and found to have incredible medicinal properties. However, it had one crippling flaw that caused the Regressive administration of the time to outlaw further research – it made people too happy when they used it. A raging debate has gone on to this day as to whether Meteor Grass should be allowed, carefully controlled, to supplement other drug treatments for various illnesses, in spite of its nefarious happiness-causing properties. The Hippie party strongly supports the legalization of Meteor Grass, while Regressives fear its toxic influence on their taciturn constituents.

Categories: Fluff/Inspiration, Humor, News, Other Systems, Products, RPG | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cutting Out The Armor

Armor is a staple of most tabletop roleplaying games with some kind of combat system. The point of Armor is that you can purchase an item that will passively improve your defense. In D&D Armor improves your Armor Class which makes it harder for enemies to hit you at all in its binary “roll high” resolution system. In Dark Heresy the Imperial Guardsman of the group will be wearing armor that gives around 4 damage reduction – though many weapons in Dark Heresy outright ignore points of armor through their Penetration value, so this more complicated than it sounds. In Exalted, Armor directly reduces points of lethal or bashing damage inflicted on the character, or both at once. There’s many more examples of course. Lately though, I’ve felt kind of down on Armor, and have been looking for ways to remove its presence from my own designs.

Read more »

Categories: 13th Age, Campaigns, D&D 3.5, D&D 4e, Fluff/Inspiration, Legacy D&D, Meta, Other Systems, RPG, Video Games, Warhammer 40k | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment
 
 

RELEASE: Home of the Brave

Greater Spirit Games (me) has just made its first commercial product available for sale on DriveThruRPG. Home of the Brave is available for $2.99. It’s a humble 13-page game based around playing Presidential Candidates in the fictional Republic of Amera. You use cards and 1 ten-sided die in order to roleplay the day-to-day narrative of the campaign trail. Each News Cycle of a game will introduce its own Theme and Political Issue, and the candidates use their playing cards, the political parties they’ve chosen to be part of, and the issue and theme they’re tackling to make humorous political speeches and earn points. At the end of the game there is a final Presidential Debate after which the highest-scoring character wins the Presidency!

The game is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND so you can share it with your game group, but every copy helps support me and my future endeavors. Every little $2.99 counts at this point! In addition, buying through DTRPG will keep you up to the minute on any Errata I have to issue or content updates, delivered absolutely free with your purchase. So if you’ve ever wanted more of my whacky ideas in a small purchasable package, now’s your chance. May the 24-hour news cycle be with you!

Categories: Fluff/Inspiration, Funhaving, Humor, Meta, News, Other Hobby, Other Systems, Products, RPG | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Kickstarters To Watch: Highlights

I normally only cover one product on my Kickstarter posts, and always one that I can write a little bit about or touches me personally in a way that gets me going. There are a lot of kickstarters than interest me and might have gone under people’s radars but that for one reason or another I’m not able to write full posts on each of them, usually because the products are very simple and speak for themselves. So I thought I’d round them all up in one post and write a little bit about them. It’s not that I don’t like them, after all – but I don’t think I could write 500 words on each of them alone! You deserve to know about them nonetheless.

Tavern Cards: Tavern Cards it a product of Chaotic Shiny‘s Hannah Lipsky, long-time maker of Random Generators for RPGs. This time you can help her kickstart a random generator for taverns in the form of a deck of custom playing cards, fully playable in your favorite standard card games like poker, while also containing colorful artwork. By drawing random cards from the deck you can generate a random tavern as explained in the description. $13 gets you a Tavern Deck, $45 gets you a deck and a signed print of one of the cards of your choice by the artist, and for $120 you can be a character on a card! Tavern cards has 14 days to go and is 3/5ths funded, and it’s a simple and interesting idea that I think is quite worth a look.

Thematic Fate Dice: This Kickstarter is essentially for a batch of Fate/Fudge dice that have symbols on the faces instead of just pluses and minuses. I normally use pretty stock dice, but I’ve seen people with all kinds of crazy dice on them that look great. $14 gets you one set of 4 dice, $21 gets you 8 dice, and so on. Most of the pledge levels are different amounts of dice and covering shipping costs. So if you’d like some new dice with colorful faces, you might give this a shot. They’re about halfway funded.

Gnomish Adventurers: I’m not really a Gnome superfan (there is a lot of evidence on twitter of me suggesting gnomes just be thrown out of fantasy games) but even I took notice of these cool-looking Gnome miniatures. The miniatures are already funded, so look to the stretch goals instead: $30 will get you a full set of gnomes, and then some special dice, character sheets and an additional figurine or sprue set. Higher rewards include more sets. Check the page for all the deets.

That’s it for the first batch, if you have any Kickstarters you’d like me to look at, feel free to email me about them. However, I will say that I’ve been getting a lot of requests, and sometimes they really don’t catch my eye. I can’t promise I’ll post about every one, even in these little collections, because sometimes either I’m not interested enough in it, I’d be uncomfortable talking about the project because of my own personal ethics and morals, or I flat out don’t really like it. I try to respond to every email as best as I can, but please take this into consideration before contacting me!

Categories: 13th Age, D&D 3.5, D&D 4e, Fluff/Inspiration, Kickstarter, Legacy D&D, Meta, News, Other Hobby, Other Systems, Products, RPG | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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