Dungeon Brew

So you’re thinking of crowdfunding your very own RPG product? Good for you. In recent years sites like Kickstarter and success stories like Open Design and Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple make this a very attractive option. After all, starting your own company or product from the get go can be difficult and costly, finding investors beforehand can really make your ride smoother.

Before you lie many portals you can use to build your fundraising project; today I’m going to give you a quick overlay of three of them.

Kickstarter

How it Works

At Number 1 on the list is Kickstarter, the popular go-to tool for tabletop game developers and their projects. Kickstarter works by raising pledges of future donation in return for future rewards or perks, with higher monetary pledges in general receiving more and more perks. If a project doesn’t receive it’s goal by the end of the deadline then there is no harm, no foul. Your investors never give up their cash and the creator isn’t required to finish a project with no funds. Furthermore, if you reach your goal you can just keep on collecting, and in fact many people take advantage of this fact to have a second go at marketing their product and giving even more to their pledges.

Campaign Tools

Kickstarter offers each Project some internet real-estate in the form of a page on their servers. You can include images, a video, and as much or as little sales copy as you want. In addition their pledge level system can be fully customized with whatever amount you want and as many levels as you feel you need. They also include some social media buttons so that you and your backers can tweet or Facebook share the project with the simple press of a button.

The Cost and Other Limiting Factors

Kickstarter has a lot of traffic, but they also have a lot of requests that never see the light of day. Of the hundreds of projects that apply every week Kickstarter only accepts around 60%. As far as actual fees go, Kickstarter claims 5% of all funds raised plus 3-5% to Amazon Payments who process the contributions. That amounts to 8-10% of your raised total, so plan accordingly. In addition, Kickstarter only allows American projects, so if you're out of country you may want to use...

IndieGoGo

How it Works

Similar to Kickstarter, IndieGoGo works by raising contributions for future projects with higher donations receiving better and better rewards...but there are two ways to to go about the process with IndieGoGo. One method works almost identically to Kickstarter, your backers contribute money and if the fundraising goal isn’t met then you don’t get a dime. However, unlike Kickstarter, IndieGoGo gathers the money upfront and refunds it if the goal isn’t met. The other way IndieGoGo works is through their “flexible funding” plan. In this plan any money that is raised goes to the project, even if the goal isn’t met.

Campaign Tools

IndieGoGo offers you a page on their servers where you can post video, images, and sales copy about your project. In addition they have a fully customizable perk system for both cost of levels and amount. They have a full integration of social tools including Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Devlog to let both you and your users share the campaign with ease.

The Cost and Other Limiting Factors

The cost for the two plans varies only if the goal is not made. If your project does reach its goal then IndieGoGo charges a 4% fee of the total funds raised. If you are using the flexible pricing method and you don’t reach your goal that fee increases to 9%, but you get to keep the remaining funds. Finally there is a 3% fee of funds raised for third party processing. That totals 7% if your goal is reached on either of the plans, or a total of 12% of funds reached if your fundraising fails on the Flexible plan. In addition there is a 25$ fee for wiring the money outside of the United States.

Because money is gathered ahead of time, and those projects which elect for the flexible plan get to keep their funds backers may be leery of being burned. Because of this, even though IndieGoGo is a cheaper alternative than Kickstarter, consumers may be slow in deciding whether to give their money to just anyone, and building trust with your backers becomes even more important.

Chipin

How it Works

Chipin is a fundraising flash application that can be added to any website. Instead of paying for pledge or perk levels, people who use Chipin...well, they just chip in. Any sort of perks are included only by the author who can use one of Chipin’s tools to view who donated, what they donated, their e-mail address and how they interacted with the event. If you don’t want to host the Chipin applet on your page, Chipin does give a very simple page to you which you can fill with text, but the applet has support for many different types of pages such as Blogger and TypePad. Money donated goes directly into your PayPal account, but can be refunded (on your action) via PayPal if the goal is not reached.

Campaign Tools

Chipin is really short on the campaign tools, including only the applet itself. The app consists of a simple bar graph tracker showing what has been earned, what percentage that is, what it is for (in a few words) and when it is needed by. Oh, and the actual button to chip in of course.

The Cost and Limiting Factors

Chipin itself takes no fee from the transactions, but because they do business through PayPal there is a 2.9% processing fee.

In addition, all the things I said about customers being leery of your campaign in regards to IndieGoGo goes double here. The transactions are made ahead of time, there is no guarantee of product, and to top it all off the Chipin site hasn’t been well maintained since 2006. The software still works, but even though this is the cheapest option for Crowdfunding out of the three, I wouldn’t put one of my products in its hands unless I had a very loyal and trusting audience.

Wrapping Things Up

It’s been my pleasure to give you this quick overview of Crowdfunding services. Are you thinking of crowdfunding a project? If so, will you be using any of the above, and why? Tell me more in the comment below.

When playing 3.5 DnD, or even the new Pathfinder, sometimes a critical hit just doesn't feel that...well, critical. Doing x2 damage is all well and good, but sometimes you want to eviscerate your foe, causing him to bleed to death, or smack him so silly he's seeing stars for a few rounds. By the same token, missing on a 1, while annoying, just isn't very descriptive. So you critical fumbled, how did you do it?

Well, thanks to Paizo's Critical Hit and Critical Fumble Decks you get a little more out of your Critical die rolls. The premise of both cards is that when you roll a 1 (for the Critical Fumble Deck), or confirm a critical threat (for the Critical Hit deck) you draw a card from the deck, compare it to what kind of attack you made (magical, natural, slashing, ranged) and that card tells you what action your critical took. Things from an extra attack roll all the way to decapitation (for the Critical Deck) or dropping your weapon to hitting yourself with your own spell (for the Critical Fumble Deck).

The Good
Besides helping busy DMs with go-to descriptions for Critical hits and fumbles, the cards keep the game lively. I use them myself and my players are always excited about a critical hit, calling for a draw from the deck almost before the threat has been confirmed. By the same token, it helps lessen the effect of a critical fumble. Sure, you are making a failure more than just an automatic miss, but from my experience the players don't mind rolling a 1 quite so much now that it comes with an interesting explanation.

The Evil
This system isn't entirely balanced. One of the critical hit cards, as mentioned above is decapitation. That is a pretty powerful thing, even when its as rare as a 1 in 52 chance already tacked on to less than 5%. A critical already has the chance to obliterate a well crafted plan by destroying NPCs and villains who were meant to live longer, adding in an additional chance for them to perish increases this problem. The other issue is that the two decks are meant to work together. You don't have to of course, you could easily use the critical hit deck or fumble decks by themselves. Keep in mind though, that in 3.5 D&D, not every monster is capable of receiving a critical hit, if you run a campaign where the players fight a lot of undead, constructs or other creatures immune to critical hits the fumble deck becomes a much more serious issue as it isn't balanced by the benefits of the critical deck.

Bang For Your Buck
Each deck costs 9ドル.99, and for that you receive 52 cards with 4 different outcomes on each one, each outcome pertaining to a different type of attack. You also receive rules with advice for how to balance the cards for use in your campaign, and some new mechanics for your game that enhance the rules presented.

The Final Verdict
I endorse these products wholeheartedly, I've been using them in my games for around a year now and they definitely keep things both interesting and fun. They are cheap, they are are well made, and they make combat a little more complex. If that's not what you want, I can see you not getting them, but if you want to make your fights a place where a man can lose some fingers, or a fighter's sword could go flying out of his grasp during a dangerous maneuver, these cards will help you make it happen.

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Hello and welcome to Paranoia. I know you were expecting to come here for a review, but unfortunately that information is above your clearance level. But don't worry, Friend Computer is here to help.

Let me explain. In the Mandatory Bonus Fun Card Game, the players take on the role troubleshooters (people who find trouble and shoot it) in an underground complex run by a benevolent, albeit unbalanced, computer. Your job is to undertake missions all while remaining vigilant against mutants, and members of secret societies. By the way, you are a mutant and a member of a secret society. You are a traitor, a well armed traitor at that. But the problem is you are on a team of other well armed traitors, all bent on proving their "innocence" by proving you are a traitor against Friend Computer. I wouldn't worry too much though, because there will be plenty of chances for you to do the same to them, or even kill them outright.

The Good
The game is fun, the rukles are simple and mission structure keeps the game engaging with a variety of objectives to complete. Added on top of all that though is the fast paced and strategic game play where every traitor for himself and danger lurks around every corner. The game maintains a sense of dark humour with great art and quotes adorning every card, not to mention missions like "Bake the Traitor" and action cards like "Spurious Logic".

The Evil
Well the biggest problem with the game is that its out of print. Thankfully though RPGNow.com and the PDF format have come to the rescue, allowing you to purchase a copy and download it directly to your computer. Of course, this presents its own issues, mainly having to print out all the cards. While most of the cards are black and white, the clearance cards and some of the game tokens are in color. And the PDF is constructed poorly, with each card being presented on a page of its own. For the color issue I ended up using different color paperclips as tokens, and I placed a paperclip over the player reference card, sliding it up and down to denote security clearance. The other problem took a little more work, I copied each individual card as a jpeg and then placed them side by side on a .doc file. Although time consuming, this allowed me to print them out about six at a time.

Bang For Your Buck
The game costs a whopping 24ドル.95. For this you get 20 different mission cards, which act like minigames, 39 different actions cards, and a variety of tokens and player reference cards, all of which have to be printed and cut out.

The Final Verdict
I had a lot of fun with this game, I picked it up at 20% off and I loved it. My friends and I played it extensively while I worked on this article. That having been said, this game is not for everyone. If you love, or you know someone who does love, the world of Paranoia, anything Orwellian or non-collectible card games you'll love this game. For those of you who don't, you'll be better off spending it on something else.

[The following article is part of the Small Press Week blog carnival being run by RPG Blog II. Many bloggers are coming together for this event to check out some of the great things about, and coming out of smaller rpg publishers. If you'd like to see what the other bloggers have covered this week, drop by Moebius Adventures for a complete list of links.]

Chaotic Shiny Productions was nice enough to send me an advance copy of their upcoming title Martial Flavor, and I'd be remiss if I didn't share what I've learned about the book. Keep in mind while reading this that the book still has sometime before publication and is still undergoing some revisions and enhancements.

The Good Vs Evil Axis

Martial Flavor is a unique book detailing five martial traditions for use in your 4th edition D&D campaign. Each Chapter details a martial tradition, complete with backstory, feats, and new powers.

The Good
This book is presented in an easy to read format, with each new chapter detailing one of the five traditions, and taking us from backstory and hierarchy all the way to which 4th edition races interact with the tradition and how. This is followed by example adventurers, and new mechanics for making the organization come alive at the game table. The fluff and the crunch in this book is balanced amazingly well, with plenty of things both GMs and Players can grab onto and spin into interesting plot points and defining features. As I read through the book I couldn't help but think about how great it would be to play a Daikort Mercenary or a Legionnaire. Each chapter brings the tradition to life with in depth background, various examples of members, how they dress, and how their society views both themselves and in many cases the world around them. I was reminded of why I own so many roleplaying books, many of them are just as entertaining a read as a they are a useful resource.

Martial Flavor is a proud addition to that design philosophy. How many times have I looked through my Martial Power book and wished it went into greater detail on what it meant to be a fighter? Well, Martial Flavor offers plenty of material for that. With this book in hand you never have to worry again about your ranger looking like any other ranger. Make the character stand out, make him a Fox in a Daikort Pack, picking his way through a shady marshland with the greatest of skill. Perhaps what is so great about this book is that it not only helps you create unique characters, but it gives you in game mechanics to make those decisions actually mean something. For example if you are an Ellesin fighter, then you are the king of mounted combat, able to take brand new feats and powers to reinforce just how good you are at mounted combat.

The Evil
I know it is a growing trend with RPG book these days, but this book just doesn't have an index. The bookmarks in the pdf are amazing, but I'm one of those weird individuals who likes to print off his pdfs for long perusals in the sunlight. Beyond that, I have one word to share with you: Background. The backgrounds in this book are more akin to those that appeared in Dragon for the Scales of War (SoW) adventure path. As such they are a little more powerful than the streamlined system that is presented in the Player's Handbook 2 and Eberron Player's Guide. That having been said, some of the backgrounds even blow their SoW cousins out of the water. Chief among these is the Ikanoi, which gives you cold resistance equal to either Wisdom bonus or Constitution bonus whichever is lower, and as such is definitely something that could level with you, especially if you are playing a shaman. Compare that feature with the Sijara's background which gives them Bluff and Diplomacy and class skills and +1 to each and you see some variance in background utility even amongst the book itself.

Bang For Your Buck
So you are thinking about picking Martial Flavor up from Chaotic Shiny. Well, it retails for 19.95 so lets take a moment and examine what you get. In this 56 page tome of a gaming pdf you get an astounding 88 feats, which cover both Heroic and Paragon tier, as well as new Multiclass feats. Some of you may be wondering why one would need new multiclass feats, so be amazed because this book has 12 alternative class features to further customize your martial warrior. You also get several new utility powers for your martial classes that really flesh out how your martial warrior is different from your typical Points of Light model. But lets go back to those feats because there is one thing I'd really like to point out. A whole slew of those feats are for characters who excel at Mounted Combat, and some of the new powers and alternative class features help support the concept. If you have EVER wanted to play a mounted character in D&D 4e, then this is the book to buy, even if you don't use the tradition that goes with them. Heck, even if you want to have a mounted character from a different power source, you will find what you need in those feats. Though obviously if that's all you want you may want to look elsewere for your mount fix.

Now, what if you are a GM? Well, then this is still a pretty good resource for you, although admittedly you are missing out on some of the fun by not being able to play any of the neat new character concepts this book helps deliver. But that doesn't keep you from introducing the Legionnaires of Arytis, or throwing your part against a well trained Daikort Pack. You can easily stat out some great NPCs that will ride both sides of the ally/enemy fence. I know I keep talking about them, but I myself will be dropping the Daikort into my home campaign, they are just too great of a DM tool to not use, and the bevy of information on each tradition gives you what you need to not only run adventures featuring these warriors, but entire campaigns built around them.

The Final Verdict
If you have a martial character, or you plan on playing one then this book belongs on your digital bookshelf. The sheer number of new feats and powers and other goodies contained therein means you WILL find something of use even if you never use the martial traditions that are linked to them. As just one example you can easily mine out the entire mounted combat tidbits (like the Mounted Fighter talent and the list of racial rider feats) and use them as is. As for GMs, since the GSL came out I've purchased my fair share of products, and I haven't seen many that come to the level of dedication, balance, and just plain cool things to put in your game. The text is well written and evocative, the sidebars are placed well and are informative. Here's the gist of things, if I was to write about all the great things in this lengthy pdf I would have to go on for pages, because there is so much great material contained within.

All of that having been said, I can understand if the price tag turns you off of the book. In today's market, and especially without having seen for yourself just how much material is packed in here it can be tough to make that kind of commitment. Comparatively though, this is essentially five products at 4ドル each. Each one containing about 22 feats, plenty of utility powers and other tools and material to boot. Thinking of it that way makes the price make a little more sense. That having been said, if your interested, but just haven't made up your mind yet you can see a few excerpts at this page of Chaotic Shiny's website. In my opinion you should save up some cash and mark November 1st on your calendar so you can be one of the first to spice up your adventuring life with some Martial Flavor.

This is going to be a change of pace for me that I hope becomes a regular part of the Dungeon Brew experience. I mentioned awhile back that I wanted to diversify the content here and this is one of the steps towards that goal.

I recently took a look at Black Wyrm Games new adventure "War of Worldcraft" as part of a blog carnival being organized by Ed Healy of too many podcasts to mention (most notably Atomic Array) and I'm going to share my discovery with you.

The Good vs Evil Axis

War of Worldcraft is an exiting adventure that gives even the most harried of GMs a fully-fleshed and highly entertaining adventure with no necessary prep time. Everything the gamemaster needs is right there, from in depth descriptions of villains to tables on the defenses of every object your players could dream of interacting with.

The Good: The adventure is a highly entertaining read, written with a level of tongue-in-cheek wit that really helps sets this product apart. The game can be played with only a quick read through, meaning that even the busiest of GMs can easily run the module without having to drop hours into customizing it for his group. Oh, and speaking of customizing the author Michael Satran has done a great job of providing advice and extra content for the game master who does want to expand on the base adventure. The product is very modular, and even if you never play the adventure the various villains in the book and the information given on the MMORPG Megaworld can help to inspire adventures of their own.

The Evil:One of the biggest issues I had with this product as I ran through it was the font they used because I could barely tell apart the bolded words from the unbolded. As you may have guessed this is a very minor detail, but it was something that bugged me as I was reading through the pdf. Another thing that I think would have helped this product out was some sort of table of contents, while the pdf has quite the in-depth bookmark system I'm certain that the lack of some sort of table of contents can make finding your spot after flipping pages or taking a break difficult.

Bang for Your Buck
The hard copy of this book clocks in at 9.95 and the pdf sells for 6ドル even at rpgnow.com. So, what do you get for your money? The adventure can easily span two nights of play as written, and Michael Satran includes various plot seeds, alternative battles, and other extras that can stretch the module to fill about five nights of hardcore gaming.

Beyond the extra material included for the module, there is real detail given as to how to use the material in the book that an enterprising GM can use to fill up an entire campaign of play. The owner of this wonderful 43 book gets two super-powered villains, various robotic adversaries, a mysterious and evil organization that has the power to create super-villains, several fully-realized locations that can be visited again and again, and of course the adventure that ties it all together.

The Final Verdict
This is easily one of the best modules I've seen all year. And even if you never intend to run the game the vast amount of material packed into those 43 pages can easily be shaped and molded into whatever you want making this one of the most useful adventures of 2009. The book was well-written, and if you use the pdf and its bookmarks well organized (although the physical copy can't quite live up to the electronic version in that department).

I definitely recommend picking this book up if you intend to run Heroes Sixth Edition, and although it loses a lot of its utility with a different system this adventure can easily be modified to work with any superhero game system.

Want to learn more about War of Worldcraft? Read on...

• Atomic Array: War of Worldcraft (Atomic Array 031)


• Game Cryer: Review by Chris Perrin


• allgeektout: What Makes War of Worldcraft Worth It


• Apathy Blogs: Online Heroes


• Roleplaying Pro: War of Worldcraft – It’s Not What You Think

Drop by BlackWyrm today!

* This post is part of the RPG Bloggers July Carnival on D&D, organized by 6d6 Fireball

Dungeons and Dragons has always been a game about teamwork, but in the 4th edition of the game it has been kicked up to the nth power. No player is left without a job to do in 4E Combat, and while they all can deal substantial damage by themselves, it is when you start using powers in concert and in certain conditions that the system really starts to stand out.

What is a Teamwork Maneuver?
A teamwork maneuver is any series of actions in combat that is enhanced by the actions of the others, or achieves some goal that it couldn't do by itself. Essentially, a teamwork maneuver is a couple of powers that when used in the right situation and order are greater than the sum of their individual parts.

Teamwork Maneuvers and Roleplay
The Fastball Special is an attack involving the X-men Colossus and Wolverine. Wolverine allows his super strong friend Colossus to toss him like a baseball at an enemy that he may otherwise be unable to reach. The move is so iconic that when Joss Whedon wrote it into Astonishing X-men he didn't even need to use dialogue to explain it.

Your team could have its own special moves, born out of a familiarity with each other and an understanding of the party's strengths and weaknesses. The combination of the cleric's Weapon of the Gods and the fighter's Tempest Dance could be called the Holy Hurricane for instance.

Example Teamwork Maneuvers
I've created a few teamwork maneuvers that you can pull out for your next game session. They all follow the same format:

Name of the Maneuver
Purpose of the Maneuver

Preparation
This section describes what you need to use the maneuver, for instance: 1 lvl 3 ranger, 1 lvl 3 dragonborn paladin with the hurl breath feat.

The Setup
This section will explain what the ideal situation is for the maneuver, and to make it easier I've provided pictures. It will explain what position you and your enemies should be in before using the maneuver, and what effects or conditions have to be active to use it.

The Execution
Here you will find the step by step guide breaking down how to perform the maneuver. Each entry assumes that the last step was successful.

Super Mr Sticky
This move places an annoying enemy near the fighter, severely damaging him in the process.

Preparation
1 lvl 1 Cleric
1 Fighter
A small room with only two possible exits

The Setup
Move the fighter off by himself in the middle of one exit. Then have the cleric move opposite him blocking or near another exit, keeping an enemy between them.

The Execution
1st: Have the cleric use Guardian of Faith, placing the conjuration on the same square as the fighter.
2nd: Have the cleric spend an action point and use Cause Fear, thus
forcing the opponent to attempt to rush past the fighter.
3rd: Wait for the opponent to provoke an opportunity attack from the fighter, then have the fighter attack, hitting the opponent and thus stopping him in place.
4th: The fighter should, known as Mr Sticky, can keep the enemy from moving away from him.
5th: Make an attack with the guardian of faith.
6th: Repeat steps 4 and 5 as needed.




Its Raining Dailys
When fighting a solo you need your daily attacks to hit. If you can pull this move off, it will make hitting with daily attacks a cakewalk.

Preparation
1 lvl 7 Rogue with Brutal Scoundrel, wielding a light blade
1 lvl 1 Warlord with an impressive Intelligence modifier
A party with daily attacks to burn

The Setup
Flank the solo with both the rogue and the warlord, and make sure all allies are within 5 squares of the warlord. Preferably the rogue and warlord should go before the rest of the party.

The Execution
1st: Have the rogue attack with Imperiling Strike, dropping the opponent's AC and Reflex defenses by the rogue's Str Mod (should be at least 3)
2nd: Now that the enemy's defense is down, have the warlord use Lead the Attack, raising all allies' (including himself) attack bonus by 1+his Int Mod.
3rd: Start using your daily attacks, enjoy.

Trapped! By a Burning Chill
Crush your enemy with assured damage every turn.

Preperation
1 lvl 1 Warlock
1 lvl 5 Warlord
1 lvl 1 Wizard
*Either the Warlock, the Warlord, or both have to be tieflings, or otherwise resistant to fire damage.

The Setup
Flank your tough opponent with both a warlord and a warlock, at least one of them should have resistance to fire damage.

The Execution
1st: Have your warlord attack the enemy with Villain's Nightmare.
2nd: Now that your villain is trapped, have your warlock use Armor of Agathys
3rd: Add insult to injury by having your Wizard cast Flaming Sphere, placing it adjacent to both the enemy and the wizard's flame retardant ally.
4th: When the enemy's turn comes up, roll damage for both Flaming Sphere and Armor of Agathys.