Tag: KickStarter

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 28: Planet of the Apes

Written by TardisCaptain January 28, 2025February 20, 2025

If you are looking for my 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge after action report with completion graphic, it will be posted when I’m caught up from being put behind by real-life events. If you made it to 31 characters, email me or privately contact me on one of the message boards or social media and I’ll make sure you get the graphic. Thank you for participating.

We are in the home stretch for the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge and today we will be using one of my KickStarter rewards with the Planet of the Apes Role Playing Game. I backed at a level where I’ll be getting the physical book when they get it published. But until then, Magnetic Press Play provided a special PDF to the backers so they could see the game now. The PDF of the core rulebook isn’t even available on DriveThruRPG yet. Now I have made some characters previously for games inspired by the Planet of the Apes franchise. In 2021 I made a character for Apes Victorious that I thought was well done so much that I had to do a re-watch of the Planet of the Apes movies. Then earlier in this challenge I made a character for Terra Primate which was… OK.

So, two things I need to say about this game. It’s based off of the PotA movies and TV series from the 60’s and 70’s. Second, the RPG system is a modification of the West End Games D6 system that was used in Star Wars and Ghostbusters. This is called the D6MV (Magnetic Variant). One of the classic attributes, Technical, was removed with the skills moved to Knowledge and Mechanical and a new attribute of Willpower (spirit and mind power) was added. So the current attributes are DEXterity, KNOwledge, MEChanical, PERception, STRength and the aforementioned WILlpower. The skills were also limited to just six per attribute. Also when you roll a pool of D6’s one of them of a different color would be known as the “Irradiated Wild Die” which can provide additional bonuses or boons and can even explode if you roll a 6. So this game felt like I was returning home with how many sessions I played of the D6 Star Wars system.

The first several chapters in the book give a good rundown on how to play the game, a taste of the PotA world (not too much to be overwhelming, but just enough to wet the appetite), and information on the templates used in character creation. The actual steps to create a character are listed on page 106. Step One- choose one of the previously mentioned templates. The book highly recommends that the players make an ape character for the first games. There are information on the various humans and mutant characters that could also be created with additional supplements on the way. After reading through them, I wanted to make one of the Chimpanzees. Specifically an Ape Scientist named Flint. This provided some information on the character such as a Memento (a special piece of equipment that provides a bonus), regular starting equipment and the attributes.

The second step is to select the Character Persona which includes a Quirk, Remarkable Ability and Motive. There is a D66 quirks table on pages 108-9 where you can randomly roll for one. The one that came up is Paranoid. Hmmm…. perhaps Flint had discovered something that would be shocking and is worried that the Orangutans will find out that he knows. By taking a Quirk, I can also select a Remarkable Ability from the next list. I selected Lucky which would allow me to re-roll a 1 on an Irradiated Wild Die. It was probably by luck that Flint found out this deep secret. The Motive is a driving force for the character and is also randomly rolled by a D66. This came up as Selfish. I… don’t know how to fold that into the character yet, but perhaps it would come up in play.

Our third step is to select Flint’s skills. Each new character has 7D to distribute among the different skills with a max of 2D in any one skill. After I picked these the next step was to calculate the SRP defenses. This is the Surprised Defense, Readied Defense and Psyche Defense. These are generated by a mathematical formula based on other stats. I wrote them down on the sheet.

Step five is the fine details. It references the quirk and motives. This is also where the character’s appearance is written down with a random D6 resulting in Bulky. Interesting. Step six is the “time to get connected” step where the backstory of how the different characters in the party connected with each other. As I have no other characters to connect, I tried to ask the voices in my head and several of them talked about how it was time to go to bed. So I’ll skip this part. I think I’m done so I’ll scan the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

While reading through the PDF during some down time I found a major printing error. So much so that I had to make a screen shot and send it to the publisher. I hope they can correct it in time before the physical publishing goes into effect.

Reading the book, I really wanted to play and run this game. In fact, I am. I’m going to be running the quick start adventure at SaltCON spring in a few weeks.

Additional Notes:

I had one reader respond to my entry of For Gold & Glory where I talked about meeting the minimum requirements for the Illusionist. Apparently the character would have had to meet both requirements listed. Another reader wanted to hear more about a possible Rome inspired campaign, which I’ll admit is pretty tempting. And yet another reader (sorry there were quite a few of you and I’m trying to churn these last posts out as quickly as possible) liked how FG&G used the alternate skill rules that were introduced in AD&D 2nd Edition.

And one last feedback note that I received on The Strange (since I don’t want to seem like I’m beating up on them). I had even more “yea I also had major issues with character creation from this publisher” in a Old Gods of Appalachia game (using the same Cypher System) where it took them 2.5 gaming sessions to make their characters. Yikes!!!!

Coming Up Next:

You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to say this. Red Dwarf The Roleplaying Game

This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.

Reviews, Role Playing Games

Castles and Crusades Reforged a Kickstarter reward

Written by TardisCaptain December 26, 2024

The cover to the Castles and Crusades Reforged Players Handbook

Another Kickstarter reward came in just before the deadline to participate in the upcoming 2025 Character Creation Challenge. The Reforged Castles and Crusades books. While “reforged” doesn’t appear on the title, it was used on the Kickstarter page. The rewards included a physical copy of the Castle and Crusades Players Handbook (photo above) and PDFs of the Monsters and Treasure, the Castle Keepers Guide, a Castle Keepers Screen and some character sheets.

The stock numbers of the 7th and 10th printings of the Castles and Crusades PHB.

The physical copy of the Players Handbook has the same cover as the 8th and 9th printings. The quickest way you can discover which printing it you have is by looking at the stock numbers on the book spine (see photo above). The last one or two digits should match the printing information on the credits page. In a way, I wish that Troll Lord Games had given us a different cover with this Kickstarter. A tenth printing and the removal of all OGL material is a major milestone for the book and it would have been a nice way to mark the change. The RPG rules are still the same (more on that below) and I understand that the cover is a tribute to the 1st edition AD&D Players Handbook, but I think this might have been a missed opportunity.

This 10th printing is a hardbound book with 288 pages (this includes additional art and the character sheets) and is published by Troll Lord Games. It has an ISBN number of 978-1-952379-70-3 and a 2024 copyright. It was written by Davis Chenault and Mac Golden with Stephen Chenault, Mark Sandy, Todd Gray, Jason Vey and James M. Ward. The cover art was done by Jason Walton and the interior color art was provided by Peter Bradley, Zoe DeVos, Joel Chaim Holtzman, Michelle Smallwood, Meliora Henning and Vladimiro Rikowski. There are eight chapters and an index (thank you). These chapters include: The RPG, Classes, Races, Character, Magic, Spells, Siege Engine (a GMs section) and a Spell Chart. A good point on the physical version, they printed little color tabs flush with the pages for quick searches.

An example of the quick colored tabs printed on the edge of the pages.

I owned a physical copy of the 7th printing so I took some comparison photos. The 7th printing has a copyright of 2017, so yes there is a big jump between the two publications. I noticed that there is a lot more detail in the 10th printing, but the basic nuts and bolts of the game are the same. I compared the points needed to go up between levels on a few classes, and they were the same. Yes there was some text alteration with the OGL removal (such as the Rogue’s ability to Sneak Attack has been renamed to Back Attack), but it appears to be the same game. Much like the removal of the OGL for Basic Fantasy 3rd Edition to 4th Edition.

10th printing on the left and 7th printing on the right.

A look at the spines for the 288 page 10th printing vs the 192 page 7th printing.

The 10th printing had a blue background tint with a brown background for the 7th printing.

So now that I have the Kickstarter reward in hand (and on PDF), how do I feel? Well, I’m very happy that I backed this project. At the time of the campaign I had been invited to an online C&C game, which unfortunately fell through. The Siege Engine mechanics for resolving skill checks sounds like something that I would like to try. I even offered to run a game for some of the 5e players who I’ve GMed for in the past. The rewards came pretty quick and I could see the quality in the work. Also I did get a little bit of a high from the “new book smell” as I was flipping through it. Now if I could just get into a game. While running a one-shot at SaltCON is very likely, I really want to see how this game runs over the course of a campaign.

Do you have any questions about Castles and Crusades Reforged? Have you backed any Kickstarters lately? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.

Reviews, Role Playing Games

Sword of Cepheus 2nd Edition a KickStarter reward

Written by TardisCaptain December 19, 2024December 19, 2024

The cover of Sword of Cerephus 2nd Edition.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to back another KickStarter campaign. The Sword of Cepheus 2nd Edition by Stellagama Publishing. I had used some of Stellagama’s products in past Character Creation Challenges with Cepheus Deluxe (boy I have to be careful when I’m typing out that name) so I was a little familiar with their work. I think the biggest reasons that I backed this campaign was 1- I’ve been wanting to try one of the Traveller style 2d6 games for quite some time now. I keep hearing about how classic this system is, but I’ve never had a chance to play. 2- I’ve got a blog project coming up that uses different Fantasy RPG systems and I could use this game for that. 3- I can create a character for the upcoming challenge to see how the character creation system compares to the Cepheus Deluxe publication. And finally 4- They had a very reasonable price to back the KickStarter. A physical book and PDF for $12 (plus shipping)? Yea, I can spare a few clams to back that. Too many times I see an interesting KickStarter only to discover the prices are well out of my comfort zone for a publisher I don’t know very well.

The physical paperback book is printed in a digest size (I think this is called A5). I’ve commented on the print on demand quality from DriveThruRPG in the past and this looks to be just as good. As you can see from the above photo, there is a color cover by Maximilian Schmuecker with black and white art on the inside provided by a number of artists. It was written by Omer Golan-Joel, Richard Hazlewood and Josh Peters. It appears that the ISBN 2-370021-773978 and it has a copyright of 2024.

There are 377 pages in this publication. There are fifteen chapters, two appendixes and an index of spells. The chapters include: Introduction, Basic Game Mechanics (bless you for putting this at the front of the book), Skills, Character Generation (see you soon), Character Advancement, Adventuring, Environmental Hazards, Personal Combat, Chases and Vehicle Combat, Equipment, Sorcery, Bestiary, Treasure, Encounters and Adventure Seeds. Superscience and Inspirational Media make up the two appendixes. I noticed a LOT of references to other roleplaying games in the OGL credits. I’d never really looked at this before since it mostly goes over my head. I didn’t see a character sheet in the physical book, but if you purchase the PDF from DriveThruRPG, it comes with three different sheets. A standard one, a form fillable one and a character sheet with extra art.

With the holidays and prepping for the upcoming Character Creation Challenge I haven’t had a chance to do a deep dive into the rules, but from what little I’ve read, I want to read more. The text is pretty clear and uncluttered. Just the way the basics are explained in the front of the book made me want to play. Also reading about the differences between the three main themes to the game: Gritty Heroism (the characters are skilled), Dark Sorcery (magic can be unreliable and corrupting) and Open World (the world does not scale to the characters). This game could be used for Sword and Sorcery, Sword and Planet (think John Carter of Mars) and Sword and Sandal (think the legends of the Greece-Roman myths and legends).

Overall I’m very pleased with the reward for backing this KickStarter. This book will get used over the next year (at a minimum, making a character, but who knows perhaps I’ll be inspired to run a game at a future SaltCON).

Do you have any questions about Sword of Cepheus 2nd Edition? Have you backed any Kickstarters lately? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.

Collecting, Dungeons and Dragons, Reviews, Role Playing Games

BX Advanced Bestiary Vol. 2 a KickStarter reward

Written by TardisCaptain September 3, 2024September 3, 2024

The covers of the BX Advanced Bestiary Vol 1 and Vol 2.

So a package arrived for me while I was at the recent SaltCON. This was another Kickstarter reward that provided me with a physical hardbound copy of the BX Advanced Bestiary Volume Two. This book covered monsters E-K. As you can see above, I had backed the earlier Kickstarter for the BX Advanced Bestiary Volume One that I reviewed in 2023.

The book is 133 pages long (same length as the first volume). The ISBN number is 2370020959793 and was published by Third Kingdom Games in 2024. It was written by Todd Leback, edited by Brian Johnson and contains art from Adrian Barber, Carlos Castilho, Denis McCarthy, Francesco Accordi, Hodag RPG, Marco Ortiz Walters, Michelle Smallwood and Teresa Guido. I appreciate that actual artists were used for this publication. It is one of the reasons that I elected to back this Kickstarter campaign.

The cover states that it is designed for used with Old-School Essentials, but it could be used for any OSR style game like Basic Fantasy, Castles and Crusades, OSRIC, Swords and Wizardry and others. Armor class is listed with both ascending and descending numbers.

A sample of some of the monsters included in this book.

This book covers about a 100 monsters from Efreet to Killer Bee with variants for each entry. One of the more interesting entries covers the horse. Not only does it give stats for different horse types (magical and non-magical) but it also gives random charts for markings, descriptions and traits. Something that could make a campaign a little bit more interesting.

Just as in the first book, there are several alternate rules for OSR type games at the start of the book and two new character races developed from the monsters in the book. You could play an awakened giant ferret or a Loxen (elephant-folk). There are also several new spells in the back of the book. The final appendix includes encounter tables and a combined Monsters by HD that covers Vol 1 and 2.

Another sample page showing the Ghoul Lord.

Like the first book, this was an interesting read. As with any small publisher, there was a slip up or two in the editing, but overall I’m very pleased with the reward for backing this Kickstarter. It gave me several ideas that I could drop into a campaign. I’m looking forward to volume three being announced hopefully next year.

Have you backed any Kickstarters lately? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.

Art, Role Playing Games

RPGaDAY2024 Day 4: RPG with great art

Written by TardisCaptain August 4, 2024August 3, 2024

Here we are at day four of the RPGaDAY 2024 challenge and our topic is “RPG with great art.” Being the father of an artist who is trying to break into the business, this is a big topic for me. Lately there has been a rash of AI renderings (I refuse to call them art) that has been used in RPG publications. Yes they are cheap, but the old saying is “You get what you pay for”. AI renderings look plastic and uninspiring. I remember when creating a character for Vintage Space in the last Character Creation Challenge and I noted how bad the AI renderings were. They didn’t have any uniformity and just seemed to be a random jumble of bad images that didn’t fit together.

So I’m going to talk about an RPG product that I purchased specifically for the art. It was the X-Treme Dungeon Master 2nd Edition that I picked up from Kickstarter and did a review when it arrived. The book was written by Tracy & Curtis Hickman, but the artist is Howard Tayler. I’ve talked about him before on my blog when he did some personalized art for me. Howard ran a webcomic called Schlock Mercenary and was able to keep it running for twenty years. As a loyal reader, I got use to his art style. The art he created for the XDM 2nd edition book had his style, but not once did I think “oh it’s Schlock Mercenary”. He was able to make it unique, make it his, but also make it new. There were a few color pieces on the cover and just inside the front cover, but the black and white art on the inside flowed along with the subject matter being discussed. There was also a little “flip book” art at the bottom of each page. I really liked the piece where the GM is using the “theater of the mind” to describe the scene. And since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few photos of the book that I took just for this blog post.

Additional things about the challenge. I’ve appreciated the feedback that readers have given me on my first couple of posts. I’ve had questions about comparing different Star Trek RPG systems. I’ve also enjoyed looking up #RPGaDAY2024 on BlueSky and finding a lot of other interesting gamers to follow. If you’ve followed me back, thank you.

Is there an RPG product that you thought had really good artwork in it? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.

James Bond, Reviews, Role Playing Games, Spy-Fi

Shadow Ops RPG: A Kickstarter Reward

Written by TardisCaptain July 18, 2024July 21, 2024

The cover to the Shadow Ops Roleplaying Game

I don’t recall how I found out about the Shadow Ops Kickstarter. Most likely it was a post on one of the RPG message boards that I read. I’m always a sucker for espionage roleplaying games. I’m also someone who is willing to pack a project that isn’t mega expen$ive. Too many times I see an interesting Kickstarter campaign, but when I look at the pledge prices I wonder where they are pulling the numbers from? Unless I really know about the people involved (which has happened on a few Kickstarters) I’m a little wary about backing something. But if the price is reasonable (and not hitting at a bad time), I’ll chuck in a few bucks to see how it comes out. In the case of Shadow Ops, the prices were right for both a physical book and a PDF of the game.

Well my physical book arrived so I decided to do a quick review of the game in a look see. I had received the PDF last month, but as I’ve mentioned before, I really like learning a bout a game with the physical book in my hands.

Shadow Ops: A Game of Cinematic Espionage Action was written by Christopher Peter (it is not known if this is a cover name) and published by Divine Madness Press. I picked up a softcover copy of the rules that was delivered by POD via DriveThruRPG. I’ve previously reviewed some POD products that DriveThruRPG has sent me in the past and this matched the same level of quality that I have received before. The book is 214 pages in length and contains black and white images throughout. It wasn’t identified as an ISBN number, but there is a barcode with 2 370020 914112 on the back which might be one. There is an introduction, ten chapters and an appendix with the last two pages being the character sheet.

Each of the chapters are listed on the side of the pages like file folders. My oldest daughter really liked t his when she was looking at the book.

Example of the chapter guides on the right side of the page.

The introduction gives two very interesting points. It states that this is not a beginners RPG. Not that it’s complicated or crunchy, but that the author assumes that the reader already knows what roleplaying games are. The second is that Shadow Ops is an emulator, not a simulator. With the full title containing “cinematic espionage action”, I believe this is the type of game that I would be interested in playing. When I’m watching espionage shows, I want to see some over-the-top scenes and action that have come from James Bond or Mission Impossible. Getting bogged down in rules that are trying to add real-life simulation to what is supposed to be an action genre, that would turn me off playing.

Chapter one is The Core Mechanics. Let me just say, thank you for getting to this right away. As I’ve mentioned before, I hate having to slog through 20-50 pages of background material before I see the basics of the RPG. It’s an RPG book, not a reference guide. For those of you who are curious, Every time your character completes a task, you roll three dice (which range from d4 to d12). A die for the attribute, a die for the skill and a stress die. The number that is the middle value of the three die becomes your Result Die to see if you fail or succeed that task. If something makes the task more difficult, you would count the lowest rolled as your Result Die and an easier task would take the higher result. There are other additional items that could have you roll a higher sided dice, but rolling the three dice are the basics of the system.

The second chapter is called Agent Recruiting and it deals with the character creation process. I’m certain that I’ll be taking a deeper dive into this when I use this game for the 2025 Character Creation Challenge. The attributes are Insight, Intellect, Personality, Coordination, Endurance and Strength. There are also skills, fortes (special talents) and abilities. The skill descriptions are found in chapter three and are broken down by skill sets (IT, infiltrator, tactical leader, etc.)

Chapter four goes into tradecraft. How do you handle things like stealth, disguise, forgery and the like. Chapter five, called Tricks of the Trade, gets deeper into the description and uses of the character’s fortes.

The equipment that characters may be able to use is brought up in chapter six, Tools of the Trade. How to obtain mission gear, enhancing equipment, resources available, assets and gadgets.

I like how the stock images are used in this publication.

Hunting Packs is the title of chapter seven and it covers the team stealthily following a mark, or being followed themselves. I didn’t get a chance to go to deep into the system, but it uses a standard set of 52 playing cards with values and suites. For those wondering about chases (by foot or vehicle), that also uses the playing cards and is covered in chapter eight “Fast and Furious”.

When the stealthy or speedy sides of the espionage game goes wrong, it can turn into the subject of chapter nine, Firefights and Fistfights. This covers the combat system for Shadow Ops.

The GMs section starts with chapter ten called Mission Briefings. It covers the session zero, the types of campaigns and designing missions.

In the appendix there is a listing of the inspirations (boo, Archer wasn’t listed), and something I thought could be useful, Player aids covering the basics that could be printed out and left on the table.

Overall this looks like Shadow Ops is a well thought out game. It’s built towards more of a Mission Impossible group of players instead of a single James Bond style campaign. I can’t wait to make a character for it in January. I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to actually play this game, but overall I’m very happy that I backed this Kickstarter campaign. Oh, one last thing that I thought was kewl, the author thanked the backers of the campaign in the back of the book.

One of these names looks familiar. I just can’t put my finger on it.

Have you received any Kickstarter rewards lately? Are there any campaigns that you have wanted to back. Tell me about them. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.

Anime, Reviews, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

A look at the Cowboy Bebop Roleplaying Game

Written by TardisCaptain April 27, 2024April 28, 2024

So on day 27 of the 2024 Character Creation Challenge I attempted to generate a character for the Cowboy Bebop Roleplaying Game. I had just received the hardback book from a Kickstarter campaign. I had backed it because I loved the anime and the live-action TV series and I always thought that it would be a great universe to run an RPG campaign.

The hardbound book is 270 pages long and is in full color. The ISBN is 979-12-80109-58-3 and was published by Don’t Panic Games. I love how the game company probably got this name from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but I had never heard of anything that they had released previously. The game director (writer?) is Michele Paroli. The bulk of the images are pulled directly from the anime.

There is an introduction, six chapters and a glossary. The chapters are 1-Rules (how to play the game), 2- Session (three of them make an episode or single sit-down to play), 3- Characters (how to make one), 4-Hunters in the Solar System (all about the Cowboy Bebop universe), 5- On Stage (kind of a GM section that describes the bounties your players may go after, factions encountered, etc.), 6- Playing the Bebop (the characters seen in the show and episodes put into RPG form).

Here are some photos I took when I first opened up my Kickstarter package. There is a lot of good graphics in this book.

The RPG rules is pretty straight forward for a narrative game (more on that below), even if the description of the rules are not. These pages attempted to tell me the rules of the game. And I did not get them at all. I remember getting major headaches trying to put this together in my head. There is no simple “This is the basics” of the game. I’m of the opinion that I need to understand the basic concept quickly so I can try to talk my friends into playing a game. If I can’t understand the game, I can’t recruit players. I mentioned this in my “Biggest turn-off when checking out a new RPG” blog post. If the RPG is not based off of a common system (D20, GURPS, 2D6, etc.) then give me a simple explanation of the game mechanics. In Cowboy Bebop, your character has traits (a description of a character look or item) and you can try to use them in a session (named after a music style) and you get a d6 dice pool and you have to get a roll higher than 5, 10 or 15 (depending if it’s the 1st, 2nd or 3rd session in the game) and… I tossed the book aside in disgust. I even asked on the RPG.net forums if anyone else had looked in on this game, and only got one response two months later. I didn’t think this was a good sign for the game when thousands of posts are made in a day on this forum.

When I attempted to make a Cowboy Bebop RPG character in January, my goal was to do this Kickstarter review in February. After getting both frustrated and angry (I thought I had wasted my money on the book) I put the book in the “To do” pile and left it there for months. I would see the book and it would remind me that I needed to write my review, but I was still sore about how betrayed the book made me feel. A blog post that says, “Pretty graphics, lots of in-universe details, system sucks to high heaven” is a very boring review. I finally grabbed myself by the collar and said “finish this review because it’s blocking other blog posts that you want to publish”. So I sat down and gathered my photos and looked again at the book. Still feeling frustrated after another attempt to understand the system, I started searching online and came across this video review from The Final Frontiersmen. While he compared some of the game to Star Trek Adventures, he did say one thing that made a light bulb go off in my head. “The key points about this roleplaying game is it’s extremely narrative.” Too much narrative is not my cup of tea. I now understood that I had received my delivered pizza and when I opened up the box, instead of seeing piping hot cheese covering sausage and pepperoni on a layer of marinara sauce, I saw anchovies, artichoke hearts and feta cheese. If you like that type of pizza, or games that is 95%-99% narrative (practically done all by the players) then you may enjoy this game very much. I know there are players who do like these types of games. In the 90’s some of my friends were just digging the Amber diceless RPG that had come out at the time. But when I watched them play, it just seemed like group storytelling where they decided the outcome. Something that was popular in online sim groups, but had zero randomness (and in my mind, zero RPG soul). With how the Cowboy Bebop RPG was stuffed into this box, it was just barely a step above a sim.

For me, I’d prefer an RPG that has a simple system that is easy to pick up that gives the randomness of the dice. A good GM and good players can easily balance the dice of roll playing with the narrative of role playing. Star Trek Adventures and the latest Star Wars system that I experienced at the last SaltCON gave that good balance that encouraged player interaction that included a narrative with the luck of the dice. I remember my favorite Dungeons and Dragons DM describing how a dragon was defeated using combined results from the rolls we made. Other GMs have given the option of having the player describe the way the bad guy was defeated when they made the killing blow.

So now I can put this good looking book in my RPG shelf. And when I want to roleplay in the Cowboy Bebop universe, I’ll use this book for background information, but use a system like Frontier Space or Stars Without Number or a host of other science fiction based RPGs as the system.

One last thought before I close up this review. I’ve taken this as a “Lessons learned” moment when dealing with Kickstarters. The description for this game was a “d6 based system” and I assumed it was more like the Star Wars D6 game I had enjoyed in the past. I will not be making such an assumption again and I blame myself for not digging deeper. After January when I would read a gaming Kickstarter, if the system was not quickly explained to me in a sentence or two, I’ve asked the organizer for more information on the game. The last thing I want to do is open up the pizza box and see a pizza I have no desire to eat.

Have you had a chance to try the Cowboy Beebop RPG? What Kickstarter campaigns are you backing now? This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.

MST3K

Kickstarter rewards from the MST3K Gizmoplex

Written by TardisCaptain September 19, 2023

I love it when something unexpected happens and it inspires me to make a blog post. Delivered today was some of the Kickstarter rewards for Let’s Make More MST3K & Build The Gizmoplex! that I had backed in 2021.

When the box arrived, there was nothing on the outside that indicated what it was. I was pleasantly surprised when the Gizmoplex popcorn bucket was the first thing I saw. My wife, also a MST3K fan, reminded me that Kickstarter rewards are gift that past you sends to current you. Both the popcorn bucket and the drink holder will get used for future viewing.

The red t-shirt is in 3D (you can’t really see it in the photo) and I can’t wait for a proper event to wear it at. As for the stickers. Well the bumper sticker will have to wait until I get a better car. But the other Gizmoplex Founding Member sticker is now sitting on the back of my laptop.

I hope that we will get an announcement about another season of MST3K soon. I really enjoyed season 13. I think my favorite episodes are H.G. Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come and Doctor Mordrid. I also enjoyed watching the specials and behind the scenes videos that were available for backers.

Dungeons and Dragons, Role Playing Games

I backed an RPG creativity kickstarter

Written by TardisCaptain May 20, 2023July 1, 2023

So I’ve posted about some of the Kickstarter rewards that I’ve received in the past. These have included the 2nd Edition X-Treme Dungeon Mastery and the BX Advanced Bestiary Vol. 1. I’ve also got several rewards coming to me later this year that I’m looking forward to seeing. However another Kickstarter campaign just came across my desk that really caught my attention.

For those of you scratching your heads, let me explain. David Flor wrote this adventure back in 1983 when he was twelve years old. He had it printed out and then lost it as he moved through life. Well, as he explains on his Kickstarter Page, it was recently found and reunited with him. David had returned to gaming life a few years ago and even had some adventures published. So when this example of 1980’s creativity was returned to him, he knew that he had to share it with others. Thus a Kickstarter was launched to scan the original (which is part of the rewards), update it with new artwork (also part of the rewards) and (if certain goals are met) update the adventure for such systems as Dungeons and Dragons 5E and Dungeon Crawl Classics.

So why did this catch my attention? This is the stuff that I would do back in the 80’s and 90s. I was lucky enough to find my homebrewed starships for the FASA Star Trek RPG and my Book of RPG character sheets. I’ve been sharing them here as a way to give my creativity to others. This type of creativity is what inspires me to post on my blog. So I wanted to share it with others. If you can back the Kickstarter, please do so. I’d love to see what is generated from this with all of the stretch goals accomplished.

And yes, I will make a blog post with my first look when the rewards have been released.

What roleplaying game KickStarters have you backed? Tell me about them or ask any questions about this book on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord page.

Collecting, Dungeons and Dragons, Reviews, Role Playing Games

BX Advanced Bestiary Vol. 1 a KickStarter reward

Written by TardisCaptain February 22, 2023March 14, 2024

So another item that came up in January, but the review had to be pushed back to this month because of the Character Creation Challenge, was the arrival of a KickStarter reward. I’ve backed KickStarters before for RPG material (and I have a few that are scheduled to be delivered in 2023). In 2022 I backed an independent publisher who wanted to put out a series of bestiaries for OSR games. Specifically in the B/X flavor (which is a given since it’s in the title of the book). This was The BX Advanced Bestiary Vol. 1 by Third Kingdom Games.

From my KickStarter submission I received the hardbound book which is 133 pages long. The ISBN number is 2370011833927. The cover states that the contents are designed for use with the Old-School Essentials RPG but could be used with any OSR style system. The cover art and interior art are all black and white. The author, Todd Leback, was able to obtain artwork from eight different artists for all of the entries. There are also several house-rules that are made available for GMs to consider and an appendix with several items, optional player races (which are classes in this OSR).

This tome covers monsters from A-D (Ape, White to Dryad). The interesting thing is that each entry also contains variants of the different monsters. So the GM can keep the players on their toes. “What do you mean this boar has an iron hide?” The entry for the dragon is 18 pages long which covers information on ages, lairs, allies and types of attacks.

A sample of one of the dragon pages in the book

There are about 100 monsters contained within the pages of the BX Advanced Bestiary Vol. 1. I’ve been in contact with the author and he responded very quickly to any issues (one of the images was accidentally submitted as blurry due to low resolution, which he offered a replacement book with the imaged replaced). I am impressed with both the organization and the book itself. I’ve been told that there will be KickStarters for future volumes. I plan to back them as they are released since the support levels were very reasonable. This is the type of effort we should be supporting. Fans of the game producing materials for other fans to use.

What roleplaying game KickStarters have you backed? Tell me about them or ask any questions about this book on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord page.