Dungeon Roller -- Tranforming Random Tables into Tabletop Fun

In March of 2012, Paul Hughes of blog of holding launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund his illustrated rendition of the old "random dungeon" charts from the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide. The Kickstarter was successful and raised close to $28,000. The additional funds allowed Hughes the time to create rules for a quick and easy Dungeon Crawl board game based on the poster and to begin work on a flash based version of the game called Dungeon Robber that would be hosted on the web and free to play for anyone who wanted to experience a narrative "rogue-like."

That game is now available and it is everything one could hope for from such a game. Players begin with very limited choices of career...they can only be Dungeon Robbers. New character classes, items, and the ability to recruit henchmen are unlocked with the successful retirement of past Dungeon Robbers. Do you want to be able to purchase food, and thus be able to heal at certain spots in the dungeon? Then you need to have a character retire as a Yeoman. Do you want to hire henchmen? Then some lucky sap needs to adventure long enough to become an innkeeper.

The game is tough and quite arbitrary due to its random nature, but it is fun in the classic Ken St. Andre way. Life is cheap and death is just around the corner. Going down a level in a dungeon is almost certain suicide unless you're of high enough level. Game play is similar to older text based games like Zork, but the results of the interface are more akin to playing a game of Dungeon Hack or another rogue-like. The game is good fun and I recommend playing the game on the website (just click the image above). If you like the game as much as I do just buy a copy of the poster and make sure that Paul gets a couple of ducats for his trouble.

History, Mystery, Orcus, and Cthulhu Greeting Cards

Today has been a crazy day, but from the moment it began I knew that it was the day that I would have to launch my new Kickstarter project even though I haven't finished editing the pitch video.  Don't worry, I will finish that soon and I'll be adding a couple of rewards.

I knew I had to launch the project when my daughter Mystery who was cheerfully playing with one of my Balor D&D pre-painted miniatures ran over to the shelf where my limited edition D&D mini Orcus was lying and brought him to the breakfast table to "play with his friend."  I don't know exactly what kind of games that Orcus and his pal "little Balor" play together, but I do know they include Aurora from Sleeping Beauty and Silvermist from the Tinkerbell series among their closest friends an playmates.

Who knew that Aurora and Silvermist went for the "bad boy" type. Watch out Prince Phillip.

It was the perfect combination of cute and terrifying and I took that as the sign that the time was right.

You see, I've been planning to release a Cthulhu Claus Holiday Card project for some time now as one of the offerings of the business my friends Wes and Joel formed with me last year.  Our goal is to create a number of gaming and gaming related products with an overarching aim of building community and expanding the scope of the hobby.  I think that the Cthulhu Claus Holiday Card project fits that mold perfectly.

I hope that its mix of Lovecraftian imagery adapted by the humorous hand of my wife Jody Lindke -- the first woman to win the prestigious Charles Schulz Cartooning Award -- with the spirit of the Holiday Season will make a great gift for gamers and for non-gamer pulp fans alike.  Ever since I first saw "All I want for Solstice is my Sanity" video and read through Tor's December belongs to Lovecraft blog entries, I've wanted to do a Lovecraft themed Christmas product.  The only thing I lacked was the funds to launch such a project, and now with Kickstarter I have that opportunity.

Of course, that also means that the success or failure of this project is up to you.  If you want this product, please back my project.  I promise that there will be more rewards coming -- original artwork anyone? -- and that we will have stretch goals.  Help me make this happen.

Kickstarter is Gamer Heaven

Ever since Erik Bauer's very successful foray using Kickstarter to fund a Gaming Paper project, it seems that each day brings a new worthy project.  Kickstarter really seems to be where the action is for the prospective game designer/start-up company.  Given my plans for the next couple years, I hope that this trend continues.

Here are two current projects in the midst of their funding processes that caught my eye.  Each one has its own appeal, but if you only had $50 with which to fund projects how would you distribute your hard earned money?

First up is Technoir, a game of high-tech, hard-boiled roleplaying.

Next up is a game that may be too "original" for its own good. I like the underlying concept -- I've mentioned before that I am looking forward to Mike Elliot and Eric Lang's "Quarriors" game -- but the wild variety of the dice in Dice Age might be more a disadvantage in the market than an advantage. What are your thoughts?