Pasts, Personas & Prophecies Kickstarter

If what you're looking for is an RPG with a rules light system then you might be interested in Sly Fox Games' new RPG: Pasts, Personas & Prophecies that has a Kickstarter currently running (and with just under two weeks left to go).

What's Pasts, Personas & Prophecies (AKA P3) about? Well, it seems to be focused on a story driven game experience with quick character creation and rules designed to flow with play. It also seems to be fairly light on the setting. From the art it seems to be focused on fantasy, with one of the touted features being a very flexible and creative magic system. One other feature is the 'prophecy' system which allows a character to undergo a 'semi-random' story arc that is rolled up, chosen, and created by the group (or, at least a few people within the group at a time). These prophecies can have a positive or negative effect on the character, though. Just hope you don't lose all your money.

Speaking of money, (segue!) how much would all this prophecy and rules light gaming cost? To get your reader on the PDF will set you back US$20. And a physical copy at US$30-33 (free shipping within US, US$12 additional outside), that also includes the PDF. Basically, if you want the book you likely want the physical copy (unless you live outside the US). There are a variety of other rewards up for grabs, too, like creating characters or NPCs, or joining in a game with the developer, Hunter Fox.

Now for the burning question: how is the project's Kickstarter? For the most part, not bad. The layout is nice, there are plenty of images, videos and information about the game (you do need to go through all of it to get the full picture, though). For the things that I didn't quite like we can start with the main Kickstarter video. This video is quite long, the 'background' music is a bit too loud and distracting, and the attempted humor, while I did get what he was going for, might be a bit of a turn-off for some potential backers. There really is a decent bit of information in that video, but it would have been much better if it were a little more serious, straightforward and short. Another part that I didn't quite care for were some of the pledge tiers -- there are several that seem rather pointless and just thrown-in for the sake of more tiers. Also, the price of the PDFs being so close to the physical copy is  a bit of a turn-off from the PDFs -- if it was cheaper it might draw in more impulse pledges. Lastly, while I did like the amount of information it was too spread out and required too much time to go through it all to get a solid grasp on what the game is about. And, really, a game being light on rules or mechanics, with fast, flowing combat and creative magic is not something all that uncommon or unusual these days -- this project really needs to show how it does those things, why its different from the rest and present this information succinctly.

If you are interested in Pasts, Personas & Prophecies be sure to check out its Kickstarter page and/or Sly Fox Games' website.

Dorkland Interview -- The Dangers of Daggermore with Hal Burdick

The Dangers of Daggermore Kickstarter is in its final stretch with just a few days left to go. Hal Burdick, the man behind the project, took some time to sit down with us here at Dorkland! for a short interview on the film, Kickstarter and RPGs.

Dorkland!: How has the Kickstarter project been for you and what, particularly, have you learned from this experience that you feel might help in future projects?

Hal Burdick: I’m reasonably happy with this Kickstarter project. The gaming community is a great one. The community has a lot of passion, a lot of loyalty, and is willing to support new projects. I once read that 33% of all funded Kickstarter projects were game related. I’m just happy that this community was willing to support the making of The Dangers of Daggermore, which is game inspired, but not really a game project.

DL: What kind of setup are you using to film The Dangers of Daggermore?

HB: Kersey Valley Spooky Woods is a haunted attraction near Greensboro, NC. The sets there are ideal for shooting The Dangers of Daggermore. Much of the haunted attraction features dungeon corridors, sewers, and dark alleyways. If they only had a tavern with a sign hanging outside reading “The Affable Adventurer,” it would be a one stop shop for shooting the entire webseries. 

DL: What types of special effects and props will be used, if any? Also, what's your personal favorite special effect or prop and why?

HB: Victoria Singleton has made some great costumes as you can see in the test footage. We got our cool looking weapons from Medieval Collectibles. Joh Harp is the art director of Spooky Woods and does special effects for us. He’s done the special effects for movies like Bombshell Bloodbath; so the effects will have a horror movie feel as well as a fantasy feel with elf’s ears and the regenerating troll monster we plan on having the adventurers fight.

DL: What are the inspirations behind The Dangers of Daggermore? Any particular RPG settings?

HB: Jon Carpenter’s The Thing was a film I ran a few adventurers about in my younger days. The Thing is a doppleganger in that movie, but it had a lot of features of a regenerating troll as well. There’s a classic scene where a head separates itself from its body,  pulls itself along by its tongue, sprouts its own legs, and starts walking across the floor like a spider. Sounds close enough to a regenerating troll to me. We’re paying homage to that with the monster the adventurers fight in the pilot.

As for setting, I have a gaming website called World of Atlas which features my home world that I game mastered for 20 years. Daggermore is set on this world. The key feature of the world is that Atlas is a real being holding up the world on his mountain. The campaign started with characters that lived on his mountain who then ventured out on a mission to save the world from Chaos who had come to destroy both Atlas and the world he held up. I’m thinking of making the world open source and OGL so that anyone can create adventures for it. I know I am frustrated by the fact that all the great adventures my friends created for our gaming group upon Greyhawk can’t be published by us or played by anyone else. 

The website also features tools for those who can’t play as much D&D as they’d like anymore due to real life intrusions.  Though I love Skyrim and Lord of the Rings Online, I also love the freedom that adventuring in an unbounded RPG setting gives you. The goal for the site is to create a never ending need for new adventure modules.  I don’t need another gaming system – that’s a solved problem. I want more adventures so that I can create characters that tell their own story through the adventures they have.

DL: Why have such a focus on RPGs and their tropes -- why not focus on fantasy, in-general?

HB: A fantasy film is like sex.  When it’s good, it’s really good.  When it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.  I pretty much watch any fantasy film I can get my hands on.  The stuff from Arrowstorm Entertainment, Dead Gentleman productions, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Sword and The Sorcerer, Soloman Kane, Game of Thrones -- The Guild even counts at some level.  There can’t be too many.

That said the ones that have focused on RPGs have either been funny and campy or pretty mediocre.  The three Dungeons and Dragons films had potential and good moments in each, but none of them brought out the paranoid claustrophobic fear that I think adventuring in a dungeon would bring.  The best movie for this is actually an offbeat horror film called The Descent.  It’s about a group of female spelunkers that encounter ghouls in the uncharted caves they were exploring.  Good stuff.  They just needed to be in armor, leathers, or robes covered in moons and stars complete with a pointy floppy hat.

DL: What will fans of RPGs find particularly interesting in The Dangers of Daggermore?

HB: Hopefully, the old school tradition of it. My first gaming experience happened when there was little more than Space Invaders in the video arcades. The drip of water from ceilings, the listening at a wooden door set in the wall of a long stone corridor, the anticipation of the monster growling behind it, all stimulated distinct images in my mind as I played. Now, I’m just trying to recreate my mind’s eye for others to partake in the same experience that so captivated my imagination in those early days.

DL: What will there be in the film for film buffs, especially if they have little to no experience with RPGs?

HB: The Dangers of Daggermore is not intended for art-house aficionados, nor as a primer for learning how to play the game. Our intended audience is gamers and lovers of fantasy and horror films. We’re using the conventions of the genres to bring the game to life. Intense situations, misdirection, lightning quick decision making, and monsters that threaten more than just your life. As I tell the others, this is not a film looking to bring the character side out of D&D; this is a film looking to bring the D&D out of the characters. 

DL: Why choose the Knight, Elf and Wizard?

HB: Partially, it’s due to the acting talent available. Gabrielle Boni makes a great elf, Brandon McClean makes a noble knight (though he could have been a bard), and James Filanowski is an actual magician. 

The script was written with these archetypes as the names of the character to highlight the fact that this is a film about exploring a dungeon more than about the characters themselves. That said, the actors have found depth to their characters, motivations for entering such a dangerous place, and ways to incorporate these backgrounds into the actions they take in the face of danger.

There is a little vagueness to these character concepts as well, which enables flexibility to how we tell the story, given the budget we’re able to shoot with. Is Knight a paladin or a fighter? Is Elf a ranger/rogue/ or arcane archer? How high a level is wizard, a prestidigitator or a mage?

DL: Why have a dungeon instead of another typical (or atypical) RPG location?

HB: Lord of the Rings, Eragon, and Conan the Barbarian have all done wilderness adventures well.  Peter Jackson did large underground spaces like Moria or Goblin Town, well. They haven’t done dungeons.  None of the three Dungeons and Dragons movies have done a dungeon either. What do those guys have against dungeons?  I mean, it’s in the title of their movie!

In addition to The Descent, I think Indiana Jones films were good for bringing out aspects of delving into a dungeon. The Well of Souls is the place the characters seek in Daggermore and the name is a nod to Raiders. I bet Spielberg would have loved D&D growing up.

My favorite part of ET when I first saw it was the guys gaming at the kitchen table and ordering pizza. No joke. Spielberg deftly brought out the essence of playing D&D in such a brief scene.  Boy, I wish he’d just go full bore one last time on a D&D film. I’d camp out for that one.

DL: Combat encounters are common in RPGs but so are social encounters. What kind of social aspects, if any, will there be in the film?

HB: The gathering of the party is an interesting aspect of the film. Wizard needs a team to enter Daggermore with him, he’d never survive alone, but none would be foolhardy enough to join him unless they had reasons to enter the dungeon themselves. If we are fortunate enough to expand the film to a webseries then those mysteries will be revealed and the social interactions between the characters will deepen.

DL: Lastly, what is your favorite aspect of The Dangers of Daggermore -- at any stage of the project -- and why? What do you feel really makes this film stand out?

HB: Though it may take a nerd, a geek, or a dork to realize it, dungeons are cool!!!

We here at Dorkland would like to thank Hal for his time and wish him the best with The Dangers of Daggermore. If you would like to know more about the project (or would like to show it some support) be sure to check out its Kickstarter page -- in its last few days!

The Dangers of Daggermore Kickstarter

Here's a Kickstarter project that blends two things I love together -- RPGs and movies. The Dangers of Daggermore project aims to create a film that is a good representation of what it is like to go dungeon delving in a typical RPG (in this case, 3.X/Pathfinder).

The general setting of this project is as mentioned above -- a pretty standard (fantasy) RPG. The main characters in this film are an elf, knight and wizard. There's a dungeon, monsters, combat, and hopefully lots of experience and loot. Most of the things you want in your adventure.

The rewards for the pledge tiers are where things get a bit different. It seems that the film will be presented as a web series and, thus, free to watch (though, correct me if I am wrong), so the rewards are not the film itself but tie-ins to it. These rewards escalate based on the pledge amount and each tier has two sides to it -- a gamer side and a film buff side. For example, the first tier (US$10) comes with character sheets and concept art of the main characters (the gamer side) and the shooting script (the film buff side).  As you go up the tiers you get more and more adventure material and more behind-the-scenes material.

On to the critique, I should start off by pointing out that the project has hit its funding goal -- as of this writing it is sitting right on it. It's done what it has set out to do, so I'll throw my guesstimates at what might have helped it get there (and what might have helped it get further). The funding goal is fairly low at US$1,000 -- it seems that this is to help produce a pilot episode, so that might be enough (I assume there is additional funding being put into the project). There is also the video on the page -- one that you should watch if you have any interest in this project. I typically skip the videos on Kickstarter pages and move straight into the text -- if you do that on this one you'll be missing out. The text on the page does give a general overview but it is far weaker than the video. The video is quite good in general and shows off some of the potential the film might have, it also shows that the project's crew does at least have a decent A/V setup (though there is some audio quality issues in one section). You also get a lot more information about the project and get to see the faces and personalities behind it -- that's all good. The pledge tiers, however, are not quite as attractive. The prices tend to be fairly high for what you get. If there was a bit more offered on each tier it would make them more enticing. As it stands, you basically are pledging more on the basis that you really want to see this project go through -- which does attest to the dedication of the backers who helped it reach its funding goal. Still, its a bit of a hard sell to the average joe.

If you would like to know more about The Dangers of Daggermore be sure to check out its Kickstarter page and be sure to watch the video.

Extreme Earth Kickstarter

A new Iron Age of comics and dystopian-themed RPG campaign setting is on Kickstarter -- Extreme Earth, promising plenty of corruption, conflict and super powers. The campaign setting is being published by Fainting Goat Games in seven different rules systems -- BASH!, Bulletproof Blues, Fate Accelerated Edition, ICONS, Mutants and Masterminds, Savage Worlds, and SUPERS!

The setting of Extreme Earth is that of a contemporary Earth with some minor changes -- namely, less resources, more corruption, and the introduction of super powers. This all leads to plenty of conflict at every possible level of society and between every possible entity. The emerging supers are, of course, tools and weapons to be used in the growing conflicts.

The price of all this conflict starts out at US$15 for a PDF (US$20 for PDFs of all seven systems -- a much better deal) and US$45 for the POD physical copy of one system. And a limited edition print copy, of a single system, can be had for US$75 (international shipping is an extra US$15 for both physical copies). There are extras at the higher tier levels, if you are so inclined, and they include goodies like getting pieces of art or having characters of your own creation implemented into future products.

Now we come to the 'critique' of the project page -- my favorite section. The video essentially summarizes the first couple of paragraphs of information on the page -- it is done well enough, though the video and audio quality can always be improved. If you would prefer to just read and not watch a video, you can skip it quite easily, otherwise it is nice to put on while checking out the pledge levels and such. The general layout of the page is good and there is detailed information -- including imagery -- of the rewards for the different pledge levels, so everything is pretty easy to understand. The information on the page for the project is just satisfactory enough to make me curious, but I would still like to see a bit more information on the setting and maybe an example or two just to get a feel for it all. As it stands I am curious but not quite assured to the point of dropping money on it -- very close, though. Speaking of money, the goal seems reasonable and they are already around the half-way point with some time to go. There are a few stretch goals listed, which is nice -- I don't like having too many out on the page before the project has funded. If they begin including some imagery for the stretch goals as they did with the pledge tiers (once the stretch goals are the next target), it would be beneficial. All in all, the folks behind Extreme Earth have run successful Kickstarter (and Indiegogo) projects before and it shows.

If you would like to know more about Extreme Earth be sure to check out its Kickstarter page. 

The ENnies: It Is An Honor Just To Be Nominated...

For the first time ever, I submitted the Dorkland! blog for consideration for the ENnies. Do I expect to be nominated, or even win for that mater? Nah, not really. I've been doing this blog for just over 10 years now, and I've been plugging away at it without really caring who likes or who doesn't like what I want to talk about over here. I staked this out as my little corner of the internet, to let the dice fall where they may (so to speak). Why the sudden need for affirmation? To be honest, the whole thing is more of a PR thing for me than anything else. Additional eyes on the blog never hurt, and having links on the ENnies site will help drive some traffic, perhaps to people who have never seen the blog before. A contradiction, I know.

Super-Soldiers And Super-Spies For Fate Accelerated.

Many of you probably know that I am a fan of the Agents of SHIELD show on ABC. With the Captain America The Winter Soldier movie coming out tomorrow, I decided that I needed to put up something inspired by the Marvel Cinematic Universe that was gameable. This mini-setting for the Fate Accelerated rules (although you can just as easily use it with Fate Core) hits the spot that I was looking for. It gives a Gm the starting framework to build a campaign using the Cinematic Universe as an inspiration, while creating your own adventures.

You can download the PDF over here. Let me know what you think either here, over at G+ or on Twitter.

Combat Description Cards Kickstarter

I've covered several RPG Kickstarters so far for Dorkland, and this project is indeed involved with RPGs -- just in a bit of a different way. So, have you ever been sitting around the game table (or webcam) and thought, "Wow, combat is so boring -- I wish it could be spiced up a bit"? If so, the Combat Description Cards Kickstarter might be the project you need to liven up the play session.

How does it work? Pretty simply, it seems. There are three different suits of cards -- blunt, slashing and piercing -- each with three different types of styles -- stylish, power and ranged -- that each have two descriptions -- damaging and death. Need a descriptive way to describe something that just happened in combat? Pull a card from the respective suit, read the style and description that best fits the situation -- or just use it as inspiration and wing it a bit. That seems to be about it. There are some 100+ cards in the set (around 120+ now, with the stretch goals, I think) so there are plenty of descriptions to use. One aspect that the Kickstarter page made sure to point out, and that I think is good, is the lack of detailed information in the descriptions -- so they can be used with any weapon in nearly any setting or situation.

Interested? Then read on for the tiers and pricing and such.

The first tier of interest is at US$10 where you can get a digital PDF of all the cards to print on your own. For a physical deck the lowest tier is US$25 (includes free shipping within the US, additional for outside), and then several tiers of additional deck, digital and other goodies in a mix. Some of these other goodies are the Conflict PvP Rulebook from the same company (Conflict Roleplaying) and other gaming aids like battlemaps. If I have read the FAQ correctly, it also seems that backers at the US$25 tier and higher will receive the physical stretch goal rewards, too, of which there are several. Overall, not too expensive considering the cards look to be pretty well made.

Now for my favorite segment: the judging of the Kickstarter page. I really don't have to do it for this project, though, as it has already more than smashed through its original funding goal and many stretch goals -- clearly, it has done something very right. Still, let's run through it quickly -- starting with the video. The video is well made -- seems like there might have been a company hired to do at least the first half of it. The one problem I had with it, though, was the bright ball of light behind the text -- that was a bit blinding and made it a tad difficult to read some of the words. Moving on to the page content -- there are quite a few images that clearly show the product, images that show the different tiers and their rewards, and images that show off the stretch goal rewards. You hardly have to even read the page and you know generally know what's going on and what it's about. I like that. The written portion is okay, as well, and does thoroughly describe the product and its uses. It's a fine Kickstarter page all-around, but I feel it is all the clear images that really help take it a bit further.

And there you go -- liven up the deaths in your game with some ready-made descriptions. If you'd like to know more about the Combat Description Cards, feel free to check out its Kickstarter page. For more information on the company behind the cards, Conflict Roleplaying, be sure to check out their website.

Dorkland Interview -- Orin Rakatha Kickstarter with Mike Penny

Orin Rakatha, the RPG setting with a long and storied background as a U.K.-based LARP, is in its final couple of days of Kickstarter -- and, as of this writing, it only needs a few more quid to reach the funding goal! Despite the busy final stretch, one of the developers, Mike Penny, sat down with us here at Dorkland! to answer some questions we had about Orin Rakatha.

Dorkland!: First up, how has the Kickstarter experience been for you so far? What do you feel you have done especially well? What might or would you change?

Mike Penny: I’ve been a fan of Kickstarter for a year or so, have backed a couple dozen projects and have like I am sure many people thought ‘I could do that’. Well now we are most of the way through and it does look like we will have made it but it’s been a bumpy ride and I have much more sympathy for those successful / unsuccessful Kickstarters I have watched. It has been an immensely exciting project but somewhat all consuming, there’s been some high and low points; the highs have to be the fantastic support we have received I think the lows have been ‘no comments’: we’ve had hardly any comments / questions which I was looking forward to!

The most challenging part has been creation of traffic, Kickstarter is a great platform but you don’t get pledges from them, almost all of our pledges have been via social media links; the best advice I got very early in our campaign was ‘in crowd-funding the crowd comes before the fund for a very important reason’ meaning build your own crowd first; which we did go out in earnest to create from an early stage and it has proved to be successful.

As for changing something not sure I would, lots of people have said that our initial campaign and video were too ‘amateur’ and I agree, we aren’t video of typesetting professionals and our Kickstarter was very much about getting the funding for these professionals for the end product but saying that if we come back to Kickstarter I think we would get some seed funding first for such things on the campaign as it does seem to be ‘expected’

Overall a very positive experience I feel and the support has been tremendous.

DL: How did Orin Rakatha come to be, all those years ago?

MP: Our Live Action Roleplaying campaign started on a world called Murandir; for a while at the time (and this is almost 30 years ago) we had a permanent fixed site for our adventures and most of the LARP games took place there. When the time came to give back the lease on the permanent site and look to the future the decision was made to write a new world to mark this change.
There was also a want to create a world that worked perfectly for the LARP environment, addressing a challenge that we call ‘Suspension of Disbelief’ in that when we LARP we want to minimize the number of times that we have to accept something ‘as it is’ because we cannot physically create it in the real world (something which table-top is not limited by). So we wrote a world that had rules supporting the concept; one of the easiest methods of describing this is via the ‘Laws of Orin Rakatha’, there is an actual law on the lands described as follows: “The Law of Gathering: The people shall not travel the land in groups larger than twenty individuals”, the LARP reason for this is although we might want to we could stage enormous battles every other weekend, our LARP events had 10-15 players and a similar number of crew (monsters) so we wrote a law that made sense of this in-character. The cool thing about transference of these laws to the RPG is that this means that the most powerful unit on the world of Orin Rakatha is the ‘adventuring party’ and here they become the armies of the towers of people they represent.  I’ll cover a bit more about this in the question about sentience below.

The original spark of Orin Rakatha came from a fairly small tight knit group but the development over the years has been handled by a large team of referees and like all the best campaigns but on the tabletop or not by huge input from the players and crew.

DL: What are some of the challenges with bringing a setting with such a long history to print?

MP: The two biggest challenges we are firstly living up to the expectations of those people that have actually been in the world of Orin Rakatha, there are now words with which you can replace a live experience (but we do feel that these live experiences will create, colour and infuse our words) and frankly we want to make sure that those people feel its great, as they will be our harshest critics, get it right for them and we feel it will work for the wider audience.

Secondly the volume of the editing task we have to undertake, there is a lot of stuff to compound into words suitable for a book, and a lot of it was created prior to all the common sharing mechanisms we take for granted today. We haven’t underestimated this task hence why there are 6 of us on the team and we’ve allowed enough time in our plan to do the primary edit (and re-write where needed as not everything fits from LARP to RPG) to meet our current delivery targets.

DL: What unique benefits or challenges, if any, are there in bringing Orin Rakatha back from the LARP to the tabletop?

MP: A fringe benefit to us is that as the campaign has developed over such a long time, there has never been one steward of the history and it has never been collected into one place, this will re-energise our LARP world as much as it will launch the RPG product. As for challenges on top of the ‘we already have a lot of people to impress’ I think it will sit around ‘crunch’ or the stats and rules not covered by the story element, as we can’t directly transfer the LARP stats to the RPG (as the LARP has it’s own unique rule set); so we do have to re-stat everything to suit a couple of the key existing fantasy campaign rules sets, we are currently targeting Pathfinder, the OGL direct, Fate and potential Savage Worlds; this is the area with the largest amount of work we have to do ourselves but we are experienced gamers and are looking forward to it!

DL: Orin Rakatha is a fantasy setting and there is a bit of info about it on the Kickstarter page, but how does it really differentiate itself from existing fantasy settings? What would get existing fantasy-game players psyched up about it?

MP: For me it’s simple to answer this, characterization and plot! This is a long story-line and the characters have actually been played by real people and been ‘experienced’ by hundreds of others. It’s a bit like re-writing a major fantasy novel, after you’ve seen the film but also asked all the audience what they thought about both the book and the film.

DL: 'Sentience' is something mentioned in the description of the game -- what are these semi-sentient lands and sentient towers?

MP: So I am not going to give too much away here! But simply put the land is alive and controlled in a mystical way, it responds to the actions of others to uphold the laws.

The structures in which each of the groups of peoples (small nations) live are called towers and these towers are linked to the mystical power that controls the land, protect the people from the mists that transform the land and also are unique in their own way, in that they are larger on the insider than they appear and have internal climate (which is where all food production and mundane activities take place), you cannot harm a person within a tower nor can you lay siege to them. They are a completely safe haven; but to retain a tower your people must have sufficient power and wealth to do so, this is measured together and known as ‘status’ on Orin Rakatha; so they must send out ‘adventuring groups’ to maintain their status (or in game terms gain xp and gold!) I said I’d talk some more here about how Orin Rakatha came to be; one of the elements we wanted a ‘reason’ for under the ‘suspension of disbelief’ was to answer this question ‘When adventuring as a low level party how come we hardly ever meet monsters that are much higher level than we are? And when we meet some lower level monsters or ones that we out-number how come they just don’t take one look at our cool armour and magic weapons and run away?’ So here the sentient nature of the land actually ‘responds’ to effectively marshal not only its own forces but also the opposing sides of towered people so that much of the time they meet others of a similar rank or level (not always GM’s!) The Mystics achieve this by the pathways being physically changed to redirect those that are travelling across the lands to ‘meet’ in a particular way. The nature of random encounters are also influenced by the lands sentience, many of the indigenous creatures have a simple culture and believe in reincarnation to such an extent that they are actually willing to fight against greater more powerful odds because they will be ‘brought back by the mists as a more powerful creature’

DL: What are some of the inspirations behind Orin Rakatha?

MP: The team and the players of Heroquest LARP developed as the fantasy genre developed in the UK, early on it was 'Dungeons & Dragons' & 'Lord of the Rings' and it's moved over the years as the fantasy genre has developed and become more accessible to everyone. But the single most significant influence during the creation of Orin Rakatha has been our players; most GM's will know this secret - the players come up with all the best plot ;0)

DL: Who or what were the Ikarthians?

MP: The Ikarthians are, or more correctly were, one of the towered people of Orin Rakatha (as described earlier all the towers are akin to a small nation of a few thousand people); they are part of the pre-history of the world (in that they date from a time prior to the player character history) and were in a traumatic incident all destroyed in a single heart-beat. You’ll find out more about them in the starter module ‘Burning Night’ and if we meet our stretch targets the campaign module ‘The Shadow of the Ikarthians’ will reveal all their story).

 DL: The art on the Kickstarter page (which I quite enjoy) seems to give off a bit of a grimdark vibe -- what exactly is the tone of the setting and how is it expressed?

MP: So there are elves, orcs, wizards, goblins, warriors and priests so it is in one way a traditional high fantasy setting but we do agree that it has a gritty more real edge to it, fundamentally this comes from the way the story was written, so firstly in the more traditional sense the story was written down by the referee organizing the LARP events, but what defines Orin Rakatha is the nature of the story development, in that it has been played out and the story developed by hundreds of people both taking part in events and writing and developing the plot as it went along. So as we commute this into the books you'll get the flavour of a number of peoples perspectives on the story. So in short it's a high fantasy campaign but with a real edge!

DL: Lastly, what is your favorite part of Orin Rakatha and why?

MP: For me it has to be the lands and towers around an area called the Ikarthian Triangle, this is made of of 3 towers; one was destroyed long ago (and some of its history is revealed in our first module Burning Night) and remains haunted by its once inhabitants the Ikarthian people; who were all tragically slain in the same moment (the whole tower of 1000's of people all at the same time), and of the other two I really love the Labyrinth of Xenos a tower of enchanters that create golems and clockwork constructs to carry out their will and whom are all linked to a single consciousness. This triangle of towers is one of the few places on Orin Rakatha where the open land is protected from the mists and it is also therefore a hub for the undesirables that have now tower sanctuary to call their home.

We here at Dorkland would like to thank Mike for his time in answering these questions and if you would like to know more about Orin Rakatha please check out their Kickstarter page -- only a couple of days left on it!

March Book One By John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell

While at MegaCon last weekend I inadvertently stumbled upon the Top Shelf Productions booth and found what is one of the most powerful comic book stores that I have encountered in a long time.

March Book One is a biographical comic, based on the life of U.S. Representative John Lewis, and written by his aide Andrew Aydin with art by Nate Powell.

One of the great things about picking up a book for the first time at a comic convention is that you often get to meet the creators. Aydin's enthusiasm for his writing on the book and Lewis' life was infectious and got me to pick up the book. I don't think that a comic creator's direct enthusiasm has influenced me as much since I met David Mack back in the 90s, and he sold me on his Kabuki comic. Of course, these two have little in common outside of an emotional impact.

This first book in a trilogy talks about Lewis' early life as the child of Alabama sharecroppers, up through his college years and early involvement in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Early on, Lewis' empathy is shown, in his treatment of the farm's chickens when he was a child. This sets the stage for what would become his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.

Don't think that is is a dry recital of facts and dates, like some high school history course. Through Aydin's talent as a writer, Lewis and the people in his life are vivid and engaging as you follow them through their fight for equality. Powell's art beautifully compliments the writing and helps to bring the writing to life.

It is amazing how much you think that you know about a subject, until someone who was actually there shows how little that you really know. This book is like that. Not in a "trying to teach a lesson" kind of way, but with the methods that can only come from natural storytellers like Lewis and Aydin. It is obvious from the writing that Aydin has a great deal of respect for Lewis and his accomplishments, and after reading this first book it is a respect that we all have as well.

I don't think that I can speak highly enough of this book. This comic is something that I am going to stick into the faces of friends for years to come, telling them that they need to read this book. In fact the point of this review is that you need to read this book. One of the things that I talked about with Aydin, while he signed my copy of the book, was that comic, and really all forms of geek media from games to movies, need to expand beyond the power fantasies that you often find and explore new territories with emotional maturity. This comic shows how you can do that.

If it isn't obvious yet, you need to pick up this book (and the next two parts when they come out).

David Trampier, 1954-2014

It has been reported and confirmed that iconic TSR Games artist David A. Trampier has died. This is the last known picture of Trampier, from the Carbondale, IL Daily Egyptian newspaper:

Probably best known for his AD&D 1e art, as well as art on the early editions of Star Frontiers and Gamma World, Trampier has a quirky idiosyncratic style of art that helped to define the early D&D experience, along with artists Jeff Dee and Erol Otus.

For those of us whose earliest gaming experiences were formed by this man's art, I can say that he will be missed.