Science and Magic Don't Mix in Amethyst

Welcome back to another Kickstarter Conversation!  Today I am pleased to be joined by Chris Dias who is here to talk about his work on the Amethyst Kickstarter.  Thank you for reaching out to us Chris, it’s a pleasure to talk to you.  

Likewise.  It’s been an intense few weeks.

Amethyst sounds familiar where have I heard of it before?  Could you tell us all about it?  

Amethyst was published as a D20 role playing game in 2008, which caught the attention of Goodman Games who released an updated version to 4th Edition D&D in 2010 (Foundations).  Since then, we also released a Pathfinder edition (Renaissance) as well as an expansion for 4E (Evolution).  The whole series has been well received by critics and fans because of its mature approach to material often looked upon as juvenile--that of a setting revolving around the conflict of magic and technology.

That’s right, I knew I’d seen those books around before!  I’ve always enjoyed tech vs magic type settings, but what sets Amethyst apart from other similar concepts like RIFTS, Shadowrun, and just Steampunk in general?  

Well, Amethyst is not technically Steampunk--about the only thing Steampunk from a visual standpoint is that you might see the odd airship or two.  And both RIFTS and Shadowrun deal with a setting where magic and technology can effectively occupy the same space.  I would also make a case that these settings in general often glorify the blending of genres without looking into the social difficulties of such a mix.  They present the end result--their desired setting--without asking how society would actually work.  Often times they can’t.  Amethyst has no cyberpunk elements and is more about the direct conflicts of two genres with opposing ideologies.  To enforce this conflict, we introduce disruption, that is the tendency of magic to disrupt technology, as both a gameplay element and a critical setting function.  With the threat that magic can take away your internet, central heating, and refrigerator, suddenly those people previously in love with fantasy novels and role playing games find themselves at odds over which world they would actually wish to live in.  

I don’t think we can talk more about Amethyst without bringing up the wonderful art you’ve got on display with these products!  Who is in charge of the art direction and how many artists do you have on the project?  

I have one.  Just one.  Oh, sure, I’ve employed others with previous books and with other products DEM has released (some of whom people will no doubt recognize) but Amethyst’s visual side truly only has one voice, and said voice has maintained a constant vision on par with my own.  That man is Nick Greenwood, responsible for 99% of all artwork in Amethyst and who will be responsible for all artwork funded by the kickstarter.  

Help Fund My Robot Army!!!

Welcome back to another Kickstarter Conversation! Today we welcome John Joseph Adams to the conversation to talk about his project HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! & Other Improbable Kickstarters.  Thank you for joining us today!
 

Thanks for having me!

Now that’s quite a mouthful for a title, can you tell us about your project?  

Sure! I describe the book as an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, and alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Which is to say: It’s an anthology of short stories, each of which will be presented as a fictional crowdfunding project pitch, using the elements and restrictions of the format to tell the story. That in of itself is somewhat meta, but then I’m doubling-down on the meta by making an entire anthology of such stories and funding it via Kickstarter.

Wait… so your project isn’t about cats?  All I saw in your video was cute cats.  Why did you trick me?

It’s surprising sometimes what desperation can inspire.

When I did my Kickstarter for Nightmare Magazine, we ended up not doing a video, even though everyone said we had to. We had every intention to, but then we never quite got our act together to do it, and ultimately we just decided to proceed without one. After all, I figured, people who would back a LITERARY project surely are willing to READ to learn about it, right?

Well, Nightmare funded just fine without a video, but knowing that the video is most of the time considered an essential element of a Kickstarter pitch, I felt like for HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! we HAD to include a video--it seemed like if I’m going to do a Kickstarter project about Kickstarters, I couldn’t skip out on having one of the critical components in my own pitch.

The problem was: I’m terrible on camera. TERRIBLE. I tried several times to just talk to the camera and make my pitch, and every take was just awful. So I was desperate and I didn’t know what to do about it. I had the thought, though, that I should be able to record the audio easily and cleanly enough--so I thought: what if I could get some kind of video footage that I could lay an audio track underneath (like a voiceover).

And then it hit me. On the one hand, Kickstarter is on the internet. On the other hand, the Internet loves cats. Then I thought: PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER. I don’t know that anyone has ever engaged in such shameless catsploitation in their Kickstarter video, but I’m actually quite proud of it. And it was a lot of fun to put together! I actually had no video or audio editing experience going into it, and, I mean...it ain’t Citizen Kane, but I think it turned out quite well, and it was fun learning the basics of those skills to assemble the video. Luckily we have a cattery (i.e., a no-kill cat shelter) in the town in which I live, so we were able to just go down there and get permission to shoot some video, and that gave me tons of material to work with. We just shot the whole thing with iPhones.

The Mysterious Monsters of Japan, revealed!

Welcome back to another Kickstarter Conversation! Today Matthew Meyer joins the conversation with his second Kickstarter The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits.  Thank you for joining us today Matthew!

Domo arigato! Thank you for having me!

The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits is an odd name, could you tell us about it?  

“The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits” is the literal translation of “oumagatoki (逢魔時),” the Japanese word for “twilight.” This book’s theme is the cycle of one night, and of course, that all begins with twilight. In old Japanese superstition, the border between night and day was also one of the borders between the living world and the spirit world. Twilight was believed to be an easy time for ghosts and monsters to cross over into our world, and that is how the word came about. If you found yourself out and about during twilight, you’d have a good chance of running into some kind of horrible evil. And of course, this book is basically an encyclopedia of things you might run into at night!

Your previous Kickstarter The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons did exceedingly well, and you’ve already reached your goal on the second.  Why do you think your projects do so well?  Is there a large market for Yokai stories and pictures outside of Japan?  

Definitely there is! I started painting and telling yokai stories on my blog in 2009, and one of the constant requests I would get from readers was to put all of these yokai into a book. Even in Japan, yokai can be considered somewhat of a niche interest, but yokai fans are very devoted to their passion. Outside of Japan, though, there is almost no material available on yokai -- a handful of English-language books and websites, but that’s it. Yokai fans outside of Japan want to learn more, but the resources just aren’t there. So my goal is to help change that, and introduce yokai to English-speaking fans (and to make fans of people who have never heard of yokai yet!).

She Came from the Great White North, it's Nelvana of the Northern Lights!

Welcome back to another Kickstarter Conversation!  Today I welcome Hope Nicholson and Rachel Richey to the conversation to talk about her historical Kickstarter Nelvana of the Northern Lights: Canada's First Superheroine.  Thank you for joining us today Hope & Rachel!

Hope: Thanks for having us! We’re so excite to talk to you, especially since we just reached our 25, 000 goal

Your project caught my eye for its historical context as well as bringing something to my attention I never knew before.  Could you tell us about your project and its historical heroine?  

Rachel Richey: One of the first superheroines in comics is Canadian! Essentially this series has been buried since just after WWII and Hope Nicholson and I are bringing her back to the public to enjoy, appreciate and cherish as part of a greater unknown history of comics!

Hope: Nelvana is an Inuit demigoddess who uses the power of the Northern Lights to fight her foes, usually Nazis or interdimensional villains. She was created as a collaboration between the group of 7 artist Franz Johnston, who brought back stories he heard while travelling amongst Inuit villages, and Adrian Dingle, an accomplished and ambitious fine artist in Toronto. Adrian Dingle reformed her into the image of his lovely wife, and created a new comic book publication called Triumph in order to showcase her adventures (and various other stories).

Nelvana sounds like she was ahead of her time.  How did you come across her story?  What made you want to bring her back to a modern audience?  

Rachel Richey: Nelvana WAS ahead of her time. She predates Wonder Woman by a couple months, she’s based on inuit mythology and she herself is half inuit! Hope and I both stumbled upon her fairly accidently, while digging around in Canadian comics history which is something we’re both very passionate about. Luckily she is one of the better known Canadian Golden Age heroes, but that is relative. Once I discovered how awesome she was, compared to how obscure she was, I was infuriated! How can Canada have something this awesome and so seemingly disregarded. No one knows and that’s objectively wrong!

Hope: Nelvana was truly amazing, I discovered her while researching forms of Canadian made media when I was an academic. A few years later and a significant amount of research led me to spend a few months combing through microfiche in my local library! I grew especially fond of those microfiche machines over that long period of time because it meant I could finally read the comics that I’d been curious about for years. I wanted to bring her back, because not only is her story and art amazing, but I didn’t want anyone to have to go through as much trouble as I did. She should be completely, easily accessible to all Canadians, and all comic fans in general!

The Canadian comic book industry sounds like an odd thing to say from an American point of view, but that wasn’t always the case was it?  What happened in World War II to allow the Canadian Comic industry to flourish, and then allowed for its fall?

Rachel Richey: During the second World War, Canada banned non essential goods from being imported to preserve the Canadian dollar. Five Canadian publishers took advantage of the open market and began producing comics, one of them being Hillborough Studios’ Triumph-Adventure Comics created by Adrian Dingle, which featured Nelvana as the lead story! She appeared in the very first issue in 1941. Unfortunately, after the war ended, the ban was lifted in 1946. American comics reentered the Canadian market and Canadian comics could not keep up in terms of production quality. So many publishers ceased publication and fell into obscurity.

Hope: There’s some indication that during the short period of overlap when both American and Canadian comics were available, the Canadian comics were sometimes more popular than the American returned comics. But American comics were in colour and had a much larger local population buying the comics which made their costs significantly lower. Canadian companies just couldn’t compete with these economics.

Kickstarter Conversations first Video Review

That's right, the blog is branching out into videos.  Right now I'm going for a similar format to my "Caught MY Eye" posts where I talk about a Kickstarter and the rate it based on product and campaign.  So check it out and let me know what you'd like to see in the future and let me know how I can improve the videos!

It Takes More Than Just the Captain to Control a Starship! PULSAR: Lost Colony

Welcome back to another Kickstarter Conversation! I am pleased to be joined by the team from Leafy Games to talk about their intriguing Kickstarter PULSAR: Lost Colony.  Thank you all for joining us today!

Hello James! Thanks for having us! We are always very excited to talk about our game! The whole Leafy Games team is pitching in today - George, our artist; Preston, our programmer; and Jenn, our writer.

Now that you’ve made every Star Trek fan on Kickstarter jump for joy could you tell us all about Bridge Simulator, I mean PULSAR: Lost Colony?   

Sure! PULSAR: Lost Colony is a cooperative starship simulator that features rogue-like elements such as random galaxies and perma-death. The main objective of the game is for you and your crew to locate the mysterious Lost Colony by exploring, engaging in combat, and gathering information to aid in your search. However, the game won’t be a walk in the park, as there will be many challenges to overcome in order to survive your journey.

Besides letting me become Captain James J Yee what does PULSAR offer that Artemis: Starship Bridge Simulator doesn’t?  

We believe we started with a similar core idea and simply took it in a different direction.

In PULSAR: Lost Colony,  we implemented first-person perspective mechanics along with fully built interiors for each ship and space station. A big part of the game for us is the ability to look out the window of starship while your friend is piloting, or to see enemy missiles shooting towards you as you man your station!

A large focus for us was to provide an immersive adventure that can be experienced in single- and multi-player modes. Putting the player in dangerous and hectic situations is strengthened when the player has the ability to directly observe not only their ship interior, but also new and strange locations out in the galaxy.

Artemis provides an very unique experience, but it also has a steep requirement in that it is difficult to set up on a whim. We think PULSAR: Lost Colony makes it easier than ever to adventure out into the galaxy in a variety of co-op modes and have the starship crew experience!

A Universe to explore, interact, and conquer! For the Empress!

Welcome back to another Kickstarter Conversation! Today I am joined by the team from Perihelion Interactive LLC who are here to talk with us about their Kickstarter for The Mandate. Thank you all for coming.

Our pleasure! Let’s get to your questions as we suspect many folks will just skip over the introduction anyway! ;)

The project seem exciting for a few reasons, why don’t you tell us what the Mandate is all about and why others should be excited as well?  

Do you like sci-fi? Do you like history? Would you like to the the former take inspiration from the latter? Do you want to be a space ship captain and manage a crew and not just a ship? Do you want a sandbox world that also has a strong narrative, with a campaign that adapts? If yes, you should take a closer look at the Mandate.

You seem to be taking a very classic, as in pen and paper classic, RPG approach to this game.  By focusing on universe building and backstory and then leaving the rest to the player that seems to be the opposite of how most games seem to be made these days.  Why make a sandbox and not a scripted story?  Is there an “endgame” beyond just not dying?  

A sandbox game has more room for player choice and will let the player impact the game world more than a linear scripted story. It is our belief that games should be non-linear media. If you want a scripted story where the writer’s needs come before your own, then the Mandate is not the game for you. Non-linear sandbox games -if done right- also allows for a higher degree of replayability which means you get both more impact on the events in the game and you get to enjoy the game for a longer time. This adds value and makes the game more enticing.