Coming Soon to Quickstarter: Shards – a Worldbuilding Zine

Kickstarter is a lot of things, from a pre-order platform to a place for helping small indie businesses get projects off the ground. Quickstarter is a little nod in the direction of the small and indie – so, us – by encouraging small, cheap, fast and simple kickstarters without all the studio-made videos and focus-tested page layouts that feature in the largest and most successful projects.

Another nod in that direction is Zine Quest spending February promoting RPG Zines, black-and-white, A5, fit-in-the-post magazines of RPG themed content. Again, right in our wheelhouse.

It’s been a year since we wound down Jigsaw Fantasy, planning to rebrand as Setting Shards and relaunch. So now is when we want to do so.

Put all those facts together and you get a crazy idea that just might work (and actually seems quite sensible after a month of working on it) – we’re taking the best bits of Setting Shards and distilling them down into a monthly Zine for GMs, Writers and other worldbuilding enthusiasts.

Each month will be a new issue containing four articles – three detailing Shards that can be dropped into fantasy and/or sci-fi settings and the fourth covering a more general concept without a specific answer where things like “Where do dragons nest, and why?” or “how do I come up with good names for characters and places, quickly?” can be explored

Next weeks blog will have more of the details – including the exact date for the launch. It will be early February, but how early? Well, that depends on when we have all the articles finished – as we experienced with Jigsaw Fantasy a monthly schedule brooks no delays, meaning we always need to maintain a buffer of completed pieces.

Please follow and like us:

Clash of Blades and Conventions

Sarah of Avandy showing her skills

Sarah of Avandy showing her skills

 

As promised, today I’m talking about Clash of Blades – the eldest of all of Artemis Games projects, though one that is as yet unpublished. If you haven’t read it already, consider taking a look at my first post on the subject.

It’s taken a lot of work to get to a state in which I’m happy with it, but aside from the art it’s finally there. With the example of the Emperor’s Hand Kickstarter we now know that we, as Artemis Games, aren’t ready to source sufficient art, advertising and general graphical quality to run a proper Kickstarter for Clash of Blades, at least not one that will allow it to reach its full potential.

We work best in text, and our social networks are mainly on the roleplaying side of the tabletop gaming hobbies, so we need far more active marketing skills and push to bring a card game to bear, and while we all firmly believe the game is capable of selling itself, in the end that’s not enough – it’s a game that we feel could be great, rather than good, and we fully intend to ensure it is.

To that end, we’ve decided that we’re going to pitch it to publishers, rather than simply crowdfunding it. Depending on what publisher picks it up1)While it’s possible that none will, I believe that to be rather unlikely it may still go through Kickstarter as a way to prove that the demand exists and to promote the game to a wider audience.

In order to sell the game to publishers, I will be attending UK Games Expo – and applying to pitch at both the Wyvern’s Lair and the Meet-the-makers Speed Dating

The earlier deadline is for Wyvern’s Lair – with submissions closing Wednesday – and for that I need to submit a <100 word summary of the game, with at most one image. Here is the current draft:


Clash of Blades is a two player expandable card game that simulates the flow of a swordfight while maintaining a constant level of tactical play; using “time” as its only resource.

Players choose from a hand of five cards an Attack, Defence or Stunt that they wish to perform, and play it onto a time-track, with the two players moves ticking down the track together.

With their deck serving as their life total the players need just two decks and a time-track to play, while the discard-damage mechanic ensures they always have choice in how to act or react.


Student Nationals in Nottingham

Speaking of conventions, we’re going to be trading at one next weekend – (April 21st to 23rd) the Student Nationals, a wargaming and roleplaying convention hosted in a different UK university each year. I’m sure we’ll see some of you there.

I make no promises as to the update for next Monday – we’ll be recovering from the convention – but we hope to have some interesting things to tell you by the Tuesday

Please follow and like us:

References   [ + ]

1. While it’s possible that none will, I believe that to be rather unlikely