We’re down to the last 24 hours in the campaign, and closer than ever to unlocking even more Tower Adventures and the Engraved Dice! I’m really looking forward to getting these out to our backers before the end of the year. I know that there are some mega-huge monster-smashing boardgame kickstarters out there these days, and the fact that some folks took some time out to support us and our game is really, really great. I hope a year from now they’ll glance over at this rare super-dope embossed-leatherette wizard’s tome sitting on your bookshelf and think: “Man, that game is so weird and cool and unique... I need to play it again. Game night!”

I also know I haven't blogged nearly enough about other gaming since this Kickstarter began, so I'm also looking forward to having a normal gaming schedule again. Its hard to play games just for fun when you're tied up in your own kickstarter!

As promised, here is a full game playthrough of Return to Ravingspire! We explore dark corridors, fight grisly Foes, and explore dimensions beyond space-time in this complete two-Hero playthrough of Return to Ravingspire.

And in case you missed it, here's the HOW TO PLAY video:

We've done it! Florence Haymaker, mild-mannered Village Hero will join your Quest in Return to Ravingspire! At this level backers get another card-stock Hero Battlemat and Hero Vigor card, as well as two new custom dice added to Return to Ravingspire. Thank you all for your support and spreading the word of the campaign!

At first glance, one couldn't be blamed for considering Florence all brawn and no brains, but when it comes to utilizing Weapons in creative ways Florence has no equal. Florence Haymaker can discard any Weapon card during a round to generate two Vorpal! These he can spend as any attribute he chooses, allowing him to take down those pesky mages and rogues with sheer brute power. Sometimes the best offense is more offense!

At the next stretch level we can add five additional Oversized Tower Encounter Cards, themed toward the Fallen Heroes from the original Ravingspire boardgame. Encounter your old friend Garsome Cinderheart, once an ally but now blacksmithing weapons for his new Dark Lord, or help noble rogue Shayla Nimblenook steal some Loot from the Dark Tower.

Please keep spreading the word and help us make the game even more epic!

Thanks and Game On!
Cory

Kickstarter campaign is still going strong for our new game: Return to Ravingspire. We just hit the halfway point in the Kickstarter campaign and we've almost unlocked a sixth playable character. Every new backer helps us put even more cool stuff in the box!

Also, I was watching some daytime TV yesterday and ran across this ad that really resonated with me...

We've achieved our first Stretch Goal and freed another Hero from the Tower: Marcus the Runelord! At this level we're able to add another card-stock Hero Battlemat, Vigor card, as well as two more custom dice to Return to Ravingspire. Marcus is not only a Runelord, but when in combat he can re-roll his equipped Vorpal Artifact dice once per round. I'm excited he'll now get to be a part of the main game! Thank you all so much for helping us get here!

Please join us and help us make Return to Ravingspire even more epic!

Game on!
Cory

We've almost reached our first stretch goal, which unlocks Marcus the Runelord for Return to Ravingspire! At this level we're going to be able to add another Hero Battlemat and his own Character and Class dice to the game.

What Marcus lacks in physical stature he more than makes up for in his ability to maximize the use of mystic artifacts. Marcus can re-roll the dice once per turn for any Vorpal Artifacts he carries. Give him the Vorpal Cape and watch him dance around combat, or give him the Vorpal Ring and help him take down the brutes in melee!

Return to Ravingspire on Kickstarter now!

Thanks to everyone being awesome, Return to Ravingspire is already funded the day after launch! You are all rad to the max. Its hard to believe this kind of stuff can happen for a dopey gamer like me, but its a powerful and humbling reminder that ultimately people are cool and wanna be supportive of other people trying to create fun stuff. Thank you for your trust! I know you're going to love the hell outta this game.
You can watch the full Return to Ravingspire funding update video here if ya want. Game on!

Return to Ravingspire is finally now on Kickstarter! Please take a look if you like Wizards and Goblins and traveling through dimensional vortexes!

You know how you work on something in secret for ever and then its time to release it and you can't really wrap your head around showing it to anyone, even though you're super proud of it? That's kind of what its like to work on Ravingspire. We make fantastic art and we work through unique gameplay ideas but we keep things close to the chest until we can make sure our choices of manufacturing are  ready for launch and their quality is good. We launch the Kickstarter tomorrow so I can FINALLY start showing off what we've done and what we're doing. Problem is, there's so much at this point I almost don't even know where to start!

Well I guess, how about with the dope 1980's commercial we made for the game?

You can tell we miss those old TSR commercials.There was one for like D&D, Marvel Super Heroes, and Indiana Jones RPG all in one mashed up commercial with tons of silhouettes and smoke machine going on. That one was great.

Anyway, we're finally going to release Return to Ravingspire on Kickstarter on April 16th! I'm super psyched about it, because this game is gorgeous and really fun to play. Even the box is awesome. Its an embossed leatherette-wrapped wooden book-shaped box, and really looks and opens like a stout book. Its made of wood too so won't be falling apart and need to be held together with rubber bands after just a couple plays like most boardgame boxes.  Plus if its stored on a bookcase instead of hidden away in the boardgame closet (and the fact that its solo-able) there's a much better chance of folk playing it over and over. How many games have I bought for $50+ only to have played them once or twice before they get lost in the boardgame closet? Too many! We're hoping the decorative nature of the box helps keep this game on display and accessible.


But anyway what about the gameplay? Is it cool? Let me tell you that YES, it is cool! We've combined dice-battling with a choose-your-path style story-heavy adventure game, and I think it works really well. We made big colorful illustrated Tower Cards with storylines on them that each give two options for the Party to follow. One of those options is almost always fight the pictured level guardian head-on, but the second option can get crazy. It involves escaping through a portal into another dimension for a short jaunt and then returning to the tower after a short time. We put in a whole separate book of adventures in there that I think is really unique to boardgaming these days.

Also I've come to dislike having piles of chits everywhere when I play boardgames. The number of tiny ziploc bags I've had to buy just to keep track of sanity tokens over the years borders on ridiculous. So we've made tracking the Fight, Skill, and Charm values in combat into a single board that also contains the player progress and doom trackers. Just move it up and down the tracks as you roll the dice. Its straightforward and keeps things a lot tidier than piles of chits. I'm pretty happy with it.

Also one thing I really love is tactical skirmish combat, but that's difficult to emulate in a quick-play adventure game without the gameplay getting bogged down in maps with grids on them and 5-foot steps. So on that same combat tracker we've put a Marching Order diagram. Where the players can decide whether they want to have their heroes take the front/melee position (usually more dangerous but first choice of loot) or whether they want to hang back and fight with ranged weaponry (usually less dangerous but second choice of loot). Each Tower card will show whether the Hero in that position will take more or less damage, based on the monster they're fighting.

We knew this added a bit of complexity to the fights, but its a simple +1/-1 damage modifier and I think it really adds some fun to the game and helps me envision what kind of attitude the Hero I'm playing has when they're exploring.

Oh my gosh there's way too much to talk about all at once on the development of this game. I put tutorial videos up on the Kickstarter and I'll throw them on Youtube as well. I'll talk more about the game over the next few weeks as the Kickstarter goes on, but if you've got any questions on why we did what we did in the game give a shout and I'll holla back! :)

I got to run my "The Last Jedi" replacement Star Wars Saga adventure called NO LAST JEDI at GaryCon last week. I've finally recovered from the Con Crud, so can now do a recap of how it went.

First of all, in case anyone wants to run a game of SW Saga themselves using the new movie's characters, I've uploaded pdfs of the character sheets I made for the game under the Campaign Resources of the Vorpal Chainsword. Second, I uploaded a bunch more pictures from the game people were nice enough to send me under the Gallery section of the site.

The story starts out with essentially the same opening crawl as The Last Jedi. Only in this case Rey has been training with the enigmatic Luke Skywalker for about 3 weeks, but has learned little of his motivations. The game opens with Chewy returning from the Resistance fleet in the Millenium Falcoln with Fin, Poe, and BB-8 in tow (Poe came in on his X-wing). They were sent by order of Princess Leia to plead with Luke to return to the fight with the resistance. The players attempted to convince Luke of the nobility of the cause, but he kept insisting it was too dangerous for everyone if he left. At that point, BB-8 played a holographic message from Princess Leia for him.

"Luke, I beg you to return from exile and rejoin our fight for the resistance. We have lost much since you left, the New Republic all having been wiped out by Starkiller Base before we were able to destroy it. But we have hope yet, as we have learned the secret location of the leader of the First Order, this Lord Snoke. We believe that if we can capture or kill Snoke the First Order will fall and Ben may even return to us. But I know that Snoke is strong in the Dark Side of the Force, and only with your help could we ever hope to prevail, but press on we must. The last remaining ships of the Resistance fleet are amassing for the final assault on his secret headquarters even as I record this message. This BB unit has the coordinates where to meet us. Help us Luke Skywalker, you're our only hope."

(Note: If the Players convinced Luke before playing the hologram then he will fight with them in the upcoming scene and one player can control him. But in this game they did not, and Luke still refused.)

BB-8 revealed that the location is in the Horuset system. At this Luke paled and says "We must stop her!" Just at that moment the sound of a Tie Fighter roared overhead!

(Note: I had a bluetooth speaker setup behind the DM screen and had a Star Wars soundboard loaded up on my phone so I could play sound effects from the movies. The sound of Tie fighters screeching by and blasters and lightsabers crashing together REALLY helps amp up the fun of any Star Wars game)

The Imperials had tracked the heroes to the old Jedi planet (the official name is Ach-To, fyi). The Imperials were now searching the planet for Luke. Now Luke has no choice but to go, so they've got to get back to the Millennium Falcon and Poe's X-Wing, and of course Phasma and a squad of Stormtroopers stand in their way.

(Note: The old Star Wars minis from the Wizards of the Coast line are perfect for the RPG, as they're pre-painted and super durable. I love them. You can still get them from ebay and some miniature websites like coolstuffinc.com.)

They fought their way past Phasma and her stormtroopers. Luke ran off to handle some AT-STs on the other side of the battlefield (if they'd convinced Luke earlier then instead he'd have stayed and helped and BB-8 could've controlled him). One unexpected hilarious moment of the game was that BB-8's player decided to roll around between bushes and ask if there were Porg nest under there. When he found some, he'd shock the Porgs to cause a burst of Porgs out of the bushes, startling nearby Stormtroopers, including Phasma! He even rolled so well on this that a hunting Nexu burst out of the plants intent on eating the Porgs and the Stormtroopers along with them. So the heroes were able to slip by Phasma (who was fighting off the Nexu) and blast their way clear to the Falcon.

Next we had a Starfighter chase scene, where the Falcon and Poe's X-wing were harrassed by Tie Fighters as they tried to break through the blockade surrounding the old Jedi planet. (I used the X-Wing miniatures for this, as they just look awesome.)  Finn and Rey acted as gunners in the Falcoln while Chewy flew, and Poe and BB-8 fought off Ties in the X-Wing. Luke just meditated mysteriously in the X-Wing.

They escaped the blockade and made their way to the Resistance fleet. Here Leia and Luke embraced and Luke explained the plot. Long story short is that Luke actually found Snoke over 5 years ago while he was mopping up Empire remnants and old Sith artifacts with his crew of freshly-trained Padawans (including Ben Solo). They had found some holocrons mapping out some of Palpatine's other projects and were shutting them down before they became a problem for the New Republic. Unfortunately one of those projects was the Tomb of Darth Plagueis, Palpatine's old master. Palpatine couldn't kill Plagueis because Plagueis could jump bodies, and had done so many times before to remain immortal. Plagueis would jump into his Sith Apprentice after he was fully trained but before the Apprentice got wise to him, thus allowing Plagueis to live forever. But Palpatine figured it out, and froze Plagueis in a Force Trap deep within a Sith Tomb on Korriban. This Tomb required Palpatine to occasionally visit and maintain the suspension so Plagueis wouldn't wake up. With Palpatine's death though, it was only a matter of time before Plagueis woke up. Luke learned of Plagueis and took his best Padawans to go shut Plagueis down for good. However Plagueis killed most of his Padawans before Luke could pull some Force magic and block Plagueis's ability to switch bodies within the Force. Ben and Luke then pulled the temple down on Plagueis and barely escaped with their lives. What Luke didn't know was that Plagueis had survived and already put his mark on Ben as his next apprentice, who was grieving from the loss of his friends and vulnerable to the Dark SIde. Eventually Ben turned evil and destroyed the New Jedi Temple, due to whisperings in the Force from Plaegus (also known as "Snoke"), and joined Snoke and helped build the First Order from an Empire remnant fleet.

(That's a lot of exposition! I know, I'm sorry. Now here I really wanted to run through a "Flashback" scene and I had the Sith Tomb map and a handful of 5th level Padawans and Luke ready to go. It would've been cool to let everyone be a Jedi and have a big battle between Plageuis (with some Sith robo-zombies) and the Players as Jedi. But the con game was already running long and time was short (only had 4 hours for the game!) so I just explained all that and moved forward.)

Luke finally explained that if he were to die, Snoke would regain his ability to switch bodies through the Force and would likely immediately take over Kyle Ren/Ben's body, which Kylo certainly wasn't aware of. So Luke had to stay in hiding to study the Jedi texts and figure out how to permanently sever Snoke's connection to the Force before he could take over Kylo Ren's body for good. But he's come out now because of where the Fleet discovered the hidden base, the Horuset system, which is where Korriban (and Plagueis's tomb) are! Luke knows Snoke's tomb is on the planet below them.

At that moment three giant Star Destroyers appeared out of Hyperspace next to the Resistance fleet! Leia commands the ships to jump to hyperspace but there's some kind of Hyperspace Jammer coming from the largest Star Destroyer, blocking their escape. Ackbar turns to the party and says "Its a Trap!" ;)

(So now we've got a Starship-scale battle to fight. I used the Fantasy Flight Armada minis for this as they look awesome. But for the actual battle we focused on the Falcon and Poe, and the other ships we rolled dice for, high/low war-style. It was a simpled D6's for Ties/A-Wings, D8's for X-wings/B-wings/Tie Interceptors. For each grouping we just rolled whoever rolled lower lost a ship (and one die) from the little 3-ship sprues. That way we could know how the general battle was going outside of the close-up battles of the PCs.)

The heroes knew Snoke was on the surface, and wanted to get Luke down there to kill him once and for all. They also knew they should probably stop the Hyperspace Jammer on the main Star Destroyer. AND the X-wings were getting killed out there so they wanted Poe to help in the overall Starship battle. So they decided to DO ALL THREE!

Poe flew out on his X-wing with BB-8, and fought his way to the main Star Destroyer. He then JETTISONED BB-8 into one of the hanger bays of the Star Destroyer! Just, out in space and through the blue shield thing right into a hanger. By himself! Then Poe just flew back into the main battle. So BB-8s goal was to disable the Hyperspace Jammer alone. Hilarious.

Luke, Rey, Chewy and Fin took the Falcon through the starship battle and down to the planet, evading and blasting Tie fighters along the way. Once there, they entered the Sith Tomb. (Chewy used quite a few Force Points on the piloting checks going down, and I just let them find the tomb rather than fight their way up to it).

!So we had this three way encounter going on. Poe would blast a Tie or two. The ground heroes engaged Snoke and Kylo Ren and some Imperial Guards, and BB-8 had to bumble his way through the Star Destroyer. That was probably the most fun part of each turn, watching BB-8s player figure out how to trick a Stormtrooper into falling down a chute or electroshock him into tripping and falling. Eventually BB-8's player found a maintenance tunnel and was able to make his way to the Hyperspace Jammer (bypassing a TON of Stormtroopers I had ready to go) and disable it. He then shot himself out the garbabe schute and into space. Poe had placed a tracker on him so just picked him up floating out in space mid-battle! It was pretty awesome.

Meanwhile I gave Poe's player Luke to play (the original plan was to allow BB-8's player to play Luke in the final scene, since anyone who had to be BB-8 for the whole game deserved a break, but BB-8 had his own adventure going on!). Luke faced off against Snoke and Kylo with force powers while Rey, Fin, and Chewy took down the imperial guards and robots with their blasters. The Sith Tomb was full of traps and they were careful to move to safe spots during each round. Kylo started throwing Chewy around and so Rey ran up to Kylo to face him one-on-one. This would also allow Luke and Snoke (who were busy throwing pillars and stone coffins at eachother) to face off in lightsaber combat. Unfortunately we ran out of time at the Con and had to leave it on that cliffhanger...

What a game! I have to say, it was so much fun, and the players at GaryCon were some of the best folks to help re-write The Last Jedi into a Star Wars story worthy of the Saga!