Live and funded on Kickstarter is Russ Morrissey (EN World, WOIN), Dave Chapman (Doctor Who, Star Trek Adventures) and Marc Langworthy (Hellboy, Judge Dredd)’s Awfully Cheerful Engine. The RPG is a loving parody of the 80s, especially of 80s RPGs.
The Kickstarter is for five whole but small books, with a sixth as a stretch goal. ACE! will use a comic-book sized format but also offer VTT support. You can see the latest backer count or join in on the project page.
There’s a host of inspiration for the game, thus five books, but if you have fond memories of Danger Mouse, Star Trek, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ghostbusters, or Indiana Jones, you’re the target for the campaign.
The core rules only need 30 pages and come with a foreword from the co-creator of the Ghostbusters RPG, Sandy Petersen. That’s one book. The other four are;
- Spirits of Manhattan – A ghostbusters parody, to use my words, in which you’re hunting the supernatural with your backpack particle thrower.
- Montana Drones & The Raiders of the Cutty Sark – Montana Drones and her team search the world for hidden artefacts, racing against hostile armies.
- Strange Science – A quaint town is a charming tourist attraction until people go missing. Perhaps some time travel and a helpful bunch of investigators can sort things out?
- Beam Me Up! – Voyages of the starship FSS Brazen in a highly illogical adventure.
As you can see, these other issues in the ACE! line are settings designed to bring to life those 80 classics.
The stretch goal is Orcs & Outbliettes which is a Pratcheett-esque parody of a certain iconic RPG.
The system uses cards, which require a higher pledge to unlock, but some blanks are provided for free from the resources page of the official ACE! site.
Think of ACE! as an irreverent, fun-packed movie. You might play as ghost hunters in New York City, a band of plucky galactic guardians, vampire slayers, or soldiers of fortune in the Los Angeles underground. Heck, you might even be cartoon animals. Good grief!
This is a multi-dimensional, time-hopping, genre-mashing, pan-galactic portal into any type of adventure you can imagine! Want to play in a fantasy world full of elves and orcs? Crew a starship as it explores the galaxy? Hunt vampires in Victorian London? Play as animal detectives, robot cowboys, wizards, ninjas, or time traveling bounty hunters?
A pledge of £7 will get you the core rules in PDF, and free virtual tabletop tokens, maps and images.
Stepping up to £14 gets you the softcover for ACE! as well.
There are more pledge levels than books, as the Kickstarter campaign allows add-ons and lots of options. However, at £35, you get all 5 of the main books in PDF, and at £45, you’ll get the stretch goals as well, plus the card decks the game uses.
It takes a £70 pledge to get all five of the softcovers added. That tier also adds coupons for stretch goal softcovers, not for free, but at half price.
There are higher tiers, including a £100 collectors edition hardback omnibus.
The estimated delivery for most of the tiers is August 2021, but it’s June if you stick to digital-only and much later in March 2022 if you go for the collector edition hardback.
You're welcome to share observations about this article in the comments.
