There’s no pitch video, the system isn’t famous, yet Nick Butler launched their first Kickstarter to ask for more than $25,000 from the community.
A few days later and the verdict on the cinematic superpowers promised by the Tide Breaker RPG is in. That target has been hit, and there’s still four weeks on the clock to run. You can check out the latest total and pledge from the project page.
In Tide Breaker, characters are superheroes. They are apex superheroes, not grim and gritty street-level heroes who could take on a couple of goons at a time, but beings capable of turning the tide of a battle.
In Tide Breaker, there’s always the option to roleplay your way around problems with anyone using your masterful diplomacy and persuasion skills, if cinematographic combat is not your style. Unless of course you’ve spun yourself into a web of losing all Hope, spelling out your Doom. Your Hope and Doom are meta-currencies that may be used in both combat and non-combat situations. Players will use Hope to resolve situations favorably, while the GM will utilize the Doom resource to create a tug of war conflict that is instrumental to the roleplaying experience in Tide Breaker.
Tide Breaker’s Hope and Doom approach is designed to offer strategic options and work with the Stunt System so that characters can be customised exactly as players want. The result, hopefully, is a hero who always has something to contribute and can be a game-changer each time they do.
The system uses d6 pools, those stunts being used to add to it and Showstoppers adding more, rerolls and exploding dice.
All this action is moderated by a Momentum resource, which has to be managed wisely by players. Extra strategy comes from the use of Zones for either theatre of the mind play or minis.
An early access PDF edition of Tide Breaker is added as a reward to anyone pledging $10 or more. However, the full version, 200-pages of colour, is set at $25.
Early access is apparently July, whereas full seems to be June, and this feels like a mistake that’s too late to be corrected now the Kickstarter is live. What’s actually happening is that you get the early access $10 pledge via Google Drive, just as soon as a human can mail you the details.
A hardcover copy and a thank you in the book is there for anyone who steps up to $45. Add-ons are also enabled at this level.
Higher tiers are available, which include merch like a tote bag, stickers and multiple copies. In fact, the top $600 tier has almost sold out, with only two places remaining.
What are your thoughts? Strike up a discussion and leave a comment below.
