Seventh Son Publishing is trying again and succeeding with SAKE and the game’s unique blend of RPG with a strategy game.
It’s not just about how brave you are in raiding dungeons but also how smart you are with that loot. Can you save up for a mercenary company of your own, an army? Can you balance the books? You can see progress on Kickstarter.
There’s plenty to check out before taking the plunge to pledge. There’s a Basic Rules as Pay What You Want already on DriveThruRPG. In April, author Rainer Kaasik-Aaslav guest posted with Welp! My players Want to Build a Kingdom and Not Adventure at All!.
SAKE supports characters such as pirates or priests, much as you would with a fantasy RPG, but also extends to building a trading empire on the seas or a powerful kingdom on land.
The setting of the Asteanic World suggests muskets and proper plate armour, the birth of capitalism and the wane of the feudal system, yet with gods and balanced magic. The games lean towards politics and dangerous dungeon crawls rather than four-colour adventures. However, you don’t like that you can port the system to a different world.
The core principles of the rules also apply to other modules. For example, the percentile of Opportunities and Hazards is rolled during each turn of dungeon exploration, while in domain play, a similar system of group percentile value is used to roll for Prosperity, Discontent and Corruption. Additionally, just as individual characters have Actions and Reactions during each Combat Round, military units also have Actions and Reactions during each Battle Turn. Furthermore, just as individual characters accumulate Escape Points to flee, army units and ships do so when battles take place on a larger scale or on water.
Backers at $29 unlock the first reward tier, which is the digital rulebook. SAKE is 450 pages long, and at this tier, Seventh Son Publishing is also enabling print-on-demand at-cost coupons. That’s generous, as they are often withheld for a higher tier.
The full digital package unlocks at $39, adding a map of the trade regions of the Asteanic World and the supplement Crime Districts of Irongate Dungeon Crawl.
That’s it. SAKE has an estimated digital delivery date of December 2024 and the campaign on Kickstarter will run until July 28th.
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