Joshua Brining is Kickstarting an interesting and narrative-driven RPG called “I Was A Teenage Creature”. He makes the point that it isn’t the monster of the week that brings you back to watch Supernatural, Buffy or Charmed again. It’s the drama.
He’s given himself quite a challenge for his first Kickstarter. I think it’s fair to say that Ninjacat Stories, his company, isn’t well known and he’s asking for US$10,000 for success. However, at the time of writing, he still has 20 days to go and has $2,645 pledged, so he can do it. You can follow the progress via his campaign page.
The pledge tiers are also a bit unusual. You can access preview PDFs of the game at lower than US$30 but if you want a PDF copy of the finished I Was A Teenage Creature RPG then you have to step up that far. At that level, you’re also getting 23 pre-genned characters and 2 adventures.
It’s going to be a big book, at some 350-pages. The mechanic system works by adding one of the four core attributes (Might, Reflex, Insight and Codex) to an appropriate skill and rolling that number of d10s. It’s the character’s emotions that determine the target number, though.
On top of that characters can spend Angst Points to get extra dice or boost successes.
You can play a sex-demon in the game. (Eros)cubus is the term for both incubus and succubus, creatures with Passion. Or you could be a Caster, humans born with a gift and Willpower, or Fae, mystic creatures, or a Ghost, or a Kitsune, or a Vampire or, of course, a werewolf. You can even play a human hunter, a human psychic or just a human. Each of these choices suggest emotions for the character; werewolves, for example, have Rage.
The game is complete and playtested. The Kickstarter is for art. This is greatly reassuring.
There’s a whole bunch of stretch goals for I Was A Teenage Creature and a hardback unlocks at $18,000 raised.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens to this Kickstarter. I suspect if I Was A Teenage Creature finds the right audience then it’ll do well enough.
This is Brining’s first rodeo. Yes, he’s worked with Margaret Weis Productions and with Spectrum Games before (though I’m not sure in what capacity) but I’m not sure he’s had any international experience. For example, one of the suggested character tropes is ‘Curious Spaz’. In the UK ‘Spaz’ is a contraction of ‘Spastic’ which is a politically incorrect slur for someone with disabilities. It’s an obscure gotcha and even Hasbro has fallen into the trap, once having to remove a Transformer from sale after calling it Spastic.
All-in-all, I’m quite tempted by I Was a Teenage Creature. Not because I like teenage angst, I tend to shy away from that in my TV shows, but because this seems like a flexible genre and an interesting experiment with emotions and mechanics.
