James Price is asking for £10,000 to make an RPG of three parts called Scorched Earth: New Beginnings. The game picks up the day after the apocalypse, and then, by part three, the players and GM have built a whole new world together.
It feels like an interesting game, but at the time of writing, there are only 17 days to go, and the Kickstarter hasn’t broken the £500 mark. You can follow progress on the campaign page.
The pitch video is a 12-minute piece to camera that reveals very little of the game itself. And there’s quite a wobble on the camera. However, Price seems confident and presents a thoroughly believable logistics plan.
There’s frequent mention of a YouTube channel which you can find here.
A pledge of just £5 will get you the finished game in PDF when parts 1, 2 and 3 are ready. £10 and you’ll get part 1 early. Take the big step up to £60, and you’ll get the £10 deal plus a hardback of the book.
Scorched Earth is designed to be a good introduction to roleplaying as possible, with part 1 being the onboarding process. Part 3 is 200 years after that, so it seems implicit in that players will cycle through various different characters.
I’m tempted by the game, but it’s that focus problem on the camera that worries me. If that video pitch was good enough to put live, then what does it say about the ultimate quality of the game?
It’s not always to tell what technologies people have access to when they produce a Kickstarter, and high production value pitches should be treated as carefully as bootstrapped ones, but undoubtedly a smartphone app might have helped.
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