The rise of virtual tabletops means that more gamers than ever are looking for tokens to represent their characters and GMs in search of new NPC designs.
A Kickstarter campaign is asking for £16,600 to launch a website that’ll address that demand. Ancient Lair lets users pick fantasy body types and dress them up like paper dolls before converting them into a PC or NPC portrait or token. You can follow the progress here.
There are tiers in which you can secure lifetime access to Ancient Lair. First, though, there are two different entry levels from the Kickstarter.
The first pledge is £7 for a “Founder Account” which gets you free use of the site but with some limitations on customisation options. There are other perks for joining at this level, though, such as dragon armour and the ability to vote on Ancient Lair’s roadmap.
A £15 pledge gets you Hero Tier for a year and beta access. That’s what it takes to use all of the tool’s customisation options and unlock the NPC generator.
You pay more to increase the number of years you have the Hero access for until you get to £60. At £60, you’re a hero for life.
It’s possible to go higher still, though. At the time of writing, several people have pledged £205 to get the Publisher tier which gives them for-profit publication rights of the images used here.
Ancient Lair has an eye on print throughout. The system includes customisable bases for these characters too, which will enable them to be paper minis.
Ancient Lair’s team
Heading the project is Shane, who has 10+ years in Project Management, and this will be important in a bit.
The illustrator is Omercan Cirit, a concept artist based in Glasgow.
Meanwhile, the development will be done by an agency, and that’s very rare to see on Kickstarter. In this case, it’s not your average web agency but a Tech-for-Good company called GearedApp. Like Cirit, GearedApp is based in Scotland.
It’s no doubt that the appointment of a full-on agency is one of the reasons why Ancient Lair is asking for £16,000 to fund. However, the presence of the agency considerably de-risks the Kickstarter project for backers. It won’t be one person doing all the code.
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