Kickstarters for Your Consideration

I don’t just run Kickstarters like my Monster Academy drive, which just cracked $11k last night. I also back them too. In fact, I’ve backed more than a hundred Kickstarters in my time, not all of which funded, for which my bank account is grateful, even if I’m not. Here are a few (all right: several) amazing projects that I’m backing (or at least loving from afar) at the moment, arranged by the time they have left.

• Deadlands: Raven: A graphic novel based on the Deadlands RPG, which I helped publish during my Pinnacle days. Greg LaRocque’s art looks sharp, and Chuck Sellner and Matt Cutter will bring a great story to it. Time left: 34 hours!
• An E-Module That’s More Than a PDF: My friend Mike Bohlmann pushes the boundaries of what you can do with an iPad or ePub-formatted Pathfinder adventure. Can’t wait to see how well this works. Time left: 35 hours!
• Megalopolis: An all-new graphic novel by Gail Simone and Jim Calafiore. When the city’s superheroes go on a killing spree, it’s time to put the town in your rear-view mirror – if you can. Time left: 49 hours!
• Camden: A great tile-laying game designed by James Ernest, illustrated by John Kovalic, and published by Boyan Radakovich, all of whom I’m proud to count as friends. In it, you and the other players are shopkeepers in London’s market district, competing for the tourists’ cash. Time left: 50 hours!
• Unexploded Cow: A classic Cheapass Game from my pal James Ernest. You heard mad cows into fields filled with unexploded ordnance from WWII. Even funnier than it sounds. Time left: 60 hours!
• Perils of the Surface World: A set of adventures for Hollow Earth Expedition produced by my friend Jeff Combos. Great, pulpy tabletop RPG fun. Time left: 3 days!
• Heroes of Metro City: I don’t know a lot about this game, but it’s a deckbuilder featuring superheroes, which is a double-bonus for me. Hopefully it could hold me over until Devin Low’s Marvel deckbuilding game comes out this winter. Time left: 3 days!
• Dungeons & Dragons: A Documentary: A film about creation of D&D and the profound effect it’s had on our world. It had me at D&D. Time left: 4 days!
• Tenra Bansho Zero: Jun’ichi Inoue’s tabletop fantasy RPG was a big hit in Japan. My friend Andy Kitowski’s bringing it over here, and it looks great. It’s smashing through its stretch goals too. Time left: 4 days!
• Numenera: My pal (and fellow Alliterate) Monte Cook’s first brand-new RPG since D&D Third Edition features a science-fantasy setting placed a billion years in the future. Illustrated by the fantastic Kieran Yanner (also a friend), this already shattered the record for best-funded tabletop RPG ever. Time left: 5 days!
• A Blossoming Honey Business: The cutest story of a girl here in Wisconsin who’s trying to raise money to expand her honey business. Sweet in many ways. Time left: 8 days.
• 13 True Ways: An expansion book for 13 Ways, the upcoming fantasy RPG by my fiends Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet, both longtime D&D designers. I don’t even have the core book yet, and I want this. Time left: 10 days.
• Gaming Paper Colors: My pal Erik Bauer makes the wonderful stuff he calls Gaming Paper, large sheets of gridded paper on which you can draw maps for your tabletop games. Now he wants to bring them to you in different colors. Time left: 11 days.
• Are You a Werewolf? From my pals at Looney Labs comes an innovative version of the fantastic party game in which you use little plastic viewers to find out who you’re playing the game. Simple and brilliant. Time left: 11 days.
• Invasion of the Saucer People: My pal (and fellow Alliterate) Lester Smith returns to game design with one he made for his grandson. It’s a light, fun card game with some cool stretch goals, including more games! Time left: 14 days.
• Electric Velocipede: The award-winning speculative fiction magazine from my friend John Klima. Good reading on a regular basis. Time left: 14 days.
• Burnt: An SF novel from fellow Geek Dan contributor Curtis Silver. It’s got a premise as sharp as Curtis’s tongue. Time left: 14 days.
• Stay Alive – Not Undead: A zombie coloring and activity book from the talented and funny Dan Taylor. I’m looking forward to handing this to my kids. Time left: 16 days.
• Tilt-Shift: A graphic novel written by Jose Torres-Cooban, reflecting his time serving as a combat photographer with a special operations team in Afghanistan. Time left: 16 days.
• Transforming Collections: A book about all the unofficial Transformers toys and accessories out there, by my pal Phil Reed (of Steve Jackson Games fame). No one knows his toys better than Phil, and his passion shines through here. Time left: 18 days.
• Dreadball: A minis game that comes off as sci-fi Blood Bowl. That’s enough to sell me right there. Time left: 18 days.
• tremulus: A tabletop RPG of Lovecraftian horror from my friend Sean Preston with a brilliant design. I liked it so much, I gave Sean a blurb for it. Time left: 19 days.
• Cthulhu Claus Greeting Cards: A set of Cthulhu-themed holiday cards illustrated by Jody Lindke and inscribed with words from my buddy Ken Hite. Fun for all ages. Time left: 23 days.
• Art of Brom: Brom’s one of the greatest fantasy artists to emerge in the last 20 years, and his cover for Deadlands helped us sell a lot of copies of that tabletop RPG back in my days with Pinnacle. Here’s a gorgeous book filled with his best stuff. Time left: 23 days.
• The Coriolis Defect: A fantastic time-travel tabletop RPG from Jay Little that, with some very cool mechanics, allows you to rewind time in your games. Right up my alley. Time left: 29 days.