If you’re into tabletop games, you may have already heard about the Apocrypha Adventure Card Game, which is featured on Kickstarter right now. It’s a new game from my pals at Lone Shark Games, but it’s based on the mechanics found in the bestselling, award-winning Pathfinder Adventure Card Game designed by the same people. It’s set in a dark and horrific modern world which I helped bring to life.
Apocrypha started as a tabletop roleplaying game several years back, and the creator – Rian Sand – asked me to help take the ideas in his home game and in his head and transform them into something we could bring to gaming groups around the world. Around the same time, he also brought in Mike Selinker of Lone Shark to create a card game that played like a roleplaying game, and that eventually became the basis for what we now know as the adventure card game (ACG).
Mike’s now decided to publish Apocrypha himself under the Lone Shark banner, and he’s lined up a fantastic team of creators to help him do it. On the game design side, the Lone Shark team includes Pathfinder ACG developer Chad Brown, puzzle ninja Gaby Weidling, Smash Up designer Paul Peterson, Pathfinder ACG class deck designer Tanis O’Connor, and Incredible Expeditions designer Liz Spain. Mike Vaillancourt serves as the art director, and former Playroom Entertainment director Elisa Teague corrals everyone as the production manager.
On the writing side, Mike lined up a fantastic lineup of creators to help flesh out the world of Apocrypha with snippets of fiction on many of the cards. They include:
- Keith Baker, creator of the card game Gloom and the upcoming RPG Phoenix: Dawn Command (which has 24 hours left on Kickstarter right now!).
- Wolfgang Baur, publisher of Kobold Press, and creator of books like Deep Magic, Courts of the Shadow Fey, and The Free City of Zobeck.
- Bruce Cordell, game designer for D&D and The Strange RPG, and author of ten Forgotten Realms novels.
- Erin M. Evans, author of the novels The God Catcher, Brimstone Angels, and The Adversary.
- Jerry “Tycho” Holkins, writer of the Penny Arcade, Thornwatch, and Automata comics, and co-founder of PAX and the Child’s Play charity.
- Kij Johnson, Hugo- and Nebula-winning author of The Fox Woman, Fudoki, “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss,” “The Man Who Bridged the Mist,” “Ponies,” and “Spar.”
- Mary Robinette Kowal, Hugo-winning author of Shades of Milk and Honey, Glamour in Glass, Without a Summer, and Valour and Vanity.
- Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man’s Fear, and The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle, and founder of the charity Worldbuilders.
- Kris Straub, cartoonist responsible for the webcomics Starslip, Chainsaw Suit, and Broodhollow, and co-creator of the game Machine of Death.
The game features spectacular artwork from the talented Nick Kay, Kristen Plescow, Serg Souleiman, and Shane Tyree – and whoever else owes Mike Vaillancourt a favor.
At the moment, the game’s raised nearly $200,000 on Kickstarter, and it still has eight days to go. It funded in about a day, and it’s knocked down stretch goals left and right since. If (when, really) it reaches $220k, I’ll write a new short story to go in the rulebook, and at $230k, I’ll pull selections from the Apocrypha story bible to reveal to the public. At $250k, the game becomes even bigger, delivering around 1,300 cards in the box.
At $99, the game is a steal, and the bargain is only getting better as the stretch goals unlock. To put this in perspective, 1,300 cards is something like 24 standard decks of cards, and you can pack a lot of game into that many pieces of cardboard. So if you’re up for an epic adventure in a dark yet heroic version of our modern world, go check out the Apocrypha Kickstarter before time runs out.
