23 octubre 2013

Empieza el Kickstarter de Shadows of Brimstone.

El Kickstarter de este interesante y excitante dungeon crawler cooperativo ha empezado. Shadows of Brimstone es un curioso cruce, entre el universo Lovecraftniano y el farwest. Tampoco es que sean los primeros en hacerlo, ya en su tiempo un excelente juego de rol Deadlands, propuso lo mismo.
En todo caso, ya podemos regodearnos con las chucherías y demás de este juego. ¿Sera mi primer kickstarter?


Shadows of Brimstone is a fast-paced, Cooperative, dungeon-crawl boardgame set in the Old West, and mixed with Unspeakable Horror!
Players create characters, taking on the role of a classic Western Hero Archetype, such as the Law Man, Gunslinger, or Saloon Girl. Forming an adventuring posse, the Heroes venture down into the dark mines, overrun with all manner of ancient demons and foul creatures from another world. With tactical gameplay, lots of dice, and a robust card-driven exploration system, no two games are ever the same as the Heroes explore the mines finding new enemies to fight, new Loot to collect, and new dangers to overcome. Players can even find portals to other worlds, stepping through to continue their adventures on the other side!

An exciting campaign system allows the Players to visit local frontier towns between adventures, spending their hard-earned Loot and building their characters from game to game! As players find fantastic Gear and Artifacts to equip their Heroes, they also gain experience from their adventures. This experience is used to level up, guiding the Hero’s path through an expansive, class-specific upgrade tree of new skills and abilities, allowing each player to develop their Hero to fit their own play style.

So load up yer’ six shooter, throw on yer’ hat and poncho, and gather the posse, the darkness is coming, and all hell’s about to break loose... in the Shadows of Brimstone!

 Shadows of Brimstone: City of the Ancients Core Set

Contents
  • Rule Book
  • Adventure Book
  • 16x Six-sided dice
  • 1x Eight-sided die
  • 1x Special Peril Die
  • Full Color Die-cut Counters
  • Over 220 game cards
  • Enemy and Hero Record Sheets
  • Large Adventure Reference Cards
  • CD Soundtrack
Map Tiles
  • 8x Unique Room Map Tiles
  • 4x Standard Room Map Tiles
  • 6x Passage Map Tiles
  • 18x Map Tile End Caps
  • 6x Map Tile Gate End Caps
Miniatures
  • 1x US Marshal Hero
  • 1x Bandido Hero
  • 1x Saloon Girl Hero
  • 1x Gunslinger Hero
  • 12x Void Spiders
  • 6x Stranglers
  • 6x Tentacles
  • 3x Night Terrors
  • 1x Goliath

Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death Core Set

Contents
  • Rule Book
  • Adventure Book
  • 16x Six-sided dice
  • 1x Eight-sided die
  • 1x Special Peril Die
  • Full Color Die-cut Counters
  • Over 220 game cards
  • Enemy and Hero Record Sheets
  • Large Adventure Reference Cards
  • CD Soundtrack
Map Tiles
  • 8x Unique Room Map Tiles
  • 4x Standard Room Map Tiles
  • 6x Passage Map Tiles
  • 18x Map Tile End Caps
  • 6x Map Tile Gate End Caps
Miniatures
  • 1x Law Man Hero
  • 1x Preacher Hero
  • 1x Indian Scout Hero
  • 1x Rancher Hero
  • 12x Hungry Dead
  • 6x Hell Bats
  • 6x Tentacles
  • 3x Slashers
  • 1x Harbinger


The Miniatures

    In Shadows of Brimstone, players name their heroes and give them personality, making choices along the way to tailor the character to their liking.  We wanted to be sure that the miniatures had the characterful detail to match!  We also know that many players will want to paint their figures.  Increasing the scale of the figures to the new industry standard for high quality, high detail, easily paintable miniatures was an obvious choice.  Our new Shadows of Brimstone figures are 35mm to the top of the head to match the scale of amazing figures from Games Workshop, Privateer Press, and others.

Why Kickstarter?

    When we started working on Shadows of Brimstone several years ago, we knew that it had the potential to be a really big and fun project.  'Dungeon Crawl' style games live and breathe on variety; the more monster types you can fight, Heroes you can play as, map tiles you can explore, the better!  With that in mind, we knew we wanted to make an entire product range, not just a single, one-off board game.  So that is the approach we have taken throughout development - World building and designing all manner of characterful and unspeakable creatures and demons to terrorize the Heroes, and fantastic new worlds to encounter!  That being said, developing a full product line takes a lot of resources and a lot of time.  It’s usually the kind of thing that you do over the course of several years.  In our case, we could have simply put a single basic core game through production and released it, then worked on it a bit here and there, releasing new expansions over time, slowly building on the world in the background as we continued releasing other new games and products.
    But…Kickstarter offers us the unique possibility to jump in with both feet, and get the support of the community to bring all of these cool and fun ideas to life straight out of the gate!  With this Kickstarter Campaign, you don’t have to wait years to get amazing new content for this exciting Cooperative Adventure game!  It allows us to produce TWO stand alone Core Box Sets to start with instead of just one! To flesh out the product line with tons of great new monsters and creatures to roam the dark mines and pour through the shimmering portals into our world! And to dive into several fantastic Otherworlds to explore as your Old West Heroes step through those shimmering portals to another place and time!  It gives us the opportunity to create loads of different Hero Character Classes to play as, each with a unique feel and play-style and with multiple options for the figures you can use to represent them in the game!
With your help, we can redefine what a 'Dungeon Crawl' game can be with a fresh new Old West Horror setting, fun and streamlined mechanics, and infinite possibilities for adventures to unfold!








How Does the Game Play?

     Shadows of Brimstone is a fully-cooperative, Dungeon Crawl adventure game!  That means that all of the players form a posse and are working together against the game itself, venturing down into the deadly mine shafts on different missions.  You may be searching for a local farmer’s lost son, carried off in the night by demons, or you might be desperately trying to find a way to seal a portal to another world that creatures are pouring out of!
1-4 Players (or up to 6 Players if combining both Core Box Sets) create their Heroes by selecting a Hero Class to play, such as the Gunslinger or Saloon Girl.  That Hero Class defines your basic character stats - how much Health and Sanity you have, how good you are at hitting enemies with your six shooter (or with a right hook), how good you are at solving puzzles or dodging falling boulders, etc.  It also defines your basic starting Gear - do you start with a Six Shooter, a Satchel of Dynamite, a Shotgun and Sheriff’s Badge?  Also, any abilities that all characters of your Hero Class share (a Saloon Girl’s Comforting Presence for example).  Each Hero also starts with a Random Personal Item that gives them a bit more ‘character’, and they get to choose one of three Special Upgrade Abilities unique to their Hero Class.  This gives players a chance to start guiding their Hero’s development right from the outset!
Once your posse is ready to go, the players roll (or decide) what Mission they have taken on and the game begins!  Each Hero is represented by a figure on the game board and all of the figures are placed on the Mine Entrance Map Tile to start the game.  All of the Card Decks are shuffled, each Hero gets 1 Grit Token, and the Depth Track is setup with the Hero Party’s marker on the entrance and the Darkness marker deep in the mines (at the opposite end of the track).
At the start of each turn, the Hero with the Old Lantern rolls 2 dice to Hold Back the Darkness!  This roll needs to be equal to or greater than the number listed on the current stage of the Depth Track.  If the roll is passed, the Heroes carry on without delay.  If the roll is failed, the Darkness moves one step up the track toward escaping the Mines!  But beware, if the Darkness marker ever reaches the entrance space on the Depth Track, it has escaped and the Heroes must flee, failing that mission.  As an added element of danger, if the Hold Back the Darkness roll is ever doubles (1-1, 3-3, etc), this instead triggers a random event from the Depth Event Chart equal to that number!
Heroes now take their turn in order of Initiative, with the highest going first.  During a Hero’s Activation, they roll a die and may move up to the amount rolled.  If a 1 is rolled, the Hero also recovers an extra Grit Token.  Grit Tokens are used for a number of things in game.  A Grit Token may be discarded to Re-roll any number of your dice just rolled (though no die may be Re-rolled more than once), or a Grit Token may be discarded to move an extra die roll worth of spaces during your Movement.  A Grit Token may also be used to activate certain powerful character abilities.
After moving, the Hero may attack if there are any enemies on the board, or if they have ended their move in a space adjacent to a doorway (an open exit from the map tile you are on), you may look down the hall and draw a random Map Card to place the next Map Tile, connecting it to the doorway you are looking through.  Each time a new Map Tile is placed, you must also move the Hero Party’s marker one step forward on the Depth Track, as the Hero Posse delves deeper into the Mines.  This is important because as the Heroes go deeper underground, it becomes harder and harder to Hold Back the Darkness (the number required to roll gets higher, the deeper the Hero Party has gone).
Newly placed Map Tiles are always either a Room or a Passage.  Passage Tiles have open doorways on all ends and can often split the path in front of the Heroes.  They do not, however, contain Encounters for the Heroes to deal with.  Room Tiles, on the other hand, always come into play with an Exploration Token on them.  As long as there is an unrevealed Exploration Token on a Map Tile, Heroes may not look through Doorways on that Map Tile (you can’t explore further than that room with the unrevealed token).  At the end of a full Hero Turn (after all Heroes have been Activated), if there are one or more Heroes in a Room with an Exploration Token, that token is revealed!
When revealed, an Exploration Token tells whether the Heroes have been attacked or if they have come across one or more Encounters (needing to draw an Encounter card).  The token also has information for how many exits there are in the room and if any of those exits are actually open gateways to another world!  Exploration Tokens also sometimes have information on them related to finding clues toward completing your mission.
Encounter cards will usually require one or more Heroes to take a Test using their Skills (such as Agility, Luck, Lore, etc) and will describe a situation that the Heroes have found themselves in.  Perhaps they have found the sight of a Massacre and must carefully pick their way through the gore, or they may have come across a lost prospector wandering the mines; will he help them, or does he hold dark secrets of his own?!
When an Attack occurs, the Heroes must draw an Enemy card to see what they will face!  There are three Enemy Decks of increasing Threat Level (Green, Yellow, and Red).  The Hero Party generally draws a card from the Threat Level based on the number of Heroes in the Party (1-2 Heroes=Green, 3-4 Heroes=Yellow, and 5-6 Heroes=Red), though occasionally this will change based on what caused the attack or if you have found your Mission Objective!
At the start of an Attack, Enemies are placed on the board and will move and fight based on a simple set of guidelines.  Fights are handled in Initiative order, from highest to lowest, and Enemies always go first where Initiatives are tied.
Once all of the Enemies are defeated by the Heroes, each Hero is allowed to draw a Loot card for each Enemy Threat card that took part in the fight.  These Loot cards will give the Hero Money, shards of rare Dark Stone, or even let them draw a piece of useful Gear or a powerful Artifact.  Heroes also gain Experience for every Enemy they defeated (or for Wounds that they caused to larger Enemies) and the Heroes are allowed to Catch Their Breath, recovering a small amount of Health and/or Sanity.
Any Heroes that are Knocked Out during the Fight, are not generally killed, but rather at the end of the Fight must roll on the Injury Chart (if Health 0) or on the Insanity Chart (if Sanity 0).  This usually recovers some amount of Health/Sanity for them, but they may have a longer lasting penalty for their injuries.  It also moves the Darkness marker up the Depth Track a bit.  If all of the Heroes are ever Knocked Out at the same time, the Mission is automatically failed!
The Mission the Heroes are currently on details what they need to do to complete their objective!  Often times, this simply requires the Heroes to find enough clues (through Exploration Tokens) to find the Objective Room and defeat a small horde of Enemies, rescue someone, or recover an occult artifact!
We will go into more detail on Fights, Enemies, and the Campaign system between adventures shortly.

Risks and challengesLearn about accountability on Kickstarter

As an established game company, Flying Frog Productions has been around making high quality, fun games for the last six years (though we have been working on most of these games for well over a decade, and have been in the industry for over twenty years)! We have been through the process many times now and have a solid pipeline for taking games from initial concept and prototype all the way to retail release, and beyond. There are always hurdles to overcome and challenges to face, especially in manufacturing, but this is something that we have experience in doing.
Some new challenges that we have already encountered include the sheer volume of figures in the game, both as concepts as well as sculptures. For the first time we are integrating 3D Digital sculpting as well as traditional sculpting to create a fantastic line of figures that are both dynamic and versatile. This is a growing trend in the industry and the figures we already have going for Shadows of Brimstone are looking amazing! There is also a tremendous amount of artwork needed to create all of the extraordinarily detailed map tiles and passages, not only of the Old West Mine Shafts, but also for all of the exotic and wondrously alien Otherworlds that the Heroes can cross into! Each Otherworld has its own feel and depth to it, as well as its own themes, encounters, and its own terrifying enemies to face! The amount of material needed to bring all of these ideas to life is staggering, which is why we have already been hard at work on pre-production for Shadows of Brimstone for nearly three years. Now it’s time to ramp up to full production and take all of these ideas from the drawing board to the table top!

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