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[Reelya]

Also, the novels he's planning are probably really horrible. I can just say that's a fact. If they were actually any good he could just get them published up-front and then use the marketing buzz to get funding for his role-playing game: even to just launch his kickstarter as "Christopher Brewton, writer of the Aventura Legacy novels announces his role-playing game system set in the Aventura universe".

(going through the video)

* "a breath of fresh air into the genre which hasn't been seen in decades" which "three books planned" which will "inspire gamers and intelligent minds". The way the narrator says "intelligent minds" here is especially annoying and condescending. You don't have to be exactly Einstein to work out that this whole claim is nonsense.

** especially since the entire setting for Aventura is the most hackneyed one possible: terran empire expands, meets multitude of humanoid alien races, then collapses via civil war into barbarism. Galaxy of adventure ensues with class-and-race based system.

***: next it claims RPG systems go through years of playtesting and refinement. However Aventura is set as a counter-example: the only RPG game in existence which has been "permanently refined" and needs no possible adjustment to the rules forever. Except for all the game books and modules they expect you to keep collecting, naturally.

****: also, D12s and stuff? If you want streamlined gameplay, reduce the types of different dice needed. e.g. D6s only, or a D10-only based system. That reduces the need for remembering which rule uses which dice.

[Pancakes]

9 months to a year to develop an AR-VR game!? This man really is creative, creative at coming up with preposterous timelines for his project. He proposed that order fulfillment may come as soon as October, or possibly even sooner. I'd imagine that if they are able to fulfill orders that soon that they already have everything in the game done, and they just need to get the physical part/logistics set in stone.

Oh yeah, they don't even have a website setup for their "greatest minds in the nation" development team. This kickstarter is like poetry...

We need all your cash
For the most creative minds
To make bad board games

[Reelya]

The greatest minds in the nation don't need websites, those are for lesser-minded plebs who need external memory storage.

[Darkmere]

Just a few notes:

The TCAP tests are, like all standardized tests, rigged to send the vast majority of people through the system. They're half-assed diagnostic tools and only affect the school's funding as far as I've ever heard. In short: "Do you know the bare minimum the government says we have to teach you? Yes? Cool, go away."

On the other hand... I appreciate that there is at least a decent chunk of effort already put in. I've seen people begging for money with far less. Still, can't even rotate a picture, though. Wow.

[Reelya]

I just noticed that the image for the body-location chart has a body location #4, but #4 doesn't turn up in the list of body locations below the image.

For a "permanently refined" system that's been playtested for "years" by satisfied players, I find that odd.

It's also odd that "torso, stomach" and - probably since it's not labeled - "pelvis" are separate body locations, yet each arm isn't a distinct body location from each hand, nor is each foot a distinct body location from the legs. It would seem to make more sense to merge "torso"/"stomach"/"pelvis" into one location, and make at least the hands their own location, so you could have character who can lose a hand but have a weapon strapped to each forearm. That makes more gameplay sense than wondering whether hits were in the upper/middle/lower torso region.

What this feels like to me is someone who's eager but doesn't have much actual common sense about basic game design.

e.g. if I was coming up with a body location system it would be a table of location-vs-size, also no need to give left arm/leg/hand/foot separate designations, just list them as one body location. So you'd have head, neck, torso, arm, hand, leg, foot: 7 basic locations. Then, each one would be assigned a size, affecting chance-to-hit positively or negatively, and each body location would have a criticality chance to score a critical hit. Preferably reducing all this to a single percentile dice roll. e.g. if you target the hand you can knock a weapon out of someone's hand, but it's a small target, so you could target the arm, which is bigger/easier to hit, but less chance to knock the weapon out of the hand.

* Also, right below that, he's got D&D type magic spells, "third level spells" listed, and divided into "wizard" "sorceror" "enchanter" "summoner" and fucking "druid". Literally all those things were in AD&D 2nd ed. Except that in AD&D, there were common magic tables, rather than having a separate set of spells for every type of magic-user. This is actually looking like a more fucked-up and less flexible magic system, while also being grossly incongruous with the outer-space setting.

** now, I just got to the bit about how $75000 will allow him to make a phone app. I can make a shitty phone app for an RPG, as can just about anyone these days, without spending any money, since the tools to do so are all free.

*** Half a million for an MMO-RPG? No fucking way. That only pays 10 people for 1 year. It's not physically possible to get an MMO for that. Especially a galaxy-spanning RPG that includes hundreds of planets, space combat, both guns and magic, and 36 races etc etc. How many programmers does he think he needs, how many artists, how many community managers etc etc?

[RoseHeart]

Artizens.

[Jopax]

Is nobody going to mention the sharpie painted space fighters on the character sheets?

Where I'm sure the thought process was that he saw some other game have a background illustration so just had to have one himself. But doing a digital one and printing it so it looks good and is useable is hard. Let's just draw one ourselves, who needs to read what their character sheet says anyways :V

[Reelya]

Is nobody going to mention the sharpie painted space fighters on the character sheets?

Where I'm sure the thought process was that he saw some other game have a background illustration so just had to have one himself. But doing a digital one and printing it so it looks good and is useable is hard. Let's just draw one ourselves, who needs to read what their character sheet says anyways :V

Yeah I noticed that, but it's basically cheap art rather than a design flaw in the game itself. Still it fits the "kickstarter gone wrong" thing to a T.

Another type of design flaw is the character-generation system. It's just a mishmash of D&D house rules and kludges like "roll twice and take the highest score", rather than just adjusting the difficulty of stat checks so that they're balanced in the first place. e.g. a much simpler system than the choice given is to say that you roll the 12 stats once then get to do e.g. three swaps. Also, it's awful that there are 12 stats, and that he says there are myriad secondary stats that you need a calculator to work out.

Also, he has negative hitpoints that are half your total hitpoints. e.g. if someone has 120 HP you have to get them down to -60 to kill them. It's a very mechanical and boring idea, and again, could be avoided just by designing in better game-balance rather than just "more HP is better". Maybe a game which didn't use the HP idea at all might be more fun and narratively interesting?

[Imic]

There are good things that come out of Kickstarter. Hollow knight. Cuphead. Etc.

[Teneb]

There are good things that come out of Kickstarter. Hollow knight. Cuphead. Etc.

Yes, and? This thread is to celebrate the trainwrecks oft spawned on Kickstarter, not the good stuff.

[Reelya]

Hence thread title "When kickstarter goes wrong". The title implies there is a "gone right" state that is the norm.

However, I'm not sure about Cuphead: sources seem to contradict that that was funded with a kickstarter.

[Imic]

Fair enough.
Mighty No. 9, anyone?

[KittyTac]

This sounds like a barrel of cringe humor. PTW.

[nenjin]

In Bucky We Trust.

[ChairmanPoo]

Oh man, this thread has lain longer dead than I thought. Well, awful Kickstarters still exist, and they are still just as entertaining to hear about.

Anyway, today I bring you a fantasy heart-breaker rpg/phone app/video game/MMO/Virtual Reality boondoggle.

At the age of 12 I was considered to be one of the most creative/inventive people in the United States (within 98-99% according to TCAP). I have earned degrees since then in Pre-Medical Sceinces and Anthropology from Pikes Peak Comminity College;

Just click forward to see unrotated photographs of hand-written notes, the amount you need to pledge to receive an LED light-up cap, and surprisingly, a lot of excellent constructive criticism in the comments section.

Oh boy, 99% on the TCAP? This man must be a genius inventor!

That KS has to be a joke.