Popup Dungeon Pops Up on Kickstarter

I'm in that board-gaming mood, readers. The one where the infinite possibilities of pen, paper and manufactured cardboard spread out in front of my mind's eye. You can do anything! You can be anyone! Shame about all that manual calculation that has to come along with the DIY design and tactility. If only someone, say Triple B Titles, decided to do a Kickstarter that took the customisation of characters and abilities but wrapped it up in a charmingly twee cut-out style.

Gasp! Popup Dungeon is exactly that. I've never felt so clairvoyant. They're after $80,000 of real, non-Monopoly money for what they're selling as an infinitely creative and replayable game. Hmm.

Got the "words appearing on screen in seemingly random order without rhyme or reason" down pat, at least. Not a particularly strong video, but the ability creation is really intriguing to me. While it inevitably snapped in half balance-wise with the attentions of the wider internet, The Elder Scrolls' magic creation system was dastardly interesting. Layering that over a D&D 4th Edition (aka best edition) style board and removing the slightly tedious if rather tense dice rolling raises my eyebrow. The animation could be improved, but the overall art style - not to mention stylistic and mechanical elements - worked incredibly well in the past.

They're running a longer campaign than the norm, at six weeks rather than a month, which raised a bit of interest in the RPS Chatamatic. Resident kickstarter expert Jim is pretty sure there aren't any additional fees for lengthening a campaign, which you might think would make the maximum the default. However, for most projects, the length isn't actually very relevant towards getting funded. The odd one will only just hit its target or has such wide-reaching appeal that more people find out about it and are interested every day, but most exposure will come early. Kickstarter's "remind me" feature and fan hype is likely to produce some amount of donation bump towards the end, but that middle section is a wasteland. Dragging it out on an inevitably unsuccessful campaign would be depressing, while those who get their money easily are likely better getting on with it rather than bloating their project with stretch goals. It's possible Triple B Titles may regret their decision in the end.