Kickstarter Haul

I recently received the results of not one, but two different Kickstarters.

The Fantasy Trip is a very interesting product. Steve Jackson (US) created a fantasy role-playing game back in 1977, partially in response to D&D. The system was simple and elegant, using a 2D6 mechanic. It’s pretty impressive to see just how good a game design could be so early in the hobby’s history. The game was published by Metagaming as The Fantasy Trip.

Jackson eventually parted ways with Metagaming and went on to form his own company. Unfortunately, the rights to the Fantasy Trip did not go with him, and so he went on to design GURPS, which shares a lot of genetic material with TFT. Although I own and use many GURPS books—they are consistently some of the best researched and edited game books around—I was never been as big a fan of the GURPS system as TFT. GURPS was just much too fiddly for my tastes.

Fortunately, after being off the market for decades the rights to TFT finally reverted to Jackson, who promptly launched a Kickstarter to get a lightly updated version of the game back into print. Although I haven’t had a chance to dig too deeply into the contents, this set is huge and like any SJG product, seems to be well-made and an excellent value.

The Reaper Miniatures Bones 4 is the latest Kickstarter to bring a horde of new plastic miniature to market. I have been in on all three previous Kickstarters, which have been a great deal and were instrumental in getting me back into painting miniatures. I did not go quite so crazy for this Kickstarter, only getting the core set and a handful of expansions. I am really looking forward to painting the new frost and hill giant figures and—finally—some war apes!

One interesting surprise with this set: it seems that all of the figures were cast in the new “Bones Black” material, which isn’t actually black but more of a dark gray. This is a stiffer plastic that appears to hold details better. It is certainly easier to pick out mold lines on these figures. I look forward to seeing how they take paint!