The position that KS is mostly a marketing tool is pretty well established around here, so no argument from me. Esp Leder Games use for Root, Vast, Oath, etc.
But I do think that Pax Pamir 2nd, made at that quality, probably would have been hard for a two person company with no games behind it to create.
I mean, I agree it's stretching it, but despite everything Leder are still relatively niche. And in this particular instance too, Oath itself, that's a big risk - it's going to be an oddball type thing, even though there will be a lot of interest on the back of Root. I also think Cole has built up some trust. I back the guy to get it done personally.
Anyway, regardless of whether Cole/Leder should be running it like this, or if they really need to, I just meant, it's still closer to what the idea of KS is as opposed to what it really is.
I'm a bit bummed still I couldn;t afford/justify it, but probably a bit happy about that too.
Right, but Pamir was 99% designed already. Sure they needed production money for the blingz, I get that, even for biggies like CMONLOL and Childres, makes perfect sense. What I don't get is Kickstarting the game while it's in early design stages. From what I hear, Oath has had brain surgery and a heart implant since the campaign closed. It's just weird to me that you would launch a campaign for a game in such a preliminary state. What are you saying to your backers? It might be this, or that, or I don't even know, we'll see. And you've put a hard limit on how much time you have left, to get to that "we'll see" point. I fear you might get a great idea, but just not have time to explore it, because the backers are yammering and clamoring. I dunno, it's just weird, but so many things are, for me.
Apropos of the discussion here, this is a fun talk through of the changes with all the design is undergoing during development. It's not essential at all, I'm not trying to convince anyone to be into playtest or something, but it's fun to listen to Cole talk conceptually at a high-ish level how the game changes were made.
Kit C just launched and Leder Games streamed a playthrough with Cole.
I like the way the game has evolved. This version is much easier to understand and it seems to flow much better than the earlier builds. I still don't see a great deal in the way of the much-vaunted legacy/chronicle element though, it looks like you could just build a random game each time and have the same experience.
Looks like there's some extra permanence via the edifices. Some people have constantly talked up the legacy elements but there were never very many even at the beginning; the main thing was how the game develops via card additions.
Yeah, 200 cards is quite enormous so that will be the pleasure in the chronicle system, the legacy elements to get there don't seem overly special. Wehrle talks on that stream about a random way to put games together so that will be there.
I don't dwell on shit like coins but hot damn those are nice coins and little books.
I'm surprised by the amount of designing still going on, and I'm worried there's going to be Lizards-sized mistakes slipping in, especially as there's only a month or so left. I think more work should have been done before launching the KS, but I'm very optimistic it'll be in good shape. In an ideal world, they would have launched the KS for the publicity and playtesting recruitment, but kept the timeline very flexible and left things open for there to be more time to work on it, even if it didn't deliver for another year. Obviously that wouldn't have been optimal for a lot of backers, but it's better than a release and then belated fixes months later.
I'm still of the opinion that that I'm interested in whatever gets delivered.
I stopped watching the back-and-forth months ago, and I'm just waiting for it to settle down and ship. If it takes a while, whatever. I'm not going anywhere anyway.
Somewhere upthread a few of us said "might be a disaster", but Cole's track record was still worth the price of admission to me.