A perilous adventure unearthing the dark arcana behind Sword & Sorcery’s iconic tabletop roleplaying game
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Over 1,000 Backers! + a video interview with some of our creators
about 2 years ago
– Fri, Sep 23, 2022 at 03:04:12 PM
WE ARE LEGION
We have been (not so) quietly watching the progress from our team space on Discord these past few days as our back count crept towards 1,000. It's a psychological milestone that we've been looking forward to for about a week,and when we finally hit it today there was much jubilation!
We only have six days left in the campaign, and this final week is statistically the slowest period for most Kickstarters; the calm before the storm when things heat up in the final 24-48 hours.
There are still over 2,500 people following this project who haven't pledged yet, so we are optimistic about seeing a flurry of activity during the final countdown and hitting our $100K (and maybe even our final $125K) stretch goals! That said, we would really like to unlock our $90K stretch goal before going into the final few days—and we only need about 18 more backers to hit that mark!
Many of you have continued posting and sharing about the project; we see you and appreciate you! For those who haven't done so yet,the most sure-fire way we'll hit our $90K and $100K (an $125K!)goals is if you share your enthusiasm with yourfamily, friends, frenemies, and DMs (“DMenies?”). Here's how you can find us online and help us spread the word:
Email your friends, fellow gamers, eldritch lovers, and dark fantasy aficionados to tell them about what we're trying to do ⚔️
In the meantime, ICYMI: Janaka, Max, and Peter sat down with the Weekly Scroll the other week to talk at-length about C.L. Moore, game design, and OSE vs 5e. You can watch the video on YouTube (also embedded below), or spare yourselves having to look at our nerdy faces and just listen to the audio podcast here.
Add-Ons Now Available!
about 2 years ago
– Mon, Sep 19, 2022 at 08:25:49 PM
We have received quite a few questions about add-ons since the project started. We had planned on waiting to allow add-ons until the pledge manager launched—after the project is complete—because it reduces the number of fees we pay. But due to ongoing demand we felt like it would best serve all of you to allow add-on to your pledges now!
To add add-ons to your pledge, click the Manage your pledge button, confirm your reward level, and then choose the add-ons you want. Just note that we are not calculating and charging for shipping until after the campaign ends—and that adding items onto your pledge may effect the estimated shipping amount we listed on the project page (though probably just by a few dollars).
If you're adding 2 or more items onto your pledge, you my find that it makes more financial sense for you to just bump up to the next highest pledge level (e.g. Core --> Deluxe, or Deluxe --> Black God's Bundle), because we designed the pledges to be the best possible deals for backers interested in all of the excellent rewards.
Add-ons will also still be available after the campaign ends, during the pledge management phase in Backerkit. So if you'd prefer to wait until then you won't miss out on anything. That said, adding items onto your base pledge now will also help us hit our stretch goals during the campaign—so feel free to add away!
Concept sketches for lost souls trapped in, and mutated by, the Black God's realm
Passing $80K and New Price Drops!
about 2 years ago
– Sat, Sep 17, 2022 at 06:58:31 AM
We Have Now Passed $80K in Funding!
And as I write this update we are fewer than 40 people away from hitting 1,000 backers. This is incredible and has truly surpassed our expectations going in—with still 12 days left to go in our campaign! As a result, we are getting ambitious because the $100K stretch goal is now in sight and we really really want to hit that so we can add yet another book to the box sets. So, with that in mind we are making an adjustment to the campaign:
Price Drops
ICYMI: we have three unique, unclaimed premium pledge tiers. Each one is for an original, one-of-a-kind hand-drawn piece of art being used in the cover designs for the box set. Backers can choose from one of three illustrations: the cover for the Black God's Shadow short story, the cover for the Encounter the Architects RPG module, and the cover for the box set and core RPG book featuring the Black God!
"Encounter the Architects" Ink on Bristol. 12" x 17"
Each piece is guaranteed to be of archival quality and has been finely illustrated by hand with incredibly detailed line-work, involving over 80 hours of inking for a single work. All original art will ship flat, separately from the other rewards.
The original artwork tiers all come with:
The Black God's Bundle
The original artwork associated with it
Personal thanks in the core RPG book
**The Black God tier also comes with the opportunity to collaborate with Janaka on designing an NPC, which will then be illustrated in your likeness by Saprophial**
"Black God's Shadow" Ink on Bristol. 12" x 17"
Originally, these were priced at $1,500 each for the Black God's Shadow and Encounter the Architects pieces, while the Black God piece was priced at $5,000. Honestly, this always felt a little high to us but we were advised by some Kickstarter veterans to set them at those price points so we deferred to their experience. However, because we've already smashed through so many stretch goals we are cutting all those prices in half—making the first two pieces just $750, and the iconic illustration for the game $2,500. Given that each piece of original artwork also comes with the Kickstarter-exclusive Black God's Bundle (worth $189 on its own), this feels like a pretty solid deal.
More importantly, if all three are grabbed by backers soon that puts us within a5-foot-reach of our $90K Stretch Goal.
"The Black God" Ink on Claybord, protected with a matte varnish. 18" x 24"
If you have any questions about these unique, premium rewards don't hesitate to message before pledging. In the meantime, thank you thank you THANK YOU ALL for helping us get this far!
Meet the Creators: Saprophial
about 2 years ago
– Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 07:40:41 AM
Throughout the rest of the campaign we will be posting spotlights on each creator who is contributing to the project, where we ask and answer some questions to help you get to know us and where we're coming from to the world of TTRPGs. This update is featuring the artist illustrating every element of our box set, Saprophial.
Q: How did you get into art?
A: I guess I must have started to draw as a toddler just as anyone does and had a decent enough eye-brain-hand connection to be considered promising. Fixation on rendering things as beautifully as I could came from some particular psychology, and I guess that made me technically decent; somewhere along the line I picked up inking and was simply attracted to it. I stopped drawing practically completely for several years, from my mid-teens to my mid-twenties, as I was consumed with studying music. I started off and on again a few years ago. Around then, a friend (with whom I became acquainted when he reached out to me to produce the Ov Lustra cover shown on the Kickstarter page) introduced me to Aaron Horkey’s art and, of course, it pulped my brain. I really didn’t know the art world or inkers, and that was a watershed moment for me in seeing what the medium could really do. At that time I decided to try producing work, for the first time, with the aim to see what I could do if I really tried to create work like that. I wouldn’t even land in the same galaxy as Horkey, of course, but it really led to my pursuing this seriously.
Q: Aside from the writings of C.L. Moore, what other fantasy work—in any medium—inspires or excites you?
A: Oh man, there’s no end of sources of inspiration, both fictional and “real”. There’s probably no effective way to answer other than to spit out where my head’s at with fantasy at this point in time ... I’ve been thinking lots recently about Satoshi Kon’s movies, Vania Zouravliov’s art, Neuromancer, the NieR: Automata soundtrack, and Jorge Luis Borges’s short stories. I love work in all flavors of fantasy, high or low, in just about any medium. As time passes and I reflect, though, I’m more interested in fantastic subtlety, at least in regards to what I personally want to produce. Roberto Bolaño’s writing is a good example of influence there. I’d love to produce work that evokes a dreadful wrongness or wonder lurking within the mundane, or casting a pall over it, without adding any more of that seasoning than is strictly necessary to get the feeling across. I’ll need to spend a long time elevating my self-education to begin to start working on that effectively, maybe finally pursue painting.
Q: Describe your ideal gaming experience (when, where, what, how).
A: Fair warning, practically all of my gaming experience is with video games, as much as I want and intend to get into more tabletop! Anything solo or cooperative with good company (being kind and/or funny > being skilled) will do. I’ve been wanting for months to gift myself a mini vacation to be a goblin and binge replay something on my shortlist (RE4, Bloodborne, or Disco Elysium right now) with some creature comforts and no work waiting, so I guess right now that’s my ideal experience!
Q: Favorite gaming snack?
A: I love to bake pressed tofu in a spicy marinade for something cheap and low effort without being unhealthy or messy. If I’m feeling more indulgent, I like a simple mixed drink with salt and vinegar chips. (PSA: eating chips with chopsticks is kind of a game-changer for keeping everything clean.)
Q: Has a game ever brought you closer to another person, or come between you?
A: Absolutely! All the former, thankfully. I met my SO because of Dead Space, which, besides the fact that it’s an incredible game, makes it extra dear to me; he and I have played a lot of games together. Video games were also a major bonding element with my brothers when we were younger—Metal Gear Solid and Halo especially. I had some nice times raid tanking with a cool guild in World of Warcraft but have resisted that delicious, dirty MMO high for years.
Q: Which subjects do you wish more creators would build games about?
A: Like a lot of people, I have causes that I wish were better explored and carefully handled by games. When dealing with ethical problems especially, I would want to see projects that really fully utilize the choice of an interactive medium. It’s tough to effectively expound without going overboard (I deleted a whole paragraph here!) so I’ll leave it at that. I think often of how I would create something that accomplished these goals, and maybe one day I’ll think of something worthy to develop. Generally, though, there are lots of great games to find out there with a lot of love poured into their writing and design. I have very few pet subjects that I feel aren’t at least being attempted meaningfully by game creators; the experience I have often is “this is something I didn’t know I wanted”.
Q: Favorite record(s) or track(s) to listen to while working on this project?
A: Too many to name! I usually think in terms of artist, as my go-tos usually aren’t just one-hits for me and I don’t listen to a ton of albums end-to-end on the regular. I just make spaghetti playlists. So I guess, to be that guy a little bit, some major players for working on Black God’s Kiss are Fange, Giles Corey, Bell Witch, Swans, Have a Nice Life, Pye Corner Audio, Cult Leader, and Sumac.
Saprophial's true form
On Game Design and the Horror of the Black God
about 2 years ago
– Tue, Sep 13, 2022 at 01:27:22 PM
When Janaka and I first talked about this project, I did my usual thing; I got ahead of myself. I read through "Black God’s Kiss" a few times, taking notes and frantically scrawling game ideas. Knowing that Janaka and Peter would be creating adventures in the Black God’s realm, I focused on the spaces TTRPG supplements would generally need to leave open. Essentially, what can the standalone bring to the table that the rest of the materials can’t?
I hit on five points that would drive the development of the game:
Solo & small group play because sometimes you just can’t get the whole crew together, but you still want to play!
Playing the narrative—the story arc of Black God’s Kiss is beautiful, and Jirel is an incredibly compelling character. A standalone game offers opportunities for jumping directly into C.L. Moore’s story, where traditional TTRPG content will make more space for players to construct their narratives.
Quick play. I love small games. I also love big games, but I wanted to create something you could learn, play, and play again, all in an evening.
Replay value. While you might be able to replay an adventure or run it with a new group, I wanted to offer something that begs you to play it again and again.
PvP! I love my friends, and we work great together in real life. So when it's time to play a game, sometimes I just want to go toe to toe and destroy them.
Having these design goals in mind, I shifted my attention to the more conceptual elements, digging into the story and trying to make sure that the game not only does justice to “Black God’s Kiss,” but shares the heart of the story.
Revisiting my notes, it is interesting to see what most surprised me. One of my earliest entries reads, “the horror of finding humanity in the grotesque.” When I read or watch something intended to be frightening, I pause to ask myself, “what intrinsic fear is this poking at?” In the case of “Black God’s Kiss,” it isn’t just the grotesque nature of the creatures Jirel encounters that terrifies her. There is a greater fear—a concept that she resists even holding in her mind lest it drive her mad—that she and these horrors may not be so different.
We often talk about fear of the unknown, the inhuman, but the Black God reminds us that there is an infinitely more terrifying abyss than what lies beyond; the dark caverns and unexplored recesses of our inner selves. What demons lie dormant within us, waiting for an invitation to the surface, perhaps with a kiss?
As Jirel quests for the ultimate weapon, she leans on the darker aspects of her humanity. She recognizes that embracing one’s shadow self is to dance on the cusp of damnation. The line between human and monstrosity is just a hair’s breadth. Within the Black God’s realm, one’s rationality, their most basic humanity, is under constant threat.
I found myself excited to tackle themes more complex than just, “see monster, kill monster, survive.” As much as I love a good monster fight, I am always down to get a bit heady.
In playtesting and game development, I am keeping this interrelational tension central to the design. This is why I chose to make Black God’s Gambit a 1-2 player game. The core game is the 2-player mode in which one player takes on the role of Jirel, the other the Black God, and you enter a psychological arena with infinite possibilities. The solo option puts you in Jirel’s boots and substitutes chaos and chance for the Black God, allowing you to experience the tension and horror of walking into the unknown.
There is one final goal I haven’t mentioned yet, even though it is the keystone in the arch. While it is so obvious that it could go unsaid, typing it here is a good way of ensuring it remains at the forefront. Ultimately, this is a game, and I want to make games that are fun. Fun is good.
The result of all these moving pieces is, I hope, a game that is quick, easy to learn and play, and invites players to consider the complexities of C.L. Moore’s gorgeous fiction.
Thank you for your help bringing this project to life. I hope that tonight, or sometime soon, you will find a moment to stare at the moon.
