Wreck This Deck is LIVE on Backerkit!

Wreck This Deck is a dark urban fantasy game of solo journaling, demon summoning and deck crafting. Summon and bind demons into your Demon Deck, defacing the cards as you go. The game was first published during lockdown and saw a lot of play, and we’re now crowdfunding the print zine that it always deserved, using Backerkit’s new crowdfunding platform.

In Wreck This Deck you will:

  • Delve into dark knowledge and live life on the edge as a demon-summoning deck runner.
  • Bind demons into your haunted deck, wielding their strength for yourself.
  • Modify playing cards, creating a personalized deck spattered with paint, blood and sigils.
  • Unleash the power of your demon deck to fight corporations, right injustice and protect your community. 

Pledge now to help us get the strongest possible launch!

Why we’re using Backerkit for Wreck This Deck

We’ve done four TTRPG crowdfunding campaigns, starting with Lovecraftesque (first edition) in 2015, then Flotsam, Bite Marks and Last Fleet. All four were on Kickstarter. We’ve had some great success with Kickstarter. But for Wreck This Deck, we’ve decided to go with Backerkit, and I want to talk about why.

First a brief plug for Wreck This Deck. It’s a solo journaling game of demon summoning and deck crafting, where you trap demons in ordinary playing cards by defacing the cards: paint them, stitch them, burn them, scrawl on them. It had some great success when we first released it during lockdown and we’re now ready to give it a print edition. If you like the sound of that then you can pledge on our Backerkit crowdfunding page.

When we first started crowdfunding, Kickstarter was more-or-less the only game in town. Indiegogo was there, but it just didn’t look as attractive, and the campaigns on there didn’t seem to do as well. Kickstarter was an accessible, simple way to get into crowdfunding – and it rewarded its users with what seemed to be a pretty good throughput from people who were just browsing the site.

But Kickstarter has made some weird moves recently. From the resistance to recognising the union, to the flirtation with crypto, it’s simply not been presenting an attractive face to ethical publishers and backers. And for a long time, Kickstarter has seemed complacent: for years it wasn’t even possible to put alt text on images, despite us writing to them to complain about the accessibility implications. (This now appears to have been fixed, thankfully.)

Perhaps in response to the diminished reputation of Kickstarter, there has been a growing set of rivals. Projects using these rivals have seen mixed success. It’s always a risk to move from a popular marketplace into somewhere new. And so there’s a risk of a vicious cycle, with alternative platforms seeing poor outcomes, putting off creators from using them.

Enter Backerkit. This is a platform that already has a lot of understanding of the crowdfunding market. We’ve been using them since our first campaign to provide post-campaign support, tracking our backers, generating helpful post-campaign surveys, managing our digital rewards and so on. Their customer service is second to none: when I’ve had problems working out how to do something they will send me a custom-recorded video by one of their staff made just for me, showing me how to do the specific thing I wanted. Where our Kickstarter campaign pages have always been approved without ceremony, Backerkit actually sent us detailed feedback on the Wreck This Deck campaign page, enabling us to improve it. And their functionality is great.

Backerkit has launched a full-blown crowdfunding platform of its own and it’s shown some pretty good success stories. But much more important, they’ve shown that they know how to run a crowdfunding platform. Their setup is flexible, functional, and well integrated with the kind of tools you need to manage a campaign. And as previously remarked, they have great customer service – both for us as the publisher and you the customer.

It felt like a risky move. We are all too aware of the potential for our campaign to lose visibility because Backerkit is still a relatively small player, with less “passing traffic”. But we think it’s the right move at this time. And early results from the campaign suggest we’ve made a good call. Of course we’ll never know how it would have gone if we’d used Kickstarter, but for a zine campaign Wreck This Deck is doing incredibly well at nearly 350 backers after 1 week, and that’s included a fair bit of people coming from within Backerkit’s website.

Of course, we’re not saying Kickstarter is evil, and we may well use them in the future. So far the crypto flirtation hasn’t come to anything, and they’ve shown they can improve by (eventually) recognising the union and offering alt text on their images. This isn’t some kind of principle-driven rupture. But we do hope that we can be part of a greater move to diversify the crowdfunding market so we’re not all dependent on one big provider. Having that competition will likely be better for Kickstarter too, in the long run.

So anyway, that’s a little insight into why we’re doing this. We’ll be watching closely how well Wreck This Deck does with a view to deciding what to do with our next big project: Lovecraftesque second edition. Watch this space!

Last Fleet is live on Kickstarter!

Hi everyone!

It’s been coming for a while, and at last the Last Fleet Kickstarter campaign has launched! If you already know about it, you can find the link to the Kickstarter here. For everyone else, read on!

Last Fleet is a PBTA game about a rag-tag fleet, fleeing across space from the merciless inhuman foe that destroyed human civilisation. You play brave pilots, officers, engineers, politicians and journalists fighting to keep the fleet – and themselves – in one piece.

The game is focused on action, intrigue and drama in this high-pressure setting. The game’s setting, situation and mechanics push the theme of pressure, whether it’s through white knuckle space battles, tense hunts for infiltrators on the fleet, or the social fallout when your characters finally crack. It excels at the classic PBTA rhythm of switching between action and interpersonal drama.

If you like the sound of that, please do check out the Kickstarter page where you can see previews of the art, read more about the game, download the reference sheets, and of course back the campaign.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blackarmada/last-fleet-rpg-lastfleetrpg?ref=3qv0g5

Thanks for your support.
Cheers,

Josh

Black Armada supports KSRU

We’ve been watching closely the attempts by the Kickstarter United (KSRU) to get recognised by Kickstarter as an official union. We’ve been dismayed by the response by Kickstarter. We support staff efforts to unionise, and we support the demands for Kickstarter to #recognizeKSRU.

We would like to emphasise that KSRU have not called for a boycott of Kickstarter, and doing so unilaterally at this stage is likely to undermine efforts to secure recognition. We are not boycotting Kickstarter. With that said, we support individual choice and nobody should be attacked for choosing to stay away from the platform at this time.

Below is an email we have sent to Kickstarter senior management (kickstarter-sot(at)kickstarter.com) and to thoughts(at)kickstarterunited.org. We’d urge all creators and backers to make your support known too.

To whom it may concern


We are writing as co-owners of Black Armada Games. We are three-time creators on Kickstarter. We have backed dozens of projects ourselves. We truly appreciate the service that Kickstarter and its workers provide to help entrepreneurs and individuals alike bring their dreams to life. We are substantial beneficiaries of that service, and we would like to use it again. Indeed, we have a campaign coming up in early 2020 that we would like to put on Kickstarter.


However, your company’s position on recognition of Kickstarter United has put us in a very difficult position. We support employees’ right to unionise as a matter of principle. We support the aims that KSRU have put forward – honestly, we struggle to see how anyone could disagree with them. It seems to us that those aims, and the support for workers to be able to unionise, is strongly consistent with Kickstarter’s stated values, not least as Kickstarter is a public benefit corporation.


It is clear that Kickstarter’s actions have been to oppose unionisation. While you have claimed to take a neutral position, in practice you have argued against forming a union, you have pushed for a process (NLRB elections) which will impede the speed and likelihood of the union being recognised. And that is without even considering the sacking of KSRU organisers, an action which looks deeply suspicious. We are horrified by these actions and, were KSRU to call for a boycott, they would have our wholehearted support and compliance.


With all that said, we have a decision to make as to whether to put our next campaign on Kickstarter or choose one of your many rival crowdfunding sites. We imagine we are not alone in reconsidering whether Kickstarter is the best platform for our brand and our values. We do not wish to undermine KSRU and we are not boycotting your site, but as a business we have to choose the best platform for our work. We may yet decide to continue with Kickstarter, but this issue weighs heavily in our minds.


And so we call on you to voluntarily recognise KSRU. End your oppositional behaviour. Redeem your reputation and move on from this PR disaster. Live your values and those of countless creators and backers. And selfishly, we’d ask you to do it swiftly so as to make our decision about our campaign an easy one.


Yours


Josh Fox and Becky Annison

Black Armada Games

48 hours left to back Bite Me! on Kickstarter

Update: Please note that Bite Me was renamed to Bite Marks, after the campaign closed. The game can now be pre-ordered from Backerkit.

We have been running a Kickstarter for Bite Me! – a game of werewolf pack dynamics here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blackarmada/bite-me-a-game-of-werewolf-pack-dynamics and we are down to the last 48 hours.

Vincent Sammy is illustrating the game … gorgeous.

As you know I love Werewolves and werewolf packs especially and this is a labour of love which I’ve talked about before on the blog.  I wanted a game which combined all the tropes of Werewolves like control, domination and hyper-violence and used that to fuel messy relationships and explore pack dynamics.  This is that game.

The campaign is funded and we have hit the first stretch goal but I really would love to get to the stretch goals by Whitney Delaglio, Kelley Armstrong and Paul Czege if we can.

If you’ve backed or shared already then thank you so much and if you have been thinking about it then there is 48 hours to make your move!

Flotsam is available for pre-order

If you missed the Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars Kickstarter, you can now get in on the action by Pre-ordering on Backerkit.

Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars is a roleplaying game about outcasts, renegades and misfits living in the belly of a space station, in the shadow of a more prosperous society. You play through their everyday lives, interpersonal relationships and small-scale drama in the Below, a dangerous world where poverty, social strife and gang conflict sit side-by-side with alien technology and supernatural weirdness.

Imagine the Belters of the Expanse watching as Earth and Mars shape their lives, the civilians in Battlestar Galactica living with the decisions made by the military and the folk of Downbelow in Babylon 5, abandoned to destitution and squalor by those who built the station. This game is about characters like that.

The game is GMless and diceless, with rules that point your characters at each other and bring their relationships into sharp focus. They help you create a rich setting, flawed characters, and charged relationships which develop over time. You’ll watch your characters evolve and change before your eyes. It’s really cool.

Pre-order Flotsam Now



Bite Me! is coming to Kickstarter – Get on the Mailing List Here!

Update: Please note that Bite Me was renamed to Bite Marks, after the campaign closed. The game can now be pre-ordered from Backerkit.

The Bite Me! Kickstarter is getting closer and closer, practically snapping at our heels over here at Black Armada.

Bite Me! is a Powered by the Apocalypse Game of werewolf packs and it is a full throated emotional howl into these cold Winter nights.

If you want to know the instant the kickstarter emerges naked and bloody into the world then sign up to our mailing list here:

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Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars

Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars is now available to buy in our store. You can also find it on DrivethruRPG, on itch.io and in gaming stores worldwide.

Flotsam is a roleplaying game about outcasts, renegades and misfits living in belly of a space station, in the shadow of a more prosperous society. You play through their everyday lives, interpersonal relationships and small-scale drama in the Below, a dangerous world where poverty, social strife and gang conflict sit side-by-side with alien technology and supernatural weirdness.

Imagine the Belters of the Expanse watching as Earth and Mars shape their lives, the civilians in Battlestar Galactica living with the decisions made by the military and the folk of Downbelow in Babylon 5, abandoned to destitution and squalor by those who built the station. This game is about characters like that.

The game is GMless and diceless, with rules that point your characters at each other and bring their relationships into sharp focus. They help you create a rich setting, flawed characters, and charged relationships which develop over time. You’ll watch your characters evolve and change before your eyes. It’s really cool.

“Josh has put together something really interesting here – there’s glimpses of a larger setting through the world, but it only comes out through the lenses of the characters. Very clever stuff.” 

– Grant Howitt, co-designer of The Spire RPG

Lovecraftesque – a kickstarter retrospective (part 4)

This is part 4 in a multi-part series looking back on our RPG kickstarter, what went well, what we’d change, and so on. Part 1 is herePart 2 is here. Part 3 is here. This time, we’re talking about the quality of the product and the post-kickstarter phase.

Delivery phase – quality

Quality-wise, I couldn’t be prouder by what we achieved. The game has met with a very positive reception, including several award nominations. I continue to get a massive buzz every time I hear about people playing it. I believe it stands up in comparison to any other horror game out there.

The production values met our very high standards. The book is beautiful, filled with gorgeous art and an evocative yet readable layout, both of which mirror and reinforce the structure and themes of the game. The physical product looks and feels great.

Image of a library. A woman in a wheelchair looks over her shoulder, holding a gun at the ready. Behind her, a monstrous praying mantis lurks amongst the bookshelves.
One of the illustrations from Lovecraftesque

I also want to say here that our stretch goals massively enhanced the game. The finished stretch goal material was high quality, incredibly evocative, and provided a powerful set of diverse support materials for the game. We had one review whinge that the game itself was just a third of the book: but that really fails to recognise the benefits of these extra materials. The book has a massive 17 scenarios – you have so much choice, and they’re all so good; many people have commented that the quick-start scenarios are their favourite way to play. Plus the essays, which offer a really in-depth analysis of how to handle race and mental health in Lovecraftian games – issues which were a major focus of the campaign, and very dear to our heart. So the stretch goals were a major success for this project.

Post-kickstarter phase

Honestly, we didn’t really plan for what would happen after the kickstarter. That might seem funny given all the detailed planning described so far, but we really were focused on the campaign.

After the dust settled, we set ourselves up on Payhip, on DrivethruRPG, and (using Paypal buttons) on our own website to directly sell the game to customers. We reached out to Indie Press Revolution in the US and Esdevium in the UK, to get the books out to retailers.

All this basically worked ok. However, one thing new game designers should know is that retail distributors ask for a very hefty discount in the region of 50-55% on your product. This is because retailers ask for a 30-35% discount. I’m not being critical – retailers and distributors have costs to meet and presumably try to make a profit too. It can be pretty tricky to make any money on sales to retailers if you haven’t factored this into your planning – which we hadn’t. At one point we realised that we would make a loss on US retail sales, and had to make some changes to keep this viable. It would have been better if we’d planned that in advance – and it’s another reason why a print run would probably have been a better choice for us, since we’ve sold hundreds of books this way, many at a negligible profit margin. We’re glad to support retailers, and have the books out there, but next time we’ll do better out of it too.

I’ll also mention accounting. Once you make money, you’re going to have to report it to the authorities. In the UK that means submitting accounts and a self-assessment tax return to HM Revenue and Customs. This is a faff. Even if you pay someone to do it, in practice you will do a lot of work. If you pay someone, it will cost you, and probably more than you think. Just, you know. Think about that, and plan time and money around it.

Just for fun, here’s a graph of our sales during and after the kickstarter. It includes PDFs, but is I estimate over 80% physical copies. You can see that retailer sales are a large share of post-kickstarter sales, which makes my earlier remarks about planning for those even more salient.

Graph of our sales during and after the kickstarter

 

Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars – kickstarter in July

I’ve been working hard to get Flotsam ready for kickstarter, and it looks like it’ll be ready to launch some time in July.

Flotsam is a game for 3-5 people about outcasts, renegades and misfits living in the belly of a space station, in the shadow of a more prosperous society. You focus on their everyday lives, their relationships and small-scale, interpersonal drama.

You could play:

The cast-off, an ordinary person fallen on bad times;

The Thunder, a tough ganger who makes the rules down here;

The Voice, the charismatic leader of a cult or community;

The Spider, a ruthless trader or spymaster;

The Sybyl, a prophetess with uncanny powers; or

The Hybrid, part human and part something else (alien, AI, god… there are lots of options).

The game is GMless: Each player gets one Primary character to play, as well as one Situation that they help to develop and push forward when not playing their Primary. That can be a lot to juggle, so the game has a simple, streamlined system that’s geared towards giving each player maximum control over the pacing of their own scenes, so you can have quiet, tense emotional scenes when you want them, or high-energy, threatening scenes when you feel like hitting the gas.

The game’s system pushes you to focus on your relationships and personal flaws, to move your character out of their comfort zone and develop them. Over time you’ll see those relationships and flaws change, and your characters grow. As such, it’s designed to work best in campaign mode. Over a handful of sessions, you’ll get to see real evolution of your character and their relationships.

Nonetheless, I wanted the game to be playable as a one-shot, so the game will include rules for quick-start play, using simple scenarios with pre-generated characters and situations. These will be designed to kickstart play with relationships that are already on the point of change, and problems at the point of exploding. It’ll mean you can play the game in 3-4 hours.

I’m excited to share the game with you! If you’re interested in this project you might want to follow the Black Armada kickstarter account here, so you’ll get a notification when the campaign launches. If you have questions or would like to talk to me about the project, you can comment here or contact me at flotsam (at) vapourspace (dot) net.

Finally, I couldn’t end this article without sharing the work-in-progress cover art by Anna Landin. It’s only a sketch and it’s already looking great! Honestly, commissioning art is one of my favourite things about being a game designer.

Four people stand around a makeshift table converted from a piece of industrial machinery. One of them leans forward, entreating another, who watches with interest. In the background we can see a round window, through which is stars and space, and a spaceship flying by.
OMG I love this sketch