So, um, Never Mind

Well, the Invisible Sun Kickstarter just went live.  I believe I said in the previous post that I was "all but sure" to back it, and now I am glad I threw in that qualifier, because it turns out I'm not going to be supporting it.   A small part of that is that nothing in the additional information we have been given assuages my concerns about the setting (and, to some degree, reinforces them).  But the core reason that I am out on Invisible Sun is that the price point is simply too rich for my blood.

 The top-line, sticker-shock inducing number is $197 for the base game, with no digital-only option.  That's a big number, and I think for many people that number is probably disqualifying on its face.  But I can quasi-justify that price.  You can explain away the lack of a digital product offerings by saying that you need the physical components in order to get the play experience they are trying to go for.  I'm a bit skeptical of this, since they explicitly state they are making an app to handle the card-play necessary for the game.  And, I mean, it is 2016 and we are now fully in the digital future, so how much sense does it make to make a game that can't incorporate a purely digital format?  But, hey, it's their game, and if the designers say you need the physical components, it is kind of silly to argue with them.

People also point out that the retail cost of the three core books for 5th Edition D&D is $50, or $150 total, so $197 for a full game is not orders of magnitude higher than that.  FWIW, you can now get the three core 5th Edition books for $90 combined on Amazon, but I grant the basic point.  Cook also makes a good, if self-serving under the circumstances, point that the cost of games should be shared by the group instead of only falling on the GM.  Lots of folks don't have that luxury, but in an ideal world the cost would and could be divided among multiple folks.  So, it's a lot of money, but I think you can make the case for it.

No, what actually causes me to be out on the project is that you have to go up to the 2nd individual backer level, at $539, to get access to the stretch goal products.  In the past with the MCG Kickstarters, the real value proposition has come from those stretch goals.  For example, I backed the "Into the Ninth World" Kickstarter for Numerena.  It was not cheap--$175--but for that I ended up getting (or will be getting) five Numerena supplements (in both hard copy and PDF format), two novels, and bunch of other game aids and other odds and ends.  Now, technically only the three core books were guaranteed, and $175 for three books and PDFs is pretty steep.  But as it worked out, that cost was in a sense spread out among a broader base of products via the stretch goals.  And, given the MCG track-record with Kickstarters, it was almost a foregone conclusion that they were going to hit a bunch of the stretch goals, so the risk of just getting the three books was very low.

If the sell was $197 for the base game and whatever stretch goals they came up with, I might bite the bullet (especially since, about an hour into the 32 day Kickstarter, they are already 1/3rd of the way to their target number, so stretch goals are exceedingly likely to be hit).  But you either have to just take the $197 flat price for just the base game, or make a quantum jump in price-point to get the bonus goodies to distribute the cost.  Either way, much of the value in the value proposition that is usually present in MCG Kickstarters is gone.

To be clear, I'm not offended or put out by these prices.  MCG can set the price for their products wherever they want.  No one owes me the opportunity to buy this game.  Nor does any of this make them bad people or anything silly like that.  If I totally bought into this concept, I might be willing to go in at $197.  But, as is, it is a bridge too far.  I hope the game is great and it does well, and I will still buy and play other MCG stuff in the future.  Just not this one.  

Some Thoughts on Invisible Sun

On Monday (August 15, 2016, for those reading this later), Monte Cook Games will launch a Kickstarter in support of a new tabletop RPG called Invisible Sun.  The game was revealed at Gencon last Saturday, and that reveal has been followed by some viral marketing efforts that have been kind of fun (you can see some of it here).  It was probably the biggest tabletop RPG announcement to come out of Gencon, and I am all but certain to back it beginning on Monday.

You can't really talk about Invisible Sun in isolation from Monte Cook and MCG, so here is a quick primer.  In the relatively small world of tabletop RPGs, Monte Cook is at the top of the heap in terms of visibility and lineage.  Back in the 1990s, he was a writer and designer on Dungeons & Dragons for TSR, probably best known for coming up with the Planescape setting, which in turn lead to the cult classic and critical darling video game Planescape:Torment.  When D&D was bought by Wizards of the Coast, he was a lead designer on the 3rd Edition of the game (2000).  He then went out on his own and developed a series of well-regarded products under his own the Malhavoc Press label (this is the period of time when I was not involved with tabletop RPGs, so I'm familiar with this stuff only by reputation).

After a brief period where he was associated with what became 2013's 5th Edition of D&D, Cook launched a Kickstarter for a new game called Numenera in 2012.  This Kickstarter raised over a half-million dollars, and spun out into a full-fledged game company, a line of Numenera products, three other games using the same game engine (2014's The Strange, 2015's generic version of the "Cypher System" rules called, well, The Cypher System, and a version designed for younger kids called No Thank You, Evil!), and five more wildly successful ($200k+) Kickstarters to support those products.

I was late to the MCG train--I missed the initial Kickstarters for Numenera and The Strange, but I have backed three of their follow-on Kickstarters.  My experience is that MCG and their Kickstarters produce well-written, visually stunning, high-quality products.  From a game point of view, I think the Cypher System rules are a breeze to run and to teach (probably the easiest rules set I have found), with only a few problems that have cropped up in play.  On the setting side, I really, really like The Strange (think about shows like X-Files and Fringe and even a bit of Doctor Who to get a flavor), but I am more ambivalent about Numenera, whose far future lost world setting hasn't really "clicked" for me (more on that later).  In this analysis, I appear to be in the minority of the Wisdom of the Internet, which tends to love the settings and not love the rules as much.  Be that as it may, MCG has become one of my two "go to" game design companies (along with British game company Pelgrane Press, about whom I will surely be writing in the future), and I would recommend their stuff to anyone looking to get into the hobby or to find new games to check out.

In any event, all of that is prelude to talking about Invisible Sun.