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He turned out quite nice, now I hope we see more soon.

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:

Rules come and go. Minis are forever (unpainted).

Sure and that is why several companies went under. Nice minis sell a certain amount but the group that buys a game only for its minis is rather small but very vocal. It is the whole package that sells the game. And if you don´t have good rules going with the nice minis you will land in the artist/display niché with your minis. Nothing wrong when you are specialised on such things, but very bad if you design a game.

The whole package might sell a game, but my wife and I, my brother, and many of my friends do not buy games. We buy models. If we want to play a game with them, there are already more than enough rule sets. Heck, we use them for Monopoly. There just happens to be a nontrivial demographic interested in buying models without rules necessarily being attached. I disagree with you about the size of this demographic. I think it's much larger than you believe.

Still, I hope the people who want a complete package are enough to make this KS a success. I really would like to see another large scale SF game with fluff based as much on modern SF as 40k was based on Dune.

Oh, and if you mention SW, the minis are really good, but still quite some people are thinking they are crap. I know they are wrong and you do probably, too. But it shows how fickle the mini-lover group can be, much more fickle than the group that goes for the whole package. In the worst case it can even turn into outright hatred as we can see on the Rivet Wars forum. Minis invole a lot of taste, rules less so, they can be much easier proven to be good or bad and you have less problems with the rule crowd because of this.

On the other hand, literally dozens or hundreds of people bought SW to use the models in other games, such as 40k.

Taarnak wrote:

 Guildsman wrote:
Well, glad to see the whole "designed by the community" mechanic in action already, namely the part where they ignore all of the forum suggestions and do what they want. The fans asked for a Han Solo/Mal Reynolds type of character, who gets by on wit rather than combat skill, which sounds awesome and which I might have actually ponied up some cash for. Instead, we got a bodybuilder with a porn 'stache and a BFG. Count me out.

Edit: not saying that it's a bad model (technically), it just isn't to my taste, and not what the official forum asked for. I'd be really interested in seeing the brief that was sent to Kev.

Got a link to that discussion? Or is it on the KS page?

~Eric

http://www.darkspacecorp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=18

The Mal Reynolds suggestion was an early suggestion and one of many. One early suggestion that did get picked up was a tech gauntlet interface. Another suggestion from the thread was the "wired" systems necessary due to not being compatible with the nano-tech.

I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any real consensus in that thread - there was certainly no consensus on having a Mal Reynolds character (unless you stopped reading in the middle of page 1). There was MUCH bigger interest in having Hansa resemble Rick Priestley, and somewhere among all the ideas being bounced around, Kev White (Hasslefriesian) posts in there (page 9) and I think you can see that he's been hit by inspiration.

If you just look at the head of Hansa, I think it could be considered a likeness of Rick.

Guildsman sounds like he is more disappointed because the miniature didn't turn out how HE wanted.

I think this is probably one of the main difficulties/issues with "...and YOU." in that people will latch onto one ot two popular ideas, and then when you have a couple of popular, competing ideas, the group that doesn't get chosen feel personally slighted and becomes disenchanted and disengaged.

I reviewed the kickstarter and so far, I don't know, I'm skeptical. The talent team they have is great and the decimal mechanics are a plus, but going by the video, I'm far from sold. I already have Infinity, Mantic's stuff *and* the stuff from Urban Mammoth and Defiance Games. why would I need another sci-fi game?

Also, what *is* Beyond the Gates of Anatres? Is it realistic sci-fi like the Alien universe? Maybe more action like Riddick or The Fifth Element? Mixed in with some ape-humans and cat-humans, so maybe it's like Avatar or the cantina scene in Star Wars. But we know it's not fantasy sci-fi like Warhammer 40,000. But I already have Infinity. Or maybe it's like that one wargame which was on the market for like two second with the ape-like simians in the futuristic Tau-like armor?

Going by the figures it looks like hard sci-fi like Infinity or Alien or Avatar, with just a few alien races mixed in. I'd prefer if it was modular, like a sister ruleset to d20 Modern, or d20 Future. I like the separate heads that Hasslefree and Heresy do.

"Every backer that selects the ‘Inflationary Epoch(£25)’ tier and above receives a the Exclusive Kickstarter Hansa Nairoba model."

Er... so what does this awesome LE figure look like? It's like, "Well, Chef, where's this amazing thing you were going to show us??"

The green they *do* have looks great, but it's just one figure and I've seen a lot of stuff that looks great over at Hasslefree, Heresy, and Defiance games.

I also didn't see a lot of work-in-progress stuff, even sketches or work-in-progress art. It's a lot to ask to buy into a new game system sight-unseen. Granted the talent they have is great, but it's a lot to ask.

Scale? Looks like 28mm, right? Oh no, it's 32mm scale. Well, um, hope it's a smaller 32mm scale, and not huge like Privateer Press' stuff...

If they don't have custom force/figure creation system like Vor: the Maelstrom I'm out.

If they were really smart, they'd have a "plague" faction which are just modern-day zombies. Or maybe an "alien" faction, like xenomorphs or grendelspawn or the smaller Abberants from Trinity: Battleground. Everybody loves generic zombies and aliens. You could raise money for a plastic sprue of that, no problem. I know I'd love 28mm zombie figures that are on par with the Zombie Vixens box set, and those Heroclix xenomorph Aliens are getting hard as hell to find.

Going by the gameplay video, I'm not really sure I like the action system,or the colored markers, which are too "kindergarten" for my taste. I also don't like rolling "low" it feels more natural to want to roll high. I do however, like the "everything is on overwatch" feel to the game.

I like the fact that it's percentile-based, I liked Trinity: Battleground, which ran on d10s. I found it hilarious why Rick Priestley goes on and on about the superiority of d10, when at Games Workshop they were telling us for years that D^s were fine.

As for figures, what do they look like? All the talk of Rever Mercenaries, NuHu, CoCom Troopers, Drones, Algoryn Troopers, Boramites and Echo and the Bunnymen means nothing if I haven't seen the figures. I don't remember Infinity surprising us like this. Defiance Games, for all their flaws, provided tons of images of what they did have, during development.

The chaos mutant guy and the green of the mutant with the claws and the giant spike on his head do look good though. The big walker looks great, although I doubt they will actually be able to pull it off.

Hansa is my exclusive pre-release figure. Sounds great - so what does he look like? Oh goody, and link to a fourm where they *still* don't have an idea. Or an image. Just a ton of waffling about what he looks like. Er... this design by committee gak is getting old. Why not just pony up the cash for the backers to sculpt two or three really stellar figures, and then let the fans pick? I know *I'd* want to see what my pre-release stuff looks like before plonking down my heard-earned money.

Images of the starter box are also lacking images. Wonderful. None of the stuff 70 pounds and above look worth it. The 125 pound Feeder looks okay though, I guess it doubles up what you get. Hope you're really into this game, because at this point, you're buying sight unseen on all of it.\

Apparently I can tack on extra drones with my pledge, but since I have no idea what they are what they do, or what they even look like, it's a no-go for me.

All in all, I didn't really see anything here that grabbed me.

What really would have put my mind at ease was images of the figures and something I found in the designer's notes for Starship Troopers, where Andy Chambers basically said, "This is the game Warhammer 40,000 could have been." Starship Troopers was very innovative, and very good, and was only killed by Mongoose Publishing ham-handed handling of the game. But I digress. I was waiting for them to say something like, "Every innovative idea we couldn't include in Warhammer 40,000 made it into this game" or "every *really* good idea we ever had while working at GW, we secretly put it on the back burner, and that's this game."

If I had seen that, I might have pledged.

 chris_valera wrote:
I
"Every backer that selects the ‘Inflationary Epoch(£25)’ tier and above receives a the Exclusive Kickstarter Hansa Nairoba model."

Er... so what does this awesome LE figure look like? It's like, "Well, Chef, where's this amazing thing you were going to show us??"

The green they *do* have looks great, but it's just one figure and I've seen a lot of stuff that looks great over at Hasslefree, Heresy, and Defiance games.

That green IS Hansa.

 chris_valera wrote:
I
Hansa is my exclusive pre-release figure. Sounds great - so what does he look like? Oh goody, and link to a fourm where they *still* don't have an idea. Or an image. Just a ton of waffling about what he looks like. Er... this design by committee gak is getting old. Why not just pony up the cash for the backers to sculpt two or three really stellar figures, and then let the fans pick? I know *I'd* want to see what my pre-release stuff looks like before plonking down my heard-earned money.

Well, the front page of the kickstarter was updated with Hansa's latest update, so I guess you haven't actually looked at the page for some time. If you're that opposed to the whole project, it's probably not for you, but if you ARE interested, AND you like the figure (which you sort of said you did) then maybe the £25 pledge would be the right spot for you - that way you get to help bring this project to life, you get the rules (which are hopefully going to be good) and you get a nice figure (that IS good).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 scipio.au wrote:
I think this is probably one of the main difficulties/issues with "...and YOU." in that people will latch onto one ot two popular ideas, and then when you have a couple of popular, competing ideas, the group that doesn't get chosen feel personally slighted and becomes disenchanted and disengaged.

Yeah, I think there's been a lot of discussion on that in this thread, but my personal opinion is that "design by committee" can fail hard when some small minority shouts louder than the others to get their way - or storms off in a huff when they don't.

The nice thing about the Hansa feedback thread (in my opinion) is not that one group of backers or another got to "design" Hansa; it's rather that every voice in that thread took part in a brainstorming session that produced ideas. Some of these ideas were discarded, while others made it in. Even the ones that were ultimately discarded served a purpose, and in the end Kev was inspired enough to make the figure he did. That's a win in my book. It's too bad not everyone sees it the same way.

Alright, I feel I should apologize. I was probably overly harsh in my judgement of Hansa. However, after reading the design thread on the GoA forum, the vision of Hansa that seemed to be prevailing is very different from what Kev eventually created. It just seems to me that the bigwigs discarded most of the suggestions from the community.

That being said, it's still a very good figure. The mustache is... not a choice I would have made, but the rest of the model is very nice. I guess I'm disappointed, since the competing design was, IMO, much more interesting and characterful.

 chris_valera wrote:
Everybody loves generic zombies and aliens.

I don't. What I want in my SF is characters to root for. Zombies and xenomorphs aren't much more than glorified animals, and presenting them as more of a threat than they have any right to be just drags everyone else down to their level of impotence.

 recruittons wrote:
I worry for his poor buttcrack! It remains a point of vulnerability

There is a very old roleplaying game called Space Infantry that had the anus as a critical hit location. So there's precedent in gaming.

 judgedoug wrote:

 recruittons wrote:
I worry for his poor buttcrack! It remains a point of vulnerability

There is a very old roleplaying game called Space Infantry that had the anus as a critical hit location. So there's precedent in gaming.

Well, as long as it's not F.A.T.A.L. RPG, I'm happy with it

 recruittons wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:

 recruittons wrote:
I worry for his poor buttcrack! It remains a point of vulnerability

There is a very old roleplaying game called Space Infantry that had the anus as a critical hit location. So there's precedent in gaming.

Well, as long as it's not F.A.T.A.L. RPG, I'm happy with it

Found it. Rectum, not anus. My mistake.

Also, one of my favorite illustrations of an alien, ever.

That... is freaking amazing. I would never play that game, but I would certainly read the heck out of that book

I love how he's like, howling in agony and clenching his right fist yet somehow all fingers on his left hand are pressing buttons. That's some superior multitasking. Seriously, this RPG has some of the worst best art I've ever seen - looks like the crap everyone doodled on the sides of their notes in school - superheroes with motorcycle helmets and flaming fists - and this game was published. The 80's were a strange time for RPG's...

I'd double my pledge immediately if Gates of Antares added this alien race in. I'd triple my pledge if the rectum became a hit location.

So at the current rate, Beyond The Gates of Antares is looking a bit shaky:

http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/2037958218/beyond-the-gates-of-antares/exp-cone.png

For those of you behind the project, what can Dark Space Corp do to kick it up a notch? What are the sort of new, GW-challenging story elements or gameplay mechanics can turn things around? I really want to hear some fresh new material from them in the month they have left, because I'd love a reason to support a GW alternative.

EDIT: Or maybe I just haven't read up on the forums enough, have they announced any planned reveals that I am just missing or something? I'm starting to get a bit nervous from the lack of new material coming forth. For the record I do not consider multiple updates worth of one green to be more than once piece of new material.
EDIT: (changed image to link to be less negative)

I barely have time to play games that I know I like, I certainly don't have time to bury myself elbow deep in a fledgling rule set and engage in my 1/2000th share of a world building exercise to the extent that would engage me enough to put money down on a handful of concept art and one mostly decent but hardly ground breaking green.

They have a lofty goal and are appealing to a niche of a niche.
What is happening right now could have been happening months prior to the KS starting, engaging and building a strong evangelical core.

OK, we now know that quite some think that they could have had more stuff in the beginning, no need to repeat it over and over andover and over...

Test rules, greens and designs are on the way and will be revealed in the near future.

Well I think the fact that the money spiked after completed Hansa was posted shows this is the way things need to go. I think you are right plastictrees, even though there has been a lot of knicker-wetting from people wanting to make a game with Rick/help create the game universe, really this is only ever going to be a niche of a niche and obviously not draw in enough money to hit that 300,000 mark.

There has been a lot of discussion on the War-droid sculpts for the last few weeks. What this KS needs now is some really cool looking greens for those, ideally before the 30 day mark, for it to capture the more general wargaming communities imagination.

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:
OK, we now know that quite some think that they could have had more stuff in the beginning, no need to repeat it over and over andover and over...

You seem to be very passionate about this particular KS and as such your attitude regarding less supportive posts is completely understandable, but your posts are coming across as a bit confrontational and that might drive some prospective backers away like it did in the Wyrd KS, just an FYI.

Having Dark Space Corp know that a fair amount of people might be interested to pledge if they go for the extra effort of presenting more of their concepts can never be a bad thing.

Love the alien sketch from the RPG. He is all that I want to be when I grow up! Angry, yet efficient.

You seem to be very passionate about this particular KS and as such your attitude regarding less supportive posts is completely understandable, but your posts are coming across as a bit confrontational and that might drive some prospective backers away like it did in the Wyrd KS, just an FYI.

Having Dark Space Corp know that a fair amount of people might be interested to pledge if they go for the extra effort of presenting more of their concepts can never be a bad thing.

DSC is following this thread and there is no need to repeat the obvious page after page, 3 times a page. Especially if it is done by mostly the same people over and over.

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:

You seem to be very passionate about this particular KS and as such your attitude regarding less supportive posts is completely understandable, but your posts are coming across as a bit confrontational and that might drive some prospective backers away like it did in the Wyrd KS, just an FYI.

Having Dark Space Corp know that a fair amount of people might be interested to pledge if they go for the extra effort of presenting more of their concepts can never be a bad thing.

DSC is following this thread and there is no need to repeat the obvious page after page, 3 times a page. Especially if it is done by mostly the same people over and over.

But Phantom is right - you are not giving an entirely positive impression to the thread with your posts. I think that the point has been made by both sides, and hopefully next week we'll have more greens to chatter about!

The miniature is quite a nice model. It's also entirely generic, and nothing about it suggests that this game has anything new to offer aesthetically.

And this is the problem. For all the arguments about how revolutionary this is, all we have is a basic game system and a fairly sketchy background, plus some very uninspired 'new' races. It's all very well to talk about involving the internet in the design process, but you need to make it clear where you're going. Otherwise you're either going to ignore most contributions (very risky given how fickle and opinionated the internet is) or end up trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator. This miniature is a good example - it's very safe, and wouldn't look out of place in a WH40k army), but it doesn't provide any insight into what GoA is going to be.

To have any chance of capturing any sustained support, the designers need to come out with a range of much stronger images and ideas - and a coherent aesthetic - and only involve the internet in fleshing all of that out. Give us images of new aliens, weaponry and worlds - this is what forms the basis of a sci-fi game. At the moment it feels as though they got as far as 'wouldn't it be good if we used different dice' then ran out of ideas.

I agree!

Currently, this project is on a disturbing downward trend - and remember Zweischneid's statement that they'd need £5000 a day in order to hit their funding goal?

That number's gone UP since then!



And they're now projected to hit 90% of their goal, which is also a number that's been going down.

Clearly there's time to rectify all of this - but... not that much time!

They need to get moving, make some changes and show... something!

 plastictrees wrote:
I barely have time to play games that I know I like, I certainly don't have time to bury myself elbow deep in a fledgling rule set and engage in my 1/2000th share of a world building exercise to the extent that would engage me enough to put money down on a handful of concept art and one mostly decent but hardly ground breaking green.

They have a lofty goal and are appealing to a niche of a niche.
What is happening right now could have been happening months prior to the KS starting, engaging and building a strong evangelical core.

Well said...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:

You seem to be very passionate about this particular KS and as such your attitude regarding less supportive posts is completely understandable, but your posts are coming across as a bit confrontational and that might drive some prospective backers away like it did in the Wyrd KS, just an FYI.

Having Dark Space Corp know that a fair amount of people might be interested to pledge if they go for the extra effort of presenting more of their concepts can never be a bad thing.

DSC is following this thread and there is no need to repeat the obvious page after page, 3 times a page. Especially if it is done by mostly the same people over and over.

"Quite being crucial"?

I'd really like to see this take off but I don't think it's going to make it in it's current state. But now that they got the name out there and word of mouth going, I really think the best way to go would be for them to pull the plug, take a month or 2 to sculpt preliminary figs for the first 2 factions, and then restructure an all new campaign that's more like "Fund our starter set!" instead of "fund our whole game and company!". So the starter gets funded, you add stretch goals to it to find the rest of the game. Start with the minimum needed for the main product, and then add to it... because in general you'll get more backers if they see the campaign is already a success. The word is already out there so one of the hard parts is already done, just restructure things and it'll go really well. Copy off Cool Mini or Not, cuz they're projects work and if it ain't broke, don't fix it

Sorry, why should one kill off the KS with it still 41 days to go?

Other KS also did not get that much money and barely made it, but that was enough to fund them and that is all that is needed.

Are we on some weird competition where every new KS has to set a new record?

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:

Are we on some weird competition where every new KS has to set a new record?

Duncan, I've gotta agree that you're taking comments a little too personally and confrontationally changing the context. Can you scale it back a little bit?

My take on what Necros was getting at had nothing to do with a "competition". It was a comment about, in his opinion, a way to run a better and successful Kickstarter campaign ... throughout the campaign and not solely about the end pledge amount.

I agree with him. DSC isn't asking for a few thousand dollars to kick off a project. They are hoping for a large sum of money and they are looking to crowdfunding to provide that. To reach that goal, they should provide more "meat" that we "investors" can bite into. I agree with Necros that this KS campaign seems premature.

And, personally, I feel that the tactic of offering pledgers a voice during development to counter the fact that there isn't really much of substance is hollow and not worth my money. A project idea so underdeveloped, if taken to an investment group, would be quickly sent away and told to return with more concrete ideas worthy of investment dollars. This campaign seems to be pandering to hardcore niche fans and is resting on a developer's name rather than on an actual product. Show the product and the money will come.

Can I ask what Scale these are on? I love the exclusive Mini and may have to go with Epoch just to get my hands on one.

Minis are approx 30mm and more on the non-heroic scale side.

@Myrthe
If quite some are being less agressive and deriding... probably I will.

Actually, as a condition of using this site, all must agree to be polite.