The Bird Catcher by S.P. Somtow

As an exercise in increasing my posting regularity, I’ve decided to initiate a delve into the world of contemporary fiction. Previously, my examinations have remained relegated to 70’s science fiction dystopias. But I’m going to try something completely different:

(drum roll)

The Apex Book of World SF!

Edited by literary great Lavie Tidhar. Published in 2009. Packed full of who knows what.

A Note on Speculative Fiction

The first thing you may notice from this book is that it’s not science fiction. The hard capital S and Fs indicate this is instead a collection of Speculative Fiction. Which is what scifi calls itself when it wants to escape from the grim science/fantasy genre shelves at the local bookseller. Hard SF is normally scared s-less by normal sci-fi tropes. I’m not expecting to run into any spaceships or aliens with weird bumps on their heads. But maybe I’ll be surprised.

A Note on World Authors

If you are from a non-English-speaking country and you are writing in English, it is going to take extra work. Each word is going to be that much more valuable. You’re going to try to get to the point without a lot of digressions. At least that’s my thinking when I read distinctly international fiction like this.

Plus, in the same way that Settlers of Catan had to be really good to make the jump from Germany, I feel like these stories had to work extra hard to get to where they are today. But I might be wrong there, too.

Without further ado, the first story in this collection:

The Bird Catcher by S.P. Somtow

If I had to “pigeonhole” The Bird Catcher into a genre, it would probably be horror. There’s not really any ghosts or monsters, but there is a serial killer. In fact there may be a couple of them.

The Bird Catcher starts off in modern day Bangkok and then flashes back to post WWII Bangkok and then the tiny fishing village of Thapsake. The main character (never named), his mother and finally a shadowy companion are all fleeing survivors of a Japanese internment camp in China, who settle as foreigners in Thailand.

Cages within Cages

The feeling of being trapped in a cage is the ongoing motif for The Bird Catcher.

The narrator has escaped a gruesome fate, but the prison has followed him. The Buddist practice of “making merit” by releasing birds is examined critically, the narrator notes the birds’ wings are clipped, and often return quite soon to captivity ready for another customer.

The narrator feels trapped by his circumstances and as a foreigner in a different culture. He feels trapped by the horrible dreams he has from the camp.

But on the other hand, Thailand seems like a pretty nice place in many respects. The narrator has friends. The weather is beautiful. Play is unstructured and offered in generous amounts. There's plenty to like.

Humans are on the Menu

No matter how wonderful the rest of the country is, the narrator can’t help but feel drawn to the brooding half-witted mentally-scarred man Si Ui.

Si Ui only has a few lines in the story, 90% of which are “Hungry!” and “Si Ui Hungry!”

Si Ui has seen some stuff from his internment camp days, and the narrator bonds with him over this. They wordlessly appreciate each other’s company and shared experience. Si Ui introduces the narrator into the world of bird catching, which he is remarkably good at.

They kill some birds. They eat some birds cooked. And they eat some birds raw.

And some of those birds, they might not be birds, but little girls from the neighborhood.

Fractured Minds and Hungry Bellies

Much connection is made between the empty hunger of surviving horrific events, the simple hunger when you want to eat, and the compulsive mental hunger a serial killer feels that draws him to his next victim.

Only problem is, I’m not convinced this is a real thing. History is full of people who have survived the worst human experience can offer, and they don’t turn into some kind of liver-eating monster.

If you are a kid, and your parents are murdered by Santa Claus, you aren’t going to dress up as Santa Claus and start punishing people. That’s an overused trope from the very bottom of the horror barrel. Yet the narrator constantly refers to the hunger inside him born from the camps and how the killing of birds suddenly grants him this relief he has never had before.

Serial killers apparently do often have tragic events in their past. But I can't help feeling there's plenty of people who are just born that way.

If this was a real thing, liquor companies would be out of business and human overpopulation would no longer be an issue.

Explaining Something to a Child

One of the most authentic feelings I got from this story was in the framing. The narrator’s flashback to his bird-chomping days is told from his perspective in the modern day. Walking to a decrepit freak show museum to show his grandson the mummified remains of Si Ui the Liver Eater, he attempts to explain the significance of his own memories to a boy who really could not care less.

This is parenthood at its most real.

When your son or daughter is a baby, you think about all the things you want to tell them. Perhaps not necessarily about your dabblings with cannibalism, but important life lessons or learning opportunities.

But here’s the real truth: there is not a single fact or figure in my head, not a single fragment of information, that holds any interest beyond the strictly short term to my son. 

Anything I tell him, I can see Minecraft continuing uninterrupted somewhere behind his glassy eyes, waiting for me to finish so he can go do something interesting.

At the end of the story, the narrator tucks his grandson into bed and hops a flight back to New York. After which he’s probably going to eat some people, I guess.

Rating?

I’m not sure I should be rating these. What would I even give them? Stars? Thumbs? Dead birds?

I’m not going to grab a zip-line and fly down to the local library to hunt up more fiction from S.P. Somtow. But I also feel like I got something out of it.

Will I like the next story in the collection? The only way to find out is to read my next blog post.

Coming Soon: “Transcendence Express” by Jetse de Vries. See you then!

Out for Bloodborne: The Card Game

“Go out, kill monsters, and take their blood...it’s a family game.” -- Eric M. Lang, game designer

You want blood and the monsters are practically bursting at the seams with the stuff. Only problem is, you’re not the only one on the trail. Other players are trying to grab what’s rightfully yours and the only by successfully navigating their help/interference will you come out on top when it comes time to collect the spoils.

A week before now, the video game Bloodborne was barely in the realm of my awareness at a all. That all changed during the GAMA trade show, when I found out Eric M. Lang was developing a short, fast card game using the official license.

Lang spilling the beans

Racing for Blood

One of the first “deckbuilding” games to arise out of the bacterial soup left behind by the impossible success of Dominion was Thunderstone. After years of successful expansions and a new edition, Thunderstone is still at its heart adventurers awkwardly buying gear and fighting monsters.
The monsters don’t feel like monsters. And the gear doesn’t feel too much like gear in many cases.
The same basic play is available in a faster framework now with all the different versions of the DC Comics Deckbuilding Game. Players take turns buying smaller stuff until they have enough gear to make the jump into the big bad guy deck, earn the big-boy victory points, and move the game closer to its conclusion.
One of the problems I see with both of these games is plodding inevitability. Each player’s turn is completely separate, with little you can do to affect your opponents. Except for a couple of really crushing cards (I’m looking at you Power Drain), you can plan out your turn pretty nicely no matter what your opponent does. You lay your cards down, something happens, you go on to the next turn.
According to Lang, in Bloodborne all the turns are going to happen simultaneously. Actions will be resolved in a changing turn order, and everything you do will possibly have an unintended effect on both you and your opponents. And during the turn, you will have to play by the seat of your pants much like one of my other favorite games.

Pressing your Luck

The “Whammies” in Bloodborne look like they can come at any time. You won’t know what attacks your fellow players are using until they do it. You also won’t know how much damage the monster you are fighting will deal until it does it. Combined, players will be uncertain they will survive each round and the temptation to leave the encounter and save your remaining resources for the next encounter will be fierce.
The example Lang brings up in the video is the Blunderbuss. You can use both melee and ranged weapons in Bloodborne. But when you use the Blunderbuss, you also do damage to anyone trying to execute a melee attack that round. You might accidentally get caught in the crossfire, which is of immense benefit to the Blunderbuss firer if you don’t survive to collect your share of the blood.

The video game: monsters are tough!

Licensed to Die

An official license to use the intellectual property from some other media empire can be the kiss of death. Lang notes the card game is designed to appeal to the digital players of the video game first, and carries some simplification versus the type of game a board gamer would expect.
This can be good or bad, and no one will know until Bloodborne gets played.
If you need a current example of a official license cash grab, look no further than the Ghostbusters board game, already moving forward on a sequel that makes yet another iteration of a very derivative concept.
On the other hand, it might be awesome.
I appreciate "simpler" games as much as anybody. Often board game mechanisms find ways to be more elegant the smaller the surrounding apparatus becomes. And whenever the turn order in a game is all mushed together, with no safe time to plan strategy, I find I get extra excitement in the process.
So Bloodborne might make a good card game. But like the video game, you’ll have to keep vigilant and not rush into anything until you know exactly what you’re dealing with.
Because once you’ve plunked down your hard-earned blood to the shopkeep, there’s no do-overs.

Asmodee's Specialty Retail Policy: Paving the Board Game Utopia

The big news this weekend (not counting Star Wars) is the reorganization of Asmodee, Fantasy Flight Games and Days of Wonder into a globular amalgamation of board gaming intellectual property. And the biggest news from within that amalgamation is the new sales agreement Asmodee has announced they will try to use to save their retail margins and rescue everyone’s favorite local gaming store from the brink of extinction.

At least, that’s why I assume they are doing it. Ultimately, behind the corporate speak, only the executives at this new Asmodee North America truly know all the reasoning.

What we have is a agreement all retailers will be expected to sign, that severely limits their rights to resell their own property purchased from one of only 5 approved Asmodee North America distributors.

Advice is Cheap, But the Games Won’t Be

I don’t own a game store. But what I do see is a world full of game stores, both online and brick-and-mortar. And I have trouble envisioning why any type of trade agreement like this would ever turn out as a good thing for anyone involved. It’s not like its a new thing, small publishers of niche products have tried to control their retail channels ever since Games Workshop began slowly strangling itself to death doing the same thing back in the early 90’s. You have to buy at certain percentages. You have to sell at certain prices. You can’t sell online.

One of the few benefits to running your own game store is being your own boss. At least, I have to imagine it is. Any report from any “specialty retailer” has first and foremost reiterated it is not about the money. There are far easier ways in this world to slowly spiral into bankruptcy.

Why do We Even Have Favorite Local Gaming Stores?

This agreement, along with opening your eyes and looking at the world around you, both seem to indicate there are plenty of ways to buy cheap board games. Even the most hard-to-find game, if its in print, you can no doubt buy it somewhere at a discount.

In the cold, uncaring marketplace the Asmodee Specialty Retail Policy is fighting the good fight. To keep those faithful retailers making the profit they deserve. But what have retailers been doing in the meantime?

I’ve personally seen the typical gaming store evolve to cope with these challenges. The competent retailer has not stood by and watched people showroom their aisles and load up on their Game of Thrones, Star Wars and Cthulhu-based board games online. Heck, one of the biggest examples of the NEW board game store is the flagship retail establishment run by the former Fantasy Flight Games itself.

There’s places to play your games. Spaces to hang out with people. Food to eat. Drinks to drink. Demo copies of new titles for you to try out.

No online store can offer any of these amenities. They can only compete on price.

Getting Them in the Door

Ask anyone in sales, and they’ll tell you the biggest challenge is just getting people to show up. Once someone has walked into your establishment, they’re already halfway made up in their mind they’re going to buy something. Heck, when I go in a game store it take incredible, almost impossible force of will to leave without buying something.

So even if the prices are higher, if you bring people into your store you will no doubt get sales. And all of the previous reasons are exactly why people go in there. Buying the board games is almost secondary. Anybody can buy board games, any time. You see the ads on Board Game Geek. They’re all over the place.

Retailers don’t need the help. So maybe this agreement will really help Asmodee turn into a super-profitable game company, a board game Google, ready to take the entire board game industry to the next level.

Well, here’s the problem. Even with the acquisition of a couple other HUGE publishing juggernauts, there’s one inescapable fact:

Plenty of Board Game Fish in the Sea

Anyone can publish a board game. There are more small board game publishers than there are stars in the sky. Go ahead and try to count them sometime.

How will this affect the board game industry?

It won’t. No matter how hard they try, I don’t anticipate any time of agreement forced on retailers to do anything whatsoever. Except destroy Asmodee’s relevance in this changing niche economy. And even then, there are so many other companies ready to fill in the gap should even the mightiest oak fall I don’t see that as a problem.

While I’m sure board gamers are already jumping out the second floors of their townhouses in anticipation of some big board game collapse, there’s just no way for it to happen. Buy the games you want to buy, however you want to buy them. And visit the establishments you want to patronize. And if you’re a retailer, enjoy your independence and feel free to shun any board game company forcing you to sign overly complex agreements. Because your clientele aren’t coming to you for the board games. They’re coming to you because you’re you.

Some famous cartoon character once said it best: "Screw those guys."

The Best Theme is a Boring Theme: Xenon Profiteer and Uwe Rosenburg's Patchwork

The Compelling Truth, as told by T.C. Petty III

Recently the  designer of  just-released Xenon Profiteer offered up an in-depth Designer Diary on the nature of his creative process. What struck a chord with me was his analysis of the role of theme in games, and how many of the most interesting games actually had pretty dull themes.

T.C. Petty III wrote:

There's something deeply humorous (absurdist? dadaist?) about creating a game that transforms an activity that sounds absolutely un-fun into a deeply rewarding experience, and it's apparent that I'm not the only one that agrees. Some of the most popular games on this site have the most boring titles, cover art, and themes that the world has ever known, but against all odds, and with intense focus on the fundamentals that make gameplay truly engaging, they pull even the most skeptical board gamer deep into their worlds of abstract grids and crop farming and transitioning from canals to railroads. Seriously, Brass is a game about the transition from canal systems to railroads. Riveting. How is this not considered ridiculous? How is it not considered art?

This insight struck me hard, and I saw the incredible truth. I have felt this way myself, instinctively, for plenty of time during my gaming life. But it took Petty’s words to put all those theme yearnings together under one umbrella that made sense:

The most rewarding games often have the most boring titles, cover art and themes. 

Yet I want to play them, and then I enjoy them, and then I want to get more. Badly.

Time to Lay Some Pipe

And its not just me. One of the most popular games in my household...with the wife, with the kids, with my friends, is Galaxy Trucker. You might initially argue at the boring theme:

“What do you mean, boring? This game is about space, and spaceships. You fly around in space and get hit by asteroids and fight space pirates.

But, I would argue, the flying in space of Galaxy Trucker is actually the uninteresting part of the game. It’s essentially a super-long scoring phase, when the construction of your ship is “judged” against a revolving menagerie of variables. From cargo delivery, to exploration, to combat to the aforementioned asteroid collisions.

Where does all the fun come from in Galaxy Trucker?

The fun part is welding pieces of pipe together. The quick thinking involved in locating just the right piece. The rush of finding a spot it connects with. The balancing of different types of components to ensure your ship can reach the destination. The delight when your opponent fails to find a legal position for his chosen tile. It doesn’t really look or feel like a spaceship. I’m really pretty sure this is not how anyone actually builds spaceships. It could be anything. A bridge or a skyscraper or a sewer line. The fun would be the same.

It’s Time to Talk about my NEW second-favorite Uwe Rosenberg game

If you want to talk about how a boring theme allows you to build up elegant unconstrained mechanics, the best example I’ve seen yet is Patchwork, by famed board game sadist Uwe Rosenberg. Unlike most of his games, there’s no starving children or tortured mutant farmers. Instead each person is weaving together a delightful patchwork quilt.

Of course, its competitive patchwork weaving, so each player is drawing patches from a shared pool, paying some nefarious entity for the patches in the form of bright, blue buttons. Actually, now that I think about it more, this game might be about mutants, too. That makes a lot of sense. The theme, however, is definitely boring quilting.

Much like Galaxy Trucker, no one is going to look at Patchwork and say “oh, this is a perfect simulation of craft quilting.” No, instead the theme is used to surround some exciting mechanics, namely weighing the “value” of different pieces based on their shape, cost and ability to generate more buttons when another income phase comes around.

See I think these are mutants or goblins of some sort. Probably living in someone’s attic, I’m guessing. Play the game yourself and give me your theories.

I want to know where the buttons come from.

The Shape of Things to Come

Before playing Patchwork, I had heard it described as Tetris-like. I would agree on this. Certainly, you are paying buttons for specific pieces to fit better into your quilt design. Because you want your quilt to be complete, without any holes or ragged spots. Because here is the final “I Have No Mouth, But I must Scream” moment Uwe Rosenberg is known for:

At the end of the game, you have to pay this button freak back his buttons, 2 for every missing spot in your quilt. Which means if you don’t play this game right you might actually end up with less buttons than you started with, or even a negative number of buttons. And that’s how this guy gets more buttons, apparently by enslaving mutants in these predatory quilting expositions. No one’s going to buy a quilt with a ragged corner!

And ragged is how they all come out, guaranteed. The natural timer built into the game ensures it.

This Game Had Me in Stitches

The mutants, the button tax, everything is laid out in very abstract, bland terms. But in that vacuum, I was able to take the components I was given and tell an incredible story. How else would you use such an impressive Tetris tile-laying mechanic. You either use patches on a quilt, or you make a game literally about Tetris. Or maybe make it about snake stacking. Fun for you, but not so fun for the snakes!

Quantum: Eric Zimmerman's Work of Staggering Genius

Quantum gets very little appreciation, and I think it’s because people find it so hard to define. Like Spock flying into the heart of V’ger, there’s a lot going on. It might make sense internally, but there’s little common frame of reference. Today I’m going to try and as my assistants I will use 3 (decidedly inferior to Quantum) board games as examples.

Stage 1: King of Tokyo

Ships in Quantum are represented by dice. The face up number is the type of ship, 1 is essentially a Death Star, while 6 is a super-fast scout. The numbers in between are ships filling the spectrum of options between these 2 extremes. So the first thing you do in Quantum is randomly generate your ships by rolling dice, then rolling them again if you didn’t like what you got the first time.

The dice rolling is only barely similar to King of Tokyo. Once you’ve established your initial ships, they stay that way until they are destroyed or you spend effort to transform them.

Like in King of Tokyo, combat is encouraged but not completely necessary. Ships gain “infamy” points when they destroy other ships, but there is no penalty for losing in an attack. Your ship can only be destroyed when defending. These infamy points can eventually be used to buy a quantum cube (the victory points to win the game) and also to gain advance cards from the middle of the board (like the mutations in King of Tokyo).

Getting the advances can also be done via research, which a player is welcome to take as one of his or her actions during the turn. Research points accrue like infamy points, and when you’ve earned enough, you get to grab an advance card, this time with no quantum cube.

Stage 2: Catan

Building quantum cubes is how you win the game. The first player to deploy all 7 cubes on the board is the victor. Just like settlements in Catan, as you expand your empire you move closer and closer to winning the game. There are no victory points, and I really, really admire the thought that went into this.

You don’t gain any resources from quantum cubes, but you do get to build new ships in their proximity, meaning you really do get the feeling of an expanding empire. Building also does not require resources, instead you need a special numerical combination of ships (each planet is different) and getting these numbers together can generate the same sort of frustration as missing your wheat payout in Catan.

While quantum cubes can never be destroyed, the primary source of player conflict is in knocking opposing ships out of commission while their owner is sweating over getting just the right number combinations.

Stage 3: Space Chess

The movement of the dice is basically Chess in space. All the pieces have narrow, well-defined movement rules. Each has a special power you need to remember. And besides building quantum cubes, the primary use for ships is blocking opposing players from moving into new territory.

Also like Chess, the player needs to think a few steps ahead since accidentally leaving an opening for your opponent to build a final quantum cube is the eventual winning condition of every game.

Stage 4: The Game is Completely Original

After comparing Quantum to 3 incredibly diverse existing titles, I’m going to go ahead and negate everything I just typed by saying Quantum is like none of these games. You would never play it and say “This is just like Settlers of Catan” unless you were a weirdo committed to finding the parallels like I was. Instead, Quantum is an entirely original creation on both mechanics and style.

After playing over a thousand hands of Race for the Galaxy, I thought I had basically found my space game. But Quantum is most surprising of all to me because after spending way too much time searching for other games like RFTG, I love Quantum even though it has almost no similarities.

Designer Eric Zimmerman is a genius. I have absolutely no familiarity with his work before or after Quantum, but I’ll be doing my research. I found out about Quantum by playing on BGA, and now it's on my list to get. Do yourself a solid and check this game out. Then try to figure out why nobody seems to be talking about it anymore.

Rattlebones: Roll & Move Evolved

I love to watch a tried and true “common sense” design paradigm be shown false. If the broader board game community said the sky was blue, I would glom on to the carefully detailed report by the guy who took the trouble to actually go outside and confirm the sky is purple as it always has been.

Stephen Glenn’s Rattlebones is a completely neglected board game from 2014 that deserves love heaped on its plate. It sure wasn’t on my radar back then, and I still don’t own a copy now. But watching the latest Game Night reveals a fascinating artifact. Conventional wisdom says it shouldn’t be any good. But the more I think of it, the more every aspect of this game is amazing and alluring for that fact and more.

Roll and Move

For starters, Rattlebones is a roll and move game. Just like The Game of Life. You might think the game does something clever with the rolling, like allowing you to pick from different dice or use the same number in different ways like with Castles of Burgundy. But no you roll a die and move your pawn by exact count around a TRACK. Then you hold your head in your hands and think “Oh, no. What have I gotten myself into!”

Building your Dice

Of course there is an innovation here, in the dice themselves. You can take the faces off and add new faces you earn from landing on spaces around the track. Each player has 3 dice, and gets to select one of those die to roll. Gold pieces (which are earned by rolling the relevant die face) can be cashed in to roll more than one die, but the default is always that one lonely roll. Each die is like its own tool for the turn, you decide which one has the best chance to help you.

Being able to roll multiple dice in turn sets up devastating combos of powers. For instance: the “2X” face doubles whatever points are awarded on the other die, but it requires you to be rolling another die. If you roll a “2X” by itself, you get zero.

Soup of the Day: Determination and Luck

Rattlebones is a dense broth containing 2 contradictory ingredients. You can steer the game in a certain direction, but you never know exactly how the dice are going to turn out. And the random movement of the game means you always need to be ready to change your plan.

Slowly developing your position is all well and good…and much of this game seems to be that. But what I hunger for is the occasion JACKPOT. When the dice show exactly what you want and huge piles of points come rolling out the machine. And you can take pride in this payout because you had to both build the framework, and take the ultimate risk to get there.

You can’t really “gun” for certain abilities. Both the randomness of the die roll and the fact that the spots on the board are randomly assigned before every game mean you will never be able to develop and optimal pattern to success. Each game will have its own unique pluses and minuses to weigh as you move around the board.

Racing to the Finish

I’ve railed against set numbers of turns in games. And I respect the dedication of a designer who finds a way to encourage movement towards the end game condition just through players acting normally during their turns.

Every time you roll a 1 on any die, a “Rattlebones” character runs backwards down the scoring track. Running into Rattlebones causes the game to end, and paradoxically the person who is caught is not ritually murdered but actually wins the game. Rattlebones is friendly!

As the powers of the dice increase, players are hurtled faster towards Mr. Rattlebones as well. Earning the aforementioned jackpot of points (from the train, stocks, stars, ex.) doesn’t just make you lap the score track, it actually ends the game quicker. If you get too far ahead of everybody else, at least they can take comfort in the fact the game will soon be over.

Dr. Caligari: The Dice Building Game

I just finished a post railing on Batman for turning up the creepy clown vibe to 11.

In contrast, absolutely nothing about the twisted reality of Rattlebones seems cheap, lazy or phoned in. The board is obviously some kind of crazy carnival attraction. The player pieces are the monkeys from Wizard Of Oz wearing party hats. Rattlebones himself reminds me most of the Buick Driver only briefly seen in Stephen King’s From a Buick 8. Try to imagine another intellectual property that has leveraged any of these concepts together in this way and you would be hard pressed.

The one thing you WON’T find on the Rattlebones board, no matter how hard you look, is a scary clown. And I am so very thankful.

When Randy Buehler started tweeting that he was playing Rattlebones at the World Boardgaming Championships, it sort of sealed the deal. As a game that’s been out for more than a year the hype train should be at an all-time low. Yet to see people continue to give it press has put the game firmly in the crosshairs of my basement-mounted periscope.

Additional Reading from The Examiner

New Bedford: No Whale Before We Sail

In a vast ocean of bland fantasy dungeon delvers and dark zombie-battling miniature games, the historically unique theme of New Bedford was like a breath of fresh salt-tinged air. It was a Kickstarter I hated to see fail. My original observations can be found here, but to sum up: New Bedford looked like a smaller, tighter version of Minotaur-favorite Le Havre, with a better less-clunky system for building ships.

With the project canceled, Dice Hate Me Games posted this final update

As most of you have no doubt noticed by now, the campaign for New Bedford has been cancelled. We did not make this decision lightly, and ultimately felt that it was what was best for the project and for Dice Hate Me Games. Although New Bedford was tracking to fund by Sunday, we felt that a relaunch at a better time of year will allow us to bring more attention to the game and, ultimately, bring all of you more added value for your pledges.

And I started to wonder just what people had not liked so much about New Bedford. Constantly evolving and growing worker placement opportunities? Random whale tile draws out of a glorious bag of mystery?

Then suddenly, quite recently, the campaign was relaunched with this updated message on the original campaign:

We greatly appreciate the support that you all lent us in this first campaign, and we hope that many of you will consider supporting us in this new endeavor. We took a good look at feedback and lessons from the first campaign, and we have a lot of new goodies for everyone this time around, including a special promotional and lots of cool stretch goals to unlock!

There seem to be a few changes. The art looks like they’ve been doing some fine tuning. And a few of the buildings have different names. The designer attributed the poor previous start mostly to timing, and the new campaign displayed confidence things would be quite different this time around.

And they were right.

With 12 days left to go in the campaign, Dice Hate Me Games has managed to raise an incredible $55,000 and collected more than twice the backers of the original campaign.

It probably has something to do with timing sure. But also it might have something to do with that glorious white whale.

White Whale, Holy Grail

The previous Kickstarter was all about historical accuracy. But this relaunch of New Bedford finally surrenders to a classic blood n’ thunderous piece of New Bedford-related fiction.

When the original whalers of New Bedford went out to sea for their next hunt, very rarely did the pursued whales rise up and devour their ship. In New Bedford, it might happen just a little bit more often than true history would indicate.

But adding Moby Dick makes for a more fun game. And gives the whales just a little more of a fighting chance. One step removed from reality, you’ll feel less like a dirty whale killer. and more like a ship sailing into a sea of myth and adventure.