Greetings from a crowdfunding project creator

Hi, I’m Ste C, and I’m new here; so I figure I’d best introduce myself and what I know about.

My knowledge of game design is somewhat fractured, being derived from a rather disconnected set of experiences, and ultimately it’s limited: I’ve never completed anything more complicated than a casual card game. While it’s a passion, it’s not a field of expertise.

What I have a better understanding of is Crowdfunding. While still limited, my knowledge is formed from practical experience, and is therefore (in my mind at least) a more useful thing to share.

I remain…

I’m Baz Stevens. I go by the name Baz King on the internet. It’s an old story, ask me about it at a Con.

I’ve been roleplaying since the first big flush of D&D in the late 70s, and have been the GM pretty much since then. There aren’t many games I haven’t owned or played in that time.

Ashley Griffiths (Games Designer plus a bit of Layout)

Who am I : Ashley Griffiths, I go by the handle NimbyDagda most places on the internet including on the UKRP forums.

How I get money to pay the bills : Dev-Op (which is kind of like a computer programmer and systems administrator all smashed into one).

How I lose the money again : I design and publish roleplaying games, ones that tend to be especially far towards the crazy hippie end of the market.

Stuff I’ve made : My first game was published a year ago and is called What You Wish For its a structured free-form game about people taking stock of their lives and striving to make them better. I am also responsible for one of the more controversial games to come out of the UK indie scene which is my game poem about a grief support group for people how have lost young children called Though Our Arms Are Empty.

Richard “oreso” Lacy (Game and Layout Designer)

Day Job: Travelling English teacher.

Play Pretend Job: Pompey Crew Design is myself and my bro-in-crime Kevin Barthaud, and we made Witch: The Road to Lindisfarne, a game about burning a young woman. And we’re currently working on The Marquis of Ferrara, a game about murder and courtly intrigue.

City and Square

A few years ago, I ran a fantasy game set in a vast city. Well, not just in a vast city; there was dimension hopping and time travel and navigating heavenly bodies. But I started with the ambition of telling the story of the city. I’d been subsisting on a literary diet of Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan and M John Harrison’s Viriconium and naturally I’d read Gormenghast and others.

The system was terribly generic, at least to start with, and I was never truly satisfied. I went through at least one complete shift to a different system (originally BRP, then some kind of Storyteller variant). I doubt the players minded nearly as much as I did. Looking back the system did a few things right but it was a terrible muddle.

Years later I came up with a tool I called the City Accelerator, which was the best name I could come up with at short notice. It’s the tool I would have used to map the city, if I’d thought of it at the right time. Since I didn’t, I decided to turn it into its own game.

The game isn’t about that city, it’s about any city where people are living anonymously, cheek-by-jowl. The City Accelerator is just one component; people will be another, and character a third. More to follow, TTFN.

John Keyworth (Designer)

By day, a programmer of video games, and by night, a designer of ‘hippy indie’-type roleplaying games.