Tower Plushie Available at Makeship
6 months ago
– Mon, Oct 09, 2023 at 07:58:24 AM
[Cross-posted this from the Covenant campaign over on BackerKit, but I wanted to make sure folks who didn't go in on that campaign new about it.]
The folks over at Makeship have officially launched their campaign for the Tower plushie. You can check it out here: https://www.makeship.com/products/the-tower-plush
Makeship works a lot like Kickstarter or BackerKit, but it's on their own website. They put up the plushie design for 3 weeks. If enough people pledge to get it, they go ahead and make them and ship them out. Importantly, Makeship have been doing this for 5 years now, and their process is well tested and refined. If you back for the Tower plushie, you'll get it in January. For full disclosure, we get a very modest cut if this is successful, but we really just thought it would be a fun thing for the fans of the game. As part of the design process, I received a production copy, and, well, it's as adorable as it is evil (and as big as my head):
IMPORTANT: We are no longer monitoring this campaign
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 04:46:01 AM
To minimize low-traffic channels and avoid missing communications, we are no longer monitoring this campaign either in the comments or messages. If you need assistance, please email [email protected], and we will help get it sorted out for you.
New Covenant expansion just launched on BackerKit!
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Jul 28, 2022 at 11:18:27 PM
We’re thrilled to announce that the new Covenant expansion has just launched on BackerKit, alongside a second printing of the original game and all the hard-to-find add-ons.
The Covenant Expansion
Get ready for a host of new challenges and powerful new tools to overcome them. You’ll get to play with a new set of heroes, a collection of unique treasures, and an assortment of novel corruptions. There are deeper changes afoot, too; with the introduction of monuments, doom skulls, and wastelands, your gameplay experience will be richer, more rewarding, and harder.
👉 Check out the new Covenant campaign
We heard from many of you who missed out on add-ons from the first campaign. That’s why we’re reprinting all accessories one final time. In our campaign, you’ll have access to playmats, card sleeves, plastic tokens, and board game bling so you can customize and perfect your Dark Tower setup.
👉 Claim the add-ons to perfect your setup
Let’s Make Dark Tower Even Better, Together
You helped bring Return to Dark Tower to life—our biggest and most successful Kickstarter campaign ever. We are extremely grateful for your support. We hope that you’ll join again to help us make the game even better.
Why We Are Launching on BackerKit
We’re launching this project on BackerKit’s new crowdfunding platform. We’ve been working with BackerKit for awhile now because we like their tools and supportive team. If you’ve backed our previous projects, you already used their site for the pledge manager and will be familiar with their surveys. We’re excited to be one of the first creators to launch on BackerKit, and to have the opportunity to help shape their new platform.
One Week Left To Back the Roleplaying Game Campaign! AMA Tonight!
almost 2 years ago
– Thu, Jun 23, 2022 at 10:14:38 PM
For those who haven't heard about it yet, our friends over at 9th Level Games are running a campaign for a fully licensed and supported role-playing game set in the world of Return to Dark Tower. There's only 7 days left to hop on board! We're super excited about the game. I'll be doing an "Ask Me Anything" with Chris O'Neill of 9LG tonight on their discord. If you want to hop in and learn more about the RPG, I'll probably also drop a hint or two about the upcoming Covenant expansion. Link to the event is here: https://discord.gg/fVBbaJND?event=987100914252927030
In the meantime, I was supposed to get a chance to play a full session earlier this week but had some personal issues that precluded my appearance. Fortunately, Brian Neff and some of the other RG crew got to take on the Adversary. So I enlisted Brian for a guest update:
Hey Everyone! This is a special guest update from In-House Time Traveler Brian Neff. I’m taking over for Justin to talk a little bit about the Return to Dark Tower role-playing game. In between sessions of playtesting Covenant and reading all the excellent feedback we’re getting from you, I had a chance to sit down with 9th Level Games’ Chris O’Neill and play a session. Ian (one of our new picture people) joined me along with Dave Chalker (the developer for the Competitive mode, as well as the designer of Thunder Road: Vendetta), and Graham Gentz (a writer for several 9th level Games’ projects). Truly a powerhouse team of adventurers.
I’ll preface this by saying that my character died at the end of the session, buried in a mine collapse.
I had a blast.
The RTDT RPG (Say that 5 times fast) is based upon Mazes, a role playing system that I’m already a little familiar with, but even if I wasn’t, takes about five minutes to learn. There’s a lot of cool stuff in Mazes that ports over really well to the Return To Dark Tower setting. Sessions are broken into a planning phase, where we decide to help an ally for a reward, or hinder the adversary. Sound Familiar?
After that, the Adversary throws challenges at us until we complete our goal or succumb to the corruption of the Tower. There’s a lot of room for doing cool stuff in the middle. There’s just enough dice rolling to keep things tense without getting in the way of the story. The story feels suitably epic, and each player gets the spotlight to meaningfully contribute to taking down the Tower.
Character creation is breezy, and most of the game focuses on the action, with plenty of mechanics to keep things moving. Each player either plays a hero and stars in a session, or plays a companion to someone else. After everyone has a session to feel heroic, each hero teams up for the final showdown against the tower and the adversary inside. In our session, I played a companion, but I never felt shoved to the side. I always got the chance to do cool stuff, and enable Ian (our hero) to complete the mission. And even though my character didn’t make it, I felt like I went out like a hero. Long live Yellow Lemons! Needless to say ,I’m looking forward to playing again, and playing a full campaign.
If you’re looking for a rules-light, narrative-heavy RPG, I’d recommend going over to 9th Level’s kickstarter and checking it out. It’s got about a week left, and is fully funded, so you can help unlock some special stretch goals.
If you want to check out our session, it’s recorded on 9th Level’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93A8b9nhuDE
In the meantime, if you want to talk more about Return to Dark Tower, Role Playing, or any of our other games, please feel free to join us over on our discord. Justin and I spend a lot of time over there hanging out and answering questions, so if there’s anything you want to know about this, or any of our other games, shout us out on discord: https://discord.gg/TcprtQESad
Until next time, have fun storming the Tower.
2nd Crowdfunding Campaign + New Covenant Playtest Signup
almost 2 years ago
– Thu, Jun 23, 2022 at 07:24:14 PM
Core fulfillment on this campaign is now complete. (There are, of course, a handful of folks who have had shipping and replacement part issues that we are still working on and will continue working on until everything is resolved.) As folks got their games and started playing them, I kept getting requests from people who either missed out on the game the first time or didn't pick up some of the accessories that were available and now want them. Given the game's success and the continuing demand -- and an all-new expansion -- we started laying the groundwork for a second campaign. If you missed the news, we have now announced that it will launch on July 26 on BackerKit's new crowdfunding platform. You can sign up to be notified when it goes live here: https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/cc85d520-1804-4fa8-bf57-297a455de3e0/landing
I'll probably talk about why we ended up using this new platform in more detail in a future update. But the short version is that they have excellent customer service and everyone who pledged to this campaign already has an account there, since we used them for the pledge manager. So, no new accounts to make or new sites to navigate. More details on the campaign as we get closer, but it will have the base game, all of the accessories from this campaign, and an all-new expansion: "Covenant".
Covenant Playtest Signup
Speaking of Covenant, we are running another round of playtesting for the new expansion and would love for you all to be a part of it. This playtest will be a full test of all of the new elements, including something that we didn't put out in prior rounds. Importantly, this will require use of the playtest app, which is only available for android users. So, if you have an android device and would like to help us out, please sign up for the new playtest cycle here: https://forms.gle/vLUVUw6y6BW9QPBR7 .
Please sign up again even if you participated in one of the prior playtesting rounds. Thanks in advance. The playtesting to date has been extremely helpful in developing the content.
