It’s odd to see a Kickstarter without a video pitch these days – especially for one asking for $75,000. Frog God Games have raised more than they need, though, as I write there’s more than $77,000 in the bank, with 23 days on the clock and nearly 350 backers. You can back the campaign here
The Lost Lands and The Sword of Air is a mystery to me. In lots of ways least of which is that the Kickstarter doesn’t tell me anything about the Lost Lands or the Sword of Air at all.
The full title of the campaign is “The Lost Lands: Sword of Air Pathfinder & Swords & Wizardry” so that’s a hint that the game will be available for Pathfinder and Mythmere Games’ Swords & Wizardry. If you examine the pledge levels you’ll find different tiers for either Pathfinder and Swords & Wizardry so that assumption looks right. It’s also clever use of keywords in the title.
We know that the game/adventures are Bill Webb (of Necromancer and Frog God Games) home game since 1977. It couldn’t have started as Pathfinder. It’s had hundreds of players already. Bill Webb is the author of the large and very popular Rappan Athuk as well as Crucible of Freya, Tomb of Abysthor and The Tome of Horrors. It certainly seems the case that Webb’s record is a huge contributor to the success of the campaign.
The rest is guess work. There might be more information out there. There’s a link on the campaign homepage to What is The Sword of Air (2mb PDF) but it’s a dead link. There’s nothing there. It’s very odd that the core essence of the product isn’t even described in the Kickstarter.
The book will be 500+ pages long. Large. The Kickstarter doesn’t tell us if The Lost Lands: Sword of Air is heroic, grim, political, large, complex, noir, Tolkien based. It actually suggests that The Lost Lands and Sword of Air are separate things.
We are told about a host of adventures that the book will contain; The Hel’s Temple Dungeon, The Wilderness of the Lost Lands, The Ruined City of Tsen, The Wizard’s Feud and lots of bonus levels that will open out. It may be the case that on social networks Frog God and Webb have explained the setting to help their backers be confident that these pre-written adventures will suit their games.
It’s worth noting the pledge levels too. The first one kicks off at $40 and the next price hike takes us up to $110. It’s going to be a large book so this makes some sense; especially if there’s custom art. The $40 will get you “Sword of Air” for the system of your choice in PDF and appropriate bonus goals. Hardcopies of the variants begin at the $110 level.
Despite all my concerns about this campaign – namely; what am I actually backing and how do I know if I can use it? – this Kickstarter is flying. Frog God and Bill Webb have earned the trust of their audience, people who know them better than I, and that effort and previous good work is now manifesting as a nicely successful crowd funding campaign.
