Fraser Simons gave his Kickstarter only two weeks to fund, but he only asked for CA$300. As this blog post goes live, there’s still 13 days on the clock, and there’s nearly $3,500 pledged. Let’s take a look at the campaign.
FLCL (called Fooly Cooly by fans) is a short, 6 episode, anime from 2000 which made it to America via Adult Swim a few years after release. It’s built up a solid fan base despite being so short.
Never Knows Best is not an FLCL roleplaying game. Simons is just wearing his inspiration on his sleeve. They reveal with the same transparency the game’s system is inspired by Powered by the Apocalypse and Blades in the Dark.
But FLCL left an impression on Simons, and its something the author wants to explain and explore. They say;
Never Knows Best is about teens struggling to discover their identity while grappling with what it means to “grow up” in a world where society imposes expectations and rules that are counter productive and, sometimes, absurd.
The rules of this game literalizes this by making the inner turmoil the teens struggle with on a daily basis something real and tangible. Those thoughts and emotions and pressures become strange, absurd creatures ordinary kids wouldn’t be able to combat. But these teenagers transform into their robot selves to take them on, embodying their inner strength.
It’s not going to be a large RPG. The projection is between 30 to 60 pages of 6×9 (that’s digest-sized) black and white pages. That’ll keep the costs down so let’s talk pledges.
A pledge of CA$10 (about £7) will get you the PDF and an at-cost coupon for a print-on-demand softcover from DriveThruRPG.
Make that CA$18 and the coupon upgrades to a hardcover version.
Most backers have gone higher, though, finding CA$25 for the Kickstarter exclusive notebook edition. ‘Notebook’ is a PDF, though, but you do get 2 print-on-demand coupons for whatever version you want.
The expected delivery is as soon as October of this year.
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