Well, we didn’t quite make it. Still, this has been a very positive experience for all of us at Move Rate 20. We’ve learned so much about the process. and gotten some great feedback. And to have acquired over 100 backers for our first project tells us that we’re not far off. So, THANK YOU so much to all our supporters, everyone who backed the project, and took the time to like & share our posts, we really appreciate it! Now we’re going to take a little time, apply everything we’ve learned, retool things a bit, then come back with a new & improved campaign later this year. We hope we can count on you all again when that happens, but regardless, thank you all again for everything. We’ll be posting updates on our progress via the Move Rate 20 website, Facebook pages & Twitter (@MoveRate20). In the meantime, enjoy the weather, and we’ll see you all again later in the year!
Happy Gaming!
Best, The gang at Move Rate 20 Games
Will the last 24 Hours of the Kickstarter be as exciting as the first?
Nervously watching the Kickstarter in its final hours
It all comes down to the next 24 hours (where’s Kiefer Sutherland when you need him). We are a little less than $2,500 short of our Kickstarter goal. A long shot? Yes, but we’re not going down without a damn good effort. As I’ve said in earlier posts it’s been a learning experience and I plan on writing a blog post after similar to my “5 Things I Learned About Myself At TotalCon 2016“, but I need to wait to see how the story ends.
Of you are reading this before March 30th 10:00am EST, please got to our Kickstarter page and back us! Share with your friends.!
If we don’t make it, it’s not the end, we’ll take what we learned and revamp, retool and rest the campaign in a few months and try again.
Thank you for your support, no matter how small, it all means a lot!
Total Con 30 was great fun and a real success for MoveRate 20 Games (despite the fact that I missed a Constitution Check and had to leave early Sunday with a stomach bug!).
The demos for our upcoming game, Master of Spies, all went great and all feedback from players was positive as we head towards the Kickstarter on Leap Day!
Our exhibition table set up for Total Con 2016
I would also like to send out a personal set of thank you’s to the people who went above and beyond this past weekend:
Naomi Price: Thanks for giving us a hand all weekend at the demo table. Takes a special kind of person to put up with me all weekend! More mudslides anyone?!?!?
The Team at “Thunder” Role Playing: Thanks for your time and patience in answering all our questions and we look forward to working with you guys in the near future.
Don Higgins: Thanks for agreeing to do that ‘last minute’ art job we threw your way!
And a special shout out to Mr. Frank Mentzer, who not only came to Massachusetts a day early to game with us, but also played Master of Spies with us. Your insight and wisdom is invaluable sir…..!
See you all for the Kickstarter launch on February 29th!
Hello all…
So as some of you may already know, our upcoming game, Master of Spies (now scheduled for a Kickstarter in February 2016), takes place in the fictional setting of the world called Eldinar. What is this strange and mythical place? Well, Rob L is here with some answers to that question and more……
Art by Paul Singer
1st Age- The Age of the Wyrm (2612 years)
Little is remembered of this age, and less is recorded. What is known is that the Dragonlords ruled supreme. Century upon century of harmonious existence, with little to interrupt their equanimity. Eventually, though, they grew bored with this life, and longed to turn the land into a living shrine to themselves.
Art by Jack Holiday
Whether men were there from the beginning, or were created by the Dragonlords for their purposes, has been forgotten. Only Uthrax, the Dragon King & eldest of their race, may recall how they came to be. Regardless, the Dragonlords utilized the humans as slave labor, though the humans also came to worship the Dragonlords as gods, a notion the Dragons did not dismiss.
Over the years many shrines were erected & statues carved, though most important were the massive temples & carefully tended groves deep within the spawling forest which the Dragonlords called The Verdant Canopy (later referred to by the humans as the Umbrageous Wood).
As mankind spread across the land in their labors, they encountered strange creatures, similar to them in features, but taller & fairer, with an otherworldliness about them. They claimed to have come from “across the sea” to visit this land and discover its secrets. They called themselves elves, and some stayed among the humans for a while, and a few even mated with them, producing offspring. Eventually, most of the elves returned from whence they came, but their progeny remained, and these were regarded as fate-touched by the humans.
Time passed, and the numbers of men grew, while the Dragonlords slowly dwindled (this fact was kept hidden from the ever-increasing humans who still worshipped & feared them). Long life they had, but few offspring. To counter this, some of the optimal humans (nearly always ones with elven blood) were conscripted to serve as breeding partners for the few fertile Dragonlords who remained. They maintained that the purpose for this was to bequeath their own greatest aspects to the fecund but generally weak & short-lived humans. These pairings produced more hatchlings among the Dragonlords than had been seen in centuries, and succeeded in producing a hybrid that embodied many of the foremost traits of the superior race. Mankind, however, had contributed from among their keenest attributes as well, though many of these were to remain dormant for hundreds of years……
No one knows what caused the Dragonlords to sleep. Perhaps it was an inherent hibernation instinct, perhaps it was ennui; but sleep they did. And thus the 1st Age of Eldinar ended with mankind left to their own devices, for the first time in their existence.
So much is going on as we break our silence from the dog days of summer. We got our newly printed, full sized cards for the next phase of Master of Spies and we are ready to take it on the road. Below is the “sexy” unboxing video of the product.
We are also an official LLC in the eyes of the Massachusetts and Federal government. It took a lot longer than we expected but it was important to use to do this right and at the beginning of the month we received our official documents.
Straight from the Attorney General desk, our stamp of approval.
Also last weekend on Sept. 12th we took part in the Boston Festival of Indie Games. It was a really great day and a bit of a learning experience. James, our “Game Breaker” and myself manned the table and demonstrated our card game, Master of Spies to lots of nice folks there, and got really encouraging feedback. One of the greatest things said to us was, “Thank you for having a short game”, in a show that was loaded with a load of great, but intensive, indie games, that really meant a lot..
We felt so official when we saw our table sign.Our table, all set up and ready to go when the doors open.Picture of our neighbors to the right of us.James standing to welcome in anyone who wanted to try our card game.A group of attendees giving Master of Spies a try.A never before seen, 3 tokens on one card. It one of the things I love about our card game, every game is different.My end of the day celebratory drink to a show gone well.
We will be bringing our card game around to local, and a few not so local, gaming stores and shows. Please check in regularly and stop by, say hello, and give Master of Spies a try.
So we did it…we finally really did it. We took the plunge, got our feet wet, and got the ball rolling!
We are an official LLC! The paperwork was signed last weekend and will be filed with the commonwealth. The four of us are now official partners in this thing called Move Rate 20 Games!
Here are some pictures of us during the “celebration”…
From Left to Right: Steve P., Ethan, our Assistant Art Director, Our Beloved Taskmaster, Rob L., & James M.Our Beloved Taskmaster, Rob L. and his daughter Emma discuss the import of what just happened as Simone looks on.Rob L., James M, and Mrs. P at the “first” company cookout.Break out the games!!!Gravwell is a new favorite in our group.Here is Asst. Art Director Ethan’s sketches dedicated to Sauron.
Gamer-geddon was a great success and we would like to formally thank everyone who attended and the folks who volunteered to help us out on our, hopefully, first of many Gamer-geddons.
We would especially like to thank;
Rivendell Books & Games for hosting, Courtney Christopher & David Gulick for cooking & desserts, Brian & Kelly Estano for smoked pork & superhero & mana cookies, Zak Lanoue for all around help, Vincent and Patrick from Mech Deck for coming out and demo’ing their game, Kathy McLean & Mal Moen for the grill, and our friends and family. Especially my dear, sweet Naomi.
Here are some pictures from the event:
Now please forgive us if we take a little rest before driving into more game testing and development.
I am typing this in a half sleeping haze, please forgive any typos. -Mr. P.
Hello all, and thanks for coming back to Move Rate 20 Games!
Not much to report from the business side if things this week. Legal stuff still in the pipeline, art work still being drawn, playtesting continuing, Mr. P still answering to my every beck and call! (Always a pleasure to be of service, Mr.R.)
So for this week I have been contemplating ‘flavor’ and gaming. We are striving to have a game environment that is rich in its history and pageantry. We want our world to feel alive. I want it filled with interesting characters and quirky personalities.
Now, coming from a D&D background, I can see where I developed this need, but I am not always this way. When I am playing Magic for instance, the background flavor of the plane I am battling in means very little to me. The same goes for games like ThunderStone and Ascension. I love the gameplay but ignore the flavor.
The games that I do play and enjoy the background environment tend to be in universes that were flushed out in different mediums. Games like X-Wing or Legendary Aliens would not be as enjoyable for me without all the rich history that came out of their franchises. Of course, the great gameplay in these games is essential, no matter how good the flavor, if the gameplay is lacking then I will not enjoy the game.
So I guess my question to you, the great internet masses, is this: How much does flavor matter to you in a game?
Greetings and salutations, and thanks for coming back to Move Rate 20 Games!
So…what’s new this week you ask? Well, let’s see what I can disclose out to the public without incurring the wrath of our legal department (and their endless supply of >REDACTED<)!
We continue to move forward with playtesting on our first release called >REDACTED< (What really? We can’t have the name in print yet! Oh well…) We have made a few small last minute rule changes and add-ons and are now making sure that they improve the gameplay through playtesting. We have also made a few more tweaks to the awesome art that is being drawn up just for us, as well as some card re-designing that will make >REDACTED< (oops, sorry!) look as good as it plays!
Speaking of playtesting …we would like to start taking our first (but not last!) game on the road for some playtesting. So if anyone out there reading this missive has a favorite haunt that may want to participate, then please feel free to drop us a line via out “contact us” link. Maybe you can be added to the growing ranks of play-testers that have tried >REDACTED< …at the very least you’ll be able to find out what the game’s name is!
Riding the success of his web series “Table Top” on the Geek and Sundry YouTube network, Wil Wheaton has revealed move info about his latest project; an RPG game based web series. Where Table Top had a group of comedians and internet celebrities playing a board or card game each episode, his new show will have a steady cast of players going through a campaign of his design.
Not the first web series about RPG Game play.
Aaron Yonda (image from the Beer and Board Games website
It will be interesting to see how they will edit the show to keep both the comedy and the story line intact. The creators of Beer and Board Games, Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda have had success introducing “Rated RPG”, a web series that breaks up a one RPG game session into several episodes. As well as Community TV show creator Dan Harmon’s podcast “Harmontown” which started
Matt Sloan (image from the Beer and Board Games website
devoting the last 20 to 40 minutes of each episode to playing complete RPG campaigns, first D&D and now Shadowrun. Not to mention the the PAX rebroadcasts of the “Acquisitions Inc.” D&D campaign that has been a major event at each PAX show and gets hundreds of thousands of views. So it seems there is a demand for this type of show where people actually playing a RPG game is the subject, but it needs to be funny and entertaining. People sitting around doing mundane tasks probably won’t cut it. It’ll be interesting to see Wil’s entry into this growing genre of entertainment. That said, I’m interested to see what this new web series will shape up to be, getting more exposure to different RPG game styles is always good for both players and GMs, even better if it gives you a good laugh.
