Deus lo Vult is a board game for two to four treacherous and greedy marauders and murderers. Based on opulent European manuscripts of the 12th to 15th centuries, the game draws heavily on the military games played by the medieval aristocracy all over the world: shogi, xiangqi, chaturanga, and backgammon. You control an army of crusaders trying to loot as much treasure from the Holy Land as possible. At the same time, you hinder the progress of other players using the mutually shared army of the Saracens. God is watching the Crusades closely and often intervenes with Divine Will events that you may use to your advantage. I give the designers a lot of credit. It is not easy to approach a game where religion is involved. Get invading while it’s hot, only three days to go on this one at the time of this post. You can find it here.

Since I heart Japan, our next stop takes us to the RPG world of Oddity high.

Oddity High is a tabletop RPG about the life of a Japanese high school student – one who’s also got one foot firmly in the bizarre. It’s influenced from the ground up by anime, manga, and video games that take the life of a high schooler and drive it off the deep end: Haruhi Suzumiya, the Persona games, Hatoful Boyfriend, and many more. You’re a high school student that’s probably nowhere close to being ordinary. Whether you’re dealing with aliens, psychics, ghosts, demons, eldritch gods or sentient cats is up to you – but whatever it is, you’re in the thick of it. Fortunately, by happenstance or by design, you’ve got a gang of like-minded, equally-abnormal friends at your side – and with their help, you’ve got a fighting chance at surviving it. Just don’t forget that you’re also going to need to survive high school, as well. Oddity High is powered by the Apocalypse Engine, the system used by legendary and award-winning games such as Dungeon World, Monster of the Week, The Sprawl, Urban Shadows, Fellowship, and many, many more. It has 11 days to go and has already doubled its funding goal. If you back this project, just don’t pick vanilla.

The final project this week could use a little love if it’s going to make it. Dreeples are dragon meeples, and I think they look great! I think of the pictures shown their most practical use would be for Tsuro, but I do enjoy the picture of using them as replacements in monopoly. This campaign is also for an original a game called dreeple wars if your looking for a little more damage to inflict. The dragons are set to ship and burn villages near and far in December. 22 days to go in the current campaign.

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If you are unfamiliar with it, Syrinscape is a sound design app that adds evocative ambient background sound and a movie-like soundtrack to your tabletop gaming experience. From ethereal forests and stony shorelines to dank vermin-filled dungeons and the spooky depths of the underdark.

And now they have landed a partnership with D&D. This along with the recently announced Call Of Cthulhu RPG soundtrack and their existing collaboration with Pathfinder RPG, not to mention their vast library of original soundtrack content, Syrinscape has taken the lead on making a fully immersive gaming experience.

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Oh, I love the illustrations in Space Race: The Card Game. Journey into the Cold War and the dawn of space exploration. A bit of role selection and card combinations await in a really interesting game engine for 2-4 players with a playtime of 30-60 minutes. There’s less than a week left and it’s already funded. A pledge of approximately $33 will get you a copy of Space Race.

Cyberpunk RPG + Powered by the Apocalypse? That’s my song. The Veil, already funded, is another Apocalypse World-based roleplaying game set in the near future. And oh, does it look so pretty. About $10 gets you the PDF, about $28 gets you a physical copy of the book, too.

Dice boxes: You can get the cheap-looking laser-cut ones that look like puzzle pieces on the edges, or you can plunk down a bit more to get something that looks well-crafted, like Steven Parker’s through his Elegant Dice Boxes campaign. $40 on up gets you a sweet box for storing your dice. (Look at those joins!) Stephen is running this to acquire additional equipment for his wood shop to expand the business.

Have you ever wanted to carry your board games around but oh no you’re a clumsy oaf? Well, now there are two — yes, two! — competing Kickstarter campaigns about game bags going on right now! The Gamefolio System lets you either pack games into a big bag ($99) or toss those pesky game boxes away and shove all your components into smaller bags that fit into the bigger bag ($155). The Game Canopy has a smaller bag for $87 or a bigger bag for $117. They all are interesting but a huge upgrade from ol’ reliable Frakta from IKEA ($3 and about $114 to $151 of games). The Game Canopy design looks really slick. (Psst: Guys, let me know if you want a product review.)

This week’s Marketplace Confusion/Parody/Coattail Riding spotlight is called Bad Apples, which shows that at least the people behind this 18-card “expansion” know where Cards Against Humanity originally came from. Yep, eighteen cards with a C$227 goal, which makes me think that even if they do get printed and sent, they won’t be the same quality as the original CAH cards. Fun: This is the second time they’re running this campaign after the printer increased their print quote (?); this second campaign has nearly the same funding goal and the same reward tier.

Q: What about last week’s Diabolical Kittens? Did that fund? A: Nope. Just C$282 of C$8,000 were pledged.

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D20Entertainment recently launched a very successful Kickstarter campaign for six-sided pencil dice with pips on each side. The creators of the D6 Number 2s just launched a second campaign specifically for role-playing games.

The basic set comes with six pencils, each pencil has a different decision on each side. There are currently six different categories with four additional categories unlocked via stretch goals.

The basic set includes the Magic Questions pencil, which has such answers as yes, no, not likely It also includes the Hit Location pencil, with body locations like head, torso, or left leg. The NPC Reaction pencil includes emotions like suspicious, friendly, and uninterested. The Direction pencil features all four directions, plus up and down. The Treasure pencil lists gold, silver, weapon, magic item, and more. The Alignment pencil includes all six base alignments.

RPG pencils cost $1 to start. For $5, you’ll get the base set of six pencils. Add $5 more to get more sets. Just think. You could outfit your entire RPG group with their very own set of decision pencils for only $25. If you preorder at the $50 pledge level, you’ll get 100 pencils to share.

The RPG Pencil Dice campaign ends Mar. 10. Estimated shipping of the pencils starts in April.

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Fantasy writer R.A. Salvatore, best known for his novels based on the Forgotten Realms campaign in Dungeons & Dragons, just launched a Kickstarter campaign for the first expansion to his popular DemonWars: Reformation tabletop role-playing game, which was successfully funded on Kickstarter last August.

The AllHeart campaign is designed specifically for small-group, or even solo play, which is something rarely heard of in the world of tabletop RPGs.

R.A. Salvatore and his band of merry game makers is seeking crowdfunding to get the game ready for mass production. You can back the campaign with a base pledge of $25 for a digital copy, or $45 for a hardback book, plus a digital copy.

The game will feature a random dungeon generator, which will allow a player to create and play through an entire dungeon without the need of a game master.

The jousting system will allow players to set up and play through tournaments by using their character as one of the jousters. If the game consists of you and a bunch of NPCs, the results are determined by a single die roll.

The Fiefdom system allows the player to manage a small village, growing it into a full-fledged city.

These systems can be played as a stand-alone mini game, or incorporated into a DemonWars campaign. Players will need the DemonWars: Reformation Core Rule Book, or the DemonWars Basic Rule Book in order to play this expansion game.

Shipping is expected in November of 2015.

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Untold is an RPG system that uses nothing but cards. You create your characters using cards, the GM has a deck of cards for encounters, and you even keep track of status ailments, etc… with cards. The Splintered Serenity starter pack comes with enough cards for 6 characters and a GM. A pretty impressive thing. The only extra thing you’ll need to play is dice.

The set comes with quick start rules to get you going, but I’d highly recommend reading the free primer on their website for a more in-depth look at how the game is played. There’s even some videos you can watch.

So on to the review. Let’s start right off with a gut-check. I really like Untold. I love the simplicity, I love the portability, and I love how you can easily adapt just about any setting you choose for use with Untold cards. I like the idea of buying extra cards to flesh out your game, but really not needing to. I even love how easy it is to create your own cards to use with the game for in-depth customization.

The first thing you need to do when playing Untold is create your character. This is done by the GM letting you know how may UP you can spend to create your character. Once you have this number you can have a character ready for play in around 5 minutes. You select a race, then start adding Aspect cards and Power cards. Aspect cards describe your character basic stats: Body, Mind, and Spirit. Power cards are the real meat of character creation, allowing you to add weapons, special abilities, spells, and more. Each type of card, including your race, has a cost that adds up to the total UP allowed by the GM. Any unused points you have go into a swap pool for later use in the game to be spent swapping cards into your character.

Note that a GM will also be building their own deck with Minion cards.

Combat plays pretty quickly, and flows well. Characters end up losing cards from their character deck when they’re injured, which is a really cool way to handle things. Experience is handles by giving out UP, which can be used to beef up characters with more cards.

There’s a wealth of information to be had on the Untold website. They’ve got plenty of fiction and information about their settings, rules for playing a battle game with your Untold cards, and more.

In the end, you get a lot of value out of the approximately $30 you’ll spend on a starter box of Untold. If you’re into RPGs, I highly recommend picking it up and at least giving it a shot.

*A copy of the Untold: Splintered Serentiy starter pack was provided by Wandering Man Studios for this review.

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