Kickstarting is in the air - Blade Raiders.

I know I'm not alone when I say that I've become addicted to pledging to projects since backing my first Kickstarter. Serpent's Tongue just completely blew up in its last day and the awards all us founders are going to reap as a result are staggering. Unbound Games has really blown me away with the amount of respect they have for their founders. I've watched the sample videos of the game itself, and I'm stoked to get my hands on all my goodies come (hopefully) in July.

Now I've moved to a couple of other projects I'm either actively backing or tracking a little to see how things go. This time I'm talking about a fantasy game called Blade Raiders. To be honest with you, I feel like I'm going much further out on the wing here with this kickstarter than I did with Serpent's Tongue. First, I'm pledging based almost entirely off of how much I enjoy the art to the right there. I love the style and the coloring. It just immediately won me over as soon as I saw it. I also like that I can get both a pdf and the softcover core book for a measly $25.00. That's a great value and really pushed me into be willing to give it a shot.

The other thing I liked about the project was the author's description of magic in the setting:

"Magic is handled a bit differently in Blade Raiders than it is in a lot of fantasy settings. In this RPG, magic comes from runestones, which are buried beneath the earth, hidden in mountains (especially near Stonemir), and guarded like precious artifacts. Some men and women are born with the ability to tap into these forces, and some devote their lives to articulating these skills and developing incredible powers. But these abilities rely completely on the runestones. No one can physically carry a runestone, so in order to take advantage of their powers, a person needs to be near one. In many instances, the closer they are to a runestone, the greater the results will be."

I really dig the territorial nature of magic that this blurb implies. I also like that it will have to be a low-magic setting with bursts of brilliant arcane action when the players get near a rune stone. Should make for a great variety of encounter types for the players to get in to.

Anyway, if you think this sounds interesting, head over to the Kickstarter page for Blade Raiders and decide if pledging for the game is right for you. As of this post there's still plenty of time to get in on the action with 26 days left to go before deadline.