Kickstarter Gaming Spotlight: Fragged Empire

G'day dear readers.
Let me begin by asking, have you heard the good news about our true and gracious overlord, Kickstarter?

Okay, so for those that came in late, Kickstarter is an Amazon operated website that allows artisans of varying crafts to get funding from the crowds out there on the INTERNET that dig what the artisan is doing..... some sort of Crowdfunding. If you want something nittier and grittier, then check this LINK, it'll take you to one of the FAQ pages.

Now that that's out of the way, on to the point of this post.

I recently discovered the KS for a game by an Australian Graphic Designer named Wade Dyer, this game is known as .... wait for it.... Fragged Empire.  I know, you already new that from the title of the post, but I digress.

Here have some fresh and tasty box text:

Fragged Empire is a tabletop RPG setting & rules, set in a far future 'post, post-apocalyptic' setting. Your people have survived 100 years of brutal tribalism & savagery & are just now emerging back into space.

Set in the style of Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien, television series Firefly, Farscape & Blake's 7 & computer-based role-playing games Mass Effect & Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic.

Now, I don't know about you folks, but I enjoyed all of those words in green and their collective meaning.

As non of you probably know at this point, I do love me a heaping helping of Sci-Fi gaming, From Eclipse Phase to Bulldogs!, I just love it. And Fragged Empire seems to have me covered rather well.

Okay, so most of the fanfare aside. Lets take a look at the game itself.

History:

In the future, Humanity is Badass. So badass that it has "terraformed millions of planets and creatied electronic wonders beyond our imagination."  Now, as any good gamer out there knows, once you've maxed out all your skills and shit, you get kinda lethargic and apathetic and such. Well, humanity hit that point and just kept rolling down that hill, hitting  the point of genetic degradation.

Once they hit terminal velocity FUCKED, Humanity created a new race to "inherit" their empire (you know, like Simba was supposed to before Scar went all sly manipulator). The new race was know as The Archons.

From there, The Archons took the proverbial ball and ran in a different direction. They didn't worry about expanding their empire too much or creating new technological wonders, nope, they started playing with genetics.  Their only goal: to create the "perfect" race. After a thousand years, enumerable races had been created, some were neglected and others quite the opposite.

So, The Archons finally think the have the formula right when they unveil the Xion.  Then they change their minds, like within the next space-day or two. Understandably, the Xion weren't too keen on giving up the title, so they fought back and lost..... hard. Only one little Xion survived and fled into uncharted space, and like any good vengeance tale the lone Xion came back two (count 'em one, two) hundred years later with his/her own army of genetically engineer being called The Nephilim.

After a six year war (wait, seriously... just six years? Eh, alright I'll go along) The Archons were tiny bits on Nephilim boots. Now that one Xion from before, he/she was pleased, vindicated, whatever and just decided to bounce (as they said in my youth).

Now we get to the present portion of the time line. 100 years after the war, The Nephilim and three other races of Humanity's Great-Grand "children" have started to get out into space and check out all the shit that was left behind by the Archons and who knows what else.

Races:
I'll go ahead and apologize for using the box text for the races. It's just that at this point in the game that I think it's best to use the creator's words to describe them.

The Corporation
Rejected by their creators (the Archons) as inferior, the Corporation (formerly known as Vargarti) have grown to love the Great Xion War as it freed them from an existence of insignificance & irrelevance. They are now eager to prove themselves. Not a nation in the classical sense, the Corporation is a massive corporate entity comprised of millions of smaller, affiliated business enterprises; a purely capitalistic society.

The Kaltoran

Born with the genetic memories of their ancestors, Kaltorans are an innately gifted & flexible race. They are eager to make a new future for themselves, though they struggle with the ‘genetic memories’ of not only the Great Xion War but the extreme measures taken by their ancestors to survive it.

(Yes, they have four ears.)

The Legion
A physically imposing race, hastily created by the Archons to fight their losing war against Xion. The Legion now struggle to create a stable society & to find meaning with no war to fight. In recent times the Legion have formed a close economic relationship with the Corporation, acting as enforcers for hire.

(Damn, he just looks so badass.)

The Nephilim
A junk-word term used to describe the diverse descendants of Xion’s genetically engineered army. Created to wage war on the Archons & their creations, before being abandoned by their creator, Xion once the war was won.

The Nephilim have an eclectic, primal & often violent society that is supported by advanced biological technology. While publicly no longer loyal to Xion, their pursuit of genetic perfection at any cost is pervasive.

Currently, I only have bullet point descriptions of the actually game mechanics. The only mechanics that have been expanded upon are how skills work and some of the combat rules, these are featured in a preview of the books layout that you can find HERE.

From everything available to me at the current moment, Fragged Empire looks awesome.  I know that I plan to back it as soon as I can, and if your into Sci-Fi gaming I recommend you check out the Kickstarter and the website for more details.

At the present time there are 31 days left, and the project has already been more than funded (it reached the goal of  $15K in twelve hours.)

Now do be aware, that all of the pricing on the Kickstarter is in Australian dollars. So if your an American, such as myself, the pricing is actually a couple dollars less that what you see at first (but they have the conversion in the tier descriptions).

TLDR:

• Fragged Empire is a Sci-Fi RPG were you play as one of four races that are essentially the "great-grandchildren" of humanity.
• Not enough info currently to talk about much more than the races and the skill mechanics.
• The Kisckstrater has 31 days left at the time of this post.

Thats it for the very first Cupcake or Death Gaming Kickstarter Spotlight. Let me know what you think, did I put too much info out there, too little, just right? And be sure to let us know about any Kickstarter projects you think are awesome, we'd prefer gaming related projects but we'll at least take a look at the projects that are posted.

Thanks Guys,

STAY FROSTY

Update time:

Here we are with 22 days left till the KS ends, and the project is 361% funded, how awesome is that.

Now as any good Kickstarter, getting to this level of coin has unlocked a few stretch goals. The majority were to enhance the book: +24 pages, higher quality pages, and a hard back cover (as opposed to the paperback originally planned).  But we have reached the point where there is officially a second book.

The second tomb is known as the Antagonist Archive (alliteration how I lovvve you), and its essentially akin to the Monster Manual for my DnD hombre's out there.... well, sorta anyway. We are now at the point were the stretch goal are enhancing the AA, so far it has gained additional content for locations and Factions. Currently the project is about $800 (give or take) away from reaching the $55K mark, which unlocks short stories in the book. 
The stretch goal after the 55k mark and currently last goal (at an unknown amount) is that the book becomes "Alive." I'm not gonna lie, I have no idea what this means, but with 22 days left, I sure as hell hope it gets there so i can find out.

Now sadly, The Antagonist Archives doesn't come free to backers. You have to pitch in an additional $15 for the PDF and $25 off of the POD version that you can order from Drive Thru RPG once the books are release.  Personally, I don't have too much of a problem with this and it makes me happy to know that both books will be available for POD since I can only opt for the PDF versions currently.

Oh yeah, have this finely crafted LINK to the FREE sample book on DTRPG.

That's all for now,
Later