Wayfarer: A Slipstream RPG Kickstarter (ONLY 60 HOURS LEFT!)

Ill Gotten Games presents a brand new role playing experience with Wayfarer, a game system with multiple setting and world building opportunities for not only the DM, but the players, too.

Over the past ten years of development, Wayfarer has been playtested frequently and shown off at various gaming conventions. The core book will be a tasteful black and white softcover, complete with many different races, pre-generated NPCs, spells, and technology. It’s more than enough to create or inspire a multiverse in any fashion you want. From high tech with sci-fi robots to Elf and Dwarf fantasy, and anything in the middle or otherwise, it’s all possible through the core narrative system.

A Pig Rocker, Robo-Wizard, and Elf Sniper ready to dimension jump.

The multiversal platform for Wayfarer is any setting you can imagine. Your campaigns can be crafted of a single setting or slip between (using any mode of transport you prefer) many worlds and even different realities. The multiverse is only as big or as small as you can picture it.

Which brings me to the core system; the Continuum Narrative Engine, which “unfolds more like a story and less like a game.” It utilizes real world physics, making it impossible for a normal human character to perform actions they would not typically be able to do, such as leaping over buildings or outrunning a train, just because they were of a sufficient skill level (a welcome restriction if you ask me.) At its core, the Continuum affords equal time to story telling as it does to combat, allowing for campaigns and sessions to freely focus on the many different aspects of role play. This could be social interaction/relationships, politics, environmental study, wilderness survival, character careers, scientific discovery, and anything else you could conjure.

This game and system is fully compatible with miniatures and grids, even full terrain if you want, but is also easily played without them. You need only one D10 for rolling (as much as I love my dice collection, not hunting down each particular die every other roll will be nice,) which you would then add any modifiers to in order to reach the target number necessary for success. Your character has three tiers to its modifiers; Attributes, Trunk Skills, and Branch skills.

Attributes are your average strength, intelligence, speed, and so on ability scores. Trunk Skills are added to your ability score when performing under a broad category of skills such as melee combat, piloting skills, natural sciences, lore and knowledge, etc.. Lastly, Branch Skills are modifiers which are added to your Attribute and Trunk Skill roll values for a more specific scope, such as using melee combat to parry a specific weapon type like a dagger or polearm and testing a character’s knowledge of marine biology or computer hacking. Added on top of that are Tricks (like Feats from Dungeons and Dragons) and special racial traits to customize your character even more!

Characters are created using a point-buy system, generated randomly, via pick and choose, or any combination thereof (though I am assured that random generation can be the most fun.) There is also no level system, instead focusing on the story rather than experience point accumulation. This empowers the players, enabling them to create the exact character they want right from the beginning (no more slogging through experience levels so you can make your mechanic also be a weapons engineer or your programmer into a master hacker!) Hopefully I will be able to jump on Skype or some other chat program soon to get the full character creation process, which I will certainly post when it is finished.

What initially drew me in with this project (and this is true with any tabletop RPG) is the art. Does it look professional? Do they use varying artists? Is the style and content relatable to the subject matter? As a hobby cartoonist who also knows many professionals, these are important qualities that I need to see before I’ll dive into a game. If the artistic content does not help tell the story and inspire me, count me out!

In regards to Wayfarer, the art content is brilliant and I was quickly hooked. From cartoons to pixelation to more realistic art, it conveys the message that you can create the story and characters you want without mucking up the idea by saying “all Dwarves look like this one.” Employed are such popular artists as Austen Zaleski, Ingmar Edmund Freske, Gustavo Cosio, and Cameron M. Croft.

With a physical copy of the core book available for only $20 (only $5 more for the .pdf as well) and more rewards available with each tier after, it was incredibly easy to jump at this project, especially since it’s already over 140% funded! At the higher pledge tiers (many of which were snatched up early on,) you could even receive a detailed, hand painted figure, the most expensive of which being a fully detailed model of your character! Other rewards include signed art prints, creating your own character and having it included in the book, and multiple copies of the core text. Also, as far as the miniatures go, many of the 3Dimensional models have been released for free by the creator of the project, Dutchmogul, an example of which can be found here for those of you who have access to a 3D printer.

Just a few of the miniatures created.

The crew has even released their first play session podcsst on their Lost Agency Archives and an interview with No Continues! Podcast. Both provide an in depth look at Wayfarer, from its humble beginning as a homebrew game to a fully funded Kickstarter campaign! Dutchmogul is also available to quickly and nicely answer any questions or concerns over the Kickstarter campain, on his Thingiverse, or over Ill Gotten Games’ Blogspot.

Dutchmogul showing off the Wayfarer minis and concept at the Seattle Mini Maker Fair in March.

So hop on board for this transdimensional adventure while you still can!

What are you waiting for,
TheDungeonRat

Any image or information provided pertaining to Wayfarer is the sole property of Dutchmogul, Ill Gotten Games, and any artists therein. I claim no ownership of content.