Kickstarter News: Five Moons RPG

Here's an interesting piece of news, Sean K Reynolds, of recently retired Pathfinder and Paizo fame, is starting a Kickstarter campaign for his Five Moons RPG idea. He wants to simplify fantasy gaming down to the Pathfinder Beginner Box level of complexity, and make fantasy gaming a more social experience. He is also breaking with the OGL and d20 SRD for this one, and will develop his own license.

It's interesting he wants to do a fresh take on pen-and-paper gaming, and he's trying to iron out the complex systems in Pathfinder and create something simple and cool. Over on the Five Moons Blog you can find more of his ideas on the game, balance, magic systems, and his other ideas.

Of note as well is designers are moving away from d20 SRD and the OGL in particular. We are far enough away from 3.5 and compatibility (and Pathfinder has it covered pretty well) that this doesn't seem to be as hot as it was in the past, so that is also an interesting development.

It seems the industry is letting Pathfinder rule the roost with complex and deep rules, while there is a clear fight on for the casual pen-and-paper gamer. D&D 5 has put its foot down in one corner, and it looks like Five Moons is the challenger with a pretty impressive designer and pedigree behind the project.

But how big is the casual pen-and-paper market? Is there such a thing? Are casual pen-and-paper gamers more of the iPhone/Android mobile gaming or online MMO crowds with much interest in pen-and-paper games? It can be argued the pen-and-paper market nowadays has grown considerably hard-core, with a clear need for new players and especially dungeon masters. Will simple hardcover games alone be enough, or is an online or electronic component necessary to draw interest from the casual players?

There are a lot of questions here, and not many good answers until we gauge the success of D&D 5 at pulling in new players. Converting older players from one game to another is not enough, these games need to cause a buzz outside of the traditional RPG community and draw in the next generation of tabletop fantasy gamers. New players are the clear measure of success for any game.

I suppose the battle has been joined, and this shall be an interesting time for fantasy tabletop gaming.