Kickstarter: The Electric State

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1192053011/the-electric-state-roleplaying-game

Another Kickstarter to track, The Electric State RPG is on Kickstarter, and this one is the third in the Loop Series, Tales from the Loop, Things from the Flood, and this.

The premise is a civil war, road trip, survival, VR addiction, the collapse of society, and a world engulfed in the aftermath of a civil war with the ruins of battle robots and sci-fi military equipment littering the landscape. This uses the Year Zero engine and is set in 1997, so it looks like, storyline-wise, this explains what happened after the Flood - but it may be another world entirely.

The images are evocative, and one thing Free League does well is deliver on the premise - especially with these highly conceptual games. Other companies would use the images to push their "other game" - or just do something so lame that the game would feel like "D&D with funny pictures."

Sadly, I get that from a lot of other high-concept Kickstarters, especially 5E setting books that have beautiful imagery and places, but the oatmeal and overpowered mechanics of 5E turn the setting into a joke where characters are gating out to Planescape anyway when they can get the spell. The mechanics do nothing to keep you there, make you a part of the setting, or even make you care. 5E wins. Please come back to Wizards next time; you will never escape the cave; thank you.

Free League builds mechanics into these games that both define you as a character and you cannot escape from. The zombie rules in The Walking Dead and the stress/motivation mechanics in Alien are two great examples. Twilight: 2000 factors ammunition into the dice mechanics since ammo is life in that world. Forbidden Lands uses the dice in novel ways, such as special dice for artifacts, and they go deep on hex crawls and strongholds - that is a fantasy survival game.

And Dragonbane is everything 5E wants to be, plus more. That game is fun, puts bounded accuracy to shame, and has legs and support.

With Electric State, I get the feeling that supplies, like ammo, water, food, and gas - may play a huge part in the rules. Addiction, too, may play a role, where you need to sacrifice your sanity to go online and get information. This is an interesting take on post-civil-war society, with the litter of unique technology providing the backdrop of a society that lost its way with the flashy allure of big tech.

We may be already there.

Project backed and helping spread the word.