Nimble 5e: They Broke a Million

There is something so fun about watching a Kickstarter campaign inch toward a million-dollar goal, especially in the face of all the naysayers and those on the bandwagon of billion-dollar corporations, and watching true gems like Shadowdark and Nimble 5e rise and find an audience.

This is the little guy winning.

This is cool.

I still play "full 5E," but this is just so much easier. Like a 2d6 game, it packs a lot into a small book that does so much; that feeling of infinite adventure in a small package has to be felt to be described. The original Traveller Little Black Books captured that spirit, and many of today's Cepheus games keep it alive and carry on its legacy.

Shadowdark captures that "magic in a small book" feeling and brings endless enjoyment to millions, being the OSR gateway game of choice for many 5E players.

Nimble is this generation's "Savage Worlds meets Traveller" in a clean, fun 5E package for fantasy gaming. It does everything D&D does, but without the whiffs, mystery action types that can and can't do various things, and general endless rules referencing and page-flipping that we have all come to loathe over the last 12 years because VTTs are too good at hiding the true complexity of D&D from us all.

If you want superheroic fantasy gaming, Nimble is the clear winner. It plays fast, satisfies the character builder itch, captures the essence of 5E, all without getting dragged down into the weeds. It is a game more about adventure, less about references to rules, pointless monster stat blocks, and rules interactions that bog the game down. You have all the same character power that you do in 5E, without needing a 16-page character sheet at level 14.

It feels like D&D, without all the problems of D&D.

Nimble joining the "Shadowdark club" is a great thing for gaming and the industry, opening up doors for competition and innovation, and allowing more people to play and expanding the hobby. This is the death of the "network effect" on which the OGL was based; the success of D&D does not foretell the success of other games, and the success of other games does not automatically "feed into D&D" anymore. The death of the OGL was also the death of the "D&D Network Effect."

All we need is the concept of fantasy adventure, and the indies can take it from here.

We have eight more hours, and I hope they can break the million-dollar mark.

Go, go, Nimble.

We are opening the book on a new chapter of the hobby.

...

UPDATE: They broke a million with four hours to go. Congrats, guys.