Bones 6 Enthusiasm and Commentary

[Inarah]

7 hours ago, Nimphona27 said:

I am a little sad that ATM there are no plans to split the core set..... As I bought so many multiples of things from the core split in the last 2 campaigns... ATM it's not a big love. Yay for wallet. But it's not enough to mean I don't get anything. As I deffo want Briarwood. And maybe the GG if they add some more to it.... Sitting patrons.... Etc.... 

 

I almost didn't buy into 5, then they started dropping those encounter sets near the end.  I'm feeling the same about 6.   Big nope right now, but it's very early, and if they decide to split up the Core I may go for some ants. 

 

7 hours ago, Chaoswolf said:

Well, they said no Chronoscope Expansion. 

I'm also hoping for a sci-fi encounter and/or some groups of 5 or 6 thematically similar figures as an optional add-on.

 

Ditto. Sci-fi, steampunk, Victorian horror, pulp adventure, all would be welcome.   I was pushing hard for Chronoscope last time, and even though they missed the ball, I still bought it. 

 

The chibis seem to be a love it or hate it thing. They're cute, and nicely sculpted, but I have no use for them.  I got them in 5, but haven't even opened the bags. Plus I have a lot of the metal versions of what became Bonesylvanians that still aren't painted. 

 

I'm hoping the coming week unveils some larger monsters. Not expecting a flood of huge dragons, but those adventurers in the tavern have to leave and earn some coin at some point.  I'm also curious to see what's in the "egyptian" expansion, given the teaser of the newly sculpted jackal warrior.   I hope there's terrain that will cross over with sci-fi or pulp gaming.  I've already painted most of the Nefsokar range in metal, seeing it in plastic won't stir me to pledge.  

 

And when are we going to see what @TaleSpinner has been working on?  :)

Edited April 3, 2022 by Inarah

[Blip]

1 hour ago, Guyra said:

Looking at Kicktraq, this KS looks to be pretty much on par with Bones 4. But Bones 5 had a crazy strong day 1(and stronger day2), and since that was the previous one, it sort of feels as though this one's incredibly slow. 🙂
😉

Thanks for the analysis! This is the first Reaper Kickstarter I've had the chance to participate in, and I was starting to wonder if we would make it to Giant Skeleton territory.

[YronimosW]

2 hours ago, Great Khan Artist said:

 

I have this feeling that Chronoscope stuff will show up in Fan Favorites. Just a hunch, nothing official. 

 

2 hours ago, Inarah said:

Ditto. Sci-fi, steampunk, Victorian horror, pulp adventure, all would be welcome.   I was pushing hard for Chronoscope last time, and even though they missed the ball, I still bought it. 

 

The chibis seem to be a love it or hate it thing. They're cute, and nicely sculpted, but I have no use for them.  I got them in 5, but haven't even opened the bags. Plus I have a lot of the metal versions of what became Bonesylvanians that still aren't painted. 

 

I have a feeling Great Khan is right about a couple Chronoscope figures landing in some sort of Fan Favorites group - maybe some Cthulhu monsters, as those seem like some of the more popular Chronoscope subjects.  If not a Fan Favorites set, then it'll be a stand-alone large Cthulhu monster of some sort, for the same reason: large Cthulhu monsters seem to do well as a rule.

 

Second-guessing, backseat-driving, and armchair-quarterbacking Reaper on Chronoscope may not be entirely fair to Reaper and I worry they might get tired of it, but I'm sure nobody means anything by it, and it is kinda fun as a thought experiment anyway.  At the risk of putting the Reaper folks off:

 

I didn't mind the Bones IV and Bones V Chronoscope sets on the whole, and I did get them - I've gotten every Chronoscope expansion since the first Bones campaign, except the one that was only shipping containers - but I did end up feeling like something is always missing from the Chronoscope sets.  Unlike (apparently) most backers, I love the grab-bag aspect of these sets where you get a little of everything, but... well, the sets aren't quite random:  the last couple sets in particular are generally three batches of similar items, and if you aren't into one or two of those batches, it kinda feels like one third or more of the set is not for you.  For a (hypothetical) example, you might get a Chronoscope 1/3 full of steampunk characters, Chronoscope 2/3 of futuristic robots, and Chronoscope 3/3 of zombies... I don't think anyone will be overwhelmed by it, especially if they're only in for the loosely incompatible steampunk, futuristic sci-fi, and zombie apocalypse gaming, and especially if, say, you're one of those gamers who is picky about your sci-fi - "Proper sci-fi is futuristic robots and aliens, I don't like steampunk or zombies!"  And if, say, you normally like Chronoscope for the Cthulhu monsters and weird pulp items, or were hoping for some space-opera aliens.... 

 

The people asking for a completely coherent Chronoscope set that appeals to one niche at a time, are onto something.  I think I'd rather see a completely "random" set with a little of everything for everyone, or three groups of closely-related Chronoscope subgenres (Cthulhu, Steampunk, and Weird West go well together, as do zombies, apocalypse survivors, and mutants... or, robots, aliens, and IMEF/Novacorp and sci-fi heroes....), but even focusing on one niche at a time would feel a little more satisfying, I think, than a set of three focused and somewhat incompatible genres.

 

In short, I'd have been happier with an even more random mix of stuff that includes even more sci-fi/pulp subgenres, but a Chronoscope expansion that tells a bit of story as a whole would have been fine by me, too, as would a completely unplanned mix of figures from only one subgenre, and I think any of those would have been stronger than the half-way measure seen in the last couple Kickstarters. 

 

That said, Chronoscope has been full of "sleeper hits" for me, with stuff that left me cold at first growing on me later on, so maybe in my unique case, the way the Chronoscope sets were curated might have worked better than they seemed (too bad I'm a bit of a weird outlier!)

 

 

I kinda think the chibis this time might have been better off as an expansion, weird to me that Reaper went instead with splitting them into three different add-on options.  Seems like the target audience for one is going to be the same for at least two of the three chibi sets, and the price difference between the three sets together vs. an expansion was pretty close, iifc - the dragon might be an exception, as I get the impression there are a lot of dragon collectors who are interested in the dragon and nothing else, but I think it could have been worked out.

 

Then again, something similar occurred to me, about the henchmen/henchwomen sets:  both of those sets together, "padded" with a couple other useful characters or terrain bits (like a camp set, maybe?), might have made for a popular expansion, but, really, Reaper isn't lacking for great expansion ideas....

 

 

Edited April 4, 2022 by YronimosW

[ksbsnowowl]

Jon said on stream the other day that there is no big Cthulhu monster this time. 

[YronimosW]

 

 

21 hours ago, BigJon said:

So any theories or leaks on the Denizens of the Dungeons expansion? Hakir seems to have a lot of hype so I feel like we're in a "we saved the best for last" situation. Judging from the one model from Hakir that I've seen I'm already in for the whole thing. So denizens is the only one I don't think I've seen anything from. 

 

No particular reason for thinking so, and it's a bit subjective, but I think the "Dungeon Dwellers" expansion last Kickstarter was an excellent set, and, I suspect, a successful one, too.  The "Denizens of the Dungeons" expansion this time has a suspiciously similar name, and I can't help thinking it will be a very similar sort of "Dungeon Crawl in a Box" kind of classic fantasy set - a "Dungeon Dwellers II", if you will.  I expect a fairly coherent but varied collection of popular dungeon-crawl monsters, a couple "boss monster" villains, one or two broadly useful small terrain bits (a treasure piece, an altar...), and maybe a small handful of adventurers - that is, more or less the same thing seen in "Dungeon Dwellers", without really repeating  anything from that set.

 

I can't help suspecting the Orcs add-on was submitted for "Denizens of the Dungeons", but didn't get included there, instead finding itself a choice between being included in the Core Set, or set as an optional add-on.  What got included in "Denizens..." instead?  It'll be interesting to see, but I have a feeling that Hobgoblins would be a popular decision, if that's what Reaper goes with.

 

 

3 hours ago, Guyra said:

Looking at Kicktraq, this KS looks to be pretty much on par with Bones 4. But Bones 5 had a crazy strong day 1(and stronger day2), and since that was the previous one, it sort of feels as though this one's incredibly slow. But thus far, it does look to otherwise be moving at the same pace as those two previous campaigns. And even with twice as much pledged on day 1 for 5 compared to 4(and 6), it ended up with only about $300k more total.

 

So if anyone's been afraid this won't go anywhere, you can sit back and relax, knowing that Bones 6 seems to be doing just fine compared to the previous two kickstarters. So it'll probably end up at around $3m by the end of it. 🙂

 

Still, wouldn't mind seeing some big stuff soon! 😉

 

I had a few paragraphs of thoughts on that subject posted to the Kickstarter comments.  The gist of it was, I have a lot of economic, geopolitical, and other reasons to expect this Kickstarter to have some depressed numbers compared to its predecessors, and every reason to expect a very different pattern of backing figures from previous Kickstarters, but Reaper's management of the Kickstarter - with only light touches being applied so far to entice backers - suggests to me that Reaper feels pretty confident about this Kickstarter's velocity. 

 

That is, so far, Reaper doesn't seem to be taking any drastic actions, and ReaperJon seems to be in an excellent mood, if his replies to comments this weekend were any sign!  This Kickstarter already met its minimum target within minutes of opening, and continues to meet stretch goals on a fairly regular basis through the first weekend without the full Reaper Staff micro-managing it, and the numbers are actually surprisingly close to previous Kickstarters, so this campaign is by any reasonable measure already a success - it's just a question of how bit a success it will be compared to the titanic successes that preceded it.

 

Reaper seems to be pulling their punches with the big, exciting, crowd-pleasing monsters, dragons, terrain pieces, and so on, and that's not a surprise to me, given the rumors that Reaper are pacing this Kickstarter differently, to avoid that period of "doldrums" in the middle between the flurry of excited backing early in the Kickstarter, and the flurry of wait-and-see funding as backers finally get off the fence in the last 48 hours of the Kickstarter.  That is, I have every reason to think that Reaper are saving this Kickstarter's most popular items for what would otherwise be the long, slow, middle-stretch of the campaign.  This will be an exercise in patience for many backers, but I'm sure Reaper will reward that patience and anticipation - the Reaper people we've been hearing from seem to be hinting that some of their favorite items are yet to be unveiled!  🙂

 

Other than that, I think the two most interesting and challenging developments for this Kickstarter would certainly be those relating to economics and geopolitics, and those relating to changing technologies - specifically, the fact that home 3D printing has become all but commonplace in the hobby, with many hobbyists able to print whatever small subjects they want on demand.  I suspect that is behind the push toward demands for ever-bigger and ever-more exotic  offerings - a larger number of backers than ever before are looking for a source of monsters and terrain that they can't simply print themselves. 

 

Which is fair enough, though I wonder if they represent most of Reaper's customers:  as backers, we are not quite the same thing as customers, and perhaps owe a little more responsibility than we realize to the larger body of customers who would be shopping for Reaper's miniatures:  we're not just backing for what we want and need, but also for what customers without 3D printers, a vast collection of minis, different interests, etc. would want, need, and buy.....  Which, if true enough, is OK by me:  that's the fun kind of responsibility, a cousin to the responsibility that comes with being an RPG gamemaster, to ensure that everyone involved is having as much fun as possible 🙂

 

Anyway, I have every reason to believe this Kickstarter is running strong, and that the most spectacular reveals are yet to come - later than those of us wanting them right now would like, but sooner, perhaps, than previous Kickstarters, where the big stuff tended to appear at the beginning and end.  We should, however, be concerned about economic and geopolitical conditions:  those could be the biggest challenges of all.

 

/close random rambling

 

[YronimosW]

2 minutes ago, ksbsnowowl said:

Jon said on stream the other day that there is no big Cthulhu monster this time. 

 

To be fair, there really aren't very many left that they could practically do. Azathoth, I think, is the last of Lovecraft's big 5 in public domain, with Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, Yog-Sothoth, and Cthulhu already appearing in previous Kickstarters, along with Dagon (who in-fiction seems to have just been another name for Cthulhu, but there are two separate models for anyone who disagrees!)  Maybe Reaper could get some success from, say, Yig, but from here on out, the others get more and more gratuitous and unnecessary, and start running the risk of copyright/licensing problems.

 

I for one would prefer to see some of the smaller beasties make their way into Bonesium:  the Great Race of Yith, the Elder Things, "Byakhees" (Lovecraft didn't create that name, and I think Chaosium and whoever else holds rights to Derleth's estate do), and Dimensional Shamblers seem like some solid choices that haven't appeared yet in Bones.

 

And, I don't know if anyone else is open to it, I'm always prepared to back more investigators, pulp adventurers, super-villains, cultists, and the like.

 

Unless we see a surprise Mythos expansion (and I don't expect to), the options for seeing many of these smaller monsters and characters in print are limited.

 

Encounters are, however, a possibility I forgot to mention:  I believe a period motor-car was teased a couple Kickstarters or Reapercons ago, but never made its way to production.  This might well be as good a time as any for that project to see the light of day again, as part of an encounter!  🙂

 

 

[ksbsnowowl]

The car was rumored to be an encounter for Bones 5. There was some issue with the wheels, though, I think. 
 

I’m down for some smaller Mythos beasties. Hounds of Tindalos… 

[strawhat]

No mythos monster?

 

That's not what I expected.  The mythos minis have always been some of my favorites.  I did a little searching on the subject a couple years back and the rights are, generally, a mess (at least here in the US).  The EU rights are now, I believe (remember, I am not a lawyer), public domain.

[ksbsnowowl]

Storm Giant Queen.

Now we’re talkin’!

 

 

 

 

Bigger pics. 
 

 

Edited April 4, 2022 by ksbsnowowl

[Great Khan Artist]

Loving that Storm Giant Queen. She will pair with my Bones 5 king very nicely. I hope it's an add-on. With Frostgrave's most recent addition having vampires and giants, some of these minis will sell very well. 

[YronimosW]

Reaper's giantesses are always, IMHO, top-notch, and that one is no exception.

 

And, absolutely agreed, Strawhat - for a (theoretically) shared universe, the copyright status for everything is a minefield for anyone who isn't careful!

 

Spoiler

I am not a lawyer, but for my own (non-commercial) purposes, the safest bet is that if the beastie or other character first appeared in a story Lovecraft wrote himself (that is, a story where he doesn't share writing credits with someone else, or a story he didn't "ghost-write" for someone else), it's probably public domain everywhere now. 

 

Yig, as such, is probably not safe - Lovecraft and Zelia Bishop co-wrote "The Curse of Yig"....

 

Alternatively, if you can find the story in one of the big, inexpensive Lovecraft story compilations at your local bookstore, but publishers that specialize in that sort of thing, and no other author is credited, it's more than likely public domain (the publisher simply grabbed and copied a public domain copy from e.g. Project Gutenberg, and the only expense to the cheapskate publisher is just the materials and labor for printing and binding the collection!)

 

The caveat is that you'll want to forget everything you think you know about the Lovecraft monster, and roll with the description and name that Lovecraft supplied in the story, or invent your own:  many of the names and descriptions we know today actually came from Sandy Petersen and Chaosium, who own their copyrights on their version of the critters.  "Elder Thing", I think, is actually Chaosium's name for a creature that Lovecraft didn't simply describe but actually drew himself in the form we know today, but only referred to as "The Old Ones"), as is the identification of "Byakhee" - a creature that Derleth named but didn't describe - with a winged creature that Lovecraft described in detail, but never named.... 

 

Anything derived from folklore is probably safe, though you might in some cases need to juggle names and descriptions a little - we'll probably never know who invented the ghuls or mermaids or eldritch cannibal fairies or changelings or chimaera and so on that Lovecraft and other pulp writers adapted from folklore and fairy-tales for their weird stories.  Generic witches, zombies, ghouls, liches, vampires, werewolves and other gothic horror favorites are right at home in "the Mythos" - "Keziah Mason", a witch from a Lovecraft story, is public-domain safe, but any generic witch is extra-safe.  Nothing stops you from giving any of those monsters your own distinctive Lovecraftian/alien twist and selling them as part of a "mythos" themed set, either:  tentacles, bug-eyes, vertical mouth full of teeth- just make sure you aren't accidentally copying someone else's reinterpretation!  Likewise, a fairly generic tentacle-monster can be given your own fairly generic tentacle-monster name, and sold as part of a "mythos" themed set - "The Face-Eater from the Stars" or whatever.  These things work great as stand-ins for most non-Lovecraft contributions to the Mythos.  Need a Hastur figure (derived in its modern form from Derleth and Chaosium by way of RW Chambers, I believe, with the modern form copyrighted), or some zombie servants of Glaaki (a copyrighted Ramsey Campbell addition to the "mythos")?  A standard-issue tentacle-monster or a handful of standard-issue zombies work great, as long as you don't use Chaosium or Campbell's copyrighted creature names to sell them, at least without permission.....

 

Anyone intending to make money or publicity on the "mythos", however, is surely wise to take extra caution above and beyond all that to make sure that they aren't about to accidentally step on the toes of a Sandy Petersen, a Ramsey Campbell, or a Derleth Estate, or whatever.  With so much of "the Mythos" as the public knows it now named and defined for them by Chaosium (who have been more or less careful about the copyrighting (with decades of experience with it, and close relationships with writers like Ramsey Campbell as a result of it), it's easier to step on those toes than one might suspect!

 

 

If that car was indeed slated for Bone V but didn't make it because of the wheels, then I suspect it was a "simple" matter of the limitations of the material, regarding the amount of weight it could support - similarly to the way that the pirate ship almost needed a special shim to support some of the decks.  And, like the pirate ship, something tells me that Reaper was sorting out a fix for the wheels, but in this case didn't have it ready in time to reveal the car.  I'll be surprised if that hasn't been worked out by now, and so I'd be surprised if the car doesn't make it into this Kickstarter.  I wonder what else would be included with the car, as an encounter?  Some investigator figures, certainly, but monsters?  Could be anything.  Speaking of the Hound of Tindalos, Reaper does have a nice Bathalian-derived metal sculpt that looks like it's ready to be Bones-ified... it might be one of the few obvious Mythos figures that is still metal-only.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 4, 2022 by YronimosW
At war with typos.

[ksbsnowowl]

The next revealed unlock, after chibi stuff. 
 

[ced1106]

4 hours ago, YronimosW said:

The people asking for a completely coherent Chronoscope set that appeals to one niche at a time, are onto something. 

 

In previous Bones KS, Reaper had themed sets which weren't explicitly Chronoscope, but weren't generic fantasy.

 

As for Lovecraft, HPL's descriptions were almost non-existent, and, as said, Chaosium and others codified their appearance. That said, even Sandy Petrsen, originator of Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu rpg, offered variants of the mythos monsters in his Cthulhu Wars game. RAFM is, afaik, the official miniatures line of Call of Cthulhu, but I'd rather see Reaper do them. RAFM miniatures are in more expensive metal, and the sculptures are not as good.

 

Still waiting for lower price per mini in the core set, but I have so many minis already that I haven't played with. Just got Fireteam Zero, Super Chibi Ninja, and some terrain tiles today from an online sale. 😸😸😸

Edited April 4, 2022 by ced1106

[Nimphona27]

I think another of my gripes with B6 is the strong focus of TWITCH only reveals atm, not everyone has time for Twitch, or an account, nor do they want one... twitch isn't bringing in backers, people coming to see the campaign page aren't necessarily seeing the things that COULD COME if people pledged, like the storm giants, and the dragons.... the things a lot of people want are the bigger pieces especially with the big rise of 3d printers and resin printers... etc..... If this thread didn't exist or someone didn't reply to my comment on the KS i would have no idea dragons had been shown already.... and that doesn't sit right with me really 😞 not even outlines on the KS campaign page....nothing.....nada.......nil points.....

[Guyra]

What I think they're doing wrong is having too much "boring" stuff, and not enough exciting stuff. We've got some minis for creatures that are flooding the market, and has been for years, with the orcs, gnolls, and soldiers. Sure, some people will love their sculpts and such, but the majority of people will go "I don't need that at all", because they have such minis already from Warhammer, Frostgrave, D&D, Classic Fantasy, 3D print lines, or even Reaper themselves. And their prices aren't even that good. And then there are chibis, which many people love, but is still a niche interest.

So, what did Bones 5 do to reach over a million dollars on the first day alone?

• Core Set started with a Zombie Giant, TWO dragons(medium and large), and several classic D&D monsterse(blights, carrion crawler, cloaker, basilisk, yuan-ti, +++).
• Second stretch goal, and first Option, was a huge sized dragon!
• Next options were dragonfolk(at the time too few available for D&D), a cool broccoli catapult(which both wargamers and roleplayers liked a lot), a dragon bust(the only bust that sold well), 20 townsfolk for $20, then a big broccoli Fire Giant, followed by another friggin DRAGON!
• Three Options after that we got the first encounter set.
• And they kept on pumping out awesome stretch goal after awesome stretch goal, with a few "boring" or "niche" things between them.

Meanwhile, the first dragon we'll see is the Pathfinder Chibi Dragon, which is the second Option from now(not counting the Chibi Goblins that are the stretch goal we're currently working towards). And with chibi being such a niche, I don't think many more people will get that than the other chibis(though likely a few more, because a chibi dragon is still a dragon). And that's at almost $1.2 million - meaning 50% more than we're already at. And yesterday we got only $37k.

Even Bones 4 didn't drop that low until day 6(and it was still slightly higher until day 8), whilst Bones 5 didn't drop that low until day 12. Bones 4 also had a small bump on day 4, when Rocky the Red(Option) and Kobold Mooks(Core Set) were unlocked. Rocky the Red was a pretty popular set in Bones 4, and a lot of people loved the kobolds in the Core Set(and they were the bonus minis in Bones 5), so it's both pretty obvious and proven that people will throw more money when cool stuff is unlocked.

So while Reaper is showing off cool stuff for Bones 6, it's not going as well as it could have. But at the pace of less than $40k a day, unless Reaper changes something up or something extraordinary happens, we're not reaching that chibi dragon before two weeks into the campaign... And that's unless the average daily drops, which is a very real possibility.

I don't think it helps to reveal what might be unlocked later on, if we don't have enough momentum to get there.

I've mentioned earlier that based on things said by the people at Reaper on streams and in comments, and based on changes in the KS, it seems Reaper wanted to go for a tactic of having a slower start, and more flow throughout the entire campaign run, instead of it grinding to a halt. But right now, at least to me, it seems instead that things have ground to a halt earlier instead. They've put too little excitement and incentive early on.

Ron has said his favourite sculpt is at $1,230k, which is the stretch goal after the chibi dragon. Hopefully that'll be something spectacular, and not too little, too late. I think Reaper would be wise to change out one of the upcoming stretch goals not yet on the map with something that'll create more excitement, though. Something that would increase the momentum of the campaign.

That all said, I still think this KS is going to land between $2.5m and $3m even if they don't change up anything. Which would still be a highly successful KS, even by Bones standards.

Edited April 4, 2022 by Guyra