Greetings, true believers! Matthew here, to chat a little about our relatively recent Kickstarter campaign, They Came from the RPG Anthology! We funded it a couple of months ago and the campaign is now over on BackerKit for anyone who missed it the first time around and wants to pre-order: https://tfc-rpg-anthology.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

But what is in the RPG Anthology, and why should you back? Let’s find out…

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Theatrical Cut

When we initially launched They Came from the RPG Anthology!, it was with a mind to fund five new genres in the They Came From milieu, which you’d be able to play as their own worlds, or cross over with existing They Came Froms. Therefore, the following chapters were already written when the book went to Kickstarter: 

They Came from the Mean Streets! – our love letter to film noir, black and white suspense movies, and lots of people talking fast while holding cigarettes or pistols, or both. We performed an actual play of it with Red Moon Roleplaying, with a story of betrayals, sex, violence, and Christopher Walken: https://youtu.be/jPb3uIHPGV0

They Came from the Bard’s Quill! – our first non-movie They Came From, as we explore the stage with new Theatrics and strive to emulate Shakespeare’s (and other playwrights’) plays via the medium of They Came From.

They Came from Bridgton Rectory! – period and costume dramas, tending to be set anywhere from the Georgian to the Edwardian era, encompassing everything from Jane Austen to Upstairs, Downstairs. We even performed an actual play of it with Red Moon Roleplaying, set at the cusp of the Russian Revolution: https://youtu.be/cveYW8RSxkc

They Came from Cowboy’s Gulch! – our long sought-after Western genre finally makes its way to the world of They Came From, with reverence for everything from Sergio Leone to Carry On Cowboy. The Old Ways Podcast performed their own actual play right here: https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/show/5wspodcast/id/27070314

And Chris Jones ran another session of it here: https://youtu.be/ulQ-r6pFXnU

They Came from the Interstellar Starship! – space opera writ large, with the possibility of going utopian Star Trek or grim and gritty Battlestar, all the way to my personal favourite: Farscape. 

But that’s not all, as the RPG Anthology also contains a quick play version of Storypath, tailored to They Came From, along with the full Storypath Ultra ruleset! If you want to read either ahead of release, just pre-order the book using the link at the head of the blog.

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Director’s Cut

As luck would have it (and due to the dedication of our wonderful fans), our RPG Anthology campaign funded additional chapters as stretch goals! It’s been a while since we last added content to a book due to stretch goals, but this is a case where we accounted for the possibility and were very glad for having done so.

New chapters were decided upon in some incredibly heated polls. In at least one case, the winner and that week’s loser were a bare handful of votes between each other. Here’s what we funded with those stretch goals:

They Came from the Billiard Room with the Candlestick! – murder mysteries! Everything from Clue and Midsomer Murders to Poirot and Marple, with a lovely assortment of detective features and tropes. I’ve written this chapter now, and am very much looking forward to seeing what people think.

They Came from the Meticulously Planned Bank Job! – one of the genres that edged its way to victory; Meticulously Planned Bank Job explores heists, gangsters, and other grotty criminal elements glazed with a veneer of class and organisation. Ocean’s 11 meets Goodfellas in this chapter!

They Came from Under the Skull and Crossbones! – renamed from Avast Behind (and there was much rejoicing) we get the long desired pirate movie genre for They Came From in the form of Skull and Crossbones! Pirates of the Caribbean, Muppets Treasure Island, Our Flag Means Death… You can find it all in here.

They Came from Beneath Capes and Cowls! – superheroes, fighting villainous rogues of all stripes! This chapter takes its inspiration from the Silver Age, the classic comics, and the ridiculous superheroes of yesteryear. More Mystery Men than MCU, you can play either with the tools we’re providing. And by the looks of it, this one will set a new record with seven or eight new Archetypes…

That’s right, we funded four additional chapters as the book’s campaign went on! But we also funded a couple more, and a few of you may have missed this part. One goal was for the writers to pick a chapter that had lost the backer polls, and the other… That one was highly unexpected.

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Reinserted Deleted Scenes

The writers thought long and hard (a day) about which chapter they wanted to add from the fallen runners. Would it be the soap opera They Came from Dawkins Creek! Maybe, or the hotly anticipated They Came from Neo Tokyo!? No in both cases! And no to most others as well, as there could be only one. And this one was:

They Came from the Hi-Octane Apocalypse! – the writing team agreed that the genre with the greatest scope for new Archetypes, a different kind of playstyle, fresh sets and Cinematics, and more, was Hi-Octane Apocalypse. Now you get to play the Leather Daddy Archetype everyone has always wanted, along with the Road Warrior, the Noise Merchant, and more, and even better, you can add them into any other They Came From. Including Bridgton Rectory.

I alluded to another chapter. We were all prepared for five additional chapters to match the five already in the book. It was nice and synchronous. But no, in the last hours of the Kickstarter, a mysterious backer put down $5,000 on a backer level to add a genre of their choice. 

We didn’t expect someone might go for this one (we had a fleeting hope, but nothing to gamble on – unless you’re a character in Meticulously Planned Bank Job), let alone in the closing hours of the campaign. Yet here it was: another chapter.

We had to wait several days. We’ve been stung before by people backing and then pulling pledges, or the credit card details they provided not working out, or paying more than they should… even human errors can catch people out (“I thought it was Z$5,000!”). But we confirmed the pledge and here’s what the backer went for:

They Came from the Steel Dragon Fighting Tournament! – Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Virtua Fighter, Killer Instinct, King of Fighters, BlazBlue, Darkstalkers, Soul Calibur, and much much more. The backer could have invented a genre, but they went for Steel Dragon, which was in one of the backer polls but failed to win. A genre all about playing the protagonists of fighting games, but in a collaborative fashion so it’s not just fight after fight, and a game where you can’t just depend on Close Combat + Might to solve every issue (despite the premise). The ideas in our draft for this one are fantastic, and I’m really grateful to the backer who went for it. It’s quite experimental, but I think we’re going to crack this one.

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Cut Scenes

There we have it! RPG Anthology is going to be a beast of a book with 11 games you can play, and 50 or more Archetypes, along with Tropes, Cinematics, and more you can move between genres. It’s one hell of a hurrah for They Came From, and I’m so glad we made it.

But I know what you’re thinking.

Will Dawkins Creek Ever see the light of day? Will we ever return to the neon shores of Neo Tokyo? Will the Code of Bushido once again bring its blade down onto cinematic RPGs? 

You’ll have to buy tickets to an uncertain sequel to find out…