Product: ProgCore Fantasy: Dark Age of Theer (Kickstarter)
Creators:

This is a sprawling project – your pledge funds so much art. In brief, here’s what we’re making:

• a universal sourcebook for any fantasy TTRPG system that is full of tips, advice, and universal house rules, all designed to help Players and GMs heighten the Wonder Mystery and Danger of their gaming sessions. The sourcebook also contains a gameworld designed for ProgCore Fantasy, Theer, described through short stories, adventure hooks, creatures, and magic.
• a documentary actual play that immerses you in play with our friends: Todd Stashwick, Felicia Day, Marc Bernardin, Yuri Lowenthal, Dr. Drea Letamendi, and Anjali Bhimani, with David Nett GMing.
• a Prog Rock soundtrack, produced by Jason Charles Miller, with original Prog Rock songs and ambient music.
• an animated short, telling a dark fantasy story from the Dark Age of Theer, animated by the best in the business and voiced by top voice artsists.
• and more, in our stretch goals!

Pledge Tiers: From $20 up to $3000
Kickstarter Ends: August 1, 2024

Today we’re choosing to Spotlight the current crowdfunding effort for ProgCore Fantasy: Dark Age of Theer. We have no affiliation to the creative team behind this project. No considerations were given to us for this spotlight article, and we have (to this point) had no contact with the team.

What is it?
This is an ambitious multimedia Kickstarter from a very talented group of passionate storytellers. There’s a system-agnostic Sourcebook, a 5e Conversion Guide, Actual Plays, Short Stories, a Soundtrack, and Animated Feature….just a huge undertaking. This is clearly a passion project for Todd Stashwick and friends, and we respect passion!

What makes it good, why did we back it?
We’re not avid listeners of any Actual Plays (no work commute for some time now, though we used to listen to Critical Role, Glass Cannon and Adventure Zone), we don’t plan to run any 5e games anymore, and we’re not particularly big fans of Prog-rock (we even had to look up what exactly the genre is).
What we do love is well-written fantasy stories and deep, compelling settings that have a strong central ethos. And we don’t mind a good animated feature now and again too! The list of celebrities behind this caught our eye, and those creative elements led us to read further. We are normally a little skeptical of celebrity-driven projects in the tabletop space, but this particular project does not strike us as capitalizing on the celebrity status of the team. They’re pitching this project on its creative merits, not solely on the name-recognition value of the team members.
The synopsis of the Sourcebook is solid:

Our sourcebook is designed to be used with any fantasy roleplaying game system. Filled with amazing art from our incredible artist collaborators, the first half of the book is dedicated to guidelines, advice, tips, and house rules to help Players and Game Masters alike create intimate ProgCore gaming experiences that center Wonder, Mystery, and Danger in their sessions, whatever their game or game world. The second half of the book will focus on the Dark Age of Theer – a game world designed to support ProgCore Fantasy play, described through stories from top-of-field writers, along with adventure hooks, unique creatures, and powerful magic. The Sourcebook will be available in Print and Digital formats; length (number of stories), paper quality, etc. will be dictated by our ultimate funding level.

OK that’s all well and good, but when we got to the vision statements of “What is ProgCore Fantasy” and “What is the Dark Age of Theer?” we really perked up. These are things that spoke directly to us:

ProgCore Fantasy is a style of play, a group of universal mechanics and house rules, an agreement between players and game masters, that focuses on recapturing those breathless moments of early play. It’s about intimate, ephemeral experiences for players and characters alike. It’s about how you feel when you’re playing the games you love. ProgCore Fantasy is system-agnostic: it does not ask you to learn a new game, or switch from the game you love, only that you agree to pursue the Three Pillars of ProgCore Fantasy: Wonder, Mystery, and Danger. 

Theer is a fantasy game world designed by Todd Stashwick and David Nett specifically for ProgCore-style play. It is built to feature the Three Pillars of Wonder, Mystery, and Danger, and to offer fertile ground for any fantasy roleplaying game, as well as stories told in other mediums. In this Dark Age of Theer, magic is rare and met with fear or wonder, the ruins of a majestic, ancient civilization mock all with their horrible grandeur and tempt adventurers with mystery, and dragons are terrifying symbols of the unknown. Its denizens live in wonder of the ruins of ancient power all around them, their lives are defined by all that is mysterious and unknown, and danger lurks around every corner.

Wonder, Mystery and Danger are the Three Pillars? Magic is met with fear and wonder, and there’s ruins of fallen civilizations? Well…..inject into my veins, shut up and take my money. That’s why we play RPGs. That’s the vibe we strive for, and a setting wrapped up into that concept from the start? Awesome, let’s see it. We’re more interested in Settings and Adventures than new Rules Systems.
With those concepts, we think this setting would be a fantastic fit for OSR-style games (like Shadowdark) – but also is a no-brainer fit for running fantasy Cypher System games. Ancient civilizations; rare, powerful and strange magic – that’s screaming Cypher System to me. The flagship Cypher System setting, Numenera, leans into these concepts pretty heavily – but veers a little to far into science-fantasy for me to really click with. I prefer a grittier, more traditional fantasy-themed take on this concept, and Dark Age of Theer seems to nail the feeling I’m looking for.

Downsides
With great ambition comes great risk. This Kickstarter is, as of this writing, half done and is just about halfway funded. Without a big push, this could fail. We’ve seen some Kickstarters from lesser known folks pop big, but this one (so far) hasn’t caught fire. It should appeal to the Shadowdark/Dragonbane/OSR crowds, but we haven’t seen much chatter in those spaces yet. This setting should slot in very well in those systems and spaces. We don’t have a lot of reach, but maybe someone with more pull will champion this soon. We don’t know what happens if the Kickstarter fails, but we’d hate to see this get shelved and disappear. We want to see more.

Final Thoughts
We’ve currently backed at the all-digital book level, simply because that’s what we mostly back at these days. Life moves pretty fast, and having to move a lot of physical books takes its toll! However, we are considering making an exception for this one and raising our pledge to get a physical book – we think it might be worth it. There’s no better way to grab your players’ imaginations that putting a physical book in their hands and having them ogle the killer art we know this project will commission. So give it a look and please consider making a pledge. Let’s make this project happen!