Last year, a product called The Real Thing cropped up on Kickstarter that could only be described as a weird little tabletop roleplaying game that was loosely based on — and endorsed by — Faith No More and their releases. Earlier this week, the company behind the RPG came back to fans with their hat in hand looking to raise enough funds for their Angel Dust and King For A Day books that expand on the game’s world, characters, and playstyle.
Through its initial crowdfunding campaign, the game’s developers eventually raised more than $68,000 to help get the game completed and printed. Using the open-source Powered by the Apocalypse RPG system, The Real Thing takes songs, lyrics, albums from Faith No More’s discography and weaves them into the various character archetypes, rules, and the stories found in the series’ books.
Now offering two books, Angel Dust and King For A Day, the new effort is asking players and Faith No More fans to pony up to help the creators deliver on something of an expansion for the game. Once again loosely based on the albums of the same name, the folks behind the game say these two books are going to be wildly different from The Real Thing.
Here’s how they describe the books:
“Angel Dust picks up where The Real Thing left off. But much like the albums, the juxtaposition is pretty jarring. With Angel Dust, we are adding a completely new set of rules for creating and populating your world beyond the hyper-local. With these augmented and new rules, Narrators will be able to leverage PC Discoveries to help generate locations and factions that are unique and linked to the characters. These new tools allow for stories to expand and flow outward from the characters, creating player-driven narratives.
“We have also added 2 new playbooks, The Broker and The Fanatic. Each adds an archetype that we felt was missing from the first 10 playbooks.
“While Angel Dust is about expanding the world of The Real Thing RPG, King for a Day is about expanding and exploring the nature of reality. We’ve added rules for encounters with the supernatural, and even for creating supernatural characters. While the focus of the included story is still on a 1990s grind through the shady underworld, the rules allow for all new concepts and abilities. With the new rules from Angel Dust and King for a Day, narrators can create stories in nearly any setting and genre while maintaining the core focus on gritty stories about outsiders maneuvering through mysteries and intrigue.
“The new systems introduced in King for a Day greatly expand the options for each character and playbook without changing their core concepts. Players will be asked difficult questions and be required to make difficult decisions as they advance. They spent the past few stories uncovering and defining who they were/are and how they fit into the world. With the new systems from King for a Day they’ll be asked what they are willing to sacrifice to move forward.”
Though there’s two more albums in Faith No More’s discography (Album of the Year and Sol Invictus), the creators of the RPG say these two new books are the planned end of the entire anthology. The key word being “planned,” since I’m sure they’ll probably do something with those other albums if enough money is raised. Never say never, after all.
If any of this made sense to you and you’re interested to learn more, be sure to head over to their page on Backerkit for more info.