Ultima creator Richard Garriott’s Kickstarter for a new RPG, Shroud of the Avatar, has closed at $2,049,849 — double the requested amount of $1 million. The final amount includes $130,000 of non-Kickstarter pledges garnered through the official site.

Stretch goals reached during the drive include a pets system, new shipping and naval exploration areas as well as a new island, a serialised Tracy Hickman novel, and castles and keeps for players to take and fight over in PVP.

The current launch window is pegged for October 2014, with four more games to be released annually. It will launch under a pay-to-play model, with no subscription required.

Source: Kickstarter, my credit card

Richard Garriott appears to be assembling his own RPG dream team to rival the all-stars over at inXile, announcing today that Tracy Hickman of Dragonlance fame is set to join the project as lead story designer.

As part of a video released during the Kickstarter drive, Hickman explains that was “a pioneer in the telling of story through games”, and that he himself was inspired by another pioneer… named Richard Garriott.

Hickman also claims that “gameplay hasn’t changed that much for 30 years,” despite “quantum leaps” in graphics, sound and physics. Hickman is apparently so convinced by what Garriott is doing to finally change gameplay in Shroud of the Avatar that he has signed on for the ride, so maybe you should also?

(If you don’t though, it’s probably fine — they’re only $40,000 short of their goal and there’s still 20 days on the clock!)

Source: Shroud of the Avatar

Richard Garriott’s decision to use Kickstarter to fund his latest not-Ultima adventure has attracted some ire from gamers, who wondered why the multi-millionaire didn’t just stump up his own cash. Now, in an interview with RPS in which they bluntly asked him the same, he explained that it wouldn’t be possible to do that.

“In order to properly fund Shroud of the Avatar, we either needed to consider a publishing partnership with a large distribution partner, or go directly to the players,” Garriott said. “There were some games I made where our publisher forced us to ship before the product was finished and those results were never good, even though they had plenty of potential.”

“By going direct to the players, we can not only avoid becoming beholden to outside influences, but instead build a relationship directly with players, for whom we are building this game.”

In the same interview Garriott also discusses facets of the game, including how it can be played entirely offline if you so desire, and how it will likely be funded under a freemium model where players will purchase access to skill trees and the like via microtransactions. Take a read, or check out the Kickstarter if you haven’t already.

Source: RPS

Something that has become readily apparent over the last six or so month is that crowdfunding has become both the salvation and the refuge of “risky” gaming ventures. I use the term risky advisedly, hence the inverted commas. I don’t mean risky in terms of hard to achieve or of dubious legality, but rather those projects that are deemed too risky for major publishers to want to touch.

Games that aren’t either the first part in a leveragable franchise, or belong to a long standing and popular series, games that can’t be advertised in the most basic, brotastic terms with wonderful hyperbole and flashy screenshots boasting all of the pixels. These “risky” projects are the ones that get a handful of fans frothing at the mouth and get some games journos waxing lyrical about how they are the future of gaming.

Whilst I’m not quite ready to go that far, the resurgence of smaller, more personal and for me at least, far more interesting RPG projects rarely fails to put a smile on my face.

Another week, another Old-School Game Designer returns with a Kickstarter aimed at recapturing the glory days. This week it’s Richard Garriott, who wants to return to his “innovative early work” with a new old RPG in the vein of Ultima, this time under the name of Shroud of the Avatar (“Ultima”, of course, still being owned by EA).

This is, as you may remember, what Garriott was teasing with “Lord British Presents”, and the countdown timer has now ticked over to reveal a Kickstarter page, where Garriott is asking for $1 million to “reinvent the classic fantasy role-playing experience”. Shroud of the Avatar promises player housing, online or offline play, as well as a fully interactive world where “if it looks usable, it should do something.”

In the FAQ section, Garriott addreses the question of “Why PC?” as a lead platform: “Some people think that PC is an outdated platform, but to that I say not true! I have always been a PC developer, and there is something magical about sitting close to a large screen, seeing your world come to life. And the flexibility of using a keyboard and mouse is unmatched; though if you prefer to play with a gamepad on a PC, you can do that too!”

“For game development, the PC allows developers tremendous innovation and gives players the most choices as far as how they play,” says Garriott. “Although a great RPG can exist in many forms (even paper tape!), I firmly believe that the PC is the best platform for Shroud of the Avatar.”

Head over to the Kickstarter page to learn more. Pledging $30 or more gets you a copy of the game, with an estimated delivery of October next year.

If you head over to lordbritishpresents.com you’ll find a countdown timer, slowly ticking away until some time this Friday, where it will reveal… something.

Something Lord British/Richard Garriott themed, no doubt. What could it be?

Well, the man has been busy on Twitter, posting images like that one of a Stonehenge-like construction, and teasing “What waits beyond for Lord British?”, so my bet is on ‘some sort of new Kickstarter-funded RPG’.

You can enter your email address at the site to ‘receive breaking news from Lord British’ too, if that’s the sort of thing you enjoy. Stay tuned!

Source: Lord British Presents