Meta-ads and other kickstart considerations

 Hi everybody.

I started running ads for Nuna on Facebook. One week left in pre-launch.

The social media campaign is a mixed bag. Doing well on Facebook and blue sky, Twitter and email list are duds. Have to try and fix that in this last week of pre-launch.

What Is it like a kick starter? Some people only do that for six months to a year in advance with their team. Not me. Go look at Coyote and Crow, an example of a brilliantly executed kickstart campaign.

Some people do a little workshop in their house and line everything up by themselves and get it done in advance. Again not me that’s Ben Milton. And he kills it.

I have connected to lots of Indie designers. Some of them work a year in advance for the team and fail. Some of them slap it together by themselves and succeeded. So there’s a lot of luck involved.

I am leaning into my creative side, learning about marketing, and putting my passion out there. By kickstart followers alone, I could conceivably have half of what I need to fund. But that number is considered 25 to 40% off.

So this week I’m going to try and plug my holes and start kickstart off on the right foot with three weeks of half decent PR behind me.

I am still being a single father to a special-needs child.

I am still working some days, but also taking days off

Most importantly, I am still going for walks in the sunshine with sunny, exercising at night, eating right and slowly getting ready for the move to the West Coast

Wish me all the luck I wish you!

Tedankhamen

SUPER SCIENCE IN NUNA

So I’ve gone on long enough about Inuit, who are one of the pillars of Nuna. The other pillar is not just Iceships, but the whole retro-futurist super science that underlies them.

Labrador and all of Canada’s arctic has an element of this. The Pinetree Line was a series of geodesic dome radars strung across the North to detect Soviet air invasion. My father worked at one, and there are lots of strange (and NSFW) stories about them. But I remember as a child seeing the white geodesic domes outside Goose Bay standing out against the rocky hills and stunted spruce trees and being awed by their futuristic shapes.

The arctic has also been the site of superpower conflicts (and attendant accidents) as well. On the 22nd of May, 1968, a cabin fire forced a nuclear bomber crew to eject Over Thule Air Base in Greenland. They left the plane to crash with its nuclear payload onboard, and its B28FI thermonuclear bomb, second stage, was never recovered. In Labrador, a German U-boat has been found sunk in the Churchill River, 100 kilometers from the ocean. German officials confirmed U-boats did operate off the coast of Labrador, and also German intelligence did set up weather stations along the coast, many of which were never found.

All these are grist for the mill in Nuna.

SCIENTISTS

What we call scientists in Nuna are more like mad scientists from comics and old movies. They strut around in shiny suits with glass cowls, fly on (dangerously radioactive) thrones, and can perform miracles when they want. They are also mysterious and secretive, and have hidden agendas that would frighten the other inhabitants of the land if they knew of them. This makes them both envied and feared by the other inhabitants of Nuna. Inuit and Vikings want nothing to do with them, but Whalers guardedly embrace their technological support.

Once, Howard Hughes tried to make a giant claw to retrieve a sunken Soviet nuclear sub in the Pacific, but told the press he was interested in underwater mining. His claw failed and the vessel broke into pieces, spilling its deadly cargo onto the ocean floor.

THIS is the vibe of mad scientists in Nuna.

ICESHIPS

Michael Moorcock introduced the idea of Iceships in The Ice Schooner, but this romantic view of classic sailing ships on ice runners needs an update.

Instead, Nuna’s light Iceships are based on the solar sails of space exploration. Anyone can be trained to use one, but repair is the sole province of Scientists.

The heavy Iceships used by Whalers are based on Soviet nuclear icebreakers, but as they would exist had the USSR had another hundred years or so of technological advancement. Remember, for a short while they beat the West in the Space Race, and their heavy aircraft are still used today. The aesthetic is Super Science Soviet City Ship (try saying that ten times fast), with light Iceships milling about them for the hunt. Kind of like Gundam on ice…

TECHNOLOGY

There are basically three tiers of technology in Nuna. There is Inuit survival technology, which seems almost magical to the other groups. Then there is modern technology, used by Vikings and Whalers, with some upgrades for the post apocalypse. Finally, Scientists use super science, retro futuristic technology that does incredible things. For a price. And there’s always a price to be paid.

Nuna Open For Questions!

NUNA - The RPG of Inuit & Iceships, winner of the 2024 BRP Design Challenge, offers a very different gaming experience. What do you want to know about Nuna? Put your burning questions below, leave a like, follow on Kickstarter. Let's reach our Kickstarter goal together!

COMMUNITY vs HIERARCHY in RPGS

One thing I’ve noticed about fantasy RPGs is that they lean into hierarchy, that is, vertical power relations. This replicates the Great Chain of Being of the feudal era, with kings deriving power straight from god, and the entire social pyramid below them consisting of royals, nobles, craftsman, merchants, soldiers and peasants as you go down.

Inuit society has very little hierarchy, and what it does have comes up from below. A chief is only in power so long as the people trust his actions and decisions. Instead, community is what binds together Inuit, as it does with many indigenous societies.

In roleplaying terms, we try to avoid saying “I know…” or “Does my character know…” Instead, you would say, “I learned from my uncle that…” In Nuna, all knowledge is derived from connections to other people, for Inuit as well as Outsider characters. For Inuit characters, community is what gives them their ability to listen to the land, for Viking it lets them work steel and fight, and for whalers it lets them know the sea and the strange leviathans they hunt.

I am working on the mechanical and roleplaying underpinnings for this now. Going to be a different kind of BRP, with lots of flavour and ways to connect to the gameworld.

SANITY IN NUNA

In vanilla BRP (Call of Cthulhu), the Sanity mechanic is invoked with typical gothic horror elements. When you see a body, a ghost, or a monster, you throw dice. It is also extended to cosmic horror, which has a greater chance of driving you crazy.

Nuna will be different because Labrador is different.

In Labrador, as in Inuit communities all over the north, kids are brought into the hunt and its experience of death for life from a young age. I remember sitting with my nan when she peeled a rabbit my uncle had snared right in front of my eyes. I was holding a toy rabbit, and I cried and ran away at first.

A day of two later we would chat as she scaled fish, skinned hares, or chopped up caribou meat and bones. Within weeks I was doing it myself. It was all part of life, and I was brought into seeing how food (life) was produced out of hunting (death) with no holds barred.

(I consider this part of the reason I acclimated so well to Japan, which has a similar ethic)

The further you go up north, the closer people are to this aspect of life, and when eating things like frozen Arctic char or raw whale, expect kids as well as adults to get blood on their hands and faces.

So in this context seeing something dead loses its shock value.

Instead, Sanity in NUNA is tied to a great existential dread of the North - the fear of being left alone. As a youth, I heard so many story of locals as well as people from outsider going strange when they were lost. The wandering members of the American Hubbard expedition saw ghostly members of their family in their delirium, and many times I heard the story of local people stranded who saw will o the wisps or such other phenomenon when cut off.

But although getting lost may prey on the minds of Outsiders, it is less of a fear for Inuit. For them, I would consider the loss of Community to be a greater tragedy. In Labrador, fully 1/3 of the Inuit died due to the Spanish Flu pandemic, and the villages of Okak and Hebron were destroyed by the Spanish Flu, Hebron losing 86 or 100 residents and Okak losing 204 of 263 souls.

Can we imagine what a horror this must have been to live through? Only sole survivors of great tragedies like Titanic or a plane crash in wilderness could know the horror and trauma. Coincidentally, north Europeans a millenia ago knew this pain, and the Old English poem fragment The Wanderer retells this trauma in relatable terms.

“Often, every daybreak, alone I must
bewail my cares. There’s now no one living
to whom I dare mumble my mind’s understanding.
I know as truth that it’s seen suitable
for anyone to bind fast their spirit’s closet,
hold onto the hoards, think whatever — (8–14)

“Can a weary mind weather the shitstorm?
I think not.
Can a roiling heart set itself free?
I don’t think so.

Although we are playing a game, it is also a panoply of different worldviews. Call of Cthulhu is American gothic with a slice of Victorian prudishness, so death and ghosts are the drivers of fear. In Nuna as in Labrador, what could be scarier than being lost and alone in the endless woods, or losing one’s entire social support network in a single blow of fate?

Reference

Heritage NF. The 1918 Spanish Flu Epidemic.

https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/politics/1918-spanish-flu.php

Old English Poetry. The Wanderer.

https://oldenglishpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/the-wanderer/

3 QUESTIONS ABOUT NUNA THEMES, RULES, & HISTORY

Q: What is the theme of NUNA?

A: The theme of most other adventure RPGs is conquest. Fight the baddies, take their stuff. 

I ain’t knocking that! It has worked for countless other games and arguably brought us this great hobby.

But NUNA is different.

The watchwords of NUNA are COOPERATION and COMMUNITY.

There are still baddies to fight. Fenris wolves, borged bears, Qallupilluks, land leviathans, etc etc. Still useful gear to pick up. But you can only survive these encounters by cooperating with your diverse group and with support from your community. If you read the histories of Labrador, it is all stories of people helping people, mixing and mingling and strengthening one another.

Then there are the communities, that come together in time of need, or else need saving .

Q: How will the rules compare to vanilla BRP?

A: It is past time to say a word about my plans for NUNA’s rules. I have three guiding principles.

CLASSIC - Take some of that old magic, atmospheric Chaosium stuff and update it. See my blog (Tomb of Tedankhamen) to see what I’ve done with Stormbringer.

MODERN - Take the best modern mechanics of the latest BRP iteration. CoC 7E I’m looking at you and some others.

UNIQUE - Add innovative rules that evoke setting and a style of play. The Community and Social mechanics and Cultural abilities fit in here.

It will also be MODULAR as not al players will have the time and interest to game regularly and build a community. For them, casual play options are a must.

All this must be playtested thoroughly. Very looking forward to this rigorous process!

HISTORY OF NUNA

Q: How long have you been working on NUNA?

A: Looking at my blog, where most of my ideas get worked out, my first reference to it is 2013. At the time, I envisaged an OSR retroclone style game. I started making notes in a Google doc, but as I grew disenchanted with retroclones and drifted back towards BRP, my ideas shifted towards using Chaosium’s engine.

Now I just have to whip all those ideas and scribblings into an appealing shape.

Blog Backgrounding Under Media Blitz

So I have switched gears over to Kickstarter and social media for the duration.

Pre-launch is ON until the 22nd. Then you have 3 weeks to pull the trigger and get in on this.

KICKSTARTER LINK IS HERE!

(If this game succeeds, next game is The Weird in Japan)

Choose Your Poison!!

(Facebook) NUNA The roleplaying game of Inuit & Iceships on Facebook

For longform fiction, releases and discussion

(Twitter) @nuna_rpg

For short snippets & news flashes

(Email for Notifications) nunathelandrpg@gmail.com

I am very stoked to have the chance to make this game a reality. Very excited to get my (and your) grubby mitts on this corebook, but ready for the 9 months maximum I figure it'll take to bring to fruition from my reams of notes and ideas.

OK, here is an oldie of great grandfather Gilbert Blake, rescuer of the remnants of the doomed Hubbard Expedition of 1903!