7 Reasons TO Back Story Realms on Kickstarter...and a Giveaway!

Alright, we're down to the last week of the Story Realms Kickstarter Project. ONLY 7 DAYS LEFT!  To help convince anyone who is still on the fence about pledging, we are going to present 7 reasons why Story Realms is worth backing on Kickstarter.  To celebrate, reach out to more people, and go out with a bang, we are also running a giveaway where you can win up to $150 in games prizes.  Details of the giveaway are below, but the first step is to read this post.  Let’s get started!

Story Realms is a cooperative storytelling game that lets gamers of all ages go on grand adventures in about an hour.  One players plays as the storyteller and helps run the game and unfold the amazing story.  The rest of the players play as heroic versions of themselves called to a storybook world of magic and mystery.

Kickstarter is a crowd-funding site that lets you help decide what new creative products get turned into a reality.  By backing the Kickstarter at least at the $40 level you get a copy of the Story Realms (and a lot more stuff if you back at higher levels.)  In addition, you get to help ensure not only that this game gets made, but that it comes out in the most amazing form possible.  You help us make the game even better, and help us ensure we can keep making great games!  

1. Story Realms is Fun and Engaging for All Ages

Story Realms will let you connect with your family and friends in a way that will create meaningful and lasting memories.  The adventures you go on and the stories you help tell stick with you long after the game.  It's not just kids that love this game.  Kids and adults have played it and had a wonderful time together.  We wanted a game adults would be excited to play with the family, friends, kids, or whoever they wanted to connect and tell stories with.  Imagination and simple mechanics play heavily into the game so it’s easy for kids to enjoy.  However, there are enough complex elements to dig into for adults to enjoy as well.  The game’s stories explore themes like doubt, loss, honoring the past, accepting change, and facing fears in addition to themes of heroism and high adventure.  There are puzzles to solve, truths to uncover, and lots of powers and artifacts to discover along the way.

2. Story Realms Has an Elaborate Storybook Setting

Story Realms adventures take place in the magical world of Storm Hollow.  It is the land where every story you’ve ever heard about has happened.  It weaves together classic literature, fairy tales, folklore, and ancient mythology.  A boy named Jack wandered into Storm Hollow long ago and defeated a giant by cutting a beanstalk.  Face this giant yourself, if you dare, when you are your friends arrive with newfound heroic powers.  Follow in the footsteps of Alice and face off against the frumious Bandersnatch.  Wield the Cudgel of Hercules or the Fairy Godmother’s wand.  Witness the brass towers and mad machinery of the city of Venture.  Step into the sky and visit the Sagestone Academy floating high about the Soaring Stones.  See the abundant magic and beauty of the Fairy Bloom.  Sail the Starfall Deeps or plunge into the Nightmare Marrow deep within the Shadow Lands.  Storm Hollow holds more stories than even Scheherazade could tell.  It has so many strange lands that even Gulliver couldn’t discover them all.  

3. Backing the Kickstarter is the Best Deal You’ll Ever Get

While the game will be coming out in from your local game retailers, the price you’re getting on the Kickstarter is probably the best price you’ll get for the game.  The final MSRP hasn’t been locked in, but it’s likely to be higher than the Kickstarter pledge levels.  Shipping is included, with heavily discounted international shipping rates. Game Salute (our publishing partner) does not have plans to distribute the game through deep-discount online retailers.  In addition, if you back the Kickstarter at the $100 Level (that’s $25 dollars more than the big box of Story Realms) you get all of the Bazaar items ($60 Value) and all of the stretch goals that we can unlock!

4. Story Realms Comes With a Ton of Awesome Art and Incredible Components

No matter which level you choose, we've done our best to give you the absolute best value for your buck. If you pledge high enough to get the big deluxe box that include Preludes and the Pieces of a Broken World Campaign you will be getting a seriously massive pile of storytelling goodness. This is the game how we wanted it to be, full of quality components that will support you through countless adventures!  A full component list is available on theKickstarter page, but here are some of the highlights.  You get 6 double-sided hero boards that have male and female art for every hero you can play.  There are 2 illustrated game boards: a map of the world of Storm Hollow and a detailed map of Venture, city of innovation and wonder.  There are 21 custom dice, 6 custom meeples, and 49 gems.  You get the Poppin’s Guide to Storm Hollow, a storybook style world guide that describes Storm Hollow, its people, its history, every location in stunning detail, and contains dozens of short fiction stories to read for entertainment.  The game contains over 120 tarot-sized cards with full art fronts and info on the back to describe the allies, enemies, locations, and scenes you will see while playing, as well as idea starters for creating your own adventures.   There are over 180 illustrated Power, Artifact, and Adventuring Kits cards for customizing your hero.  Beyond the basic rules, the game includes tips for being a great storyteller, 13 pre-made adventures, 20 pre-made challenges for easily making your own adventures, and rules for an extra scenario that lets you play a more traditional style cooperative board game (with no storyteller required).

5. Story Realms Makes Storytelling Fun and Not Scary

Story Realms is a fantastic introduction to storytelling games for players that are new to this style of game.  If you are a longtime RPG fan that wants to get your family or casual game friends to play, this is the game for you.  If you’ve wanted to try your hand at storytelling but have been too afraid, this is the game for you.    If you are a parent or teacher that wants to help your kids learn how to be great storytellers, this is the game for you.  If you are a family that wants to play a game that will create lasting memories of a unique experience, this is the game for you.  Story Realms supports you a as storyteller with a simple 3 scene structure for the hook, rising action, and big climax for every story.  Art for every character, enemy, challenge and scene makes it easy to describe the world to the players, while still leaving a lot of room for imagination.  Story Realms supports its player’s storytelling by encouraging creativity and problem solving.  Every challenge has multiple ways it can be approached and solve.  Every player has the freedom to contribute fun ideas to the story.

6. There Are Some Exciting Stretch Goals to Unlock

If you’ve looked at the Kickstarter, you may have noticed that we have already reached our funding goal.  So why do we still need your support?  Well, there are a lot of really cool stretch goals we’d like to reach.  Stretch goals are funding targets that will allow us to give the backers extra goodies or do upgrades to the entire game. The more stretch goals we reach, the more we can pass along to our supporters! If we can reach all of our stretch goals, we get to vastly expand the game by providing more artifacts, more powers, more lore cards, more challenges and 2 entirely new adventures that take place in the amazing fantasy and steampunk inspired city of Venture.  We can add an entire landmarks expansion that gives an entirely new kind of lore card and new kind power for the players to explore.  Finally, we can upgrade the game to include beautifully hardbound books that will stand up to the test of time. We are confident there is enough game and world here for you to enjoy for years to come, so we really want to be able to make these gorgeous books a lasting treasure.

7. Story Realms is Infinitely Replayable

Once you have Story Realms, you can play it forever and never have the same experience twice.  The big box comes with 13 adventures.  If we reach high enough on stretch goals we get to give you 2 more.  That’s 15 times playing for about an hour before you run out of pre-made stories.  Then there are 20 pre-made challenges in the box and 8 more we can add if we stretch high enough for helping you to create your own adventures.  Once you’ve got a good feel for how adventures go, you’ve got hundreds of Lore Cards and Scene Cards and dozens of examples of mechanics so that you can build your own adventures from scratch.  Of course, if you back the project, you’ll also be ensuring that Story Realms is successful enough that we can provide you even more tools and more pre-made adventures to pick up down the line.  With all these fantastic tools and just a little bit of imagination you can create your own stories and play Story Realms into infinity.  

There's an incredible world out there to discover.

And Now…The Giveaway!

Alright, you’ve read 7 Reasons To Back Story Realms on Kickstarter. Now we want your help to spread the word.  All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this blog post with your favorite reason to back Story Realms.  You can earn additional entries into the giveaway by promoting the Story Realms Kickstarter across websites and social media.  Post a comment and link to the Story Realms Kickstarter on Facebook, Twitter, message boards, forums, and wherever else you can think of.  List where you’ve promoted Story Realms in the comment you leave and you will earn an extra entry for each and every one. Please don't be spammy, we just want to make sure as many people as possible have a chance to find out about this campaign. This is our big finish, and we want to give something back to our supporters, and really close this campaign strong. With your help, anything is possible! At the close of the Kickstarter in 7 days, we will do drawing to find out who wins.  

The Grand Prize Winner will be awarded $150 in Game Salute store credit to buy whatever Game Salute Games that you want.  3 Runners Up will win $50 in Game Salute store credit.

 UPDATE: 6 Days Left! Here's the games prizes we've added to the giveaway to celebrate reaching 500 backers on Kickstarter!!!

2x Carnival w/ Sideshow Expansion

2x Farmageddon w/ Grumpy Melon Seed Pack

1x Super Showdown w/ Kickstarter Cards

1x Lines of Fire w/ Kickstarter Extras

1x Dead Fellas w/ Kickstarter Cards

1x Creatures w/ Kickstarter Cards

Also, if you play the Print and Play adventure Den of Darkness from the Kickstarter page, or played the game any other way (playtest, demos at conventions, etc) you can get THREE EXTRA bonus entries by taking the time to write a session report, preview, blog post, or first impression of Story Realms and linking to it here in the comments! (If you've already done so, just tell us where!) Keep sharing!

 Check back daily because we will be posting a new blog post every day for the next 7 days and giving updates on the giveaway (we may have some extra surprises in store!)  One thing we will be sharing at the end of each post are some examples of games you can get from the Game Salute Store, so you can learn more about some amazing games out there!

 Game Salute is dedicated to bringing you the latest and greatest in games! They’ve partnered up with lots of innovative game design studios to bring these titles to local games shops and to ship directly to you! Although the Story Realms Kickstarter is still running, many other great games have already hit their funding goals and are now available for preorder through Game Salute. 

7 Successfully Kickstarted Games You Can Preorder When You Win! 

(Descriptions taken from the Kickstarter project pages)

Zpocalypse: Zpocalypse is a survival board game set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Two to four players start in a basement/fallout shelter which can lead out to several base locations or even through the tunnels to sewer grates throughout the  transformable board. Their survivors are trying to make it day to day in a world torn apart from the walking dead. The game combines combat, resource collecting, character development, team play, and strategy towards the goal of surviving in the Zpocalypse!

Island Fortress: Island Fortress is a board game about building a mighty fortress on a harsh and unforgiving island colony populated by rough laborers and hardened convicts. You are among the courageous few who try to use the combined power of these workers to raise a truly impressive stronghold.

Gunship: First Strike is a tactical space combat game that uses Boards, Cards and Dice together in an innovative and exciting way.  Each player builds a custom Gunship, choosing Weapons and Armor placement to suit his tactics.   The Objective is the total destruction of the enemy Assault Carrier.  Guess what? They have the very same orders!  Engage in Dogfights and Strafing Runs with your Fighter Squadron and use your Gunship's Torpedoes and Bombs to pummel the enemy Carrier (if you survive the Defense Cannon barrage!)

Titans of Industry: This inventive worker placement game set in the 1920s lets you buy factories and businesses, produce goods, and sell them for victory! It is the 1920s, a time of much industrial building and growth. In this board game, you must invest in building factories and businesses, in order to produce goods and sell them to gain victory points. It is a delicate balance of money, production, and goals. The person who can best manage their buildings and meet their goals in 7 turns will win.

Viva Java: In VivaJava, players send their researchers to hot spots around the globe to gather the perfect bean. This may bring them into contact with other players who are also on the hunt, creating a crucial choice: Go it alone and continue to research, or join forces with that opponent, hoping to combine beans from both player's bags and share the score with a superblend. Going it alone with research can often prove useful as players spend time in the lab developing abilities that grant them an advantage. However, in VivaJava the bold taste of victory will go only to those players who are able to balance solitary research with cooperation amongst their fellow gamers.

Kings of Air and Steam: Kings of Air and Steam is a pickup/deliver and route planning style game set in a steampunk setting.  Players become one of 12 characters piloting an airship to gather goods from factories and then delivering them to cities via their network of railroads. Build up your business as a shipping magnate, and become the next King (or queen) of Air and Steam.

Heroes of Metro City: Be the Hero -- defeat the Archenemy before Metro City is destroyed! Choose your own combination of super-power cards as you play. Each player represents a super-powered Hero of their own design who must stop their Archenemy’s nefarious plan to destroy Metro City. To succeed, the Heroes must do battle with hordes of Minions, diabolical Villains, and the Archenemy who leads them! The more Energy and Powers a Hero develops, the closer they get to defeating their Archenemy. But time is running out! For every moment the Heroes delay, the forces of evil destroy more of the city the Heroes are trying to save.