Jace chats with co-creator of the Winds of Numa Sera, Morgan Rosenblum about the Kickstarter campaign for the board game based on the Dark Horse Original Graphic Novel. Morgan chats about the various iterations of the game as it has gone through development. He explains the multiple win conditions and other attributes of the game that make it infinitely replayable. Plus, he shows off some of the special items that you can only get with the Kickstarter version of the game. The funding goal has been met, so bid with confidence knowing that you will have a great game to play with family and friends over and over.
The Comic Source Podcast
Winds of Numa Sera Kickstarter Spotlight
[Music] Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of The Comic Source. I'm your host, Jayce, crowdfunding episode here, a little bit different. The actual campaign is for a board game, but it's based on a comic graphic novel. It's really a rich world. I have one of the co-creators joining me to talk about it. Morgan Rosenblum, "Winds of New Macera" is the campaign. I'll start off by congratulating you initial goal of 10,000, and it's raised $129,466. So far so clearly you have hit on something that people are interested in. So give us an idea of the world, of what the "Winds of New Macera" is about, and then we can get into some specifics of the mechanics of the board game. For sure. So it's similar to a Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones simply in the sense of you competing, you know, some different races, all the different cultures and backstories and unique histories that we curated and designed. And then the story in the book itself follows several different characters, like primarily four, which is why we also decided to do it as like the four kingdoms, but they're all from like different walks of life. So it's not just like, this is the king and the king and the king and the queen and the queen. From each area it's this one, we follow like a poor stable boy that gets framed for murder, a baron's daughter who's like father bent the knee, and then she lost her sort of like lineage and ability to become a knight, because in like the main world women are not allowed to serve and stuff. And then you have this like young orphaned empress who's like the last of her line, trying to hold on to a very fragile kingdom and being manipulated by like a bunch of different puppeteering advisors, like in politicians. And then you have the marinine, which are like the cat people that we've modeled after Thundercats, who have like sort of like lost, they've lost the Great War and are now reeling in their slaves in a different city and stuff. So this was a story that has like a lot of different aspects to it. It's a much larger narrative because it bounces around perspectives. And so like a protagonist in one storyline is the antagonist in another, which is kind of neat. So the main theme behind the story is history is written by the victors. And so kind of the underlying messaging behind that really is that like the narrative that we may think we know may not be the sole truth or the truth at all. Right? So the victors get to sort of craft the story that they want for the histories to be remembered by. So don't lose. And then when we've been making, so this all started as a crowdfunding project. We launched the graphic novel on Kickstarter several years. I don't know, like we started writing it probably in 2018 or 2019 or something like that. Me and my childhood best friend. When I say childhood best friend, Johnny, I've known. I'm 39. I've known him all 39 years. Like our parents met in La Maas class. We popped out of our moms' wombs being best buds and growing up just being super like imaginative and embracing the Internet. And you know, eventually started creating our own stories together. We had always wanted to make a really cool medieval fantasy story that was inspired by some of the things that like, you know, we fell in love with growing up. And when's it been, we spent just like a fully, almost a full year just on like the culture crafting and world building before we started following any like actual narrative journeys on anyone. And then once we were like sort of finishing the graphic novel and starting to people, we started getting feedback like, yo, this needs to be a game, like a video game or a board game. We've done some work on video games and know how expensive that can be. And we've always loved board games and played board games, but it never made one. And we had all this like art work. So we're like, well, that would probably be more doable, the board game. And so we started like looking into making a board game and made a really come did it all along in the very beginning, right? Like five years ago and made it like look great first, but the mechanics were meh. And we brought it around to different conventions, had it like play tested and we got some initial feedback, which was like, this game isn't very fun. So we were like, all right, well, how would you, what don't you like about it? What did you like where? And so we just kind of reinvented it and consulted with the right game creators that had done this before and really kind of helped us out as well as like the play testers and did that for five years and just iterated, iterated, retested it. And until finally, the main feedback we were getting was when can we get this, like, I need to buy this now. We were like, okay, we're finally there. And then we just launched it on Kickstarter. So I think the reason it's done so well is because we put in the work, like people knew about the game for a while because a is based on the graphic novel. So we already had that established, even though it's sort of like a niche following, it's not like super mainstream. It's not like a dark souls adaptation or something like that, which everyone knows the dark souls video game. And then when the board game came out, it was like, yeah, well, this was more like, oh, I didn't even know about the graphic novel, but there was enough people that knew about this. And we're highly anticipating it. So part of our marketing really helped us so that by the time we launched it, like everyone had known about it, that we wanted to know about it and jump on it. So, yeah, we've been fortunate to have like our super successful campaign and we still got one full week left. We're offering like some really cool exclusive items that you won't be able to get after the fact, like best pricing you'll get because if and when this goes to retail, like, it's going to cost a little bit more in the retail market than it will. So we're getting in at the Kickstarter level, plus there's like special versions of the game and cards that you can only get during Kickstarter. So, you're interested, check it out now. Yeah, a link in the show to everybody to go and check it out. And I wanted to have Morgan on a lot sooner than this. It was because I had COVID. We had to delay. So, yeah, apologize. There's only a week left. But if you're listening to this before the 16th, you have time. Again, go click the link in the show. Let's go and check it out. Like Morgan said, the artwork is absolutely fantastic. You know, super rich, a lot of sort of diversity, you know, in what your choices, who you want to play, you know, which not only what faction you want to play, but what character you want to play within that faction and what have you. As far as the actual gameplay, Morgan, can you give us some examples of maybe some comparisons to other games that people might be familiar with? Like what is the actual kind of mechanics of the game? What does it kind of feel like? So, again, it's two to four players. It's what's referred to as a kingdom builder or engine builder. So, you control one of four kingdoms and each kingdom comes with like a trio of heroes that you will get to sort of set as a line of success. So, think of it as like a lineage and you can organize the order of which they get to be played as. So, you can't play as the next one unless the current king or queen is slain or dies. So, that's sort of part of the fun and the strategy of it. And there's multiple win conditions, which is also neat, which means that everyone isn't just trying to get to one victory condition or one way to win. You can win by being the best conqueror in the lens. You can win by being the best sort of hand-to-hand combat hero and it's called a champion victory. The conqueror victory is obvious to the conquering strongholds. Champion is slaying other heroes and then there's the legendary or the legend victory, which is you've unlocked a bunch of class titles. It's like from, it's a jack-of-all-trades type of win condition where just by doing a little bit of everything, you've amassed a bunch of reputations throughout your rule that puts you into the history books of Ethera. And then the last one is Master, where you can focus on a single skill and just develop it as far to like max out on it and you become like the world's best martial artist or the world's best farmer or the world's best blacksmith. There's like five different ones you can pick and that you can see it all the way through. So you don't have to win on a battle-based victory. You can win on knowledge-based and things like that. So it's a game that really offers you a whole lot of freedom, but it's extremely interactive. So it's two to four players, but everyone seems to think that more people you get to play it, the more like crazy fun it gets because one of the things we really wanted to make sure this game did is it made you feel like you were actually like a ruler and that like in particular, right? So trading or negotiating is one of the functions of the game. It's one of the things you can do during your turn. You can be like, "Hey, will you give me two coins so that I can buy this armor and what you want on exchange?" So you can kind of trade off your assets or you can promise actions or lack of action. I can say, "If you give me two coins, I won't attack you until you're on your last hero." Now, the cool thing about the game is you do not have to honor that trade, right? At first, we were like, "Should you be forced to?" And then we were like, "But in real life, if you would barter some peace treaty with someone else, you could betray them, but then all the other neighboring kingdoms, aka the other players that were playing with you, would be like, "Don't trust that guy. He's bringing this word." And so we thought that was kind of cool. So you could strategically kind of wait to break your word until you're on like the very end of the game or whatever, or not at all. But it really creates that thematic play and that kind of take that effect. It's got to play a player versus player element to it. So you can be like in your own little zones, turtling up, trying to just build, build, build. But other players may say, "Yeah, not so fast. I'm going to come and attack you." So because you're getting too wealthy and smart just by focusing on your forces. So we always say it's like plan to prevail, adapt to survive, rise to be remembered. So you may have a plan that you want to execute, but things will affect that plan, forcing you to kind of shift and change. And then ultimately, it's like how you react to the certain circumstances that allows you to rise and win the game by being the first race. It's the first one to achieve any of the four victory conditions wins the game. So the turns are pretty fast. It's got that RPG type vibe because you can get tons and tons of equipment. So like equipped to your hero, you can level the hell up. Like skill points, every faction also has like a unique skill tree or tech tree. So like you can build up and like, they're all different. They all play differently. One faction might be better at attacking other heroes, but really bad at defending. One might be really good at earning money every time they build. Another one might be really good at like scavenging for items and things like that. So we really made each one feel unique. And if you've read the graphic novel, Jase, it'll definitely heighten the experience. But because you'll be like, Oh my God, these characters play like they feel in the story, but you don't have to read it to play the game at all. Like it stands on it's uncomfortly. Yeah, it sounds like, you know, based on the number of options, you know, both, you know, how you set up your, your three heroes, you know, which faction you choose for that matter, or which, you know, wink and issue you might be going for, which probably can change mid game if things, you know, don't go the way that you initially planned. It just sounds like there's a lot of like ability to replay, like play and play again, and it never feels like the same old thing, right? Like, and don't get me wrong, there are games that are funny. Like, okay, I'm going to play Uno. It's the same rules. It's the same game, you know, every time that can be fun. But also it's like, man, how many times can I play Uno in my life before? It's like, all right, been there, done that, you know. But it sounds like this. Again, there's just so many options that it just seems infinitely kind of replayable. Is that some of the feedback that you've received? Like people can't wait to play and then I can't wait to play it again and try something different. Once we got it right, like I mentioned this earlier, when we started, there was only one victory condition and like the replayability was like, man. And then once we, by the end of it, the replayability got so good where we had play testers literally just coming back the next day or like later with a different group of friends that they like told about that went to the convention with them that they met up with. And they're like, oh, this is the game. It's like, yeah, and then they just so that they could play with different factions or the same one, but in different orders. Because even playing is the same faction twice. Like you can make different choices throughout. You can organize your heroes differently. You can focus on different things. You can go down different routes of like the, the tech trees. So like every single kingdom, all four of them come with like this, this cool kingdom mat, right, that folds up and it's a dry erase so that it makes it really easy to kind of keep track of your stats. And it all tells you like what they're good at in a simple paragraph. Like these guys are really good at conquering, but they're also kind of good at this stuff too. And then it it on the other side of it, it shows you like their tech tree. So like just like in a video game, right? Like you can level up, but you can't get to the best stuff until you've unlocked all the other stuff beforehand. And every single one of them is fully different, right? And the other cool thing that we did as well is like we also recently introduced these little miniatures. So like we wanted to have a fun way of making, so like this is obviously the rooster, like is their sigil. So we wanted to make it feel like if you were placing, like you were going to, you know, like send your forces to a different kingdom to attack. So you use these guys pretty much place on top of the cards you're designated as an attack to like really give it that like, you know, I'm a reward general leading, like sending my forces over to the south and each one of them matches like their kingdom, which is neat. There's the snake one is the last one. Yeah, those are fantastic. Super cool. And we want it like we could have just done like people like little miniatures, but we thought it'd be kind of neat if it kind of felt different from what else was out there. And so like these at some point, we might just make a whole chess set of these things. Right, with like all the different kingdom pieces. We thought that'd be really cool. And like as a other thing. And then we even like, like the level of detail in this world building like these custom coins. So that's like the logo. Right. But on the opposite side is like gold, sun, silver, moon, and then like we have copper earth. The cool little battle die. This one's pretty bad. So I don't know if you can see this, but inside there are skulls. Oh, that's awesome. Right. And they're all on no two dice are the same. So like there might be like three or two and some versus others and they all kind of like fit in different positions and just like whatever they landed in the mold. But it's supposed to they're called it's called the blood soap skills battle die. And there's there's six numbers on here. It's not a typical D six. It's like one, two, three, four, five, six. It's minus three minus two minus one plus one plus two plus three. So there's like a 50 50 chance that you're you have to roll this during battle as and it'll add to whatever your baseline status. So it's like if you if your hero starts the game and has like, you know, for attack in a one defense when you're on attack, you're going to go in four plus or minus whatever you roll here. Right. Right. And then you also get a chance to like the third aspect of battle is you can add a battle card, which is like, sometimes this one is like sell sort. So you're like recruiting help for 10 gold or 10 capital that will bolster your forces by this one says if you deal any damage to your opponent and double it. And if you would lose power habit rounding up. So like, there's cool ways to manipulate this little thing. And you can get certain items and artifacts that will literally say like treat all numbers on the battle die as positive. So if you roll the line, it's actually a plus three. So it's all cool ways for you to feel like your manipulate like luck plays a role and randomness earlier on in the game. But the better you get at it, the more you can manipulate your luck, which is really fun for us. And I think players in general, but to answer your question, yes, the replay ability's been great. That's probably one of the best things about our game is that people just want to keep playing it and playing it again. Like, and we got it so balanced where if someone starts to pull away, the game seems to find a good way for everyone else to kind of catch up because you can make alliances with other weaker players to like stop the guy that's getting close. So we found this, this sort of nice, happy medium where everyone always seems like I would have had you if I had one more turn, which is a great feeling that Yeah, well, okay, I was one turn away. I could have won. Yeah, let's play again. I know this time they get you. Yeah, exactly. And the games are fairly short. I mean, if you look at the table presence of it, people think it's like this heavy game. I want to say heavy, not like physically heavy, but like, you know, very complex, but it's actually like a pretty, it's been rated as like a light to medium weight game. There's just like a lot of custom customizations to a lot of intricacies, intricacies, but like, so you'll learn it after two quick turns. You're like, I'll get it. Not only that, but like even on the Kingdom boards themselves, it tells you what to do during your turn. So you don't even have to keep going back to the rule book. You just go through this checklist. It's like, okay, start a turn axis. Next, I have to explore. Okay, part of your turn, you're always exploring. So you have to draw like sort of like from a chance deck and it's like encounters. It's like what happens. And you might find something good. You might find like like an item or artifact. You might find something bad. Like while you were camping, you were attacked by raiders. But we also added choices to all those. So it can be like, you know, either give up to capital or give up to life points, you know, or something like that. So you're always like making decisions as far as like lesser of two evils, even in bad situations, which is something that we learned from players. They were like, yeah, it sucks when something bad happens. And I still feel like I had no choice over the matters of random. So we're like, cool, if something bad happens, we still give them a choice. Right? So like, what do you want? Even if something good happens, you found a treasure chest. Now you can either take in five gold or you can take in 10, but everyone else also gets five. Yeah. What do you want to do? Right? So it gives you that nice, like balance of cool. I get it. My choices matter, but I'm not. I don't have like decision paralysis. I'm like, I don't know what to do. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, as I said, everybody, it's already been fully funded. So, you know, if you back, you're going to get it. What's the timeframe Morgan? What do you hope and have this in people's hands? We said may, but it might wind up being suited in that. Like the game's fully done, which is great. So like the bullet point or just kind of like time code, the key milestones, Kickstarter ends this coming Friday, right 16th, August 16th, then we open up the pledge manager. So like, that gives people a small window that may have missed the Kickstarter to still try to get in before we put in our print order. The manufacturers and then, you know, during that window, we're also like just doing one final round of proof reading and things like that, just to make sure everything is great and then testing all the prototypes one last time. Luckily for us, like the version that we've displayed and sent out to reviewers and stuff is the final version. So it's just a matter of like doing our like final checks, you know, to make sure that everything is perfect. And then it goes to production, I think, in like October or November. And then at that point, it takes a couple of months to actually manufacture, you know, the thousands of pieces and game units. And then it goes on to like the shipping hubs around the world. I think those, those arrive in like March. And then it goes to people. If we can get it to people sooner, we will absolutely like we just want to make sure that we're not rushing for the sake of rushing and then missing some stuff. But this game is done, it's definitely like this is not our first rodeo. It's my third or my fourth Kickstarter. And we've fulfilled all of our orders before. This is definitely our biggest one, but we also have a lot more partners now, like we're more seasoned. So like we made sure that we have like our distribution partners and manufacturing partners and everything already set up and ready to roll. So we're ready. Yeah, so all that everybody to say you can bid with confidence. Again, there's about a week left as I'm releasing this. I really wanted it to get it sooner, but you know, life happens. But definitely go and check it out. There's a link in the show notes and I'll mention as I always do, because I mean for a board game, especially one with this amount of replayability, it's very affordable. It's, you know, base game is $60. Plus, again, like Morgan said, there's a chance that this will be in stores at a later date, but it won't be this version with all these add-ons, stretch goals, that kind of thing. So the value is really there. But that being said, maybe this sounds like it's right up your alley, you would love to join, but you just don't have the means. We get it, we understand times are tough for everybody right now. The other way you can help out, you know, not that they need to hit the stretch goal, because like I said, they already have. But help out your fellow gamers, help out anybody else you think might be interested. And it does help out the campaign because, you know, even though it's already funded, you know, the more funding, the higher profile gets more eyes on it. You know, the better chance there can be a sequel and that kind of thing. Yeah, that's the other part, not even just for the board game. So if we have expansions planned already, but like, exactly, if we can eclipse like 200,000, at that point, we can start putting money that we make on top of that back into the graphic novel, the continue volume too. So like, the graphic novel is what started everything for me. We, Johnny and I wrote it as a three part, like as a trilogy, right? So the first book is 224 pages and it's chunky and it's good, but it's just the, by the end of it, we've had a lot of people say like, oh, man, I'm just getting into it now. You just like started getting into the character like, now I need more. And we've always planned for the rest of it, but making a graphic novel is also very expensive. So, you know, I saw like a Reddit article out there was like, this guy just cares about like making a one and done and going out of the next thing. I'm like, no, you couldn't be more wrong. Like, I have a tattoo of that purple chick. You see her right on your screen, like on my arm at the very top or whatever. But anyway, like, I'm all in on this series and it's just that we like, unfortunately, we don't have a whole lot of financing. Even the 128,000 that you're looking at right there, you're like, oh, they're crushing it. Yeah, we are crushing it. But do you have any idea how much it costs to like make this game, pay the artist go to convention tours to like where we had to see flights and dead hotels and rent booths and stuff like that. Hey, consultants to get their feedback proof readers artists. We paid it. We've been working with the best artists. There's no AI using our game, right? So like these things cost a whole lot of money and I would love nothing more than to keep going on the same IP and the same thing. But like as a way to hopefully kind of grow it, where we, you know, we do this sort of trans media approach where we are like, okay, we started as a graphic novel that appeals to, you know, comic readers and graphic novels. But now there's another group of people in the board of gaming space that, you know, this world would serve very well to be turned into a game. We create that and then hopefully that also now has been bringing more light back on over to the graphic novel. So for example, the collector's edition, which is a Kickstarter exclusive, comes with the graphic novel, right? So like that and we have to buy those graphic novels from Dark Horse, which in turn helps our sales. So we're taking like a less profit margin, but we're fine with that because it counts towards the Dark Horse sales, which hopefully will help lead to them being like, cool, we want to order the second volume in the series, you know. Yeah. Yeah. All is connected. So if you want to back this project, A, you're going to the three things you're going to get the best pricing you will get. You'll get it before any retail market. So if you're like, I'll just wait until it comes out in the retail market. Okay, you're going to be waiting a lot longer and you're going to have to pay more. And the other thing is like you can, if you really are big comics fans and you like the original graphic novel, helping the, you know, backing the board game Kickstarter will actually in turn help the funding ultimately for the graphic novel. Yeah. And again, everybody, we understand if you just don't have the means as much as you would love to partner up with some friends, you know, go in, you know, two or three of you, and then you can lower your costs that way. Or, you know, again, maybe you just can't make it work. The other way you can help out is just share it on social media. But, you know, your gamer friends know that your comic book fan friends know, hey, there's just, you know, amazing game with in this world of the wings of numerous era graphic novel. It really sounds great. Here, go and check it out. Just spread the word because again, there's a very limited time left and we want to be sure that anybody who wants to be able to join the campaign and has the means to join the campaign has the opportunity. Because it's always the worst when you find out something that you would love to have been a part of the Kickstarter campaign and get that kind of initial exclusive version, but the Kickstarter is over. Either way, on that note, so because we understand someone's seeing this for the first time now, I'd be like, crap, I already spent my budget for this month or I'd already, you know, I don't have the paycheck for it. You can get in for a dollar, like literally a dollar that gives you access to the pledge manager, which will remain open a little bit after, like, maybe a month after the Kickstarter campaign concludes. With giving you the ability to upgrade later. So, like, put in the book now, if you're, like, kind of unsure, worst case, like, okay, you, like, spend a dollar, I think you guys can get over that. And then, best case, it's like, cool, now it buys you more time to then, like, upgrade to another version later, find, like, you were saying, just get some other friends on board to, like, kind of, get in on a package deal or whatever to get the game. But this is definitely something that I think, like, even for, like, casual gamers, you will love. Like, I, when we were testing it, we've had people of, like, you know, like, three generations, the grandparent, the parent, and then the kids, like, all playing together and getting it and liking it, you know, and then, like, having a blast. And, um, that was cool to see, right? Because, like, we weren't sure that would work, right? And it was like, oh, it does work like that, too. So, you know, it's designed for, we always say 12 and up, because, you know, it's, I think a 10-year-old could probably figure it out, but just to be, it's not, like, geared towards, like, little kids, what do you mean? I like writing mature storylines, you know, games, but it's not like our raid or anything like that. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, one dollar gets you in pretty much, and you can do that, and then decide later if you want to, like, upgrade to a different version of the game after the fact. But try to get that in before the Kickstarter campaign, otherwise, you might miss out on the Kickstarter exclusives. Yeah. And that will also give you access, by the way, to the better pricing. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I'll carry on with you. Yeah, so, again, everybody, link in the show. Let's go. Just take a few minutes to go and check it out. Again, the artwork's fantastic. The game looks amazing. You have until the 16th. Um, so, yeah, like, Morgan said, it's a fantastic idea. Go and just, you know, pledge the one dollar, and then later, um, you know, go get a chance to talk to your friends, or have you go in, get your next paycheck, whatever it might be. So, definitely go and check it out. I highly recommend it. Uh, and I'll put a link to, um, Morgan's publishing company in the show notes as well. He's got a lot of other, you know, great ideas. In fact, uh, just recently had another episode with his brother, talking about their Ram God series from Massive, which is an amazing story in and of itself. So, highly encourage you guys to go and, uh, and check it out. Uh, and again, as we're winding down here, yeah, there's Ram God. If you're watching us on YouTube, you can see that amazing cover, uh, there. So, yeah, be sure and go and check out that episode as well. A lot of great information about that series. So, as we're winding down here, Morgan, any last thoughts for our audience? Um, well, thank you guys for watching this all the way through. And, uh, just know this too, as part of the Kickstarter goes, like, I'm huge on community building and, like, engaging with anyone that's interested in this stuff. So, we constantly share, like, behind the scenes stuff that we're working on, like, in real time. So, like, sometimes it'll be like, hey, we're thinking between these three cards or, like, these three character designs, like, help us pick. Which I think, like, is a lot of, based on the feedback we've gotten, people love that stuff. 'Cause, like, we'll all put polls up on, like, Facebook groups or, like, via emails or whatever, and you guys can weigh in if you want on things that you like, uh, best, and those will make it into the game. And sometimes the people that are most involved or that are, like, helping us the most, like, we see that stuff, and we, like, we'll reach out to you guys and be like, yo, we saw that you've been, like, really become an ambassador for us. We'll send you, like, some cool, like, signed stuff that no one else has, which is kind of cool, too. That's awesome. Lining into the community aspect of Kickstarter is always a great thing. So, uh, well, congrats again on hitting the funding goal. I know there's still a lot of work to be done. So, uh, best of luck with, um, the rest of the campaign and fulfillment and all of that. And, yeah, hopefully we get some more, uh, Winds of New Misera graphic novels and stories. So, um, so you guys can kind of complete the vision, this idea of this trilogy that you have. Thanks so much. Uh, and to all you listeners and, um, viewers on YouTube, we want to thank you as well. We appreciate you joining as always, and we will talk to you next time. [Music]