Zelda-inspired tabletop RPG Break!! is the next big crowdfunding hit

Tabletop role-playing games are all about fantasy. Inside the magic circle of the dining room table, you can be whatever you want to be – a powerful wizard, a roadside cyberpunk hacker, or even a smarter-than-average bear. One of the reasons we buy TTRPG books is to validate those fantasies. It’s Inspiring To Pick Up A Copy Of Dungeons & Dragons player’s handbook And find that fantasy version of yourself provided on the page. But for Reinaldo Madrinan, co-creator of Break!! TTRPG, it was always difficult to see myself inside those books.

Like many players of a certain generation, Madrinen grew up playing Japanese RPGs, such as The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy, and watching anime. Rarely, the heroes he was enjoying appeared in the pages of a western TTRPG.

“It was almost like the old Simpsons gag – Why doesn’t mine look like this?Madrinen said in a recent interview.

So Madryanen decided to do something about it.

Break!! is the culmination of a decades-long effort to get what was under his head on the page – a fully featured, pen-and-paper experience designed and written with his style in mind. She has a close collaboration with Secret Sauce co-creator Gray Wizard, said Madryn. The unnamed “hobbyist artist and information design nerd,” as he describes himself, has gone through several rounds with Madrinen to get the game right.

At first, Madrinen thought he had found the right angle for the project in an early edition of D&D that had been released in Japan – a three-volume set known as the Rules Cyclopedia series that first appeared in 1994. Posted in. The original set was designed and built with a Japanese aesthetic in mind, featuring bright colors, cartoon-like characters throughout.

“I remember seeing that and going, Oh that’s perfect! that’s what I want!Madrinan said. “It actually turned out that it wasn’t right, because when I got into it, I was like, yeah you know what? I think I want to move on a bit The secret of the mind here. maybe a little link to the past kind of stuff,

Image: Gray Wizard

Image: Gray Wizard

Image: Gray Wizard

Image: Gray Wizard

The result of that tinkering has apparently been a hit among consumers. Madryn’s Kickstarter campaign was fully funded shortly after it launched, and it’s pulling in toward $400,000 in its last few days — a considerable sum for an unproven franchise. It doesn’t even hurt that the entire gaming world is waiting with bated breath for the release The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the KingdomOnly the second major entry in the Zelda franchise to be released for the Nintendo Switch. Break!! Seems appropriate for that particularly enthusiastic audience.

“It doesn’t matter how it happened,” Madrinen said of the Kickstarter success, “I’m really happy with it.”

The main book is mostly finished, he said, with delivery of the digital version expected in June, soon after the campaign ends. Later, in November, the physical product is expected to be distributed to backers. However, this is just the beginning, as Madryn has plans to support the system long after its release.

but no Very Long, mind you.

“I want to start doing free things for the game every couple of weeks again,” Madryanen said. “We’ve already got it planned. We want to do supplements, and we’re going to have little books and modules and stuff for supplements that are things that Gray and I can get out and still be high quality.” Maybe, but it doesn’t take years and years.

you can find more Break!! on its Kickstarter page, where a digital copy will set you back around $25 and a physical copy starts around $57. The campaign will run till May 17.