Kingdom Death Monster 1.5 Triple Funded

Returning with a vengeance and on it’s last month of funding is the new Kingdom Death Monster Kickstarter Campaign sitting pretty at 7.3 million in funding and three times it’s original backers. The project revolves around a 1.5 edition of the core game being printed along with an ever-growing list of secondary and tertiary expansion content; with an update kit tier for those that already own the core game. I keep calling it a new “edition” but my understanding is that it’s a reprint with a new expansion tucked inside it that lengthens the core game with an even more final boss. And announced during the campaign is the new Screaming God expansion that adds further final bossness. Because hey, game was too easy amirite?

In addition to the core game the campaign presents the Gamblers Chest, otherwise known as “The Gigantic Box Of Expansions”. Every day or two Adam Poot’s rolls 2D10 and updates the boxes contents accordingly. Inside is everything from advanced game rules, “Narrative Character” mini-expansions, topless men with solid iron nipple-rings, and more! It’s basically for people like me that must have every single bit of game content or I feel dead inside.

I’ve been watching this campaign extremely closely because I feel like it’s a landmark for the tabletop hobby as a whole. Adam Poots is using Kickstarter exactly for what most people argue it should be for: Pushing through a complex labor of love project no sane corporation would touch. This lack of executive meddling is part of what makes the game so organic in presentation.With less than a month to go and plenty of content to reveal it’s too early to wrap up exactly what your pledge will get you besides many, many miniatures; even now there are monsters in the darkness that have yet to make themselves fully known to us.

I keep calling the game complex, why? Having watched a lot now I know that the table setup is pretty manageable compared to other big box games. There’s less than ten miniatures on the table at any time, all of the decks are placed in specific places in a neat row during play, and you assemble miniatures as they are needed session by session. Those are major selling points, but I call it complex because of how extremely intimidating the game can be for the uninitiated. Looking at any individual part of the game, the kick-starter campaign, or really anything KDM related without the entire product as context can be absolutely maddening like an eldritch artifact. You really do have to watch a full session of the game being played before your brain clicks and you get it, just reading a rulebook won’t do. And that’s also a selling point.

Kingdom Death Monster is currently on it’s last month of it’s Kickstarter Campaign. To sum up what’s what: Kingdom Death Monster 1.5 is the core game, the Gamblers Chest is a big box of extra game content, and the other expansions are large chunks of extra game content.