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BackerKit
''BackerKit'' is a crowdfunding platform focusing on creative projects with an emphasis on tabletop games and fantasy books. On ethical grounds, BackerKit bans projects containing art produced by Generative AI. History BackerKit was founded in 2012 by Maxwell Salzberg and Rosanna Yau as a pledge management, payment processing, shipping, audience engagement, and pre-order tool for Kickstarter campaigns. In 2018, Backerkit established The Creative Fund, with the goal of donating one dollar to a wide range of projects on Kickstarter. In 2022, BackerKit announced its own crowdfunding marketplace in response to criticisms within the tabletop role-playing game industry against Kickstarter's investment in Blockchain. The first major crowdfunding campaign on BackerKit was for Gloomhaven's Grand Festival, which raised over $5 million. Other early successes included Return to Dark Tower ($2 million) and Spirit Island: Nature Incarnate ($1.2 million). In 2024, the premium edition of Bra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and Alternative Finance, alternative finance, to fund projects "without standard financial intermediaries". Mollick, E. (2014). ''The dynamics of crowdfunding: An exploratory study.'' Journal of Business Venturing. Vol. 29, pp. 1–16. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crowdfunding. Although similar concepts can also be executed through mail-order subscriptions, benefit events, and other methods, the term crowdfunding refers to internet-mediated registries. This modern crowdfunding model is generally based on three types of actors – the project initiator who proposes the idea or project to be funded, individuals or groups who support the idea, and a moderating organization (the "platform") that brings the parties together to launch the idea. The term crowdfunding was coined in 2006 by entrepreneur an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tabletop Role-playing Game
A tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG or TRPG), also known as a pen-and-paper role-playing game, is a kind of role-playing game (RPG) in which the participants describe their characters' actions through speech and sometimes movements. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a set role-playing game system, formal system of rules and guidelines, usually involving randomization (such as through dice). Within the rules, players have the freedom to improvisation, improvise, and their choices shape the direction and outcome of the game. Neither pen and paper nor a table are strictly necessary for a game to count as a TTRPG; rather, the terms ''pen-and-paper'' and ''tabletop'' are typically used to distinguish this format of RPG from role-playing video games or live action role-playing games. Online play of TTRPGs through videoconferencing has become common since the COVID-19 pandemic. Some common e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Return To Dark Tower
''Return to Dark Tower'' is a board game for one to four players, designed and published by Restoration Games. The game is a sequel to the 1981 board game ''Dark Tower'', by Milton Bradley Company. ''Return to Dark Tower'' has players cooperate or compete as they rule over kingdoms surrounding the titular Tower, with their chosen "heroes" gathering resources, defeating monsters and enhancing their strength. As the game progresses, the Tower dispenses corruption across the land, which players must cleanse, while also looking to identify the foe inhabiting the Tower, so that they may defeat it, to win the game. ''Return to Dark Tower'' features a circular mat that is sectioned into quarters, to represent the kingdoms, with a Bluetooth-powered Tower at the center, which is connected to an app that runs the game. ''Return to Dark Tower'' was designed by a team of board game industry veterans - most notably the creator of '' Gloomhaven'', Isaac Childres and the creator of '' Pandemic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gloomhaven
''Gloomhaven'' is a cooperative board game for one to four players designed by Isaac Childres and published by Cephalofair Games in 2017. It is a campaign-based dungeon crawl game including a narrative campaign, 95 unique playable scenarios, and 17 playable classes. Since its introduction the game has been acclaimed by reviewers, and has been described as one of the best board games ever made. Gameplay ''Gloomhaven'' is a fantasy-themed, campaign-based tactical skirmish game, in which players try to triumph in combat-based scenarios which scale in difficulty depending on the number of players. The game is cooperative and campaign driven, with one to four players working their way through a branching story consisting of 95 scenarios. The campaign develops in a legacy format, with stickers that are placed on the board and cards and sealed envelopes that are opened when certain criteria are met. While it has drawn comparisons to role-playing games such as ''Dungeons & Dragons' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spirit Island (board Game)
''Spirit Island'' is a euro-style co-operative strategy board game designed by R. Eric Reuss and published by Greater Than Games in 2017. Digital versions have been released for PC, iOS, and Android. In the game, players take the role of spirits on an island and win by driving off colonizing invaders. History Reuss designed ''Spirit Island'' in response to other board games in which players take the role of colonizers. The Invader game pieces were made white deliberately in ''Spirit Island'' to highlight that light colors do not always imply 'good'. The game has four expansions, ''Branch & Claw'', ''Jagged Earth'', ''Feather and Flame'', and ''Nature Incarnate'' (the last released in 2023). Both the base game and several expansions were funded via Kickstarter, while ''Nature Incarnate'' was funded via BackerKit. A multi-platform digital version of the game, first announced in 2018, was released in 2020. The game was also released on iOS and Android devices. The mobile versi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tabletop Game
Tabletop games or tabletops are games that are normally played on a Table (furniture), table or other flat surface, such as board games, card games, dice games, miniature wargames, Tabletop role-playing game, tabletop role-playing games, or tile-based games. Classification according to equipment used Tabletop games can be classified according to the general form, or equipment utilized: Games like chess and draughts are examples of games belonging to the board game category. Other games, however, use various attributes and cannot be classified unambiguously (e.g. ''Monopoly (game), Monopoly'' and many modern Eurogame, eurogames utilize a board as well as dice and cards). For several of these categories there are sub-categories and even sub-sub-categories or genres. For instance, German-style board games, board wargames, and :Roll-and-move board games, roll-and-move games are all types of board games that differ markedly in style and general interest. Tabletop game component ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Generative AI
Generative artificial intelligence (Generative AI, GenAI, or GAI) is a subfield of artificial intelligence that uses generative models to produce text, images, videos, or other forms of data. These models learn the underlying patterns and structures of their training data and use them to produce new data based on the input, which often comes in the form of natural language prompts. Generative AI tools have become more common since an " AI boom" in the 2020s. This boom was made possible by improvements in transformer-based deep neural networks, particularly large language models (LLMs). Major tools include chatbots such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Grok, and DeepSeek; text-to-image models such as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, and DALL-E; and text-to-video models such as Sora and Veo. Technology companies developing generative AI include OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta AI, Microsoft, Google, DeepSeek, and Baidu. Generative AI has raised many ethical questions. It can be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kickstarter
Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of April 2025, Kickstarter has received US$8.71 billion in pledges from 24.1 million backers to fund 277,302 projects, such as films, music, stage shows, comics, journalism, video games, board games, technology, publishing, and food-related projects. People who back Kickstarter projects are offered tangible rewards or experiences in exchange for their pledges. This model traces its roots to subscription model of arts patronage, in which artists would go directly to their audiences to fund their work. History Kickstarter launched on April 28, 2009, by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler. ''The New York Times'' called Kickstarter "the people's National Endowment for the Arts, NEA". ''Time (magazine), Time'' named ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blockchain
The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of Record (computer science), records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a Trusted timestamping, timestamp, and transaction data (generally represented as a Merkle tree, where Node (computer science), data nodes are represented by leaves). Since each block contains information about the previous block, they effectively form a ''chain'' (compare linked list data structure), with each additional block linking to the ones before it. Consequently, blockchain transactions are resistant to alteration because, once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be changed retroactively without altering all subsequent blocks and obtaining network consensus to accept these changes. Blockchains are typically managed by a peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer (P2P) computer network for use as a public distributed led ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Winn Sanderson (born December19, 1975) is an American author of high fantasy, science fiction, and young adult books. He is best known for the Cosmere fictional universe, in which most of his fantasy novels, most notably the '' Mistborn'' series and ''The Stormlight Archive'', are set. Outside of the Cosmere, he has written several young adult and juvenile series including '' The Reckoners'', the '' Skyward'' series, and the ''Alcatraz'' series. He is also known for finishing author Robert Jordan's high fantasy series ''The Wheel of Time.'' Sanderson has created two graphic novels, including ''White Sand'' and ''Dark One''. Sanderson created Sanderson's Laws of Magic and popularized the idea of "hard magic" and "soft magic" systems. In 2008, Sanderson started a podcast with the horror writer Dan Wells and the cartoonist Howard Tayler called ''Writing Excuses'', involving topics about creating genre writing and webcomics. In 2016, the American media company DMG ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Words Of Radiance
''Words of Radiance'' is an epic fantasy novel written by American author Brandon Sanderson and the second book in ''The Stormlight Archive'' series. The novel was published on March 4, 2014, by Tor Books. ''Words of Radiance'' consists of one prologue, 89 chapters, an epilogue and 14 interludes. It is preceded by ''The Way of Kings'' (2010) and followed by ''Oathbringer'' (2017). In 2015, it won the David Gemmell Legend Award for best novel. The unabridged audiobook is read by narrator team Michael Kramer (narrator), Michael Kramer and Jennifer Mendenhall, Kate Reading. Development The release of the book was delayed due to Sanderson's commitment to writing the final book of ''The Wheel of Time''. Initially, Sanderson planned that this volume would be named after the tome Shallan is given at the end of the first volume: ''The Book of Endless Pages''. However, the name was changed after the editor commented "Uh, are you sure you want to name a very long, very thick fantasy book ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
