This is the second Kickstarter campaign for the Sig setting. Back in the fall of 2015, I launched a successful campaign for a 112-page book titled “Sig: The City Between”. That book was intended as a supplement for one of our previous products, the Spark Roleplaying Game. The last Sig Kickstarter was a rousing success, raising just shy of $10,000 with 308 backers.

Classic version of Sig: The City Between

This generous support allowed us to create a ton of excellent content, including

PDFs for all the backers

A limited digital print run of the book (soft-cover, full-colour, 112 pages)

Seven stretch goals to hire contributors to create new prime worlds

The Night Market adventure as a stretch goal.

A detailed map of Sig as a stretch goal.

Since then, we’ve added more and more content to the book. We prepared Chapter 1 (customized mechanics you need to play), Chapter 4 (the Atlas of Sig), most of Chapter 5 (the stretch goal prime worlds) and chapter 6 (example/adventure). The book blossomed into a full, stand-alone product in its own right. This coincided with nearly selling out of the remaining copies of the original softcover print run.

We’re running this Kickstarter to raise funds for an offset print run of full-colour, hardcover books, containing both the old and new content.All backers of the previous campaign, and individuals who bought the PDF of Sig, have received the updated digital content (PDF, Epub, Mobi) via DriveThruRPG. There is a special tier, suited for those who backed the original Kickstarter.

Manual of the Primes Mockup

The Visitor: Are you just curious about the game, or do you prefer PDFs? Back at the Visitor Tier, and we will send you the digital version of the game immediately. If the game isn’t your cup of tea, keep the PDF with our compliments.

The Freebooter: If you are one of those generous souls who already backed the Kickstarter campaign for Sig: The City Between, you already have the full digital version of the Manual of the Primes. You may be interested in the affordable Freebooter Tier, which offers a print copy of the new book, without any of the (redundant) digital content. Also a great value for anyone who prefers non-digital versions of games.

The Citizen: Excited about discovering Sig for the first time? Want to explore the city with a beautiful hardcover book, flipping through the glossy pages to learn about the ‘verse? Want to search through the PDF to find some of the hidden gems, and toss it onto your ebook reader? The Citizen Tier will give you both the physical and digital versions of Sig: The Manual of the Primes.

The Benefactor: Are you eager to spread the word in your local community? Back at this level and you get everything associated with the Citizen Tier, and we will also send a free copy of the hardcover book to a friendly local game store (FLGS) or local library of your choosing.

The Faction: Ready to start a campaign of Sig, but your group doesn’t have copies of the book? If you back at the Faction Tier, you can get copies for everyone! You’ll receive four copies of the physical book (and digital copies along with each of them) for less than the cost of each backing at the Citizen tier.

The Bizzare: Some merchants and other generous souls may desire many copies of the book. Back at The Bizzare level, and you’ll get 10 copies of the physical book at wholesale rates. Perfect for game stores, game groups, and clubs.

The base goal for this campaign is a significant one, and the highest base goal that I have had on any of my projects to date. The costs associated with a professional-quality offset print run are significant, and we need your help to raise $8,000 (Canadian dollars) to pay for the printing alone, the remaining fulfillment costs coming from the profits of the last print run.

Initial goal of $8K has been met!

Stretch Goal 1 - Sig Quickstart (FUNDED!)

At 250 backers, we will produce a free Sig Quickstart adventure for everyone! This will be a PDF that you can print and play, perfect for a convention game or a one-shot. This Quickstart will include a set of pregenerated characters, rules references, a tutorial section, and the Night Markets adventure.

We will also produce custom character sheets for the Roll20 platform. We will also collect the relevant sheets, illustrations, and pregenerated characters from the quickstart adventure, to make it easy for you to run the game online.

Stretch Goal 2 - Sig Reference Deck (FUNDED!)

At 300 backers, we will produce a custom deck of cards as a play aid. We will publish a deck of custom reference cards that describe each of the Heritages, Factions, and Powers associated with the various planes. This deck will make character creation easier, by putting a write-up of each of those groups on playing cards for your reference. There may even be information about the prime worlds and shard realms, hidden within the deck. It will also serve as a fantastic randomizer for the group to randomly determine which factions might be advancing their schemes, which powers might be meddling, and which community might be caught in the middle.

Mockup of the Sig Reference Deck

Stretch Goal 3 - The Deluxe Upgrade (FUNDED!)

If we get our 350th backer, I will make them even better. All of the books will be upgraded with additional features to make them both more attractive and more functional in play. We will include silk ribbon bookmarks with every book to help you navigate the shadowed pages. We will include printed endpapers at the front and the back of the book, so that we can include a couple beautiful maps of the City Between there for your use. Mockup of the Sig Deluxe Upgrade I will even work with the printer to see if there are any other shiny extras that we could provide. I want to pull out all the stops and make the book as ridiculously awesome as I can. Stretch Goal 4 - The Origin Deck (FUNDED!) If we reach 400 backers, we will design a second custom deck of cards for backers. This new play-aid will be known as the Sig Origin Deck, and allow you to create your characters quickly through a draw of the cards. The origin deck will contain Parent Cards and Profession Cards. Each character will have their talents defined by the combination of two Parent Cards and one Profession Card. It means you can quickly create your characters and their families on the fly, and the GM can also use it as a deck of NPCs during play. Mockup of the Sig Origin Deck Final Stretch Goal 5 – Freebooters (Funded) Sig is a rough city. It’s a home for cutters and bashers, hungry for coin and glory. It’s a battlefield between the city factions as they fight over territory. It’s a city of gods, demons, and stranger things which lurk. No wonder that scoundrels flock to the city between. If we reach 450 backers (was 475) in total, we will unlock this new product which adapts the Blades in the Dark system (from John Harper) for the Sig setting. This system will allow us to explore the criminal underworld and faction politics bound into Sig. It will enable planar heists, political maneuvers, and more cults than you can shake a stick at. This is an exciting goal, but it will also be a great deal of work on my part. If we hit our ambitious goal, I will invest the time to make this awesome for all of you. Now let’s drag more folks into Sig. There ain’t much time left till we lose the tether.

If this strikes your fancy, or you want to learn a bit more about Sig, there are plenty of resources at your disposal.

I ran a fantastic session of Sig for the One Shot Podcast, which you can find over at Episode 1, Episode 2 and Episode 3. This is full of actual-play goodness, including serpent cults, dragon pearls, and mythenders.

I had a lovely discussion on the Modifier Podcast about aligning settings to mechanics, where I do a deep dive into the mechanical elements of the game. Check out the Episode!

I recorded an episode on the Misdirected Mark Podcast where we chatted at length about how the system works overall, including the various narrative elements that are hard-coded into the rules. I also too the chance to discuss how I view System, Setting, and Situation as three distinct elements in game design. Check out the episode!

I also had a long discussion on the Ottawa Game Publisher's Podcast with my friend, Todd Crapper of Broken Ruler Games. In this interview, each of us explained our own publication processes and I spoke at length about Sig. Have a listen here!

I was also interviewed by Brie Sheldon during the campaign for Sig: The City Between. Brie is a great interviewer, and asked some pertinent questions about the setting. http://www.briecs.com/2015/10/five-or-so-questions-with-jason-pitre.html

Want to Play?

During the campaign, I will be running a number of 2-hour demos of Sig over Google Hangouts. If you are curious about the setting, want to try out the mechanics, or just want to play a game, please join me!

I will be making a number time-slots available over the course of the campaign for demos, and each game can handle 2-5 players.

Session 1 - Sunday, January 29th from 14.00 to 16.00 EST. 4 Spots Remaining.

Session 2 - Sunday, January 29th from 19.00 to 21.00 EST. 5 Spots Remaining.

Session 2 - Saturday, February 4th from 14.00 to 16.00 EST. 4 Spots Remaining.

More sessions will likely be announced in future backer updates!