Crowdfund a game about writing fiction, Sci-fi anthologies and more!

There’s a bit of a Doctor Who bent to this week’s look at all things crowdfunding, as we take a look at two projects inspired by the sci-fi series – but that’s not all. There’s an RPG about fighting your friends, a cool anthology of sci-fi and fantasy stories, and a game that’s shaped by the story you write for it.

Header Image: Elegy for a Dead World

Inspired by the likes of Battle Royale and The Hunger Games, this tabletop game tasks you with fighting amongst your friends in a dystopic battle for survival that switches the usual pen-and-paper RPG impetus of co-operation into one of competition:

The game is set in a dystopian future where young adults are forced to fight to the death, inspired by a few popular stories you’ve probably heard of. The default setting of the game has a bit of dark humor in it, to emphasize the absurdity of idyllic happy families sitting down and watching real people fight to the death. But of course the game can be as light-hearted or dead serious as your group wants it to be.

Also, because the game is, itself, about a game, it allows the GM to intervene directly in the role of the director – the shadowy figure who oversees the game. Through this, they can keep the action moving and constantly drive the characters towards interesting scenarios and away from boring discussions of how best to arrange people’s inventories.

A $10 pledge nets you a digital copy of the games rules, maps and character sheets, whilst $25 gets you a printed copy.

The Minister of Chance is a strange thing, a spin off of a spin off – The long running sci-fi/fantasy audio drama originally grew out of characters from a Doctor Who Big Finish Audio drama made in 2001. It’s grown into its own thing since then – and has quite the cast of British actors, from Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann to Tamsin Grieg and Tim McInnerny – and now they want to bring the adventures to a movie format:

In a world not our own, Ambassador Durian (Paul McGann) of the technologically advanced country of Sezuan arrives in the sleepy kingdom of Tanto. Charming and handsome, he jovially offers the King a pact of friendship, then explains that if the King declines, his population will be annihilated.

a £10 (roughly $16) pledge gives you a digital ticket to access the first of the four planned episodes of the movie, as well as your name in the credits.

This collection of 14 sci-fi and fantasy stories comes from a variety of noted authors, and is the first step in establishing a new small press company called Zombies Need Brains:

This project will fund a science fiction and fantasy anthology titled TEMPORALLY OUT OF ORDER, containing approximately 14 all-original (no reprint) short stories from established SF&F authors in the field—including David B. Coe, Laura Anne Gilman, Faith Hunter, Stephen Leigh, Gini Koch, Seanan McGuire, and Laura Resnick, plus others. The book will be edited by Joshua Palmatier & Patricia Bray, both editors of the DAW Books anthologies “After Hours: Tales from the Ur-bar” and “The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity,” and the Zombies Need Brains LLC anthology “Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs. Aliens.”

You know the drill: $15 gets you a digital copy of the anthology, whilst $20 is enough for a physical edition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPfZ-7uIJQ

We’ve covered Alisa Stern’s Doctor Who puppet series before on io9, but now they’re asking for help to fund the webseries’ latest Christmas Special:

This Christmas, we want to make our best episode yet!

It will be a musical adventure starring the Twelfth Doctor and Clara – something a little darker than our past Christmas episodes. We plan to create an atmospheric setting for a mysterious story to unfold in. The puppets won’t speak or sing, so the music will be their voice.

We plan to release the episode about two weeks before Christmas.

A pledge doesn’t actually give you access to the episode, which will be released on youtube anyway, but offers a variety of rewards like props from previous shorts, a chance to meet the creators at NYCC, or the opportunity to go and see the puppets and filming in person.

This PC game is a sidescrolling sci-fi adventure inspired by classic literary authors – and has you writing parts of the story to shape where the adventure heads next:

In Elegy for a Dead World, you travel to distant planets and create stories about the people who once lived there.

Three portals have opened to uncharted worlds. Earth has sent a team of explorers to investigate them, but after an accident, you are the sole survivor. Your mission remains the same: survey these worlds and write the only accounts of them that outsiders will ever know.

$10 gets you a Steam key for the game when it comes out in early 2015.

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