Kicking Redshirts and the MHI Employee Handbook
Usually I'm not hurting for "geek cred." I'm a full-time webcartoonist, which provides ample cachet in those circles. But when I'm looking to impress my friends in the military I have to resort to name-dropping. I tell them "Skippy and I are mutual fans." And it's true. I have to work pretty hard not to put Skippy's List into my comic.
Skippy (aka Jonathan Schwarz) is also a game designer, and this year he teamed up with fellow webcartoonist David Reddick to create a hilarious, counter-intuitively simple, meme-reinforcing card game called "Redshirts." In it, you attempt to get your away team of expendable, crimson-jerseyed alien-life-form-fodder killed, while simultaneously assisting your opponents' away team(s) in the hopes that they'll actually succeed.
The game is wonderful, the art is perfect, and numerous members of the Star Trek franchise have enthusiastically lent their likenesses to the project in the hopes of getting to die AGAIN.
Skippy is doing a second edition, and if you participate in the Kickstarter you can get nifty bonus cards. I've got a first edition copy here, and I will attest to Skippy's ability to deliver the goods.
Note, please, that I'm not the sort of guy who will actually run around name-dropping. But as long as I'm brandishing the fame of my friends, Larry Correia, best-selling author of the "Hard Magic" and "Monster Hunter International" series, is also a Schlock Mercenary fan. Larry and I game together, and while he has yet to take me shooting up on Yard Moose Mountain, I have a standing offer.
Well, Larry is teaming up with Steven S. Long and the folks at HERO system to create the Monster Hunter International Employee Handbook, a full-color hardback which will serve not only as bonus material for the MHI series, but also as a role-playing game. That's right, soon you will be able to hunt werewolves, vampires, zombies, and more game geared leaning more towards bombs and bullets than angst and eyeliner.
And yes, there is a Kickstarter for this project.
As of this writing, both Larry and Skippy have passed the magical thirty-percent threshold, and they both have almost a full month left on the clock, which means it's likely both of them will succeed. Congratulations on a pair of strong starts!
[UPDATE, OCT 3rd, 7:15 AM: Redshirts 2nd Edition has funded! And it has already overfunded by almost 40%. Congratulations, Jonathan!]