With 2021 wrapping up, I reached out to Nightfall Games to discuss their 2021, their plans for 2022, and the unexpected delay on DEMON DOG, their next crowdfunding project. Mark Rapson, co-owner of Nightfall Games, agreed to answer my questions about DEMON DOG, The Terminator RPG, SLA COLLATERAL, and more.
EGG EMBRY (EGG): I appreciate you for discussing how Nightfall Games’ 2021 went, what Nightfall’s 2022 plans look like, and the unexpected delay on DEMON DOG. Let’s start with your thoughts on 2021, was it a good year, and did you reach all of your 2021 goals?
MARK RAPSON (MARK): Egg, thank you for the opportunity to talk Nightfall Games.
Yes, 2021 has been a great year for us. It has had its challenges, I’m sure most of your readers know them well, things like COVID lockdowns, fallout from Brexit, paper shortages, massive price rises, delays and difficulties around freight, shipping cost increases and surcharges, Kickstarter rules changes, VAT setup changes in all of Europe. But Nightfall Games continues to grow as we deal with each challenge.
It has been a good year for sure, and those challenges have affected us, and have delayed us slightly, but we fulfilled the SLA Industries 2nd Ed Kickstarter over the cusp of 2020 and 2021, won an ENnie for it, and launched two new Kickstarters in 2021, namely The Terminator RPG and SLA Industries COLLATERAL. It has been our best year by far, and our momentum is building.
DEMON DOG was planned for December, but Kickstarter have changed their rules recently, meaning that unless you have successfully completed four prior Kickstarters you cannot run more than one concurrently. We have The Terminator RPG and SLA COLLATERAL on the table, so they need to complete before we launch more. It is a bit disappointing, but makes sense, especially considering the number of companies in the gaming industries with more than a handful of incomplete projects. Kickstarter’s policy makes sense, and in the case of DEMON DOG and Nightfall, make little difference to our scheduled fulfillment and release dates for DEMON DOG. Interestingly, we as a team have now completed nearly a dozen Kickstarters, but as Nightfall, just the one. We did consider fighting our corner, but really in our view the Kickstarter policy is good for backers and the RPG industry as a whole.
EGG: That’s a good overview of where you stand, thanks for that. Let’s move to your company’s 2021 Kickstarters and start with The Terminator RPG campaign in March, 2021. We talked about the contents of the project during the campaign, and the project found a nice sized audience with 2,145 backers for £135,007 pledged. From your point of view, did the campaign achieve all that you were hoping for?
MARK: Yes, and more so. I think that a lot more people will also get on board when they see the final products. Its reception was very similar to the ALIEN RPG, by Free League. For that, many, myself included, couldn’t understand how a game could be made from the simple concept of one baddy and running away from it, but as has been proven the ALIEN RPG has been a massive hit, and it is now very clear that there is massive replayablity and dimensions to the Free League product. The Terminator RPG should see a similar thought change. There is a lot going on. I have also had the pleasure of reading Andrew E. C. Gaska’s writing for the The Terminator RPG and it is a thing of beauty. It is clear why he is becoming a writer to watch.
EGG: Let’s jump over to the SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Collateral Kickstarter in September, 2021, which is a sourcebook for SLA Industries 2nd Edition and reached 921 backers who pledged £70,000. As the first followup to 2020’s SLA Industries 2nd Edition, how do you feel this project was received by SLA fans?
MARK: For a sourcebook Kickstarter (as our SLA Industries COLLATERAL is), a fair expectation is between 1/3 to 2/3 of the core book KSer revenue and backers. We were expecting around half, so £70k and 921 backers was a big win for us. As with the The Terminator RPG, we are focused on quality writing, quality art, and quality production. The first KS showed we were true to our mission and now we are seeing a return on that as many people come back for more. They won’t be disappointed. The KS also pulled in a lot of new people too. KS really is great for marketing and when you deliver quality, people know they can trust you to do so again and again.
EGG: As a setup for the next question, where are each of those Kickstarters on their development/fulfillment cycle?
MARK: The Terminator RPG should be ready for print by the end of January 2022. SLA Industries is currently on track for going to print in March 2022. Printing schedule will be dependent on the current paper shortages.
EGG: That’s a fair call out on the 2021 paper shortage. Let’s move over to your next Kickstarter, DEMON DOG. The original plan had this project launching on Kickstarter in December, 2021. However, due to a rule change, it’s been pushed back. Before we get into the delay, what is DEMON DOG?
MARK: “DEMON DOG takes the same rules-lite music inspired OSR thesis seen in MÖRK BORG and applies it to the Punk aesthetic.
DEMON DOG is an irreverent game for an irreverent age, it’s MÖRK BORG, punk style.”
Dave, Jared, and I (the ownership of Nightfall Games) are big fans of many of the products of other RPG companies, each of us have a big library of books. For a number of years, we have been talking about an ‘Ode to’ range, when our bandwidth allowed it. The first announced of these projects is Harrowvale 5e, which will use the D&D 5e ruleset, this is being made in collaboration with Handiwork Games. It’s a big project where the combined teams write our love letter to D&D, we have talked of other ‘ode to’ products, for example Chaosium’s Cthulhu.
We became aware of MÖRK BORG last year and we bloody love it, we wanted to do an ode to it. Dave left our team meeting and started making artwork and outlining the product in his spare time and after a few weeks, he shared it with Jared and me. It’s great because it has that black and white style of Dave’s that so many people loved SLA 1st Ed for, but taken up to the next level. As often happens with our team we started floating ideas and coming up with concepts and it wasn’t long before DEMON DOG became a thing. We all agreed to take Dave’s approach and work on DEMON DOG in our spare time. The book is written and most of the artwork and layout is done. It will be print ready by the end of Feb.
EGG: Why was DEMON DOG pushed back? Can you give a rough estimate of when you feel you will be able to get it up on Kickstarter?
MARK: Kickstarter have recently changed their policy to allow newer companies only to run one KS campaign at a time for their first four Kickstarters, after that, when the company has proven itself, in the game industry, it moves to three. We currently have one fulfilled and two in process. We will need to complete both these, then do DEMON DOG before we get to the position where we can have three at once.
We originally planned to launch in December 2021 and fulfill in Summer 2022, now we do both in Summer 2022.
EGG: You’re sticking with Kickstarter, but did you considered taking DEMON DOG to GameFound, GameOnTabletop, or IndieGoGo?
MARK: We did consider it, but our main reason to use crowdfunding is for marketing. At present, in our view, Kickstarter does this best.
EGG: Will this change in Kickstarter’s policy change how much of future projects you plan to complete before entering the crowdfunding phase of their development?
MARK: No, but it does mean we will get better at planning and we will ensure a shorter window between campaign and fulfillment. I spent the last few days scheduling and we have a close to full pipeline until the end of 2023.
EGG: Good to hear. Moving on to 2022, in your press release for DEMON DOG, you mentioned some of your 2022 plans. Let’s start with STOKERVERSE, what is this RPG about?
MARK: The SkokerVerse RPG will use the same S5S rule system at its core as The Terminator RPG and SLA Industries, but tailored to the world in question. Art direction is being led by Clint Langley. We are expecting the Quickstart PDF to launch in early 2022. It will be a sand box system where the players can exist and investigate in a world of Bram Stoker’s writing, it’s dark horror and mind bending, but should be a lot of fun. The book will be a visual (and I guess visceral) delight and very different in look and feel to SLA and The Terminator RPG.
EGG: You’re working with the always awesome Handiwork Games on HARROWVALE. What is that project about?
MARK: They are indeed awesome. Dave, Jared and Jon (of Handiwork) go back a very long way and, as Jared puts it, are good chums. Over the years they’ve met often for beers, etc. and during those times, Harrowvale developed. In recent years, Jon and I have discussed it a lot more and, having seen and owned his awesome Beowulf, I just knew that what we envisioned in his style would be a dark gritty joy.
I consider that Harrowvale 5e is D&D turned up to 11. It’s gonna be dark, muddy dingey, and bloody hard. The players will need to think hard on what they do, when and how they do it. There will be real jeopardy and coming up against a really basic monster, like a skeleton or goblin, when the campaign starts is really going to hurt or kill. For computer or board gamers, think about Dark Souls, that in RPG form, coming from the twisted minds at Nightfall Games and Handiwork Games. ‘Get out or die trying’ is really a great tagline.
EGG: Beyond those projects, what else is Nightfall Games contemplating for the future?
MARK: Games wise, we have a number of irons in a number of fires, but as yet I can’t divulge anything more than that. It is fair to say that Harrowvale 5e, DEMON DOG, StokerVerse RPG, and completing SLA COLLATERAL and the The Terminator RPG will keep us busy. We will be doing more with The Terminator RPG and SLA Industries, for sure.
We will definitely be attending UKGamesExpo and Salute in 2022, possibly some local small ones in the UK and I have my eye on some conventions and exhibitions in the US. I will also likely attend Essen as a punter, too.
EGG: Thanks for talking about where Nightfall Games is at and where you’re going. Where can fans learn more about your company online?
MARK: Egg, it has been a joy as always! Our website is [here], Facebook, Twitter, [and] Kickstarter.
Egg Embry participates in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program, Noble Knight Games’ Affiliate Program, and is an Amazon Associate. These programs provide advertising fees by linking to DriveThruRPG, Noble Knight Games, and Amazon.
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