Voting Day 3 is up! Spotlight: Production Assistant role! New addon added!
about 3 years ago – Thu, Oct 07, 2021 at 10:22:12 PM

Voting day #2 is up

The king is dying, and his children mock him by riding his favorite dragon around. Every day, no less!! Surely this story will be about these princesses and princes learning a valuable lesson and redeeming themselves...or falling into terrible ruin! What will happen "one day"? Vote here to decide!

Yesterday you upgraded the tiles and tokens to 2mm cardboard - awesome. It was INCREDIBLY close, 149 to 147 votes. Elections matter, people!! But don't worry, that means the 5 extra middle Scene cards were popular enough that they'll find their way back into rotation, I'm sure.

Today's vote will settle the age-old question: do gamers prefer more punishment, or more reward??

Spotlight: new player role, the Production Assistant!

Today's spotlight is on one of the 4 new player roles included in the B-Movie Expansion: the Production Assistant. This role is already unique just in its theming because initially, I only wanted to include major heads of departments as player roles - like the base game roles: Director, Producer, even the Star is not just an "actor", they're THE STAR. I wanted players to feel like they are big shots, so I didn't include roles like 2nd Assistant Camera or Dolly Grip.

But the expansion's co-designer and developer John Velgus showed me the error of my ways. Roll Camera is about ALL the roles in a film working together to make it happen. Of course EVERYONE on set considers themselves a big shot - and they should! Everyone is indispensable. You think the actors are going to fetch their own coffee?? Forget it. The Production Assistant, or PA, might as well be the most major role of all.

Even better, Velgus designed this role's special abilities to make you really feel - well, helpful! As a good PA should. With the Helping Hand action, you can permit the next player in turn order to turn one die to VFX, the wild face, instead of rolling it. Very helpful, thanks for the hand! The Random Task action gains the production $1 - no small thing! Perhaps a thankless task, but a useful one for sure. And my personal favorite, Get Coffee, lets 3 Idea cards be discarded and re-drawn among all players at once. This is great for getting cooperative interaction - who's going to discard how many? - and also great for refreshing those hands of Ideas if they're getting stale. Nothing like a fresh cup of joe to get the mind whirling again!

And of course, the Production Assistant has the perfect player privilege. 

New addon added: the GameTrayz film reel tray

Just to note, this tray already comes with ALL COPIES of the base game in this campaign! But there were several backers who got the retail two-piece box from the last campaign, which did not come with the GameTrayz tray, and wanted to get this one as an addon. I can't think of a good reason not to offer it, so here you go! Like all addons, it'll ship free with a pledge for either the base game or the expansion (although again, the base game already comes with this included!).

Does it fit sleeved cards?

Well, sort of. I did ask GameTrayz to design it to fit sleeved cards, and technically sleeved cards do fit inside the tray, but they can get bent corners and it's all a bit too tight. I did test it myself with sleeves I bought off Amazon and they must not have been very thick because I had no troubles fitting everything. TLDR: sleevers have been disappointed with this tray. Just be aware.

However, I am speaking to GameTrayz about potentially doing a tweak of the tray to make SURE it fits all the base game cards sleeved. Whether that happens will depend on a) if it's possible, b) how much it'll cost, and c) how much the campaign raises! Think of it as a stretch goal. I'll know those numbers when we hash out the details.

Bonus question: what's your favorite B-Movie?

Mine has got to be Plan 9 From Outer Space. It's got aliens AND vampires. The perfect Roll Camera: B-Movie film. God bless Ed Wood. "Your stupid minds! Stupid!!"

Your pal,

Mal

New multi-color Scene cards unlocked! Voting day 2 open! Also: you are great!
about 3 years ago – Thu, Oct 07, 2021 at 12:28:53 AM

First off: this is awesome.

I just gotta say up front that I am SO happy to be launching another campaign with you - whether you've been following my antics since the last campaign or before, or whether you've never heard of any of this before and are just getting on board - THIS IS SO MUCH FUN. Thanks to you, I get to make stuff that makes me happy, and I get to share it with you and make you happy. I mean, what could possibly be better than that?? 

Thanks for that. Really.

Okay onwards with the fun stuff!

Day 1 of shooting is in the can!

If this is confusing to you, it's explained on the campaign page, but the idea is this: every day this week and the last week of the campaign (next week will be a break because I'll be at Essen Spiel) you will have a chance to vote on two different Scenes from the B-Movie Expansion. Each Scene carries with it an upgrade, so by voting, you're doing two things at once: 1) voting on how you want the expansion to be upgraded, and 2) voting on how our "movie"'s story should progress! Both are tracked in the "editing room" on the campaign page.

So far, we're opening our story in classic b-movie fantasy fashion: an old king on his deathbed. Or maybe just very sick. Is he a good king? An evil king? Will the people rejoice if he dies? Or will there be strife for the throne? Or does this have nothing at all to do with our story and was just an excuse to get an old famous actor on the poster??

Let's find out! Vote here to continue our story and upgrade the game again!

Spotlight: "multi-color" Scene cards

If you know Roll Camera, you know that Scene cards come in 5 different colors that represent their tonal content: blue for tragic, green for dramatic, purple for comedic, yellow for sentimental and red for violent. These are important when working toward the endgame Quality bonuses that your Script offers, and in the base game each Scene only has one color. 

Yesterday, you voted to add 5x multi-color Scenes to the expansion, which will be Scene cards that share two colors - so red/green, or blue/yellow, etc. I'll let the co-designer and developer of the B-Movie Expansion, John Velgus, explain: "In game terms, the benefit of multi-color cards is their flexibility. They can count as EITHER one of the two colors at any time. This encourages players to adapt, and creates some interesting situations during gameplay. There are also a couple new effects that might make it in to the game that have some really cool interactions with multi-color cards. Plus, they can be fun for storytelling and flavor."

We're still working on how the artwork and layout for multi-color Scenes will go, but my plan is just to make the artwork feature both colors prominently and seamlessly (and thematically, of course! Going to be fun imagining how a violent/comedic or tragic/sentimental scene will look). It won't be two different Scenes side-by-side or anything like that.

But I voted for the +5 Equipment cards :(

It was a close race for sure! That tells me that there's interest in more Equipment cards, so I'm sure that Scene and its +5 Equipment card bonus will find its way back in a future vote...!

Spotlight: what else?

I'd like to continue to "spotlight" new content from the B-Movie Expansion in the updates to come, so please let me know in the project's comments if there's anything you'd like to know more about. I'm already planning to spotlight the new player roles and talk about their powers as well.

Did you know I do a web comic? 

It's true! For almost 11 years now, I've been doing Itchy Feet: the Travel and Language Comic, which was the inspiration for the card game that started me down this whole Keen Bean Studio path. Itchy Feet is being published by Tinyview, an app for web comics, so for the best viewing experience use a mobile device. And if you can, please also subscribe - you get bonus panels for each new comic, and also Tinyview is literally supporting me and my family full time, so it allows me the time to do projects like Roll Camera and my other upcoming board game projects! It's a dream.

Speaking of other projects...

Join us over on the Keen Bean Studio Discord if you want to talk with other keen beans about Roll Camera, Itchy Feet, or also if you want a peek into my in-development work. I have a channel there where I post my latest prototype ideas, thoughts, and ask questions on early stuff. It's a lot of cardboard and scribbles, but if you want to see what's coming up, that's the best place!

Okay, that's it for now, folks - see you in the comments!!

Your pal,

Mal

Well...that was fast!
about 3 years ago – Wed, Oct 06, 2021 at 08:06:15 AM

This is just a very quick update to YOU, you there, who decided to pile dive onto this thing in its first 90 minutes (just about the length of a feature film!):

Thank you! ❤️

We funded in less than half an hour. Just amazing. That makes the first campaign for Roll Camera, which funded in 3 hours, look like a turtle riding a lazy snail by comparison! This is B-Movie's time, baby!! And YOU are the star. I could not have asked for a better cast to join me on this ride.

Let's get this show on the road!!

Your pal,

Mal