Cult Crafter - a cult-building card game for 2-4 players

Hello my lovely cult fam.

Just a friendly reminder that there are just about 24 hours left before the open enrollment period to the Order of the Dark Wheel closes up, so if you have friends or loved ones who haven't backed, now is the time to peer pressure them. And if you've been sitting on the fence about having your face, the face of a loved one (human or animal) illustrated into the game, this is your last chance to upgrade your pledge!

I also wanted to quickly just remind folks that this campaign is part of Pocketopia. It's 62 creators all making pocket-sized games. There a lot of other TTRPG folk out there, as well as other tabletop folk like myself - one of whom is my cross-collab partner, Mat Lorre of Terrorbox Co. 

ANYWAY, Mat has brought SHIFTED to Pocketopia, which is a social deduction game similar to Werewolf or Mafia with the weird space monster vibes of Among Us. 

I'm pretty stoked to be partnering with Mat, as we both run one-person shows  - he does all the art, game design, and also is screen printing the shirts he's making. Running these campaigns as a one-person show is definitely not for the faint of heart, so these types of collaborations are always super rad. 

Oh, and a friendly reminder - if you back BOTH of our games, you get a bonus variant art card from each of us! I illustrated a SHIFTED card, and Mat did a bang-up job doing alternative art for the First Bog Witch with some sweet dual-wielding serrated knives. 

Also, if you back 6+ Pocketopia campaigns, you also get a cool dice bag (plus all the cool games you back), which is a nice bonus. So if like shifty social deduction games like I do (I might get to do a Blood on the Clocktower game this Saturday after I go to my local protest!), then definitely consider checking out SHIFTED in these final hours. 

Thanks again, and I'm so excited to be bringing Cult Crafter to life with all of you. 
-Rick

Howdy everyone!

We're almost to the end of the campaign - we're about 6 backers away from unlocking the Void Queen sticker! So if you've been waiting to back, now's the time!

Also, thanks to everyone who voted in the last backer poll - I'll be updating the correct spelling of "Ascension" Day (and will be keeping the quotes, since no one is really ascending anywhere in that unfortunate situation).

I also went through The Game Crafter to get a fully designed version to take around to people. I'm pretty excited to be able to share with more folks something that looks like an actual card game. Witness the difference between what early playtesters saw, and what we've got to look at now:

The proofing deck is nice as it's highlighted a lot of things I want to tweak in the layout - things like text sizes, placements, color tweaks - by fixing them now, it'll make the final proofing stage with the actual manufacturer (which is a lot more expensive) much more efficient and faster. 

Anyway, here are some more hastily-taken photos of the proofing deck.

That said, thank you again for all the support so far! 

I'm still sort of in disbelief that we're making Cult Crafter a reality, and I literally could not have done it without each and everyone one of you. 

Thanks again, and I hope you're having a great week! Happy April! 

-Rick

Howdy everyone!

Hope your week has been off to a good start!

We're currently 13 backers away from unlocking a free sticker for every backer - please spread the word, and since she's everyone's overwhelming favorite demon god, it'll be a 4" wide sticker of the Void Queen. So tell your friends so I can make these big ol' monster stickers!


I'll also be tabling this weekend at WonderCon, slinging art, enamel pins, and passing out flyers for Cult Crafter. If you're headed to Anaheim this weekend, swing by table A14 in the Artist Alley and introduce yourself!

For our card spotlight, I wanted to showcase two more Event cards: "Ascention" Day and Assassination.

Just a quick warning - I do talk about suicide and violence, as while these cards and the cult are fictional, I'll be discussing how they thematically make sense based on real events. Feel free to jump to the poll if this isn't going to be good for you.

So first off, I know that "Ascention" is misspelled. But I also think that having a) it be in quotes, since it's just death and not real ascension, and b) showcase the fact that people willing to die in a dark ritual probably aren't going to notice spelling mistakes.

I've actually created a new poll for you to weigh in - fix the spelling, or let it ride!

Anyway, so regarding the actual card mechanics, this acts as the only outright negative card in the Resource deck. Idols, at worst, won't match your god's aspect(s), and the other events are can be discarded if they're not helpful.

"Ascention" Day, however, must be played upon drawing. It doesn't cost an action, which is good, but it does force you to sacrifice BOTH a hierophant AND a follower you own. Major bummer.

In playtests, this often set the player back too far, so while you can totally get tripped up, there is one benefit - you get to choose another follower to sacrifice. I thought this change really fits in with the thematic elements as well - it's documented that at the massacre of Jonestown there were folks with poison syringes and guns that took care of people who wouldn't take the poison voluntarily - so having violence spread out beyond the confines of the cult makes perfect sense.

Assassination is a darkly themed but really versatile card. It allows you to get rid of a grifter or saboteur taking up precious space in your sects. It also can be used to target the cultists in your opponent's sects. 

Assassination lets you choose any in-play cultist. If it's a follower (presumably of high value) you can immediately sacrifice it, ridding your opponent of tribute. 

Alternatively, you can take out a hierophant that is aligned with their god/idol to completely wreck a sect. That said, you need to sacrifice one of your followers to do so - but if you've got a saboteur or grifter as a follower, this is killing two cultists with one stone. 

Just be warned that whenever a player finds themselves with a sect with followers but no hierophant, a power vacuum forms - and that player can promote any follower within the sect to a hierophant. So choose your targets wisely! 

Historically, cults will use any method they can to control their members, and while I thought it all was mostly brainwashing, it's all forms of coercion - blackmail, violence, death threats, etc. I recently read an article about how two ex-Jonestown cultists were assassinated, likely by a former member. Scary stuff. 

Anyway, that's it for this update, and I hope to see some of you at WonderCon! I'm crossing my fingers that a printed prototype* arrives in time to show to folks at the convention (they tell me it'll arrive in time for Saturday and Sunday!)

Thanks again!!
-Rick

*While it'll have the art for all the rest of the cards, the cultist cards will still have the "placeholder cultist" art in it, since I need the campaign to finish before I start making all of you lovely Become a Cultist backers into card art. 

Yooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! We're funded!
 
Thank you everyone!

So amazing!

I was actually writing this update when I got a ping on my email and it let me know we did it! You all did it!

Cult Crafter is officially going to be a game!

Alright, I'll keep this one short and sweet: First off, if you haven't voted in the postcard poll, please do so, as it closes at 12pm PT Friday! 

Secondly, in early playtests, people often asked "Why don't I just cycle through the cultist deck as fast as possible? Why gamble on drawing resources or gods?" 

Great question. 

Enter: the Saboteur. 

This card is unique in that it's the only card that has two different colorways for the art. Partially because when illustrating her (live on stream) I realized the orange and teal looked a bit too Lara-Crofty and started messing around with the color shifter, and the red and green looked pretty cool too. 

Since there's two copies of the Saboteur, I figured "why not keep them both?" 

So along with the other "bomb" card, as my wife calls them, this pair of cards live in the cultist deck. While they'll be shuffled back in if they're revealed in refilling the drafting pool, they otherwise lurk silently. As a perfect spy, their goal is to infiltrate your sects and prevent you from getting sets of cards.

You'll notice this super spy is colorless-  that's not a wild, that's an unaffiliated aspect. She's going to join your cult by eating up your non-draw action the turn you draw her, and while she'll give you some tribute to make you think she's a devoted member, she's not going to help you with set bonuses. 

Just hope that you have an open spot for a follower when you draw her - she's even harder to get rid of and more annoying if she becomes a hierophant in your sect. 

So to answer the earlier question, if you haven't seen a Saboteur or Grifter come up in a while, you might not want to press your luck going for cultists and maybe one of the other decks would be a safer move. 

Anyway, I'm going to go run around the house celebrating for a few minutes and will try to get my cats in on the celebration. 

Thank you all again!!!

Rick 

Howdy everyone!

Wahoo! We're so close! Huge thanks to everyone who has helped us get to 90% funded - I'm hoping we can push over the hump soon!

First off, thanks to everyone who's shaping the postcard pack contents - I've ushered in the top few favorites and everything else (including some other fan favorite illustrations) are now in a battle royale poll to see what else will make the cut!

Secondly, I wanted to showcase a few of the non-god cards in the event you missed the part of the Kickoff Stream (starts around 18:45) where I went through the cards in the resources deck. I think this might be a good way to also talk through more of the game mechanics and rules as well - I dunno, let me know in the comments! 

Today, I'll talk a bit about the Conspiracy Theorist and Consult the Oracle. Both of these are Event cards (as opposed to the Idol cards - the other type of resource card). 

The Conspiracy Theorist is a bit unique in that it's the only Event card that become a permanent. Idols become permanents in the game, but overall the Event cards are meant to signal some type of temporal event. The Conspiracy Theorist should really be named "Conspiracy Theorist Joins Your Cult," but that's too long of a name to fit on the card.

Basically, the Conspiracy Theorist allows you to clone another follower you own in play. All followers (besides the Saboteur and Grifter) have a tribute value of either 1, 3, or 5, so you'll want to save the Conspiracy Theorist for a higher value follower.

The other benefit is that the tinfoil hat guy is malleable - he'll also take on the aspects of the follower he's latched on to, meaning that the additional benefit is that he can help you complete a set of a specific aspect to help certain hierophants and Idols get a set bonus.

Consult the Oracle is an event card that is one of those cards you hope you draw towards the middle or end of the game. It allows you to move 1 cultist (meaning a follower or even a hierophant) from each of your sects to a different sect you own. To really optimize this, you're likely going to play this after you've started building out all three of your sects. 

Consult the Oracle is meant to simulate the knowledge a cult leader gets from consulting the All-Seeing Oracle, a decapitated witch who sees the past, present, and future all at the same time. Because the Oracle's mind exists in all timelines simultaneously, she actually doesn't know she's been reduced to just a head on a stick and therefore still hands out prophecies even though she died hundreds of years ago. 

Gameplay-wise, this card can help you move "stuck" cultists into more optimal placement. I think of Cult Crafter ultimate as a resource-management game, even though most people would classify it into trick-taking due to trying to match the aspects of your god with your cultists. I think of it as a resource-management game in that the resource is space and time - space in your hand, space in your sects, and the time via the order (no pun intended this time) in which you play cards.

The Oracle allows you to escape these space-time constraints somewhat by moving cultists around once they're played as if you too could understand the past, present, and future. 

Alright - let me know what you think about these card spotlights! Hit that "learn more" button below and drop a comment with your thoughts!

Thanks again, everyone!