Early last month, Protagonist Labs launched a Kickstarter for its first project, an online storytelling game called Storium. See my original post on the launch for all the details about the game.
The campaign is scheduled to end the evening of May 8, and it’s gone well. It blasted past its initial funding goal of $25,000 in less than a day, and, as of this writing, it’s up over $180,000. Attribute much of that to a series of stretch goals that brought new worlds into the game, from authors including Saladin Ahmed, Mur Lafferty, Andrea Phillips, Lenny Balsera, Fran Wilde, Chuck Wendig, Ken Hite, Rich Dansky, Adam Koebel, Lauren Roy, Elizabeth Bear, Ryan Macklin, Magdalen Braden, Ursula Vernon, Tobias Buckell, Lillian Cohen-Moore, Carrie Harris, Keith Baker, Max Gladstone, Scott Sigler, Sage LaTorra, Mike Lee, Karen Lord, Shoshanna Kessock, Quinn Murphy, Jay Bushman, Seanan McGuire, Brian Engard, Jocelyn Koehler, Nicholas Tulach, Matt Wallace, Logan Bonner, Nathan Ballingrud, Jordan Weisman, Tracy Barnett, Sam Sykes, Robin Laws, Steven Sanders, Steve Long, Lilith Saintcrow, Maureen McHugh, and James Patrick Kelly, as well as the worlds from three tabletop RPGs: Mutants & Masterminds, Young Centurions, and In Nomine. [A stretch goal also added me contributing materials from my own Monster Academy novels.]
On top of that, backers have also unlocked new character avatar art, new story card art, an expanded gamma test, localization into at least three other languages, and new social media features. At $185,000, Charles Stross joins the league of legendary writers already assembled, and there’s a huge push to crack the $200,000 barrier after that.
If that happens, the Protagonist Labs team will develop a version of Storium tailored for use in schools. As they state, “We will work with educators to identify and build the features that schools require, run pilot tests, and even design ‘worlds’ and curricula for students of different ages, including adults.”
With less than 45 hours to go before the end of the campaign, this might seem tight, but the drive picked up another $1,000 in the time it took me to write this. Be sure to check it out, and—if the project excites you—chip in to grab a whole lot of amazing worlds to play in.
