Maximum Recursion Depth: One More Week for Kickstarter! (and unrelated info about COVID-19 and vaccines)

 The Maximum Recursion Depth Kickstarter is in its final week! The campaign has been wildly successful, or at least has far exceeded my expectations, which is very exciting and encouraging. It's currently >200% funded, and all stretch goals have been met! While I don't at this time intend to add more stretch goals unless it makes significantly more money in its final week, additional funds will still help me better understand the market for content like this, and will provide me greater flexibility and potentially more content for this book, if not as a stretch goal per se. As-is, it is looking like the book will still cost me some amount of money out of pocket, which is totally ok, I was prepared to spend potentially much more out of pocket and that would have been without even the stretch goals, but this is just to say, additional backing would certainly still be appreciated. It would be very cool to get >100 backers!

Once the funding period wraps up, I will outline both to my backers and on the blog what my plans are for maintaining both projects. I realize it's been a while since I've posted anything besides updates on the MRD Kickstarter, but I hope to change that soon. I imagine I'll have to slow down the frequency of non MRD-related posts or refocus the blog for a while in some other ways, but hopefully, I will be able to make both work.

On a totally unrelated note, a good friend of mine from grad school, who is nearly finished with his PhD in cognitive neuroimmunology and, if I'm remembering correctly, has two Masters degrees, one in behavioral neuroscience and the other in clinical psychology, has just started a youtube channel, Live Life in Flux. In his first video, COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Explained, he does exactly that. As someone who is generally skeptical of a lot of pop-sci / science communication work, I have to say, I think he really finds a good balance between presenting the real science, coherently, without dumbing it down or condescending, nor misrepresenting it. It is well-produced, interesting, and has a calming, ASMR or meditative quality to it, and I would encourage you all to give it a look, follow his channel, and follow him on twitter @fluxinflux. Below is a picture of him, because I think it says at least a little something about how awesome he is:

Maximum Recursion Depth: All Kickstarter Stretch Goals Reached!

The third and final stretch goal for the Maximum Recursion Depth Kickstarter has been reached! This means Scrap Princess will produce two pieces of art and FM Geist will produce a Poltergeist Form. At this time, I don't intend to add additional stretch goals. Instead, any additional value will go towards the cost of the game. That being said, if any unique opportunities present themselves, or if the Kickstarter manages to gain significantly more backing by the end of the funding period, I may consider additional stretch goals.

I realize I haven't made a real blog post in a while. Once the funding period for the Kickstarter has ended, I'll share some updates and thoughts about how I intend to continue with the blog while also working on completing Maximum Recursion Depth.

Maximum Recursion Depth: Scrap Princess (1) Stretch Goal!

The Maximum Recursion Depth Kickstarter has met the second stretch goal! This means that Scrap Princess will produce an original piece of art for this issue! Scrap Princess's piece should be a nice accompaniment to Vallinin, who has done amazing work for the game so far and will continue to be the primary artist on this issue. We've nearly completed the fourth Poltergeist Form and it is possibly the best yet (I happen to know it's his favorite...).

Scrap Princess and I have not decided on what exactly her contribution will be yet, but for reference, included below are three pieces of art she's produced for one of my other campaign settings, Phantasmos.

Maximum Recursion Depth: Fiona Maeve Geist Stretch Goal!

The Maximum Recursion Depth Kickstarter has met the first stretch goal! This means that Fiona Maeve Geist will produce a Poltergeist Form for this issue, bringing the total number up to 7! This will also be the first official Poltergeist Form not created by me.

I would generally encourage people to consider creating their own Poltergeist Forms if they feel so inclined, but admittedly, I do not have a specific framework for doing so at the moment. Likely, while discussing with Fiona, I will end up having to create that framework or inadvertently creating it in the process. That may or may not make it into the book in any formalized way, but at least it will be one more interesting Poltergeist Form, with a unique perspective, which hopefully people will appreciate. Maybe I'll share a formal framework for creating new poltergeist forms on my blog, or in a future issue.

In any case, I'm really excited to see what she creates!

Mothership Dead Planet, by Fiona Maeve Geist, Donn Stroud, and Sean McCoy. In my headcanon (and in absolutely no official or authorized sense...) this makes Maximum Recursion Depth the black sheep stepchild to Mothership.

Maximum Recursion Depth Kickstarter Funding Goal Met!!!!

The funding goal for the Maximum Recursion Depth Kickstarter has been met!!!!! Still hoping to get the stretch goals, would love to have Fiona Geist as a guest writer of a Poltergeist Form and a couple pieces of Scrap Princess art, but anyway, this is very exciting, to have gotten fully funded in under a week!

Also, I was interviewed about Maximum Recursion Depth last night on The Hardboiled GMshoe's Office! I think it was a good discussion about the game, and they asked some good questions. I hope people give it a look.

EDIT: I had meant to write some other stuff in here and then completely forgot. Anyway, I have to actually do my job, but this weekend I'll have a follow-up post about some stuff now that the goal for the MRD Kickstarter has been met.

Maximum Recursion Depth Interview!

Quick Update, a bit last minute, but I will be interviewed later this evening about my Kickstarter for Maximum Recursion Depth! Details below:

[Q&A] The Randomworlds RPG chatroom welcomes Max Cantor (Maximum Recursion Depth: The Karmapunk RPG) 11/18/2020 7:30 p.m. CDT!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/maxcan7/maximum-recursion-depth-the-karmapunk-rpg/

To join: https://tinyurl.com/randomworldsIRC

Log to be posted at: https://gmshoe.wordpress.com/

EDIT: Here it is! Here's my interview with The Hardboiled GMshoe's Office

Maximum Recursion Depth Kickstarter!!!!!

I just launched a Kickstarter for Maximum Recursion Depth! It's going to include a ton of new content and revised content, awesome original art by an amazing artist, awesome stylistic layout. This is a preview of MRD becoming what I had always intended for it to be. I've scoped the project so that I'm prepared to fund it entirely out of pocket if necessary, but a successful kickstarter will allow me to do more, more quickly, and will make it more feasible for me to continue to produce more content in the future of this level of quality and with these and other partners. I have a lot of doubts that this will succeed, and it's scary and depressing and a little embarrassing thinking about how poorly this is likely to go, and frustrating to believe this despite how much work I've put into this. But, it was a good learning experience, it forced me to think about certain things more thoroughly, to be prepared to really commit myself to doing this. So it's happening, one way or another, even if the KS fails. But I really hope it doesn't...

Here it is!