The illustrated character creation and world building activity book that comes to life with the roll of a die!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
New tiers for the home stretch!
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Jun 27, 2023 at 08:06:51 PM
Hi everyone,
We are in the home stretch with 3 days left. It’s a very exciting time for the campaign and our goal is within reach.
Big news about reward tiers!
We’ve decided to make some changes to the offerings of the $500 Book Cameo and $300 Custom character tier.
Custom Character Tier *revamped*
The Custom Character tier is now the Mini-cameo tier! You or someone you nominate (or your cat) will now be featured somewhere within the pages of our book; as a villain, shopkeeper, robot or dragon tamer. This tier will no longer offer a custom character drawing. *submitted image must be approved by the team.
Mini-cameo tier example
Book Cameo Tier *revamped*
We are now featuring all four of the Book Cameo backers as the sole “Headline Image” featured on the first page of a chapter. A big special spotlight cameo! This tier still includes the custom character drawing by Conor Nolan of a Wizard or Alien character they'll create using Roll for Your Life.
Book Cameo tier example
Retailer Tier
We are also now offering a Retail Only Tier, allowing for stores in the USA to stock their shelves with Roll For Your Life. It would mean the world to us if you could reach out to your local book stores and hobby shops and encourage them to check out our campaign. We’d love to work with smaller brick and mortar stores.
Podcast by the creators!
Last but not least, we (the creators) have made a Roll For Your Life podcast! If you’d like you can listen to us roll through the Wizard chapter to create interesting characters, discuss the book and giggle a bit.
We so appreciate everyone who has supported this so project so far and if you can help spread the word about our final days on Kickstarter that would be amazing. Thanks again!
--Dakota
Over half way and climbing!
over 1 year ago
– Mon, Jun 19, 2023 at 02:41:05 PM
Hi everyone,
We have passed the halfway mark and are making great progress towards our goal. Your help spreading the word and singing the praises of Roll For Your Life has been inspiring, thank you!
You can find all of these links and more in the "playthroughs, reviews and mentions" section of our Kickstarter page.
--Dakota
Your name in the book!
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Jun 14, 2023 at 10:05:07 AM
Hi Everyone,
We’re about to update our campaign page to clarify the benefits of supporting us here, now, specifically on Kickstarter. But I wanted to let backers know first: we’ve decided to include the name of every backer in the book as Founders!
It’s another way for us to show our appreciation and commemorate your support.
And don’t forget that Henry will be chatting about Roll For Your Life on Rule of Lore’s Twitch channel, this Friday the 16th at 6pm pacific.
Onward!
--Dakota
Live stream with Rule of Lore
over 1 year ago
– Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 03:40:57 PM
Hi everyone,
This Friday the 16th from 6:00-7:30pm Pacific, Henry Nolan will be joining the Rule of Lore team to discuss Roll For Your Life and explore a chapter!
Join them if you’d like to see our book in action and hear more about our design process, sources of inspiration, and what most excites us about this project.
Head to their channel to check out more content: video games, tabletop RPGs, and round-table discussions about storytelling in all its forms!
--Dakota
Over 100 backers and well on our way to $10,000 dollars!
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Jun 08, 2023 at 10:32:06 AM
The word is getting out and we are so happy Roll For Your Life is spreading!
Ithought I'd share a little more background about Roll For Your Life, our process making it and why it means so much to us:
Roll For Your Life was born out of a desire to create an approachable system that would help guide creative thinking. Something perfect for quick group or individual play with this as the ultimate goal: create characters and discover stories through guided chaos. An activity we could jump into without too much investment while still scratching the same creative itch that tabletop RPG character creation does.
Roll For Your Life didn’t have a name for many years. It was just a game we played casually on long drives, rainy days, and while we watched our favorite movies. It was played mostly for laughs, putting a few categories together that would capture the essence of an archetype. The randomness of the dice always had a way of bringing out the funnier side of building a character and we strived for absurdity: “My pirate has 6 parrots, two peg legs and a boat pulled by manatees?” We often drew the resulting characters, marveling at the “exquisite corpse” like jumble of attributes. The more we tinkered and considered the outcomes the more we discovered that this had real potential for storytelling: serious or silly, it could be leveraged to free the mind of the previous hang-ups and jumpstart creativity. And while we moved away from it being simply a numerical gag, some of that innate humor remains, and we’re glad it’s there.
So what started out as a pastime between friends eventually grew into the Roll for Your Life we have now. A love letter to genre conventions: a simultaneous celebration and deconstruction of the big archetypes and tropes of page and screen. We all know in broad strokes what a Wizard is like, or a Noir Detective, or a Dragon. But we want to let the dice roll out of the conventional boundaries, to tear apart and rebuild these beloved stock characters, to twist them in surprising ways.
I’ve attached a few “behind the scenes” photos showing our journey until this point below. Photos of us kicking around ideas, scraps of paper with notes, some early sketches by Conor, our demo at Orca Con and our doggie mascot Willa!
Thanks again for all of your support so far. We can do this!
--Dakota
Brainstorming circa 2019
A collection of notes from various chapters. Some very early drafts and some late round tweaks.
