Knowledge Asymmetry

Knowledge Asymmetry

Meet your new criminal fixer and discover 4 villainous crews stalking the solar system. Will you hire their services as thieves and assassins or enter their ship lairs to track them down and bring each to justice?
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MOTHERSHIP MONTH 👽
#Alien
#Indie
#Horror
mothership-month

This project is part of MOTHERSHIP MONTH 👽, which runs from November 12th - December 10th 2024. Learn more →

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Choose your Villain!


Knowledge Asymmetry is a 24 page module for the Mothership RPG collecting 4 villainous spacefaring factions, their ship lairs, and a shadowy corporate fixer to draw unwitting player crews into the criminal underworld. Inside you'll find unique spacecraft, brand new ship upgrades, and 6 different NPC's each with their own tactics and behaviors.
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All Physical Backers receive the Assassin's Anglerfish sticker!

To celebrate the successful funding of all Mothership Month projects, Knowledge Asymmetry's Physical backers now get the Assassin's Anglerfish sticker!
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Pledge Levels:

Knowledge Asymmetry is Columbary TTRPG's first crowdfunding campaign and we're keeping things sharp and sleek with two pledge tiers: Physical or Digital.


The Physical Backer option includes the Knowledge Asymmetry booklet and PDF, plus all digital AND physical stretch goals

Physical Backers Receive:

  • The Knowledge Asymmetry booklet
  • All physical and digital stretch goals
  • A PDF of the Knowledge Asymmetry bookmarked and ready to use in your home games.
The Digital Backer option includes a PDF download of Knowledge Asymmetry and all digital stretch goals



Digital Backers Receive:

  • A PDF of the Knowledge Asymmetry bookmarked and ready to use in your home games.
  • All digital stretch goals

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Stretch Goals:

So we’ve funded, now what?


We BLEW through 2500 in the first 24 hours. What's next?
At $6000 we are upgrading the criminal dossiers to printed player handouts for all Physical backers.
  • BLASTED:
    • Unique maps of the factions' ships for crew to explore.
  • BREACHED:
    • 4 mini missions from the Corporate Fixer draw in players and place their crews in the midst of a showdown between each faction.
  • VENTED: 
    •  A sticker pack of logos for each faction AND the corporate fixer for Physical backers!
  • GORED:
    • Player Facing Virtual Table Top maps for each ship lair.
  • BREACHED:
    • Player Facing Virtual Table Top Dossiers for each criminal faction detailing their backstory, methods, and tactics.
  • At $6000:
    • We upgrade the Criminal Dossiers to physical player handouts for all Physical Backers!
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What's Inside Knowledge Asymmetry:

The Heist Team

The Scarlet Croswell ordinarily runs mining resupply, but they also specialize in less upstanding forms of cargo transfer...
Scarlet Croswell operates an upstanding transshipping operation by day, but put those same cargo transfer skill to use operating as a cutting edge team of thieves. Want to get a hold of a shipping container that inconveniently happens to be in another crew's cargo hold? You'll need the rim's best thieves for the heist.


Illicit Ship Upgrades

The WSW Houle Flier's hangar bays hold more than just racing fighters, but few who enter Wulco's holds return to tell what they found inside.

Wulco Shipworks is renowned as one of the winningest System-1 Racing League teams. Delve into infinite parallel dimensions to seek out powerful (and dangerous) new ship upgrades. Want to get somewhere faster than is strictly advisable? You need ship engineers with the bleeding edge mods to do the trick.


Evidence Disposal Specialists

Pan & Rose shipbreakers runs a no-questions-asked salvage operation. You want an alien infested freighter disposed of? A crime scene disappeared? You need a scrapper with a discrete disposition willing to look the other way.  P&R will jump to your location and slag any vessel in their industrial centripetal furnace, The Maw, then drop the molten remains into the star of your choice.


The Lone Assassin

Talitha Sarafolean spent years as a Company ward imprisoned in Barley/Kaberpul's Bioweapons R&D department. The company losses sustained during her escape have never been fully tallied, but there is a very real price for her unique skills. Which side of her smart rifle would you rather be on?
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And More...

1 Criminal Fixer
  • Everybody needs an IN with the criminal underworld
6 Unique NPC's
  • These lawless criminals each have their own motives and tactics
4 Custom Ship-Based Lairs
  • Villainous crews stalking the space between stations and stars
10 All-New Ship Upgrades
  • Push your crew's vessel far beyond the SBT's factory specs and face the otherworldly consequences
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The Booklet:

Knowledge Asymmetry will be a full-color 24 page staple bound booklet. Printed on a 100lb cover and standard 80lb pages, this is will be a simple functional tool to use at your table, with lively inspiring art by Jettila Lewis and myself. 

Rather than printing at one of the big online print outlets I'm using my friendly local printshop, Chicago Printworks. I've relied on Chicago Printworks for Mothership projects and other pamphlets in the past, and I can pick up and examine proofs in-person at their shop just one neighborhood over.

Fulfillment and shipping will be handled by Space Penguin Ink. Postage and shipping costs will be collected separately after the campaign completes.
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Fulfillment:

Digital fulfillment will be handled on BackerKit. Physical fulfillment will be handled by Space Penguin Ink, LLC.

Shipping will be charged post campaign via BackerKit, and we are trying to keep shipping costs down.

We will be shipping all orders from the US.

We are trying to keep EU/UK/ROW shipping as low as possible, but can't guarantee there will be no import fees. Import fees are the responsibility of the backer. We will also endeavour to provide shipping options that include tracking in BackerKit.

Estimated shipping costs are as follows. We are using weight-based shipping, and you will be charged shipping via BackerKit for the total weight of your pledge and any add-ons.

United States - $9-12
Canada - $19-26
United Kingdom - $19-26
EU - $19-26
US Territories and ROW - $27-38

Note that these are shipping estimates, based on projected book weights. These estimates are subject to change. We will offer tracked shipping options in BackerKit.

Unfortunately we cannot ship to the following countries at the current time: Afghanistan, Belarus, Brunei Darussalam, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Niue, Russian Federation, Syrian Arab Republic, Yemen.
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Timeline:

Expect to receive Knowledge Asymmetry in the second quarter of 2025. The module is written, art and layout are underway, and artist Jettila Lewis is ready and waiting on funding to finish up the character art!

After her work is done the layout will be finalized and the module will go from there to printing with Chicago Printworks before being sent to backers by my fulfillment partner, Space Penguin Ink. They will bill backers for shipping at this time, separately from the fundraising campaign.

This is Columbary TTRPG's first crowdfunding campaign, but not our first table top module. I'm building what I hope to be ample buffers into our production timeline, while also aiming to get Knowledge Asymmetry to backers ahead of schedule.
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Who is Columbary TTRPG?

I’m Ben King, a grocery clerk at a non-profit, and dog walker in Chicago, Illinois, USA. I’ve been making small free table top supplements at https://benking.itch.io/ for years, but I’ve never been intentional about sharing what I’ve made. Columbary TTRPG is where that will happen going forward. Subscribe to Columbary TTRPG's Substack at: https://substack.com/@columbaryttrpg

For Knowledge Asymmetry I'm partnering with Chicago artist Jettila Lewis, born and raised in the River Styx. You can see more of her work at:
https://www.instagram.com/jettilalewis/ 
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MOTHERSHIP MONTH 👽



Brace yourself for Mothership Month—a group-collab project led by Tuesday Knight Games featuring some of the brightest stars from the Mothership third-party publishing (3PP) community. Each 👩‍🚀 creator has launched a brand new adventure filled with criminals, smugglers, and rimspace pirates.


 

Mothership Month Supply Pods

🚀 Back 5+ projects at the physical level and gain access to the SUPPLY PODS. All Supply Pods are now unlocked, so backing just 5 projects will get you all of the below:

  • 🌟 Supply Pod 1 (Unlocked!): 1 pack of Mothership CHARACTER CARDS. Each pack contains 13 pre-made character cards ready for use as pre-gen characters or NPCs. Each pack comes with at least one FOIL card.
  • 🌟 Supply Pod 2 (Unlocked!): +1 pack of Mothership CHARACTER CARDS, 5 foil campaign project stickers.
  • 🌟 Supply Pod 3 (Unlocked!): +1 pack of Mothership CHARACTER CARDS, +5 foil campaign project stickers, and an exclusive Mothership Month 24 pin!
  • 🌟 Supply Pod 4 (Unlocked!): +1 pack of Mothership CHARACTER CARDS, +11 foil campaign project stickers, and Shadow of a Doubt a brand new "reverse murder mystery" pamphlet adventure by Ian Yusem (Hull Breach, The Drain).

All in: if you back 5+ projects you're getting 4 Character Card packs (an entire deck of cards), 21 foil project stickers, an exclusive Mothership Month 24 pin, and a brand new adventure pamphlet.

Are there more Supply Pods to come? We're looking into it now!

Streams, Interviews, and more!

All month long, we're diving into the void with daily streams, unsettling interviews, and exclusive, heart-pounding reveals. Whether you're a veteran spacer or new to the Mothership, join us in celebrating the universe’s bravest survivors…and those who didn’t make it back.

Thanks for joining us on our first ever Mothership Month! 👽
If you believe that this project is not in compliance with BackerKit’s Community Guidelines or Terms of Service, you can file a report by sending a message via this link: Report this project