After Reset has potential, though with Wasteland 2 coming out shortly and the rather high amount being requested (for an unknown developer) I’m not certain how much of a chance it has of getting funded. There’s quite a bit of time left, though, and Joystiq just covered them, so maybe that will bump it up a bit.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2146421095/after-reset-rpg

I backed Shroud of the Avatar, but after hearing how they intend to do the combat, I’m kinda regretting it.

Just as an FYI, I backed enough to get on the Dev+ boards, so I know ‘some’ things I can’t share publicly yet, but I can share this much because they’ve already made it public.

You earn skills as you advance levels. You can put your points in different skill trees, but their’s no class that you have to live with forever. You just put them where you want them.

Then, and this is where I start to have problems, before you get to combat you pick ‘some’ of your skills to put in a deck/bag/whatever. There’s a minimum amount of skills you can have in your bag because once combat starts, they’re made available to you in a limited scope for a limited time before they fade out and are replaced with other skills from your deck. Using them replaces them faster than waiting for an opening.

Some armors and such will insert ‘slugs’ into your deck that mean you drew a blank on that slot for combat.

It’s possible to have multiple decks, that you can switch on the fly, but at a penalty. Additionally, you can lock a few skills down if you spend XP for the privilege.

Which basically means, knowing a skill, like heal, fireball, crushing blow, etc. May not be available to you even though it’s what you need, it’s what you know, and maybe even in your deck.

The pro’s to this is that supposedly it will create more thought into deck building (questionable) and it will let them do combos where you can simul-cast multiple skill/uses into undocumented powers (interesting… but not enough for me).

So, they’re going for a magic the gathering, real time combat, RPG. They do know it’s a risk, and have budgeted time to take it out, but are pretty locked on to trying it in Alpha at this point, and not giving a lot of time to have a plan B before just jumping to WoW if it fails.

All of this might be interesting in another kind of game, but I feel like it will be too limiting to encourage the exploration they’re promoting, or the do anything anytime feel I usually get from a Lord British game. Others are concerned about how they’ll play a game with a UI that moves around, and others are concerned that luck of the draw will matter so much more than skill that it won’t be fun.

So yeah, it’s definitely not for everyone, but it is different.