There are few properties that hit me as hard in the nostalgia as ThunderCats. It sits in that rare space reserved for childhood heroes that felt larger than life, mythic even. Lion-O lifting the Sword of Omens, Panthro’s gruff competence, Cheetara’s speed and confidence, and yes, even Snarf’s constant fretting all all defined the characters in ways that stuck with me. ThunderCats always delivered on the promise of high adventure that lodged itself deep in my imagination.
So when I saw that a ThunderCats tabletop roleplaying game had landed on Kickstarter, my first reaction was excitement. Genuine and immediate excitement. ThunderCats and roleplaying games seem like a natural pairing. Heroic archetypes, ancient ruins, strange technology, and clear moral stakes are all things that tabletop games do well. On paper, this should be a perfect match.
Then I started looking closer.
One thing that immediately bothered me was the character art. I understand that every new adaptation wants to put its own stamp on a property, but some of these design choices are baffling. Snarf, in particular, looks almost unrecognizable. How they drew him just feels off. The charm that I so fondly remember has been stripped away. And Tygra, dear god, why does Tygra have a mustache and muttonchops like and old sailor?
This problem is not new. It reminds me a lot of the ThunderCats miniatures CMON released for their Zombicide board game. Some of those sculpts, and the accompanying art, barely resembled the characters many of us grew up with. They felt like reinterpretations that forgot what made the originals resonate in the first place. When nostalgia is a major selling point, drifting too far from the source material feels like a kick in the pants.
What truly gives me pause, though, is the Kickstarter page itself. There is essentially no content. None. No preview spreads. No sample layouts. No teaser pages showing how the rules are presented or how the setting is handled. As of now, nothing appears to have been produced beyond the announcement itself. That is a major letdown.
For a roleplaying game, especially one using a licensed property and a starting buy-in of $40 for the PDF, I expect to see something. Even a single page spread would go a long way toward building confidence. Right now, backing this project feels like buying into an idea rather than a product. That uncertainty directly diminishes my faith in what is being offered.
I am curious about how the ThunderCats will be blended into Dungeons and Dragons 5E. My curiosity is absolutely there. How will they handle technology versus magic? How are the ThunderCats themselves represented mechanically? How flexible is the system if you want to tell stories beyond the core cast? I want to dive in. But at this point, I don’t have any confidence in what will be delivered.
If I am being honest with myself, I know I will never actually play a full campaign (or even a one-shot) of the ThunderCats roleplaying game. This would be a nostalgia only purchase, a bookshelf item, something to read and flip through rather than something that hits the table regularly. That makes the $40 – $50+ price tag sting a bit more than it otherwise might.
So will I back this campaign?
I do not know yet. Fear of missing out (FOMO) is real, especially with licensed games that may never see a second printing and that probably won’t be widely available on store shelves. I have about two weeks to decide whether nostalgia outweighs skepticism.
For now, all I can do is watch, wait, and hope that something concrete appears before the clock runs out.