As a man of a certain age, I get a bit misty-eyed whenever someone brings up HeroQuest, which was a board game produced by Milton Bradley in 1989 that let you explore dungeons and fight hordes of miniature monsters. As much as I loved that game in my youth, there's no getting around that it was, in a word, bad. But it had some enduring ideas, and those are the fuel for an ongoing Kickstarter for a tabletop roleplaying system you can share with your friends on PC.

TaleSpire is meant to be a freeform toolbox for roleplaying adventures that you build yourself. You have painted miniatures, terrain in which to move them around, and scary monsters for them to fight. As a dungeon master, you'll be able to design towns, dungeons, and whatever other settings you can imagine with a built-in set of tiles and components. When your heroes encounter evil things, you can tell them to roll for initiative, and they can throw pleasingly realistic dice to see where they wind up in the turn order.

The system is currently running a Kickstarter, and I've got to say, it looks absolutely fabulous. There's a nice tilt-shift camera effect on all the scenes and minis that makes them look like they're tabletop figurines somehow brought to life.

Here's the pitch video:

"Our aim is to get rid of everything that gets between you and your stories," the creators, a studio called BouncyRock, say in their Kickstarter copy. "TaleSpire is not tied to a specific game or ruleset; if it's role-playing on a square grid we have your back."

It's at least worth a look, particularly if you've run or plan on running a traditional pen-and-paper role-playing game at some point in the future. The Kickstarter runs through August 7, and they're looking to raise about $127,000 to take care of production costs and wages. They have what they admit is an "aggressive" roadmap, and plan to have a playable beta available six months after the Kickstarter wraps up.