Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

Folks who buy Aeternal Legends at IPR have been able to get the PDF for free. We got a great response when we had the special and we’ve noticed a lot of folks landing on the Aeternal Legends Pitch article, so now’s the time to officially announce that we’ve dropped the price on both the PDF on RPGNow and the print version on Lulu to be competitive with the IPR deal — and to make either version more attractive.

So: Aeternal Legends in print was $26.95 — and it’s now $21.00! Grab it at Lulu.

Aeternal Legends in PDF was $11.95 — and it’s now $5.95! Grab it at Lulu or RPGNow.

Plus, you can always grab both for $26.95 at IPR. But let’s say you have the print version and want that PDF. We’d be happy to send it to you. Just email a picture of you holding the book (you don’t have to show your face if you’re shy) to m AT mobunited DOT com along with an email address RPGNow likes and we’ll send you a free download from RPGNow.

The game’s getting a bit more buzz, but naturally we’d like to get more. So we encourage you to talk about it online. Let us know about your impressions, games, hacks — we want to know about it. It was never our intention to build an urban fantasy RPG that was excessively “gimmicky,” but one where we fit playability and depth into a small, accessible package — something we hope is greater than the sum of its parts.  Continued support is coming. Fight Like a Legend is going to be joined by the Spheres expansion as soon as the art’s done and we find time to get it ready.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

Or, “You’re Magic, You Are”

I have to admit something. I really love games that blur the lines a bit. If you’re of an age, you’ll remember Over the Edge. That game had a suggested scenario that involved the characters finding out that they were the protagonists in an imagined fictional world. It then had them meeting first the GM, then the other players. Lots of people pointed out how this required the right players to be a lot of fun. I’m pretty much the textbook example of a “right player”. It jumps straight to what I want: a way to become invested in the game as a player on the meta-level of being a player, in addition to the actions of my character. I want my expectations, and the expectations of everyone at the table, to help shape the world.

This is not a revolutionary idea per se. FATE-based games like Spirit of the Century, Starblazer Adventures, and Diaspora use Aspects, player-defined traits that describe both characters and setting elements. Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies has the players working together to build the setting. Any game with freeform traits—such as Unknown Armies—allows a player to say to the GM “This is what I want to see” simply by naming those traits. Just about every section of GM advice worth it’s salt includes a section pointing out that it’s not just the GM’s game; it belongs to everyone.

That’s not to say that the GM must constantly bow to the whims of the other players, or that the characters can never fail. This is a fallacy that Malcolm’s been happily tearing to shreds in his GM as God entries here. The GM is God, but God must listen to his clergy occasionally.

Few games—in fact, I’m hard-pressed to name any, though I’m sure I’m wrong—have an in-setting explanation for why two groups’ stories can be entirely different in tone and theme and yet take place in the same game. If you’re running a World of Darkness game inspired by the works of Kelly Armstrong it’s going to look a lot different to one that’s Raymond Chandler with wizards. Both games are World of Darkness games, but neither has a reason for the other also being possible.

I like the idea of a group’s shared expectations having some impact on the game-world. It’s a powerful thing, and a resource that more groups should tap. So in Æternal Legends, we have the all-pervading magic. It suffuses the world. In theory, magic shapes the world—and magic is in turn shaped by those Legends who have ascended to the Source.

In practice, the tides of magic are shaped by the players. Magic is the in-setting way of saying: “It’s something that the group finds cool, so stop worrying and enjoy the ride.” Every game, without exception, has bits that make no sense. They exist purely to further the type of game that the writers want to write, and that players want to play. In Æternal Legends, that’s an explicit facet of the setting.

And because I’ve been thinking about Spheres again on and off, this leads me to a slight realisation. A Legend who reaches the Crown can sublime into magic rather than turning back; effectively becoming part of the magical field. Now, for groups who find this sort of meta-hacking interesting, that effectively gives the old character as much direct authorial control over the story as the players. And now that he’s on the meta-level, the character’s desires may not mesh with those of his player any more…

In this way, a long-running (or high-powered) Æternal Legends game may well take the route first outlined in Over the Edge, perhaps following a similar path to the hero in Grant Morrison’s Animal Man. It’s an interesting thought-experiment, if nothing else.

-Stew

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

Mob United is a one and two person band. That means that some decisions happen not because of any particular strategy but because I don’t have the time to do them differently. So I’ll say it straight up: I’m extending the free Æternal Legends PDF (which includes a discount of 11 bucks on the print version of the core, available when you download it) deal via RPGNow because even though I have a very specific way I want to close the special (that’s the sneaky mercantile part) I don’t have time to jump through all the hoops.

Don’t make any mistake: I will be ending the deal this week – I’m just not sure which day. I’m currently working on a large (and NDA-protected – sorry! It’s not WOD Online, though) electronic gaming project that requires my full attention. I will try to give people a day’s notice, but we’ll see. Anyway, you better grab it in the uncertain window of time ahead!

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

It’d be bad form for me not to mention that Æternal Legends is free in PDF and cheap in print right now, wouldn’t it? I will point out that both offers only run to the end of GenCon. That gives you until Monday to take advantage of a dirt cheap print copy. For those not purchasing in dollars, the price drop still applies; customers in the UK can get the print edition for £11.36 rather than £19.19.

Malcolm’s already covered three great games to buy with Æternal Legends from Lulu. He’s also written a great elevator pitch in Five Reasons to Play the Game. I’m not going to go over that ground again.

Instead, let’s have a bit of game design. One thing that I really don’t want to let go of is the idea that the core rulebook is king. I inherited that idea from working on the World of Darkness games, where each supplement has to work just fine with only the corebook. To that end, I don’t want supplements that contradict the corebook. We’ve all seen them; the writer comes up with something new and better, and what’s said in the main book no longer matters. Sod that.

Supplements are supplemental. They work best (especially for indie games) as collections of options. Hence Fight Like a Legend has a bunch of options focused on combat: a simple combat system, new injury systems, and a way to use the combat systems for social conflict. You don’t need any of these systems, but they let you tailor the game to your own preferences.

Spheres is much the same. It’s got a bunch of options to make Spheres work the way you want them to. Maybe you want Legends to increase in power as they gain ranks in the Sphere? Or maybe you want to make the Spheres more explicitly magical? Both options are right there for you. Sphere Guilds and Shells both get extrapolated from the their sidebars in the corebook, and the Higher Spheres get full write-ups. Whatever role you want Spheres to play in your game, this supplement has you covered.

This is the one defining trait running through everything I write for Æternal Legends. I’m not defining more and more of the world with each release. Far from it; I’m doing my best to tailor the game to your group. Because this isn’t a game for reading; it’s a game for playing. Get some people around a table and throw some dice!

-Stew

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

I’m ruthlessly hawking Æternal Legends but there’s one problem. I want you to buy the Lulu print edition at 11 bucks off after getting the PDF for free, but Lulu’s shipping rates can be kind of steep for one book. Your natural solution? Buy several books. There are tons of great games that print through Lulu that aren’t Æternal Legends but are still awesome. Let’s look at three of them.

Dread: The First Book of Pandemonium

This is a violent, sleazy splatterpunk epic. Everybody’s a bit tougher than human but that just let’s ‘em bleed a little longer. The system uses a straightforward dice pool mechanic that just takes a few minutes to pick up, but the real charm of the game lies in its inventive demons and the way it’s easy to build basic stories and boot characters right into the action. The game’s only drawback is the fact that it’s background’s a bit sparse for long term play, but the supplements correct that.

MSG(tm) Executive Edition

MSG is Wood Ingham’s corporate dystopia, remarkably relevant in the way it models relationships that exist now, but merely stretches them to the point where you can satirize them “safely.” Otherwise, you might be left with rather savage self-criticism, but that can come later, after you’ve screwed over each other in search of security, raw power and the extraordinarily fuzzy line between the two.

Reign

Consider making Reign your alternate go-to fantasy RPG. The One Roll Engine System runs smoothly enough to support any core fantasy gaming you feel like doing with remarkable efficiency. Much has been said about the Company (big-ish organization) rules, but I think these are merely serviceable, while the core RPG concepts as presented here are remarkably refined. This game also has one of the better discussions of magic systems in RPGs (even though I don’t agree with it 100%, I think people fiddling with magic in a game should read it) and a world presented in digestible chunks, making it much simpler to take away basic ideas and cool bits.

Honorable Mention: RedBrick’s Catalog(s)

For God’s sakes people, you can buy Blue Planet, Earthdawn and Fading Suns from them! What the hell are you waiting for? All great games. Look ‘em up online to see why. EDIT: CORRECTION.  Sadly, you have to buy everything but Fading Suns through Mongoose now, and that company doesn’t deserve a cent of your money.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

I wanted to publish Æternal Legends as my first major release because I wanted to produce a game people would play, not read. It’s got accessible themes and motifs – elves, the heroic journey, the hidden world.

Funny thing: Sometimes “accessible” is hard to sell. Why get another game with elves? Good question. I’m not big on sale spiels, so this is something of a necessary evil – but hell, I’m going to tell you what I think Stew’s game brings to the table:

Being Human Means Something

In Æternal Legends being a regular human and not an Elf, Dwarf or Gnome means something aside from you being the “generic guy.” Humanity has a twofold mystical purpose. Humans are Lords of Beasts, charged with being the ultimate custodians of the natural world. They also have sole access to the Foundation Sphere: the power that preserves communities and raises armies. A human Legend can grow the claws of a tiger or sing up a revolution. They may be adaptable, but they aren’t the “none of the above” people.

Heroism is Enlightenment

This is a biggie. Being a Legend (a typical PC) in the game makes you a hero, but not just in the “You get special effects and nifty fight choreography” sense (though you do get those). Heroic ability is governed by a Sphere, inspired by the way the Sephiroth are used in the Western Magical Tradition (see Alan Moore’s Promethea for a comic book treatment and an inspiration for the game). Legends walk the Spheres to enlightenment – but that enlightenment has trials drawn from classic, heroic fantasy. When the Dark Lord arrives, he represents an internal, spiritual threshold and a material challenge, waiting in a tower or maze.

Intuitive Essentials, Not Fiddly Details

The game is easy to play for a couple of reasons. Character creation is lightning fast – five minutes a PC once you have it down. The real beauty of it is the way Stew decided early on that he wasn’t going to write down big, fine-grained lists of powers. The freeform magic system asks if your spell is Minor, Significant or Major, gives you the tools to build a spell and lets you run with it. Spheres are plugins for core game traits that anyone can understand shortly after reading the relevant passages. Now there is a tactical, resource-based combat system in there too, but that’s because the game is all about only doing what’s necessary to play around the game’s loose focus. It’s action-oriented, so that gets a more detailed tool. Similarly, magic isn’t about oodles of spell levels, but it does provide systems for the sort of stylish, off the cuff spellwork Stew felt was at the heart of the setting. Read, make characters and go.

Screw Plausibility: The Secret World is Big and Cool

Stew and I have both worked on tones of World of Darkness stuff. We both wanted a game that took the hidden world concept in another, more freewheeling direction. So in Æternal Legends one person in 20 is supernatural – and no, nobody else knows. Yes, we do have a magical veil of ignorance to keep the real world around but here’s the truth: It’s like that because enormous secret nations of troll Mafiosi, gnomes selling clockwork netbooks and wizard superspies kicks ass, and we basically tell you to roll with it the way you would the stuff in Hellboy II or the Harry Potter novels. Stew’s secret world is big an exuberant, not something cringing in the shadows.

Clichés Kick Ass

Elves are tricky. People either expect the Generic Elf, or some tortured reason why “our elves are different.” (They have spikes in their heads! They only live for five years!) Stew decided to go with “Hey, remember why you think elves are awesome?” So elves carry a divine mark chosen by the player, but there’s nothing wrong with your basic High Elf (like our signature character Lydia, who graces the book’s cover). Your vision of the elf counts.

Stew (and later myself, as developer) went through lots of fantasy tropes and decided that instead of rebelling against them or thoughtlessly tossing them in, he’d make them as meaningful as possible, but leave room for player and GM customization. Instead of guffawing at the idea of meeting a wizard in a tavern, we made the most powerful wizards (humans) the kinds of guys who can plan a caper in a tavern (because humans have sole access to the social Sphere of Foundation). Instead of making the ultimate Dark Lord the generic fallout of a creation myth, Stew made Da’ath the foe that arises when a hero stands at the threshold of uncertain places in her own soul.

These aren’t all the reasons why I love this game, and why I’m proud to have published it. Æternal Legends wasn’t designed to fit an elevator pitch, and I didn’t pick it for a single gimmick. Need more info from third parties? Try Stew’s reviews page (at his site). It’s about thinking big, not being afraid to find new value in the familiar, but still being brave enough to go beyond – to challenge the Dark. Seriously.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

Hey! Here’s an excerpt that summarizes the world of the Æternal Legends Modern Fantasy RPG. I originally posted this back on Mob United Media’ old livejournal (which is now a feed of this blog), but now that we’re relaunching the game it’s worth looking at again.

What about that relaunch? We’re offering the Æternal Legends PDF for FREE via RPGNow from now until around the end of Gen Con. Plus, if you download the free PDF you’ll be able to order the print version from Lulu for only $15.95 — 11 buck off the normal $26.95 price!

A World of Magic

Æternal Legends games take place in our world. The Unaware are the people you pass on the street or stand next to on the subway. The Aware see the world differently. The car mechanic at the end of the block is really a musclebound dwarf. His assistant is a craft-wise gnome. One of the college dropouts at the bar is a powerful wizard, trawling for guardians and apprentices between drinks. He’s just recruited the woman at the stool next to him. She decided it was better to be a Legendary hero than a database administrator.

The Unaware can’t see real magic. To them, the Clades are just eccentric strangers. Sorcery is coincidence and superstition instead of the boiling blood of Creation. Legends usually fall right off their radar. It’s not that the Unaware can’t see or interact with Legends, but something stops them from caring too much if an elf breaks into a corporate headquarters or a goblin steals somebody else’s car.

Magic

Magic is self-belief; being true to yourself in the face of adversity is the key to raw power. Knowing who you really are is the first step toward shaping magical world. Without that knowledge, you can’t even perceive the magic – you’re Unaware. With it, you can work miracles. While Legends are the most powerful Aware, they’re not the only ones who can summon flames or call lightning from a clear sky. Mine-knockers and alley witches populate the secret world, satisfying the same needs as mundane doctors and labourers.

Legends hone their magical natures by taking on a Sphere: an archetypal role that fits their beliefs. A Legend who wants to keep his family or neighbourhood safe joins the Sphere of Strength; a thinker who wants to know more about his Legendary state assumes the Sphere of Splendour. Legends join one of six Spheres at first, but some move on to even higher callings.

Different Eyes

A gang of goblins shows off to new members on the streets of Brooklyn. The gang’s boss is a sorcerer who wants to make her mark as a big player. She turns vandalism into murder and with a snarl, throws a bolt of fire at a passing dwarf.

An Unaware shop clerk strides by a gang hanging out on a street corner, keeping his eyes forward as he counts the seconds until he’ll be late back from his lunch break. One thug shouts and gestures in indecipherable slang. Suddenly, a stocky man across the road screams and falls. The clerk glances back. Was some kind of fit? A heart attack? Only timing links the gang to the collapse – even if the fireball passed right through the clerk.

One of the Aware – a gnome barman on his way to work – sees the new wizard on the block and instinctively ducks back. Summoning fire in broad daylight isn’t the smartest thing for the gang to do, but getting mixed up would make him a target.

A Legend sees the attack. She pulls the dwarf to safety, checks him over and turns her attention to his attackers. The goblins pull their weapons but they’ve already lost. This is the Legend’s turf, and she vowed to keep it safe.

Adventure

Legends eat, drink and breathe adventure. Whether they plot to save a local hero from falling to the Dark or face the goblin hordes of a Dark Lord intent on taking their city, no Legend leads a quiet life. Fortunately, there’s no lack of magical equipment to help them, from flaming swords to shotguns of dragon slaying. They walk to hidden, magical places to find strange creatures, solve ancient riddles, and progress on their personal journeys.

The magic that compels a Legend to a life on the edge also shields her from some of the consequences. The Unaware tend to ignore Legends. This even applies to adventurers kitted out in weapons and armour. When there are too many witnesses or extremely dogged, suspicious Unaware investigators, the Ministry of Administrative Affairs takes interest. The Ministry hides inside government departments, working in areas that Unaware governments scarcely imagine. Different departments cover everything from taxes and licensing for dangerous magic items to covering up the weirder things that even the Unaware might see. The Ministry is often ill-disposed toward Legends who can’t exercise the most basic discretion, and have Legends on hand to enforce their policies, if need be.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

Sometimes the chaos of real life mutes a small press RPG release. This was the case in August 2007 when we completed Æternal Legends, Stew Wilson’s modern fantasy RPG. We were both pretty damn busy with life and other projects, so we  didn’t have a chance to boost it as much as we wanted. Now, two years later, the situation’s changed – it’s time for a relaunch.

To kick things off, we’re offering a PDF of the core book for free via RPGNow. Furthermore, anyone who downloads the PDF will get an $11 print edition discount from Lulu.com by following a special link in the free PDF. This drops the core book’s print price from $26.95 to $15.95.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

I had a big ramble about the importance of the Shells in defining the role of the Dark, and how the antinomian urge suffuses the Qliphoth in the Western magical tradition, particularly Hermetic Qabbalah. Then I deleted it. I don’t really think that a blog on game design is the right place for me to engage in huge tangents on whatever bit of occult lore I’m obsessing over this week—at least, until I get several more posts in.

Instead, I’m going to tie what I was going to write into game design.

We have some pretty core assumptions:

• All Legends follow a Sphere
• That Sphere bleeds of magic through an archetype.
• Lightsiders use their Spheres to find a form of apotheosis

That apotheosis can be as simple as embodying the archetype—becoming a Scion—or as complex as travelling through the Spheres and subliming into the magical field.

The trick here is in the first bullet point. All Legends. Darksiders, too. As the Light has its Spheres, the Dark has its Shells. The Spheres embody the Light, with deep meaning and ways for Legends to really develop. In contrast, the Shells reflect the Dark: they’re hollow, all the same form without the substance.

Take Strength. The Sphere of martial combat. A Lightsider not only becomes a kick-ass warrior, she learns a whole host about what it means to have power—responsibility, dedication, and humility being the main ones.

The Shell of Strength is Golab. That’s what you get if you want to be a kick-ass warrior and not give a shit about what it means. If you approach every situation with force, if you want to be a bully, or if you don’t care about collateral damage, you’re following Golab. Power without meaning. Form without substance.

I’m thinking about this a lot as I write the last of the Shells for the Book of Spheres. Naturally, I’m not creating each Shell from whole cloth. In addition to the notes in the Æternal Legends corebook, I’ve got a whole bunch of research and inspirations that I’m mainlining. What does it mean to live your live without substance? To give in to every emotional whim, to see the imperfections in everything? Darksiders live every day like that.

Each Shell is a fundamentally unhealthy viewpoint, but that doesn’t mean it’s entirely invalid. The Shells are still archetypes, and they still have power—and a dangerous Darksider can use them to work towards his own apotheosis. Sure, he becomes a slave to the archetype’s worse aspects, but he can learn from that experience and grow far more dangerous. Think about what life is like for the Darksiders in your games, what part of life holds them in thrall, and what it must be like to hand your life over to an archetype.

-Stew

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

Hi. I’m Stew Wilson, the guy behind Æternal Legends. I’m going to be blogging here at Malcolm’s request, talking about game design, emergent features, and whatever else I can relate to the topic of modern fantasy roleplaying.

The First Pillar: Open Design

What is open design? It’s me talking about game design as it happens, making decisions and presenting a rationale at the time. That way I have a better record of why I made any given decision, and you get to see some cool stuff that’s coming down the pipe.

Since I’m working on Spheres already, let’s dig down into the past: Why Spheres?

First of all, because I like games that have inbuilt factions that characters can be a part of, but that don’t proscribe too much; organizations, rather than classes. This comes out of playing and writing White Wolf games. I also love organizations that are archetypal in some way. When the game that would be Æternal Legends first showed up, I wanted to work some of my knowledge of various occult traditions into the game. Oddly enough, Alan Moore’s Promethea covers much of the same ground; telling a meaningful story using the Sephiroth. It wasn’t until I saw John Coulthard’s representation of the Qabbalah as the London Underground map that the idea of blending “sephira as splats” and “modern fantasy” really clicked.

From that, I threw myself into research. And now, we’ve got Spheres. Which are reflections of the Sephiroth, but they’re also philosophies and paths for Legends to follow and archetypes for channeling magic into the world.

Naturally, that leads us to the Qlippoth, which informed the Shells. But more on them later.

The Second Pillar: Emergent Features

An emergent feature is something that isn’t ever stated in the book, and is perhaps something that I never intended to happen, but that ends up being a selling point. The opposite, of course, is “Errata fodder”.

Another example: each Clade is flavoured with one of the classic Western alchemical elements. This, again, is because it’s a bit of occultism that I’m fairly familiar with; I’m nowhere near as au fait with other systems like the Chinese. Classical elements include a fifth alongside {earth, air, fire, water}, commonly Void, Æther, or something similar. I knew I didn’t want five Clades, because traditional fantasy has four core “races”, so I didn’t have to worry about what my fifth element would be. Score.

An unintentional benefit of this choice is that humans got their own one of the classic four (which is unimportant), and thus became just as empowered and naturally funky as elves. Given that most roleplaying games featuring dwarves, elves, and the like treat humans as an uninspired baseline, being able to say “But our humans are just as unique and funky!” is a nice benefit. Humans play a role in the Clades, and through that people playing human Legends have a real kick that other games don’t always offer.

Other bits include the nature of (and interplay between) the Light and the Dark, but again that’s something for a future post.

The Third Pillar: Miscellany

I’m reserving the right to talk about anything else I can relate to Æternal Legends in even the most tenuous way. This includes answering questions that people pose in the comments, reviews of books, movies, and the like, commentary on other games, and whatever else I can come up with.

If you’ve got a question, fire away!

-Stew

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

This is just a quick reminder that Æternal Legends creator Stew Wilson has an official livejournal for the community at http://community.livejournal.com/aeternal_legend/ (remember – no “s”).

Over at this post Stew is talking about future expansion for the line. We already have one out — Fight Like a Legend — and more is coming. Drop by, join and give him some feedback – and if you don’t know the game, pick it up!

• Supports vanity projects that are released without quality considerations.
• Operates at a scale that passes along increased costs to consumers.
• Attempts to keep costs down for the producer and consumer by devaluing component labour.

Jorgen, Son of Jotun

Morgan Benyata

Cameron Forbes