The Aeternal Legends Pitch: Five Reasons to Play the Game

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.