Kingdom: Supplements
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
