Realms beyond Ashes of the Fallen Kickstarter - Where wizards are actually a Sorcerers
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ceresgames/realms-beyond-ashes-of-the-fallen/faqs
Basically, Pool of Radiance spell usage with Temple of Elemental Evil semi-type combat using 3.5 D&D ruleset with toolset for modders. Backer, me? Hell yeah!
Basically, Pool of Radiance spell usage with Temple of Elemental Evil semi-type combat using 3.5 D&D ruleset with toolset for modders. Backer, me? Hell yeah!
5
Comments
Micro Update I #1 with campaign progress and thanks.
we’re just over 48 hours into our campaign and we've reached an unbelievable ONE THIRD of our goal. And that's all thanks to you, our brilliant 883 backers!
We can't thank you all enough, really, BIG THANKS to everyone. It has been such a busy past couple of days, but we are overwhelmed by the support we have received from fans, friends and fellow developers. Especially the support of fans of classic RPGs means a lot to us. We’re humbled by all your comments and questions on the campaign page, your many mentions and tweets and posts on social media. We’re trying to reply to every one of them, even if it takes a bit longer at the moment as we’re working around the clock.
We’re almost ready for a content update, but in the meantime, we’d like to share with you how the journey started. Enjoy the stunning concept artworks of Robert Andreas Drude.
We will keep you posted on all developments. It'd be amazing if you could keep spreading the word.
Many thanks for all your support!
And Update #2 The Journal and the Map - an Adventurer’s Tool
Realms Beyond offers you a detailed journal and detailed minimaps for each location, so you can easily keep track of everything you have encountered on your travels. The journal will automatically record summaries of dialogues and list all the different quests you’ve learned about. To keep things interesting, the quest entries will not be updated automatically at every step of the way. While the clues themselves will be recorded, you have to connect them to the quest yourself!
As an example, let’s look at the simple quest of finding a buried treasure. A citizen of Vedwyd has found an old diary and treasure map when he cleaned out his basement. They belonged to his great-grandfather, a pirate who, when he was older, settled down to live an honest life on behest of his worried wife. But before he settled down, he buried some of his treasure at a location only he knew: a chest containing jewelry that could easily have been identified as loot from a recently plundered merchant ship.
The diary contains a short description of the location, and the treasure map is a crude drawing of what it looked like. "Berried jewls at renner grov", says the diary. "Start at nearby cave entrans. East 6 steps. North 4 steps. Luk at pointy rok bitween 2 trees. Pik it up an dig belo." Clear enough instructions to find the treasure, one might think. But the man doesn’t know what his great-grandfather meant by Renner Grove. There is no grove with such a name nearby. Maybe there had been, once – his great-grandfather had lived long before the Cataclysm, and in the turbulent times that followed, the name may simply have been forgotten. There is a clue, though: there was a cave entrance in the grove’s immediate vicinity.
The journal will update with the basic information you’ve learned about the quest.
With this information in your tow, you can talk to other characters in town and ask them whether they know anything about a certain Renner Grove, or if they know any nearby groves that have a cave in their vicinity. And indeed, Amiella, the local hunter, knows about two groves in the nearby wilderness, both of them close to cave entrances. Both entrances connect to the same system of caverns, and they’re not far away from each other. She will mark both of them on your world map. The journal will automatically record this new piece of information you have learned, neatly sorted into the entries of interesting things you’ve learned from Amiella.
Now, with a proper clue, you can set out to look for the buried treasure. If you follow the instructions from the old diary – neatly recorded in your own journal – you can indeed find a pointy rock at one of the two groves. The old treasure map Mathis has given you can also help you determine which of the two locations is the right one.
Now that you found the rock underneath which the treasure is buried, you just have to pick it up and dig beneath it… oh, snap, you didn’t bring a shovel! You’ll have to head back to town and buy one. But wait! Since you found the spot, you should mark it on your map so you can find it more easily next time.
The minimap in Realms Beyond allows you to set your own markers in order to mark any location you find interesting. This comes in very useful when you explore dungeons or towns, as you can mark places that you want to return to later, or places that you think might hold some significance.
If you get into an encounter that is too hard for you and you wish to return later, place a marker. If you find an interactable piece of environment but you don’t know what to do with it yet, place a marker. If you found a special item you think might be relevant for a puzzle, place a marker to remind you where you found it.
Some markers will be placed on the map automatically, triggered by interactions with objects in the world. As you can see on the screenshot, four of the markers look a little different. They haven’t been set by the player, but were placed after the player received some new information about the area. Areto’s Tomb was marked when the player read the inscription above the door, for example. The chamber of sacrifice was marked when he examined an offering bowl.
In addition to placing your own markers on the map, you can also write your own notes into the journal. Realms Beyond gives you all the tools you need to keep your information organized, without holding your hand. Important information is recorded automatically, but sorted by which character told it to you, not sorted by which quest it is related to – this way, you are free to make your own connections and come to your own conclusions, without the game doing it for you.
With our journal and minimap systems, we want to provide a user-friendly experience without taking away the feeling of discovery and accomplishment the old classics gave you. Of course, taking your own notes and placing your own markers on the map is entirely optional: something you can do if you feel that taking additional notes will help jog your memory. Giving the player options is what we’re all about, and allowing you to scribble all over your journal and map is one of those options.
Interacting with the Environment: yes, you can touch that!
Talking about the treasure hunt – as you may have noticed, it involves picking up a rock and digging beneath it. Many items in the game, and even some pieces of the environment (wall niches, inscriptions, a broken wall that looks climbable…) can be selected and interacted with. Every object can be scripted to be interactable and behave in different ways when interacted with.
Interactable elements will be outlined when you hover your mouse over them. But beware: not every interactable item is beneficial. Some might be devious traps: a magical trigger that unleashes a storm of fire when touched, a lever that locks the only exit behind you, a valuable artifact that makes arrows shoot out of the wall when you pick it up. But they can also open new ways: a heap of boulders that can be cleared by a character of high strength, a magical barrier that dissipates when touched by an enchanted weapon, a tree that can be hacked down to create a makeshift bridge over a narrow ravine.
The many pretty objects that clutter our world are not mere decoration, they are fully interactable and often serve a gameplay purpose. Always be observant, and you will find many things to play around with in Realms Beyond. And since every object you can interact with is highlighted when your mouse passes over it, it means that there’s no annoying pixel hunting. You will see at a glance whether you can do something with an object or not.
This allows us to add elaborate puzzles to the game, as well as alternate quest solutions and plain fun environmental interactions. A statue that requires an item to be placed in its opened hands in order to unlock a secret door. A merchant’s cart that can be toppled over to create a distraction. Or a magic stone that hops away whenever you try to touch it.
The interactable objects in our environments follow the three golden rules of our game design: interactivity, reactivity, and player choice.
Stay tuned for the next update where we will talk about the world of Realms Beyond a little!
Edit: looks like the class system is going to be a combination of 3.5 and wizardry style advanced classes:
https://www.realms-beyond.com/forum/index.php?topic=38.0
No 3.5 multiclass, but I'm fine with that
Been resting at €65,000 for a few days hopefully it can get some momentum somewhere. Also a couple of more updates on the kickstarter page, most recent one is about unique weapons and lore making sure that weapons and items have a history behind them. Some weapons you can hear NPC’s chat about as myths and legends and find them in their battered, worn state and repair them to full power. Love stuff like that and feel it adds to the mthyos and atmosphere of the world.
UPDATE!
Hand-Crafted Items: Artefacts Grounded is Argea’s History
In the grand library of Galkarru, you’ve read a story about an ancient city in the middle of the desert, situated near a fertile oasis. It was once a prosperous city of tall minarets and flowering gardens, ruled by a proud sultan who decreed that everything within his city’s walls belonged to him and him alone. When he saw a priestess of Aliltu who visited the city, he was struck by her beauty and wanted to have her, so he instructed his men to take her to his palace. But when she was brought before him and realized he wanted to make her a part of his harem, she cursed the sultan and his city: she doomed all who lived in the palace to live eternal lives, their bodies preserved at this moment in time, no longer aging – and unable to leave the palace grounds. The rest of the city she cursed to turn into scorpions, as they were as deceitful as scorpions, first showing her hospitality then allowing the sultan to take her as if she were his property. And so, the legend says, the dreaded scorpion people came into the world.
The story also describes the sultan’s scepter: a precious thing, made of gold and silver and a dozen jewels, and enchanted with powerful spells that enhance the wielder’s beauty and grant him a presence inspiring to all who are near him. The story is widely believed to be a legend, the city a mere symbol and warning of what happens to those of great arrogance. And yet, you set out to search for it. And there, deep within the territory of the scorpion people, you find the ruins of an ancient city partially buried by the sand. When you enter the palace, you are attacked by armed guards, nimble harem dancers, and the sultan himself – their souls driven mad by centuries of being cursed to stay within the palace. You fight them off, your blades granting them the sweet release of death, and when you examine the body of the sultan – there, in his hand, is the legendary scepter, just as it had been described in the story.
The magic items you can find in Realms Beyond are all unique, hand-crafted, and rooted in the world’s history. You won’t find randomized loot in your dungeon crawling adventures – everything is placed by our level designers. When you read about legendary ancient artifacts in the history books of Argea, it’s quite likely that they can be found somewhere in the world. But finding them is not always easy.
Time hasn’t been kind to some artifacts of the past. They were damaged in battle or by greedy looters and are now broken into several parts, and a player who wishes to make use of their power must first repair them. Two such examples are the Sandals of Queen Mirvala and the Singing Spear.
The Singing Spear was wielded by the legendary Pyrrhenian hero Lachides, who used it to slay the treacherous dragon-snake Lathraios. All who had attempted to slay it before him fell into its traps, for it was a cunning and stealthy creature, but the Singing Spear warned Lachides with its voice when Lathraios came upon him from behind, and he turned around and thrust his spear deep into the creature’s heart. In a later episode of Lachides’ adventures, he got into a fight with the hero Antikles, who hew the blade of the Singing Spear from its shaft with a quick strike of his sword.
Not much is known about what happened to the broken spear afterwards, but several contradictory tales are told by Pyrrhenian storytellers. Only one thing is common to these tales: the shaft and the blade went on different ways, going through many hands over the course of the centuries, and were never reunited. And indeed, the player will find blade and shaft at two different locations, far away from each other. Once both parts are found, the spear can be repaired by a skilled craftsman, but if the player has only one of the parts in his possession, he can use the shaft as a staff or the blade as a dagger.
Queen Mirvala’s Sandals are a pair of enchanted sandals once worn by the legendary sorceress-queen of the lost civilization of Virduris. Six gleaming jewels were set into them, each one imbued with a different enchantment – turning them into one of the most powerful pieces of equipment in the entire game. But while the sandals themselves are quite easy to find, still worn by the ancient queen’s magically preserved corpse, they are missing the enchanted jewels that turn them into such a powerful item. Mirvala’s tomb had been looted by graverobbers long ago, who pried out the gleaming jewels and left the leather sandals on her corpse. Tracking them all down won’t be easy, but it will be a worthwhile and rewarding quest. With each jewel you set back into the sandals, they gain an additional enchantment.
But not all enchantments are beneficial. Some magic items are cursed with negative effects and can only be taken off with a remove curse spell. Others might have two natures, with both positive and negative effects in their enchantment. One such artifact is The Burden of Knowledge, a crown once crafted by a sorceress to remind herself of the weight and responsibility her knowledge carried with it.
With unique items like these, varied in their effects and rooted in Argea’s history, the exploration in Realms Beyond: Ashes of the Fallen feels exciting and rewarding. Some of the more powerful artifacts even require the player to hunt down multiple pieces and have them reassembled – epic quests that might last from the beginning to the end of the game.
Of course, not only the items are hand-crafted with an attention to detail. The dungeons are all designed by hand, too, as are the enemy encounters. No random encounters, no procedural generation, no level scaling. Everything is built by the hands and minds of our writers and level designers, as human creativity is able to create more interesting content than computer algorithms ever could.
Micro Update #4: Stretch Goal Revealed & New Reward Tier "Digital Deluxe Edition"!
Two weeks into the campaign, almost 2/3 funding achieved and that’s a good occasion to reveal our next stretch-goal!
When reaching 115,000 EUR in funding, Casey Hollingshead and Scott Hamm, lead writer and contributing writer of the turn-based tactical RPG masterpiece Battle Brothers by our fellow indie dev friends at Overhype Studios, will join our writing team!
If you like challenging turn-based combat within a strategical open world map, you should definitely take a look at Battle Brothers! (official webpage, Steam)
Besides their work on Battle Brothers, Casey also contributed to the widely praised RPG Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire (Steam) while Scott is known as a writer for the indie RPG gem Age of Decadence (official webpage).
But that’s not all for today!
Due to the request of our backers, we’ll add another reward tier.
The “Digital Deluxe Edition” (at 70 EUR ~ $80 USD) will include everything of the “Digital Edition + Combat Beta + EA” tier plus:
the digital art book in high resolution
the digital soundtrack
a digital high-resolution version of the worldmap
the digital version of the printed manual and spell book in high-res
your portrait as base for a random NPC (you’ll be able to make suggestions regarding the character, but we can’t guarantee to fulfill any of them)
All those new digital rewards will of course be added to all other tiers starting from 125 € as well.
Thank you all for your ongoing support!
Only a handful of witches and warlocks have met this creature of the underworld. But even they know not its name.
But maybe one among you has been told its name? A silent whisper in the night, a cold breath of something dark and primal speaking ancient syllables into your ear. Tell us the creature's name, so the people of Cormac know what to say when they pray to their gods for protection!
Everyone can participate in this little game. Come up with a fitting name for the demonic creature that rises on the night of Sanhviun and send it to us. We will choose the one we like the most to be the name of the creature in our world. The winner will also be proclaimed - if he or she so wishes - and be listed as "Invoker of [Demon'sName]" in the credits, in addition to the normal credit listing given by the backer tier if he or she is a backer.
Please be aware: Only one submission per person! Otherwise, the demonic creature you're trying to tame will burn you alive there and then.
Suggestions can be submitted below in the comment section of this update, on Twitter, Facebook, or in the related thread in our forums. We will collect all names sent our way before the end of the deadline and then choose five of the best – and you will choose the winner by voting on the official Realms Beyond website.
The deadline is 1st November 22:00 (10PM) CET
Who knows the creature's name? Come forth, wise men and women of our realms, and tell us!
Lateat update goes over the camping and survival looks similar to how Pathfinder: Kingmaker does the camping except a little deeper.
It does seem like it's picking up momentum...hopefully
I'd like to back this, but unfortunately cannot afford to.
I guess I’ll start BG:EE on an Infinity Engine binge again and by the time I’m at the end of Icewind Dale 2:EE it’ll be released right Beamdog