Kickstarter for Blackstar Games Shadowlands

[torstan]

I've been involved with the world of Sæmyyr for a while now, as is Mearrin69. I've been doing the world map and he's been doing the regional and city maps. And if you haven't seen them, you should check out Tarina - it's Amazing.

Blackstar are doing a Kickstarter drive to raise money to get the Pathfinder world to press, and to give people a chance to get in on the world building. It's a fantastic sandbox world with huge scope and very cool mythology and mechanics. The magic system is one of the most carefully thought out I've come across and there are extremely cool surprises in store for players as they learn more about the world and it's unique properties.

Find out more, and get involved, here:

Shadowlands

[mearrin69]

Thanks for posting this! Good luck to BlackStar with this. I'm very impressed with those guys and their work.
M

[tilt]

hmmmmm... looks good of course, but I had hoped to find a little more info about the contents, especially the magic system - love magic systems (one of the reasons I also love Brandon Sanderson's books )

[Neheh]

Hi Tilt,

This is our first publication, which is why the Kickstarter is so important for us, so we haven't put anything out about the magic system as yet. However, you can listen to an Actual Play podcast here (http://trollitc.com/2011/10/actual-p...inder-setting/) which has some in game examples of the magic system. The magic system mechanically is more or less like the standard Pathfinder system, with some heavy mechanics alteration and more importantly (for us) social alteration. The _idea_ of the magic system is based upon a complicated behind the scenes idea of multiple Artificial Intelligences, nanocites in spellcasters (which they don't know about), and a kind of information network involving probability theory and quantuum theory. This is also invisible to the character (and often to the player) but is important as part of the world story background (for higher level characters). Because we wanted magic to take a back seat to social and scientific realism, there are restrictions on casting certain spells, or there are spin off affects for different spell caster. So we've created a system not unlike the old 2E Wild Magic to help us fit the mechanics in with the story.

I know that's not much of an introduction but hopefully it helps whet your appetite for the world! We've developed an enormous world and these are only the first modules and supplements. Our hope is that if these are successful, I will give us enough money to continue working and developing future supplements and eventually a Player's Guide.

If you feel so inclined, we'd love it if you could help spread the word! http://kck.st/qOP9Re

[Neheh]

Thanks Mearrin! We have to say that we're pretty impressed with your work too! ;-)

[tilt]

Hi Neheh, thanks for your reply - still a little cryptic but perhaps now it's cryptic in a good way

[Neheh]

Hi Tilt! Sorry for the delay in response and also for being cryptic. I wanted to thank you actually as you've inspired me to try and be a little more creative with out FB and Twitter feeds (FB.com/BlackStarGames and @BlackStarGames) by offering factoids about the campaign setting every day. So thank you! I'm not sure how to be too much less cryptic without giving anything away, but if you promise to tell any interested cartographers/gamers about us, I'll try and be as specific as possible! :-) So, practically all Arcane spellcasters and mentalists (what we call psionicists) who are not the Brotherhood of Magus Adept base class (a new class we are publishing in our Kickstarter) must roll on a magical flux table (like a wild surge table). There is a small chance that this could result in a wild result &/or insanity. The *reason* for this is storytelling, i.e. there's a problem with the probability matrix that allows arcane spellcasting. Because of this though, the Brotherhood Adept is banned from using any spell with the "Mind-Affecting" or "Charm" spell descriptors (actually they can learn them, but its "illegal"). There's more, but I wanted to try and be less cryptic and give you a little more detail! Hope that helps!

[Neheh]

So, partially inspired by Tilt's great questions about our magic system, I've written up another tantalizing post which gives a little more background. You can check it out here on our Kickstarter page! Thanks for checking us out!

[tilt]

thanks Neheh, always glad to hear more.. and good that you'll throw some teasers out there - its important to keep people interested