Oh my heart! There’s a backer level that gets you a canvas print of a piece of art from the rulebook. It’s my all-time favorite most beautiful game book.
I’ll never be able to afford it but wow.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1192053011/emissary-lost-epic-campaign-for-award-winning-cori
If you love it and are going in on it anyway for the regular rewards, I’ll kick in some SEKs.
Oh Scott, no. The spread is big, like 200. It’s cool! Nice to have dreams.
OK but it can happen!
Have you run the game yet, Paul Beakley ?
John Till no! But I’m committed to it after Burning Wheel.
Yes, I’ve had it for over a year and done nothing with it yet.
MadJay Brown and I were brainstorming a super fast on ramp to get players up to speed on the cultural context because that feels like the hardest bit. The actual character and crew stuff is pretty evocative! And the MYZ engine is functional enough to get what it will feel like (pushing, gear dice, etc.).
I’m bringing it to New Mexicon, with Paul Beakley ‘s help on dialing in that Fast Ramp. I’ll run it.
So… I backed the first. Got all the books and cards and such.
And man, the book is so pretty, but I cannot imagine actually running this.
Help me Paul, how do I love this game?
Brand Robins it’s the next thing I’m gonna run and I’m figuring that out myself.
I think it has to do with nailing down the really distinctive setting and culture bits, explaining them, and then leveraging that via the “crew type” stuff. If you’re traders, what’s your relationship with the big nomadic fleet that floats from place to place? If you’re archaeologists, what about the precursor races? Push the Dark Between The Stars stuff allll the time, like nobody actually wants to travel between worlds. Push the faction tech, which I think is underappreciated because it’s off in a PDF. Leverage the bejeezus out of your patron and enemy, build out the implied setting stuff based on those two touch points. I have to think asking provocative questions about the crew members’ personal lives as well. Fetishizing the cultural weirdness, a la Glorantha.
Basically I don’t know what the answer is yet. I’m not sure how to love it either.
One of the problems is the English translation is a bit painful in places – the future history section near the beginning, for one. That’s been a definite reading block for me. Another issue that is very distracting to me is the mess they made of Islamic cultures. I wish they could have kept the deities as Islamic saints, and not broken the monotheism. To me this shows a disinterest in the cultures they are trying like hell to evoke. So when I run this, I will probably demote the deities to saint status.
John Till yeahhhh… I don’t love the treatment either but it’s also mostly art direction, it feels like. Like where is Allah? Having all these Icons feels maybe pre-Islamic but I really don’t want to do the heavy lifting with players. Don’t know that I can count on much more than “you know Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves? How about Aladdin?”