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Color me interested

winterdyne wrote:
Robed legs and a different upper torso would work well.

That was kind of what I meant. While you wouldn't necessarily need everything to be new, you would need more than a new head and arm (for example). I still think the upgrade sprue concept is a good one though. It allows lots of easy modifications to existing kits when new options become available.

Reading the drop scene in the first book with the Karists wrapped in robes to cover their armour would be a very neat concept for an upgrade sprue that would make troops in disguise, or the priests at any time. It was also something that came up during the (dare I mention it) GoA ks that simple upgrade sprues would easily allow for things like desert equipment or snow equipment to modify the base troops.

Anyway. Back to reading the book

Out of curiosity: Who is the sculptor?

Not many companies credit their sculptors and I don't really understand why. Lol.

Like the sound of things so far, and I'm interested in seeing the KS.

~Eric

I love the art and sculpts.

Prestor Jon wrote:
I like the Epireans, I have a ton of scifi troopers with guns from various companies that I want to use for a game that suits me better than 40K. I don't have any issue with the proportions and the shoulderpads I can live with since for some reason game designers everywhere are convinced that in the future all soldiers will need shoulderpads even though they've been rendered impractical centuries ago.

My only criticize for the Epirean model shown is that he needs more gear. Even if he isn't going to have a pack he still needs webbing for ammo pouches, medkit, canteen etc. Nobody goes into a battle with just a rifle and one magazine. Hopefully there are more bits available on the sprues for the Epireans, if not I'll just have to dig some out of my bits box.

Without knowing dakka's plans for gear, sprues, etc, i happened to be looking at this very recently and it may be of use for people looking for gear bitz: http://www.wargamesfactory.com/webstore/dreamforge-games/eisenkern-stormtrooper-accessory-set

I assume that the ubiquity of shoulder pads in sci fi miniatures is to do with sculpting shoulders on multipart models.

I only assume that, however, as I am balls at sculpting and have 0 knowledge about moulds and casting etc.

 Vermonter wrote:
Thematically the Karists are also a lot more compelling to me, mostly because I'm a sucker for sci-fi fanatical zealots / religious cults. Corporate-style factions like the Epireans are kind of a human baseline faction for a lot of sci-fi. I don't say they shouldn't exist - they're probably necessary just to anchor the fictional universe with a relataible / understandable human group. But that same necessity / ubiquity can make Corporate humanity seem a bit vanilla.

I don't really like either of the two factions. Despite being an atheist, I'd be much more interested in a non-cult religious faction as the good guys, like my old "What if the Salvation Army had an army?" faction, the Order of the Shield.

The Karis in some ways make me think of the Nod from the Command and Conquer games. I'm not sure why, and that mindset can obviously be dispelled once I learn more about the game, but it's sort of the impression I have right now. Maybe something between Nod and Menoth from Warmachine.

 AlexHolker wrote:

 Vermonter wrote:
...a non-cult religious faction as the good guys, like my old "What if the Salvation Army had an army?" faction, the Order of the Shield.

The Salvation Marine Corps. You don't walk past their donation pot without putting something in, if you know what's good for you.

Back to the OP, I'm curious how FLGSs will be linked into this, if at all.

Man, I can't wait to see some more. I've been looking for a new game to play for awhile, and I like fluff more than anything, so I'm really interested to learn about your universe.

Can't wait to see some more mini pics and I'll be looking around for the kickstarter

privateer4hire wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:
...a non-cult religious faction as the good guys, like my old "What if the Salvation Army had an army?" faction, the Order of the Shield.

The Salvation Marine Corps. You don't walk past their donation pot without putting something in, if you know what's good for you.

No. This is apparently a difficult concept for people to grasp, but I'm talking about a faction who - stay with me here - are not donkey-caves. Not a doomsday cult who converts others by the sword, not some corporation which cares for nothing but its own self-interest, good guys who try to keep the peace and get everybody evacuated before the Maelstrom hits.

 AlexHolker wrote:

privateer4hire wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:
...a non-cult religious faction as the good guys, like my old "What if the Salvation Army had an army?" faction, the Order of the Shield.

The Salvation Marine Corps. You don't walk past their donation pot without putting something in, if you know what's good for you.

No. This is apparently a difficult concept for people to grasp, but I'm talking about a faction who - stay with me here - are not donkey-caves. Not a doomsday cult who converts others by the sword, not some corporation which cares for nothing but its own self-interest, good guys who try to keep the peace and get everybody evacuated before the Maelstrom hits.

I think if you delve a bit deeper into our world and fiction in the future, hopefully you'll see that's not our intention with either faction. We don't have an explicitly good or evil faction, but that doesn't mean that there aren't heroes (or villains) within them. Personally, I think the best stories come where the characters are people in all their many types and motivations. The Maelstrom is the ultimate testing ground to see how they choose to live their lives - do they want to be altruistic and try to help people, or are they just out for themselves?

There will be branches of the Epirian Foundation that will be callous and ruthless in pursuing only what's profitable. But there will be other worlds where the local trustees and sheriffs decide to do their best to save everyone they can. Similarly for the Karist Enclave, some of the hardline warriors believe that bringing their religion at the tip of a pulse carbine is the only way to ensure the Karist Way is spread, whilst there are huge numbers of the Karist Kaddar priesthood out on doomed worlds, trying to get as many of the vulnerable offworld where they can take the time to decide for themselves how to live their lives, so they can prepare themselves to meet ascension at the time that they are ready.

I hope that with time, we can convince you that there is room for both sides within our factions - and that this gives us a lot more scope for creating the kind of compelling conflict that leads to great fiction and the motivation for why the people on the Edge are fighting each other, even when they belong to the 'same' faction. One of my big bugbears when I was playing other wargames was playing games where I turn up with the same army as my opponent, even down to the colour scheme and theme, and we fight, despite there being no logical explanation in the fluff why such a battle might occur. By giving a bit of ambiguity and dissent within each faction, so that there are disagreements and conflict between members of the same group, I hope that we can give a good reason why these armies might come to battle each other, as well providing a really rich setting for us to tell you great stories, and allowing you the freedom to decide what kind of Karists or Epirians you want your army to be.

 AlexHolker wrote:
No. This is apparently a difficult concept for people to grasp, but I'm talking about a faction who - stay with me here - are not donkey-caves. Not a doomsday cult who converts others by the sword, not some corporation which cares for nothing but its own self-interest, good guys who try to keep the peace and get everybody evacuated before the Maelstrom hits.

The problem with that sort of faction is that they're not really particularly believable.

Individuals might be selfless. But any large organisation is ultimately going to be out to protect their own interests. They might justify it as being for the ultimate good of everyone (as the Karists do) but sooner or later it all comes down to the hard decisions, which are going to be decided on the basis of what is best for that organisation rather than what is best for everyone else... because otherwise that organisation won't survive.


Although it's worth noting that the Karist movement isn't a completely unified front (as is going to happen in any big enough organisation), and the level to which they use force as opposed to diplomacy is going to vary from branch to branch. For a group with their aims, soldiers aren't just for converting people by force... they can just as easily be for defence while trying to organise evacuees.

That's part of the point of painting the different factions in shades of grey - it opens up all sorts of possibilities for your own faction.

insaniak wrote:

 Vermonter wrote:

I have a big question about the tone and backstory of this universe.

It seems on the face of it that you may have out-grimdarked the grimdarkiest game of them all, with the imminent annihilation of everything not set sometime in the inevitable but vaguely distant future, but happening right now. In other words, this reads at the moment a bit like a sci-fi "Endtimes" game, at least for the region of the universe that it focuses on: the edge of the Maelstrom. In terms of narrative, that's an interesting choice; it feels like we're beginning with the end of something rather than the beginning, presumably arriving at the climatic crescendo of everything. It's not exactly clear how long people living on the edge have got, but it doesn't look like we're talking about centuries here.[

I do hope that the future will be more complex and open-ended than that. I'd like to play in a universe where the eventual dominance of one faction (like Chaos) or inevitable annihilation by a natural event doesn't render all actions ultimately futile. It would be good to game in a world where battles have real consequences, which ultimately means they affect real futures, not just how we choose to die in a few months.

One of the challenges of designing a background for a wargame is coming up with a reason for everyone to be willing to fight everyone else... and even themselves. The sheer chaos caused by the Maelstrom does a perfect job of providing that reason, IMO.

But while the Maelstrom promises imminent annihilation for those worlds on the edge, the sheer size of the galaxy means that there is still plenty of room for the story to continue. The story for individual worlds on the Edge will be short. What happens as the Maelstrom continues to advance? That's a much longer story.

The Maelstrom promises the eventual destruction of everything... but it's not certain. It might burn itself out. Someone might figure out how to stop it. The Karists might be right. Or there may be some other thing that comes along that saves the day... So it provides the perfect trigger for conflict, while still allowing for that glimmer of hope.

GrimDork wrote:Interesting thoughts, Vermonter.

That's kind of what I was thinking too, they say they aren't trying to go as grimdark as 40k, but with MEdge the galaxy is actually blowing up constantly in the background no matter what you do, whereas with 40k there are just tons of threats besieging humanity.

But at the same time, the 'there is only war' line doesn't apply. The Karists fight Epirians for the right to preach their ways, the Epirian upper classes callously abandon worlds worth of settlers to their sad fate, but the planets aren't constantly being attacked by orks, or giant space bugs, or evil space terminators. On worlds far enough from the Edge, there are decades of life, often hard lives spent working your ass off to buy your family a ticket to a world further towards the outer rim... but while there's the constant wave of doom approaching, the constant threat of annihilation from various enemies is less.

More of a creeping doom than a zomg threats from every angle. And within that setting the skirmishes and wars happen when factions bump heads.

So its an interesting mix of doom/gloom and optimism. As long as you can keep moving out, there's hope for you and your descendents I guess.

As for the Karists, if you read the first novel it isn't far in before you find out they use energy from the Cybel network to power at least some of their technology, and they seem to have enslaved/indentured a race of aliens to work for their purposes. I'm not sure how sentient/intelligent the Angels are, but they're supposed to be largely amorphous critters that can assume most any convenient shape, and who seem to subsist off of the energy in the Cybel network.

*edit*
Also, what Insaniak said, I was thinking it but didn't say it. 40k pretty much wants you to believe there is no hope, there are literally just too damn many threats encroaching on humanity from within, without, and from the warp and beyond, humans will never win. MEdge still gives you hope, even though there's an obvious time limit ticking down.. there's hope in fleeing the Maelstrom's Edge.

*edit edit*
Lastly, I really have to say it's a very interesting angle to come from too. Starting at the core and working out! This in and of itself is relatively unique. Usually after you expand, you go too far and something starts eating you up from the outside in. You wake up the necrons or tyranids. Colonies get forgotten or go dark, the known universe actually shrinks because of encroaching threats. With MEdge... it seems the very opposite, your core, safety zone, everything that you know is blown up first, and you have to flee into the unknown to survive. So there's hope, but at the same time its terrifying. Maybe you'll flee the Edge just to run into some otherworldly living galaxy that decides to politely devour your entire species as they flee willingly into it's being, just a thought

First off, this is a great question, Vermonter, and insaniak and GrimDork have captured a lot of what I wanted to say in response!

When I first joined the team in the very early days, the idea of the Maelstrom was what excited me most. I've been playing games my whole life, and I'm naturally as a writer most attracted to the narrative of a game. I like building, painting and playing with an army that I've come up with an identity and character for, and then I love it when I'm playing a tournament or a campaign that has a story element to it, that the actions in any one game make a difference to the way the world develops and my army's part in it.

One of the things that frustrated me with the narrative of a lot of wargames I've played over the years is that the reasons for the armies fighting are really tenuous. There are factions that fight just because they like fighting, or because they've always been at war with Eurasia, or because they are evil bwhahah or just because they want to destroy everything. That doesn't excite me, as a writer or a player. I can enjoy the game and the battles despite that, but it leaves my narrative cravings unsatisfied.

The Maelstrom is destroying each star system in turn, creeping its way across the Spiral Arm (which is the only known settled part of the galaxy). It started near the Capital Worlds further into the centre of the galaxy, and exploded outward, gobbling up many of the richest and most advanced planets and civilisations in a few decades. The Maelstrom travels much faster along the cybel tunnels of dark energy that stretch between objects of large mass, like stars or Jupiter-sized planets, than it does in open space. At the centre of the galaxy, where the density of stars is higher, the expansion was quick and brutal.

Now, some thousand years later or so, the process is a little slower, but unpredictable. When you first spot that purple stain in the sky, it might be decades or even a generation before your world is destroyed. It may be faster, if a cybel tunnel ruptures and the Maelstrom accelerates along it. But you have some time, to work out what to do next. I think that gives us lots of tension and inevitable conflict (which, in a wargame, we really want), but there's also hope.

People really have a reason to fight and strive on the Edge. To work as a Contractor for the Foundation, so that you can earn a berth on an evacuation ship for your family. To dig up metals and build ships and robots, so you can save more people. To dedicate your life to teaching people how to live better, so that they are prepared for the coming ascension. To steal a vessel and pilot it out of the system with as much booty as you can strongarm for yourself. To use the chaos to overthrow your oppressive government. To search through abandoned buildings on worlds inches away from destruction, hunting for that perfect treasure to make your fortune. To gain power so you can become warlord over everything you can.

I think there's room in our universe for a more complex and open-ended future.

Vermonter wrote:

Finally, I hope you will eventually have some sort of horrific, non-human or altered human faction. It could be Lovecraftian, or cybernetic, or Artificially intelligent, or undead, or - and this would be asking a lot, but hey, maybe you're geniuses - something genuinely new, a completely non-derivative sci-fi menace. Psychologically, the Karists have a horrific edge already due to their convictions (if you're on the wrong side of them), and the Epireans, as countless sci-fi films have shown us, have plenty of horrific potential as corporations following Social Darwinist principles. But ultimately your game will fare better, I believe, if it incorporates at least one physically weird / horrific faction in its second or third wave. And by weird / horrific I do not mean Evil; even the most frightening, hideous things presumably have reasons and rationales for what they do, knowable or not. Even ticks are just trying to survive and reproduce when they attach themselves to our nooks and crannies and give us Lyme disease, after all. Little bastards.

I think you will be happy with what we'll come up with, both in future factions and what we'll announce in the next few weeks.

 AlexHolker wrote:

privateer4hire wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:
...a non-cult religious faction as the good guys, like my old "What if the Salvation Army had an army?" faction, the Order of the Shield.

The Salvation Marine Corps. You don't walk past their donation pot without putting something in, if you know what's good for you.

No. This is apparently a difficult concept for people to grasp, but I'm talking about a faction who - stay with me here - are not donkey-caves. Not a doomsday cult who converts others by the sword, not some corporation which cares for nothing but its own self-interest, good guys who try to keep the peace and get everybody evacuated before the Maelstrom hits.

Well since the Epirean faction is corporatized there must be departments/companies/whatever the term for subdivisions is that perform altruistic charity work for the sake of the tax deductions and nonprofits and NGOs that work from donations. The Maelstrom is an extinction event level crisis so think how immense and powerful a Red Cross type of organization would get when everyone is desperate to survive.

Awesome...just plain awesome.Will keep tabs on this.

So let me get this straight. During the golden age of technology when mankind was exploring space. A massive warp storm starts eating world's excuse me I meant the maelstrom starts eating worlds?

There are some that can commune with the warp err I mean melstrom and gain powers in their psychic oops I mean meditative state?

This sounds very original!

computertrucker wrote:
So let me get this straight. During the golden age of technology when mankind was exploring space. A massive warp storm starts eating world's excuse me I meant the maelstrom starts eating worlds?

There are some that can commune with the warp err I mean melstrom and gain powers in their psychic oops I mean meditative state?

This sounds very original!

Nice first post. Very original.

Made an account just for that ehh? Or did you want to trash talk something without showing your 'face' hereabouts?

Cute.

Interesting parallels I guess. I don't think the big bad purple thing is really equivalent to 40k's Warp though.

The level of idea saturation that exists in this day and age, it's to the point you could point out almost anything new as derivative if you really had the motive to do so.

My understanding is that the Maelstrom destroys absolutely everything - the Karists certainly believe in the Ascension, but as far as every other living thing is concerned, it's more like "the Nothing" from The Never Ending Story than 40k's warp.

They look like big, strong hands... don't they...

computertrucker wrote:
So let me get this straight. During the golden age of technology when mankind was exploring space. A massive warp storm starts eating world's excuse me I meant the maelstrom starts eating worlds?

There are some that can commune with the warp err I mean melstrom and gain powers in their psychic oops I mean meditative state?

This sounds very original!

There is absolutely no similarity between a 40K warp storm and the Maelstrom.

And I'm not sure where you got the bit about 'gaining powers' from communing with the Maelstrom. Communion doesn't grant them powers. It puts them in a meditative state, and helps prepare their minds for the supposed Ascension.

I think it's hilarious he's trying to make the case that 40k is in any way original. But no, he's right- 40k invented fanatics and grim environments and warpstorms- they also invented space marines! Just go ask the guy that wrote Starship Troopers, he was channeling Kirby's thoughts from the future!

Really intrigued by all this! I don't post a lot on dakka but I've been reading it for years and am definitely interested in a squad based skirmish game!

Definitely prefer the Karist over the Eprian right now, nothing wrong with the Eprian imo but I'm just not usually a fan of human factions especially unarmored. That said, if robots play a big part of each faction then I'm likely to enjoy both.


The rule overview has me pretty excited and there is a very good chance of it replacing 40k for my 'large model count' games.

Price will be a factor but I will be very surprised if I don't go in for a starter.

Haven't decided how a feel about the models yet but I love the universe and would like to get my hands on the story. Any approx of when the books will be out in soft cover? Will they be available to buy during the KS? I would really like to read them but I do not have a Kindle and with all the time I spend working on the computer during the day my eyes are not up to reading a story (no matter how awesome) on the computer at night.

 Accolade wrote:
I think it's hilarious he's trying to make the case that 40k is in any way original. But no, he's right- 40k invented fanatics and grim environments and warpstorms- they also invented space marines! Just go ask the guy that wrote Starship Troopers, he was channeling Kirby's thoughts from the future!

Who Heinlein? I'm not actually sure if he was even the first to come up with that idea honestly. I really love Starship Troopers though (the book, not the movie).

Personally I think the idea of the Maelstrom is a really good one, and not something you could compare to a warpstorm anyways. It seems to me the Maelstrom is a steadily advancing destructive force gradually devouring all in it's path. I only know what I've read here so far, but too me, that's a great plot device to sow division all along the edges of the galaxy and I can easily envision the levels of hysteria it would cause in all those who knew their end was on it's way whether they liked it or not. All sorts of plots and actions can hatch from that, some destructive, others benevolent.

My only real concern is if advancing the storyline with a giant destructive force being the major strife building plot device, how long can we expect to draw out the galaxies destruction? In game and fluff terms, are we assuming even with story advances, everything just takes place in some really long timeframe, while everyone knows the end is coming? I mean, I guess are we talking years, decades, enough time to create ark ships to travel outside the furthest sphere of the galaxy?

I'll read the books as soon as I can and hopefully gain some insight there.

Oh hey, on a sidenote, will there be female models? I ask because what's shown here initially is all dudes, but I imagine in this particular universe, men, women and even children might end up in fighting or support roles given the dire state of the galaxy.

I do also hope in future we'll see some tanks. I know it was stated already that vehicles are at least initially a lot to design and work around, but I do really love vehicles even if they're small ones.

That's about all I had to wonder about atm. I love you....

What? Too soon???

It would be interesting to see that the religious faction may like the followers of the marker in Deadspace are deluded on what the maelstrom really is, i hope it is some kind of ascension, and there will come out a new faction like the reapers off mass effect or something else.

If everyone is fleeing the imminent destruction, will there be a space based faction like the nomads in infinity?

Well that puts this old topic in better perspective:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/552663.page

carboncopy wrote:
Well that puts this old topic in better perspective:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/552663.page

I had totally forgot about that. Yeah I thought at the time it was a weird thing to do on a holiday...

 Phyrekzhogos wrote:
My only real concern is if advancing the storyline with a giant destructive force being the major strife building plot device, how long can we expect to draw out the galaxies destruction? In game and fluff terms, are we assuming even with story advances, everything just takes place in some really long timeframe, while everyone knows the end is coming? I mean, I guess are we talking years, decades, enough time to create ark ships to travel outside the furthest sphere of the galaxy?

It depends on which bit of the story you're focussing on.

The galaxy is a big place. It's taken a thousand years for the Maelstrom to reach as far as it has, and it still has a ways to go. So the overall story arc is potentially quite long.

On a more 'local' focus, though... the Maelstrom's passage through individual systems, once it actually reaches them, can be quite swift. So there's all sorts of potential for stories or campaigns or the like to focus on individual worlds or small sectors of space, in that volatile time as the Maelstrom makes its approach and finally sweeps through.

That can then have a ripple effect on the overall story... as different regions are destroyed, the balance of power can shift between different factions, access to resources changes, new information can be gathered on the Maelstrom...


That's part of what I find so exciting about this setting - there is almost limitless potential for things to evolve organically while still keeping the basic premise of the setting intact.

Oh hey, on a sidenote, will there be female models?

Lego had said earlier in the thread that the current focus on males exclusively is down to the logistics of launching a new range from scratch, but that it was a potential option for the future.

If anything, the maelstrom sort of reminds me of that james spader sci-fi movie (supernova?) where at the end there's going to be a wave encompassing the galaxy that will either elevate humanity to a new plane of existence or else destroy it utterly. But even still, i wouldn't call it a copy. Still waiting for more info to be released, how long has it been? Are we there yet?