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 cincydooley wrote:
Hey now.... I've only backed 1 Mantic KS and didn't back either of Raging Heroes.......

Heh, my apologies! No need to panic though, the intervention isn't until next week.

You know, it was really a perfect storm. GW stopped making as much that I liked and KS had lots of projects I did.

 Smacks wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
It's not as simple as saying 'This one made fourteen gazillion dollars in its first 3 minutes, and it had butterflies in it, so that kickstarter that didn't make as much is clearly doing badly due to its lack of butterflies...'

Actually, in spite of the above being a rather hyperbolic example, that is kind of how deduction works...

Sure. Except the end result is flawed deduction when there are more than just that one factor involved.

At the end of the day, MEdge is a brand new game, that isn't a self -contained boardgame, or an excuse to sell models to people who will just use them in 40k, from a studio that has no prior history in making games... And that, I feel, it's a bigger factor than the models. New wargames (other than aforementioned games that really only exist to sell models to the 40k crowd) have fairly consistently done badly on Kickstarter. MEdge has at least funded, but it's still pushing against that inertia that people have where new games are concerned.

Yet still there seems to be a predilection towards invalidating that criticism

Not agreeing with your criticism is not the same as invalidating it. You're welcome to your opinion... All I'm doing is sharing mine, which happens to differ from yours.

It's obvious the maelstrom is the side-effect of exposing a quasar to those chalky heart candies you get on Valentine's Day:



"As the candy hearts poured into the fiery quasar, a wondrous thing happened, why not. They vaporized into a mystical love radiation that spread across the universe, destroying many, many planets, including two gangster planets and a cowboy world. But one planet was exactly the right distance to see the romantic rays but not be destroyed by them: Earth. So all over the world couples stood together in joy. And me, Zoidberg. And no one could have been happier unless it would have also been Valentine's Day. What? It was? Hooray.!!"

But honestly, the similarities between 40k and MEdge are what- purple void space/incoming thread destroying things, a religious cult causing a ruckus, and a feeling of imminent doom? Doesn't that describe any futuristic setting? This is just my personal opinion obviously, but I think that 40k has really negatively impacted some people's ability to consider anything other than 40k. It's like WoW or Apple, you show someone a new MMO or laptop and they just say "oh, it's just like an inferior WoW/Mac" without ANY thought whatsoever. Just really good brainwashing.

(That being said, I think Apple, WoW, and 40k are good products. But if you can't see value in things outside of them, there might be an issue.)

BTW, Futurama totally stole that whole world-destroying thing from 40k.

 insaniak wrote:

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
They're showing the actual minis which are not to everybody's taste both in terms of looks and in terms of proportions (while experienced KS backers disregard concept art, there are plenty of inexperienced ones who DO back based on nice art which it's they assume will end up as perfectly scaled to what they want)

That's actually a really good point that I hadn't considered here... which is funny, given that the current trend of only having concept art to show off is precisely what has put me off a lot of Kickstarters on account of not being able to tell what the final product will look like.

In this case, the minis not being to some peoples' taste may well have cost them some backers who might have pledged on concept art... but it's ultimately probably far better that those people found that out before pledging, rather than later on...

With the exception of very few companies that have proven track records of turning out great looking models (Raging Heroes), I definitely need actual figures, prints or at least renders. While I like Mantic's rules (though Alessio's behaviour in regard to KoW2 along with Jake's attitude to not fixing DZ and DB issues have seriously degraded that trust) I'll pledge for their rules but in no way will I ever pledge for Mantic's figures without concrete sculpted materials or solid renders as opposed to concept art. That of course goes for any other KS at this stage.

So even though I actively dislike several of the designs, ME is still miles ahead of a lot of others in that regard.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And what's the deal with "VIP website access"

Is this the whole thing?:

VIP status gives a number of benefits:

A 10% discount on anything bought direct in our webstore (from retail release onwards).
2 weeks early access to new releases on our webstore compared to the general public.
Exclusive short stories for your kindle/ipad/kobo/pc/other digital reader (exclusive for 1 year).
Additional free digital content such as audiobooks, new missions, etc.
Beta access to the rules as soon as they are ready, should you wish to help us playtest the game prior to release.

Because other than for superfans that want to playtest their beta rules and so forth, I'm not really seeing anything there that is a draw. Unless ME plan to sell only directly from their website and cut out retailers who also discount.

It seems like a defend deal, especially from a small company.

If for some strange reason this manages to blow up to X-Wing levels (just as a comparison), then you could end up with supply issues. Being able to have a two week period where you are first in line to order directly from the company instead of waiting to see if your store got a delivery could be a good benefit. Getting 10% off is also nice in that regard if it makes it a better choice between "get it now at 10% for sure, or hope your retailer gets a delivery and maybe get it at 20%."

Of course the opposite end may very well be that the game remains small and it could happen that no major discounter ends up stocking it at all. And if no discounter stocks it that 10% discount will be nice to have.

I don't know that I would pay for VIP, but as a free bonus for backing it's not something that I will complain about.

Also: free stories and art is always nice.

I dunno. For a game starting out (small) I'd think they would want to have retailers much more onside and not compete with them for the (very limited - certainly initially) initial small customer base. Anything that's going to turn your retail partners off stocking your product might not be that great an idea. Not sure about the value of "free stories and art" as part of a paid website sub either - surely you'd want as much of that out there as possible to get people who aren't invested into the game. Despite the fact that I'm not personally interested at all in either, both this and the other thread shows a lot of others are very interested in that stuff, and the fluff is often the thing that can make people come down off the fence and try out their game, etc.

 Accolade wrote:
But honestly, the similarities between 40k and MEdge are what- purple void space/incoming thread destroying things, a religious cult causing a ruckus, and a feeling of imminent doom? Doesn't that describe any futuristic setting? This is just my personal opinion obviously, but I think that 40k has really negatively impacted some people's ability to consider anything other than 40k. It's like WoW or Apple, you show someone a new MMO or laptop and they just say "oh, it's just like an inferior WoW/Mac" without ANY thought whatsoever. Just really good brainwashing.

No, it does not describe any futuristic setting. Believe it or not, but it's possible to have science fiction that doesn't wallow in grimdark. Defiance Games might have been a lemon but I really liked the fundamentals of that setting: a new age of colonisation on an interstellar scale with no apocalyptic threats, just a cold war that was unlikely to escalate and some local wildlife that was a hazard to new civilian settlements. Even the out of control AI was merely a peacekeeper that protected human cities from attack.

In Alien War, Earth was peaceful and the "war" was merely border skirmishes out on the frontier. In Maelstrom's Edge, Earth is dead and the entire galaxy is circling the drain.

So then automatically like 40k. Because 40k "invented" those two concepts.

40k did not invent grimdark. Grim dark is just a stupid saying from the game's slogan and a tendency to beat players over the head with how bad things are in that universe. Things are bad to the point of absurdity.

MEdge is more like galatic global warming with a vengeance. It's not talking about factions that spend their free time torturing millions, or others worshipping a corpse leader. It's just a dire situation that has bred a lot of conflict. There is absolutely nothing connecting the two except very very broad overreaching concepts that might as well equate to "oh, both games have people fighting each other...in SPACE! And things really suck...sheesh, what a rip"

I also don't hear this "it's grimdark, too much like 40k" gripe about Infinity, where the combined armies are apparently trashing the human's at an exceedingly terrifying rate. Is it because we have the cutsey robots that people just don't think about that part of the lore?

 AlexHolker wrote:
Believe it or not, but it's possible to have science fiction that doesn't wallow in grimdark.

Indeed it is. Like MEdge, for example.


While the overall outlook for the galaxy is grim, thanks to the (so far as anyone knows) unstoppable nature of the Maelstrom, it's really just about people being people.


The writers behind MEdge have put a lot of effort into creating factions with believable motivations. We're all doomed... but that's going to take a while, and in the meantime, there's room for stories of heroism, greed, selfishness, selflessness... people doing great things, because they need to be done, people doing horrible things, because they can, and people just getting on with their lives, as best they can.


The Maelstrom, ultimately, just provides an excuse for battles to encompass any forseeable scenario.

 insaniak wrote:
We're all doomed... but that's going to take a while, and in the meantime, there's room for stories of heroism, greed, selfishness, selflessness... people doing great things, because they need to be done, people doing horrible things, because they can, and people just getting on with their lives, as best they can.

You just described 40k as well.

 warboss wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
We're all doomed... but that's going to take a while, and in the meantime, there's room for stories of heroism, greed, selfishness, selflessness... people doing great things, because they need to be done, people doing horrible things, because they can, and people just getting on with their lives, as best they can.

You just described 40k as well.

He just described real life as well. We ARE all doomed (meaning we are all going to die, not that some love quasar is going to kill us all).

My point was that he was using stuff like that as criteria to show Medge isn't grimdark when the exact same criteria apply to 40k as well and it is decidedly grimdark. The way I see it is that you need to look at the single biggest overriding detail of a universe to see if it is grimdark. With 40k, it's listed in the front of almost every non HH book on the first line of a page... " in the grim darkness of the future there is only war". For Medge, you don't even need to look that far... it's IN THE NAME! The name of the game is Maelstrom's Edge. It details stuff that is happening on the cusp of an unstoppably destructive force that is slowly and unstoppably destroying the known universe. That's grimdark, baby!

 warboss wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
We're all doomed... but that's going to take a while, and in the meantime, there's room for stories of heroism, greed, selfishness, selflessness... people doing great things, because they need to be done, people doing horrible things, because they can, and people just getting on with their lives, as best they can.

You just described 40k as well.

Not really. In 40K, that doom is due any moment now, and in the meantime we're all just meat for the grist and the galaxy wouldn't notice if we weren't here.

There are very few 'normal' people just getting on with 'normal' lives in 40K.

MEdge is like a busload of regular commuters, sliding slowly towards a cliff edge. 40K is more akin to a busload of teenage emos heading full-speed for that cliff, being driven by a maniac on acid whose foot is nailed to the accelerator pedal.

Nah. Silly metaphors are silly.

40k's universe is big and much more detailed than others (because of course, it's been around for so long). The whole enclave/empire of Ultramar for example is pictured as pretty much like somewhere like Singapore. Authoritarian government, but relatively free, safe and domesticated (except for that Boxed Set about Macraggae!)

I've been thinking about why this hasn't been blowing up as well.

Orlando had some good thoughts:


I had a couple of thoughts to add as well.

At first it surprised me. I started looking through some of the other forums as well trying to get a feel for what others have been thinking. (I really want this to succeed).

The thought that's struck me is that the thing which is keeping this from blowing up is the exact same thing that makes it so great: a reasonable and realistic approach to a difficult objective. They want to make a great game with all HIPS. They want to deliver it in a reasonable time frame. They want people to know what they're getting by showing production models. They don't want to over promise which, lets face it, happens all the time.

So we get production models that are good, but not stunning. There may be some proportion issues but I refuse to judge that until I see them in person. We are going to get exactly what we see pretty close to the delivery date, I expect. To do that they won't promise models they can't make for years. As wonderful as the product was, how long did it take Dream Forge to finish up? No matter how much interest a gnolti would generate, I don't think we're going to see it because it wouldn't fit with the plan.

I think it's admirable. I also think the lack of shiny stuff is going to keep this from sky rocketing.

The other thing I noticed is that a lot of folks just glance at it and dismiss it as "not-40k from dakka." They don't look any deeper or even look at the rules preview. Those rules have the potential to be solid gold, but no one is looking at them. I think once SAS starts getting attention for the rules we'll see some more growth.

I haven't chimed in on the discussions about ME thus far but I was discussing the matter in private, and asked to share my thoughts as a connoisseur (of sorts) regarding kickstarter campaigns. My reticence has mainly been on account that A) I really do both respect the people involved, and the fact that they took this incredible risk forward, but B) I... I'm not at all sure they can fix things at this point.

What I mean is that ME is a much more mature product then we're used to seeing on KS as it's basically a finished project: the molds have been cut, the aesthetic decided on, the fiction written (2 books?!). In terms of work put in, they are heads and shoulders above where other campaigns are... but that's a big problem in this particular case.

I think that underlies what we're seeing with the, call it defensiveness, by the people involved. The Corporation faction models are not concept art, they are done. I don't know how much SAS has already invested, but my assumption is that they cannot simply scrap something like, say, all the human figures in the Corporation line.

I've also hesitated to comment because... listen, I realize this is very much a YMMV matter, but I just really don't like a lot of the elements of the game. I'll go on about the aesthetics, but the storyline and universe just really doesn't appeal to me much at all. I'll be blunt, to me the game seems like an attempt to 'fix' 40k by going back to the glory days of... the late 90's? I think I can sum up my problem with the aesthetic with a single image I saw recently;



That's the three infantry types that Mark's Dreamforge line ultimately produced, and I think it's an amazing example of what hard plastic can do these days. I think of that line, I think of Adam Poots' Kingdom Death line of plastics, but to be fair they are both A) not available yet, and B) in 32mm (+?) scale. So Dreamforge seems like the best comparison for 28mm hard plastics.

And ME simply doesn't stand up particularly well to what Mark is offering. A much less fair comparison;


Faced with the truth of that, the defensiveness is understandable, but... I mean, the answer I have seen for why the corporate troops looks, uh, the way they do, is "you look at models from several feet away instead of close up," and "ease of distinguishing units/weapons during play". Which are both fine in theory: that's the reasoning for the exaggerated style and limitations on customization that characterize WM/Hordes. But WM/Hordes grew to where it is by emphasizing the "play like you got a pair", tournament-centric mindset that characterized CCGs like Magic. The people (at least at the start, I believe) attracted to that game were people less inclined to care much about aesthetics. it was also years ago, when GW had far less competition, and nothing to speak of for plastics. I'm not sure that you can get away with that same gambit today, and even if you could, ME isn't being sold in a way that takes advantage of that same mindset.

That is one of the oddest things: (to me at least) this game really appeals best as '40k done right'. But the SAS folk are adamant that it isn't, that any and all similarities are purely coincidental. Which is just silly.

The argument that the figures are designed for table-top viewing also fails to take into account another factor: I know that I buy a huge amount of my models simply because I like models and I like to own beautiful things. I doubt that I am alone in having many models that have been painstakingly assembled and painted, only to rarely if ever actually see the surface of a game table. I own Dreamforge models simply because I like the way they look, and they are far from the only such entities in my collection. Consider, for example, these models from the last update of the Fallen Frontiers campaign;
These figures 'feel' modern, in a way that the ME figures simply don't.

I won't go too much into the setting in this post, save to say that my limited exposure to it has engendered an intense dislike of it. It is one of the most nihilistic settings in contemporary sci-fi, certainly in my experience. It is literally nihilistic: even in 40k, while the Imperium of Man teeters on the brink, that apocalyptic fall won't be the destruction of the universe/galaxy. Countless Tau, Orks, Chaos Worshippers, assorted other Xenos, sentient Necron machine entities, etc, etc, will survive and, indeed, perhaps prosper. The ME universe, by contrast, is on a countdown to complete destruction.

The ME universe seems, to me, almost totally unsuited for the setting of a war game: say what you will about the Imperium of Man, but the role of the player in the game is, in a narrative sense, important. The threats the universe of 40k is concerned with are martial in nature: ravaging hordes of monsters, subtle and corrupting cultists, encroaching empires. In ME, the overarching threat is utterly indifferent to the activities of the players: the deep mysteries of the setting are a subject for scientists, explorers and inventors, not generals or warriors. The player takes on the role of a bystander, limited to fighting battles of ultimately no importance for, at best, Pyrrhic victories.

I don't want to go on about the setting, so I'll stop there. I'm trying to develop some ideas on how to improve performance, but I am genuinely afraid that there is too little left that can be changed to actually make a difference.

 Buzzsaw wrote:
The ME universe seems, to me, almost totally unsuited for the setting of a war game: say what you will about the Imperium of Man, but the role of the player in the game is, in a narrative sense, important. The threats the universe of 40k is concerned with are martial in nature: ravaging hordes of monsters, subtle and corrupting cultists, encroaching empires. In ME, the overarching threat is utterly indifferent to the activities of the players: the deep mysteries of the setting are a subject for scientists, explorers and inventors, not generals or warriors. The player takes on the role of a bystander, limited to fighting battles of ultimately no importance for, at best, Pyrrhic victories.

I think I can see where you would come to that viewpoint, but it's not what I get from the setting.

To me, as I mentioned earlier, the Maelstrom provides a reason for the conflict, but ultimately the battles are no less 'important' or part of the narrative than they are in 40K. Conflict in 40K is largely about territory... the Imperium wants to control their slice of the galaxy, and preferably the rest of it as well, and everyone else wants their part of the galaxy. Battles ensue.

In MEdge, the conflict is ultimately driven by the Maelstrom, rather than factions just being territorialistic, but the battles achieve the same end - survival in a galaxy that wants to kill them, and carving out their own space in spite of a whole bunch of threats that all want their own space.



And it's worth keeping in mind as well that the Maelstrom being the end of everything is not a given. It might stop of its own accord. It might be stopped by someone coming up with something clever. The Karists might be right. Or there might be some other way of escaping it that hasn't been revealed yet. And that's another part of what I'm looking forward to with this. It's a universe that has been built from the ground up to be able to evolve later on. 40K doesn't have that. As much as a game setting doesn't have to move, the clock always being set at two minutes to midnight is one of the most frequent complaints that I've seen about 40K's setting. For 40K, the setting is the game. For MEdge, it's just the starting point.

I would like to say, as someone who (despite not having much presence on the forum) has followed the KS since day one, without pledging, I am most definitely interested. I've been reading a few topics on Medge recently, and one of the things i hear people keep saying is 'it's bad because its KS fund hasn't rocketed up,' at least, that's the vibe I get.
I personally, am holding off pledging simply to see where it is going. I am most definitely pledging at least for the box - I love the previews of the rules, the miniatures (alright not all of them) and the way the fluff manages to have a setting that is both hard(er) sci-fi, and makes you think about the morality of different actions and courses. I am mainly holding off to make sure i have the spare funds, and to wait to see if there will be more add-ons (fingers crossed for some more Epirian drones, Scarecrows etc.).
I think that there are quite a number of people out there who hold the same opinion (although i might be wrong, and i could be the only one. Meh.) and hold a strong conviction that there will be quite a hike in the KS pledge level in the last week of the KS.

As for the models, they all look good, although I do agree with most of the complaints about the Epirian contractors, however i can't wait to get my hands upon the Epirian drones. Yes, the scarecrow is impractical to a certain degree, yes, the flight drones need better propulsion, but they do look awesome. And they do have the suspension of disbelief that is needed in hard sci-fi - a flying drone with only 2 rotors could work, and yes, humanoid 'scary' robots could work.

A lot of people are saying that the universe seems too much like 40k, and while some of those points are valid, is that such a bad thing? From what i've seen, it hasn't really used any of 40k's 'bad' traits, (heroic scale aside, i actually quite like it) and it does differ quite a ways from it's 'Grimdark' setting. While most people argue that 'Grimdark' is to do with the setting, i will counter by saying that Grimdark is just as reliant upon the feel of the universe and fluff - and Medge does a great job of having the grimdark setting, without having a grimdark feel to the fluff. I personally think this is great, although i'm sure some will disagree.

In summary, Great job SAS, yes, there are things for you to improve upon, but there are also many things which you have nailed. Keep up the good fluff, it really is a great break from the OTT grim-darkness of 40k (Which is good in it's own right, don't get me wrong), and has a great depth, which i'm sure your talented writers can improve upon. I can't wait to see the scarecrow and hunter models, and keep up the good work!

 insaniak wrote:

 Buzzsaw wrote:
The ME universe seems, to me, almost totally unsuited for the setting of a war game: say what you will about the Imperium of Man, but the role of the player in the game is, in a narrative sense, important. The threats the universe of 40k is concerned with are martial in nature: ravaging hordes of monsters, subtle and corrupting cultists, encroaching empires. In ME, the overarching threat is utterly indifferent to the activities of the players: the deep mysteries of the setting are a subject for scientists, explorers and inventors, not generals or warriors. The player takes on the role of a bystander, limited to fighting battles of ultimately no importance for, at best, Pyrrhic victories.

I think I can see where you would come to that viewpoint, but it's not what I get from the setting.

To me, as I mentioned earlier, the Maelstrom provides a reason for the conflict, but ultimately the battles are no less 'important' or part of the narrative than they are in 40K. Conflict in 40K is largely about territory... the Imperium wants to control their slice of the galaxy, and preferably the rest of it as well, and everyone else wants their part of the galaxy. Battles ensue.

In MEdge, the conflict is ultimately driven by the Maelstrom, rather than factions just being territorialistic, but the battles achieve the same end - survival in a galaxy that wants to kill them, and carving out their own space in spite of a whole bunch of threats that all want their own space.

As I pointed out, much of my points are of the YMMV type (although I can't help but hear the voice of Harry Plinkett "it's a matter of opinion but mine is right"). That said, I am utterly unpersuaded by this notion. The Maelstrom as an instigator of conflict rings so false to me, on so many levels, that it's difficult to boil them down... so I'll just spit out a few of the ways I find it objectionable;

-A major third-party threat as a source of conflict, rather then cooperation. There is a reason that overarching threats have been used to bring warring sides together in fiction, because that's what they do in real life. Whether it's the galaxy threatening Yuuzang Vong bringing the Imperial Remnant and the New Republic together in the Star Wars universe, Unicron bringing Optimus Prime and Megatron together, GI Joe and Cobra uniting to battle... uh, a fat man, Buffy and Spike fighting Angel, Master Chief and the Arbiter fighting... whoever that was, and so on.

This is, of course, a reference to real life. The proverb "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is ancient enough to be claimed by many cultures, and as for the ur example, well... 'nuff said.


-The idea that the Maelstrom is needed for conflict: I've seen several people from the SAS team talk about how the Maelstrom "explains" conflict, and how they "needed" this to instigate and be the driver of conflict in the setting. Because, as we all know, in the absence of an apocalyptic threat, humanity is just too darned peaceful.

I don't like the setting of 40k, but in this regard it's actually (IMO, and only in a small way) superior to the ME conceit.

 insaniak wrote:
And it's worth keeping in mind as well that the Maelstrom being the end of everything is not a given. It might stop of its own accord. It might be stopped by someone coming up with something clever. The Karists might be right. Or there might be some other way of escaping it that hasn't been revealed yet. And that's another part of what I'm looking forward to with this. It's a universe that has been built from the ground up to be able to evolve later on. 40K doesn't have that. As much as a game setting doesn't have to move, the clock always being set at two minutes to midnight is one of the most frequent complaints that I've seen about 40K's setting. For 40K, the setting is the game. For MEdge, it's just the starting point.

First, this is simply wrong, or to be more generous, unsupported: from the Kickstarter main page "The apocalypse is coming inexorably to every planet on the Edge." So... yeah, the word 'apocalypse' or 'apocalyptic' is used no less then 3 times. Literally the first bullet point on the main kickstarter page is "A 'slow apocalypse' sci-fi universe supported by years of writing and published novels."

Now, are such things possible? Of course... but only because there is so little that has actually been delineated. It's possible they'll introduce Jews in Spaaaaaaace, but I have some doubts about it.

By the way, I see that the front page of the campaign has been changed: am I the only one that no longer sees any reference to "hard sci-fi"? Last time I looked I distinctly remembered seeing such a things mentioned (I know because I found it a ridiculous thing to claim).

EDIT: Looking at the front page, I'm actually noticing that a number of things I thought were there are no longer there. Wasn't there a whole section with 5 or so bullet points about the game? That section seems, rather then the points being expanded on, to have simply been deleted.

The thing I find most depressing about the setting is that it's like ten thousand years in the future and very little has changed. Apparently humanity has basically peaked and all we can look forwards to is more of those screens from NCIS where they move windows around with touch gestures. The Amazon drone is the pinnacle of human technology, and so it will be forevermore.

(Though it's weird, because the setting mentions a few things as new or state of the art, like maybe humanity just decided to put a pause on technological progress for ten thousand years for the heck of it and then start up again.)

It very much feels like it's trying to recall the earlier 40k on so many levels, but with some Firefly or whatever thrown in.

 Buzzsaw wrote:
By the way, I see that the front page of the campaign has been changed: am I the only one that no longer sees any reference to "hard sci-fi"? Last time I looked I distinctly remembered seeing such a things mentioned (I know because I found it a ridiculous thing to claim).

When I looked back over the other thread some days ago, the first reference I could find was a non-SAS poster calling it "more hard" and then someone from SAS talking about it being "harder" (as in harder than soft, not harder than hard).

 Buzzsaw wrote:
-A major third-party threat as a source of conflict, rather then cooperation. There is a reason that overarching threats have been used to bring warring sides together in fiction, because that's what they do in real life. Whether it's the galaxy threatening Yuuzang Vong bringing the Imperial Remnant and the New Republic together in the Star Wars universe, Unicron bringing Optimus Prime and Megatron together, GI Joe and Cobra uniting to battle... uh, a fat man, Buffy and Spike fighting Angel, Master Chief and the Arbiter fighting... whoever that was, and so on.

This is, of course, a reference to real life. The proverb "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is ancient enough to be claimed by many cultures, and as for the ur example, well... 'nuff said.

Spoiler:

The thing is, all of those examples you've given are threats that can clearly be opposed. The Maelstrom isn't... it's a (presumably) force of nature, and the various factions all banding together, in this situation, just means fewer resources for everybody.


Of course, it's also possible that I just have a slightly less optimistic view of humanity than you do

-The idea that the Maelstrom is needed for conflict: I've seen several people from the SAS team talk about how the Maelstrom "explains" conflict, and how they "needed" this to instigate and be the driver of conflict in the setting. Because, as we all know, in the absence of an apocalyptic threat, humanity is just too darned peaceful.

Ultimately, what the Maelstrom adds is chaos. And chaos is essential for a setting unless you're going to limit who each faction can fight against. Otherwise, you end up with games that don't make a lot of sense.

This is something that's always bugged me with most games. While there are all sorts of potential reasons for factions to be fighting other factions, a game setting also needs to account for those times when you have a single faction fighting itself. Why are these stormtroopers fighting those stormtroopers? Why are these Tau fighting those Tau? And so on.

40K goes some[i] way towards covering that, but there are any number of times where a match-up just winds up feeling [i]odd.

The Maelstrom provides a setting where, on the edge, everyone is ultimately out to save themselves. And so it's entirely conceivable for different Epirian branches to wind up at odds with each other.

First, this is simply wrong, or to be more generous, unsupported: from the Kickstarter main page "The apocalypse is coming inexorably to every planet on the Edge." So... yeah, the word 'apocalypse' or 'apocalyptic' is used no less then 3 times. Literally the first bullet point on the main kickstarter page is "A 'slow apocalypse' sci-fi universe supported by years of writing and published novels."

Members of the design team have mentioned in the news thread that the plan is to evolve the setting over time, and it was covered right at the start that the origin and exact nature of the Maelstrom is something to potentially be explored later.

So the initial setting is as explained in the Kickstarter - the End is coming. But what actually happens later is very much up in the air.


As opposed to, say, 40K, where it's a reasonably safe bet that in another 20 years time we'll still be sitting right at the end of the 41st millenium, with nothing much changed other than a whole bunch of extra units being added in.

The Maelstrom doesn't bring only conflict. The Karists wouldn't have got together and united in faith with out it. The Broken would not be forming alliances and brotherhoods without it. The Artarians wouldn't be the society they are today without it. There are many, many examples of the Maelstrom bringing people together. But no one wants to play games about those!

And you certainly don't get a much better example of bad situations bringing different people to together than the Broken


So yeah, there's certainly both sides of the coin presented in the background.

 insaniak wrote:
Ultimately, what the Maelstrom adds is chaos. And chaos is essential for a setting unless you're going to limit who each faction can fight against. Otherwise, you end up with games that don't make a lot of sense.

It is impossible to prevent this, because even if you make up an excuse for sub-factions to fight against one another, there's nothing stopping two people from deciding to make the same army - "the Defenders of Delta Prime" or whatever - and having those two armies fight against one another. Why bother trying to make sure anything can be canon by undermining the reason people would actually care if it's canon or not?

 insaniak wrote:
And it's worth keeping in mind as well that the Maelstrom being the end of everything is not a given. It might stop of its own accord. It might be stopped by someone coming up with something clever. The Karists might be right. Or there might be some other way of escaping it that hasn't been revealed yet. And that's another part of what I'm looking forward to with this. It's a universe that has been built from the ground up to be able to evolve later on. 40K doesn't have that. As much as a game setting doesn't have to move, the clock always being set at two minutes to midnight is one of the most frequent complaints that I've seen about 40K's setting. For 40K, the setting is the game. For MEdge, it's just the starting point.

Is that necessarily a good thing? Because I can think of two examples - Mass Effect and Battlestar Galactica - where the attempted resolution didn't just not work, they were so stupid and out of place people still hold grudges over them years later.

If the setting eventually becomes better, why not start the story at that point instead? Start things off after the initial exodus ends, as everybody realises that they're no longer running for their lives from an all-consuming doom that seems to have stopped. Epirians eye the Karists with suspicion, perhaps believing that a few drive failures during the escape were not misfortune but sabotage by this death cult who wanted to be overrun by the Maelstrom. Stragglers come up from behind, rather pissed that they didn't make it into the first wave of refugees and were left to die. Things like that.

 AlexHolker wrote:
If the setting eventually becomes better, why not start the story at that point instead? .

Fair point, I suppose. How awesome would Star Wars have been if it had actually started at the point where the Empire had been overthrown and peace had been restored to the galaxy?





Actually, I'm not sure 'awesome' is the right word, there.


Honestly, I think we're just back into 'can't please everybody' territory. For me, it's the fact that everything's up the crapper, while still having that hope of turning around somewhere giving people a reason to keep trying, that makes the setting interesting. Obviously you're looking for something different.

 insaniak wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:
If the setting eventually becomes better, why not start the story at that point instead? .

Fair point, I suppose. How awesome would Star Wars have been if it had actually started at the point where the Empire had been overthrown and peace had been restored to the galaxy?

Actually, I'm not sure 'awesome' is the right word, there.

Star Wars is not a setting where the status quo is that everyone, everywhere is going to die in a fire. As far as we knew the destruction of Alderaan was an unprecedented loss of life, and that was intended as a one-off to intimidate everyone else.

 AlexHolker wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:
If the setting eventually becomes better, why not start the story at that point instead? .

Fair point, I suppose. How awesome would Star Wars have been if it had actually started at the point where the Empire had been overthrown and peace had been restored to the galaxy?

Actually, I'm not sure 'awesome' is the right word, there.

Star Wars is not a setting where the status quo is that everyone, everywhere is going to die in a fire. As far as we knew the destruction of Alderaan was an unprecedented loss of life, and that was intended as a one-off to intimidate everyone else.

With respect, that's not what our universe is about. Not everyone is going to die in Maelstrom's Edge. Space is a big, big place, and the worlds that are on the Edge are a tiny fraction of the worlds that remain in the Spiral Arm. We have thousands of worlds further away from the Edge left to explore, where business as usual is going on. The Maelstrom is approaching those worlds, but it's not going to wipe the whole galaxy off the map in the space of a single lifetime. It's taken a thousand years to get to this point, and it will take several thousand more to get to the other edge of the galaxy. If you want to have battles in the 'peaceful' part of the galaxy, then that is certainly available to you - but as insaniak said, is that really as interesting a setting for a wargame?

What the Maelstrom does mean though, is that the people on the worlds close to the Edge have difficult choices to make about what to do next. Do they abandon their belongings and get away as soon as possible? Do they stay and try to make the most money exploiting the resources before they are destroyed? Do they play pirate, preying on the refugee columns streaming away from the Edge? How about those that voluntarily choose to go back to the doomed worlds, trying to rescue as many people as they can, or save some priceless artefact? Perhaps some may even devote their lives to finding a way to stop the Maelstrom. There's plenty of room for heroes, villains, hope and despair. I've really enjoyed writing stories in that context, and I'm excited about the many possibilities there are in the future.

The thing we wanted to do most of all when creating our setting was to provide a compelling reason for the fighting that makes up the bread and butter of any wargame. We didn't want to have a setting where there were these huge wars just because a certain alien just liked fighting, or because one or the other race just wanted to destroy everything (for no really good reason). We want to have kickass technology and characters and fantastic, enjoyable battles, but if we could also make sense of them in terms of the background motivations of the factions, even better!

We've spent a lot of time designing a setting where it made sense that there would be a lot of battles, whilst not making it a completely unwinnable scenario for anyone to escape the Maelstrom. The speed of the Maelstrom's expansion and the way that people travel through the cybel network are very intentionally designed so that it's challenging for people to escape but that there's still hope - you can read more about our designs of both on the updates on the Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/medge/maelstroms-edge-a-next-gen-sci-fi-miniatures-warga/posts/1212994

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/medge/maelstroms-edge-a-next-gen-sci-fi-miniatures-warga/posts/1217288


I am very proud of the universe we've designed and I think it's a great place to explore, which leaves room for both conflict and hope. If the setting isn't for you, that's fair enough, but for me it's been a blast writing stories for Maelstrom's Edge, and people seem to be enjoying reading them. I think there's a lot more to it than what you're saying here, and I'd like to think that as we reveal more about it over the next few weeks, people will like what we've made.

 SexierThanYou13 wrote:
People keep saying is 'it's bad because its KS fund hasn't rocketed up,'
...
I am mainly holding off to make sure i have the spare funds, and to wait to see if there will be more add-ons
...
I think that there are quite a number of people out there who hold the same opinion, and hold a strong conviction that there will be quite a hike in the KS pledge level in the last week of the KS.

Kickstarter campaigns tend to follow quite a predictable curve. You are right, there are a number of people like you, and there will be a big hike during the last week, that's completely normal and expected. However, it will likely be in proportion with what we've already seen.

 Smacks wrote:

 SexierThanYou13 wrote:
People keep saying is 'it's bad because its KS fund hasn't rocketed up,'
...
I am mainly holding off to make sure i have the spare funds, and to wait to see if there will be more add-ons
...
I think that there are quite a number of people out there who hold the same opinion, and hold a strong conviction that there will be quite a hike in the KS pledge level in the last week of the KS.

Kickstarter campaigns tend to follow quite a predictable curve. You are right, there are a number of people like you, and there will be a big hike during the last week, that's completely normal and expected. However, it will likely be in proportion with what we've already seen.

Fair enough, and i certainly wasn't denying that it hasn't been as successful as it could have been, I was just bringing up the point that judging a project's overall success due to the first couple of weeks of it's KS isn't a fair judgement. If you were to come after the KS and say then that it hadn't done well, (providing it actually didn't do well) then that would be a fair assumption. Yes, KS campaigns tend follow a certain curve, but there is always the chance that they wont, and that is all i am bringing up.

On another note, the Epirian Contractors are actually starting to grow on me, i seem to be disliking them less and less as i see more of them. Is anyone else getting this, or is it just me?

Looking forward to seeing the hunter and scarecrow add-ons!


Edit: Am I the only one that noticed in around half of the karist trooper images there is only five of them? I think there are only about two images (Overall 'box' shot, and alll the karist minis) that show all six, what's with that?