Sunday 30 June 2013

Character Archetypes

Character Archetypes


Mundus RPG’s melee archetypes are based on our four combat styles. These four combat styles are Agile, Mixed, Raw Power and Technique. Combat styles define how a character fights where as our weapon skills define weapons they use.

Agile fighters are very defensive and they gain bonuses to avoiding projectiles. They usually favor light and fast weapons. Most dual wielders also choose Agile as their combat style because of a good synergy between these two skills.  Mixed fighters are jacks-of-all-trades as the style borrows some of its abilities from the other three combat styles. As such mixed is very customizable but this also makes it a very difficult combat style for new players to use. As one might guess from Raw Power’s name, its focus is on all out offense and maximum damage. When choosing a weapon for a Raw Power character bigger is usually better. However we have seen successful Raw Power builds that used daggers… The Technique combat style is the combat style that defines samurai. Technique is a melee oriented style that can be customized to focus on either offense or defense. Technique users usually choose medium sized one handed weapons or light two handed ones. From these four styles Raw Power and Technique are the easiest for new players to use.

Where melee fighters can’t forget their ranged defense, ranged fighters can’t forget their melee skills. Because of this even ranged fighters should have a combat style and some kind of melee fighting skill. In addition to our four melee archetypes we have three ranged archetypes. These three archetypes are Archers, Ritualists and Throwers.

Archers are the furthest reaching ranged fighters in Mundus RPG. They are also the most common ranged fighters on Mundus. The negative thing about Archers is that out of all three ranged archetypes they are usually the most vulnerable one in melee combat. They also tend to be the most lethal ranged fighters if they play their cards right. Ritualists, our game’s spell casters, are the most versatile ranged fighters as they are able to work in supportive roles as well as in attacking roles. In addition ritualists have access to the most destructive attacks in the game. Throwers specialize in either throwing few large weapons per combat round, for example throwing spears, or in spamming massive amounts of small daggers or shurikens. As one might guess throwers have the shortest range of all three ranged archetypes. Of course you can mix these archetypes as you wish. For example Ritualist Archers are very effective and Throwing is a good support skill for melee fighters.


See you next Sunday!

Sunday 23 June 2013

Character Creation

Character Creation

In Mundus RPG we use a module system to guide the player through character creation. Modules present three stages of character’s life from birth to adulthood. After the three stages character is 16 years old and in our world he is an adult. After these modules player can choose to take extra modules or use his remaining experience points as he wishes.

The first module stage describes characters birth and early childhood. The second stage defines late childhood years and training he has received from his family. The third stage describes character’s training to his selected profession or lifestyle.

Each module includes experience pool for Attributes, Skills and Traits. Player can spend this XP within the restrictions of the module. For example, Samurai Family module gives player 10XP to spend to attributes and 18XP to skills. This character creation system gives the player a quick backstory for his character or speeds up the creation of a predefined character.


See you next Sunday!

Sunday 16 June 2013

Update

Update


This blog post is a short update about the current status of Mundus RPG. To start off few announcements; Ville, our designer, finally managed to graduate and at least for the next six months he will be working full time on Mundus RPG.  This means we are moving to the actual production phase of Mundus and hopefully sometime in the future we also get this game released. However, at this point it is still too early to speak more about the release.


Right now our core rules are more or less final and we are only adding secondary stuff, such as traits, perks and spells. From now on most of Ville’s work time will be spent writing our rule book. We are hoping to get a very bare bones version of our rule book to our friends so that they can GM their own campaigns. Also our future blog posts will shed some light on our core rules and gameplay mechanics.



Here is an extra picture for you guys. This little fellow enjoying his cucumber is a kappa. In Mundus RPG kappa is a very common Tentaikan water demon and in the real world kappa is one of the most well known creatures in Japanese mythology.

See you next Sunday!

Sunday 9 June 2013

Demons

Demons



Demon as a term is quite broad. Creatures from Ascendes or Acernos are often referred as “demons” in Mundus. Many such creatures live in Tentaika. Baku, Tengu and Kappa are good examples. But most commonly the term “demon” refers to creatures born under the influence of godly powers.

Demons gain their great physical and mental power from their strong connection to arcane powers of gods. Demons can be separated into three categories of power based on their way to reproduce. Demons which are able to reproduce within their own species are the most weakest as they have sacrificed most of their strong demonic powers to be able to reproduce. Such demons have become stable races. Good examples for such demon races are Kappa and Inugami which both are common demons in Tentaika.

Second category of demons is those who reproduce with other species. These demons are rarer as crossbreeding does not often lead to full breed demons. Most common demon race which spreads to other races is Akuma. Akuma possess unique and fearsome ability to infect humans. Infected humans are slowly corrupted and turned into Akuma if not cured.

The final and most powerful category is those demons which are directly created from arcane rituals. These demons can possess other beings and gain control of their physical body. These demons are often crafted by skilled ritualists who seek great power that can be granted by demon’s soul. Gaki is a common outcome of these experiments where a demon soul with great life force is created and implanted to the subject.

See you next Sunday!

Sunday 2 June 2013

Morte

God of Death

As the god of Death, Morte is responsible for collecting the souls of the dead on Mundus and Acernos. When a being dies its soul leaves the body. If the soul is weak, like an animal’s soul, it is dissolved and it is used to create new life. If the soul is strong enough, which means it is at least almost as strong as a human’s soul, it just hovers near the body and it is invisible and untouchable to almost everyone. On Acernos, Morte uses his powers to collect souls every ten minutes or so. As Morte can’t directly influence Mundus, he sends his demigods to collect the souls of the dead. Also, as we mentioned in our Matinia blog post, Morte is responsible for creating new life on Acernos.

Morte is often portrayed as a bent old man with a long beard and a cane. Morte is rather cranky and somewhat austere and as such he rarely gets along with other gods. He has an especially poor relationship with Inmicus, god of War. Morte makes public appearances extremely rarely as he tends to show his physical form only to his carefully selected elite.

Morte’s sub gods are a special case as they all have a permanent physical body and they do not represent anything in the same sense as other sub gods do. Also Morte or his sub gods don’t have any lords. Instead each sub god governs his own group of demigods. These demigods are responsible of personally collecting all the souls on Mundus. Each of these groups is responsible for a single nation on Mundus. Ankou and his Grim Reaper’s are responsible for collecting souls on Alerian soil. The northern lands of Seigrike are governed by Odin and his Valkyries. The last and largest of these groups governs the nation of Tentaika. They are Shinigamis led by Enma.


See you next Sunday!