Ropecon 2013

Back from the Ropecon 2013

Hello everyone! Last weekend we were at Ropecon 2013 and we hosted four games during the weekend. Almost all of our games were full and all in all players seemed to like the game. We would like to thank all the players for trying out Mundus RPG!

At Ropecon we game mastered the campaign from our Quickstart. Each of the four parties took a very different approach to the problem at hand. If you are planning to play the Quickstart campaign and you don’t want to spoil yourself, stop reading now (See you next Sunday!).

The basic plot of the campaign is that the players are demon hunters who are tasked to find and kill a Gaki demon on the island of Akusekijima. The campaign guides the player characters to search for a rōnin who presumably works for the gaki. The players are informed that the rōnin has probably used one of the two tea houses in the town. From either of the two tea houses the player characters find information about the rōnins whereabouts and with the “help” of the rōnin they can find the gaki. For more detailed description of the campaign check out the Quickstart’s Game Master chapter.

In one of our games the plot didn’t follow the script at all. The player characters ignored the tips about the tea houses and the rōnin and focused in finding the demon. They followed the rumors about the demon’s attacks against samurai and travelers across the island. One of the characters was a samurai from the local Murakami clan and he used his influence to arrange a small weapons shipment which the player characters then used to lure out the demon.

The trap was a success and the characters managed to capture the rōnin leader Noboru. The players managed to make a deal with him and he revealed the gaki’s hideout. Once the player characters reached the temple of water god Agura they shouted a challenge to the gaki. One of the player characters challenged the gaki into a duel, but he soon discovered that he was no match against he gaki. His not-so-honorable demon hunter friends rushed to help him and defeated the demon after many rounds of combat.

See you next Sunday!

Quickstart Release!

We’re excited to announce that the Mundus RPG Quickstart is now available!

This quickstart is made to present the Mundus RPG’s core mechanics. It also includes a short campaign “Trail of Calamity” and eight unique sample characters.

We offer this quickstart in two qualities, print and web quality.

Print Quality Download (48,5MB) - Web Quality Download (8,9MB)

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Mundus RPG Team

Ropecon Crunch & Trailer

This week we don’t have a proper blog post, because we’re preparing for Ropecon (http://2013.ropecon.fi/en/ ). If you are in the area during the convention please drop by. We are also GM:ing four games during the weekend. Also because the convention lasts form Friday to Sunday we won’t have a blog post next week.

Here is a teaser trailer for Mundus RPG

See you soon!

Nanaken

This week we’ll shortly introduce the special group of people working directly under the Shogun. This group is called Nanaken and it consists of seven people hand-picked by the Shogun himself. All members of Nanaken are extremely skilled warriors and they are deemed living legends. Nanaken members are usually given jobs that fit their expertise. Even though they are all extremely skilled warriors their specialization may be assassinations, politics or anything between.

Originally Nanaken was formed to battle rogue demigods but since then it has transformed into a Shogun’s personal elite fighting force. Nanaken members are usually dispatched to handle rebelling clans or other internal disputes. Because of this Nanaken members are required to be highly loyal to the Shogun in addition to their top notch fighting skills.

See you next Sunday!

2nd Anniversary of Mundus RPG

2nd Anniversary

Last Wednesday was the 2^nd anniversary of Mundus RPG. So we decided to look back to when we started the project.

Happy mob of Gorai celebrating the anniversary.

Two years ago I was having a shower and got an idea about an Asian themed roleplaying-game. So I pitched the idea to my three flatmates. On that same evening we had a raw concept of a post-apocalyptic Asian themed roleplaying-game with zombies and kung-fu fighting.  During the first week of development we iterated the core gameplay concepts of the game and had our first gameplay sessions where we tested the rule set. Few weeks in to the development, the idea of post-apocalyptic theme, and zombies, started to wither away.

First Draft of the Map of Mundus. First development day

In early development our goal was to create fun and deep gameplay system for our own roleplaying needs. None of our four man development team saw this as commercial product. During the next nine months our development team shrunk to two members and somewhere around the nine month mark we were told that we should consider commercializing the game.

Now, after two years of development of Mundus Roleplaying-Game, we are set to release the game in digital format this fall!

Ville Huohvanainen

Lead Designer

See you next Sunday!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!