An Introduction to Relics of the Ancients

As a said on my previous entry, one of the major objectives of this blog is to make updates of my personal RPG-related projects. While this serves as a way to keep everyone interested informed on how things are developing, it’s mainly to keep me focused in working on them until they are finished (because, you see, that’s the tricky part, everyone can start a writing project, but what really matters is when you finish it).

Relics of the Ancients (which I’ll explain in a little while) is going to be my first big RPG writing project. Along the way, I’m also going to be releasing several short games, mostly to act as thought exercises of different types of mechanics I’ve considered over the last year. I want to explore different approaches to an RPG system, both conventional and unconventional, to see how things work out.

That explained, let’s move to the main event…


Relics of the Ancients: Overview
In Relics of the Ancients, players portray sorcerers of an extinct race who bound their souls into powerful relics in a desperate attempt for survival millenniums ago.  Recently awakening from their long slumber, they find themselves into a whole new world that has forgotten them.

Will they try to atone for their past sins in this new life? Will they try to carve a new empire over the ashes of the old one? Will they pursuit ancient vendettas?

Regardless of the path they choose, they’ll have to deal with their hubris and alien urges, for longer they remain unconnected to a mortal body, faster their minds diverge from what they were before the binding. On top of that, power itself is double-edged sword, for the Theluria (the energy of the earth itself, which gives shape and stability to the world) was severely damaged long ago, every spell casted deepening the wound.


Setting
While I don’t have specifics to give yet, I imagine the present state of the world to be very different to what it was while the Ancients ruled. Civilization is on a very primitive state, with uncountable tribes scattered around the map and very few cities (none of which have much influence beyond their walls). There are no mighty Empires trying to conquer their neighboring territories under a single banner… at least not yet.

While that may sound as if the Ancients’ Era was great, it really wasn’t unless you were an Ancient yourself. All modern sentient species were created as the slaves of the Ancients; their only purpose was to serve their masters without question. But something happened, the Ancients got ambitious, their hubris went too far and they broke the Theluria. In the backlash, their powers diminished long enough for their own slaves to take them down. That’s why modern tribes are so superstitious about sorcery, even if they don’t remember exactly why.


System
Again, I don’t have specifics to share yet, since I’m still trying to write a set of rules that reflects what I want people to get from the game. I’ve even considered it to make it a diceless game at some point. All I can say is that I love simple systems that don’t require too much bookkeeping and are fast to learn and run.

At this point, my inclination is to make a simple dicepool system to resolve conflicts that involve the character’s mortal vessel, while leaving everything related to sorcery diceless (that’s not to say there aren’t complications for using sorcery, but I’ll handle them in a different way).


Inspirational Material
I’m drawing inspiration from several sources, adding more as times goes by.

On television, the anime Records of Lodoss War features an example of a sorceress binding her soul to a relic to survive her civilization’s demise. On literature, Robert Howard’s Conan stories (plus the first Schwarzenegger’s movie) are being a great inspiration for the setting.

Finally, there are several roleplaying games that inspired me. Foremost among them is Exalted, where I started to work on this concept with the Solar Circle spell Immortal Phylactery of Soul and Mind (check my Scroll of Sorcerous Enlightment PDF in the Downloads section), my attempt to recreate Dungeons & Dragons’ liches in Creation. Recently, the Talislanta gameline also had a deep impact in my ideas on how to portray the Relics of the Ancients’ world with his vastly rich setting, full of diverse cultures and species.


That's all I have for now. I hope to be making new updates soon.

Over and out.