Strange Owl Games and the poet and Amul Sul podcast co-host Rinsos (Richard Rohlin) are bringing Amboria, a tabletop RPG of adventure, language, and liturgy, to life.
The Kickstarter has already hit the $14,000 target, and there’s over a month left to run on the clock. It’s a game that assumes a campaign will be played out over many sessions and game years. You can see progress on the pitch page.
Community building is the newish angle in Amboria. It’s a world where magic exists but is always subtle, powerful and dangerous, contrasting to the mechanical and predictable spells found in many other systems.
The game uses the Clash system we first saw in Jackals: Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying. This means points can be used can be spent to be better while being heroic while also keeping combat deadly.
Development on the World Under Starlight began nearly two decades ago as an attempt to answer the question: what makes a culture, a homeland? As a medievalist and philologist, I’ve used a variety of anthropological and linguistic tools in an effort to sub-create a sense of home, place, and belonging. At its core of my worldbuilding approach is the idea that shared stories—and more specifically, shared sacred stories—are the building-blocks of societal cohesion.
This focus makes Amboria: Roleplaying in the World Under Starlight different from most fantasy roleplaying settings. Taking its cues from real-world examples of cultural mythmaking such as the Aeneid and the Kalevala, Amboria is based on a series of long-form narrative poems.
Backers can support the indie publisher by offering money for the project or sharing news of its existence.
Those backers who pledge $25 or more will get the Amboria core rules in PDF. At $40, backers are also given the Thunder in the North PDF.
At $45, there are the PDF and print versions of Amboria core rules as rewards with add-ons unlocked, while $80 makes both books available in print and PDF.
A limited $200 tier includes a game session with Richard Rohlin as GM, aka Loremaster.
Strange Owl estimates delivery in October this year in PDF and April next year for the print.
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