Ember: 25,000 hexes and perhaps a new TTRPG style born from VTT

You will need the Foundry VTT to play Ember, the company’s latest innovation. There’s over a week to run on Kickstarter, and thousands of gamers have pledged their support.

Ember will be a game, a setting and a sandbox. While Foundry VTT is needed, only one person in the group must have the paid-for system running. You can find out more details on the pitch page.

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Ember has been developing since 2022, and I wonder where the Foundry team finds the time. If the project comes to life, it’ll offer up years of gameplay, and fans might have a problem with time, too!

On offer are 25,000 hexes of a world map that can be explored together online, and those have non-linear quests with consequential choices. In other words, we’re taking a VTT engine to merge a hex crawl with a computer game like The Elder Scrolls.

Ember supports D&D 5e and its own in-development RPG system called Crucible. I suspect we’ll hear more about the latter in future news from Foundry. The game takes care of the complexity by offering a built-in character creation process and then doing the heavy lifting on the rules.

We’re used to animated maps and light changes, but I’m interested in the Vista system. Vista lifts the camera from a top-down view of the world, as so many VTTs have to look at the horizon. In this mode, Ember is more like a visual novel, and GMs can customise these as they want to.

Ember support is free, as you can share this news, but gamers looking for rewards must find $90. That’s $10 less than the expected retail price and comes with early access. At $90, the rewards include the game and the PDF of the Players’ Guide.

Then, at $120, backers also get a PDF of the setting book and digital lunar dice.

Backers stretching to $160 can enjoy the hardcover and the PDF of the setting book. While at $200, there’s also bundle access to Foundry, exclusive token equipment, party banners, and a soundtrack. $220 supporters get all that, but early access is upgraded to beta access. Alpha access unlocks at $320, and there’s also a cloth region map.

The Kickstarter runs until October 3rd, and all tiers’ estimated delivery is December 2025. That feels close; I know it’s over a year away, but there is a lot of work to do here.