It would be easy to glance at Historia and call it “D&D with furries”, but it would be wrong. Look again at the art; these are grim looking races, not cute and huggable. Historia is a dark fantasy, lowering the magic in standard 5e and introducing rules for factions.
It’s working. Mana Project Studio has, at the time of writing, a full 30 days on the countdown clock and are %150 funded. That’s about €24,000 of the €15,000 goal. You can follow progress on Kickstarter.
The team is impressive. Matteo Pedroni is part of the founding team; they come from the CMON Zombicide RPG design team. Michele Paroli is part of the team; they wrote Journey to Ragnarok. Mirko Failoni is part of the team. They’re a concept artist who’s worked on Vampire: The Masquerade, Age of Sigmar, The One Ring, Pathfinder and many others.
The goal is a hardcover of about 250 pages, with full-colour illustrations and maps.
There will be;
- 15 new playable races (Familliea) divided into species for a total of ~50 different anthros
- 9 new classes suitable for Renaissance fantasy
- A new take on magic
- Firearms and historically accurate equiment
- New rules for Factions, Careers with Ranks and Prestige
- New Backgrounds and a new system called Ventures
- Other new rules
- Encounters and important NPCs from the world of Historia
It is hard to do what Mana Project Studio is trying to do. D&D is high fantasy in bold colour, not dark, not low fantasy can certainly not Renaissance. The 5e rules favour abstraction over realism and so do not need to worry about ‘historically accurate’ weapons.
It’s all on a scale though, it’s certainly possible that MPS will make Historia darker and lower fantasy than the Forgotten Realms. The atmosphere they create for the game world can then do all the rest.
It’s a pledge of €12 (about £11) for the PDF, all stretch goals and the Hippocras Commendae Recipe in PDF. Step up to €42 (about £39) for all that plus the hardback.
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