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ffuturesTorg Essentials
https://bundleofholding.com/presents/TorgEssentials
This revived September 2019 Torg Eternity Essentials is one of two offers in progress featuring English-language ebooks for Torg Eternity, the cinematic cross-genre RPG of the Possibility Wars from Ulisses Spiele. The all-new companion offer, Torg Eternity Cosms, adds the supplements covering the Living Land, Nile Empire, and Aysle settings.Published in 2018, Torg Eternity reboots but closely replicates the original Torg: Roleplaying the Possibility Wars published in 1990 by West End Games. Seven savage High Lords from parallel realities ("cosms") have attacked the Earth and divided it among themselves. Each cosm has transformed part of our world to reflect the Technological, Magical, Social, and Spiritual Axioms of its own reality. But rare individuals, the Storm Knights, having mastered the Possibility Energy that creates the world around us, are strong enough to resist and, perhaps, expel the conquerors.
The venerable Encyclopedia of Science Fiction summarized the original Torg well, and the description still applies to Eternity: "While each of the alien realities represents a particular subgenre of fantastic fiction, they are generally original and evocative, embodying novel twists on the conventions of their forms. [...] The design of Torg included several unusual and innovative mechanics. The gameplay is intended to be cinematic in feel, with rules that enable characters to perform the remarkable feats characteristic of much adventure fiction and a strong emphasis on highly structured linear narratives. A deck of cards is used to direct the flow of 'action scenes'; both the Gamemaster and the players may use cards which introduce such subplots as a romantic involvement or the appearance of a personal nemesis, or perform more mechanical functions such as enhancing characters' abilities or allowing them to escape from difficult predicaments."
In May 2017 Ulisses Spiele rebooted the Possibility Wars with the spectacular US$366K Torg Eternity Kickstarter campaign. Torg Eternity's lead designer is Shane Lacy Hensley of Pinnacle Entertainment, who got his professional start writing for Torg. The new line updates the rules and reimagines the cosms. This revived September 2019 Torg Eternity Essentials offer presents the Torg Eternity rulebook, two scenario collections, and play aids -- everything you need to join the Possibility Wars.
We provide each title complete in .PDF. Like all Bundle of Holding titles, these ebooks have NO DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), and our customers are entitled to move them freely among all their devices. (By publisher request, the DriveThruRPG versions of these files are inobtrusively watermarked.)
Ten percent of each purchase (after gateway fees) goes to these two Torg Eternity offers' pandemic-related charity, Direct Relief. Direct Relief sends protective gear and critical care medications to health workers, with emergency deliveries to medical facilities across the US and to regional response agencies across the world.
The total retail value of the titles in this Torg Eternity Essentials revival is US$37.50. Customers who pay just US$9.95 get all seven titles in this revived offer's Essentials Collection (retail value $37.50) as DRM-free ebooks, including the complete Torg Eternity Core Rules (retail price $25) and Drama Deck (plus the Torg Eternity Free RPG Day Special), the Torg Eternity GM Screen and Archetypes (pay-what-you-want), the scenario collections Day One Adventure Book (pay-what-you-want) and Delphi Missions: Rising Storm (retail $10), and the Character Journals record sheets (retail $2.50).
Torg Eternity Cosms
https://bundleofholding.com/presents/TorgCosms1
This all-new Torg Eternity Cosms Bundle is one of two offers in progress -- one new, one revived -- featuring English-language ebooks for Torg Eternity, the cinematic cross-genre RPG of the Possibility Wars from Ulisses Spiele. The companion offer from September 2019, Torg Eternity Essentials, has the corebook and early supplements. If you're new to the game, start there. This new companion adds lots of material for three "cosms" (parallel realities) -- the Living Land, Nile Empire, and Aysle settings. Publisher Ulisses Spiele has systematically expanded the Eternity line in a series of well-conceived, uniform crowdfunding campaigns, first on Kickstarter and recently on Game on Tabletop. So far they've delivered the Living Land, the Nile Empire, Aysle, the Cyberpapacy, Tharkold, and just last month they shipped Orrorsh. Still ahead, presumably, are Pan-Pacifica and Core Earth; after that, who knows? Terra? The Space Gods? Torg remains full of Possibilities. A primal jungle, the Living Land is ruled by High Lord Baruk Kaah and his army of blood-crazed humanoid dinosaurs, called edeinos. The cosm has taken over both coasts of the United States, the Yucatan Peninsula, and the mysterious White Zone in Canada. Where the Living Land rules, miraculous spiritual power is available, but technology rusts and fails. Ordinary humans, and even some heroes, regress to their primal passions.
The original West End Living Land sourcebook, the first book in Torg's 1990s support line, stood for years as its greatest disappointment. As conceived, The Living Land (1990) aimed to "level the field," to take down "overly powerful" player characters. In a 1999 RPG.net review Darren MacLennan described some of its obstacles: "There's no clear way to fight within the Living Land - the technology level is about that of the Stone Age, there's no way to navigate, and the Social Axiom isn't even good enough to allow armies to invade. [...] There's also rules for losing things within the Living Land -- weapons, valuable artifacts, and so forth. It could be entertaining, once, to have characters lose a valuable piece of equipment to a tar pit, but to have it happen all the time is just asking for trouble from players who have worked a long time for a particular widget they like. It's 'one of the prices you pay for entering the Savage Land'; it's also a manipulative and obnoxious way to punish players for having the nerve to step into this environment."
The May 2018 Living Land Kickstarter gave Torg Eternity's designers -- many of them old hands from West End days -- a chance to redeem the cosm. It worked out well: The "Deep Mist" and "Law of the Lost" World Laws that made navigation difficult are gone, replaced by a Law of Wonders that summons treasures of lost civilizations in the unexplored jungles. The Law of Life means the jungles teem with giant creatures of every imaginable kind. The Law of Savagery instills a powerful rage to destroy one's enemies, "a heightening of physical attraction," and also your hair starts growing really fast. And the Land Below, a sort of Hollow Earth "sub-cosm" in the original game, has become part of the Living Land.
In contrast to the Living Land, the Nile Empire was, and remains, one of Torg's most popular settings, an Egypt-That-Never-Was where melodramatic pulp-action tropes hold sway, and mystical mathematics enables astrological magic. Ruled by mad Doctor Mobius, a resurrected Pharaoh turned master criminal, the Empire extends from North Africa to the Congo. The Eternity version holds true. The cosm's Laws of Action, Drama, and Heroism guarantee headlong movie-serial thrills, and the Law of Inevitable Return ensures you'll always have a villain to fight.
In Great Britain and Scandinavia, now a magic-saturated land of fantasy called Aysle, technology more advanced than a flintlock rifle sputters and malfunctions. West End's original treatment of Aysle felt pallid and weakly supported. The July 2019 Aysle Kickstarter put the cosm on equal footing with the rest. Maelstrom Bridges crash into the North Sea to bring forth Viking raiders. Semi-mechanical clankers trudge through the streets of London. A stupendous ritual has connected the underground passages of Aysle to subways, cellars, and caves everywhere on Earth. By the Law of Delving, any break in the ground may now be a portal to treasure and danger in the Land Between. And anywhere innocent lives are at stake, the Laws of Heroes and of Legends will call someone to take up the fight.
We provide each title complete in .PDF. Like all Bundle of Holding titles, these ebooks have NO DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), and our customers are entitled to move them freely among all their devices. (By publisher request, the DriveThruRPG versions of these files are inobtrusively watermarked.)
Ten percent of each purchase (after gateway fees) goes to these two Torg Eternity offers' pandemic-related charity, Direct Relief. Direct Relief sends protective gear and critical care medications to health workers, with emergency deliveries to medical facilities across the US and to regional response agencies across the world.
The total retail value of the titles in this Torg Eternity Cosms offer is US$225. Customers who pay just US$24.95 get all six titles in our Starter Collection (retail value $112.50) as DRM-free ebooks, including three complete cosm sourcebooks (retail price $20 apiece) -- Living Land Sourcebook, Nile Empire Sourcebook, and Aysle Sourcebook -- plus three campaign-length adventures (retail $17.50 apiece) set in the three cosms: The God Box, Fires of Ra, and Revenge of the Carredon. These six books can keep any group busy for months.
Those who pay more than the threshold (average) price, which is set at $39.95 to start, also get our entire Bonus Collection with fifteen more titles worth an additional $112.50. Each of Ulisses Spiele's cosm Kickstarter campaigns has funded an identical slate of support titles for that cosm: In addition to the main sourcebook and campaign adventure, there's a Delphi Missions collection of short adventures, a Gamemaster screen and collection of player character Archetypes, two full-color map packs, and a GM Pack with Threat Cards for the Drama Deck, artwork, "Threat Blips" (virtual tabletop tokens), and a bookmark.
- Delphi Missions: Living Land (retail $12.50), Living Land GM Screen and Archetypes (retail price $10), GM Pack (retail $5), and both Map Packs (retail $5 apiece, total retail $10)
- Delphi Missions: Nile Empire (retail $12.50), Nile Empire GM Screen and Archetypes (retail $10), GM Pack (retail $5), and both Map Packs (retail $5 apiece, total $10)
- Delphi Missions: Aysle (retail $12.50), Aysle GM Screen and Archetypes (retail $10), GM Pack (retail $5), and both Map Packs (retail $5 apiece, total $10)
When I saw the original bundle in 2019 I said: "This is basically a grimmer, darker version of the original Torg game - in fact the first twelve pages of the rule book are largely introductions saying that, before actually explaining what the game is about - and suffers from many of the same flaws; you're going to have problems using it if you don't want to run the official campaign, and there really isn't anything for characters to do if they don't want to be "storm knights". This isn't exactly a unique flaw, lots of games are built around their campaign settings, but most have room for some variation in adventurer goals, and for characters who aren't "Big damn heroes". This was one of the reasons why I never got into the original system, and unfortunately I'm seeing nothing here to change my mind. On a more positive note, this is a cheap way to find out if you like the system, if I remember correctly the whole lot including the bonus collection costs less than the original rules did, and there might be something there you like." While the revisions and the new bundle make the settings of the second pack more playable, I don't think that they really fix my main reasons to dislike this game. But if my objections aren't a problem for you, it's worth a look.
