Project Update - A Deeper Dive to Deck of the Damned for Dungeons and Dragons DMs
over 2 years ago – Fri, Sep 08, 2023 at 11:03:14 AM

Hello all,

We are well over %1000 funded and we wanted to celebrate this feat by giving you our new mechanic, and one of the awesome physical goodies in this campaign, Deck of the Damned. 

This update is based on this week's newsletter, to which you can sign in from our website, here. This means it will also include our Lore Article of the Week section, which showcases interesting snapshots of the Historica Arcanum lore.

Carnage, Despair & Solace: Deck of the Damned

With the Deck of the Damned, GMs will have a chance to simulate madness, trauma, and despair in the thick of the arcane combat, and menacing encounters of Dungeons and Dragons. Pulled from the deck during the carnage of combat, these cards have the chance to darken the skies, or give much needed reprieve.

What you see here is from the Combat Severity II deck - referring to the conditions in which it was brought into the game.

While the GM is the final arbiter in when the deck is brought into the play - each deck has its own set of unique trigger conditions. For instance, one of Combat Severity II's triggers is when a Player Character falls unconscious during combat.

After the trigger is met, a card is drawn by the party. The consequences get assigned to a player character depending on the first section of the card. 

Each card is resolved internally for ease of use, so, you do not have to go around the Player's Handbook looking for rules. If there are lingering effects, the player can simply carry the card until the effects are resolved. 

The Deck of the Damned will contain around 150 cards, three paths of damnation: Combat, Arcane & Tragedy, each path with three severity levels. Once the cards are ready, we will do an extensive internal and public playtesting - what you see now is an early alpha version. From our very early playtests, we found the deck to add a lot flavor and stakes to each combat encounter, especially when things start to go bad for the players!

Lore Article of the Week: The Grim Golems

Eternal Guardians of the Tower of Justice, the Grim Golems have come a long way from their origins in the Egypt.

Grim Golems carry the name of the Padishah who brought them to Constantinople, Selim the Grim - conqueror of Arabia and Egypt.

The Grim Golems are powered by arcane pacts, nestled within sealed jewels - their so called hearts. Clad in marble and brass, they are imposing figures, oft used inanimate as impressive statues. Within combat, they are as dangerous as their figure suggests, as their stone and metal bodies can easily pummel any adversary to dust - and their arcane bejeweled hearts grant them resistance against a wide range of eldritch assaults.

The origin of these Golems is known to be the deserts of Lower Egypt, where the arcane manuscripts retaining information to how to construct these monstrosities were found and studied. 

Perhaps the most notable of the scholars who researched and built upon these manuscripts is Al-Jazari, the Chief Siege Engineer, Advisor, and Confidant to Saladin.

Project Update - New Tier of Stretch Goals Unlocked!
over 2 years ago – Fri, Sep 01, 2023 at 04:05:49 AM

Hello everyone, 

We should be breaking some records with this campaign. Not only are we pushing through stretch goals very, very fast - but the last mini survey was such a joy for us. Honestly, we expected a few more suggestions - instead we got hundreds of really cool ideas for us to think through. 

Unlocked Stretch Goal

Art Upgrade, Poster & Handout Suite: This was one of our favorite stretch goals to unlock. Thanks to your support, we will be able to expand our art team - and give you digital and physical posters, wallpapers and handouts!

Next Tier Uncovered

Comic Booklet: The very first Historica Arcanum content outside of our traditional sourcebook. We will create a full comic booklet that is set in the Era of the Crusades - and share it both digitally and physically!

Animated Dungeon Maps: Our art team have been working on building maps in video game engines in addition to 2D mapmaking softwares. If we manage to hit this stretch goal - we will professionally produce animated dungeon maps as digital files, and incorporate them to the books as 3D rendered environments!

Thank you all for all your support! We will keep on marching to make Era of the Crusades the best Historica Arcanum setting ever!

As always, we are always online, feel free to comment, and ask any questions you may have!

Mini Survey - Future Historica Arcanum Settings
over 2 years ago – Mon, Aug 28, 2023 at 06:31:16 AM

Hello everyone, 

While the Era of the Crusades campaign is bursting forward every day (seriously, WOW!) - we wanted to reach out to you to get your take! As backers of the previous Historica Arcanum title, Empires of the Silk Road may remember, we gave you a survey to see where you'd want to see the next Historica Arcanum to cover. The most popular option was the Era of the Crusades. 

Before we prepare the options for the next survey, we wanted to give you a voice! What part of the world, what timeline, what event would you love to see in the next Historica Arcanum sourcebooks?

Go wild below!

Metis Creative Team

Hunt for the Wicked Giveaway Contest & Another Stretch Goal Unlocked
over 2 years ago – Fri, Aug 25, 2023 at 04:31:16 AM

Hello everyone,

What a whirlwind! We are beyond ecstatic - and can hardly believe how far Era of the Crusades has went. Thank you all for your love & support, we truly, truly appreciate it immensely!

Now, to today's update!

Hunt for the Wicked!

As we were preparing for the launch, we started the Hunt for the Wicked - giving away signed copies of Historica Arcanum: Era of the Crusades bundle, for the first three adventurers who correctly uncovered the identity of the Villain of Era of the Crusades.

There is still time for you to submit your answer below the original post here.

To aid you in your search, we unveiled three auguries, hinting at the true identity of the wicked.

The First - Tower & Greatness:

The Second - Mother & The Harlot:

The Third - Abomination & The World:

Other clues can be found in our weekly newsletter. Your fellow investigators are already knee-deep in theories and occult readings in our Discord Server.

Join the Community:

A New Stretch-Goal Unlocked:

We just unlocked Digital Assets for VTTs! We will now be able to create digital tokens of all the character faces, maps of all locations, and more! 

We can't wait to unlock even more stretch goals - we have some of the most fun ones still lurking in the mist.

A Mini Update - Unboxing the Last Collector's Box Set
over 2 years ago – Wed, Aug 23, 2023 at 10:31:15 AM

Hey there everyone,

We are back with a mini update that we thought would be nice to share with you guys! 

A while ago, we asked our friend Jorphdan to do an unboxing for the collector's edition of Empires of the Silk Road. We wanted to share the video that was posted a few hours ago with you guys so that you get a clear idea on the base quality we are starting from in the Era of the Crusades.

Behold:

Our production team is already working on a couple of upgrades to make the box sets even cooler! We can't wait to share the prototypes with you all once we have them at hand.

Cheers,

Metis Creative Team