Endless General /eg/

First! edition.

Other urls found in this thread:

1d4chan.org/wiki/Endless_Legend
youtube.com/watch?v=bQxP_RXcLJo
youtube.com/watch?v=K2aQYDmsocQ
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Just think about what we created.

Anywone else hyped for the full release of ES2?

Nani?

Perfection.

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Last thread, where progress was made in secret and frog tits were talked about and drawn.

The wiki with links to lore and current RPG resources (DnD 5e, Savage Worlds): 1d4chan.org/wiki/Endless_Legend

Ladies and gentlemen, it begins.

lookit them tiny feet on the mecha's legs
they look sophonny

You don't need to namefag

>general

No. Be hype for the game in its correct place.

Whoops, had it from another thread.

Buddy, you're a few threads too late and a half baked idea of systems to play with to be a killjoy. Or at least, a killjoy with any sort of effectiveness.

So I've been seeing this thread around and noticed you guys pop up in some of the other Generals. For all the people passing by:

What is Endless Legend?
What makes it so interesting?
What is it comparable to?

I'll try to answer as best as I can user

Yes
Puff
Bats

>What is Endless Legend?
A game with a neato fantasy setting, which is itself a single world in a much larger space setting.

>What makes it so interesting?
It's fucking weird, in a good way.

>What is it comparable to?
It's like if Warhammer Fantasy was set on a single isolated planet in Warhammer 40k, but trading a portion of its grimdark for extra faction diversity.

You forgot the impossible delicious artstyle and design.

>It's like if Warhammer Fantasy
Pretty much nothing like that... And the very opposite of grimdark. I'd call it a reimagining of standard D&D fantasy.

Get this: this is a setting where what people believe is magic, is actually science-fiction. The "Magic Dust", which is essentially mana, is nothing but tons and tons of nanomachines.

I'm sure you'll like it if you try it.

Endless Legend is what happens when a bunch of 4x players get bored of Civ and put together a massively homebrewed, asymmetrically designed 4x of their own in an attempt to have fun. Honestly half the races sound like brainstorm ideas for a Civ Mod.

>What if we had a race that cant use diplomacy?
>What if we had one that had no food but ate money?
>What if we had one that only ever got one city?

and so on.

>And the very opposite of grimdark
I wouldn't go quite that far. There are a lot of grimdark elements, just with brighter colors, and not looking like it's from a 1980s children's toy cartoon. The setting is pretty fucking bleak and pessimistic, and I'd say a solid half of the factions are downright horrifying.

I'm not sure we have the same definition of "grimdark".

If something has a spooky/bleak aesthetic, it's dark. If something has a pessimistic/dire setting tone, it's grim. If you've got some other definition, that's on you, homie.

It trades away some of the dark for an extra splash of weirdness and color, but Endless Legend/Space is grim as hell, and often dark too.

The visual design in EL is anything but dark. The story is dramatic, if anything.

What endless legend is and why it's interesting are kinda both the same thing IMO: Ednless legend is a civilizations-esk game where you control one of many different cultures to control the globe. Every race is styled after some fantasy concept, and all the technology developed is fantasy themed, but all the magic is actually a result of the conscious or unconscious use of Dust, gold-colored nanomachines designed by a mostly extinct posthuman civilization (the titular, and ironically named, Endless), and all the fantasy-like races are either robots, aliens, or mutants created or collected by this posthuman civilization. It's an infinitely neat setting because on the surface it's a pretty fantastic looking fantasy setting, but more deeply you look into it the more you discover it's actually part of an even more interesting high sci-fi setting. The game Endless Dungeon I believe prequels it within the timeline, and the two Endless Space games sequel it.

It is comparable to numenera, a similar sci-fi setting masquerading as fantasy setting.

What are the titles of the faction leaders?

I remember that the Broken Lords have a king and the Forgotten have a Master Shadow (if I'm interpreting flavor text correctly), but that's it.

Take a look at the police mech.

Wild Walkers is onontio
Cultists have the Queen and the Unspoken.
Necros aren't smart enough except for the one guy.
Mages have a "high sunseeker"
Drakken seem to have a coucil of 12, but that is separate from the faction leader.

Dungeon of the Endless. It also plays drastically differently from EL/ES/ES2 as it is a rogue like, tower defense, thng.

Are Sophons organics?

By default, you are reffered to by the game as an Emperor. Faction specifics is more complicated.

Allayi have a sort of high-priest, I'm not very sure.

yeah, that one. I haven't played it myself, and am only vaguely aware of it's place in the timeline. It's the survivors of that which go on to populate the world for the events of EL, right?

DON'T TASE ME BRO
They're little grey/green men

Sophons are organic, they just all wear those suits.

youtube.com/watch?v=bQxP_RXcLJo

They become the Vaulters faction, though members of other factions are present in DotE.

youtube.com/watch?v=K2aQYDmsocQ

>Are Sophons organics?
Kind of. They're organics, but they've replaced a majority of their bodies with cybernetics. I'm pretty sure that their brains and other vital organs tend to still be present, though.

>Did one of our party betray our intentions to the spineless trinity who rule the Forgotten in Dagaari Tanga - the fearful High Consecrate and the feeble Masters of the Divinities? Those rulers who have forgotten our motto: "we are the power in the shadows"?

-Master Shadow of the Warfarers Divinity


What even ARE Forgotten politics? How many proper nouns can be present in a single thought?

>How many proper nouns can be present in a single thought?
I don't know but they certainly seem confused on gender pronouns.

For the Drakken, the two "faction leaders" are on an expedition under loose orders from the Council of Twelve, and their campaign ends with one of them being given a seat there.

Forgotten do sometimes seem like "the diversity faction", going by their hero blurbs. Still, one tranny and a coupla lesbian ninjas are hardly the end of the world.

Endless Space 1 and Endless Legend both majorly suffered from making two many of the factions unnecessarily human.

Endless Space 2, having each space-fairing faction a different race with exception to Horatio (but Horatio is great, so that doesn't count) is far better.

Discuss.

Naah. I did kind of think something similiar when I first bought EL and looked at the factions (before any of the expansions), but once you get into the lore they're plenty diverse. Besides, it makes sense that a lot of them would have shared origins, they're on a single planet.

Can't say anything about the Space games, though, never touched them.

Yeah well said tranny still looks a whole lot like a girl.

That's kind of how it works, yeah

No, trannies change sex. They don't say they're dudes and still dress like girls.

I think you're confused, user. It's a dude who wants to be a girl, not the other way around.

Then why are they calling him "he" and not "she"?

You know, a good tranny is a tranny you don't see. If you see it, they're flaunting something.

'Cause the character biography isn't the character itself talking? Also, I think it switches from "he" in the beginning to "she" after the switch, but I can't be bothered to boot up the game and wait for the character to show up on the market to double check.

What would sophoni rebel about?

Science not being a priority.

Unscheduled server maintenance.

Could it all be resolved by saying "Its all a social experiment bro, just a social experiment!"

They'd complain at the lack of explosions.

I'd point to the experimental Molotov cocktails they made.

Yes I do, I want to scratch my ego

>What is Endless Legend?
a 4X strategy with very assymmetric gameplay and well-subverted tropes
>What makes it so interesting?
Visual design and lore
>What is it comparable to?
Game? Civilisation but not boring.
Setting? Normal fantasy but with a whole bunch of "HEY WHAT IF"

>have a great voydyani start, farming a minor race dry to get out a 2nd Ark by turn 20
>shit on Luminares in 3 different wars and finally meet Riftborn/Sophons
>my side of the galaxy has zero strategic resources except for one Titanium deposit

do generic weapons scale well in this like in Endless Legend?

They do. There is also the market if you really need it.

>2nd ark by turn 20
You should be able to get it by turn 13-15, earlier if you have both of your starting ships leeching.

Not to get too /v/ in this shit but Cultists had an absolutely great narrator for their campaign quest or whatever its called in Endless Legend.

The cult is a collection of often heavily augmented people of all kinds and races that follow this strange god within their holy city. They expand heavily and absorb all villages they come across by preaching and brainwashing them into the flock. Those who oppose get their legs broken, thrown into a pit, and preached to some more.

The narrator for cultists is one of those, and slowly he becomes broken in until he accepts the unstoppable wave of cultists washing over the planet, eliminating war, culture and existence as we know it.

I have bad luck with finding minor factions to farm early on, any ideas what to tweak in the campaign settings? Ideally I'd like to start right next to one ofc.

I have constellations set to many.

Use your staring probes to scout out early systems before you move anything. Particularly, aim them between systems like in the pic so you can get two systems revealed at once.

I'll spruce up the SW brew soon. Just finals are a-comin' and I have decided, in a fit of madness, to run a Fantasy Craft one shot.

Is it worth buying ES2 while it's still in EA or should I just wait for the full release? I'm still having fun with EL so I'm not in a particular rush.

There is a 25% price reduction while it is in EA and full release is on friday.

Guess I'll be buying it then, thanks.

We should put things like this in the OP.

Well that is definitely true, but the ending of the game is literally that the world dies and the surviving faction fucks off leaving the rest to die along with Auriga
It's pretty grim when the biggest victory a faction can achieve is survival

If he's gonna namefag then so shall I because I'm a HUGE faggot that likes to TAKE IT IN THE ASS

Correct use of strategics is a whole Meta in itself. My testing shows that Titanium / Glassteel weapons are not that much stronger (unless you got Tier III), and you should rather aim for Palladium / Adamantian. Additionally, strategic armour scares very poorly, and in case of Titanium / Adamantium becomes obsolete in the same era you're getting it (kek) ... On the other hand, trinkets, which are part of that tech, never go obsolete, so usually Titanium / Glassteel are the best things to get since you'll have plentiful amounts of those strategics. Especially that their bonuses are the bread and butter, as opposed to the super pricy Mithrite counterparts and such that don't give such interesting bonuses. You may use strategic armour for a while if you're really anal about getting a high initiative rating for twenty turns or so but otherwise, big waste of Glassteel.

In short, here's how it goes

Any strategic weapon
High-tier lategame strategic armour (Adamantian to Mithrite)
Glassteel - Adamantian trinkets

Oh great Puff, please show mercy for us mortals that do not have all the DLC.

How do Allayi structure their society? Does their leader have a title? What ARE the pearls, exactly?

Not that guy, but pearls are a byproduct of Auriga's slow death. The Allayi start out believing it's her boon to the faithful, to empower them to supremacy. That goes out the window once they start to realize the planet is dying, though.

Their campaign ends with the Allayi committing themselves to staying with Auriga to the end, to ease "her" passing as much as they can, even if they die out too. It's actually kind of sad.

No idea. From what I know, it's a theocracy. They have Holy Texts.

"In my hands sit the waxed and oiled leather pouch, black with age, that contains the Epistle of Vors Grayspire and the Euchologion, the ways of prayer."

Leaders are mentionned by name. I'm currently checking the description on the Ward of Vros Therman.

As far as naming conventions go, Allayi have three names:
A first name that always end in -os
A "Winter name" that they earn on their first battle, depicting a feat, always a verb of action (for example Sniffer, Leaper, Rockstrider)
A last name depicting an element of the landscape, an item etc (Redpoint, Greenblade, Highridge, apparently a compound name)

So for example if you make a random one you could say

"Kios Changer Whitetree"

Pearls seem to be spheres of a strange magnetic material that grows underground and comes up to the surface because of Winter. It's mentionned as the "blood" of Auriga so it's not a very good thing. These spheres can be of different shapes, from small to giant. Big "pearl clusters" are the giant ones. It seems to be a composite construction of pieces imbricated together. Pearls can be reforged into equipment and armour.

>Their campaign ends with the Allayi committing themselves to staying with Auriga to the end, to ease "her" passing as much as they can, even if they die out too.
From what I gather they do

From what I gather they take it as a holy sign that Auriga wants them to use the pearls to survive the Winter while she regenerates with the Temple of the Earth's Core

No titles are mentionned anywhere. Leaders apparently by names. They do have some with titles whose job is to remember the Epistle or all the "complex Allayi lineages and whatever" but I don't have the Hero in front of my face right now. They have shamans for their spiritual needs, they divide into clans and they have breeding seasons (sound like fun). I know that the first flight is a big moment for the Allayi and a sort of passage rite in itself.

For some reason official lore mentions the heroes have big strong legs. Hm.

And I forgot: all the Guardians have Allayi names.

ES1 actually has a fair amount of non human ones. The majority of them even.
What I hate the most is how nearly everything is a fucking humanoid.

The only playable ones that aren't are:
>sowers
>amoeba
>harmony
>riftborn
Most which were from the first game.

Even the trees are humanoids. I'm still pretty mad they bought back sophons and cravers as playable since they're pretty uninteresting.

>they take it as a holy sign that Auriga wants them to use the pearls to survive the Winter while she regenerates with the Temple of the Earth's Core
Yeah, but then the last journal of the campaign pretty much states that they're pretty much willingly going to march into extinction as they do their best to soothe Auriga in her last, gasping moments.

I thought the Allayi story was kind of meh up until that point, and I'm not too keen on their playstyle, but honestly? That was one of the best campaign endings in the game.

I like the way that the non-UE human factions in ES2 are all either ending up as Minor Factions, or as mere political elements in the UE. Sheredyn as an internal political force in the Empire or Pilgrims as a Minor Faction is a much better handling of the whole thing.

I know that the Sophons have one such Minor Faction too. I'd like if there were some more splinter groups off of the Majors to boot.

I think this is a tremendous improvement, yes.

You know what would make a good Minor Faction in ES2? Aurigans. Have the Vaulters return as a Minor Faction, but among their ranks are refugee populations of the (loser) factions who tagged along after Endless Legend.

>They become the Vaulters faction
Is this verified? Because it sorta makes sense but I can see a few problem (like: the whole purpose is to leave the dungeon, so who stays in there to become the Vaulters?)

When you finally make it to the surface of Auriga, you find the planet in a crazy cataclysmic state, so the Pre-Vaulters decide to go back down into the Labs and make a go of civilization down there.

There was something shifty with the expedition. I think it was meant to do something else with the prisoners, and be turned away with its official mission. It carried all the materials needed to startup a colony.

Wait, couldn't you just reskin Numenera for this?

Assuming we make "human" a race rather than each faction being a race, are the Forgotten human? They were vaulters that were the subject of science experiments and then thrown out into the cataclysm to adapt. So, generally still pretty humanish, but they can turn into a transparent mist at will and have a bunch of glowy bits, and hardly any humans I know can do that.

So the Vaulters were founded by 19 offworld humans, 1 native human, 2 robots, 1 nidya, 1 awakened necrophage, 1 broken lord, 1 drakkenling, 1 haunt, and 1 extremely intelligent canine?

Yeah, they're just genetically altered. Probably that messes with their brain and that's how they're so sexually confused.

That was ONE drop pod.

I also don't see a Nidya or a Dog. Additionally they met natives inside the dungeons.

Life as outcasts breed sexually liberal/liberating politics, I suppose.

Do NOT go to a Free Love music event hosted by Forgotten. Shit will fuck you up.

the Nidya's one of the natives they can meet, along with hte necrophage, drakkenling, haunt, native human (she's a sister of mercy) and broken lord. The dog's a secret characte ryou can get when going random character.

>sexually confused
No confusion, just less caring about traditional roles and expectations.

Or make you learn things about yourself. ;)

The Forgotten are pretty culturally enlightened for a society of disparate science-hating refugee camps dedicated to violent revenge.

Why not just use a fate style build-your-own system using aspects and have premades? There's no need to get into the nitty gritty dnd style. You could even have another set of aspects for culture if having 5 different flavours of human bother you. It would be a lot more consistent with the game and would expand and free both the players and the setting.

Very valid, very doable. Could you mock up an example for us?

Blackface people with knives, specialize in sabotaging other people's cities and stealing their technology, Tumblr-grade libertarianism

Hmmmm

Sisters of Mercy are natives from before the Vaulters? Since when? Endless Space does fuckall to explain humans.

Monte Cook pls go

>Tumblr-grade libertarianism
I've seen these words before, but never next to each other.

Sure. Gimme a sec, I wanted to procrastinate on what I was doing anyway.

Well, the Vaulters didn't exist until after Dungeons; one fo the recruitable heroes in Dungeons of the Endless is a Sister of Mercy (that's been possessed by what is probably in hindsight an Infected Riftborn, I'd wager), so yes, the sisters pre-date the vaulters.

Is the body type of the armor the only thing separating a Broken Lord from a Broken Lady?

>yes, the sisters pre-date the vaulters.
And they reproduced by scissoring?

The codpiece, mainly

Probably not; they are just a minor faction, so it's not like they're the ONLY humans. I'd bet there's other humans--hell, no reason the Roving Clans couldn't pre-date the vaulters either, I'd think.

>Tech

We don't know why they're medieval.

So I was operating on the principle that it was a standard FATE Core game. While doing so I figured that I may as well rename FATE points to Dust for flavour. It would make sense that the PCs were heroes after all. It also tackled the ‘what can dust do and why is it important’ question without ruining the magic and mystery of it by giving it hard rules. Dust does exactly what the plot wants it to do, just like in the games. So a character sheet would look much the same as a standard FATE character sheet but with a slot for race and culture somewhere around the top and FATE points would be called Dust instead.

Race Sheet

Race Name: The Broken Lords

Aspects
Appetite for Dust: Broken Lords do not need to eat to sustain themselves as other races do but must instead consume dust. They can siphon dust from other lifeforms, though with detrimental effects to the lifeform's health. The amount of dust gathered depends on the complexity of the lifeform.

Broken Forms: Broken Lords exist only as spirits trapped within suits of armour. They do not tire and can be much more sturdy than purely organic species. Increase your total physical stress boxes by 1. This form works in their detriment in that they cannot heal wounds naturally and so cannot heal their consequences without using Dust: 2 for mild, 4 for moderate, 6 for major.

culture incoming

I was thinking of using WEG's D6 system as a base for a game. Also, does Endless Legend have guns? I think the Formorians have them, but I've got no clue on the other races.
So is Dust still handled as a currency?

Culture Sheet

Culture: The Broken Lords

Aspects
Broken Forms, Endless Virtue: The Broken Lords are a faction of knights and town-builders, an aristocratic society that believes in honor, virtue, and justice. To succor the weak, to champion what is just, to root out evil wherever it may lurk -- those are the ideals by which these noble warriors live.

Culture: Necrophages

Aspects
Farming a shit, don’t eat something that wasn’t killed

Diplomacy a shit, always be fighting

Note that these stats should be no means considered what they really should be in the ‘final product’. For example I didn’t really know what happens to something that gets the SUCC from a Broken Lord, I mean they can die but do they all? Or is that just when they get greedy? A particular mechanic I had in mind when writing this was the compel mechanic. For those of you not in the know: A GM may, at any point, compel a player to do something using any of their aspects. The player can accept the compel, as which point they gain a Fate Point (Dust) or they can resist, in which case they must spend a Fate Point. This can represent using will to resist one's vices to just straight up resisting your biological programming with the sentience the dust has afforded you.

That being said: There's no reason why you couldn't transplant this to your system of choice either. You just need to add a Fate Point styled system, which is easy enough and start doing compels.

I would probably count the dust that a player has on their sheet as metabolized dust. It's already in their system and cannot be spent unless extracted through some kind of means. The dust is now a part of them as they are heroes. Non-metabolized dust would be handled through items (such as the little canisters we see them in), which can be used to gain the fate point dust or bartered.

Would a Broken Lord be compelled to give into their vampiric tendencies or lose FATE Dust, as is the problem in their quest, or be compelled to be a chivalrous knight that champions the just and succs the weak, as is their base personality?