Wednesday 14 May 2014

An Introduction to Wrathborn

In this post I will be talking a little about the history of Wrathborn and how it came about, this is for those who like to know more about the games they are interested in. I will also give a very brief look at the lore of the game and introduce myself to you all.

Well first I'm Rick Eddon, some of you may have followed or still do follow my painting page, The Hairy Painter. I have been a wargamer since I was about 9 years old when I first got my first Games Workshop game and from then it has been a great love affair. I really enjoy the fantasy gene and the future war torn themes that's some games have. I think some of my main love for fantasy has also come from books such as Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and Terry Pratchett's Disc World series. All these things has helped shaped the vision of Wrathborn and with the help from the very talented Alan Perry and Alessio Cisbani, together we have been able to bring my ideas to life.

So how did Wrathborn start I hear you ask?

Well it started about three years ago in a little gaming centre in Northern Ireland called Arkham Gaming Centre. At first it was an idea and like most ideas it changed a lot but the one thing that never changed was one of my main aims and this was to try and create a game that moved away from the old gaming mechanics of one person playing their turn and then the next person. I wanted the game to be as real as you can with dice and miniatures but Wrathborn wasn't a fantasy game with an ever growing background like it has now. No, it was meant to be a table top game set in the Star Wars world but after I contacted Lucasarts and seen what this would mean for myself and the game, I had to have a rethink.

For Wrathborns first year it was very much a selection of bits of paper with notes scribbled on it and it didn't really have much of an order to it, the only real part of the game that seem to flow and work was the combat mechanics and this is where I started to build the game from. After what seemed a life time I had a very basic game. Wrathborn had a turn or as it is called a Game Round which would be split into three phases, it had movement and a basic sense of how terrain would affect your miniatures but most of all it had combat. From this point the play testing started to happen, I would take it to local clubs and friends homes to try it out and it just steam rolled into shape. It wasn't long before one of the biggest changed would happen and looking back on the older version of the Alpha play test book I think I did the right thing with this change. You see Wrathborn was going to be a unit based game, with units made up of 4-8 miniatures and it would have a Dark Age feel to it but this soon changed into more of a skirmish game with each miniature been its own unit. The change really made the combat feel more realist and I'm really pleased with the outcome.

With this first change and a new direction to take the game, I have slowly added more elements to the core rules, such as magic which I call Element Walking. I will do a post about this later on. Ranged combat was also added and changed and refined which also adds more to the dynamic feel of the game. The Alpha Rulebook comes in at close to 90 pages of rules and the background to the world has yet to be finished and added but I expect the finial size of the rulebook to be close to 200-250 pages, which for my first outing as an Indie Games Developer is rather impressive, don't you think?

So what about the world of Wrathborn?

Well Wrathborn is a world that has been sent into a period which is very much like our very own Dark Ages from history. The reason for this is the end result from a long standing war between the Gods and the Elemental races, which sadly the Mortal Plain has become the new battle ground for. Each faction of the game has its very own history and area of the world map, the Norndrassel live in the cold north and raid the Kingdoms of the south for loot and salves. The Lycanfiends are hulking beasts which are part man and part wolf, they live in the largest forest which stretches from one side of the land to the other. In the south west we have the Kingdoms of Aner'a, these humans once tried to protect the refugees of Myros when the Felrakka came.

The Felrakka, what can I say about these angels of death other than they are the true evil in the world.

There is so much more that I can say but if I did, I would run out of content really fast so for this post I will end it.

In the next post I will take a look at the Norndrassel.

I hope you enjoyed this brief look at where Wrathborn came from and I thank you for taking the time to read this.

See you next time.

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