Corebooks: Endless Realms

Gods, this book is beautiful. It’s nice to be working on something this lovely.

Seven months ago, I met some people at a convention that were piecing together a new tabletop role-playing game that made use a contested d10 system. They had some mock-ups of a core book and a soft copy put together, a Kickstarter that had gone live and a demo game they were running. My BFF Andy and I ended up sitting down to play and had the most fun, going through a stock adventure that the crew had put together.

We stayed behind to chat and I ended up working for them on a contract basis. Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of reading through their Corebook and helping them with their Creature Compendium and even writing a Starter Kit. They took me to some conventions and I ran some games and took over some game rooms, which was fun. The Kickstarter succeeded and now I have a Corebook in front of me.

I collect and run role-playing games. I started with Transdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by Palladium and branched off into Star Wars before mangling into Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition. I’ve now got a library worth of books and modules and I’ve run everything from In Nomine to Shadowrun to Iron Kingdoms to Inquisitor to Ragnarok. I even designed a few games of my own with my own systems, one as a freebie when I was a kid and one that I marketed as an adult. I was just looking at marketing another game when I bumped into the people behind Endless Realms, Lunar Games.

The scope of what they wanted to build was refreshing and their capacity to do it sold me on them immediately. Lunar Games is built of the best sorts of dreamers, those that can see exactly what they want and how to go about getting it down, and their passion and acumen is obvious just from holding the book and I now have in my hands.

It’s hefty, as Corebooks go. A respectable 338 pages filled to the brim with new ideas and new ways to build classes that only look familiar on the surface. The Barbarian is one of my favorite examples of this, a warrior class that plays with the spiritual concept of rage and asks what that would look like, what passions would drive someone caught by the anger in their soul? Things only get better from there.

The races, likewise, are all original and do things you might not expect but all of which make sense. The classic elves and dwarves and goblins of other worlds would not do well here, where other species have risen up to fill mythological niches in ways those others could only dream of doing, all while offering their own unique talents, skills and builds. It’s hard to think of another game where you can play the descendants of a nightmare invasion that failed, a species built of literal fear that are now stuck on the material plane.

Look at that artwork. It’s freaking gorgeous.

All the options are there, easy to understand and build, with as much depth as you’re willing to delve into. A massive mythology that can take the brunt of endless campaigns and still give more, with a simple set of mechanics that are surprisingly robust and adapt well to whatever situation you may want to throw at it.

The paper is fine, too, the full-color book beautifully illustrated and the fonts easy to understand (I’m looking at you, Vampire: the Requiem, with your terrible heading font), with an index that makes finding things a breeze. The mythology is expansive, the mechanics simple and deep, and the book gorgeous. What more could you ask for?

You can order a watermarked digital copy by clicking here or clicking here, with physical copies to be made available to the public soon. You can also click here to take a look at some stories about the mythology of the game if that’s a thing you’re into. Either way, you’re going to be happy you nabbed a spot on board. This game is awesome.