Cosmology of the Ember Setting

[MNblockhead]

Yesterday, Foundry published a new Article on the Cosmology of the Ember Setting. Ember is the forthcoming Kickstarter project by Foundry to create an entire setting, game system, and adventure purpose built for the Foundry VTT.

While the cosmology itself is fairly standard fantasy fare, what intrigues me is how they integrate it mechanically in the game. One advantage of a VTT is that the VTT can handle the bookkeeping for how moons, etc. affect things. There are plenty of mods for calendars, day/night cycles, active effects etc., but I've always found it a lot of work to set up, test, and keep updated for game systems like D&D in Foundry. Even with a VTT, I mostly ignore or fudge things like lunar cycles, weather, day/night cycles etc. So I am very interested in seeing how the Foundry team integrates this into Ember. Can they finally manage to have the system seamlessly integrate these effects and apply them into the game seamlessly, with little to no overhead for the GM?

From the article:

These cosmological concepts are more than just important aspects of lore for the Ember setting, they also impact gameplay in important ways. Narrative in Ember is guided by a dynamic event engine which you will learn more about in a future article. The orientation of cosmological bodies at a particular point in time is an important factor in determining which narrative events occur and how gameplay within those events unfolds.

Animated Cosmos Model​

Ember features a dynamic and interactive in-game representation of the Cosmos (depicted at the top of this article) which is animated to present the position and prominence of all bodies in the Cosmos as game time progresses. This makes it easy for gamemasters and players to understand the current state of cosmological mechanics and to anticipate what lunar events may be about to occur.

Dynamic Event Engine​

Narrative events in Ember depend on a number of cosmological components. The time of day is defined by the position of Lantyr (the Sun), resulting in a conventional cycle of day and night which affects the likelihood of many events. The position and influence of moons also make certain events more or less likely. There are even unique events which can only occur when a specific moon, or even combination of moons, are at their zenith. The Inner Realms also slowly orbit Ember each one reaches full prominence once per in-game calendar year. The position of cosmological bodies also affects the likelihood of certain weather events; for example heavy storms are more likely when Mayis is at its zenith while a wildfire might spread more quickly if Ragen is full.

Character Creation​

Furthermore, these cosmological concepts are integrated into our unique character creation and progression mechanics. Each player character in Ember selects, as part of initial character creation, a particular Attunement which reflects an affinity that your character has for one element of Ember's cosmology. Attunement can correspond to a specific moon or other facet of Ember's cosmos. Each attunement provides a unique set of minor mechanical benefits which modify your character's capabilities in Ember. These capabilities can temporarily grow more powerful when the focus of your attunement grows in prominence.

The more I learn about Ember, the more intriguing it is to me and I subscribed to its Kickstarter upcoming project page so I can back the project as soon as it goes live.

It is a little bittersweet for me as I am also excited about Crucible, Foundry-developer Atropos's pet project to build a crunchy, tactical game system optimized for Foundry. Unlike Ember, Crucible is a more typical game system where GMs can run their own adventures and campaigns, or run third-party adventures (if anyone ever develops any for Crucible). The one downside with Crucible is that I fear it will lack playable content. While a great fantasy game system optimized for Foundry would be awesome, I doubt I would get much use out of it if there isn't a good amount of adventure material for it. I simply don't have the time to create my own settings, campaigns, and adventures these days.

Which is why Ember has me interested. It is a tightly integrated setting and game system for foundry that looks beautiful. I don't know how replayable it will be or whether they intend to expand it or open it to third party content creators. I suppose that will be determined by how successful the Kickstarter and subsequent sales are.

I think that there is something to be said for bespoke, platform specific game systems like Ember and Crucible for Foundry, the potential VTT for the MCDM RPG, and the 3D VTT that WotC is developing for D&D. I'm wrangling with tech all day as part of my day job, and to be frank, I'm tired of VTTs being a whole side hobby for me.

Even though I ran D&D on Foundry for nearly 5 years, I didn't buy the official D&D game system for Foundry when it became available and have not pre-ordered any D&D content for it. I've become so burned out on trying to get D&D 5e to work smoothly in Foundry, constantly testing and troubleshooting modules, that I'm in a wait and see mode to see whether--if/when I run D&D 5e 2024--Foundry, Fantasy Grounds, Roll20, or the WotC VTT provide the best experience. I fully expect that it will take a couple years for the various VTTs to develop their 5e game systems to the level of maturity that would get me to open my wallet.

If I end up running D&D within the next year, I'm likely going to pare down the complexity and just run games in D&D Beyond with its Maps feature. But more likely, after I complete my Warhammer Fantasy campaign (using the Cubicle 7 WFRP4e games system for Foundry), I can see myself running Ember, while keeping my eye on what MCDM does and on Crucible's development.

Foundry has long felt like the VTT for VTT hobbyists. What excites me about Ember is it seem like the first game system for Foundry (and perhaps for any VTT) that is truly for the masses. I hope they can deliver on the promise. I've been burned on software-related Kickstarters in the past and I have not backed a software project on Kickstarter for years on principle. This will be the first exception for me in years.