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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 9389434" data-attributes="member: 6796661">Yesterday, Foundry published a new Article on the <a href="https://foundryvtt.com/ember/cosmology/" target="_blank">Cosmology of the Ember Setting</a>.  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:The more I learn about Ember, the more intriguing it is to me and I subscribed to its <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/foundryvtt/ember-rpg" target="_blank">Kickstarter upcoming project page</a> 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 <a href="https://foundryvtt.com/packages/crucible" target="_blank">Crucible</a>, 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.</blockquote>

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