Into the Mother Lands: A Sci-fi RPG by PoC Designers

Arilyn · Jun 19, 2021

I have more games than I'll ever play, but they make me happy. And sometimes I'll grab a RPG that's been sitting on our shelf not getting played, and we'll use it and have a blast.

And giving money to a game designer for a game I may never play doesn't bother me at all. I like to support designers.

Don't get me started on dice. Now that may be an actual problem.

imagineGod · Jun 19, 2021

Arilyn said:
I have more games than I'll ever play, but they make me happy. And sometimes I'll grab a RPG that's been sitting on our shelf not getting played, and we'll use it and have a blast.

And giving money to a game designer for a game I may never play doesn't bother me at all. I like to support designers.

Don't get me started on dice. Now that may be an actual problem.

In that case let me tempt you with spherical dice.

I would have collected these myself, but I look upon my vast collection and have too many already, including 12 Gio Lasar constellation d6 dice I for d6 Star Wars (though astronomically they are wrong for a galaxy far away).

Arilyn · Jun 19, 2021

imagineGod said:
In that case let me tempt you with spherical dice.

I would have collected these myself, but I look upon my vast collection and have too many already, including 12 Gio Lasar constellation d6 dice I for d6 Star Wars (though astronomically they are wrong for a galaxy far away).

View attachment 138490

These are amazing!

Grendel_Khan · Jun 20, 2021

Final note on this campaign: Ended at about $360k, which is awesome. But still no word on the system, which I personally think is not awesome. And the final video ends with "we can't wait to share with you what we're going to create." Isn't that what the campaign is for, to share that?

Anyway, enough of that. I'd say I wish them luck, but I feel like they kinda didn't really explain what they were doing, leaving you to have to watch their streams to get real context. So they don't need luck, since they already have a big enough fanbase.

Bagpuss · Dec 10, 2021

Six months after the campaign has closed they have finally announced they won’t be using Cortex but developing their own in house system.

J.Quondam · Dec 10, 2021

Bagpuss said:
Six months after the campaign has closed they have finally announced they won’t be using Cortex but developing their own in house system.

Is this related to the Cortex licensing issue announced a few days ago?

Grendel_Khan · Dec 10, 2021

Bagpuss said:
Six months after the campaign has closed they have finally announced they won’t be using Cortex but developing their own in house system.

Any details? Or just that that's their plan?

Bagpuss · Dec 11, 2021

Grendel_Khan said:
Any details? Or just that that's their plan?

from a backer only post

Alright, after conferring with the folks working on the game and making sure we got you info since people... keep... asking. Here's the deal with mechanics.

We are not going to use Cortex Prime. Why? Biggest issue was licensing and finding something that fit and was fair to both parties. Also the cost of licensing would have been a whole lot. So what will Mother Lands RPG run on? Our own system, which you all will get to test, beat up and give feedback on soon.

We've got Daniel Kwan, Eloy Lasanta, Aabria Iyengar, BDave Walters, Gabe Hicks and Eugenio Vargas working on the mechanics. We've had a few meetings to figure out our best course of action before deciding to go with our own system. Since ItML RPG is something new, we wanted to also have unique mechanics that reflect what we're doing with the IP.

What exactly are we doing? We're still going with a dice pool, but streamlined to be easier to learn and to flow better for streamed sessions. Not that Cortex is a bad system and them letting us use it for our streamed shows helped us get the stream launched quickly.

What's happening on creating the mechanics front? We've got a meeting of the minds happening in the next couple of weeks; and after that session, we'll have a better idea of when playtesting can start in early 2022 for those who backed the KS at The Gamemaster Bundle tier and up ($75). They will receive a KS Playtester role in the discord. If you have not joined the discord as a KS backer, information on how to do so is in this post.

Sorry this has taken so long to get to you all, as we wanted to be sure that making our own mechanics was the best course of action, and using an OGL pool or other mechanics option just didn't fit after accepting that a Cortex License wasn't going to happen either. We also are staying away from a D20 system as we want this to be visually, mechanically and otherwise discernable from D&D; as many people still describe the show and in-development game as "Black D&D but in Space".

So there you go, TL;DR we are making our own mechanics and will keep you all up to date as we work through and playtesting becomes ready for backers. Lastly, a reminder that many of the team will be at PAX Unplugged and taking time for the holidays. We should be having an update from our Art Director as pencils come in.

This update will also be shared in the Discord in the KS Updates channel

Thanks for coming along with us on this journey, and we look forward to being in touch a lot more in the new year.