Hi everyone!

Today I’ve done an update on the store, so now you can get the Era: The Consortium Stretch Goals as well as the Kickstarter rewards – just in case you missed he campaign!

I also added the Time Travel Session Pack to the store, for people who are looking for more sessions.

Enjoy!

– Ed

Hi everyone!

Firstly, I’d like to thank everyone for their contribution to this campaign. Without you, whether you supported us monetarily or by spreading the word, we couldn’t have done any of this. So thank you very much for supporting Era: The Consortium, and making the game a reality.

The campaign is now over, we’ve made 4 stretch goals, and over 450% funded, which is absolutely brilliant – everything we had hoped for and more!

I’ll be  focusing on finishing the layout and editing of the rulebook as soon as possible… and I am hoping to get this out early if that’s at all feasible. I’ll keep you guys informed about the progress, of course.

Once again, thank you all for the support you have shown this project, and I look forward to finishing this game thanks to that support.

– Ed

P.S. for those of you who are wondering, there are more games and comics in the pipeline, both in the Consortium and elsewhere!

Hi everyone!

Our number has increased massively in the last 12 hours or so, to the point that I can now tell you that we have achieved our $4000 stretch goal!

Pull out your Sniper Rifles and take aim!

This Stretch Goal lets us expand the Mobile Application to include a Combat Tracking function. This will allow you to load characters and order them by initiative, as well as retrieve their stats on demand. So you don’t need a tonne of character sheets for enemies – just create and store them at your convenience and pull them up when you’re playing!

As a GM myself, I can’t wait for this one!

We have quite a way to go to the next Stretch Goal, “The Secret War” extra booklet, which describes the technology and abilities of specially trained covert operatives within the Consortium… but I know we can do it with your support, even with so little time left!

– Ed

Hi everyone!

We’ve managed to reach our 300% Stretch Goal! It’s absolutely amazing we’ve made it this far, and I’m proud to be sending this to so many fans of the game!

Pull out your laser pistols and get ready, because here’s the reward:

One of the things that has generated the most interest amongst those we have spoken to about the game is the possibility of Time Travel within the Consortium universe, changing history and seeing the results.

We’ve explored this with our Patreon campaign, and we’re now giving the first 5 sessions of this campaign to everyone with a Rulebook or Primer – 4 extra for the Primer buyers (as they already get one), and 5 new sessions for those with a Rulebook. They include 5 playable characters, so you don’t need anything more than the Primer to play (though the rulebook will let you re-roll the characters if you want to!).

Thank you all for following us this far, and we’re hoping we might push to one final stretch goal in the last few days!

The next will be an expansion of the mobile application which will allow you to track combat and mark off health by retrieving stored characters you have created – we’re very excited about that one!

– Ed

Hi everyone!

The third week of our Kickstarter has come to an end, and we’re pleased to tell you that we’ve achieved another Stretch Goal, so all of you who pledged $5 or more will be getting a new 7-page comic when it’s released, Counting Down From One Part 1! This follows the actions of a small group of time travellers out to change the history of the Consortium.

As a celebration of the end of our third week, today we’re talking to Co-Writer and Editor Johnathan “Synaid” Lewis.

When and how did you get into writing?

I was actually going to college to be a computer professor and my advisor suggested that I take courses as opposite to computer programming as I could to keep from burning out. So I started taking literature courses. Somehow, that evolved into writing.

My Bachelor’s degree is in English – I never did get that programming degree! Instead, I got into consulting on storylines and such for various companies (mostly behind the scenes stuff, particularly villain dialogue in recent years) and being a writer for various indie comics. Era: The Consortium  will be one of the first times that my name has been on something this big.

What do you like about this project?

I think my favourite thing is the creative way in which we’ve been able to tell the lore, not just short stories, but we’ve done letters that were sent home and censored, news stories and even a story where a woman sits in an office listening to a recording and we see is her reactions to it.

We’re also releasing comics on the side which expand the universe – both the Last Stand of Stiletto Unit and the new comic we’ll be releasing as we’ve just hit $2000! It’s really great to get my name on comics, since I’ve been working on them for so long.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve been asked to write?

I was asked to write a story about three hungry girls trapped in a room together. I had to turn that one down, though.

What’s your favourite story from the ones you’ve done for Era: The Consortium?

I loved writing Elliot Draigon, who we see as a Tim Curry type villain. In particular, there’s one story where he almost gets assassinated.

Thanks for following us this far, and we’re pleased to be looking towards the last week of our Kickstarter and the possibility we may even break another Stretch Goal.

– Ed

Hi everyone!

Week 2 has come to an end, and it’s truly inspiring to see so much support for this project we’ve all put so much time and effort into.

If you’re going to MCM Comicon in London this weekend, we’re actually there running games for the whole three days, as well as a few panels to talk about game production and mechanics. You’ll be able to buy at least some of the Kickstarter rewards from us (though not all, I’m afraid!), and even play through a session with either myself or one of the other GMs we have for the convention. Come and say hi, we’re over near the Canteen somewhere!

This week has been quite eventful for us, our MajorSpoilers offer has kicked off (go have a listen to one of their podcasts that we sponsored – Critical Hit 271, for example!), and we ran a Q&A session at the RPGnet Chatroom. The moderator of the room, Dan, keeps a chatlog on his blog, if you’re curious what came up! And, of course, tomorrow is our first day at MCM Comicon London.

Another insight into our staff today – we’re going to talk about one of the artists who has done a huge amount of work for the book – more than any other – Sophia Michailidou.

When and how did you get into art?

I have been into art since I can remember. my parents kinda dragged me into it, though without that being their intention… growing up, my dad was an architect and my mom an artist, so it was just around me always.

My one and only career choice was becoming an artist, so I went to the University of Fine Arts in Greece and after I graduated I learned to work digitally since I had no space to work with traditional art at home and I fell in love with it… and this is what I’m still doing until today!

What do you like about this project?

This project started for me completely spontaneously; one day I was hanging around the net and I saw this job and I said to myself “Ok why not? It would be interesting to do something different.”

After the project began, I started to enjoy working on these Sci-Fi images and getting into the skin of every character and situation I had to deal with. I really like working with Shades of Vengeance! We are always discussing everything and I have a full understanding and cooperation on all the matters.

I learned so many things from this project and I think it is making me a better artist.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve been asked to draw?

This is a tough question, I don’t know what’s normal anymore!

I think that drawing something from other’s people imagination is already kinda crazy, so I can’t think of anything specific… I am so used to that everything looks normal to me!

What’s your favourite picture from the ones you’ve done for Era: The Consortium?

Hmmm… It’s hard to pick just one from so many pictures I have done for this project. I really like the weapons section, I never thought I had that in me.

But if I have to choose one I will go with “Fearless” Quirk. I believe it has a great dynamic pose and transfers the feeling of the whole atmosphere to the viewer.

Once again, thanks for reading and thanks for your backing!

– Ed

Hi everyone!

So… we’ve had quite a few requests for a playtest packet so people can take a look at the rules and have a go at a session.

And, because you’re all wonderful people and we want to give you what you want to see in order to understand the game better we have, indeed, decided to give out a playtest packet on our Kickstarter.

This contains enough to play the game once, with 5 players, but it shows only some of the rules and does not cover more than a small fraction of the equipment and weaponry in the full game. That said, it’s representative enough to give you an idea of what you’re getting rules-wise, and we’ve included some artwork for you.

The session is the Last Stand of Stiletto Unit. We chose this one for two reasons:

• Because we actually run this session at conventions – we felt that those people who aren’t able to join us deserved to have a chance at the same scenario!
• Because this is one of the most important moments in the Consortium’s history – we wrote a comic about these people for a reason!

Please comment on the packet here, feel free to ask any questions you have.

And most of all, please enjoy the game!

– Ed

Hi everyone!

So… Week 1 of the campaign has now finished. I’m very pleased that we’ve managed to get as far as we have, thank you to everyone who has contributed already! To be funded by now is absolutely brilliant!

However, we’ve been having a talk with a few of the people who’ve looked at our Kickstarter and aren’t ready to pledge. It seems that what most people want is a bit of explanation about the rules and a few examples of gameplay. So we’ve decided that we’re going to release a small snippet of the rulebook. It’s enough to play the game once, with 5 pregenerated characters so that you can all play The Last Stand of Stiletto Unit! As this is the session we usually play at conventions, we felt it was only fair to offer the rest of the world who can’t make it to see us the same opportunity!

So grab your d10’s and get ready, we’ll be making that available to you all (including those who have backed us, of course) at the end of today!

Now, you’re probably wondering about the creator of this game, this “Ed Jowett” guy. You’re probably wondering what gave him this idea, how did he decide to turn it into a roleplaying game, how did he move it along so far without funding before now? So, I thought I’d answer some of these questions! Best to get the hard part out of the way first… yes, it’s true, I’m from England!

I’m a lifetime Science Fiction fan. I grew up watching Star Trek – since I was about 4 or 5 – and I read Asimov for the first time when I was 9. I have a photo signed by almost every member of the cast of Farscape and a load of happy memories from the conventions I’ve attended to get them, and the limited edition Tali’Zorah vas Normandy poster hanging on my wall is one of my most prized possessions.

I also love games. I’ve had my Playstation for about 3 years now, and despite this project eating most of my life for the last 2 years, I’ve managed to rack up an (apparently) impressive number of Platinum trophies (Add me if you like!) on various games. I love the stories that people create for games, the scope of their potential and the things they choose to show or leave to your imagination.

I first started designing games of some description myself when I was about 7 years old and taught myself Basic and began programming frantically, trying to create my own computer game. As I grew up, my designs grew more ambitious, and I even chose to take Art classes in the hope that I could illustrate to people what I’m talking about (The artists on this project can attest to the success or failure of these attempts!). All this culminated in a degree in Software Engineering where I actually built my own strategy game for my dissertation and studied the various AI methods used in games.

Things really kicked off for me, though, when I started GMing games and realised the massive potential for tabletop RPGs in terms of choice, and how much we were losing by playing computer-based games (which to then had been my only experience – Pool Radiance and later Neverwinter Nights and Temple of Elemental Evil were just a few of the games I grew up playing). With so many ideas gathered over such a long period of time, inspired by the scope of Sci-Fi universes such as that of the Dune series (which I like so much that Sandworm remains my online handle to this day!) and the visual candy offered by games like Mass Effect, I felt that I had to create my own universe, to show my ideas to the world.

Before I knew what was going on, it grew beyond what I’d ever imagined – my attempt to write it for other members of my group to GM down grew into deciding to produce a full, high-quality rulebook over just a month or two! (I won’t bore you with the details of the story again, it’s in the Shades of Vengeance profile on Kickstarter if you are curious!)

So that’s me. I’m someone who was inspired by the group of people I work with, and who realised that taking that inspiration and both using it as well as passing it on to other people was something very important.

Thank you for backing this project, my dream, and helping me to continue producing games for you to experience and enjoy.

– Ed

Hi everyone!

I’ve been approached by rpgnet and asked to do a Q&A session about Era: The Consortium on their chat room!

So, of course, I agreed.

It’ll be at 2pm Chicago time, which is 8pm for those of us in the UK, and you can join in through your web browser to get any of your own burning questions answered!

I hope to see you there!

– Ed

Hi Everyone!

We’ve decided to have a small celebration for the Kickstarter being 100% funded!

I have been receiving images from Tan Sim, a new artist we’ve taken on for completing a few of the last images!

These images show many of the habitable planets in the Consortium, and a flavour of what society looks like on those worlds!

Please continue to spread the word, as some of the Stretch Goals will allow us to greatly expand the story of universe and the accessible roles in game… I’d love to get those out to you, particularly The Secret War!

– Ed

P.S. These are brand new images, which have never been seen before!

Hi everyone!

Funded!

We made it!

In 3 days!

I can hardly believe it!

I hope we’re not done yet, though – we have more time and so much more potential. There are Stretch Goals up, and have been since the start of the project, because we want to give you all even more than what is in the Rulebook.

• We want to produce a character creator app that lets you build character easily, and guides you through the process, tracks combat (to save paper, as well as make life easier!), lets a GM create and store NPCs, design new items or item variations, all before the session starts! As a GM myself, I’ve designed this to have everything I want for game preparation.
• We’re making a new comic, “Counting Down from One”, which explores some of the events around the beginning of the Consortium, following a group who travel back in time to change the Consortium and protect it from a threat which will occur in the future.
• There’s an expansion booklet we want to produce, “The Secret War”, which describes and makes playable the covert operatives on both sides of the Resistance/Consortium conflict, their equipment and stories of their activities.
• And so many more…

We have loads of ideas (even beyond the currently stated stretch goals), and we want to give you them all!

So… thank you so much for your support, and please continue to spread the word! We’re funded now – everyone knows this book (or should that be “these books”?) is going to happen, it’ll be in your hands before you know it.

Just to get you fired up, here’s an image from Victor Adame Minguez which you’ve only seen a small part of before, for a few moments if you watched the video. Now you can see the full image, “Rebuilding Arawn“. This image shows the four species working together for the first time to rebuild a planet after one of the worst disasters in the history of the Consortium.

– Ed

Hi everyone!

The long-awaited day (well, long-awaited for me, anyway!) has arrived, our Kickstarter has now been launched.

You can find the campaign here.

Head on over and check out the various rewards we are offering, including Comics, the Rulebook Primer (v1.0!), the Full Rulebook in digital, paperback and hardcover forms and much more!

Feel free to comment on our campaign or ask questions.

If you’re not able to back us but you want us to succeed, there is something you can do – share us on Facebook, tell your friends, spread the word. This is a very fun game; it’s got a lot of detail and carefully made rules that are fun to use, and people really will enjoy it.

Thank you so much for following us this far.

– Ed

Hi everyone!

The Kickstarter goes live tomorrow, and we’re all very excited over here!

Towards the end of the story of the Consortium, there are rumours of horrible weapons being developed, weapons which will kill a single species within the Consortium, but not significantly harm other species.  Rumours abounded about what had happened to the Ximian Homeworld, for those clever enough to listen.

The Resistance was, of course, horrified… they sought out these weapons and that’s what led Stiletto Unit to stand before the “Caladbolg” weapon core of the Orion.

I’ve featured an image on this post, which shows the last moments of Stiletto Unit… I hope you enjoy it.

I look forward to interacting with everyone via Kickstarter! Feel free to comment on our project, ask questions, etc… I’ll be around to answer.

– Ed

Hi everyone!

Just two days left to the Kickstarter.

Today, it’s time I spoke about Shaun Hardcastle, one of the most interesting and most important characters in the history of the Consortium – without him, there would be no Resistance, no Elliot Draigon, and a lot less solidarity on Arawn.

As his name implies, Shaun Hardcastle once led the Big Seven company Hardcastle Haulage – one of only two companies in the Big Seven to have control stay with its founding family. However, he was cast out of the Big Seven, replaced by his three sons as the CEO of the company.

Fleeing from imprisonment, he discovered pirate forces and over the next few years banded them together as an army the likes of which had not been seen since the Bug War with the Ximians.

Attacking Arawn and Aeron, he came extremely close to either destroying or conquering the Consortium.

This piece of artwork is one of my favourites in the book, showing his personality brilliantly in my opinion.

– Ed

Hi everyone!

Only 3 days until our Kickstarter launch!

Today, I’m talking Aliens in Era: The Consortium.

When I first started, I thought very carefully about what I wanted to offer the players. Did I want to force them to stick to Humans, but provide a society with all kinds of aliens (perhaps a little like Mass Effect)? Did I want to force them to be aliens – perhaps excluding Humans from the equation?

After I made the decision to have both Humans and aliens, I still had to choose how many alien races were needed. In fact, in earlier versions of the book, the Eulutians and Ximians were the only playable races apart from the Humans. I added the Vilithii as playable a little later.

While I’m reasonably happy with four playable races, I have an expansion idea for a fifth race, which will be included as a Stretch Goal in the campaign. Each race is unique, and has its own way of interacting with the world, and their own world views. It was vital to me, as a lifelong sci-fi fan, that aliens are not just Humans that look different. Each race had to have their own personality, their own approach.

You can find more information on each of these species on the Backstory page, but I’m going to discuss each one in turn, here, briefly, and explain the differences in their outlook on life, because I love them all in their own way!

While the Eulutians joined the Consortium with very little struggle or difficulty, that is to be expected. They are peacemakers, and they will often take a longer, more subtle route to reach their goal rather than fight head-on for it. That, obviously, doesn’t apply to all of them, as they have boasted some of the fiercest warriors ever seen in the Consortium – they are very self-reliant relative to Humans, thanks to their culture and upbringing.

The Ximians were the opposite when joining the Consortium – decades of war followed by decades of oppression was how they entered. Being insectoids, I had considered giving them a hive mind, but instead chose to make their attitude a very communal one – they believe everyone should be working together to make the whole greater. They would each give their life for their people, and while their appearance may be initially quite unpleasant to Humans, I felt that people would eventually get used to them.

The Vilithii are backward primitives who were brought into this community by virtue of happening to be present on one of the Consortium planets. I asked myself how they would adapt to life amongst more advanced races, especially being shapeshifting flora. The answer was fairly logical – they would find their place and adapt to fit it.

Each of these races has expanded the Consortium in its own way, and I think each brings a different and valuable potential attitude to a player.

I hope you feel the same!

– Ed

Hi everyone,

Just 4 days to go to launch!

Today, I’m going to talk about the ability that you guys will have to play at any point in the history of the Consortium – a factor we have used in the Patreon Campaign to provide you with time travel scenarios!

Each item and spaceship has a first available date, and pieces of technology that were replaced have a last use date. Planetary history is mentioned in each case, and we have even provided example scenarios to play as part of the GM section of the book for many of the stories within.

By way of an example, here is a small snippet from the example sessions section of the Rulebook:

The Solar Flare                       Year: 32CE

Session Type: Combat/Pacification                Player Roles: Riot Control Teams

A Solar Flare knocks out all power, communications, etc in Kurma City.

In order to contain the situation, martial law is imposed immediately by Smertios Security – by this time, Smertios Security controls the law enforcement for around half of the city. Other security companies are overmatched in their attempts to contain the rioting and looting. After the first night, many of them send requests to Smertios Security to command their forces to quell the riots – they have the experience their competitors do not.

On the second night, everything is very much more peaceful.

On the third morning, power is restored to the city:
Hayden Bank has become the leading bank in the Consortium. Other banks have had accidents with their backups during the blackouts which makes their acquisition by Ben Hayden quick and relatively easy.
Smertios Security now controls almost all of the security firms in Kurma City.
Open Technology is awarded the contract to restore power and create shielded power systems by the Senate.
C&C: Colonisation and Construction is given the contracts for the repairs.
Hardcastle Haulage ships in supplies from all over the planet to assist these activities.
Moritasgas Pharmaceuticals provides medical care at a loss for all those injured during the incident.
The Mining Conglomerate provided refined raw materials as needed.

There is great speculation about whether these seven companies, who controlled this issue so well together, should take over the government – the Senate is seen as timewasting and selfish.

We are very proud of the leaps we’ve been able to make offering this scope for the game, and we can’t wait to send it out to you all!

If you want to comment, you can hop over to our Facebook community!

– Ed

Hi everyone!

So, for the first of our countdown days, I’m going to take you back to the very beginning of the Consortium.

No-one really knows when the Kurmaja was launched from Earth, and no-one really knows whether the Kurmaja was the first of many or the last of any. What everyone does know is that the Kurmaja arrived in orbit of Taranis after over 1000 years of travel, and the captain decided to land and settle there.

The founders of the Consortium saw the potential of this world, and chose to make their home there.

They reverse-engineered the ship to make their first city, Kurma, and today I’m releasing an image of that event for the first time!

In the coming days, we’ll follow the history of the Consortium up to the beginning of the Kickstarter (in a very accelerated manner, of course!)

– Ed

Hi everyone,

Exciting news! We’re going to be starting our Kickstarter on 10th October 2014.

The Kickstarter will give you the chance to buy the Rulebook Primer, Full Rulebook, Comic and everything else we’ve produced so far, as well as having a few juicy stretch goals (an application to assist with character creation on iOS and Android, for example!).

We’re also giving the opportunity to back for just $1 in return for thanks in the book, just so you can show your support.

I’ll (of course) be linking the campaign here as soon as it kicks off, and if you guys could all spread it around, that would be absolutely amazing!

During the countdown to the beginning of the Kickstarter, I’ll be posting a few things of interest about the book every day – images you haven’t seen yet, a short story or two for your enjoyment…

So, keep an eye out here if you want to experience a little more of the Consortium before the Kickstarter…

– Ed

Hi everyone!

A week ago, I posted that Era: The Consortium is nearly complete, and since then I’ve been bombarded by requests to see what the actual rulebook looks like.

As a result, I’m unable to resist giving you guys a sneak peek!

Here are three images, screenshots taken from within the book (they are clickable links to the full-size images!):

I can’t wait to get this book out to you guys!

– Ed

Hi everyone!

I am pleased to be able to announce that Era: The Consortium is nearing its completion as a full rulebook.

Some of you have already purchased the Era: The Consortium Rulebook Primer, and a few of you have even followed us for the full two years we’ve been working on this project.

With a few bits of artwork, editing and proofreading still to go, we’re projecting being complete in early 2015, and we’ll be shipping it out to stores as soon as possible after that!

We’ve achieved a lot during this project and we’re very, very proud of the Consortium universe as a team.

Thanks for your continued support, and keep an eye out here, we’ll let you know when you can get hold of the book and play the game for yourself!

– Ed

Hi everyone!

Have any of you ever wondered what it’s like to play Era: The Consortium?

Dice and Stuff have actually had a go and stuck it up online as a podcast!

They are exploring the universe as Claymore Unit, a small group who joined with Stiletto Unit in the assault leading up to the Last Stand of Stiletto Unit.

So far, they’ve produced two podcasts: they both cover the initial experience and the recruitment of three Smertios Secuity guards by the Resistance.

They’ve done a really great job, so check it out!

– Ed