Gameplay Livestream is Live
over 2 years ago – Mon, Aug 02, 2021 at 11:02:27 AM

Hi everyone!

The Team Covenant Gameplay Livestream of Earthborne Rangers is now live! You can check it out right here!

If you’re not able to watch it live, don't worry. The link will take you to the archive of the stream as well. You’ll also be able to find it on the main KS page.

Steven and Zach will be playing a “vertical slice” of the game. Similar to a demo, it’s been designed to give you a good sense of what to expect from the final product in terms of gameplay without spoiling the story.

There are two ways to play the vertical slice. One, is by playing a “Search and Rescue” mission, which is one of the many mission types you’ll find in the final version of the game. The other is open-world exploration, where the Rangers are free to roam and discover the small portion of the Valley available to them.

I’ll be in the YouTube chat during the stream if you have any questions. You can also reach out via DM or ask any questions you may have in the comments.

Enjoy the show!

Much love,

Andrew

Winning & Losing in Earthborne Rangers
over 2 years ago – Sun, Aug 01, 2021 at 04:29:28 PM

Hi everyone!

I wrote in the first update that I wouldn’t be posting updates on Sundays, but here’s a bonus, Sunday update for you all the same.

This morning, Andrew Fischer and I recorded an in-depth interview with Jason Perez of One Stop Co-op Shop. He played the game in our playtest environment on Tabletop Simulator, then he asked us several of the burning questions that many of you have regarding the gameplay. While you’ll have to wait until Wednesday of next week to watch that video (or listen to the podcast), there’s one very important topic from that conversation that I felt was too important to wait: the concept of winning and losing, and what it means to Earthborne Rangers.

During our conversation, Jason expressed to us that the phrase “there’s no winning or losing” is a loaded one, especially on Kickstarter. To me, that phrase means “there is no ‘Game Over’ screen.” That is, there is no point during the game at which you are forced to stop, reset, and try again. I realize now, however, that to many others, that phrase means something else entirely.

Jason explained, from his perspective, and from the perspective of others, that saying that you can’t win or lose a game usually means that you're talking about a storytelling game--that there are no real consequences, nor any real stakes. If you share a perspective similar to Jason’s, rest assured, that is not the case. There are consequences. There are stakes. And they will play out on the table through cardplay.

Fischer used a great example to describe how winning and losing works in our game, and how it differs from other games in the genre:

While there is no countdown timer or doom clock in Earthborne Rangers, that doesn’t mean there aren’t objectively “good” and “bad” outcomes. If, for example, you have a mission to divert a flood that is threatening a village, the desired outcome is pretty clear. You’re going to want to divert that flood, and if you fail to do that, that’s certainly going to feel like you’ve lost that particular game. Succeed or fail, however, the narrative will continue. Succeeding may grant you a reward, but failing may open a new narrative path, and give you the opportunity to help rebuild that village, which may grant you an entirely different reward.

As with all games that have a strong narrative with which you’re invested, if you fail to divert the flood, you may decide to “reload” and try again (like reloading your save if things didn’t go how you thought they would on Virmire--Mass Effect fans know what I’m talking about). That choice, however, will be up to you. From the game’s perspective, you can continue, and see what happens next.

That’s what “losing” a mission looks like.

Another question we’ve been asked is “can I lose a campaign?” Using the definition of “losing” from the above example, the answer is yes. There are multiple endings planned for the campaign, and one of them, almost assuredly, will be viewed as the “bad” ending. That ending, however, is probably my favorite ending, so if it comes to pass at the end of your campaign, my sincere hope is that you’ll run with it, as it will persist into the Legacy of the Ancestors campaign expansion and allow for some pretty fun stuff to happen in the story that follows.

I hope this helps clear up some of the misunderstanding around this topic. If you’d like any additional clarification, or if you have any follow-up questions, please let us know.

A big thank you to Jason Perez for providing the spark for this update. Please be sure to check out the podcast and the video on One Stop Co-op Shop on Wednesday, August 11th. Thank you, Jason!

Tomorrow’s gameplay livestream will almost assuredly answer a lot of your questions regarding cardplay, but I’m sure it will also raise several more! I’ll be camped out in the YouTube chat during the livestream to answer questions, but please feel free to ask questions in the comments, or to send me a DM. Happy to answer your questions in whatever form they may come.

Tomorrow’s update will post early, with a link to the livestream. We’ll post the update discussing deck construction on Tuesday.

Until then!

Much love,

Andrew

Developing the Earthborne Setting – Sam Gregor-Stewart & Andrew Navaro
over 2 years ago – Sat, Jul 31, 2021 at 06:23:51 PM

Sam:

When Andrew first approached me about this new game he wanted to make, he didn’t start by talking about the mechanics. Instead, he wanted to talk about the idea he had for a world to set the game in.

For the first four months, most of our brainstorming involved the world of Earthborne. Early on, Andrew established that he wanted it to be our world, but so far in the future that much of it would be unrecognizable. He particularly drew inspiration from The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe, a story set on an Earth far in the future, where some technologies had become so ubiquitous that they were basically magic, but humans had also regressed into a more primitive, medieval existence.

Unlike Wolfe’s world, however, Andrew was very insistent that Earthborne be an optimistic setting. This turned out to be a good thing, given my proclivity for creating worlds that are grim, gritty, and dripping in moral ambiguity! Especially since, as it turns out, Earthborne starts with a pretty grim subject that we’re all dealing with right now.

Although Earthborne Rangers is set over two millennia in our future, the story of the setting begins only a few decades from now. On this Earth, catastrophic climate change continues to worsen, until the damage we’ve caused the Earth becomes nearly irreparable. In the face of certain annihilation, all peoples of the Earth are galvanized to action, and each civilization, each culture, and each community, large and small, begins the monumental work of setting things right.

The world comes back from the brink, but it is profoundly changed, as are the people who live in it. Over hundreds of years of shifting values and priorities, our descendants develop a deep reverence for the planet. As such, the one constant across the many cultures of Earthborne is a desire to live in harmony with the planet  and safeguard it from harm. The people of the Valley represent just one of these cultures, and each has their own perspective on what this means.

Andrew:

For me, the greatest challenge was putting myself in that mindset, and trying to imagine the lives of our descendents in an almost alien world from our own, but deeply connected to it.

Most of my life is spent living within the confines of a city, driving from destination to destination, or sitting in front of a screen for work and/or play. It is only when I’m able to disconnect from this day to day and spend time in nature that I feel like I gain some small insight into what living more connectedly to the Earth might be like, and that happens far too infrequently.

Ultimately, the greatest, most readily available tool for me was that of meditative visualization.  I would sit in my backyard, or in our garden (when the weather cooperated), with a notebook and a pen, close my eyes, and breathe. I tried to invite in the sensation of being in that place, that future Earth. I observed whatever visions came to me in those moments, and just took notes. If you’ve ever practiced or tried basic meditation, the methodology I used was essentially the same. I’d set an intention, breathe, and accept whatever came.

What I saw in those moments were towering trees, lush and abundant greenery, strange flowers and insects. There were clear mountain lakes swimming with odd dark shapes and shores glittering with gold, its value as a currency now meaningless, left to rest where it lay. I saw a lot of weird creatures, and I tried my best to capture their likeness in my sketchbook--sometimes with success, sometimes not so much.

I think the most profound part of these experiences was not the visuals, but the bodily sensation. It was peaceful, calm, and nurturing. In short, it felt really good!

Taking those experiences and then converting them to a game world was a challenge for me. I’ve come to love this vision for the future so much that I am loath to put it in any sort of jeopardy (as Sam and Brooks can attest), but in order to create a compelling adventure with stakes and consequences, some amount of danger must exist. Adventure isn’t terribly adventurous without a little (or a lot) of danger.

In the end, the central narrative we’ve outlined for the “Season of Rebirth” (core set) campaign sets up the people of the Valley and the Rangers to contend with one of the many unintended consequences of the work their ancestors (that’s us) did to pull the Earth back from the brink of destruction. How you confront this danger will be up to you, and the consequences of your decisions will carry over into the Legacy of the Ancestors campaign expansion. The story has multiple resolutions. Each one we hope you’ll find narratively fulfilling and thought provoking--a tall order for a card game, I know, but that is our goal, and I feel confident we’ll achieve it.

Design & Visioning with Adam & Brady Sadler
over 2 years ago – Fri, Jul 30, 2021 at 08:47:19 PM

Hi everyone!

It's been another amazing (and very full) day. The writer in me wants to try to come up with new and interesting ways to say thank you every day, but all I can think to say is, thank you! It feels truly amazing to have so many of you here, supporting this project, and we're just getting started.

We woke up bright and early today, and spent the morning at the local FedEx Kinkos, printing and cutting the vertical slice of the game, then sending it on its way to Team Covenant for the livestream on Monday. As I cut each card and watched the stacks of each set steadily grow, I steadily grew more and more excited. For a demo with only a few finished pieces of art and a few concept sketches, I think it looks really great. I can't wait for TC to play it, and for you all to see the game in action.

Elsewhere on the Internet, Shut Up & Sit Down posted a recent conversation between Matt Lees and I where we walk down memory lane, talk a little about the recent past, and look ahead to the future. You can check that out here.

Also, on today's the Covenant Cast, Zach and Steven share their thoughts on Earthborne, the Kickstarter campaign, and offer their insights as to what it all means for the industry. You can check that out here!

Now I'll hand off the reigns to Brady Sadler, who's going to take us on a tour of the initial visioning and design of Earthborne Rangers.

Until tomorrow!

Much love,

Andrew

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Hello rangers!

My name is Brady Sadler, and my brother, Adam, and I had the honor of working with Andrew Navaro and the rest of the team to craft the core system for Earthborne Rangers. This was a very exciting opportunity, because we had an absolute pleasure working with Andrew while we were at FFG, as well as when we set off to be freelance game designers—he also designed the cover of my debut novel, and illustrated the booklet of our first album!

Oh, and we also got to jam on some Megadeth together.

When Andrew laid out his vision for me and Adam, we were instantly inspired by the unique world he wanted to build. Additionally, on a personal level, cooperative card games are undoubtedly my favorite type of tabletop game, so I was flooded with ideas right out of the gate.

However, once the dust settled and the work began, we quickly discovered that we had quite a challenge on our hands. While the team mutually enjoyed existing cooperative card games, it was important that Earthborne Rangers was not just an iteration of those games. It needed to feel like the theme, and since the theme is so unique, the feel of the game had to be unique as well.

One of the very first things Adam and I focused on was the energy system in the game. One commonality that hobby card games share is some sort of “mana” system, or similar resource management aspect to playing cards. This is something I really enjoy about games like Magic: The Gathering—I have always loved the idea of different types of resources being used for different things. But we wanted to tie this concept tightly to a character, since the game was more akin to RPGs. This is where the aspect system came from.

While there were many iterations of the aspect system, we always had four aspects representing the core capabilities of the rangers. Almost everything from the core system was built around this concept of rangers having four types of energy that they use to perform activities and play cards.

Once we found our resource system, we started to evaluate how player decks should work and what they represented in the game world. During this step of the process, Adam and I had many meetings with Andrew about his favorite RPG character-creation systems. We ended up referring a lot to existing RPG books, and analyzing  those character building processes, to envision how Earthborne Rangers players might create their rangers; i.e. build their decks.

After we figured out character creation, it was time to determine what the rangers would be doing during a game. We knew that the core of the game experience should be around discovery and “the journey.” There’s a vast, unique world out there to explore, so we didn’t want to set up a series of rail-roaded experiences that players just procedurally went through.

The team all agreed that adventures in Earthborne Rangers needed to be organic experiences that serve to both flesh out the world and give players the opportunity to interact with that world through the characters they created. Additionally, the world itself should react to what the rangers do. This is represented by the challenge deck.

Each time a challenge is triggered (which is pretty much any time the rangers affect the world), a player must draw a challenge card. These cards not only throw in some uncertainty for actions, but they also trigger effects on cards in play. This concept really breathes life into the world and can either reward careful players with beneficial effects, or penalize reckless ones who let potentially detrimental effects linger too long on the table.

In the end, I feel like Earthborne Rangers offers players something fresh, exciting, and unique. My own personal goal with this design was for cooperative card game fans to discover things both new and familiar, and I think we did just that.

The Art of Earthborne Rangers
over 2 years ago – Thu, Jul 29, 2021 at 07:57:04 PM

Hi everyone!

I'm very excited to share tonight's update with you, written by Evan Simonet, the exceptionally talented illustrator behind the art featured throughout this campaign.

But before we get to it, I want to thank you all again for your continued support. We're officially halfway toward unlocking the regional manufacturing stretch goals, which is a great place to be at this stage of the campaign. I'm excited to make a run for it by the end, and see if we can truly make regional manufacturing happen. But enough about manufacturing! Let's talk about art! See you tomorrow everyone!

Much love,

Andrew

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The Art of Earthborne Rangers

The artistic direction for Earthborne Rangers began as a collaborative effort between Andrew Navaro and Joe Banner. By the time I had joined the team back in March, Andrew and Joe had already been busy for over a year envisioning the world of the Valley with a vast repository of conceptual sketches as the fruits of their labor. In my first few days, I found sifting through all that content overwhelming and intimidating, but I couldn’t deny the passion they had captured in the vast and wondrous world they had been building.

Offering up my own concept sketches alongside their array of fantastical creatures, contraptions, Rangers and locales, we had amassed a wealth of images depicting a world too big for the screens we viewed them on. What was missing however, was a cohesive style through which that world would ultimately take form. It was important for us to develop an art style that was true to the Valley, captured the hopeful mood of the game, and set us apart from the aesthetic of others. In order to pin down that visual aesthetic for the interior art of Earthborne Rangers, I presented Andrew with a style guide filled with examples from artists whose work captivated me. After some back and forth in which Andrew picked what he liked from the wide net I cast, we finally decided on a direction to take the art. However, what really sold us on the path we took was our mutual adoration for the visuals found in the films produced by Studio Ghibli.

With a creative direction in mind, I began illustrating the characters who live in this world, rendered in a way that was evocative of those Miyazaki films we were so fond of. As a result, much of the art sees characters detailed with strong linework and flat colors, surrounded by lush environments rendered in a more loose and painterly style.

Ultimately, what really informed my process in creating art for Earthborne Rangers was the collaboration between Andrew, Joe and myself. With Joe’s uncanny ability to create beautiful and striking compositions, coupled with Andrew’s eye for detail honed by his years as an artist, and art director, my job is at times more of a process of transmutation, channelling their visions and personality as well as my own into a finished product.

As with every illustration, it begins with a sketch, like the one Joe created of the ferocious Atrox. This sketch passed through Andrew, who made his own edits and supplied reference imagery for the final product before sending it along on to me:

Upon receiving the Atrox sketch, I spent some time working the subject matter into something that would fall in line with my own style. In this case, I decided to rework the Ranger’s pose, as well as remove the hood as up until this point we had been making art featuring a lot of hooded and hat-wearing Rangers! I also had an impulse to rework her posture towards something that I felt was slightly more dynamic:

With the revised sketch complete, I shared it with Andrew and Joe for another round of feedback before moving on to the final. It is during discussions like these when interesting compositional and world-building topics come up. With the Ranger’s hood down, we’d need to know how she prefers to keep her hair. Obviously we wanted the hairstyle to not just have visual appeal, but to be functional as well. After all, Rangers lead active lifestyles! Most importantly though: what is an interesting hairstyle that would lend itself to the energy of the scene we are portraying? Like her cloak, her hair can help imply motion and action as she bravely places herself between the frightened traveller and the Atrox. Hopefully, that energy came through in the final image:

Unlike a lot of artists whose process I follow, I find myself in need of a very robust sketch before continuing on to the final treatment. Where other artists can freely evolve an illustration from a few gestured lines to a supremely polished image without many steps in between, I tend to shift my frame of mind from expressive to highly detail-oriented over a series of refinement steps to the sketch. By the time I have arrived at a place with the sketch where I can proceed confidently with final linework, the process is coming from a place in my mind that is more technically oriented. In the case of this image, that technically-minded side of me very much enjoyed rendering all the small details in the rocks strewn throughout the scene just as much as the characters in the foreground.

As a young artist, I was fascinated and a little frightened to learn that not everyone possess the ability to visualize things within their minds. I was frightened because a part of me worried that I too did not possess that “inner eye” that is seen as an inextricable trait of the visual artist. I can see things in my mind and translate those images to paper, but there is always that shift towards the end of my process where I rely on the technical mind. It's as though I need to shift from artist to draftsmen in order to finish a piece. As I've gained in experience, however, I’ve come to embrace that aspect of my style and process. Much like the Valley - a place whose ancient wilderness hides the secrets of a forgotten technology, my artistic style has a dichotomy that can flourish through this creative collaboration.