- Location
- UK
Hi.
In this post, I'll be introducing the world of MetaSeed. Originally a low fantasy worldbuilding project, it is tied to providing the backdrop for a turn-based card strategy game. I'll be touching upon both briefly for now, with more detail in later posts.
So, what is the inspiration for MetaSeed?
The initial impetus came with the release of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar and Total War: Warhammer. The former is a complete revamp of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, cutting out the majority of the complex tables, obscure rules and complex mechanics and replacing them with a set of rules that can fit within 4 pages.
Total War is probably familiar to most of you. You command an army composed of units of several types in real time, on a battlefield where tactical maneuvers provide decisive advantages. TW: Warhammer is going to be released in a few weeks, and hopefully will be the fantasy version of the epic campaigns the series is known for.
As a long term fan of collectible card games, I've wanted to design a game that can provide all of the above in a setting with consistent tone and coherent mechanics. I'm also secretly a hard science fiction nerd, so expect scientific theory and maths to be thrown into some explanations.
What's the big idea?
Write up an interesting setting, design an open-minded game and put them together for a product you might find interesting to read about.
Let's start with the world.
The setting should be vaguely familiar to you, reader. The Asian plains, the European mountains, the deserts of Africa... they are all still here. But, you and your people, you've been long gone.
Some time in the distant past, the MetaSeed arrived on the planet. It was not malicious, it was not benevolent, neither solid nor sentient. It created life by consuming itself, and warped the sky and seas to support its children.
The first people to rise from the mud are now called the Firstborn, or the Elves. They called themselves Humans, and children are reminded of their deeds as a warning. Back then, the MetaSeed was still fresh and powerful. Not content with being given a paradise, the Elves sought to grow powerful, and so they applied their science and technology to understanding the MetaSeed. They soon learnt to harness its energies, and used it to fuel their progress. Carelessly, they sickened the seas, polluted the earth and announced themselves Masters of Creation while murdering one another in pointless wars.
Quickly, they lost control over the energies they had unleashed. Forced to give life to twisted creations and living weapons, the MetaSeed lashed out against its own creation. In punishment, the Elves were fused with their weapons and machines, and left breathing in agony as the Earth covered them in dirt and buried them under rock and tide. Their last cry for help was sent to the stars. We are certain something heard them...
Betrayed and exhausted, the MetaSeed lay dormant for hundreds of thousands of years.
An eternity has passed since that dark age. Our scholars cannot ascertain the date, for corrupted energies challenge those who travel too deep in search of the answer.
What they do tell us is that the MetaSeed rose again to perform its duty. The pollution of the Firstborn was scrubbed to the best of its ability, and it scattered itself to seed life all over the globe. We People are just one of its new creations.
Who are the new races?
Nautilids - Canada/Alaska/North Sea. Humanoid sharks, eels, crabs, with pincers, tentacles and gills. They prey on merchant ships and haunt the nightmares of fishermen. They roam the open seas on monstrous mounts, and they follow their Fertile Queen blindly. However, their incursions are becoming more frequent, each time moving deeper into land. Some say a dormant power, dwelling even deeper than the Nautilids, has awaken and is driving them out of the seas...
Saurians - South America/Central africa. Dwellers of swamps, jungles and humid forests, this race awakened before the People. They resemble crocodiles with elongated limbs, frogs walking upright, geckoes with human eyes... they are natural predators the of humans. They have rudimentary tools, with which they build lethal traps to protect their forests and the wonders rumored to be hidden within. The lucky explorers die in spike pits or are riddled with poisoned arrows. The unlucky ones are captured and put to use as sacrifices in elaborate rituals to please the Howling God. Their screams echo throughout the night, and the next morning, villagers are raided and women and children poached by scaled warriors that move through the undergrowth with supernatural speed, shooting arrows and hunting with spears and nets.
Ashra - Central Asia/North Africa. In the dry plains east of the Stone Empire, hordes of demons roam. Deadly archers on horseback, impressive tacticians on the fields of battle, these nomads only resemble humans from afar. Under their armor, they have jaws built for rending flesh, claws for slicing open their victims. They utter chants of dark magic that turns their skin red and hot. The raids are announced by a shadow assassin, a mere cloud and knife, slitting the throat of a senior commander or leader, to be found dead next to his relatives in the morning. The intelligence and skill of these creatures is evident, but instead of building cities, they tear down others. Some say this is the work of the Centaur King's prophecies, himself the creation of a Sorceror's Cabal privy to knowledge forbidden to humans.
Black Kingdoms - Russia/East Europe. In these cold lands, the pollution of ancient wars persists, and so the MetaSeed never finished its task of clearing them. Early men were cursed by the combined presence of the pollution and the active MetaSeed fighting it. In their presence, they degraded into ghouls that preyed on their families after death. Corpses withered but never decayed, sometimes springing to life with otherworldly hunger. Vampires are the brave souls that hunted for power in the magical wastes and returned, their noble hearts turned black by the curse of immortality. Their life was now sustained by consuming the blood of the living. Together, they destroyed the Republic and formed the Black Kingdoms on its remains. Each Kingdom has its Vampire King- a being centuries old, transcending mortality and humanity, always desperate for blood. They war as much between themselves as with the Stone Empire.
Free Realms - South Europe/Arabian Peninsula. A diverse tapestry of tribes, nations and republics that fight for a democratic, cosmopolitan way of life. They make their living braving the seas and deserts to trade between themselves and the Stone Empire. Disputes are settled by both sides hiring mercenaries from the Stone Empire. This flow of gold back to the Empire is said the be the sole reason why the Empire's ports open up for them. Others say it is the education of their mages and their control of the sea lanes that keep the Empire from mounting a full offensive. While a citizen might enjoy freedom and rights found nowhere else, there are dark corners in the Free Realms. Greed has pushed some into piracy and dealings with the People's enemies. Others delve into the dark arts, either in a quest for power or forbidden knowledge. Many a mage has been caught smuggling black tomes from the North and trying to recreate the blood magics of the Vampires...
Stone Empire - Central Europe/West Europe. The once greatest civilization of men. A thousand years ago, they expanded from their birthplace on the European shores, growing tall and powerful as they reclaimed land and forest from the wilderness. Any non-humans they encountered, they crushed. They discovered the use of magic through technology, fuelling their research and building undefeated armies with it. When the Republic crumbled, its population fled into the mountains, where they burrowed and starved for generations. A hundred years later, they crept out of the holes a different people. Each step forward was behind a fortress. Each farm was ringed with defensive walls, each road dotted with watch-posts and each hill topped by a tower. The paranoid, pessimistic rulers murdered each other over the newly acquired scraps of land, and the survivors formed an iron-fisted Empire. Driven by magic, armies grew once more. To feed their people, the Stone Empire trades manpower and mercenaries for food and skills. To control them, there is an oppressive monotheistic religion and a personality cult around the Holy Emperor. Many fear the Empire returning to the deviancy of the Republic.
Terminology
The People refers to the group of races that resemble humans the most. The Elves or Firstborn were the first People, and the Stone Empire and Free Realms are populated by the People.
The MetaSeed refers to the original life-force that shaped the Earth's biosphere millions of years ago. It can also mean the concentrations of magical energy found where the wars of the first age were the most destructive. Finally, it is considered to be a physical property of living flesh that distinguishes it from inanimate matter.
Magic is the product of MetaSeed. It is the end result of concentrating the energy released from MetaSeed and directed towards completing a certain task. Theoretically, everything magic can accomplish can be reproduced by machines of varying complexity.
What about the game?
Well, I'll keep this brief, as I'll go into detail about it in later posts. The core concept is that each player has a total number of points for an army, and a certain number of spells.
These points are divided freely between a number of units of the player's choosing. An 'army deck' for a 1000 point game can consist of 250 units of 4 points each, up to 10 units of 100 points each.
The individual unit's points are distributed into Attack, Defense, Hitpoints and Speed, with Equipment (0-2 of six selections) and Skills (up to 3) having fixed costs. They are also divided by race, with each race providing bonuses and maluses, or racial skills.
Instead of 'cavalry' or 'archers', the player is free to create them by giving the unit a high Speed stat or a Missile equipment slot.
The units, once designed and the points distributed, are assembled into regiments. An army can have a maximum of 10 regiments. There will be more details later, but a regiment acts as one 'super-unit' in combat.
Regiments have a movement range dependent on the speed stat of their slowest unit. They are played in order of speed. For example, a regiment of 8 units with 10 speed will move before a regiment with 7 units at 11 speed and 1 unit at 5 speed.
Combat involves a Movement, Shooting, Melee and Losses phase. Flanking gives a bonus to Attack power.
After the fastest regiment has had its turn, the next fastest regiment gets to play, even if it is the opponent's regiment. If there is a wide distribution of speeds, the regiments will be played back and forth between players, so there are no distinct 'turns' where one player crosses their arms for half an hour.
After all regiments have been moved, the opposite player can use a spell card. The number of spell cards available to each player is determined at the start of the game. The spells a player can start with depends on the composition of their army. A 100% undead army can use the most powerful faction spells, while an army with 10% of each race has to contend with generic spells.
To sum it up:
Free movement turn-based tactical wargame, with unit cards freely created by the player and assembled into regiments. It can be played with a deck of playing cards, a notebook and a ruler at the bare minimum.
In this post, I'll be introducing the world of MetaSeed. Originally a low fantasy worldbuilding project, it is tied to providing the backdrop for a turn-based card strategy game. I'll be touching upon both briefly for now, with more detail in later posts.
So, what is the inspiration for MetaSeed?
The initial impetus came with the release of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar and Total War: Warhammer. The former is a complete revamp of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, cutting out the majority of the complex tables, obscure rules and complex mechanics and replacing them with a set of rules that can fit within 4 pages.
Total War is probably familiar to most of you. You command an army composed of units of several types in real time, on a battlefield where tactical maneuvers provide decisive advantages. TW: Warhammer is going to be released in a few weeks, and hopefully will be the fantasy version of the epic campaigns the series is known for.
As a long term fan of collectible card games, I've wanted to design a game that can provide all of the above in a setting with consistent tone and coherent mechanics. I'm also secretly a hard science fiction nerd, so expect scientific theory and maths to be thrown into some explanations.
What's the big idea?
Write up an interesting setting, design an open-minded game and put them together for a product you might find interesting to read about.
Let's start with the world.
The setting should be vaguely familiar to you, reader. The Asian plains, the European mountains, the deserts of Africa... they are all still here. But, you and your people, you've been long gone.
Some time in the distant past, the MetaSeed arrived on the planet. It was not malicious, it was not benevolent, neither solid nor sentient. It created life by consuming itself, and warped the sky and seas to support its children.
The first people to rise from the mud are now called the Firstborn, or the Elves. They called themselves Humans, and children are reminded of their deeds as a warning. Back then, the MetaSeed was still fresh and powerful. Not content with being given a paradise, the Elves sought to grow powerful, and so they applied their science and technology to understanding the MetaSeed. They soon learnt to harness its energies, and used it to fuel their progress. Carelessly, they sickened the seas, polluted the earth and announced themselves Masters of Creation while murdering one another in pointless wars.
Quickly, they lost control over the energies they had unleashed. Forced to give life to twisted creations and living weapons, the MetaSeed lashed out against its own creation. In punishment, the Elves were fused with their weapons and machines, and left breathing in agony as the Earth covered them in dirt and buried them under rock and tide. Their last cry for help was sent to the stars. We are certain something heard them...
Betrayed and exhausted, the MetaSeed lay dormant for hundreds of thousands of years.
An eternity has passed since that dark age. Our scholars cannot ascertain the date, for corrupted energies challenge those who travel too deep in search of the answer.
What they do tell us is that the MetaSeed rose again to perform its duty. The pollution of the Firstborn was scrubbed to the best of its ability, and it scattered itself to seed life all over the globe. We People are just one of its new creations.
Who are the new races?
Nautilids - Canada/Alaska/North Sea. Humanoid sharks, eels, crabs, with pincers, tentacles and gills. They prey on merchant ships and haunt the nightmares of fishermen. They roam the open seas on monstrous mounts, and they follow their Fertile Queen blindly. However, their incursions are becoming more frequent, each time moving deeper into land. Some say a dormant power, dwelling even deeper than the Nautilids, has awaken and is driving them out of the seas...
Saurians - South America/Central africa. Dwellers of swamps, jungles and humid forests, this race awakened before the People. They resemble crocodiles with elongated limbs, frogs walking upright, geckoes with human eyes... they are natural predators the of humans. They have rudimentary tools, with which they build lethal traps to protect their forests and the wonders rumored to be hidden within. The lucky explorers die in spike pits or are riddled with poisoned arrows. The unlucky ones are captured and put to use as sacrifices in elaborate rituals to please the Howling God. Their screams echo throughout the night, and the next morning, villagers are raided and women and children poached by scaled warriors that move through the undergrowth with supernatural speed, shooting arrows and hunting with spears and nets.
Ashra - Central Asia/North Africa. In the dry plains east of the Stone Empire, hordes of demons roam. Deadly archers on horseback, impressive tacticians on the fields of battle, these nomads only resemble humans from afar. Under their armor, they have jaws built for rending flesh, claws for slicing open their victims. They utter chants of dark magic that turns their skin red and hot. The raids are announced by a shadow assassin, a mere cloud and knife, slitting the throat of a senior commander or leader, to be found dead next to his relatives in the morning. The intelligence and skill of these creatures is evident, but instead of building cities, they tear down others. Some say this is the work of the Centaur King's prophecies, himself the creation of a Sorceror's Cabal privy to knowledge forbidden to humans.
Black Kingdoms - Russia/East Europe. In these cold lands, the pollution of ancient wars persists, and so the MetaSeed never finished its task of clearing them. Early men were cursed by the combined presence of the pollution and the active MetaSeed fighting it. In their presence, they degraded into ghouls that preyed on their families after death. Corpses withered but never decayed, sometimes springing to life with otherworldly hunger. Vampires are the brave souls that hunted for power in the magical wastes and returned, their noble hearts turned black by the curse of immortality. Their life was now sustained by consuming the blood of the living. Together, they destroyed the Republic and formed the Black Kingdoms on its remains. Each Kingdom has its Vampire King- a being centuries old, transcending mortality and humanity, always desperate for blood. They war as much between themselves as with the Stone Empire.
Free Realms - South Europe/Arabian Peninsula. A diverse tapestry of tribes, nations and republics that fight for a democratic, cosmopolitan way of life. They make their living braving the seas and deserts to trade between themselves and the Stone Empire. Disputes are settled by both sides hiring mercenaries from the Stone Empire. This flow of gold back to the Empire is said the be the sole reason why the Empire's ports open up for them. Others say it is the education of their mages and their control of the sea lanes that keep the Empire from mounting a full offensive. While a citizen might enjoy freedom and rights found nowhere else, there are dark corners in the Free Realms. Greed has pushed some into piracy and dealings with the People's enemies. Others delve into the dark arts, either in a quest for power or forbidden knowledge. Many a mage has been caught smuggling black tomes from the North and trying to recreate the blood magics of the Vampires...
Stone Empire - Central Europe/West Europe. The once greatest civilization of men. A thousand years ago, they expanded from their birthplace on the European shores, growing tall and powerful as they reclaimed land and forest from the wilderness. Any non-humans they encountered, they crushed. They discovered the use of magic through technology, fuelling their research and building undefeated armies with it. When the Republic crumbled, its population fled into the mountains, where they burrowed and starved for generations. A hundred years later, they crept out of the holes a different people. Each step forward was behind a fortress. Each farm was ringed with defensive walls, each road dotted with watch-posts and each hill topped by a tower. The paranoid, pessimistic rulers murdered each other over the newly acquired scraps of land, and the survivors formed an iron-fisted Empire. Driven by magic, armies grew once more. To feed their people, the Stone Empire trades manpower and mercenaries for food and skills. To control them, there is an oppressive monotheistic religion and a personality cult around the Holy Emperor. Many fear the Empire returning to the deviancy of the Republic.
Terminology
The People refers to the group of races that resemble humans the most. The Elves or Firstborn were the first People, and the Stone Empire and Free Realms are populated by the People.
The MetaSeed refers to the original life-force that shaped the Earth's biosphere millions of years ago. It can also mean the concentrations of magical energy found where the wars of the first age were the most destructive. Finally, it is considered to be a physical property of living flesh that distinguishes it from inanimate matter.
Magic is the product of MetaSeed. It is the end result of concentrating the energy released from MetaSeed and directed towards completing a certain task. Theoretically, everything magic can accomplish can be reproduced by machines of varying complexity.
What about the game?
Well, I'll keep this brief, as I'll go into detail about it in later posts. The core concept is that each player has a total number of points for an army, and a certain number of spells.
These points are divided freely between a number of units of the player's choosing. An 'army deck' for a 1000 point game can consist of 250 units of 4 points each, up to 10 units of 100 points each.
The individual unit's points are distributed into Attack, Defense, Hitpoints and Speed, with Equipment (0-2 of six selections) and Skills (up to 3) having fixed costs. They are also divided by race, with each race providing bonuses and maluses, or racial skills.
Instead of 'cavalry' or 'archers', the player is free to create them by giving the unit a high Speed stat or a Missile equipment slot.
The units, once designed and the points distributed, are assembled into regiments. An army can have a maximum of 10 regiments. There will be more details later, but a regiment acts as one 'super-unit' in combat.
Regiments have a movement range dependent on the speed stat of their slowest unit. They are played in order of speed. For example, a regiment of 8 units with 10 speed will move before a regiment with 7 units at 11 speed and 1 unit at 5 speed.
Combat involves a Movement, Shooting, Melee and Losses phase. Flanking gives a bonus to Attack power.
After the fastest regiment has had its turn, the next fastest regiment gets to play, even if it is the opponent's regiment. If there is a wide distribution of speeds, the regiments will be played back and forth between players, so there are no distinct 'turns' where one player crosses their arms for half an hour.
After all regiments have been moved, the opposite player can use a spell card. The number of spell cards available to each player is determined at the start of the game. The spells a player can start with depends on the composition of their army. A 100% undead army can use the most powerful faction spells, while an army with 10% of each race has to contend with generic spells.
To sum it up:
Free movement turn-based tactical wargame, with unit cards freely created by the player and assembled into regiments. It can be played with a deck of playing cards, a notebook and a ruler at the bare minimum.
Last edited:
