Torg Eternity x2

In February 2022 we presented two offers — one new, one resurrected — featuring Torg Eternity, the cinematic cross-genre RPG of the Possibility Wars from Ulisses Spiele. The revived September 2019 Torg Eternity Essentials had the English-language core rulebook and early supplements for a bargain price; if you’re new to Torg Eternity, start here. And its all-new companion, Torg Eternity Cosms, added lots of material for the Living Land, Nile Empire, and Aysle settings funded in three Kickstarter campaigns.

Published in 2018, Torg Eternity reboots but closely replicates the original Torg: Roleplaying the Possibility Wars published in 1990 by West End Games. Seven savage High Lords from parallel realities (“cosms”) have attacked the Earth and divided it among themselves. Each cosm has transformed part of our world to reflect the Technological, Magical, Social, and Spiritual Axioms of its own reality. But rare individuals, the Storm Knights, having mastered the Possibility Energy that creates the world around us, are strong enough to resist and, perhaps, expel the conquerors.

The venerable Encyclopedia of Science Fiction summarized the original Torg well, and the description still applies to Eternity: “While each of the alien realities represents a particular subgenre of fantastic fiction, they are generally original and evocative, embodying novel twists on the conventions of their forms. […] The design of Torg included several unusual and innovative mechanics. The gameplay is intended to be cinematic in feel, with rules that enable characters to perform the remarkable feats characteristic of much adventure fiction and a strong emphasis on highly structured linear narratives. A deck of cards is used to direct the flow of ‘action scenes’; both the Gamemaster and the players may use cards which introduce such subplots as a romantic involvement or the appearance of a personal nemesis, or perform more mechanical functions such as enhancing characters’ abilities or allowing them to escape from difficult predicaments.”

Ulisses Spiele has systematically expanded the Eternity line in a series of well-conceived, uniform crowdfunding campaigns, first on Kickstarter and recently on Game on Tabletop. Each reintroduces one cosm with a 144-page sourcebook, a 114-page campaign adventure, a Delphi Missions scenario collection, maps, and play aids. So far they’ve delivered the Living Land, the Nile Empire, Aysle, the Cyberpapacy, Tharkold, and in January 2022 (the month before this offer) they shipped Orrorsh. Still ahead, presumably, are Pan-Pacifica and Core Earth; after that, who knows? Terra? The Space Gods? Torg remains full of Possibilities.

1. TORG ETERNITY COSMS [all-new]

This all-new Torg Eternity Cosms offer presented everything from the Living Land, Nile Empire, and Aysle Kickstarter campaigns Ulisses Spiele ran in 2018-2019. Note: You need the Torg Eternity core rulebook to use this material.

A primal jungle, the Living Land is ruled by High Lord Baruk Kaah and his army of blood-crazed humanoid dinosaurs, called edeinos. The cosm has taken over both coasts of the United States, the Yucatan Peninsula, and the mysterious White Zone in Canada. Where the Living Land rules, miraculous spiritual power is available, but technology rusts and fails. Ordinary humans, and even some heroes, regress to their primal passions.

The original West End Living Land sourcebook, the first book in Torg‘s 1990s support line, stood for years as its greatest disappointment. As conceived, The Living Land (1990) aimed to “level the field,” to take down “overly powerful” player characters. In a 1999 RPG.net review Darren MacLennan described some of its obstacles: “There’s no clear way to fight within the Living Land ­– the technology level is about that of the Stone Age, there’s no way to navigate, and the Social Axiom isn’t even good enough to allow armies to invade. […] There’s also rules for losing things within the Living Land ­– weapons, valuable artifacts, and so forth. It could be entertaining, once, to have characters lose a valuable piece of equipment to a tar pit, but to have it happen all the time is just asking for trouble from players who have worked a long time for a particular widget they like. It’s ‘one of the prices you pay for entering the Savage Land’; it’s also a manipulative and obnoxious way to punish players for having the nerve to step into this environment.”

The May 2018 Living Land Kickstarter gave Torg Eternity‘s designers — many of them old hands from the West End days — a chance to redeem the cosm. It worked out well: The “Deep Mist” and “Law of the Lost” World Laws that made navigation difficult are gone, replaced by a Law of Wonders that summons treasures of lost civilizations in the unexplored jungles. The Law of Life means the jungles teem with giant creatures of every imaginable kind. The Law of Savagery instills a powerful rage to destroy one’s enemies, “a heightening of physical attraction,” and also your hair starts growing really fast. And the Land Below, a sort of Hollow Earth “sub-cosm” in the original game, has become part of the Living Land.

In contrast to the Living Land, the Nile Empire was, and remains, one of Torg‘s most popular settings, an Egypt-That-Never-Was where melodramatic pulp-action tropes hold sway, and mystical mathematics enables astrological magic. Ruled by mad Doctor Mobius, a resurrected Pharaoh turned master criminal, the Empire extends from North Africa to the Congo. The Eternity version holds true. The cosm’s Laws of Action, Drama, and Heroism guarantee headlong movie-serial thrills, and the Law of Inevitable Return ensures you’ll always have a villain to fight.

In Great Britain and Scandinavia, now a magic-saturated land of fantasy called Aysle, technology more advanced than a flintlock rifle sputters and malfunctions. West End’s original treatment of Aysle felt pallid and weakly supported. The July 2019 Aysle Kickstarter put the cosm on equal footing with the rest. Maelstrom Bridges crash into the North Sea to bring forth Viking raiders. Semi-mechanical clankers trudge through the streets of London. A stupendous ritual has connected the underground passages of Aysle to subways, cellars, and caves everywhere on Earth. By the Law of Delving, any break in the ground may now be a portal to treasure and danger in the Land Between. And anywhere innocent lives are at stake, the Laws of Heroes and of Legends will call someone to take up the fight.

There were six English-language titles in this offer’s Starter Collection (retail value $112.50) as complete, DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including all three full-length sourcebooks — the Living Land Sourcebook, Nile Empire Sourcebook, and Aysle Sourcebook — and the three campaign-length adventures set in these cosms: The God Box (Living Land), Fires of Ra (Nile Empire), and Revenge of the Carredon (Aysle). These ebooks alone can keep a player group busy for months.

Those who paid more than this offer’s threshold (average) price also got this offer’s entire Bonus Collection with fifteen more supplements and play aids worth an additional $112.50. Each of Ulisses Spiele’s cosm crowdfunding campaigns has funded an identical slate of five support titles for that cosm: In addition to the main sourcebook and campaign adventure, there’s a Delphi Missions collection of short adventures, a GM Screen and collection of player character Archetypes, two full-color map packs, and a GM Pack with Threat Cards for the Drama Deck, artwork, “Threat Blips” (virtual tabletop tokens), and a bookmark.

• Delphi Missions: Living Land, the Living Land GM Screen and Archetypes, the Living Land GM Pack, and both Living Land Map Packs
• Delphi Missions: Nile Empire, the Nile Empire GM Screen and Archetypes, the Nile Empire GM Pack, and both Nile Empire Map Packs
• Delphi Missions: Aysle, the Aysle GM Screen and Archetypes, the Aysle GM Pack, and both Aysle Map Packs

2. TORG ETERNITY ESSENTIALS
[from Sept 2019]

This revived September 2019 Torg Eternity Essentials offer presented the Torg Eternity rulebook, two scenario collections, and play aids — everything you need to join the Possibility Wars. There were seven titles in this revived offer’s Essentials Collection (retail value $37.50), including the complete Torg Eternity Core Rules and the Drama Deck (plus the Torg Eternity Free RPG Day Special); the scenario collections Day One and Delphi Missions: Rising Storm; the Torg Eternity GM Screen and Archetypes; and the Torg Character Journals record sheets.

Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to these two Torg Eternity offers’ pandemic-related charity, Direct Relief. Direct Relief sends protective gear and critical care medications to health workers, with emergency deliveries to medical facilities across the US and to regional response agencies across the world.