It's on! We've launched our newest Kickstarter project today – and we hope we'll be getting your support! Here's the Kickstarter link.



Era: Survival is one of our most ambitious roleplaying games to date – a Core Rulebook featuring everything you need to play, including character creation, setting information, equipment, weapons, vehicles, NPCs, small adventures and entire campaign outlines. Most importantly, it's a new take on the survival genre and we think we nailed it!

Forget what you thought you knew about zombies, mutants or post-apocalyptic futures. Most other genre games ignore the ways society would evolve (or devolve) after the apocalypse hit, or go for standard answers. In Survival, Contagion has wiped out most of mankind, transforming those Infected in horrible ways, but survivors have grouped together in no less than 14 factions, all presented in-depth in the Core Rulebook.

It's been 100 years since the deadly parasites became airborne and any hope of finding a cure has long since been abandoned. However, one of the factions, the White Cross, does have a substance, "Injection", available that allows for temporary immunity. Needless to say, a dose of Injection is much in-demand and, while the White Cross distribute it as widely as possible, it's been known for wars to be fought over it.

In Era: Survival, we do present the kind of grim, bleak future one has come to expect of the genre, but firmly embedded in a believable, action-packed world ripe with intrigue, fear, betrayal... and the occasional act of true heroism. In that respect, Era: Survival may be the most human, psychologically-and sociologically-involved RPG we've made so far. It presents opportunities for all kinds of gameplay, ranging from political games to action, adventure, exploration, drama, science fiction and horror. Even more importantly, it's great fun and those of you who are already familiar with our other Era games will find Survival uses the same rules system with only minor tweaks to better reflect the genre.

Please check in here for any and all updates and let us know what you think! We're already planning several adventures and supplements, so rest assured that backing Era: Survival will make sure you'll be able to enjoy the ride for a long time to come!

Please support Era: Survival here!

Hello Sandworm,

I'm a big Post-Apoc RPG fan. So I'm your target audience, but so far your pitch isn't different than the dozen free PDF RPGs I've downloaded over the years and barely finished reading.

So it's time to sell me (and everyone else reading this post)!!


Several questions for you:

1) What other RPGs have your made?


2) Are these Traditional RPGs, Narrative RPGs, or some hybrid?


3) Explain this quote:

In that respect, Era: Survival may be the most human, psychologically-and sociologically-involved RPG we've made so far.


4) Explain this quote, but expressly WHY Era: Survival is different than Rifts: Chaos Earth, Mutant Zero, or any other Post-Apoc RPG that would use effectively the same blurb:

In Era: Survival, we do present the kind of grim, bleak future one has come to expect of the genre, but firmly embedded in a believable, action-packed world ripe with intrigue, fear, betrayal... and the occasional act of true heroism

Hi Spinachcat! Thanks for asking!

1) So far, I've made 3 others myself:
http://eratheconsortium.shadesofvengeance.com/
http://eralyres.shadesofvengeance.com/
http://eratheempowered.shadesofvengeance.com/

I have another on the way, and I've perfected and published 3 other peoples' game concepts.


2) Traditional RPGs, mostly. I encourage player narrative (and the mechanics reflect that), but they are controlled by dice and a GM.


3) Era: Survival is about people who are facing extinction. There's no cure to Infection, Humanity will be gone in another 100 years. What's your response to that?
Do you panic? Give up? Try to live a good life for yourself, ignoring others? Work every day to find a cure, even though it's probably hopeless?

The point is to understand what people would do in this world. Unlike Era: Lyres, which is really more about the Fantasy aspect, and Era: The Consortium, which is more on a large scale, the broad sweep of history, Era: Survival is about the Human element.


4)
Rifts: Chaos Earth is really all about dimensional beings and magic reappearing, so this is a much more "grounded" game, with a lot realism to the Survival Horror.

Most post-apocalyptic games don't present different factions or societies in great detail. They will give examples of cities and such, but not show different types of reasoning leading to different lifestyles on a faction and personal level.

Mutant: Year Zero is most similar out of the ones you mentioned, but it assumes societies are all pretty similar, and in Era: Survival, the Factions all have their own agendas and many are very much opposed to each other. Also, you always play in an ark which groups people together in surviving the apocalypse and the world outside needs exploring. In Era: Survival, the world is known, but ever-changing as Humanity fades from Gaia.


Does that answer your questions?