Geek Native’s write-up of Black Lantern Productions’ Immortals: Hubris & Glory was pretty popular. It suggests to me that the TTRPG publisher is on to something with their dark 5e setting, and the interest isn’t just a token quirk that a Greek games company is crowdfunding a mythic Greek setting.
The Kickstarter asked for €20,000 and, at the time of writing, has more than €65,000 pledged, nearly 500 backers and weeks to collect more.
Financial disclosure: Black Lantern Productions are a Geek Native advertiser. They have no editorial influence.
What follows is a Q&A with the Black Lantern Productions team that was shared with media and then exclusive content for Geek Native that came to us with help from Dimokritos Saloustros.
What is “Immortals: Hubris & Glory”?
Immortals is an RPG setting based on Greek Mythology. For us, it was an opportunity to fuse our favorite hobby with fantastical elements the Greeks believed in 2500 years ago. And, believe you me, upon studying Greek mythology extensively in the context of preparing for this project, our ancestors had an incredible talent for fantasy and mythopoeia – mythmaking.
“Immortals: Hubris & Glory” had a different name for a while. What was it and why did you change it?
Originally, Immortals: Hubris & Glory was called “Athanatoi”, meaning Immortals in Greek. We decided to change the name to the English version because it had better reception with international players.
We understand that certain words in our language might be difficult to pronounce and that could limit the game experience.
While that was also applied to many ruling names and lore, some iconic things like “Hysterophemia” (meaning legacy – fame after one’s death), remain in Greek.
Listeners of Geek Native’s podcast will know that Girdy has problems pronouncing English words. He’d be lost with any Greek that wasn’t a request for Ouzo.
Okay, so there’s a second Titanomachy and a war… but what makes it “dark” rather than just deadly and violent? Is Immortals a gruesome game, a chilling one, an angsty one or something similar?
Essentially, the first Titanomachy was a “family feud” among deity-like entities about dominance in the universe. Yet, even in the first Titanomachy, battles between Titans, Gods and Chthonic deities, wasn’t usually straightforward, nor was limited to violence.
Unspeakable curses, hideous plots and torment were in play with many of them meeting fates worse than death. In the end, the Olympians won and passed such a fate to their adversaries. They bound them to Tartarus, the eternal prison. A deep abyss in the Underworld that is used as a dungeon of torment and suffering.
In the second Titanomachy explored in this setting, these creatures, tormented for eons, return. Their thirst for vengeance won’t be conventional. Their sense of self has been twisted and their nature changed. Along them, other trapped entities escaped Tartarus and plagued the land, nearly driving the mortal world to extinction.
Immortals isn’t just a game of violence and light battling the darkness. Everyone and everything has its own balance between sin and virtue while attempting to build their sagas. The world is almost dead and even if the Olympians prevail again, it will never be the same as before. These are the last pages in the history of mortality. They will be filled with heroic deeds and unspeakable crimes alike.
In short, Immortals is a game of balancing one’s self between vice and dignity, while surviving the horrors that plague this world, in an attempt to be remembered after death.
Is there a suggested player age rating for the game?
Immortals deals with various concepts that can be characterized as explicit for certain audiences. Body horror, sexual tension, extreme violence and explicit language are some of them. The suggested player age is 18+.
Why back Immortals?
Immortals offers a completely new magic system using aether, the breath of the Gods. This invisible element allows mages to cast a slew of new and potent spells inspired by Greek myth.
The system does away with spell slots, chaotic tables and spell levels, replacing them with Spellcasting Difficulty SD, which tests a mage’s mettle whenever they cast a spell. They can enhance their efforts through aether points, representing their innate reserves of power. Lastly, a wide array of new spell tags have been introduced, similar to 5e’s iconic (ritual) tag, presenting alternative ways to cast spells, including prayers, philtra, and more!
In my next question, I demonstrated I wasn’t paying attention but wanted to share the comprehensive answer from BLP so I’ll embarrass myself by repeating it.
What was the motivation to move to a points based magic system?
The Immortals’ magic system is not a point system. All of us, in the dev team, have played various mainstream systems, the 5e being one of them. We find the spell slot system to be less user friendly for new players, tedious work when trying to create a character at high levels and punishing for spellcasters since they require a very strict resource management. A great example about the latter, is that many spellcasters end up using melee and ranged weapons if the scenario forces them to deplete their slots. These are magic users. Magic should be difficult to master, but once achieved, it should be always accessible.
Our system allows the casters to never run out of attempts to cast their spells. Each spell has a difficulty the mage must meet in a roll. While leveling up, the mage scales to have better chances to meet the difficulty of easier spells, to essentially be able to cast anything below a certain difficulty without much fuss.
We do have a resource, called Aether, that can be spent to gain more dice, thus, better chances for higher level spells, or used to empower spells.
In short,
- A spell has a Spellcasting Difficulty.
- The caster rolls as many dice as their Primary Spellcasting Ability Modifier, specified by their class.
- The caster keeps as many dice from the ones rolled, as their Secondary Spellcasting Ability Modifier.
- They can use Aether to empower the effect of a spell, gain more dice to roll or keep more dice from the ones they rolled.
- They have unlimited attempts and spell uses per day.
You can back Immortals until the 1st of March via Kickstarter.
