Antiquarian Games launched the crowdfunding campaign for Legends of Realms Eternal (L.O.R.E.) on Kickstarter on 7 October 2026, seeking $25,000 to fund the print run of its core volume, the Player’s Companion. The California-based studio aims to challenge the industry’s shift toward rules-light fantasy by delivering a deeply tactical, grid-focused roleplaying game that merges the positional combat of classic tactical video games with modular pen-and-paper customisation.
The project introduces an expansive d20 rules engine featuring over 1,000 powers, 40 advanced classes, and dedicated mechanical subsystems for social encounters, environmental hazards, and downtime crafting. Players can inspect the engine directly through a free teaser document on DriveThruRPG or test the mechanics via the official portal at loresearch.games while the campaign runs its 30-day funding cycle.
Mechanical evolution and class design
To understand the system’s operational philosophy, we spoke with lead designer, co-founder, and creative director Gregory Wunderlin about how L.O.R.E. addresses common frustration points in modern fantasy tabletop design. Please note, I didn’t get this interview live before the crowdfunding launch and should have.
You describe Legends of Realms Eternal as “Final Fantasy Tactics meets D&D”, yet the beta rules present a setting-agnostic, crunch-heavy simulation with granular rules for everything from object hit points to item crafting. What core design problem in contemporary fantasy d20 games does L.O.R.E. solve that existing heavyweight systems like Pathfinder 2e or GURPS do not?
I do get this question a lot! “Why not just Pathfinder?”, and it’s one of my favorite to answer. One of the core design concepts of L.O.R.E. is “Narrative flexibility through supporting mechanics”. Yes, it’s crunch, which takes people to Pathfinder/GURPS, but this game is really an evolution of D&D off of 5e, but in that the heavyweight direction instead of the lite systems we’ve seem stem from that. You’re going to find more here that reminds you of Dungeons, specifically a mixture of 3.5 & 5e (maybe some 4e, hello Warlord) than others. As to the actual question: what design problem? There’s a few:
- Shorter, deep classes. How often does a player reach their capstone with the 20-level class structure? Most campaigns end around high-end mid levels (10-12ish), then you’re done. L.O.R.E. is specifically designed around this. You should get to finish your class by the end of a campaign–then if you start a new one, there are options to continue that progression. The basic concept is Base Class -> Advanced Class -> Master Class, with side progressions of Prestige Classes.
- Crafting! Most often, crafting is broken down into “roll X, make Y”. L.O.R.E. presents a modular, robust crafting system for every kind of equipment type. You can personalize anything you make via its mechanics.
- Expanded encounter design. Combat is great, but L.O.R.E. treats social & environmental encounters as just as important: they have their own systems, maneuvers, options, and even roles within classes to handle them. They can all also be combined, using the same base system with differences manifesting on the tactical level that still play with the other types of encounters.
- Deeper alignment. Alignment has found itself mostly sidelined in modern incarnations, useful for fun grids or memes, but in use it’s rough, with folks disagreeing on what constitutes Lawful Neutral. L.O.R.E. breaks alignment down into Motivations. You’re not just good, you’re Brave & Charitable; you’re not only Evil, you’re Prideful & Fearful. You can gain, lose, or change motivations in play, and they also serve to grant experience. If you risk something to satisfy your motivations, that’s worth more than an easy fight with a goblin or two.
At the risk of going on too long (too late, right?) that’s the general gist of the game: it expands and provides immense additional depth to systems and game tropes we love. Familiar, but new, marrying those old-school ideas with more modern design theory.
The Kickstarter campaign launches on 7 October 2026 with a nearly 500-page Player’s Companion, featuring over 1,000 powers and 40 advanced classes. How much of this system is fully playtested and locked for production, and what physical manufacturing milestones must the campaign achieve to fulfil backer copies on schedule?
I’ve been personally running beta tests for about a year now with a core group of folks familiar with the system. There’s always going to be errata in a game this large, but I’d say 80% of the game is locked. There’d be a bit more playtesting post-campaign, but only enough to confirm that any one class isn’t too unbalanced (the Blood Mage was, but that’s been fixed), maybe 6 months or so? As for our milestones, our initial funded goal is all we need to produce the physical manufacturing. We were very careful to not over-tax ourselves with multiple physical books; those will come later once we hit our stretch goals. In house, we decided fulfilling a year after the campaign was fair to give us plenty of time to fix any issues.
The good news is that the game is done. All the core parts you need to play are in the Companion, which is written, and just needs formatting to make it easier to parse. Even if the physical issues arise the digital books will be made available!
Mathematical balance and character architecture
Unlike standard d20 class models, L.O.R.E. decouples hit points from endurance, links defence to an active Guard Value, and imposes hard bonus caps across item, morale, and innate sources. How did you calculate the mathematical sweet spot where stacking bonuses and precision dice do not break bounded math during high-level play?
Ah, the sweet, sweet math of balance. L.O.R.E. achieves its balance by way of niche–instead of “every number is appropriate for every situation”, your character excels at what they do, and needs help where they don’t. That is to say, you will break the game when the game wants you to: a Fighter aces combat, but the game knows this, it wants the Fighter to do well when in a straight, sword vs sword brawl. L.O.R.E. isn’t tightly balanced. It leans into things being too strong, but because it knows that, the challenges you face act under the same design philosophy.
If you want to get mathy: I used two major anchor numbers (10 for ability scores with every +2 turning into the classic +/- 1 progression), then equipment uses multiplicative variables as an anchor (x1, x2, etcetera). There is no cap to either aspect, but each is controlled at hard-capped bottlenecks. Bonuses have a ceiling, so 20 + X (Max Bonuses) = T (Max Target Number). It’s easy to scale challenge at each level down from there. What breaks this is ability scores only have soft ceilings, so a specialist can overcome T.
So yeah! You will break the math at high-level play, but the game knows that and accounts for it in its encounter design. A level 2 Wizard, 10 Arcanist, 10 Archmage is still going to have trouble when the Ancient Great Wyrm shows up and lands on their face.
In May 2026, during your appearance on Monastery Interviews, you discussed building versatility into character progression across eras of play. How does the interaction between fixed Score Potentials and the Heritage Point buy prevent min-maxing when players splice hybrid physiologies?
It doesn’t, really, but that’s because min-maxing is fine in L.O.R.E. There’s enough variety and encounter variability that maxing can be very good for something very niche. The problem is the more you max, the more that min matters when it shows up, which it will. There’s also enough per Physiology to satisfy non min-max players with options and unique choice, and a min-maxing player can do their math and be happy with their high number. Both are valid approaches, and both are rewarded.
Also, please, please tank your Luck Score to find points for other stats. It’s a good time for your Loremaster.
Magic resource economies and tabletop resolution
Magic in L.O.R.E. is split across six separate essence pools, ranging from an Acolyte’s Fervor to a Namer’s Quintessence, each governed by different casting actions and component rules. What was the mechanical rationale for separating power resource economies entirely rather than using a unified universal mana or slot system?
All Magic Origins in L.O.R.E. do function under a universal mana (Essence) system. A Namer’s Quintessence and an Acolyte’s Fervor are both Essence with the same governing rules (how much you can spend per turn, how powers are used, etcetera). What changes are the interactions per Origin. For instance, Naming Powers (Harmonics) are dynamic, but limited in number, so one power is useful as you spend more Quintessence on it, and may do different things. Divine Powers (Prayers) are traditional: they are categorized into Circles (power levels) and do one thing per power. Powers do require a specific type of Essence to cast, to clarify. So a Harmonic cannot be cast with Fervor.
The rationale for separating them comes from specialization, identity, and balance.
An Acolyte uses Divine Magic. This gives them access to robust healing, unique to them, magical damage types (Profane & Radiant), and other niches not available to the other Origins. This also means that a Wizard cannot jump into those niches without considerable effort. Their Aether does not translate into Fervor. Mechanically, this solidifies the Acolyte’s primary role in the party and rewards their progression focus. With multiclassing encouraged as part of progression, guardrails are necessary to prevent a character from jumping between classes and becoming supremely powerful in each. Separate economies do that!
The Player’s Companion introduces an active “Players Always Roll” mechanic for spells, alongside a strict degrees-of-failure table for skills and crafting checks. What led you to place all opposed rolls into the players’ hands while preserving static target numbers for the Loremaster?
Honestly, games are more fun for players, and easier to manage for game masters, when the player does the rolling. It’s a factor of literal time better spent for a GM. They can make a snap-decision for a target, or reference it from a resource, and the player is already rolling. GMs still get to do fun storytelling. You decide penalties, targets, results, and so forth, but the cognitive load is significantly decreased.
The player manages themselves; the GM (we call it a Loremaster) manages the world.
Simulationist crafting and material logistics
The crafting and downtime rules are extraordinarily detailed, pricing individual items down to singular coins, node sizes, and tool quality modifiers. In an era where modern roleplaying games often abstract logistics into wealth ranks, why did you choose to build a full simulationist crafting subsystem?
L.O.R.E. does use wealth ranks as an option under equipment! If that’s more your speed, you don’t need to track individual coin. Otherwise, this harkens back to the “what problem does this solve” question: crafting tends to be woefully underserved, and even when present, it often only allows you make predetermined items with little customization. Having a full crafting simulation offers that and the ability to go deeper. If you want a customized Longsword, it’s more than just “now this sword does 1d10 damage!”. It also creates an entire niche character: the party crafter, who spends their time arming, improving, and supporting the party.
Crafting is near and dear to my heart, so I wanted a game that made it an option. And to be clear, it is an option. You can get by fine without using it. Even if you don’t fully commit, items in the equipment section have a crafting target number attached to them (all equipment was made via the game’s crafting systems to test them) so you can choose to use the “I want this, so I roll that” method.
If you want to mess around with it, I do have a public version of the google sheet I made for weapon crafting: LORE Weapon Crafting (Public) – Google Sheets (make a copy!)
Production standards and manufacturing resilience
You have stamped the teaser rules with an explicit “No A.I.” guarantee. With commercial production costs climbing across independent publishing, how did you budget human-led illustration and cartography for a 500-page core book without pricing entry-level backers out of the market?
Thanks for noticing that. I refuse to use generative AI, it’s done such a hatchet job on visual artists and is destroying their ability to work reliably. To be honest, we’re getting by on less art because of those increased costs.
Our trick comes down to not asking less than what we need. It’s not uncommon for crowdfunding campaigns to do that. They try to hit lower funding goals and bank on stretch goals to carry them through. We didn’t. In looking at our budgeting, we have $12,600 (that’s not a typo) banked for art costs. Our primary artist, Miranda, is incredible, and she’s generous in her pricing, at least until we get established enough to not sweat the numbers. With that in mind, we’re really hoping to shout loud enough to get that volume.
If that funding fails, we’re still releasing the book, it will just have considerably less art.
Several recent crowdfunding campaigns for heavyweight indie roleplaying games have stumbled during post-campaign freight and print fulfilment due to rising paper costs. How has Antiquarian Games hedged against printing crises and overseas distribution risks for a book of this scale?
Fortunately, the business mogul at Antiquarian is Mark Day, who has literal decades of experience in games. Those 30+ years are rife with contacts and dealing with shipping delays. His guidance is essential here, and our goal is to work with printers and distributors in the countries we’re shipping to (US, Canada, and hopefully the UK), like Fulfilrite in the US for shipping.
We’ve given ourselves time, also. Life is messy, and distribution messier: we’re not promising a 2-month turnaround; in giving ourselves a year to ensure printing and distribution, we have time to solve any issues that crop up. Additionally, not all of our money is spent on reception. Once funded, a significant portion remains in reserve in case the worst happens and we can’t deliver, or if it’s needed to make that distribution happen.
In short? We’re careful, reserved, and know how to handle a crisis.
Market positioning and tabletop execution
The d20 roleplaying games market is currently crowded with post-OGC fantasy redesigns and 5e-adjacent variants. What makes you confident that tabletop groups experiencing rules fatigue want a denser, high-crunch tactical system rather than rules-light alternatives?
There’s so, so many rules-light games out now and coming out still, and we’re a bit of a rebuke to that. L.O.R.E. is, at its core, much more of a narrative game than high-crunch implies. Its mechanics exist to support the narrative rather than crunch in spite of it. I think a narrative-first, crunchy game is more of a rarity, and once folks get into the game and realize everything they can do with it? That’s the sweet spot.
Fortunately, games exist in so many shades of gray; I don’t think you can say rules-lite is always this, and crunch-heavy is always that, and L.O.R.E. is its own shade.
It’s anecdotal, but I’ve been playing, running, and making tactical games for 20 years now, and I’ve always found players: online, at tables; my confidence comes from knowing there’s always another gamer looking for something to satisfy that tactical itch. Ever played an Owlcat game? We’re out there!
L.O.R.E. provides a deep alignment grid that tracks active keywords and rewards mechanical marks for satisfying motivations. Some modern designers argue that rigid moral tracking restricts roleplay; how do you justify baking ethics directly into character progression?
The morality isn’t rigid! Motivations track how your character responds to a situation and why, not necessarily if it is ethical or not. Here’s an example:
Charity. Generosity of spirit and wealth, committed to ensuring the welfare of others despite loss to yourself.
Charity is a “Good” Motivation, and it says you’re generous, this is your impetus to act, not every facet of your philosophy. To satisfy this Motivation, and contribute to your progression, here’s more:
Satisfaction. Provide for the needy, destitute, or lost at cost to yourself, pass on indulgence or excessive gain.
So, if you have Charity, and you give a substantial amount of your coin to an orphanage on the verge of collapse and it grants you no material gain? You get experience! Congrats, you stuck by your convictions. This is designed to reward roleplay, not restrict it. There’s also no rule that prevents you from acting against your Motivations. In fact, L.O.R.E. has the opposite: it tracks that behavior, and if you act a certain way often enough, you can pick up that Motivation, and start being rewarded for leaning into that RP evolution.
You can say that “Pride” being an Evil Motivation implies ethics, but it doesn’t prevent you from using it in a “good” way. Moral philosophy is the biggest bag of cats, so the game rewards the behavior in regard to your decisions, not how moral you are.
Iteration, failure, and indie recommendations
Looking back at early iterations of the engine, which specific mechanic or class proved an outright failure during alpha testing, and how did you rework it into the current draft?
Quite a few, hah. The original incarnation of the Psyker was awful. It had none of the depth of the other Classes, and it was far too limited in its powers. It felt like a “I want psionics!” add on that had no business being in the game. Mostly, it mimicked the psionic classes from other games, and it only reproduced powers from other Origins. Honestly, it was lame. To fix it, I made an entire “Mentalism” power list, giving Psykers their own power identity, and completely rehashed their ability to reproduce other powers: they still can, but now it feels intentional and woven into the game. This is also a mechanic I gave to a few other classes (mainly the Bard and Namer) to better incorporate it.
Also, there was no “Guard Value” originally (think Armor Class). I experimented with auto hits and damage mitigation, but the math was brutal, and it quickly made the crunch untenable with everything else on top. Very much my burnt toast of game design decisions. That damage mitigation persisted in a much lesser form (certain armor properties reduce physical damage types) to increase depth, and it works great now.
Beyond backer counts and funding targets on Kickstarter, what concrete dynamic at a gaming table tells you that a session of Legends of Realms Eternal has run exactly as intended?
At the end of each session we recommend spending 5 to 10 minutes giving out experience, which we call “Accomplishments”. If each player can argue for, or be rewarded one or two Minor Accomplishments (which are geared toward individual characters), that means they’ve all been contributing to the game, are engaged, and acting in character. And that’s where the fun comes in! I’d say that’s the true mark of a good session.
Perhaps on top of that is the assignment of Affinity Points or Levels. This is an optional mechanic that tracks relationships between players and NPCs, and earning them is a great indicator of engaged, satisfied players.
Where can tabletop gamers download the free beta preview, follow the Kickstarter campaign, and what other indie creator or project in the roleplaying games community deserves our readers’ attention right now?
Ah, my favorite part! As of writing this, gamers can find the beta preview on Itch.io and RPG Trader, with DriveThruRPG coming soon! As for the campaign, we’ve put a ton of information on the Prelaunch Page, including a link to the free preview, our socials, and the game itself (along with a trailer!). If you just want our general socials where we post updates and content, you can follow them via our Linktree.
And wow, okay. There’s so many incredible indie creators out there. I’m going to go off a bit:
- Do you like Final Fantasy or JRPGS? Aeons of Adventure has a Kickstarter Prelaunch up!
- I love the folks over at Bad Toad Game: Mercs, Mages and Monsters on DriveThru is super affordable!
- Underground Oracle Publishing is made up of amazing creatives, and their Kickstarter for Creature Companions Expanded was just funded, but could use more eyes.
- Dean and Vicky at Everae Games are trying so hard to prop up indies. Their game Untold Destiny deserves a look.
- Joshua Ohmer (Ravenquil) is a wonderful fellow, and a tireless supporter of indies. He’s been posting 5e content for years and I’d love to see him get more attention: Linktree
- Lastly (I could go on forever), I’d love to shout out the Frontiers Engine. It’s free, and Jayke, it’s creator, is an incredible person.
Campaign fulfilment and crowdfunding tiers
Backers interested in physical editions have several distinct avenues to support the project. The campaign caters to budget-focused collectors with an entry-level black-and-white hardback edition of the Player’s Companion alongside digital modules, while standard colour volumes and collector-grade premium hardcovers fill the middle tiers. High-level patrons can also access exclusive designer workshops, private Discord design channels, and digital gaming sessions run directly by Gregory Wunderlin.
The Kickstarter campaign operates under an all-or-nothing model, requiring the complete $25,000 threshold by 6 November 2026 to proceed to production. Physical rewards are estimated to ship by March 2028, with core digital PDFs slated for release in August 2027.
