The Electrum Archive - Issue 01
A downloadable zine
“On Orn the pauper dreams of a liquid, black as starless night. The power of gods, distilled into midnight ink.”
The Electrum Archive is a science-fantasy TTRPG zine series inspired by the worlds of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Dark Sun and Ultraviolet Grasslands. It uses simple core rules inspired by other OSR games like Cairn, Mausritter and Whitehack to quickly get you started playing.
The game is set on the world of Orn, a place long ago abandoned by an alien race now known as the Elders. The magical ink left behind in the shipwrecks of these ancient aliens is now used as currency and inhaled by warlocks as fuel for their spell casting. Adventurers called inkseekers venture out into the decaying world beyond the cities ruled over by scheming Merchant Houses to look for Elder artefacts and ink.
Winner of The Awards 2023!
What's in this first zine?
- A robust system of core rules and procedures to get you started exploring Orn.
- A large point crawl map of the inhabited portion of Orn.
- Descriptions of the eight major factions and their schemes.
- 60 plot hooks spread over six detailed regions to kickstart your adventure.
- 120 engaging encounters to come across on your journeys.
- A bestiary with over 30 monsters to discover and a table for generating NPCs.
Physical Copies
The first print run sold out! If you want to get your hands on a copy of the second printing, you can pre-order it here!
Physical copies are available through:
- ALL THE PROBLEMS IN THIS WORLD in Germany [SOLD OUT]
- Peregrine Coast Press in the UK [SOLD OUT]
- Exalted Funeral in the US [SOLD OUT]
- Ratti Incantati in Canada [SOLD OUT]
Resources and Third-Party License
Check out electrumarchive.com for resources like digital character sheets! It also contains a third-party license if you want to create and publish your own hacks and supplements :)
Playlist
To set the mood while you are reading the zine or while you are playing, Sam Leigh has put together a wonderful playlist for The Electrum Archive.
Want to review the game?
If you are looking to review this game on stream, a blog post, or some other channel, please grab a community copy! Tag me @emielboven and I'll share your review and add 10 more community copies.
Join the Cult!
Come hang out in the CULT OF THE LIZARD KING Discord!
Purchase
In order to download this zine you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $12 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
Support this zine at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Community Copies
If you can't afford the full zine please grab a copy of it for free! If you just want to see the free rules, check the demo section below.
New community copies get added when people buy or review the game!
- Every sale adds a community copy.
- Each review or actual play adds 10 new community copies.
- Each sale of 18 USD or more adds 5 new community copies.
Download demo
Development log
- 1.3 UpdateJun 28, 2023
- 1.2 UpdateMar 13, 2023
- The Electrum Archive Issue 02 is now live on KickstarterFeb 01, 2023
- Issue 02 Kickstarter AnnouncementDec 06, 2022
- Physical copies in North America!Nov 24, 2022
- Physical copies!Nov 16, 2022
- 1.1 UpdateSep 15, 2022
- The Electrum Archive - Issue 01 is out now!Aug 30, 2022
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
This is lovely, though I do have two questions, one is gameplay related the other to the listed inspirations.
The first is how much leeway do advantages/levelling up give you after you made your character, because the stats are very unforgiving for a d10 system (since you can accidentally end up with a character who has like 1 point in each stat)
The second would be though it's not listed the game oozes the same vibes Caves of Qud has, did anyone on the team play it? Might just be the Morrowind insiprations. Lovely game though great work!
Thank you!
To answer your questions:
1. Leveling up and advantages give some leeway after rolling a bad character, but your character will probably still struggle more than others. However, it's not as bad as it might look at first glance, since there are three other things that smooth it over a bit:
2. I've played a bunch of Caves of Qud! I love that game, and even though it wasn't a direct inspiration it must have influenced my thinking about TEA in some ways while writing it :)
Thank you for the reply! Glad to see you're a fan of the game as well, can't wait to play TEA with friends as soon as I can get a group together.
I love Morrowind. I love the artstyle. I love that you can download the rules for free.
This is a great zine and a great, unique world you've created!
I'm looking forward to preordering the second print run in the new year, when my finances bounce back :D
Thank you so much!
Quick question, sorry if this is somewhere and i just missed it. It's about backstab and tripling damage on update 1.3. When do you count Armor into the damage? during backstab is it armor first then triple, or triple then armor?
For example a fixer rolls for backstab damage and gets 3, enemy armor is two. Do you triple then for 9 and count the two armor making it 7? Or are you meant to run it as the two armor lowering the three to one and tripling it to 3 damage?
Armor is subtracted after the damage has been tripled. So in your example the fixer would deal 7 damage (roll of 3, tripled to 9, reduced to 7 by the opponent's Armor Value of 2)
I hope this helps!
alright dope, thanks for the quick reply!
Hello! Thank you for a such great game :) Do you have in plans to create some kind of solo rules?
Not currently, but I had solo games in mind while working on the first issue. So, if you use some kind of GM emulator, the random tables presented in issue 01 lend themselves as seeds for solo campaigns :)
Hello Emiel :) great stuff. Ranged weapons say you can attack an adjucent zone, does that mean that ranged weapons cant be used in melee?
Yes, they can't be used in melee
For those of us that funded the original printing, where do we get the updated pdf files from? I can't seem to figure out where that download came from.
If you email me at emielboven[at]gmail.com I'll send you a download link :)
Man, what a wonderful zine. It reminds me so much of Mœbius, both the art and setting/story.
Definitely anxious to play but just reading through the zine itself is definitely worth the price!
Thank you!
I'm absolutely in love with this game. It's probably the best rpg zine I've ever encountered. Can't wait to see more.
Thank you so much! That means a lot :)
Just backed the physical legacy option, can't wait to play :)
I’ve had this for a long while but had shamefully not given it the in-depth read it deserves. I’ve finally remedied that and gosh it’s just so dang good.
As soon as physical stock is back in at Exalted Funeral, I'll pick it up... I still cling to physical over virtual copies.
That might take a while since I'm all out of the first print. I'll be reprinting the first zine as part of the second zine's Kickstarter campaign, so you can consider picking it up there :)
Same question, great answer. Will back.
Just bought this zine in Subcultures- Netherlands!
Absolutely loving it!
Awesome! Thank you :)
Hey there, I added your zine to Goodreads a while back, and I've written a review there!
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62894339-the-electrum-archive
Thank you so much!
Any word on how to get a paper copy? Have been loving it so far with the pdf!
Yes! You can get a copy as part of this bundle.
If you want to buy just this zine, there are copies currently on their way to the following shops:
So keep an eye on those :)
Seems like ALL THE PROBLEMS IN THIS WORLD in Germany doesn't have at all... I hope there will be a restocking. I'm really looking forward to getting a physical copy. It seems like I blew my chance
The copies haven't reached the store yet, so there will still be a chance for you to get your hands on a physical copy :) And if they sell out quickly I'll make sure to send over more to keep them stocked
Thank you for clarifying!
They are now available!
Have played two games of this and am absolutely loving it, got a community copy but will definitely be buying when I can. Seriously awesome, can't wait for more! Setting is awesome, mechanics are simple and very quick to get things going. I LOVE the spell system, simple yet flexible and super interesting. Tons of encounters and generators. Just super solid all around.
Thank you!
This is so cool! I've read almost 50% of the zine now. This reminds of Caves of Qud and I really love it!
Hell yeah :D
I grew up on Nausicaa, Moebius and Morrowind. I am looking forward to running this, I would have loved this when I was sixteen. Really lovely stuff!
Thank you so much, that means a lot! :)
I saw this on the OSRRPG Instagram page and was intrigued. Really glad I grabbed this. The mechanics are light, but a little more meaty than a lot of other light systems (which I am grateful for), the setting REALLY freakin' neat, and the art is perfect for what this zine brings to the table.
I really can't wait for Volume 2. I hope it has more than the Irr too. I am pretty stoked to learn about the Sunless Princedoms, but I'd also love some more worldbuilding and weird stuff. I put on my Electric Wizard playlist and dove deep into the zine. So glad I nabbed this!
Thank you so much! Reading this made me really happy :)
Hello, how many players is this designed for? I can't see that info anywhere - sorry if I'm just blind :-) Can it be played/adapted for solo?
I like playing it with 2-5 people, but you can just scale encounter sizes to your liking so adapting it for solo play shouldn't be too much trouble. The encounters tables are filled with encounters that can spiral into their own sub-adventures so I think that would help a bunch when playing without a Game Master.
Is there a mailing list or some other way to be notified when the physical version goes on sale?
I'll post about it on my Twitter @emielboven and on here, but you can also subscribe to my monthly newsletter: https://emielboven.substack.com/
I absolutely love the style of this, it's gorgeous. I bought the digital and am following for news about the print version when available.
Thank you :)
This is fantastic. I played a couple sessions on the discord during the playtest, and really enjoyed it. Now that I see art for the orb drones, they're even scarier than imagined haha.
This book looks great! I’m in love with the art. I’m going to hold off for a physical copy in October. Can you tell us what storefront will carry it?
Thank you!
I haven't officially approached any other retailers yet but Ratti Incantatti in Canada and LFOSR in the US will definitely stock them. ALL THE PROBLEMS IN THE WORLD in Germany will probably also sell them since they were happy to carry my other game DURF :)
Will the physical copy include a copy of the PDF? Or some way to put the cost of the PDF towards the physical copy if we purchase the PDF now?
Might depend a bit on the shop but I'll try to make it so that physical copies include a digital PDF :)
Sounds good. I'll be playing my first DURF game this weekend which I'm looking forward to, and super excited to see this has finally released too.
Enjoy!
This is so incredibly well done. I’ve just skimmed it and already have a dozen ideas of things to incorporate into my own games. If you took everything that’s inspiring and mind-bending about science fantasy of the Moebius/Heavy Metal variety and distilled it down into one zine, you’d get The Electrum Archive.
Thank you, David!