The Electrum Archive - Free Rules
A downloadable game
This is the free rules PDF of The Electrum Archive. For a better look at the world of Orn consider picking up the first zine.
The Electrum Archive is a science-fantasy tabletop RPG, inspired by games like The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Ultraviolet Grasslands, Suldokar's Wake, and Cairn. It is being developed through zines that detail parts of the world of Orn and add new rules and procedures for you to use at the table.
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.
Looking for an adventure to run?
The second issue of The Electrum Archive contains two adventures to kickstart your campaign on Orn: a dungeoncrawl through an old tomb which now houses a fleshgrafter and her experiments, and a heist to steal an item from an influential warlock's tower.
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.
Join the Cult!
Come hang out in the CULT OF THE LIZARD KING Discord!
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Development log
- 1.4 Update and Issue 02Apr 30, 2024
- Update 1.3Jun 28, 2023
Comments
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This looks fascinating, both the rules and the world. I’m curious as to what level you’d expect game play to reach. It looks like it would sustain up to level 7 or 8 fairly easily on a first skim of the rules, but I’m wondering if you’ve any experience in play for this?
In my experience, it takes around 35-40 sessions to reach level 8. I'm a big proponent of systems where you actually get to reach the later levels and do cool stuff, so this feels like a good amount of sessions before players get to retire their character and wrap up a campaign. The first few levels go fairly quick (players will generally reach level 3 after around 3 sessions) but it slows down a bit after that.
As for adventures to sustain a campaign of that size, issue 02 will have two adventures in it which will roughly take a party up to level 3 or 4, and has a system for handling downtime in between. A bigger third adventure is also planned for after which will probably take players up to level 6. But TEA is made to support sandbox play, so just letting players come up with their own goals and letting them run wild using only the factions and encounters in the first issue will get you pretty far if you're comfortable with some improvisation :)
A rough sandbox and a few things to start the PCs off (e.g. an initial job, or patron) is often how I do things these days, but once the starting phase is over the players have normally grounded themselves in the world and start following up on the things they’ve found that interest them, so I’m used to a certain amount of improvisation. Good to see you’re looking at a longer view for the game. 35-40 sessions is a long campaign for us these days, and I’d like to get back to something like that. TEA is something I’ll be keeping in mind.