Shane and James are here again to bring you some fun content. Today we channel our inner Genie and we are talking about our 9th Age Wishlist. Things we would love to see, and hope gets changed in the 9th Age community and game mechanics.
We hope you enjoy the show. Episode 33 is up and ready for your listening pleasure.
~S&J
The Wargamer Project Podcast 
Hi guys Giladis from 9th Age here 🙂
It was interesting listening to this so I decided to comment because I can feel your passion.
Before we start. Shane you are an asshole 😛
1. Background
We are painfully aware that the volume that has been released up to this point is less than many background oriented hobbyists, myself included, would like to have, but we are doing what we can with the resources at our disposal. The background team has been working hard since the end of September 2015 and the amount of writing produced is enormous. As a comparison the sub-forum containing the works of the background team is only smaller than General, DH, HE, KoE and WDG sub-forums and there is only 15 of us in there 😀
As I was listening to your podcast I was finishing editing a word document on Elves in the 9th Age. It is just general stuff with some foray into detail on some places and units and as it stands it is 43 pages long Calibri 11, justified, spacing 1.0. And it can only grow from there.
It is also important to know that we had a slight change in the vision how the background should in the end look like or how detailed it should during 2016, so our first two books might be a bit on the light side from what is our vision now and both books will get updated when their turn comes for army redesign under 2.0 rules.
As for the narrative you have mentioned I am not sure we can provide that as the background team is not building a story, but a setting for individual players or groups of players to places their stories in and evolved them to their own tastes.
In addition to the background that has been released up to this point in Army Books, Rulebook and Paths of Magic there will in the future be other books that will contain background. Some like the background compendium will be exclusively devoted to it.
2. Magic
The background for the magic was released last year with the full Paths of Magic book and the current call to the community to provide their own ideas is just that. People behind the rules want to include the community into the brainstorming, as the likelihood that of coming up with something cool and mechanically sound increases. This does not mean just one of those proposals will be picked as the thing (though it could happen), but they will serve as inspiration and an idea poll for the work that will be done by the rules writers. It is a big task and I know I will spend many hours just going through these things checking which ideas and mechanics are setting compatible.
3. Map
I feel the point behind the map was missed. The map is not a standalone and is supported geography section in the full Rulebook to give further insight on the world as we work on other material. The fact we made it available outside the rulebook was because we wanted to provide it to anyone who would like to use so they would have to copy-paste out of a PDF. Here is also another issue that I feel has been missed. This is not a “modern” map nor it tries to be either visually or conceptually. All our background material is being produced in world from a perspective of an unreliable narrator. The map that is in the Rulebook as well as the two maps in UD and SE Army Books are artistic renderings of how maps could look in the world of the 9th Age. Our inspiration came from the works such as Pomponius Mela, Hecataeus of Miletus, Al-Idrisi and Fra Mauro. So there is no scale, the shapes and sizes are inaccurate and so forth. Just in case you are wondering there is a by the standards of modern cartography sound master map. It is a 1:16 000 000 monstrosity created way back in October of 2015 and is used as a starting point for all of our work. The size of the 9th Age world is identical to earth and continents are in the same location and have the same size even though the coastlines have been changed in order to ensure the world we are creating can have climate and sea current models as close as possible to Earth to ease the work in determining the distribution of biomes. So when we come the Highborn Elves army book it is not impossible we do another world map but from their perspective and with a maritime conceptual orientation not that dissimilar from lets say Piri Reis map, with more focus on the sea and coastal areas and the interior not being important to the map maker.
4. 2.0 Rules Set
You will probably be glad to hear that the 2.0 Rulebook rules set is intended to be frozen for a few years once it gets published. On the other hand the Army Books will be slowly redesigned and updated to full status with artwork and background to accompany the rules.
5. Legendary Characters
We have every intention to release a Legendary Characters Compendium as a freestanding material. Probably several volumes over time. This/these document(s) will provide additional background material on the characters as well as rules and artwork. There is already work being done by some of the companies that support us such as Avatars of War to bring the first of our legendary characters, Sunna, to life.
6. New Army
We have plans to release new armies in the future and there is plenty of background material from which they can be developed. Some more visually recognisable others far less so. On the issue of adding new units to the existing armies we for the time being have an inclination to be a bit on the conservative side as we do not want to favour any particular company on the market. The units that currently exists in armies are based on hobbyists existing collections and one of our main motivations was to allow people to play with what they have. In the future when we will contemplate adding new stuff it will either have to be supported on the marked by several producers or be a completely new thing that companies can then develop based on our concepts. Therefore it is highly unlikely we are going to add new stuff just because any one company brings out something cool looking.
Well this took longer than intended 😀
If you want to discuss these things further I am open to it, or if you want to talk about other stuff, either here, on the 9th Age forums or in your show.
Cheers
Marko
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