Primorbis Theme
Three hundred million years ago on this very planet, intelligent life evolved on earth. This life took on a form unfamiliar to what we would recognize as human, yet they shared some uncanny qualities to ourselves. These first people, the Primogen, grew a vast civilization with advanced technologies and intelligence and abilities unimaginable by even today’s standards. Yet, with all their prosperity, they too were inevitably drawn to a fate of fractures and eventual collapse of their society and ultimately their own race.
In the ashes of their destruction, the Primogen race divided and isolated within their own regions for nearly 30 million years. In isolation, each evolved unique characteristics that allowed them to adapt and thrive to their respective environments. They changed until the Primogen were no more. Primorbis begins on earth on a continent on the opposite side of the planet from Pangea. This continent since has been consumed by beneath the expanding tectonic plates that formed the modern world, thus destroying this once ancient advanced set of races.
Basic Concepts
In Primorbis, you take on the persona of one of 20+ starting characters either by yourself or with a group. You can select a beginning set of quests that will teach you about the game and your surroundings. Each character has their own personal quest, and new quests are discovered as you play. As you play, your character will acquire and train new skills and abilities while also discovering new items, weapons, resources, and special abilities.
Primorbis takes place on two different levels of game play. At the top level, characters explore an open world map uncovering over 250 world map tiles to reveal new lands. The world map is broken up into 20 different geographic regions representing the 20 different races that exist in the world. These world map tiles represent one of two factions and a broad range of difficulty levels that you yourself will have to level up in order to explore. Each world map tile represents roughly 1000 square miles of land.
At the lower level of the game, each world map tile contains up to 10 different locations. These locations include Cities, Capitals, Villages, and a large number of Scenarios each with their own maps to explore and creatures to encounter. Creatures that include local animals, monsters, and bosses to battle. Each scenario will come with its own success criteria which will vary widely from one to the next. In these scenarios, you may uncover a number of items including resources and weapons that can be taken back to town for selling and trading.
Primorbis is an open world game. While you start the game with one personal quest and a group quest, it’s up to you how to play. The game is filled with hidden quests to uncover, guilds to join, and scenarios to explore. To that extent, you and your friends decide how to play.
Primorbis can be either cooperative or competitive. You decide what faction you align yourself to along with your group. Every decision you make may bring you closer to one another or further away. Set yourself too far apart and you may find yourself at odds with others leading to your isolation.
Design
There are a few key elements that make Primorbis stand apart from all other table top games. I believe that with successful implementation of a game with these aspects this game will be the world’s greatest tabletop game.
Open World: Earlier I described how this is an open world game. By that, mean that although the game will have hundreds of different quests and associated story lines, none of them are required. Each player can choose for themselves where to go, and what to do. You may choose to complete quests, or you may choose to explore the world. You might prefer to search for and trade rare items, or aspire to find the most expensive and rare weapons in the game. You may aspire to wealth, fame, glory or all of them at once. No matter what you desire, you decide how to play this game and all along you will discover secrets and adventures that you may not be able to help yourself but be pulled into.
Role Playing Game: Primorbis is a roll playing game. Each player will select and customize a character representative of themselves, or who they would like to be in this strange world. They will learn about their character, discover their secrets of who they are. As your character advances in the game, you will have endless opportunities to tailor their skills and abilities to your liking. The game will not require a “dungeon master”, allowing every player to be able to play a character. An extensive set of pre-programmed AI capabilities will be built into the creatures (Animals, Monsters, and Bosses) of the game will be included to allow this, and it will be done in a fashion that ensure a high level of variability even when playing the same scenarios more than once to maximize the enjoyment of replay-ability.
Asynchronous Game Play: Unlike most games that require a very specific turn order for all players. While some of this will be the case in scenario play, Primorbis will allow for parallel game play in the world exploration phases by a VERY LARGE number of players at the same time through asynchronous game play mechanics based in real-time. This game will have, in theory, no maximum number of players, or at least not one limited by the game rules and mechanics. Nothing is worse having 7 friends with only 6 player games. I want to make sure everyone of your friends can join in the fun. The trade-off of most games with large number of players is having individuals sitting idle while everyone else takes their turn.
Portable Characters: Most importantly, your character in your game will pack up into it’s own character box that can be taken with you to game night. If your friends have a copy of the game, you can play with your character on any other copy of the game. In this regard the game is highly portable even though the full game will likely be on a scale bigger than any game ever seen before. This feature will allow you to bring your character to a friends house with their own copy of the game without having to bring everything with you.
Extreme Organization: Time is precious. One of the greatest limiting factors in many RPG style board games is the setup and takedown times. I know some of my favorite games take nearly 30 minutes to set up and another 30 minutes to put it all away. This time takes away from game play, and reduces the frequency at which myself and others can enjoy the game. Game X will be designed with organization in mind. Every component, card, board, miniature, and more will all be designed with packaging and accessibility for set-up in mind. The goal will be to create a game that is so well organized that it can be setup to play in less than 5 minutes. I know it’s going to be a challenge, but I think it’s incredibly important.
With these characteristics, I believe Primorbis will be the first true MMTRPG (Massive Multi-player Tabletop Role Playing Game) of its kind and a truly unique gaming experience. This just scratches the surface of Primorbis, which will also feature revolutionary game storage that will allow you to set up and take down the game in just minutes. Primorbis will also be made with some of the highest quality components, materials, and artistic design making it truly unlike any board game you’ve ever seen. In order to build this game, I plan to deliver it in 20 parts. Each release will be for a single region that will have interconnected elements of game play added with each expansion. Any mistakes from prior versions will be corrected and improved on in the next. This should also make each iteration of Primorbis more reasonably affordable than if all 20 regions were to be produced and sold in a single package.
What’s Next
Now that you’ve learned the high level details of Primorbis, click on the link below and read more about The World of the lost Primogen and discover the regions and races.