Twenty-five stood in a line, cloaked in thick brown robes with voluminous sleeves and large hoods that were pulled low to hide their faces. Quiet and humble, they kept their heads bowed, their shoulders stooped, and their hands folded before them, though not a digit showed from beneath the folds of cloth, not a flash of flesh in the whole line.
“Piety, dignity, poverty”, the old Father Abbot intoned in his nasal voice. He stood alone on the balcony above the main entrance of St.-Mere-Abelle, the most prominent monastery in all the kingdom of Honce-the-Bear, in the northern temperate zone of Corona. Intertwined with the rocky cliffs of the southeastern coast, St.-Mere-Abelle had stood solemn and dark for nearly a millennium, with each generation of monks adding their toil and craftsmanship to the already huge structure. Its gray rock walls seemed to grow right from the solid stone, an extension of the earth’s power.
“Do you willingly enter the service of God?” the Father Abbot asked.
The twenty-five responded with a unified “Yes, say I!”
–The Demon Awakens
One of the best fantasy writers of our age is none other than R.A. Salvatore. He’s been a big name in the Forgotten Realms series for Dungeons & Dragons for as long as I can remember. Not only is Salvatore a great author, but he’s a gamer at his core, too. What many don’t know is that some time ago Salvatore sat down and, after playing tons of other tabletop RPGs, decided to make his own game. After some time he let it sit on the back burner and discovered that his son was following in his footsteps.
Salvatore took some time to examine the game his son was making, and realized that it would fit together perfectly with his own. The duo sat down and decided to marry the two gaming systems together, and Demon Wars: Reformation was born from their labor. Now both father and son are working to bring their new game to the forefront, and they’ve posted a campaign for it on Kickstarter. The great news is, the campaign is already funded, and it only has about 48 hours to go!
Demon Wars: Reformation takes place in the world of Corona, immediately following the events in the novel Immortalis. Players take the role of monks from the Abellican Church as they set out to smite the evil that’s creeping across the land. Something that really catches me about Demon Wars: Reformation is that it uses the percentile dice instead of your normal D20s when making rolls. Salvatore commented on using these dice, saying, “It adds more nuance to the game, and as far as complexity goes, it’s good for the brain to do a little 2-digit adding. Exercise your brain!”
You can check out the game on its Kickstarter page, and if you want in, now’s the time to jump! Salvatore and his son have been working to bring us a throwback tabletop RPG that reminds us of the good old days, and Demon Wars: Reformation is the game to do just that. The game is set to ship in April of 2014, so it won’t be too long before Demon Wars: Reformation takes the community by storm.