British game company Shades of Vengeance has launched an incredible new tabletop RPG on Kickstarter, Era Silence, where characters may not speak.
Tabletop roleplaying games deliver an immersive, collaborative storytelling experience that stirs the imagination, hones the players’ social and acting skills, promotes tactical thinking as well as emotional intelligence, and simply virtually guarantees a good time for all involved. Most RPGs can be defined by a number of tropes, including in-character dialogue… but what if the characters find it impossible to communicate with each other verbally?
Era: Silence is an RPG designed for single-session play that has gamers take on the role of young warriors who have to prove themselves in an astral plane in order to earn their True Names.
The Setting
In Era: Silence, the small, nomadic Wolf Clan, the methodical Cobalt Eel Clan and the volcano-dwelling Gold Salamander Clan all share the same tradition: promising warriors who seek to earn their True Names go to the mystic Oracle during Proving Season. If chosen by its priestesses, their astral selves are projected to another plane known as the Isle of Silence. These new versions of themselves often have different physical or even mental traits, but have to work together to overcome a set of Challenges determined by the letters they need to spell their True Names. Those who fail are doomed to stay on the Isle forever and help other warriors in their own quests.
The System
Era: Silence uses a trimmed-down version of the easy-to-learn d10 Era System which also powers the other Shades of Vengeance roleplaying games, including Era: The Consortium, Era: Lyres, Era: Survival and Era: The Empowered. Although it is highly compatible with those RPGs, Era: Silence is more suited towards shorter, single-play sessions, whereas most of the other Era games (except perhaps Lyres) are ideal for longer campaigns that entail a virtually unlimited amount of multi-hour game sessions. However, Era: Silence is also easily adaptable to entire campaigns in and of by itself, which makes for a very interesting take on a fantasy setting.
What Makes It Unique?
Aside from the setting and the focus on shorter sessions, Era: Silence characters cannot talk to each other. Even though players will still describe to their friends and game master what their characters are doing, they aren’t allowed to use in-character speech, since this is impossible in their astral forms. It’s a great, innovative new way of tackling the entire acting experience that challenges everyone involved to come up with their best descriptions and sign language. During playtesting, this aspect made quite a splash and we’re sure you’ll find it amazing too!
Watch the Era: Silence Kickstarter video:
You can head on over to Kickstarter and support Era: Silence right now and please share with your friends.
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