Eldfall Chronicles Coming To Kickstarter May 18th
April 22, 2021 by avernos
Over the past few months, we've been keeping an eye on the upcoming fantasy skirmish game from Freecompany, the Eldfall Chronicles. We've been given a glimpse into the world, the factions and even a bit of the gameplay and now we have confirmation of the date it's coming to Kickstarter on 18th May if you want to stay informed you can sign up on their website now.
Eldfall Chronicles Core Box Preview
The guys behind the game have released the beta rules and have a very active community on their Discord server where they are going through extensive playtesting in advance to bring the best version of the game they can to people's tabletops when it arrives. So if you are interested in helping to shape the game and the world it's definitely worth jumping in and helping out.
Apart from the rules we now have seen not only the all renders of the core faction miniatures but also the first preproduction models from the world of Calad and they look like the finished models capture all of the details of the renders and they look absolutely beautiful I can see a lot of people getting use out of these in a lot of games with that much individual character while still having a feel of a coherent faction.
Citadel Guard v Hunters-Guild // Eldfall Chronicles
Everything I've seen so far is very exciting, from the blend of fantasy and history to build their world through to the open beta and community engagement Freecompany are doing everything in their power to make Eldfall Chronicles the best game it can be and I think it's refreshing to see this effort being poured into the game in advance. Often beta testing only seems to start after campaigns and I think it's an excellent sign of their expectations for where they can take the world in the future.
Do you feel like jumping into the world of Calad?
"Everything I've seen so far is very exciting, from the blend of fantasy and history to build their world through to the open beta and community engagement Freecompany are doing everything in their power to make Eldfall Chronicles the best game it can be"
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Those look really good.
Well the figures look fantastic so that’s a great start to the game.
To be honest, I would seriously not consider backing this due to the fact it’s almost certainly going to cop a lawsuit from Corvus Belli, not to mention public backlash when people work out what is going on here. Normally when you’re plagiarising rules you at least try and shift things up a bit – these rules are pretty much just cut and paste 🙁
Why would a lawsuit come from Corvus Belli ?
As one of the developers, I am sad to see it came across this way. I don’t want to get involved in the comments, but I felt I needed to address this.
I can say there are certain similarities to Infinity, which we did address before. That said, when we wrote the core rules, we took no shortcuts. With all respect to Corvus Belli, a company that we admire greatly, it was never our intention to create a »fantasy Infinity the game«; we wanted to create a new game that at the same time resembles RPGs and puts the players into the role of a leader of a small party, as if you’d go on a (battle) adventure in a unique fantasy setting based on living history.
The team working on this consists of proud gamers and we are excited about many games: we are proud that we took a lot of inspiration from MMORPGS, Divinity, Sekiro, Wither, MTG, YGO, DnD, Frostgrave etc. It always served as inspiration, since these things are all awesome and hard to get out of minds, but it was never a destination. I’m looking through the N4 rules now and to name the big similarities: the active and reactive role, movement (to some extent) and the use of D20 are indeed similar. We took these decisions mainly because in our opinion they reflect realistic battles the most. All three of the main developers train martial arts and study history; we appreciate mechanics that are closer to realism.
However, Eldfall has multiple different modes of play: pvp (where your party plays against another player), pve (where you play against an AI, controlling creatures and other hostiles), co-op (where players team up and go on a quest to face greater foes). The game is usually played with only 3–5 character models, each with unique abilities and classes that affect how they are played and how they synergize with others. They can also be customized by upgrade cards. The game also has »Leaders«, which buff or de-buff models. There are also scheme and event cards, that affect the general flow of the game and can differ from faction to faction. Each model has stamina; this determines how many times a model can activate and react each turn and even more so, how it handles itself in combat. Since the game deeply revolves around magic, it also has various kinds of spell mechanics (summoning) and so on.
Apologies for the long text and any concerns we might have caused.
T-Chan, these basic rules are not ‘similar’. That’s a weasel word. They are ‘identical’. You certainly have created a wide range of other content that is very different to Infinity and that’s awesome. But you should not be trying to obfuscate that you lifted the basic premise, changed the names, and are trying to pass that off as ‘original’. It is not.
Again, if I were you I would contact CB and ASK if they are OK with this. Send them an email, they’re nice people. It’s the polite and sensible thing to do. If they give you their blessing, go nuts!
But if they don’t, and they tell you that it’s something they may consider pursuing legally, then you can find that out BEFORE you engage in the massive effort of launching a game, not AFTER.
It will take you five minutes to send an email that may define the entire future of your game. That’s probably five minutes well spent.
And if you don’t want to engage in that basic act of politeness, I would suggest you read
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/intellectual_property_law/publications/landslide/2014-15/march-april/not-playing-around-board-games-intellectual-property-law/
an investigate whether or not CB have patented their system, because if they have you are in clear breach (especially as you admit right here to having read their rules!). And then check how EU/Spanish law differs, as it probably will.
But rather than do all that, just send an email. You never know, CB may love what you do and help you elevate your game to their community. Always better to try and create a positive situation if you can.
Thank you sincerely for your concern!
We will do all that is possible to make this right. We’ve sent them an e-mail.
I do believe that in this situation it is the best we can do if the rules came across as you’ve said. Again, I am sorry for this conundrum, but I do stand behind what I’ve written before.
That’s really good to hear. In most cases, people are reasonable. It’s just when someone is surprised by something they can often act negatively, which is why I mentioned it.
As an Infinity warcor, I can’t say I understand this comment. I mean, I can see some design similarities with the mechanics, but if we used this kind of criteria thousands of boardgames, wargames and PC games would be plagiarism…
As the guy who edited all three of the first editions of Infinity from before it released onwards, I’m more than familiar with the system. And yeah, there’s more than a few examples where people lifted systems directly, that doesn’t make it something that it isn’t.
The fundamental premise of Infinity is an active/reactive turn system, using a D20 skill resolution, success determined by highest successful roll. It uses this D20 resolution in every way except for one notable exception – the Armor stat, in which the attacker must roll over. Infinity is also characterised by a system with an extremely wide range of skills and ‘states’ to leverage its primary focus as a skirmish game.
In other words, exactly the same system.
The mechanics are lifted whole cloth, let’s not mess around here. Now whether that’s something that can or will be pursued in court would be down to CB, chances are they won’t care.
But pretending that the fundamental basis of this system isn’t identical to Infinity is disingenuous at best. Better to acknowledge that and deal with it openly than to somehow pretend these identical mechanics are an ‘original’ creation, which they are not or that the developers ‘accidentally’ copied the exact fundamental premise when they clearly have heard of Infinity and read it.
Except myy understanding is that you can’t copyright ideas, processes and mechanics
That depends on how you structure your IP. It also depends on where you proceed any lawsuits.
Point being, if you’re going to ‘borrow’ someone’s work, you at least have the politeness and common sense to check with them first. Not only for legal reasons, but for community ones too, not to mention basic decency.
Did you contact Corvus Belli privately about this before making a public accusation and commenting on Corvus Belli’s likely legal response? I think that would have been the polite thing to do, would it not?
I note that even though the “chances are [Corvus Belli] won’t care” this game is still “almost certainly going to cop a lawsuit from Corvus Belli”.
In any case i expect Corvus Belli will be extremely grateful to you for making an issue of this on their behalf.
It’s not an ‘accusation’, it’s a statement of simple fact. These are very different things.
If the developers don’t bother to reach out, then they might be lucky and no one will do anything.
Or they might put a whole pile of effort into their project, collect a lot of peoples’ money and then have it all come crashing down painfully.
Either way, not my problem, and this isn’t the court of law you seem to think it is. Instead, it’s a place for them to have something safely pointed out that they should have thought of at the beginning of their project.
Also, making these kinds of pointless snarky comments doesn’t make the world a better place and just exacerbates whatever personal issues drove you to make them, so I suggest you refrain in future for your own health if nothing else.
OK, fifteen minutes of fame over… back to gaming.
The Courts have said you cannot patent/copyright a game mechanic. Game mechanics have been taken and used in many different games. Unless you are a lawyer in this area, I say you have no standing no matter how many books you have edited.
As in all matters regarding IP, it is better to consult a lawyer who can defend you in court first. Asking pretty please permission makes no sense because if the other person just does not want to give permission for whatever non-legal reason, they can just say no. That is not the same as having a legal right. And, giving permission that today they will not sue you does not mean that tomorrow they will not without a legal document. This is something for a copyright lawyer and not stupid internet talk.
For example, there are plenty of games where you roll a die and then look at tables to see what the result of the die roll means. That US courts have said that is to common and general that you cannot copyright or patent that mechanic. It must be so unique that it could not be confused from another and must show something that is significantly different. Meaning, making those tables round or having a sub-table that takes you to another table is not significantly different that someone else could not come up with that idea.
In the case of action/reaction, it is my belief they would say the same. Different base sizes, they would conclude the same.
Unless you copy word for word the rules (and there is court precedence about this too if words are common use for a “intended operation”) which can be considered plagiarism which is illegal, game mechanics as a whole cannot be copyrighted.
In my view, we do not know and it is discussion between the game designer and a lawyer.
‘The Courts have said’ have they?
Which courts mate? Mozambique? Bhutan? I mean if you bothered, there’s a link I posted right above that would explain this to you.
IP law is considerably more complicated than you seem to understand, and as I have repeatedly said, depends where and how you proceed with any action.
You also seem confused and somewhat aggressive. First you say it’s not an issue that can be patented. Then you say you should lawyer up and not send emails.
Of course you send an email first. That way, you know whether or not you’re facing outright threat of legal action from the get go. And, more to the point, if you’re making profit from something someone else thought of, it’s basic politeness to do so assuming you are doing this in good faith, which these guys seem to be.
Speaking of politeness, next time you think to spray like that, do a Google search first.
Short answer – in the US at least, you can indeed patent mechanics. The US patent system is something of a joke and it’s not hard to play it to your advantage, with the person with the most money to burn generally winning.
https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2011/12/22/patenting-board-games-101/
Blah, blah, blah. Did you get fired by the development team?
No, but you were clearly bullied in school and need to act out your issues.
Looks freaking amazing! Can’t wait for it! And meanwhile, why not call your mother it has been a while and she misses you. (#squirrel lord edit)
Not sure if this is woefully tone deaf or satirical, hoping the latter as I got a good chuckle.
Spam.
IMHO, there are a ton of game systems available. A game system is only fun if you have a lot of other people who want to play it with you and also pay money into the system.
IMHO, you should follow the path that Blacklist Games has done. They offered up the miniatures in their first KS. They got a feel for how many people wanted these miniatures and did a survey for their miniature agnostic game book. Then they had a second KS for the game book + accessories and because everyone loved the miniatures from the first KS, they more than doubled the funds and backers for their second KS.
This also allowed for a lot of community feedback. People who only wanted the miniatures, just pledged for the miniatures and those who wanted a skirmish game were able to get the whole game in the second KS.
As for myself, I would be interested in the miniatures but not interested in the ruleset demo provided.
I also like the idea of just being ale to scoop up the mini’s. They look fabulous.
The Kickstarter will be primarily for the miniatures. The rules and other documents will be open-source 🙂