CORE CONCEPTS
Before learning the rules of combat, campaigns and scenarios, there are a few ideas that define how Mortisphere works.
The game is built around four central concepts:
- Dice represent living, dead or otherwise existing beings. - Crews are built from individuals rather than anonymous troops. - Scenarios are narrative conflicts with changing objectives. - The campaign remembers what happens.
Understanding these concepts is the foundation for everything that follows.
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DICE ARE CREATURES
In Mortisphere, every member of a crew is represented by a single die.
The die is not a health counter, a token or an abstract value.
The die is the creature.
A d6 is not six creatures.
It is one creature with a value of six.
A d12 is not twelve points of strength spread across a unit.
It is one being, machine, organism or entity that has the potential represented by a d12.
The die determines the being's value when creating a crew, but it also represents its current power.
A larger die represents something greater:
- More dangerous. - More capable. - More difficult to destroy. - More expensive to recruit or improve.
However, every creature has the potential to become important.
A small creature that survives battle after battle may become one of the most valuable members of a crew.
A powerful creature that falls during its first encounter becomes nothing more than another forgotten corpse on Mortisphere.
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THE VALUE OF EXISTENCE
Everything in Mortisphere is measured by what remains.
A creature's die size represents its existence value.
The standard values are:
Die| Value d4| 4 d6| 6 d8| 8 d10| 10 d12| 12 d20| 20
When creating a crew, players spend points to recruit members.
A d8 costs 8 points.
A d20 costs 20 points.
The greater the creature, the more of your crew's resources it consumes.
A crew built around a single enormous entity will have very different strengths and weaknesses compared to a crew made of many smaller survivors.
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CREWS
A crew is a collection of individuals brought together by circumstance, necessity or shared purpose.
They may be:
- Mercenaries seeking payment. - Survivors searching for a place in the final age. - Mycelian organisms piloting forgotten bodies. - Ancient machines still following impossible commands. - Creatures that have no reason to exist except that they do.
Every crew has a leader.
The leader is the centre of the player's story and has additional rules representing their importance, ambitions and survival.
The leader is not necessarily the strongest member of the crew.
In Mortisphere, importance is not always measured by power.
Sometimes the smallest creature is the one that refuses to die.
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AREAS
Mortisphere does not use a traditional battlefield.
Instead, scenarios are divided into Areas.
An Area represents a significant location within the conflict.
Examples:
- The ruins of a forgotten city. - A collapsed industrial complex. - The surface of a dead god. - A corrupted biological landscape. - The remains of an ancient weapon facility.
Each scenario contains a number of Areas, usually between two and five.
Players record where their crew members are located and move between Areas when the scenario allows it.
The distance between Areas is not measured.
The question is not:
“How far away is the enemy?”
The question is:
“Can we reach them before something worse happens?”
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SCENARIOS
Every battle in Mortisphere is a scenario.
A scenario provides:
- The location. - The situation. - The objectives. - The opposing forces. - The special rules. - The possible consequences.
Scenarios are not isolated battles.
They are events within a campaign.
The outcome of a battle changes what happens next.
A failed mission may leave a crew weakened, but it may also reveal something unexpected.
A victory may provide equipment, resources or new opportunities.
There is no single path through Mortisphere.
There are only the consequences of what your crew chooses to do.
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THE LAST AGE
Mortisphere is not a story about saving the universe.
The universe has already ended.
The battles fought here are not about restoring what was lost.
They are about what remains.
Every crew has its own reason for continuing.
Some want wealth.
Some want power.
Some want answers.
Some want revenge.
Some simply want to exist for one more day.
The end has already happened.
Everything after this is just what refuses to stop.