You are an explorer in a dangerous universe. The enigmatic ruins of the Great Dark are shunned by most, but not by you. You seek them out, delve into their shadowy depths and uncover their secrets. The Blight – the cataclysmic scourge that spreads from the ruins – is your beacon. Where there is Blight, there are artifacts to be found. Ship City is dying, but you and your fellow explorers will do whatever it takes to create a better future. Don your delver suit, step aboard a mighty Greatship and venture down the Slipstream towards the unknown. Your creed: explore or perish.
Free League Publishing today announced that Coriolis: The Great Dark Roleplaying Game is now live on Kickstarter. A science fiction RPG about exploration, mysteries, and intrigue in a Lost Horizon, this next chapter in the Coriolis saga is about hope and enduring against all odds.
The highly anticipated RPG was funded in just seven minutes and has already raised more than $80,000 USD during the first 30 minutes, with 23 days to go.
The campaign is now running through a list of stretch goals, including a full-color map of the Lost Horizon, custom dice, Alchemy Virtual Tabletop Content Module, and a soundtrack with ambient music, with more stretch goals on the way.
Explore Coriolis: The Great Dark Roleplaying Game on Kickstarter
All backers who pledge levels with physical rewards within the first 24 hours of the launch — i.e. no later than 3 PM CET on March 20 — will get a bonus art print of the cover art.
Inspired by 19th-century expeditions, deep sea diving, and pulp archeology, Coriolis: The Great Dark offers you to join dangerous expeditions, navigate the Byzantine schemes of Ship City, and hunt for the keys that unlock the mystery of the Lost Horizon.
A boxed campaign set entitled The Flowers of Algorab is also part of the Kickstarter and delivered alongside the core game. If successfully funded, all backers will get the PDF versions of the game months ahead of the official release.
Coriolis: The Great Dark is the second edition of Coriolis – The Third Horizon, Free League’s very first science fiction RPG. The rules have been updated and further developed, the setting is new and advances the timeline of the universe.
THE GAME WORLD
Coriolis: The Great Dark launches you into a desolate part of space – The Lost Horizon. Here, a fledgling human civilization who fled war tries to stake out a new life in a harsh environment.
You live in the meandering asteroid-metropolis of Ship City and you are employed by the Explorers Guild to undertake dangerous expeditions. In Ship City, you will take on missions and investigations to help your guild and build your crew’s reputation with the other major players of the city – the Navigators, the Machinists, and the Gardeners.
Delving into the ruins on desolated moons or other star systems in search of resources and artifacts will bring out the best of you and your crew. Together, you will need to overcome physical obstacles, face creatures from the Dark and endure the ubiquitous Blight.
YEAR ZERO ENGINE
The rules of Coriolis: The Great Dark are based on the latest iteration of the acclaimed Year Zero Engine, used in award-winning games such as ALIEN The Roleplaying Game, Blade Runner The Roleplaying Game, Tales From the Loop RPG, and The Walking Dead Universe Roleplaying Game, but specifically tailored for this new game.
As a core mechanic, you roll a number of six-sided dice decided by the value of your base attribute and your talents. The more competent you are, the more dice you get to roll. Any roll of six indicates a success, and multiple successes trigger bonus effects. Rolls can be pushed, i.e., re-rolled, at the risk of losing Hope that you will ever survive the horrors of The Great Dark.
THIRD-PARTY LICENCE
As part of the release, Free League will create a new free and open license for third-party content for Coriolis: The Great Dark. The previous game, Coriolis – The Third Horizon, will not be developed further, and the old books will not be reprinted. However, an Open License will be created so that fans of the previous game will be able to create and publish new modules. Using these licenses, all creators will have an irrevocable, worldwide, and royalty-free right to freely create, produce and sell content and expansions for both games and their settings.
ABOUT THE GAME CREATORS
Free League is one of the most funded RPG publishers on Kickstarter, raising over $10M across 34 successful campaigns, including Dragonbane, Alien The Roleplaying Game, Blade Runner The Roleplaying Game, The One Ring™ RPG, Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, Forbidden Lands, and Tales from the Loop RPG.
Kosta Kostulas, Nils Karlén and Martin Grip, Free League co-founders, take lead in designing the game with a new version of the award-winning Year Zero Engine created by Tomas Härenstam. Original artwork comes from lead Blade Runner RPG, Alien RPG and Coriolis – The Third Horizon artist Martin Grip and graphic design by Christian Granath.
More details will be shared via Free League’s social media accounts in the weeks leading up to launch. Follow them on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, and visit their official website at freeleaguepublishing.com to stay updated.
About Free League Publishing
Free League Publishing is a game studio and publisher dedicated to speculative fiction based in Stockholm, Sweden. We have published a wide range of award-winning tabletop roleplaying games and acclaimed art books set in strange and wondrous worlds.
Our upcoming games include Zone Wars – A Mutant: Year Zero Wargame and The Electric State Roleplaying Game.
Our current game portfolio includes the official The Walking Dead Universe RPG, the fantasy RPG Dragonbane, the MÖRK BORG spin-off RPG PIRATE BORG, the official Blade Runner RPG, The One Ring™ roleplaying game and The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying for 5E, Tales From the Loop – The Board Game, the official ALIEN RPG (Gold ENNIE for Best Game 2020), the Gothic horror game Vaesen (winner of three ENNIE Awards 2021), the pitch-black fantasy RPG MÖRK BORG (winner of four ENNIE Awards 2020), the alternate ’80s Tales From the Loop RPG (winner of five ENNIE Awards 2017, including Best Game), the retro-fantasy Forbidden Lands (winner of four ENNIE Awards 2019), the postapocalyptic Mutant: Year Zero (Silver ENNIE for Best Rules 2015), the science fiction games Coriolis – The Third Horizon (Judge’s Spotlight Award 2017) and Death in Space, the dark fantasy game Symbaroum, the weird-fantasy Into the Odd Remastered, the cyberpunk RPG CY_BORG, and the new edition of the RPG classic Twilight: 2000 (Judges Award for Best RPG at UK Games Expo 2022).
