After much deliberation and a lot of checking, the Æther Core Book is now available in printed form. We wanted to make sure that many of the problems encountered by Kevin when he was running Æther Gaming Systems weren’t stumbling blocks for us again. In short, he learned from his mistakes, and those lessons were the cause of the six-month delay between the availability of the Core Rules in paperback and its original release in PDF format through Drive Thru RPG and RPG Now.
This book has had its format tweaked, a few problems fixed that were not caught on the original PDF, and contains all the same information found in the PDF. For those of you not familiar with the book, that includes:
- Chapters on Character Creation, skills, combat and actions, equipment, and running the game; all the things you need to actually run the system.
- An entire chapter on the creation of settings if modern noir isn’t your cup of tea. Either create one with intent or use the random setting generator to set the time, tone, technology, and genre of the setting.
- Appendices dealing with the NPC archetypes, creatures, and vehicles.
- A huge spread giving a full history of the modern noir setting of Wellstone City, including its development from the golden age of exploration in the Caribbean, through war and strife to its modern existence as a major metropolitan center.
- The introductory adventure, Public Transit Assassins, which exposes characters to Wellstone and the conflicts between some of the major crime syndicates and the little fish of the city trying to make it big.
This 160 page book contains all the rules you’ll need to run any Æther supplement or setting, as well as everything listed above. With original art by Ben Overmyer and additional illustration supplied by Other World Art, as well as graphic and layout work by Kevin Rohan, this book is in every way an improvement over the original release of the book from Æther Gaming Systems. The tables have been improved from previous versions in order to make them clearer and easier to use. The book has also seen a major edit from the previous printed version at the capable hands of David Baymiller.
All in all, if you’ve seen the PDF, imagine the beauty of the book in its full glory as a printed copy. If you’ve seen the old book, imagine it re-imagined, with artwork that adds context (not simply space), a major editing, and a fresh layout … as well as fifty pages of additional content, better formatting, and clarifications. It is in every away an improvement over the original version, while still being 100% compatible with the old Source Book, the old versions of Æthermancy, and all of the books released under the Silver Gryphon Games banner.
So what are you waiting for? The book is available in print form from Lulu.com right now, and you can find it by clicking on the following link:
Or, for more information, including more details on the ever-expanding setting of Wellstone City, click below to visit
There you can get all of the updates and the new maps of the boroughs of the sprawling southern metropolis.