I recommend that you look at the light civilization from the Kaijudo card game. The creature design there might help if you get stuck.

Awesome, never heard of it. Thanks for the info!

I agree with maxl the light civilization will be ideal if your looking for not your typical king of angle almost everything in that one civilization is type of angle/robot or angle/alien cross the card game is'it that bad I happen to have a few boxes of them myself back when they were called "Duel Masters".

PS. if you have to make a few more human ones try looking up the D&D Deva and the angles from this one blizzard game who's name I don't what to talk about it will be worth your while.

Oooh, okay, yeah, I have heard of Duel Masters, I think. After I looked it up, I thought the art looked sorta familiar :b

Yeah, the Deva are really cool (I also like the Pathfinder Aeons), and I've always loved Tyrael's design <3

Something like the Angels from Bayonetta.

Sounds pretty cool - it's one of those games I always wanted to play, but have never gotten around to it.

I'd recommend it.

I totally want to draw something like this. O3O It's so amazing!! :O
Jocarra, you never seize to amaze me.

Thank you so much <3 I really appreciate it!

You should give it a shot - lemme know if you do!

-puts on sun glasses- That shiny sparkle lol. But yeah this came out amazing you have really outdone yourself. =) I love everything about this work.

Haha, he is rather sparkly, isn't he XD It was intended more as "BLINDING POWER OF PURE WILL AND ORDER" but... yeah. Sparkly 8D Thank you very much!

there's no reason to believe the scriptures of any belief gets it right either. the whole idea of ANYTHING looking very much like we do, especially anything beyond the merely physical realm, is to me absurd on the face of it.

it may have been compelling when people believed in a pythagoran, earth centric universe, not realizing all those little dots in the night sky were like our own sun, nearly all of them with planets, like those in our own solar system circling them.

i suppose frp systems are set in a midevil mindset because so many people seem to find the priveledged running around belligerant and everyone else shiviering in marginal shelter, somehow romantic.

and i suppose they're popular because people see it as escape, the idea of having that prevaledge where they can vicariously get away with anything, the price of which being to have to be always watching one's own back, and having a small group of friends/adventurers, to watch each other's.

of all the kinds of fantasies to wish to role play, nothing could be further from my own.

i guess i'd better stop before i once more start ranting about cultural implications.

no reason there can't be things that are neither physical nor imaginary. even less reason though, to expect them to have anything to do with what people, and religious masters, have chosen to imagine.

There's a lot that could be said in response to this, but I'm frankly a bit hesitant to because it's clearly a highly charged set of topics for you that's only peripherally related to this particular picture, and I'm not interested in anyone getting upset over anything, because really, it's just a drawing of a made-up thing in a make-believe game.

Don't forget the ones with eyes all over its body!

Haha, good ol' Ophanim :b

This leads me to wonder, what kind of "religious" system does Endless Realms have?

Are there relatively many, specific gods "of" things, like in D&D? Are there only a few of them, or only one? Or are there unspecific "forces" of good, evil, order, and chaos, instead of named beings?

(also, while this one is basically Lawful Good, I hope good and order won't be "the same thing." Chaotic Good and Lawful Evil are just as interesting as the other way around.)

There is no organized religion in Endless Realms, persay, nor interference/intervention from the gods. One of the developers really wanted to avoid the subject of religion in the game (which I disagree with - it's one thing to want to avoid religious debates in real life, but in a make-believe world where gods are demonstrably real, it seems religion should be a thing), and while there ARE gods, there's a strict non-interference policy, as it were. The gods ensure the cosmos stay in balance, and short of universe-breaking events, stay out of things entirely.

There are gods for all of the major cosmic forces (eg. Order, Chaos, Good, Evil, Life/Death), and its generally their job to keep them in balance. They are generally not worshiped or prayed to, since gods are known for not responding :b although some people may revere their "way" (eg. Order).

Instead of gods, there will be spirits: ones of particular locations (like a specific river, or mountain, or forest), and ones of particular concepts (like war, festivities, or harvest). They have very limited "godlike" powers, and love the attention of mortals, so they'll grant boons in return for favours (eg. a river spirit needs the source of contamination dealt with, but its beyond her "territory" and must send adventurers on her behalf) or worship.

Heh, Order/Light/Good are three different forces in the game, as are Chaos/Darkness/Evil, so no worries :b

Actually, if the gods never show up, their existence is up to just as much debate as it is in the real world. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it could mean that two nations, groups, or characters could have religious views that obviously cannot be both correct, without one or the other being proven incorrect. It also could mean that you could make a non-religious character whose atheism stays neither disproven nor proven even in the highest of epic levels. (now that I think of it, what level system IS there in this game?)

Have any of those "spirits" you've mentioned been drawn yet? It seems like this guy may or may not be one of them. He's certainly weird(but cool!)-looking enough for it.

So, the basic alignment is Good/Evil, Order/Chaos, and Light/Darkness, right? If so, that would make for 27 basic alignments if Neutral is an option for each. (I'd like to have a Chaos/Darkness/Good character.)

Also, you've mentioned before that Endless Realms is likely to have Virtues and Vices to make things more complex(and therefore more realistic) than simple alignments alone. Is there any news as to what those could be?

*nods* It hasn't been set in stone, I don't think, but yeah. While the gods are "strongly suspected" or even "known" to exist, probably because of the existence of things like magic, I'm sure many of the common folk might refuse to believe in a god that ignores them, or ignore them back equally.

I'm not 100% certain about the levels - I think classes are being built up to level 20, for now, but expected that there will be epic level stuff later?

No, none of the spirits have been drawn yet - I'm almost unsure if any of them really call for being illustrated: as part of the whole "let's avoid having deus ex gods in the world," spirits have rather limited power, but also tend to only stick around for so long (say a few hundred to a few thousand years) before moving on. So if a spirit hasn't been seen for a few generations, it's possible it's just left entirely, and might be replaced by a new spirit later. So you could have a wind spirit that happens to live outside town, but for 1000 years he's a mischievous whimsical character who loves fun and trickery, but 1000 years later he's replaced by a clearly different wind spirit who's a moody academic with dark ambitions.

Oh, heh, sorry, there is no alignment system at all. The developers felt that alignments are both too restrictive and typically ignored anyway by players (I disagree, but anyway), and replaced it with the Virtue/Vice system. When you create a character, I believe you can pick one virtue, one vice, or maybe one of each (something like that, anyway) as a prominent character trait you intend to RP, and I believe there's a system by which you can eventually pick more? So maybe your paladin is highly prone to jealousy and being overcompetitive, and is quick to anger. Or maybe your village-slaughtering, blood-bathing barbarian loves children, always sparing their lives, and regularly donating a portion of his profits from raids to orphanages :V

I'm not sure if picking a particular vice or virtue gives you an actual in-game effect (similar to Social Traits from Pathfinder/D&D) or not, but the vices and virtues you have supposedly should affect how the world sees you as they're concrete traits your character has and regularly demonstrates, perhaps similarly to how reputation systems work in a lot of video games. Like if you have mostly vices, angels won't like you as much. But yeah, to be honest, I don't really know much of anything about the Virtue/Vice system.

Magic doesn't technically need gods to exist. There aren't known gods in the world of Harry Potter, for example. Maybe magic is just a fifth force of the universe, or something.

So, probably up to 20 for now, but will likely go to 30 one day, right? While I know you're not sure, do you expect going to 30 to be an option of the main books, or will you need expansion packs?

While spirits should be made up by the Narrator, there should be some description of them so we know what to make up. Maybe "John and Jane Doe" spirits to show what they tend to be like? I dunno.

Yes, I do like the virtue-and-vice idea. Makes the characters a lot less two-dimensional than an alignment system. Probably wouldn't affect combat unless you're in the Dream Realm or something, but it'd have a big effect on diplomacy situations, and may affect some dice rolls in those. Or maybe not. This game has a lot it's still working on.

Which reminds me, do you think this game will be crowdfunded, or does the company have enough money already to just start selling it when it's ready?

No, I know that; sorry, that's not what I meant to imply. It's more I'm suggesting that the nature and reality of gods is elucidated through magic. Like, they know gods exist, because wizards exist, and wizards have seen/heard/met/scried them or whatever. So some people might be sceptical or ignorant, but I assume some people know as a demonstrable fact gods exist because of magic.

I don't know if the core book will go up to level 30. I do know it'll go up to 20 right now.

Yeah, the developers are writing in a few spirits - perhaps to be used as samples, or maybe notable examples from the past, or particularly powerful ones that show up again and again over history?

No, the game won't be crowdfunded so far as I know - the game developers are funding it 100% out of pocket themselves.

So, why can't the gods show up in the mortal world? Did they make some "Prime Directive" saying not to, or do they simply not have the physical forms needed to "exist" in our world? If the latter, I can imaging one of them being something like "the player" from a turn-based battle simulation game: While incapable of appearing here because that's not how the world works, they have a lot of power through the indirect control of subordinates, such as angels, heroes, and maybe something like an exarch or avatar.

They can, they just don't :b Mortal matters are, for the most part, beneath them/none of their concern.

Well, it just makes sense. You don't see the Secretary of Defense running into the battlefield, because he can accomplish much more by directing the troops from afar.

A couple of questions, how many gods do you think there'd be in Endless Realms, and do they have specific forms that they usually look like, or do they change on whim without a "true shape" to worry about? Also, did they create the Realms, or(like in D&D) were they just some of the first beings to live in them?

I believe there are gods of Order, Chaos, Elements, Animus, Good, and Evil? I'm not 100% certain, the lore may have changed since I last checked, but I think the universe was actually started by mysterious Creators, who created the Gods of the great cosmic forces to run things (the Elements, Order, Chaos, and Animus), then left. Then the Gods created sentient creatures, which created free will and Good and Evil, so the Good/Evil Gods are the newest, and could be said to have been born of the mortal races, and not the other way around.

Then there are the Valenti, who aren't exactly gods but kinda are :b They make sure everything is running properly and all the cosmic forces are in balance and such, and manage interactions between realms.

Then there are the dragons. Their lore hasn't been elaborated on yet, but they're not as powerful as the actual gods, but as far as players are concerned, are basically gods themselves. I'm not sure if there will be dragons for all the cosmic forces, or just the Elements (one for each).

That sounds pretty cool!

Will anything be said about the mysterious Creators, or are they too, well, mysterious for that?

Nope, they're a mystery. It's not clear if even the gods know anything about the Creators.

So, basically, the players could say "the creators" means whatever they want it to, be it any religious being or even the big bang, and they wouldn't be "wrong?"

Not sure about that, but basically the Creators aren't really going to be discussed at all except briefly in lore - someone or something mysterious made the universe and gods, and that's all that's known about them.

So it could fit with the religious beliefs or lack of same of whoever plays the game, just like the mystery of the afterlife in Harry Potter, right?

Probably :b It IS a fantasy game set in alternate universe-type settings, so whether or not someone is theistic is sorta beside the point :V

Clearly, you've underestimated the strength and determination of some people's opinions,

*chuckles* Well, that's true. But just because some people WILL care doesn't mean it's not beside the point ;) Seriously, I think the only thing anyone on the development team knows about the Creators is someone(s) or something(s) started the universe and made the gods (which don't interact with mortals) and then disappeared. We haven't discussed how this can be applied to real-world religion.

Maybe the Creators were the game designers!

lol, the Giant Nerds in the sky.

The "gods" of the webcomic Housepets were essentially RPG players, with mortal avatars as their "characters." It makes more sense when you read it then when I explain it, though it's strange either way.