The Silver Anniversary Edition
Everway is a fantasy Tabletop Roleplaying Game, originally designed by Jonathan Tweet and published by Wizards of the Coast in 1995. The design was quite unusual for the time, using a Tarot-like "fortune deck" instead of dice for random resolution and placing heavy emphases on narrative and on visual imagery. This was related to the fact that the Wizards of the Coast were at the time flush with cash thanks to the initial success of Magic: The Gathering, and decided to spend some of it on a beautifully presented RPG; in addition to the fortune deck, the game came with a set of trading card-style "vision cards", with more available from shops, with images intended to help prompt players and GMs to come up with characters and plots.Unfortunately for the game, Wizards quite soon realized that pouring money into cool projects like this one would quickly burn through their Magic profits. Everway was really not as successful as they had hoped, despite having their marketing support behind it; for a while, cheap copies could be found in countless remaindered book shops. So they abandoned the project, redirecting their and Tweet's attention to creating Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. However, recognizing that it had a core of enthusiastic fans, rather than simply kill off Everway they sold it to Rubicon Games, who in turn later passed it on to Gaslight Press. Hence, a little material appeared for it over the years, notably The Spherewalker Sourcebook from Rubicon, a collection of setting details and backstory ideas. But the game largely faded out, as a small fanbase, however dedicated, and small-scale part-time publishers are perhaps not totally compatible with a game whose primary selling point is lush production values.
However, a possible solution to this sort of problem eventually appeared in the form of Internet-based crowd funding, and by 2020, the game was in the hands of another new publisher, called simply the Everway Company, who launched a Kickstarter campaign in early 2021 to produce a "Silver Anniversary Edition", which reached backers by early 2022. Although the vision cards were no longer economically feasible, the project produced a deluxe two-volume edition, a new printing of the fortune deck plus optional extra cards — the "season deck", effectively the minor arcana to the fortune deck's major arcana — and some PDF support material. Although COVID-19 may be slowing things down a little, further support may be forthcoming.
Tropes Observed in the main book and minor supplements:
- Alternate Universe: Alternate universes — in a traditional-fantasy form — are known as "spheres" in Everway.
- Character Customization: The game permits considerable flexibility in character creation, although all PCs should be more or less human and more or less heroic, and should fit the general setting.
- Dimensional Traveler: "Spherewalkers" such as the PCs are people who can use Everway's fantasy-style Portal Network.
- Elemental Powers: The game's character creation rules use the classical four elements — fire, water, earth, and air — pervasively, but in a notably subtle way. To start with, characters' personal stats are named for the elements: "Fire" relates to active energy, dynamism, combat skills, and so on; "Water" determines sensitivity and intuitive feelings; "Earth" is the stat of raw might and resilience; "Air" determines thinking ability and verbal skills. Furthermore, special character powers and schools of magic are all linked to one element or another. However, these associations rarely involve direct invocation of the element itself; rather, "air magic" involves words of power, fire-linked powers can involve the manipulation of any sort of energy, and so on.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Most stock fantasy tropes can show up in Everway games; there are countless "spheres", all different but all some flavor of low-tech fantasy.
- Hub City: There are of course lots of cities scattered through the multiverse, but as the title may hint, the game pays special attention to the city of Everway in the realm of Roundwander, "the Crossroads of the Spheres," which has an extremely exceptional 71 or more gates. Everway is accordingly a bustling trade city where scholars know a great deal about other spheres and are always interested to learn more. However, it can't exert much direct power over other spheres, because only a few people can traverse the Portal Network and they tend to have minds of their own.
- Incendiary Exponent: Characters can have any power the GM accepts is reasonable and can assign a point cost to, and one of the example characters has a power called "Sweat Fire". It's more useful for providing light than for dealing damage, but hey, you're still on fire!
- The Multiverse: The framework for Everway games is a fantasy multiverse; player character "spherewalkers" are distinguished by their ability to use the gates that link the "spheres" (parallel worlds).
- Point Build System: The game gives players twenty points to distribute between a character's stats, special powers, and style of magic as they choose.
- Portal Network: The gates which PCs use to travel between spheres form a fantasy portal network.
- The Six Stats: Averted with extreme prejudice, although the game isn't entirely statless. Everway characters have four stats; Fire, Water, Earth, and Air.
- Tarot Motifs: The fortune deck isn't the tarot major arcana, but some cards and images definitely borrow from the tarot's major arcana; both feature cards such as Death and The Fool. A peculiarity of the fortune deck is that one slot is left open, being marked as the Usurper; each realm (a significant region on a specific sphere) has its own Usurper, whose nature says a lot about the place.
- Tarot Troubles: The fortune deck exists as a thing within the game, and some characters may be skilled in using it to take readings — which can be good or bad, so the usual ominous implications are averted. Note that cards from the fortune deck are also used when defining a character's personality, identifying their primary virtue, greatest flaw, and possible destinies.
Tropes found in the Spherewalker Sourcebook:
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: The sword named "The Edge of Light and Darkness" was created to exemplify "the dividing line between Is and Is Not". The Edge of Light and Darkness could cut anything its owner could conceive of cutting, and could wield the blade with sufficient skill to hit. In addition to the relatively mundane task of doing a Clean Cut through any physical substance, known examples include cutting through the fabric of space-time to create portals between alternate universes, killing an opponent by cutting his soul free of his body (without actually leaving any physical wounds), and destroying a pocket universe by slicing the substance of reality into its fundamental elemental components.
- Drunken Boxing: A possibly-mythical combat system called "The Entangling Art" involves the user appearing clumsy, staggering out of the way of blows, accidentally tripping enemies and clumsily dashing weapons out of their hands. It can be used to break arms, knock down stout warriors, and even kill opponents.
- Dying Curse: When Rasmadahan the Dragon of Fire died, the sword used to kill him gained magical power and became known as the Dragonbane Sword. Rasmadahan laid a dying curse on the blade that caused anyone wielding it to suffer from the ravages of old age even if they were still young. The curse can cause the sword's user to die of old age while in their twenties.
- Forbidden Fruit: In the story "The Serpent of Ice", a magician who lives behind a waterfall tells a tribe of hunters that they can take all of the water they want from below the waterfall, but not to take any from the spring that feeds it. The chief of the tribe and her son decide to take water from the spring anyway, and the water turns into a serpent that kills the son.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Queen Sunset the Undying, ruler of the Red Merchants, removes their souls and places them in receptacles, which causes the Merchants to become a form of vampire. The newest are called Knights, and with time (at least 50 years) they can become Barons or Baronesses, and even Dukes or Duchesses. Many Dukes and Duchesses have high charisma and a dominating appearance. If the container holding a Red Merchant's soul is opened or broken, the soul flees and their body is destroyed. A wooden stake to the heart can inconvenience one but not destroy them. They are deathly pale, though Dukes and Duchesses who have recently fed gain a ruddy color and the warmth of the living; most use cosmetics to cover this, with varying success. They are corpse-cold as well, and they neither sweat nor bleed.
- They must feed on blood. Knights must drink the blood of a close relative. Barons and Baronesses can feed on the blood of any human being. Dukes and Duchesses can survive on the blood of any creature with a soul, and if they drink the blood of an animal they can take that animal's form.
- Knights are immune to aging in the normal way, but their bodies will decay over time. Barons and Baronesses can avoid decay as long as they drink blood regularly.
- Knights are damaged by sunlight, repelled by roses and silver and harmed by silver weapons. (Some new Knights are repelled by a picture of a rose and are vulnerable to ordinary weapons.) Barons and Baronesses are similar, except that they can overcome the effect of roses. Dukes and Duchesses are vulnerable only to prolonged sunlight and weapons made of silver, water, or spirit.
- Barons and Baronesses regenerate all damage within two days except for harm inflicted by silver weapons, by ice, or by weapons of the spirit, which heals at the normal rate for humans. Dukes and Duchesses can heal damage taken in one day regardless of source.
- Some Barons and Baronesses can take "whisper form", which allows them to become fog-like and move around in that form. All Dukes and Duchesses can do so.
- Shout-Out: The Soulseekers have the ability to remember their past lives, with masters of "true recall" able to remember dozens. However, some Soulseekers are not able to handle all of these past personalities; they go mad or are possessed by one of the stronger personalities. This appears to be a reference to Frank Herbert's Children of Dune, in which Alia is almost taken over by the personality of Baron Harkonnen and is possessed (and driven insane) by the memories of her ancestor's lives, and Leto merges with the personality of one of his ancestors.
- Soul Jar: See Our Vampires Are Different above.
