La Notte Eterna is an upcoming Kickstarter by the Italian group, Ali Ribelli Edizioni launching today! To celebrate, they sent us some preview material, and we thought we’d take a look through it and share some sneak peaks with you.
La Notte Eterna is a high fantasy setting where the sun no longer rises as the result of ongoing war between the gods. You can imagine the impact that has on the world. Undead and other nocturnal threats thrive, and the mortal races band together for survival.
We are introduced to three new races, the Karevi, a group of shadowy humanoids, the Urakian, a hybrid humanoid animal group, and the Wiloi, a glowing arcane infused option. Of the three, I like the Urakian the best, and am always in favor of some sort of furry race being in D&D. They are fairly similar to the new OneDND Ardling, but have the atvantage of being released first (the settings been around for a bit now), and also not having really dumb lore. They were humanoids whose ancestors had their bodies magically infused through radiation from the settings desert. Basically, you get to be a Rhino man because a Wizard Did It, which is a perfectly reasonable answer.
We also get 15 new subclasses, of which I can speak to two. The North Wolf Barbarian, and Chosen of Darkness Monk. The North Wolf reminds me a lot of the Frostrager from Frostburn, one of my favorite 3e books, and I’m certainly interested. You get cold resistances, and your weapons ice over when your age adding cold damage. I’d personally pump it up a bit in power, but when don’t I say that about a 5e subclass. The Chosen of Darkness is all about stealth, granting darkvision, bonuses to stealth, and extra damage while in the shadows. It’s almost like a monk/rogue multiclass, and works pretty well. I especially like the disengage as a bonus action power it adds. So your monk is just silly fast.
A big mechanic in La Notte is the appearance of Meteors. Essentially, while the gods war overhead, stuff falls down to earth. While the gods wouldn’t be bothered with such cast off refuse, to the inhabitants below, this is a world shaping artifact. These Meteors form the basis for most La Notte quests. An artifact crashs to earth, and you’ve got to find it. Much in the way of an ultra-goth Stardust.
The other big, interesting thing La Notte does is Sphere Magic. Essentially ritual magic any character can use regardless of class. While I don’t have full mechanics, the essence of the feature is that the life essence of ancient heroes can be called forth with a summoning sphere to help with something in the present day. It sounds like a nice way to round out a low player count party, or for the DM to add spikes in PC power if they are falling behind.
Art throughout is pretty top notch, and leans heavy into the dark haunting themes of the setting. In my opinion, things always look cooler at night, and La Notte leans into that hard. Everything is cloaked in shadows and mists, hinting at greater dangers hidden in the darkness.
If you back on kickstarter, you can get three full-color books (with a fourth as a stretch goal), a set of dice, pack of minis, a handmade wooden case (very unique addition), and a bunch of posters or other material. If the game sounds interesting to you, you should follow the campaign and see how it goes.
*Edited the article 2/15 – Added an affiliate link for the kickstarter.
The TTRPG Factory 