The most dynamic and immersive MMO to date, Chronicles of Elyria is the first MMORPG where your character ages and dies, encouraging you to think beyond your character to their role in a larger story.

Fearless in its design, it embraces a character's ability to impact other characters. A closed economy, finite resources, non-repeatable quests, and a fully destructible environment means the world is experienced differently for every character. Each time you log in there is something for you to participate in. Local, regional, and national conflicts are continuously unfolding, giving birth to repeated opportunities for you to change the course of history.

Enter the world as a member of a player-run family, then work your way up from a humble adventurer to a landed vassal, develop your dynasty, and work your way to King. Not interested in running a kingdom? The fully skill-based system and lack of classes means you're rewarded with the ability to create the exact character you want to.

Will you follow a path of virtue... or something darker?

Hi Everyone! I’m Jeromy Walsh, Creative Director of Soulbound Studios and I want to welcome you to the first Design Journal for Chronicles of Elyria. When I decided to write weekly design journals I found myself suddenly faced with the daunting task of deciding which feature to write about first.

That’s harder than it sounds. There are a lot of compelling systems in CoE; most of them never seen before in an MMO. So I asked myself which feature is so important that it merits being number one? Is it aging and dying? What about the skill-based crafting system? Survival? Maybe permadeath? In the end though it was an easy choice. A glimpse at the company logo reminded me it needed to be the Soul System.

But why? Because it’s at the very heart and… wait for it… soul of Chronicles of Elyria. Pun aside, the Soul plays an important role in many elements of the game. For instance:<

Souls are integral to the lore
They’re our answer to the permadeath conundrum
They’re vital to skill advancement and end-game character balance
They contribute to the dynamic story engine
Soul Selection is the very first step in Character Creation.
In fact, there is so much to talk about with respect to just Souls that what started out as a regular weekly Design Journal has turned into a three-part series. No joke.

For the next few design journals I’ll be going in-depth about different element of the Soul System. In this journal I’ll be talking about what a soul is and isn’t and how it’s used in character creation.



Figure 1.0 A soul during character creation

What is a Soul?

First and foremost a soul is the complete set of memories, experiences, and past lives of a character. When transferred from one character to another, the soul brings with it Talents, Achievements, and accelerated Skill Development, providing a feeling of continuity and progression.

A soul is also the link between a living character and their physical body. In most cases, the Spark of Life cannot exist in a body without a soul. Without a soul, the body will die.

What isn’t a soul? A way to make the game seem fair. In addition to the aforementioned, the soul brings with it a degree of randomness, as not all souls are created equal. Some have special Talents not present in others, while some have experienced more past lives, making them inherently more powerful.

Souls make dying a requirement for advancement

Since the beginning of Chronicles of Elyria we’ve known we needed permadeath. Permadeath is vital to so many mechanics of Chronicles of Elyria that without it, it fundamentally changes the game. But we were faced with the question of how we can kill a character, while still allowing players to feel a sense of progression. The answer came in the form of skill ramps.

There are a vast number of Skills in Chronicles of Elyria, divided up into multiple categories including Fighting Skills, Crafting Skills, Survival Skills, Deviant Skills, etc… Over the course of a character’s life they will advance some or all of those skills to varying degrees. But if you were to spend every moment of your character’s life, they’d still cap out at some maximum before they eventually died of old age. Training skills takes time and, put simply, there are just too many skills to advance them all within a single lifetime.

Fortunately, the memories of your souls’ past experiences carries on with them in the form of a skill ramp. A skill ramp isn’t the same as skill points. If you had 50 skill points in one life, you won’t begin with 50 in the next. Instead, based on the aptitude gained in previous incarnations, your character will re-learn past-life skills at an accelerated rate. So if it took you a week of active playing to get a skill to 50 points in your previous life, you can expect it to take significantly less in the next life.
So how does this effect the permadeath system? By leveling some skills faster, you’ll attain a higher total number of skill points than was possible in a previous life. In this way, the process of life, death, and rebirth is essential to enabling characters to reach their full potential.
One thing to point out is that with each passing life, the skills you gained in your first, second, third, etc… life will have less and less impact. However, if you continue to develop those skills with each successive life, the benefits will be compounded.



Figure 2 - A concept for the Akashic Records

Once Borns and more powerful souls

It’s believed that when someone dies their soul returns to a great library called the Akashic Records. The library is filled with books and scrolls containing all of the deeds of every life a soul has lived. It’s in these chambers that a soul can read over their past lives and learn from their mistakes in preparation for their next life.

It’s also said that every soul is born with a purpose. That they choose the precise time and place in which to be born so they can learn the lessons needed to attain enlightenment.

Anara Starsong – Keeper of Chronicles

As we just discussed, souls in Chronicles of Elyria participate in a process of reincarnation. After each incarnation the soul’s potential is increased through skill ramps, leading to higher potential. Therefore the more lives a soul has lived, the older it is, and the more powerful the soul is said to be.

While a somewhat derogatory term, souls experiencing their first incarnation are referred to as “once borns.” Upon launch, the majority of souls given to players will be on their first life with fewer and fewer having lived additional lives. The result will be a heavy distribution of younger souls, with a few players being given slightly older souls, and an even fewer number being given souls that are three or more lives old. Note, these older souls will be handed out randomly, and even the developers will not know who the older souls are.

While we recognize this might seem “unfair” to some people, it’s no different than our world. I mean, maybe we have souls, maybe we don’t. But everyone agrees that individuals have existed throughout history such as Plato, Aristotle, The Avatar, Einstein, Hitler, Voldemort, Newton, and Da Vinci that were arguably ahead of their time and improved our understanding of how the world works, as well as our ability to recognize good and evil. The players who receive souls older than one life will be, for good or ill, some of the most influential characters of their time.

So far this all sounds great right? But what about the players who join the game a year, two years, or even longer after the game initially launches. A system of advancement that rewards people, without bounds the longer they play, encourages a barrier to entry. I’m looking at you, EVE Online.

To counteract this problem, we’ve determined that souls available to players during character creation will naturally age over time. Characters created a couple years after launch will use souls that are a few lives older. This makes it so players who come late to the party can continue to be competitive.


Talented Souls

Thus far we’ve been talking about skill ramps which are available to all players. But one of the things we wanted to do with Chronicles of Elyria is create asymmetric player experiences. By making the world naturally unbalanced, it creates opportunity for conflict, drama, and memorable world events.

One of the things that creates a truly unique player experience is that some, but not all the souls in CoE, will have latent abilities known as Talents. These are, for lack of a better way of describing them, supernatural abilities which have been granted to a soul to fulfill some destiny. We already have a large and growing list of Talents, and we’ll be soliciting more from the community. Some examples might be Magic Use (this is one of the more common ones), the ability to Travel, Shapeshifting, Healing, Animal Speak, Planes Walking, and many other things.

We recognize that some players may be put off by the fact that their soul doesn’t have a Talent. We’re sorry about that, we really are. However, we urge you not to let that deter you from adventuring out into the world. More heroes are created from those that overcome adversity than those with an inherent advantage.

With that said, if you opened your character creation screen and saw a list of souls, some with Talents and some without, you’d probably pick one of the ones with a Talent wouldn’t you? Yeah, we would too. That’s why the presence of a Talent isn’t displayed on the character creation screen – nor on the character selection screen – at least not until the Talent has been activated.

In order to use a Talent a character must activate it. To do this, the character must experience some trigger. Triggers can be anything from killing a specific type of beast, to coming in contact with their soul mate, to falling from a great height, to being crushed to death, to drowning, etc… The more severe and unusual the trigger, often the more powerful the Talent will be. And a player won’t know they have a Talent until it’s activated the first time.

Once activated, a Talent follows a soul from life to life, with no need to re-activate it. As well, a Talent generally doesn’t manifest in its most powerful form the first time. Repeated use, completing specific quests or rituals, or just being reborn can cause a Talent to develop into a more powerful version of itself.

Figure 4 - Another in-game view of the Akashic Records

What’s next for souls?

Thanks all! That wraps up the introduction. In the next design journal we’ll continue our coverage of souls by examining some of the exciting ways souls interact with other game systems. In particular, we’ll take a look at Soul Mates, Achievements, Past Lives & Déjà Vu, and how souls participate in your character’s Destiny.

Q. What classes do you have?
None! Chronicles of Elyria is a fully skill-based system, in which the skills you use determine which skills you're good at. There are, however, schools you can join which will provide certain benefits such as ranks and titles, and will help you develop certain skill sets more quickly.
Q. What kinds of skills are there?
Skills will be revealed in an upcoming content milestone. Stay tuned!
Q. I read somewhere this was an RTS, RPG, kingdom management... thing. What does that look like?
Correct! To the adventurer it's mostly an AARPG. If you purchase land and start building a town it takes on more sim-like elements. Running a county or duchy will feel a lot more like an RTS, and for the Kings, it plays more like a kingdom/resource management game. At each level of play new user experiences become available help make managing your new role easier. And unlike in most RTS/Kingdom Management games, in CoE, your units are the other players!
Q. What do you do to prevent people from stealing your mail?
Shh! This is one of our best kept secrets.
Q. What are the mini-games you mentioned for nonS E N S O Rbat skills?
It's hard to describe without pictures. There will be more to come in a future content milestone.
Guilds and Families

Q. I read somewhere you start as part of a family?
Yep! As part of character creation you pick a family. This impacts everything from where you start, to which possible skill bonuses you begin with, to what physical attributes such as hair color you can select.
Q. Does it have to be a player-run family?
No. You can select NPC parents as well, but they tend to be less talkative in Family Chat.
Q. What if I don't want to be constrained by family restrictions?
You can opt to start as a ward of the state. You get more flexibility in character creation, but lose most of the starting benefits of a family.
Q. Are there guilds?
Absolutely! With a metric ton of new features I'd say we're really the first MMO to support guilds.
Q. What if I want to bring my guild with me to Chronicles of Elyria?
Great! We'll be providing codes which will allow you to bring your entire guild into your family or guild so you can get a jump on building a powerful dynasty or enterprise.
Q. How do I make sure my friends start on the same server?
When you provide a friend with a game code it will allow them to create a character on your server, even if the server population is capped.
Q. How I do I make sure my friends start in the same area as me?
As part of character creation they will have an opportunity to pick a family that is close in proximity to yours.
Death and Dying
Q. Wait, players age and die?! Really?!
Yep. When we thought long and hard about what we wanted to achieve with this game - dramatic story telling, rich, evolving history, a balanced skill based system, etc... it became clear to us that the only way to achieve that was if characters were constantly cycling. But don't worry, we're spending a lot of time thinking about how we can make the process of death, and birth an enjoyable and interesting part of the game.
Q. So, there's dying, and then there's DYING?
Correct. During normal play you can get knocked out or receive a fatal wound in which your soul temporarily leaves your body. Neither of those are permadeath. But each time your soul leaves your body your soul's connection to Elyria gets weaker, shortening your total life span. When you reach your maximum age, you will sleep the Final Sleep and be no more. That's DYING.
Q. Do I lose experience if my soul becomes seperated?
There's no experience in Chronicles of Elyria. However, you may experience some skill atrophy if you're dead for long. And also, the process of being ripped from the physical world takes a toll on the soul. Each time you die, it will reduce your available life span.
PvP and other Unsavoury Activities
Q. Is there PvP?
Yeah. Lots. Everywhere. Kingdoms go to war, assassins wage their silent battles in the night, highwaymen lay wait in ambush on the unsuspecting passer-by. However, except in times of war, PvP is illegal, and the penalty is stiff. So while PvP is possible everywhere, it's highly unlikely around civilized areas.
Q. Griefers. Tell me you've at least eliminated the griefers!
Actually, more or less. In Chronicles of Elyria, crimes such as attacking other characters is punishable by time in prison. The more time someone spends in prison, the shorter their playable lifespan, the more their skills atrophy, and the less powerful they will ultimately become. So, we've kind of removed most the incentive around griefing.
Q. What about gold farming?
We recognize that not all players can (or want to) spend the same amount of time per week farming gold for that special armor. We also recognize some people have a ton of free time, but not a lot of money. We're attempting to equalize this by having an in-game exchange market.
End-game Content
Q. What does end-game content look like?
There isn't any. No, seriously. This game is about being a part of an epic, ongoing story-line. Fill your characters' days adventuring, siegeing, farming, running a town, county, or kingdom. Spend time increasing your family's holdings and building your Noble House. And then, in your characters' final days, let them sleep the final sleep, while your soul grows young again and re-born into another character to make their own mark.
Q. Is there raiding?
No.. and yes. There are no static raid dungeons. However, world events will frequently cause big, bad, nasties that need to be dealt with to roam free or take shelter in an abandoned ruin.. Also, as players amass a large amount of wealth and hide it in their castles other, less savoury players may choose to break in and steal it. Finally, kingdoms will often go to war and siege each others' castles. All of these can and will require a varying number of players to be successful.
Q. How big is the world?
Really, really big. More details to come.
Game/Engine
Q. What engine/technology will you use?
We're currently using the Unreal Engine.
Q. I'm confused, I thought you were using the Soulborn Engine.
When you think of a typical "game engine" you think of the set of libraries used to perform model/terrain/water/particle rendering, camera movement, animation, physics, user input, and sound. These are all, in general, things that the user experiences directly on the client-side and defines the look and feel of a game. For these things we're using the Unreal Engine.

In contrast, there are a set of services/libraries running on the back-end that drive the soulpool, the dynamic story engine, etc... These services are scanning for and initiating dramatic situations and controlling the hierarchical, goal-based AI of the NPCs. These services also define the rules/mechanics which make Chronicles of Elyria different from other games that use the Unreal Engine. This collection of server-side logic and services is the Soulborn Engine.