So I thought it could be fun be fun too all you international Coriolis-lovers the kind of interesting story about Coriolis the RPG and its orgins, for example, did you know that the current version is actually 2.0?
You see Coriolis was originally made by Järnringen, you know the guys behind Symbaroum? It was their second game after Mutant: Heirs of Doom. The game Mutant has a long past in Sweden and their version was a kind of mishmash between Mad Max, The Wind in the Willow and the 19th century Swedish literature. You can kind of say that Year Zero is kind of a prequel too that setting(I know many roleplaying-groups, who see it as that at least). Anyway after they made that game and the largest official roleplayingcampaign in Sweden to date(three books that are 700 pages combined) they started making Coriolis which was completed in 2008 and many people fell in love with the rich and colourful setting which oozed of atmosphere. It was so good in fact that it made our group begin to eat baklava, Middleeastern cuisine, dates and Maghrebi mint tea and really immerse in culturegaming, something we sadly did’nt do before or after that. Anyway Järnringen gave hugh promises about a large campaign that would rival their first, four big splatbooks and other stuff but after the first few supplements, like a GM-screen and intro-adventure, things went very quit except for the odd lifesign here and there about that the first part of the campaign where being made.
Enter Fria Ligan, some guys from Stockholm who felt that the official material didn’t last very long and began making their own on the now defunct horisontensande.se which was well received, they also began making articles in the Swedish roleplaying magazine Fenix and Kosta, the projectlead of the current Coriolis even wrote a 100page adventure to the old Coriolis. Järnringen however finally admitted in 2011(?) that they were burned out after over ten years of RPG-making and so the torch was given to Fria who, by that point had probably written more to Coriolis than Järnringen, although most if it was written for their own slice of the Horizon that most times didn’t affect the galaxy as a whole, with all the big factions and their conflicts.
However after some small releases it became abundantly clear that the old system of rules had som serious flawa that made the game quite broken(a word which I hate to use since that rarely is the case when people scream it on the internet), especially the spacecombat which were clearly unfinished in places and kind of needed to be handwaved a lot. So Fria Ligan decided that it was time to make a new rulesystem but promised that It wouldn’t take too much time. Unfortunately that was not the case and so began the dark age(five years can of course be considered an age! ) of “Coriolisåret”(The Coriolis Year). So called since every year did Fria Ligan promised that this year would be the Coriolis Year, the year where Coriolis 2 would come and all the material that was almost finished would follow with it but alas that was never the case until 2016. Fria Ligan explained in a lengthy podcast that there was always something that happened, almost like a curse that made them take one step forward and to step back. They decided for example that the new system would be based on FATE under these years but then realized that system didn’t quite work with what they were trying to create, so back to another system until the one its based on today that is based on Year Zero’s system. I still am just a little small bit salty(a very privileged kind of salty ) over the wait even though most if it was explained in the podcast but I will not dwelve on it here any further unless anyone would want to know.
Anyway the year is 2016 and finally the game has arrived and it’s definitely the game I had been looking forward to the most and it delivered. For me it blends the thing Järnringen excels in, namely write things incredibly and oozing with atmosphere with the tight professionalism and all around quality that is Fria Ligan. This is told by my highly subjective point of view and I am probably wrong in some places or missed/glossed over things in others. Also Excuse my broken English and smiley faces