Welcome to Ethermore — An emerging fantasy worldbuilding project on community and blockchain.
We are excited to announce the launch of a fantasy world, with community focus and classic fantasy at its core, backed by blockchain NFTs.
Introduction.
Ethermore arrives as a drop of 15,000 NFTs, each a unique procedurally-generated fantasy character on the Ethereum blockchain. Each character is a token of entry to the community, world of Ethermore.
Heroes’ stories, quests and world-building events will evolve off-chain in community discussion, evolving as Ethermore lore as voted by the community, where decisions have consequences in the world.
It is a communal project to build a fantasy world and participate in the narrative arc.
It is more than ownership over game assets that is exciting; we explore how the combination of emerging web3 tools can be the future of worldbuilding and storytelling. The ownership, social and organizational components of web3 can re-shape how we think about worldbuilding experiences.
Choices and the world around you
Everyone loves a good story. Playing as a character with a backstory and core values and a meaningful narrative arc. Adventuring around in a complex world, making choices that have consequences and are reflected in Ethermore. Role-playing can provide the most meaningful and immersive experiences in the theatre of the mind. The same place where the scenes in your favourite book took place.
Early web3 tools bring the architecture of choice-making to a new level. This allows many people to coordinate and make decisions to guide the direction of a narrative. There are rules of engagement, voting, and consensus.
This choice architecture could be applied to worldbuilding. Choices inside stories are presented as similar to DAO voting, where it is the wider community of players that decide world-changing events or how the story unfolds. A more community-driven, interactive narrative piece.
Layer Zero: The most important layer of any blockchain or Dapp
As web3 emerges from the murky swamp of web2, a lot of people new to the scene ask: “what is web3?”
The answer is some ethereal place between on-chain data, Twitter, discord, metaverses, and chat rooms. A more viable answer is a combination of all of the above: the community, the layer zero, between the people and imaginations, and spaces where ideas can flow in the theatre of the mind. That is where web3 exists. Stoking the embers of those early communities and having multiple builders and participants on a variety of mediums and spaces is what web3 games are going to have to accommodate.
What we built
We are a small indie team but decided to take the plunge and see if we could build that experience using web3 tools in making Ethermore, with the use of on-chain characters that players can own, but with the focus on web3 social and decision-making tools to drive the narrative, and worldbuilding.
Our primary aim is to bring an immersive experience, and to experiment:
Ownership: NFT based characters.
Creativity: With community worldbuilding
Choices with consequences: Dynamic metadata and consequences in decision-making narratives.
At the time of writing, we have seen some traction building for the project. This is partly intentionally our choice to grow organically and low-key so we can slowly temperature-check our community as we build.
We have launched the ‘moral compass’ quest Dapp on our website where you can log in with your character and face choice-based scenarios that will feedback on your characters ‘morality’ metadata.
So if you are interested in joining from the start, find a character that speaks to you, and hopefully have a totally new worldbuilding experience.
We really hope to see you there.
The Characters.
Each and every Ethermore character is procedurally generated and unique. No two are alike. However, there are rarer traits within the population broken down by type, class, background, and artifacts. For example, there are more Humans than Half-Elf, and even rarer are Celestials. There are more Fighters than Wizards, but even fewer Sorcerers.
Each character will appeal differently to each collector. Value to the owner will be determined by aesthetics, specific desirable traits, or implicit rarity.
Each character will have a type, a class, a background, and possibly start with a special artifact. There are even variants and sub-classes among the population.
- 39 varieties of possible fantasy races
- 38 different classes of hero
- 9 possible character backgrounds
- 9 possible item artifacts
There may also be some hidden quests, lore, and adventure hooks among the characters to begin the world-building.
The Art and Value.
Pixels X Bold Colors X Gradients X Procedural Generation
Pixel art culture is the juncture between two eras: retro gaming origins and the beginning of a cypherpunk digital blockchain revolution.
The philosophy of both movements exploring what is possible on the frontier in new digital worlds. For many of us, pixel art is simple nostalgia and imaginary worlds.
To see the lesser blocks of a form, and let our imaginations fill in the details. Ethermore lives in the theatre of our minds. The characters and the culture are the blocks.
“Truth is a matter of the imagination.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin
Social capital and community
Fantasy communities are always full of like-minded, diverse, and welcoming people that are there predominately to collaborate towards a shared goal. The subset niche of these folk in web3 is a small ven diagram and hosting space for people to break the ice through games, creativity, and problem-solving is a breeding ground for collaborations, new friendships, and opportunities to build things.
Due to the collaborative nature of the project, a tight feedback loop exists between the community members and the Ethermore narrative arc and world. The open-sky project has worldbuilding and choice-making a the heart of the experiences and as a result, ownership and involvement in the imaginary world are core to the project.
Security.
The core character assets are represented by an ERC721 token on the base layer of Ethereum, secured with IPFS storage and on-chain provenance hashing, it is as secure as game assets can get in blockchain games. Ethermore characters are layer 1 with the narrative, gaming, and social value accruing off-chain.
From the ground up.
Our earliest community-driven and voted content was basic things like the names of the moons (Keccak and Skein) or the Tallest mountain (Mt. Ethermore) but as this develops into choices that shape the world, kill characters, decide the fate of NPCs.
The Community.
We will foster grounds for the community roots of Ethermore to grow.
We have intentionally left Ethermore an imaginary blank canvas for us all to paint a story on. We have sprinkled the seeds of the people and the places to grow. To build a community around this collective creative experiment that starts in the theatre of our minds and ends up on-chain cannon in the world of Ethermore.
- Spaces to meet other characters and NFT holders.
- Places to meet adventuring parties for digital or tabletop games, utilizing your character as an avatar or tabletop token.
- Corners to contribute to the world-build of Ethermore as a fantasy world and community worth exploring.
- Future contributions and decisions about the on-chain lore and directions of Ethermore.
- Abilities for leadership and moderator roles to evolve within the community.
- Nooks for Book clubs and podcast discussion.
- Galleries for Fanart.
- Competitions and quests involving the NFT character
Maybe someone in the community will write a beautiful backstory to the dusk elves, and we can make it lore.
We are going to build this world out. Together.
What makes Ethermore unique?
- One of the first evolving fantasy world on the blockchain with full ownership of unique procedurally generated characters.
- Participate in the world of Ethermore community from the start as it grows and creates the subculture.
- Unique decision-making game structure
- leading NFT ESG standards of offsetting CO2 on the minting process and full carbon offset of our mint.
- Built by us, who know fantasy and have spent many hours in imaginary worlds and always wanted to build one.
