Tormenta


Tormenta is a Brazilian fantasy role-playing game campaign setting that has been played at various times with the rules system for AD&D, Runequest, D20 System or 3D&T. It was created in 1999 by Marcelo Cassaro, Rogério Saladino, and J. M. Trevisan as a special booklet to commemorate Issue #50 of the magazine Dragão Brasil. It has been published by Jambô since 2005, is one of the most popular role-playing games published in Brazil, and has spun off related materials such as comic books, novels and a video game.

Description

Tormenta is a roleplaying game set in a fantasy world. Its main continent, Arton, is threatened by a magical alien storm called Tormenta that threatens to assimilate and destroy everything and even the gods cannot do anything to stop it.
Arton is ruled by the Pantheon, twenty greater gods, but there are many minor gods.

Gods

Arton has 20 major gods that form the pantheon and a infinite number of minor gods.
The major gods are:
Wynna: The goddess of magic is mother of all magic in Arton.
Lena: The child-goddess of life, motherhood and childhood. Legend says that all life on the universe comes from her laugh.
Khalmyr: God of justice, law and order. Former leader of the Pantheon.
Nimb: God of chaos, madness and luck. There is a common say “Khalmyr may has the board, but it’s Nimb who moves the pieces.
Mara: Goddess of the peace, parties and love.
Arsenal: God of war. Used to be the high priest of the former god of war, Keen, but he defeated him in combat by using the most powerful magical sword in the universe, the Holy Avenger.
Kallyadranoch: The god of dragons, tyranny and power. Kally has been out of existence for 8 centuries, his body sealed behind the Sleeping Dragon Mountain in the Blood Mountains, but he came back recently, allowed to return to the pantheon after Glórienn’s fall.
Tannah-Toh: The goddess of knowledge, teaching, sciences and arts.
Sszass: The god of lies, betrayal, snakes and poison. Sszass was thought to be dead until recently.
Oceano: The god of sea.
Alihanna: Goddess of nature, animals and plants.
Aharadak: God of the Tormenta. Used to be just a Lord of the Tormenta and ascended to the Pantheon after Tauron’s death.
Megalokk: God of monsters and savagery.
Tenebra: Goddess of night, Underdark, and undeath.
Azgher: God of sun, fire and the deserts.
Valkaria: Goddess of ambition, humanity and adventure. Recently released after 8 hundre years imprisioned in a statue.
Thwor Ironfist: God of goblinoids. Ascended after Ragnar’s death.
Thyatis: God of prophecy, fire, phoenixes and rebirth.
Hynnin: God of thiefs, rogues, treachery and cunning.
Lin-Wu: The god of honor venerated in Tamu-Ra.

Former major gods
A rare event, sometimes a major god fall from the pantheon, be it by death, be it by lack of worship or by punishment. Here are the gods who fell:
Glórienn: The former goddess of the elves and the concept of perfection, after the elven city of Lennorien’s downfall she tried to use the Tormenta as a weapon for vengeance against Ragnar and his Dark Alliance. After she failed to manipulate The Tormenta, she became depressed and, when the Tormenta tried to dominate her Divine Realm, she didn’t even tried to resist and then she fell from major goddess to minor goddess and slave of Tauron. She pleated with The Tormenta to overthrew Tauron and put Aharadak in the post of major god. After that, she tried to use force the elves to worship her, and after the Intervention elven cleric Gwen, every single elf saw how selfish she was and abandoned the former goddess, turning her into a mortal.
Tauron: Tauron used to be the god of strengh, creator and patron of the Minotaurs and he believed that the strong must protect the weak and the weak must serve the strong. After Glórienn’s plot with the Tormenta, he was killed in combat by Aharadak and his corpse is still in Tiberus, now dominated by the Tormenta.
Ragnar: Ragnar used to be the god of death of the goblinoids. He was killed when the bugbear emperor Thwor Ironfist manipulated the meaning of the prophecy he created to throw a meteor at him when he voluntarily weakened himself.
Tillian: Tillian was the god of invention and gnomes. Tillian created the Tormenta with Valkaria and Kally, and his punishment was become a immortal crazy beggar forever.
Keen: The former god of war. His avatar was defeated in combat by Arsenal wielding the Holy Avenger, so he gave up his position as the god of war.

History

In 1998, Brazilian comic book artist and writer Marcelo Cassaro, who was also editor-in-chief of the magazine Dragão Brasil, published a role-playing adventure called Holy Avenger, set in a land called Arton. The three-part adventure was published in issues #44, #45, and #46 of Dragão Brasil using the rules for either AD&D or GURPS. After Holy Avenger was published, Cassaro called his two assistant editors, J. M. Trevisan and Rogério Saladino, to an editorial meeting in his apartment to discuss how to commemorate the upcoming 50th issue of the magazine. The decision was made that the three of them would create a special insert for the magazine detailing the world of Arton, bringing together in one cohesive setting all the characters, locations, items, gods and other separate creations from articles previously published in the magazine. The eventual product was an 80-page booklet inserted into the magazine called Tormenta, named after the magical storm that ceaselessly ravaged the seas around the continent of Arton. The setting was designed to be used with the major roleplaying systems used in Brazil at the time, AD&D, GURPS, and 3D&T, a proprietary rules system created by the magazine.
Word of mouth spread about the Tormenta booklet, and Issue 50 of Dragão Brasil quickly sold out. Demand for Tormenta was so great that some newsstands were reported to be selling the booklet separately. Cassaro, Saladino and Trevisan became known as the "Trio Tormenta". Soon after, they published a new edition using only the rules for 3D&T, in order to avoid copyright issues with Wizards of the Coast and Steve Jackson Games.
Cassaro also republished Holy Avenger as a manga-style comic, with scripts by Cassaro and art by Érica Awano.
The unexpected success encourtaged the Trio to publish more articles in Dragão Brasil. Although some readers complained about the excess of Tormenta articles, many readers asked for more. In the following years, the amount of new material, including some created by fans, resulted in new editions and revisions to Tormenta. In 2001, with the creation of the Open Game License by Wizards of the Coast, Tormenta Third Edition was launched, followed by Tormenta d20 in 2003. In the same year, an adaptation of Tormenta was also released for the latest revision of 3D&T called 3D&T Turbine.
Over time, Tormenta was so successful that it threatened to outgrow Dragão Brasil. Trio Tormenta decided to create a separate magazine, Revista Tormenta, published by Editora Talismã, which would be solely dedicated to material for the Tormenta setting. The magazine was well received and seventeen editions were released before Editora Talismã withdrew from the arrangement in 2005. The members of the Trio started to work with other publishers, launching RPGMaster published by Mythos Editora; and Dragon Slayer published by Mantícora, which emulated the old Dragão Brasil, with bimonthly releases and initially with content mainly focused on the d20 System and the Open Game License.
The Trio continued to release new editions of Tormenta and 3D&T including a new version of Tormenta D20 published by Jambô Editora, based on D&D 3.5 in 2005; and the next revision of 3D&T, again published by Jambô, under the name 3D&T Alpha in 2008.
However, after Issue #23 of Dragon Slayer, the original Trio stepped down as editors of the magazine, and were replaced by Guilherme Dei Svaldi, Gustavo Brauner, and Leonel Caldela, who became known as Trio Tormenta Ultimate..
In 2010, the two Trios collaborated on a new edition of Tormenta, published by Jambô Editora, with a game system based on OGL, but with many elements of its own. A version of the new Tormenta was again adapted for 3D&T with the launch of the Alpha Adventurer's Manual. In 2013, a revised version of Tormenta was released that contained errata from the previous edition, as well as 16 pages of new material. In 2016, Tormenta Alpha was released, adapting the campaign exclusively for 3D&T. The following year, Tormenta RPG Guild of the Monkey Edition was released.
In 2019, in celebration of 20 years of Tormenta, Jambô launched a crowd-funded campaign on the Catarse website to raise R$80,000 for Tormenta 20, a new RPG system, also based on D20, but with new rules, races, classes and with a complete update of the campaign world. The appeal raised R$1,918,486, 2,400% of the original target, the largest Brazilian crowd-funding campaign up to that time, and the3 first to top R$1 million.

Campaign books

D&D 3.5

(Publisher Talismã)

Literature

The Challenge of the Gods, action game on 3D platform, by the Digital Games Laboratory of the Feevale University in partnership with Jambô Editora

Magazines