Ronin Round Table: Chronicle System Community Development

The Chronicle System is what we call the "engine" that "powers" our A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying system. Though we have no plans at current to divorce the system from the setting of Martin’s Westeros, we would like to expand on it some. To that end, we’ve been working on a series of PDF releases under the Chronicle System banner.

In many ways, these products are for our fan-base, who have always wanted some expansions to the system. We’ve talked to folks on the forums and in person and the results of those conversations are the Chronicle System products in the works.

But, we figured we’d take that community participation one step further. Not just in terms of what product ideas you’d find useful, but also its specific contents. This week, I posted the first of our Community Development posts in our Chronicle System Community Development forum, a subforum under our A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying forum. In it, we’ve presented a whole expansion to a favorite system of rules for the game: the Holdings element of House-building.

The intention behind doing so is simple: we want your feedback. What will be useful to your game? What is flavorful? What inspires you and what leaves you flat? We’d love your feedback on as macro or micro a level as you care to share, knowing that your contributions are going to be put to serious consideration and implementation by the developer. Obviously, not every idea can be used, but I’ll be mining the conversations for the very best ideas.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be presenting more and more chunks of this PDF for scrutiny and discussion, so that the final product isn’t just something that our fans want, but something that our fans helped make. It should be something everyone really wants to get their hands on—those ideas that will help your game, as developed by those of us who create the game system.

At this point, it’s an experiment—we’ll see how this goes. But if it works, who knows? We might like the process so much that we do it again in the future.

As always, thanks for reading, and thanks for playing.