Green Ronin Publishing Streaming!

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Over the course of the last few months, Team Ronin has been quietly engaging in some experimentation with livestreaming. I say quietly, because even though we’re broadcasting live to the world at large, we purposely chose to keep mum in the run-up to the events in order to give us some room to experiment with format and presentation, and to become familiar with the various technical and logistical aspects of planning, promotion, and of course, going live with the broadcast itself.

It’s been a few months now, and while we will continue to improve our streaming prowess and expand our efforts, it is safe to say that the experiment has been a great success! Though more importantly, we are truly enjoying the experience. So it’s time to level up our streaming game, and like any good endeavor meant to build stronger relationships and connect with people, it’s time to make a little more noise and most importantly, solicit feedback from you directly.

The original idea came as a result of an emergency meeting of the entire team. The spread of COVID-19 was creating a world-wide disruption in every aspect of our business, from printing to conventions- and though at the time there was uncertainty as to how long key infrastructures (like shipping services)  would be incapacitated, we felt certain of one thing: business as usual wasn’t going to work. But as important as finding ways to shift our overall approach to sustaining  a business, there was another, equally important issue to address: in the most trying of times, the connections you make with other humans plays a huge role in your outlook on the world. The more positive, constructive, and authentic human connections you have, your chances of success are increased exponentially. But more than that, we go a long way towards increasing that oft-fleeting feeling of well-being when we can be together in the struggle, even in the face of unprecedented global catastrophe,

So, with a pinch of teamwork, a dash of business necessity, and a heaping helping of blind enthusiasm, the Green Ronin livestreams will continue (until moral improves)! Consider this your invitation to stop by and join the conversation! We laugh a bit, tease a bit, and talk a lot about ideas and motivations behind your favorite Green Ronin projects, inviting your favorite freelancers and contributors from across our catalogue of products to join in the fun.

But be warned! We plan to continue experimenting with the concept, expanding the great ideas and regrouping around those ideas that don’t quite hit the mark. Some of it you’ll no doubt enjoy, other parts might not resonate as much (and that’s ok!). Just be sure to manage your expectations: these live streams are casual conversations and opportunities to connect. While we require time to perfect the presentation, we show up ready to connect and share with you directly.

So, if you’d like to check out a Green Ronin broadcast live and in person, you have two opportunities currently:

Mutants & Masterminds Mondays! Streaming with Crystal and Steve

Mutants & Masterminds Monday with Crystal Frasier and Steve Kenson, streaming live on Facebook at 2p Pacific, every Monday*

 

Fiction Fridays! Streaming with Jaym and Nicole

Fiction Friday with Jaym Gates and Nicole Lindroos, streaming live on Facebook at 2p Pacific every Friday*

Oh yeah, and I’m there too, your disembodied voice cracking wise and trying not to act like too much of an idiot in front of company.

Finally, if you’ve got some thoughts around the kinds of livestreams you would like to see, streaming venues you would like us to explore, or perhaps some thoughts on making the stream more accessible, feel free to send a note to letsplay@GreenRonin.com! I can’t guarantee that every idea can be incorporated, or that we can respond to every single email we receive on the subject of creative improvement, but I do promise we will read them!

Many thanks to those that stumbled across our little experiment and still somehow manage to stick with the program! We look forward to our conversations with you every single week, and hope you do too.

See you on the internet!

*A host of things can impact a livestream, from unplanned internet outages to illness, from to technical fumbles, to… well, just about anything. We reserve the right to shift and change hours, to reschedule, and to expand or contract our broadcast schedule as required by mood or law. Please adjust your expectations accordingly—and don’t forget to bring the fun!

Mastering Time Travel (Part 2)

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Gamemastering Time TravelIn the second part of my Ronin Roundtable guest-spot on the Time Traveler’s Codex (part 1 is here, in case you missed it!), let’s look at how the sourcebook talks about Gamemastering time travel, the nature and use of time travel in the Earth-Prime omniverse, and a peek at the Silver Age time period and some familiar faces found there.

As Chapter 3 of the Time Traveler’s Codex points out, Gamemastering time travel stories can be a challenge. The chapter looks at a number of considerations, building on the intro material from Chapter 1, including deciding how changeable the timeline may be, what methods of time travel exist, the various hazards of time travel, and the important question…

Who Controls the Time Machine?

A major element of a time travel story or series is: Who is in control of the means of time travel? If it is the Gamemaster, then time travel can be largely a plot device for getting the player characters to a new era for the start of a new adventure. They might need to figure out exactly why they are there, but how they get there is taken care of. The same is largely true of time travel is under control of a non-player character, particularly some powerful patron who sends the heroes back and forth through time. The characters might occasionally be able to request some “bending” of the rules but, otherwise, the mechanics are out of their hands.

On the other hand, if the heroes are in control of their means of time travel, the Gamemaster will want clear rules as to how time travel works in the setting and the limits of the heroes’ means of travel are, if any. Be prepared for players to come up with unexpected uses of time travel and to test the limits of that ability. Having some type of limit in place, such as only being able to make so many “jumps” before having to recharge or refuel, or a need to avoid excessive stress on the space-time continuum by spacing out the use of time travel, can provide some boundaries.

The Omniverse

The Earth-Prime setting for M&M is not just one world or even one universe but a vast omniverse of parallel realities and alternate dimensions, of which your own series is a part. Whether it diverges only a little from what’s seen in sourcebook like Atlas of Earth-Prime and Emerald City, or diverges a lot, there’s room in the omniverse for everything! The Time Traveler’s Codex looks at time travel as a phenomenon in the context of the Earth-Prime setting, from cosmic beings like the Time Keepers and their Cosmic Clock, to characters like Doctor Tomorrow, Zeitgeist, and the notorious Tick-Tock Doc and his Counter-Clock Culture.

A Silver Age Retrospective

Since a guidebook to time travel requires times to visit, the Time Traveler’s Codex also looks at a wide range of historical eras, including the Golden Age, Silver Age, and Iron Age of the Earth-Prime setting, focusing on Emerald City, Freedom City, and New York City, respectively. Even if the only “time travel” that interests you is setting your M&M game in an earlier era, this part of the Codex has a wealth of material for you!

The Silver Age section looks at the heyday of the original Freedom League, from their founding after Hades’ attempts to invade Freedom City with an undead army in 1960 up through their first meeting with Pseudo during a secret invasion of the Grue in 1969. It also looks at the original Atom Family and their eventual “discovery” of Farside City, and important Silver Age villains like August Roman, Queen Khana, and Set the Destroyer (along with the slightly less important but still notable Red Death and Bee-Keeper).

And don’t forget, alongside the Time Traveler’s Codex, we also have the amazing bonus content PDF “All Time, No Space!” available FREE for download.

Even More Perilous! (Ronin Roundtable)

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This week sees the release of NetherWar, Part 2: The Pentagram Peril, the segment of the mystic-themed campaign for M&M that I helped to write. I say “helped” because Pentagram Peril wasn’t originally planned as part of a series at all. It was a stand-alone adventure involving the Factor Four and Hellqueen going after some magical treasures when I originally wrote it. But when M&M Developer Crystal Frasier came up with the NetherWar series, the concept fit right into it, so Crystal worked her own particular magic upon my original adventure to make it suitable as a chapter in the series and … voila! The Hellqueen’s scheme now fits into a larger plot involving Earth’s magical power and legacy.

Pentagram of Peril!

Art by Alberto Foche

Peril Times Two!

Speaking of larger plots, Crystal and I were talking for a Mutants & Masterminds Monday broadcast a while back about other magical villains who could fit into the NetherWar series, and Pentagram Peril would be an interesting place to include Dr. Azoth and his Homunculi (from Threat Report, also featuring in the M&M novel Roadtrip to Ruin) as additional or substitute foes. While it would be possible to replace the Factor Four with the evil alchemist and his minions, an even more interesting option is to have Dr. Azoth after the Bloodstones of Vhoka as well!

Perhaps the confrontation at the museum with the Factor Four plays out as-written, but the earlier theft of the other bloodstone from Freedom City University was actually carried out by the Homunculi, leaving each faction with one bloodstone each to start.

This turns all of the middle scenes of the adventure into a three-way competition for the bloodstones between the Factor Four, the Homunculi, and the heroes:

  • The stealthy and shape-shifting Takwin is dispatched to Dakana to infiltrate and steal the bloodstone from the treasury there.
  • The mighty Man-Drake is sent to Agartha to contend with the Terra-King and take the bloodstone from the grasp of Granite and Pyre.
  • Petra is sent to the Antarctic to retrieve the remaining bloodstone from Nullatempus, as easily able to survive the bitter cold there as Sylph.

Do the heroes try to play the villains off each other? Do the villains cooperate to deal with the heroes first before they settle who gets the bloodstone?

Since it’s likely only some of the stones will end up with each faction, the final confrontation at the Maw of Vhoka is both for control of the artifacts and to cast them into the Maw to release and control their accumulated power. It’s possible for multiple villains to gain additional power from the bloodstones, or maybe it is a struggle just between Hellqueen and Dr. Azoth, each using their minions to run interference, as well as summoning bloodstone gargoyles to aid them.

You can also decide if Dr. Azoth is an interloper interfering in the larger scheme of NetherWar or just another part of the larger plan, perhaps a “back up” to ensure the scheme involving the bloodstones is successful, should the Hellqueen and the Factor Four not prove up to the challenge. Either way, the added villainy is sure to make Pentagram Peril even more perilous!

Justice for all. Black lives matter.

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Justice for All
Everyone at Green Ronin was outraged by the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, and we support the protests demanding justice in his name, and in the names of countless Black people murdered and mistreated by the police. Black lives matter, and it’s long past time white America acknowledged that, and took responsibility for the deep-seated racism at the roots of our nation’s history, poisoning our nation’s present.

From the very beginning, the American ideal of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” was reserved only for some. That is unjust and cannot be allowed to continue. The injustices of the past must be redressed and, more importantly, present-day systemic racism and white supremacy must be torn out of our nation, root and branch. For there to be peace, there must first be justice. Justice for George Floyd. Justice for Breonna Taylor. Justice for Ahmaud Arbery, and so many, many others. Because until there is justice for them, all of them, there cannot be justice—or peace—for all.

Justice for all. Black lives matter.

Justice Now Sale
In conjunction with this statement we are launching a new Charitable Giving sale. From now until July 6, the Mutants & Masterminds Basic Hero’s Handbook is on sale for $20 in print and $15 in PDF. $10 of each sale will go to Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County. Comics have often been used to tell stories about the fight for justice and heroism in the face of oppression, and you can write your own chapters with the Mutants & Masterminds RPG.

We also encourage you to donate directly to BLM Seattle or the nationwide organization. Seattle Met has a good list of other ways to support the protests here in our home town.

You may also consider supporting social justice organizations we’ve donated money to in previous Charitable Giving campaigns.
Center for Justice and Accountability
Innocence Project
National Immigrant Justice Center
Pride Foundation
RAICES
Southern Poverty Law Center

What Even Is Time (Travel)? (Ronin Roundtable)

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With the 20th anniversary of Green Ronin Publishing and the 18th anniversary of Mutants & Masterminds this year, we’ve been doing a lot of looking back at the past. But what about visiting the past or, for that matter, changing the past? Well, that’s where the Time Traveler’s Codex for M&M comes into play, arriving “just in time,” so to speak.

Time travel is a favorite sub-genre of mine, and the superhero genre is especially fertile ground for it, given the “anything goes” approach of my comic book universes. It’s not all that unusual for a character to be someone else’s potential offspring from an alternate future, or for one’s nemesis to be someone you haven’t even “met” yet, but who is trying to erase you from history! Naturally, when M&M Developer Crystal Frasier proposed the Time Traveler’s Codex, I was first in-line to write part of it!

Time Traveler's Codex on sale now!

 

The parts of the Codex I got to write include: The overview of time travel as a sub-genre, temporal mechanics and rules options, the role of time travel in a series, creating characters with time travel in mind, Gamemaster advice on handling time travel and running time travel adventures (or series), time travel in the Earth-Prime omniverse, and a revisit to the Silver Age of Freedom City as a time travel destination. Here on the Ronin Round-Table, in this installment and the next, let’s take a sneak-peek at a few of these in more detail.

Infinite Possibilities

Well, there wasn’t room in the sourcebook for infinite possibilities (if there is later, maybe I’ll jump back and revise). Still, the beginning Time Traveler’s Codex takes a good look at how time travel might work, and at the various staples of the sub-genre, including alternate timelines (and alternate selves), non-linear time, paradoxes, fixed points in time, and temporal enforcement agents (both natural and supernatural). Gamemasters can decide for themselves what time travel options exist in their own games, with some guidance as to the possibilities and repercussions.

Temporal Mechanics

The first chapter of the sourcebook also looks at optional rules systems for handling things like temporal navigation, temporal drift, temporal mishaps (complications specifically related to time travel), temporal transformations (either from revisions in history or exposure to chronal energies), and retroactive continuity. It’s a place where some of the M&M game systems get to shine, from transformative afflictions to time-related complications. I particularly like the following extension of the hero point mechanics for time travel:

Hero Points and Retcons

Temporal manipulations allow for an additional option for hero points, using the Edit Scene ability to “retcon” changes in history! Essentially, so long as the player can come up with a time travel scenario that explains it, they can spend a hero point to edit the scene to make it the case. For example, heroes might find themselves trapped and without their devices; a player suggests their hero will, at some point in the future, come back into the past and leave an extra set of equipment behind a false panel nearby! The GM approves, the player spends the hero point, and voila! The heroes open the panel to find the gear that they need.

In addition to the normal limit imposed by the number of hero points they have to spend, the GM may wish to impose temporal consequences for an excessive use of this option, perhaps causing a character to start to develop time sickness (following) with the DC of the resistance test based on 10 + the number of hero points spent retconning that game session (or over a certain number that session).

Next Up: Mastering time travel, time in the Omniverse, and a look back at the Silver Age!

ASSAULT ON THE NERIAN NEXUS: WEST COAST EDITION

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Nerian Nexus in Emerald City!

Assault on the Nerian Nexus is out and ready to run your heroes through the gauntlet! And while it’s packed with excitement featuring your favorite Freedom City baddies, an observant fan of our weekly Mutants & Masterminds Monday livestreams raised an excellent question: How do you jump from our previous adventure series, Emerald City Knights, to the events of NetherWar if your group wants to keep the same lineup?

There’s nothing saying you can’t just transplant the personalities and histories of Freedom City directly to Emerald City. Like any comic book series, simply give your heroes a few “villain-of-the-week” style adventures as a palate cleanser, then you can lead right into the events of Assault on the Nerian Nexus. But Freedom City and Emerald City have very different themes and casts, and with the events of Emerald City Knights delving so deeply in the west coast city’s obscured history and establishing the new status quo, you might want to recast the events of NetherWar to fit the west coast flavor.

Re-inventing the NetherWar adventure series to fit Emerald City requires a little more legwork if you really want to lean into the charm and mood of the city established during Emerald City Knights:

Step 1: Pick a Theme

Freedom City’s is inspired heavily by the long comic book histories of major publishers. It’s a melting pot of silly and serious, combining many genres of superpowers and comics with an eye more toward earnest heroics as the unifying theme. Emerald City, with its deliberately concealed history and modern, tech-oriented power boom, is more rooted in modern film and television, drawing inspiration from television shows like Heroes and movies from the new cinematic takes on classic comic mythologies. These sources look for a common and scientific (or believably pseudo-scientific) origin to superpowers and often ignore magic or else describe it like a scientific force not yet entirely understood.

All this is to say: Magic isn’t a major force in Emerald City as depicted in Emerald City Knights, even if the city itself has several noteworthy magical villains.

You as the Gamemaster need to decide if you want to keep the original magical overtones of NetherWar, or convert it to one of the power archetypes more commonly seen in Emerald City, like aliens or psychic ability. Rather than use NetherWar’s existing big-bad, you could use a powerful psychic like Koschei or the Cosmic Mind—who has become disembodied and is now trying to merge with the collective human unconscious to rule the world! Alternatively, you might run NetherWar as an extension of Emerald City Knights, with many of the magical threats being replaced with technology and nanites unleashed by Tellax as the alien robot continues its quest to transmute the Earth into a cosmic weapon.

Step 2: Decide the Histories

The events of NetherWar turn heavily on the actions of Adrian Eldrich before his death, with his old foes re-emerging to threaten the world now that no Master Mage opposes them. If you stick with a magical theme to the series, you’ll need to decide if Adrian Eldrich operated out of Emerald City and left much of his legacy there . If not, you’ll need to cast a replacement. With the Fraternal Order of Evil deliberately concealing much of the city’s superheroic history, it’s entirely possible another powerful mage made their home in the city, and whose legacy was forgotten and stronghold lost upon their death. In this case, it isn’t wards keeping villains from plundering the Nerian Nexus (or whatever you decide to call it), but simple ignorance. The gold rush to reclaim the lost treasures might begin when a Silver Age villain like the original Mad Machinist might babble about the lost stronghold in their old age, or the rediscovery of another Silver Age lair like that of Guild of Justice headquarters in The Reign of Cats and Dogs might point heroes and villains alike to this lost trove of magic.

If you instead decided on a theme other than magic, you’ll need to pick histories and locations to replace the magical ones featured throughout the NetherWar series. The Nerian Nexus might instead be a secret Ghostworks of Majestic-20 lab or a Preserver ruin hidden in the Atlas Mountains or deep below the Pacific Ocean. Peruse the Emerald City sourcebook for inspiration and don’t be afraid to create your own lost legacies in Emerald City to explain the how and why of strange locations.

Step 3: Cast Your Villains

To round out your Emerald City remake of NetherWar, decide which villains from the original adventures you want to keep and who you might re-cast with Emerald City natives.

The menacing Madame Macabre makes an excellent substitute for Medea. While nowhere near as ancient and a good deal more sarcastic, Madame Macabre is still bitter at the world failing her and relies as much on trickery and manipulation as she does brute force to get what she wants. For more powerful magical opponents to replace Malador in later adventures, you might look at Doctor Azathoth or Professor Jackanapes, or the chaos goddess Eris might insert herself into events to complicate everything. The obsessive collector of secrets Arcanix might stand in for Warden, while Toy Boy’s role as the ever-loyal spy might be replaced by another terminally-ill villain like Doubletime or Mosquito.

You can round out your gallery of rogues with magical adjacent villains, such as the Looking Glass Gang and various magic-themed Stormers like Chain, Epiphany Jones, Ghostlight, Lord Etheric, and Silver Sorcerer.

In the end, Astonishing Adventures are tools to help you and your group have a good time. Take what you like, replace what you think will work better, and otherwise customize the adventure to fit your needs!

All the villains and organizations in this post can be found in the pages of the Emerald City and Threat Report sourcebooks.

Powered UP! A Mutants & Masterminds fiction Anthology

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Next week we are proud to release a collection of Mutants & Masterminds short stories from Nisaba Press, in an anthology entitled Powered Up!

Powered Up from Nisaba Press

Time passes, some things change, and other things remain. If you could go back in time nineteen years, and tell me in 2001 that the characters I created for Freedom City (the first sourcebook for what has become the Earth-Prime setting) would still be around…well, I might well have done some things differently, knowing that, but overall I’m glad that I didn’t. Because time passes, and things change, and we and the world change with them.

Comic books are very much a shared medium. Even the great creators, who set the stage for generations to come, eventually passed the torch of the wondrous worlds and characters they created onto other creators, who have done the same, on and on for generations now. While not-yet twenty years is a small comparison to a publishing history easily four times that, I can look back to the earliest days of Mutants & Masterminds and Earth-Prime and the tremendous number of people who have contributed to it: writers, artists, editors, developers, and other creatives, as well as countless players and Gamemasters. They made what started out as “my” world into a truly shared world.

I was recently told by a reader that one of the things he liked about Earth-Prime is that we have allowed time to pass in the setting, largely as it has passed for us. Characters from almost twenty years ago have grown-up, retired, moved on, and even died. Young upstarts are now married with kids. Young kids are now young adults and the Earth of Freedom City has grown—oh, how it has grown! This book is just the latest chapter in that growth.

Powered Up is a whole different view of a living, changing, heroic world, because it is a collection of stories. For a tabletop roleplaying game like Mutants & Masterminds the stories need to be incomplete, unfinished: They are implied, hinted-at, or only half-told—offered as dangling threads you can pick up and follow, or briefly summarized histories of the epics of the past. They’re incomplete because they await players, the storytellers, to finish them.

This anthology lets us step inside those stories in a different way, not as players but as readers, and we can follow along with the heroes and people of Earth-Prime as their stories unfold before us. The diversity of stories in this collection shows just how rich and living a world Earth-Prime has become and, if I may indulge the role of “proud parent” for a moment, just how well it has grown-up over the years. I’m excited to be able to share these new stories with you, and looking forward to all of the stories—and changes—to come.

 

NEXUSES, NERIAN AND FAR (Ronin Roundtable)

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Assault on the Nerian Nexus

The next adventure in the NetherWar series, Assault on the Nerian Nexus, releases this morning. Following an unspecified number of years after the events in Master of Earth, Assault on the Nerian Nexus represents the first big event to kick off the villain’s diabolical plan to conquer not only Earth-Prime, but all the cosmos! The NetherWar begins with a bang, as Medea cracked open Adrian Eldrich’s now-vacant sanctum, the Nerian Nexus, to plunder the treasures inside! But secrets never stay secret among Freedom City’s villain community, and a half-dozen other villains wait in the wings to make their own run on the wealth and knowledge long protected inside the supernatural abode! The heroes will need all their strength and cunning to stand up against a rotating gallery of villains before they can escape with deadly secrets and powerful magic artifacts!

Adventure author John Polojac—who you might remember from Rogues Gallery and the SuperTeam Handbook — did a great job bringing the surreal world of the Nerian Nexus to life, with plenty of bizarre encounters beyond villain rumbles to vex and emotionally scar your heroes. John always overdelivers, and was thoughtful enough to provide some advice for Gamemasters who want to switch up the events of Assault on the Nerian Nexus for increased customization and replayability by adding an optional encounter with the villain Arcanix at the adventure’s conclusion.

I’ll let John take it from here:

The Arcanix Alternative

Arcanix

Having the far more self-interested Arcanix substitute for Warden in the conclusion sets up a potential confrontation for the heroes. While Arcanix desires the same prize as Medea—the multiversal guidebook Alternity Atlas—he realizes he arrived too late for that. But the mysterious mage will take a concession prize as his due, all the lesser items gathered by the Crime Leaguers on their sojourn. Heroes balking at this “compensation” must contest with Arcanix. The characters should justly be wary of giving over ANY of the Nerian Nexus’ prizes to the avaricious Arcanix.  While he has no genuine animus towards the team, he realizes they are unlikely to comply with his demands, so Arcanix will strike the instant any heroes voice objection!

Even if prevented from absconding with ill-gotten goods, Arcanix taking leave with Medea to parts unknown is obviously a bad idea. Should he escape with the immortal in tow, an adventure can be built around tracking Arcanix before he finds a way to add Medea’s secrets to his own. As memories cloud following his departure, the team must act quickly to discover a means of reaching Arcadian’s extra-dimensional bolthole!

The Arcanix Alternative takes the adventure’s conclusion in a very different direction, setting up a chase scene or rescue mission culminating in a confrontation with a power spellcaster. Depending on how the heroes handled other villains throughout the events of Assault on the Nerian Nexus, they may assist the heroes in freeing Medea or use the distraction as a moment to lash out for revenge! Tom Cypress in particular is likely to become involved to save his best friend, while Medea’s Crime League cohorts may likewise follow up on her kidnapping before they lose their only reliable access to magic power.

Arcanix’s statblock and background information can be found in the pages of Threat Report, alongside dozens of additional villains who might threaten your heroes!

The NetherWar doesn’t end with Assault on the Nerian Nexus, so stay tuned for further supernatural adventures!

 

Ronin Army forums update: All Good Things…

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Hello Green Ronin fans,

Today we have guest post from our stalwart forum moderator Fildrigar, on the status of the Ronin Army forums that have been down for the last week.

Ronin Army Gamer Badge

Green Ronin Gamer Badge

Greetings!

I’m Barry Wilson. You might remember me from such internet places as That One Wargaming With Miniatures Forum and Esoteric Prog Rock Fans Online.

I have a long history with, and a deep and abiding love of internet forums. Since I first discovered them in the Nineties, I have whiled away many an hour reading and posting on them. I never had the patience for IRC, far preferring the slower, more thoughtful discourse (and formatting options) forums usually provided. I’ve been moderating Green Ronin’s forums for around eight years now. 

Unfortunately, the time has come to shut down the forums. While it wasn’t an easy decision, it was necessary once we discovered a rather serious security vulnerability that made continuing to support the forum software an untenable position. We have reached the tipping point where the security risks involved with maintaining the forums outweigh the benefits. We tried to find a solution that would allow us to maintain the existing forums in read-only mode, but just running the forum software on our servers would pose too great a security risk. 

Forums have in the past provided a place for people to discuss our games. Increasingly, those discussions have moved to places like Facebook, Reddit, and Discord (and many, many others.) Places like these are allowing us to reach more fans than our small forums did. Searching Facebook for the names of our games will direct you to groups available there. There is also a very robust and friendly Discord community called the Green Ronin AGE Appropriate Discord. You’ll find some of your favorite Green Ronin staff regularly hanging out there to talk about the latest Green Ronin happenings.  

In closing, remember that we love you, keep on gaming, and we’ll see you on the internet.

THE TIME TRAVELER’S CODEX: ALL TIME, NO SPACE… (Ronin Roundtable)

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It’s Monday, and we’ve got a lot of things going on we wanted to share, so we figured: “Why not host an impromptu live-stream?” So, we’re inviting you to join Green Ronin Publishing today at 2:00 pm Pacific/5:00 pm Eastern for a special test-run of our live-streaming capabilities, featuring Mutants & Masterminds Super-Dev Crystal Frasier and designer Steve Kenson! They’ll be streaming from our Facebook page, talking about all things Mutants & Masterminds, including the Astonishing Adventures line, its exciting new NetherWar adventure series, and the newly-released Time Traveler’s Codex. Barring any unforeseen technical challenges, they’ll take your questions, too! So come hang out with us as we dip our toes into the world of Facebook live streaming! See you at 2:00 pm Pacific/5:00 pm Eastern, today!


One of the weird truths in any publishing industry is that you often pay for text you can never fully use. The reality of publishing, especially anything highly visual like textbooks, manuals, and game books, is that graphic element of the book needs the text to stop in specific places or only take up so much room. You order your text hoping for a perfect fit, but all too often you need to trim all kinds of interesting tidbits to finally make your book fit. And while the Time Traveler’s Codex gave us access to the End and the Beginning and all ticks on the clock in between… we still ran out of space.

But all good things in time! The miracle of the internet means we no longer throw out babies in the trash, but instead package them up into a free bonus PDF for you to enjoy, whether you purchase the Time Traveler’s Codex or not! Obviously you’ll get a lot more utility out of the content provided if you have the sourcebook in hand, but when push comes to shove, this eclectic mélange of equipment and minions from up and down the timestream can find a home in just about any Mutants & Masterminds campaign. It includes some of my favorite bits, like the centaur and mermaid, that had to be cut from their respective eras—while fun, they’re far from historically accurate—as well as a few fun pieces of time travel gear that can expand your arsenal or provide a handy power boost to your favorite villain!

So download it and… take some time for yourself.