Ronin Roundtable: Musings on Women, Games, and the Tabletop Industry

About a month ago I attended the DICE Summit in Las Vegas. The DICE Summit isn’t normally part of my convention rotation but I was invited to sit on a panel about what electronic games can learn from tabletop gaming and that topic is decidedly in my wheelhouse. The panel was moderated by Randy Pitchford of Gearbox and my fellow panelists were Mike Mearls of Wizards of the Coast and a colleague formerly of the tabletop business who made the move to the videogaming world, Josh Mosqueira, lately of Bonfire Studios. If you missed the livestream of this keynote, and are really, really curious to see how it went down, you can watch the whole thing here: https://youtu.be/F4vLd9cZW2o

The DICE Summit includes game design students and students of other game-related studies in their conference, something I was only vaguely aware of when I participated on the panel. During the coffee hour following our talk, I found myself speaking with first one, then two, then six, then nine female students who are pursuing game-related studies and who were downright eager to hear about opportunities in tabletop gaming. I left the conference feeling very enthusiastic about the diversity represented by these young women and was reminded once again that our industry is relatively young and started so very, very white and very, very male but that has been consistently changing for the better year by year.

One thing that has concerned me over my years as a professional is the lack of a mentorship culture in tabletop gaming. I wrote a whole essay about it for Elisa Teague’s collection, Girls on Games and despite pondering the problem from a few different angles I’m still at a loss on how to best address that situation. This is not to say that individuals don’t mentor others in certain circumstances, just that there is a distinct lack at the level of the game industry’s biggest organizations that doesn’t exist in other professions.
Still, just because there are challenges (even big ones) doesn’t mean that I’m satisfied to just coast along and wait for someone else to make a difference. I like to think that I walk what I talk, personally and professionally. Try to, anyway. I was very pleased to be a part of Gen Con’s Industry Insider Featured Presenters advisory committee last year when we achieved gender parity in invited speakers for the first time. Closer to home Blue Rose is hitting hobby distribution in April and is undoubtedly our most recent public example of Green Ronin’s interest in both portraying diverse characters and attracting diverse players to go along with them. We’ve also expanded and changed up our team, from our convention staff to our line developers, and not only have we gotten to know and work with some great women in the process but we’ve added some excellent new perspectives and approaches to challenges that have helped make Green Ronin a stronger and more productive company across the board.

2017 is still young and I’m excited about the projects we have brewing from now into early next year. We have some new projects, some exciting bits of news, and some upcoming freelancing opportunities to talk about in the coming months. Some of the projects I’m most excited about haven’t been announced yet but more information about every little thing will eventually appear here. Watch this space Mondays.

Justice For All Sale

Support the National Immigrant Justice Center in our Justice For All sale.

Support the National Immigrant Justice Center in our Justice For All sale.

As part of our ongoing Charitable Giving Initiative, through the end of March, 2017, you can partake of our Justice For All Sale in our Green Ronin Online Store. Both the print and PDF version of the Advanced Bestiary for the Pathfinder RPG are on sale, with $10 of each one sold going to the National Immigrant Justice Center.

Ronin Roundtable: It’s a Team Effort

We are a very tiny team here at Mutants & Masterminds, and can only protect so much of the city on our own. But many tiny teams make for a mighty league. Thankfully, Green Ronin does not stand alone on the field of superhero gaming. We’re backed by some of the coolest and most creative third-party publishers in the hobby industry, and there are a lot of them out there, from small passion-project companies with one or two offerings to powerhouses that turn out monthly or even weekly offerings. Time spent in exciting crossovers with Green Ronin’s many allies won’t be wasted, and here are just a few of my personal favorites:

(the Might Miracle Guardians by Tony Parker)

Vigilance Press offers some of the most fun and creative characters out there. Their two Rogues, Rivals, and Renegades collections are some memorable lineups or rogues and rivals (as one would expect from the label), but my personal delight is the Kaiju Kultists installment of the Due Vigilance series and the oft-requested romance comic rules available in Strange Attractors. For added entertainment, give their podcast a listen; Beacon City is a great campaign that features guest stars from the Freedomverse!

Rogue Genius Games’s weekly Super Powered Legends series offers familiar faces from pop culture with modern twists, all written and illustrated by the double-threat Jacob Blackman. Also among their offerings is the incredibly useful Super Powered Bestiary.

The brilliant Steven Trustrum and I got started in the industry around the same time, and I spent most of my twenties with a professional crush on his writing. His company, Misfit Studios, puts out some of the most useful and insightful products around, including the indispensable Better Mousetrap which contains a wealth of character-building ideas, GM advice, new villains and organizations, and plenty of expanded options for the core Mutants & Masterminds rules.

Finally, Xion Studio offers the popular and well-developed Watchguard campaign setting, which I am embarrassed to admit I still haven’t managed to read through despite the incredible reviews and popularity. Despite my personal blind spot, Xion is worth highlighting if only because Charlie McElvy, the creator of Watchguard, is helping Carlos Cabaleiro and Vito Delsante bring the world of their comic book, Golden Guard, to life as an RPG as part of their kickstarter!

Our third-party publishers are an amazing group that work hard and deserve plenty of love. There’s nowhere near enough space here to highlight all the amazing creators who deserve it, so please share your favorites here on our forums or on social media!

Ronin Roundtable: Critical Role

“Its already been such a ride. When I began our little home game nearly over 4 years ago, I never expected to be inspired enough to create a whole continent. When the fine folks at Green Ronin approached me last year about fleshing it out and putting it all down in a book, I was in disbelief that people would be interested in such a thing. When I accepted the challenge, I was filled with trepidation at the herculean task ahead of me. Now here I am, nearly complete with the first book of my writing history, about a world I created within my silly brain space, discovered by my wonderful friends as they explored it, and now prepared to be released into the wild for others to learn about, take up, and they themselves create within. I am extremely proud already. 

It has been a curious process, fraught with difficulty and learning experiences, but has been extremely fulfilling. To look down at this collection of thoughts, ideas, and possibilities… to put it out into the world as my gift to others, permission to take my baton and run with it, is so very exciting. I hope the final product will be something you enjoy creating with as much as I enjoyed creating it.”

 

-Matt Mercer


The Departure ©2017 Kent Davis


This amazing piece of artwork was created by Kent Davis  @iDrawBagman. His additional work can be found at his Artstation website.

You Am Ork! Again!

One of the neat things about being developer at large at Green Ronin is that I get a taste of nearly everything. And lo, I have sampled many hyper-palatable game treats, full of the salt, sweetness and fat of . . . okay. Metaphor’s been stretched too far. Besides, maybe that doesn’t fit with the taste of Ork!

Ork! The Roleplaying Game was Green Ronin’s first original RPG: an unabashed “beer and pretzels” roleplaying game of comic carnage by Todd Miller and Chris Pramas, with Robert Toth. Green Ronin’s been working on a new edition for a while, but they—now we, since I’ve joined the firm—want to get it just right. Ork! comes from the company’s cradle. The kid’s grown up and headbutted people at a few hardcore shows, but we still love him. He was never good in school, so we’re giving him a job at the company, and an upgrade, into Ork! The Roleplaying Game, 2nd Edition.

Getting Ork! right means getting the tone (funny and relaxed) and game play (action-oriented but not tactical) down the way the game needs, and the way Chris and Todd want to see it. Thus, as the game’s developer I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants, or at least trolls: Chris and Todd, Robert, and Jon Leitheusser, who started the process of getting Ork! to its next edition.

You Am Get Core Premise
Since I became Ork! developer, it’s been my job to review everything to date, and polish it to fit Chris and Todd’s vision for the game. When confronted with the manuscript, I decided to think like an ork, and ask dumb questions, like: “What am game about?” (This is how orks speak, by the way.) This is a dangerous question in game design, because if you develop the game to stick too closely to the answer, you get something narrow and boring. But Ork! is a comedy game, and these aren’t usually in danger of getting too anchored—in fact, they tend to need that premise more than your average straight-faced game. Players already tend to act silly, so for comedy, the question really asks, “What absurd thing gets taken seriously, so comedy happens without forcing it?” So, I read Ork! and found the key: god barf.

Why? The ork creation myth goes like this:

In the beginning, there was no earth, no sky, no sea. There was Krom.

Krom slept and dreamed, and dreamed and slept for countless ages.

And then, he woke up. And he was hungry. So, Krom searched around for something to eat.

At last, he found a rock. Krom ate the rock, and it was good.

But later, the rock made Krom sick to his stomach, and he threw up for seven thousand days, and seven thousand nights.

Out of Krom’s stomach came the world, all the mountains and oceans and animals.

But Krom still felt sick. He never should have eaten that stupid rock!

And he was mad.

And then, he threw up for seven thousand more days, and seven thousand more nights.

Krom threw up the squishy men, and the sour men, and the trolls, and the giant cockroaches and the flying monkeys and the goblins, and then, when he thought he couldn’t throw up anymore, he threw up the orks.

And they were good.

Krom spoke to them.

“You shall be brave and strong,” he told them.

“You am shut up!” they yelled back.

And so, Krom cursed the orks.

“Everything that walks, swims, or crawls on the earth shall be your enemy. And they will never rest until they destroy you!”

“But, if you should somehow kill them all first, then I shall reward you.”

So spoke the mighty Krom.

And the orks were happy.

That’s what Ork! is about. You’re an ork and somewhere, up there, Krom presides over his barf. He’s annoyed.

You Am Get Game Meka, uh Miccani—You Am Get New Rules!
Ork! reinforces is mythology with its core mechanic: All dice rolls are opposed! Sometimes they’re opposed by the rolls of other orks, squishy men, sour men and the hordes of other annoying beings that inhabit the world, but when anything else opposes an ork, such as a tricky thing to climb, or how to make a weird magic item work? There’s not static, objective difficulty. There’s Krom. You roll against his dice. Now he’s a god, and this might seem unfair, but Krom rolls dice based on how interested or annoyed he happens to be with his least-favored creations. Chris Pramas baked this idea right into the rules, and I’ve decided to use it for a couple of new systems, including the following:

Cheats: Other games have “specializations,” and “focuses” that represent special training or talent. But orks aren’t the sort of people who stay inside and practice violin while the other orks play kick the squishy man head, and they’re not really “gifted”—or at least, orks don’t get tutors and special classes and pats on the back. To be especially good at something, they must cheat Krom.

Cheating Krom gives an ork the ability to steal dice from the Orkmaster—that is, the GM who represents Krom in an Ork! session. You roll them alongside your own to do especially well at something. The downside? Krom can’t be cheated forever, and those same dice get added to some future roll against you. Todd Miller’s called the new edition a game of “passing the dice around,” and that’s intentional, as swiping dice back and forth, to defy and be punished by Krom, is part of play.

Magic: Ork! features a lot of magic. Most of it takes the forms of items orks either find during adventures, or are given by their leader, the Warlock (changed from “shaman” in the last edition). To activate them, players roll against the item’s Krom dice. Magic is, after all, a form of cheating, and Krom prefers orks use their toothy snouts and meaty hands to get things done. In addition, this edition features ways for orks to use magic themselves. Todd’s experimented with this idea, and wanted a system that could deal with it without leading to “magic-user” types annotating their character sheets with boring stuff. Thus, all magic deal’s with Krom’s Curse—and if you’re trying to twiddle your thumbs and magick up some missiles, well, Krom doesn’t like that one bit. But the world is weird, and Krom wants orks to show a little backbone (their own, or one ripped out of an enemy vertebrate), so this punishment is about flavor, not giving the players a bad time.

You Am Play!
I’ve grown pretty attached to Ork! and have really enjoyed collaborating with Chris and Todd, and seeing the great work people have put into the game. Now that it’s my turn, I’m taking their advice and looking at it with an eye toward how I’d like it to run. That means breezy, brief rules, plenty of room for improvisation, and a system that leashes a couple of fun ideas to a system designed to unleash a little orkish mayhem. Hope you like it! Or, uh, you am like it!