Ronin Roundtable: Rhydan of Unusual Size

 

After some shipping snafus, the Blue Rose Romantic Fantasy Roleplaying game has made its way into the hands of Kickstarter backers and will likewise be finding its way to a game store near you (especially if you ask your friendly local game store to stock it…).

One element of the Blue Rose setting that differs from “vanilla” fantasy worlds is the rhydan: “awakened” intelligent animals with psychic abilities. Indeed, the name “rhydan” in Aldea (the world of Blue Rose) essentially means “thinking beast or animal”. Rhydan are based on the various—often psychically-linked—animal companions found in romantic fantasy fiction, psychic “catalyst creatures” and companions from science fiction (from Andre Norton’s Star Man’s Son to Alan Dean Foster’s For Love of Mother Not), as well as the talking animals of various faerie and folk tales.

Rhydan “awaken” from otherwise ordinary animal species, and Blue Rose presents a handful of the most widely known rhydan, along with a table for “create your own rhydan” options. Early readers of the book particularly noted that rhy-cats (one of the most common rhydan) typically look like siamese cats, but are the size of mountain lions and wondered: Are all rhydan of such unusual size?

No, or at least, not necessarily. Rhy-cats were some of the very first rhydan in the earliest drafts of Blue Rose (before we were calling them “rhydan,” in fact) and they were conceived of as a specific species, unique to Aldea. That status carried over into the final draft of the original edition of Blue Rose, which had fewer rhydan options than the current edition. Nevertheless, when we updated how rhydan were conceived of in the new edition, we kept rhy-cats largely as they were as a nod to the game’s legacy. It could well be that ordinary house-cats, or even great cats like lions, tigers, or panthers (oh my!) could have rhydan members.

 

It’s likewise possible, given how rhydan already differ from their “parent” species, for rhydan characters in Blue Rose to be quite different in terms of size or even morphology from their mundane cousins, if you and the Narrator wish. For example, while the Blue Rose book doesn’t offer options for extremely small animals like mice as rhydan, it would be possible, or the Narrator could even offer the option of using an existing animal template, such as the raccoon, as a basis for a two-foot tall rhy-mouse with manipulative paws (and, a penchant for swashbuckling, perhaps?). The same might go for rhy-rats as well as others such as rabbits. Similarly, while there’s no rhy-elephant (rhylephant?) option in the game, perhaps a small awakened elephant from a distant clime, based on the horse template with a lower base speed and the addition of a tusk attack and manipulative trunk, is an option. Extrapolate outward from existing templates for similar creatures and variants.

Each rhydan is already unusual amongst its own species, so there’s no reason you can’t further tweak their unusual nature to better suit a concept a player might enjoy. Spin out interesting new characters and companions for your own Blue Rose series!

Pre-Orders Closing Soon

We have several products pre-ordering currently, but time is running out!

Through the end of May, 2017, when you pre-order the print version of Blue Rose: The AGE RPG of Romantic Fantasy, Blue Rose Narrator’s Kit, and the Freeport Bestiary (which is for the Pathfinder RPG) through our Green Ronin Online Store, we’ll offer you the PDF version of the relevant title(s) for just $5 during checkout. Just click the Add to Cart button on the popup to get the deal.

The Blue Rose Dice Set is also pre-ordering right now through the end of the month, but it doesn’t have a digital counterpart.

Other recent releases you may have missed are Love 2 Hate Politics and Love 2 Hate Comics, expansions for Love 2 Hate: The Party Game for Inappropriate People.

Ronin Roundtable: New Paths in Freeport!

 

Adding New Paths to Freeport

Freeport: The City of Adventure updated the Freeport setting to the full set of Pathfinder Roleplaying Game rules… as they existed at the time. Since we published the massive 544 page ultimate urban fantasy setting and sourcebook in early 2015, new hardbacks have been published for Pathfinder. Most notably Horror Adventures, Occult Adventures, Pathfinder Unchained, and Ultimate Intrigue. So does that mean there’s no room for the classes and ideas from those books in Freeport?

No, absolutely not!

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the most noteworthy ideas from those volumes, and how you can use them in your Freeport campaign. Of course you don’t need any of these new books to run an awesome Freeport game. But if you already have them, Freeport makes a fine place to use them!

Horror Adventures

Okay, this one is really easy.

Add everything.

Well, feel free to add everything, and to skip anything you don’t like the look of. The sanity rules in Horror Adventures can either replace or augment the madness rules in Freeport: The City of Adventure. Corruptions, especially deep one, ghoul, possessed, and shadowbound, tie neatly to the horror elements of Freeport, especially those touching on cults and elder gods. In fact, adding an advance corruption to an npc using the cultist npc class from Freeport: The City of Adventure is a great way to make a unique and unexpected cult leaders.

The archetypes and class options from Horror Adventures are all perfectly appropriate for Freeport, but it’s worth mentioning the mad scientist (alchemist), dreadnaught (barbarian), elder mythos cultist (cleric), hexenhammer (inquisitor), cult hunter (investigator), bloody jake (slayer), serial killer (vigilante—see the discussion of Ultimate Intrigue, below, for thoughts on the vigilante), and elder mythos scholar (wizard) work particularly well for darker Freeport campaigns or for noteworthy villains.

Similarly many of the feats, spells, rituals, gear, and magic items work best in the hands of npcs, though if players want to dip a toe into problematic powers, this book expands the ways a GM can let them to that. The advice on running horror games and the shot bestiary are solid, but it’s worth remembering that while Freeport has horror elements, it’s as much pulp swashbuckling adventure as it is fear or horror.

Occult Adventures

Everything in Occult Adventures works fine in Freeport, but in general has a flavor of strange philosophies and traditions from far-off lands. A GM perfectly well can add an Academy of Psychic Sciences in the Eastern District of Freeport of a local, notable source of occult knowledge is desired, but these rules also present a wonderful opportunity to present fully flesh-out options for characters from “far away” to access to help them feel foreign and a bit alien. Given the nature of the Coils in Freeport cosmology such far-off lands could be anywhere, but existing options such as Mazin or Khaeder (or both) can also be reskinned as the home of psychic magic. This also creates a natural backstory for such characters, given that the ivory Ports on the continent are the primary traders with Khaeder, making them a logical starting point for Khaeder psychics, and a reasonable place to establish some small amount of psychic-aware schools and sages.

Pathfinder Unchained

The unchained versions of the barbarian, monk, rogue, and summoner work just as well in a Freeport game as the original classes (and, to be honest, the unchained summoner makes more sense and the unchained rogue is more flexible and interesting). The rest of the optional rules depend very much on whether you like the ideas behind them. There’s nothing about changing the action economy or altering skills that interferes with the rules from Freeport: The City of Adventure, and options like esoteric material components, innate bonuses, and scaling items can actually help reinforce the swashbuckling-with-magic feel of Freeport. Similarly the simplified monster creation rules work just fine, and if you like them, by all means use the,.

Ultimate Intrigue

There’s nothing about the Freeport setting that requires a GM to run games filled with intrigue, mysteries, social climbing, backstabbing, and interpersonal drama—but a lot of people sure seem to prefer it that way! For those folks, Ultimate Intrigue can be a significant boost to the level of talking, investigating, and scheming going on in a game.

The rules on influence can easily be used to track the PCs interactions with factions throughout Freeport, ranging from the various crime organizations to businesses, nobles, the guards, and even specific captains and crews. The research rules are great for mysteries that need more than a single check to find the answers for. The heists section is more advice than rules, but can still be useful for a GM wanting to add more complex schemes to a campaign. The pursuit rules work fine for tacking people across the city, or across an island, but can also be easily adapted for sailing ships attempt to catch up to or evade on another, or beat each other to a destination. The social conflict rules offer more advice and a number of examples of how to add social challenges to a game, and if a GM could use some help getting the most out of the colorful personalities and politics of Freeport, these can be a good jump-starter.

Then, there’s the vigilante class.

There are many fantasy campaign setting where a character with a social identity and a separate, secret vigilante identity don’t work well. If a game is primarily focused on clearing out a dungeon, or fighting as part of a formal military unit, or learning magic at a wizard school, the vigilante class has very few opportunities to shine. That can be true in a Freeport game as well, but characters inspired by the Scarlet Pimpernel or some version of Robin Hood can work very well in a Freeport game that has a lot of social interactions and scheming.

Before allowing vigilante PCs into a Freeport game, the GM should consider how they’ll interact with the campaign’s intended plot. Because the vigilante is built around the idea of having two identities, any player running one is going to look for opportunities to take advantage of that ability. If the campaign is going to include patrons and nemesis in social settings, and heists, and spying, and fights in back alleys the PCs would prefer not to get linked to, that’s likely to work well. If social interaction is going to be more straightforward, and most games focus on delving into cult temples hidden in the sewers or exploring new islands filled with ancient dangers, the vigilante (and characters using any similar options from the archetypes, feats, and so on in Ultimate Intrigue) is likely to get frustrated and have less fun.

Everything Else

Of course there are lots of other sourcebooks available for Pathfinder, from a lot of publishers, ranging from 1-page collections of a few themed feats to 32-page player-focused books to huge tomes on psionics, dragons as player characters, and 1930s-era pulp adventures. More easily than many settings, Freeport can handle all of it, if the GM and players think a new set of rules or options looks good and interesting. Adding too much may make the setting lose much of its existing flavor, but that doesn’t mean it’d be any less fun. The fact the cosmology of Freeport includes the idea that the coils of Yig have already drawn in pieces of other worlds closer to Freeport, and with the right ship (and the right magic) a crew could sail to nearly anywhere, means that anything a group decided to add to a Freeport campaign “fits in,” even if it’s something so strange the locals are likely to shoot first, and ask question alter.

Freeport Bestiary PDF Preview

Freeport Bestiary for the Pathfinder RPGThe Freeport Bestiary is almost here! To celebrate, we have uploaded a PDF preview from the book showing off the deadwood tree. These hateful, unliving monstrosities were created in the fall of Valossa, and seek to destroy all life that they encounter.

There’s just one more week to pre-order the Freeport Bestiary for the Pathfinder RPG, and get the PDF version for just $5. The pre-order ends at midnight next Friday, May 26.

Ronin Roundtable – Sentinels of Earth-Prime: The Big Picture

We’ve got one day left on our Sentinels of Earth-Prime Kickstarter. If you haven’t backed it yet, head over to Kickstarter and check it out. It’s a cooperative card game that takes place in the core setting of our Mutants & Masterminds RPG and uses the excellent Sentinels of the Multiverse rules by Greater Than Games. The great news is that the Kickstarter funded in nine hours and now has topped $135,000, so we will be making Sentinels of Earth-Prime for sure and we’ll have the resources to produce the first print run up front. That really is one of the best things about Kickstarter from a publisher’s point of view, so if you are a backer, thanks for making it possible. Today I thought I’d share our long-term plans for Sentinels of Earth-Prime because we aren’t just launching a game here, but a game line. Let’s talk about what that means and how it relates to Mutants & Masterminds.

 

The first step is, of course, making the core game and the mini-decks that are part of the Kickstarter. Those are scheduled to ship to backers in April of 2018. We’ll then release them into stores, as we value our partners in retail and distribution and want the game to reach the widest possible audience. This should get Sentinels of Earth-Prime out just before summer, which is convention season for the game industry. We can thus run demos and promote it at important conventions like Origins and GenCon. This should all make for a strong rollout and help establish Sentinels of Earth-Prime as a worthy successor to Sentinels of the Multiverse.

What’s the next step? Expansions, of course! The way we’re designing the core game, it tells the story of key events in the years 2002-2006 of Earth-Prime, most notably the Grue attack on earth and Omega’s invasion of Freedom City. From there we have two boxed expansions planned. The first will advance the timeline to 2012, covering the Silver Storm in Emerald City and related events. The third expansion will bring the timeline up the present day, and include elements from The Cosmic Handbook and the new edition of Freedom City. Our plan is to do one release a year for the line, so the core game in 2018, the first expansion in 2019, and the second expansion in 2020. We may do additional mini-decks along the way. Certainly, we have plenty of characters to work with! Over the past 15 years, we’ve published literally hundreds of heroes and villains from the Earth-Prime setting, and more are on the way.

Mutants & Masterminds, the roleplaying game that birthed the Earth-Prime setting, will of course be continuing its run concurrently with Sentinels of Earth-Prime. The long-awaited third edition of the Freedom City sourcebook is coming out next. It’s in layout now and should be going up for pre-order by the end of the month. After that is a new print collection of the Rogues Gallery series of villains, which will include some all-new content, because you can never have enough villains in a superhero RPG! We round out the year with the launch of the Mutants & Masterminds Basic Hero’s Handbook. As the name indicates, this is a beginner friendly entry point into the Mutants & Masterminds RPG. If you’ve never played M&M before, it’ll be a great place to start.

That should give you a good idea where we are going with Sentinels of Earth-Prime and Mutants & Masterminds. If you want to get in on the Sentinels of Earth-Prime Kickstarter, there’s still time! There are some stretch goals we’d love to unlock before the campaign ends, so do check it out. We’re counting on you, heroes!

Ronin Roundtable: Critical Role – Vestiges of Divergence

As we’re closing in on the finish line for Critical Role: Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting, I’m putting the finishing touches on the chapter that deals with the heroes of the land. Part and parcel of that hero experience is, of course, magic items, and Tal’Dorei has some very cool things to offer, in the form of Vestiges of Divergence.

For those not in the know, the Vestiges are holdovers from a powerful magical era. When found, their power is subdued, after long years slumbering. But as the hero accomplishes more and greater tasks, the magic of the Vestiges stirs and begins to rise, allowing heroes to advance these items first to awakened status and finally to exalted status through the performance of great feats or personal development.

 

For today’s post, I’m going to share with you the Pyremaul, a massive hammer filled with potent elemental power.

Pyremaul

Weapon (maul), legendary (requires attunement)

Forged from deep red iron, this massive hammer houses an ever-burning gemstone of orange flame. You have a +1 bonus to attack rolls made with this weapon. When you hit with an attack using this weapon, the target takes an additional 1d6 fire damage.

You can choose to have this weapon shed bright light in a 30 foot radius and dim light for an additional 30 feet. If you kill a creature with an attack using this weapon, the corpse is immolated, turning to ash.

Awakened

When a character awakens Pyremaul, apply the following changes to the item’s traits:

  • Increase the bonus to attack rolls to a +2.
  • Increase the additional fire damage inflicted by a hit to 2d6.
  • When you score a critical hit with this weapon, the target must succeed on a DC 15 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone.

Exalted

When a character exalts Pyremaul, apply the following changes to the item’s traits:

  • Increase the bonus to attack rolls to a +3.
  • Increase the additional fire damage inflicted by a hit to 3d6.
  • When you score a critical hit with this weapon, the target must succeed on a DC 17 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone. The target also suffers an additional 3d6 fire damage from the critical hit.

(It should be noted that this item is currently in-development, and this draft may not reflect its final description.)

Add-On Decks for Sentinels of Earth-Prime!

As promised we’ve unveiled the add-ons for Sentinels of Earth-Prime today! The info is on the Kickstarter page but I’ll repeat it here for the sake of convenience.

We’ve got four additional decks for Sentinels of Earth-Prime: two heroes, one villain, and one environment. You can get them by simply increasing your pledge. They are $6 per deck or you can get all four decks for only $20! So if you wanted two decks, you’d increase your pledge by $12. If you want want all four, increase it by $20. You’ll be able to pick the decks you want after the campaign via BackerKit.

Sentinels of Earth-Prime Add-On Decks

Let’s take a look at each of the add-on decks!

Eldrich

Eldrich is the Master Mage of Freedom City. An adventuring archaeologist of the 1930s, he is the reincarnation of the Atlantean mage who imprisoned Malador the Mystic millennia ago. He defends Earth-Prime from mystical threats and is an ally of the Freedom League.

Lantern Jack

The mysterious guardian of Lantern Hill dates back to the Revolutionary War in Freedom City. Stories claim that Lantern Jack is the restless spirit of a colonial patriot slain by a British officer when he attempted to warn the people of the city of an attack. The truth is much darker…

Malador the Mystic

Malador is an ancient sorcerer from the sunken realm of Atlantis. Once a noble protector of humanity and a scholar of mystical lore, Malador has become mad with power-lust. He wants nothing more than to wield ultimate power and be acknowledged as the supreme master of the mystic arts!

Sub-Terra

Sub-Terra is the strange realm deep beneath the surface of Earth-Prime, where the Serpent People and Morlocks engaged in a long and brutal war. It is a place of monsters, myth, and menaces spawned from both science and sorcery.

These decks have a decidedly mystical spin and will add a lot to the core game. Consider adding them to your pledge today!

The Star Raiders: New Mutants & Masterminds PDF

Star Raiders

Star Raiders

We have a new Mutants & Masterminds PDF for you today. Presenting … the Star Raiders!

In a galaxy in upheaval, heroes are found in unlikely places. That’s certainly the case for the crew of the Marauder, who have become known—and wanted—in the Stellar Imperium and the Grue Unity for their involvement in recent events. Some within the Republic Alliance call the Star Raiders heroes; others dismiss them as pirates, mercenaries, or renegades. In truth, they are all of those things and more.

Designed to mesh nicely with our Cosmic Handbook sourcebook, the Star Raiders are a band of ready-made rogues and swashbucklers ready to ply the spaceways as rivals in your cosmic adventures, or as a ready-made band of intergalactic heroes!

The Star Raiders PDF can be yours for just $4.95, or, if you place an order for Cosmic Handbook in print or PDF format, we’ll throw in the Star Raiders PDF for free!

Ronin Roundtable: Small Shows

I don’t write up a lot of blogs here for Green Ronin. Mostly, everyone sees my pushes for GMs for Gen Con and an occasional posting for other folks. I’m taking on the duties this week for the Ronin Round Table and I’m super stoked to talk about fan-run conventions and smaller events.

We receive a few emails here and there from fan-run conventions looking for support. This could mean a variety of things, ranging from free books, GMs to run games, or Green Ronin Staff & Developers to be Special Guests or Guests of Honor at various cons. Some events are looking for sponsorship or product for their game libraries. I’ll talk about each one and how we can (or sadly, cannot) support your event.

GMs – We have a pretty small group of super fans who run games for us at Gen Con aka the Green Ronin Freebooters. Many of them run games in their local game stores and conventions. They do this for the love of the hobby and supporting local game communities. We have a bunch of free content & “Quick Start” adventures which can easily be converted to “con games”, over at freeronin.com. Many of our GMs run their homebrews, tailored to their FLGS/con.

How we’re supporting the GMs – We’ve been working on more Quick Start adventures, which will make it easier for not only our Freebooters, but for any GM to run at a game store and con. These will be great introductory adventures, to highlight our game systems and our worlds. We’re talking of an asset kit, too, so any GM, FLGS, or Con can use these assets to promote their games and events on their social media.

Free Products – This one is tough. We’re still a small team, even though GR has been around many years. We simply cannot afford to send every convention free product. We still have to pay for the game, as it were, to “buy” it for said con. And then spend the shipping to send it out. We get many requests for books to add to a con’s library or “play & win” program.

But really, to be honest? Not a lot of folks actually pick up an RPG book to learn how to play over the course of the con. There are always exceptions, of course, for super motivated RPG players. And sadly, many of us in the industry have been burned by con organizers keeping the products themselves or selling them on eBay/their FLGS.

Green Ronin as Guests – This is an upside for everyone! You get to invite our staff to a show, we get to talk about our products, run some games, talk about the industry, and all kinds of cool things that benefit the con and our staff. Many of us have been invited to a variety of events, all over the world. We’re also more likely to bring a small amount of product with us to sell and donate, as we’ll be able to meet the organizers and the community.

Small conventions are great. It’s really wonderful to be able to easily chat with our community. It’s a great way for us to network with other publishers, and meet future freelancers. It’s a good way for us to bring content to your show, especially when we’re doing writer’s seminars, giving advice about publishing, or talking about diversity in our games and in our industry.

If you’re interested in our Freebooter program, you can check it out here. If you’d like to invite a member of the Green Ronin Team to your event, you can email me directly and let me know who you’re interested in bringing on board. You can find me at donna@greenronin.com and I’ll reach out to my team. We can focus panels, workshops, and games for your event.

Press Release: Green Ronin to Publish Lazarus RPG Book

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

GREEN RONIN TO PUBLISH LAZARUS RPG BOOK
World of Lazarus Brings Greg Rucka’s Comic to Roleplaying Games

May 1, 2017—SEATTLE, WA: Green Ronin Publishing announced today that it has signed a licensing agreement with Greg Rucka to adapt his critically-acclaimed Lazarus series from Image Comics as a setting for its forthcoming Modern AGE Roleplaying Game.

“We are huge fans of Greg’s work and of Lazarus in particular,” said Green Ronin President Chris Pramas. “The comic’s vision of a world dominated by corporate families and featuring staggering levels of income inequality becomes more relevant by the day. Lazarus tells a powerful story and soon you’ll be able to add your own chapters to that around the table.”

“I’ve been a gamer since I was ten years old,” said Greg Rucka. “RPGs, in particular, have been an important part of my life in so many ways—as recreation, of course; as entertainment, as a means of escape, yes; and, honestly, as an enormously vital part of my development as a writer, and, I would hazard, as a human being. My best friends were made long ago around the gaming table. To have been part of creating something with Michael Lark, and to have that creation standing strong enough that Green Ronin sees its potential as a gaming world, might just possibly be the greatest compliment I could ever receive. It sounds hokey, I suppose, but it’s true—as someone who has spent days, weeks, months, exploring the worlds of others at the gaming table, to add to that is a big deal.

“That I get to do so with Green Ronin makes it all the more of a joy for me. Chris and company know their stuff inside and out, and more, they know where the mechanics end and the story needs to begin. I couldn’t be happier to be working with them on bringing Lazarus to RPGs.”

Green Ronin will publish the World of Lazarus this Fall. The book will present Lazarus as a setting for the Modern AGE RPG, which will be released concurrently. Modern AGE takes Green Ronin’s popular Adventure Game Engine—as seen in the Dragon Age, Blue Rose, and Fantasy AGE RPGs—and adapts it to the modern action genre.

More information and previews for the World of Lazarus and Modern AGE will appear on www.greenronin.com in the coming months.

About Green Ronin Publishing
Green Ronin Publishing is a Seattle based company dedicated to the art of great games. Since the year 2000 Green Ronin has established a reputation for quality and innovation that is second to none, publishing such roleplaying game hits as Dragon Age, A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying, and Mutants & Masterminds, and winning over 40 awards for excellence. For an unprecedented three years running Green Ronin won the prestigious GenCon & EnWorld Award for Best Publisher.

About Greg Rucka
Greg Rucka is the New York Times bestselling author of over a thousand comics and at least two dozen novels. He currently writes LAZARUS, co-created with artist Michael Lark, and BLACK MAGICK, with artist Nicola Scott, both from Image Comics, as well as STUMPTOWN, with artist Justin Greenwood, published by Oni Press. He has recently completed a critically-acclaimed run on WONDER WOMAN for DC Comics, and is currently writing the screen adaptation of his series, THE OLD GUARD, co-created with Leandro Fernandez, for Skybound Entertainment. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, two children, and a large and overly enthusiastic dog named Marlowe.

Contact Green Ronin Publishing

Nicole Lindroos
General Manager
nicole@greenronin.com