GM for Green Ronin at Gen Con!

Happy 50th Anniversary to Gen Con!

Team Ronin is super excited about Gen Con this year, especially with the success of our updated Freebooter GM Program. We decided to focus on our one big event, as we’re kinda small to support events all over the country and beyond. Make with the clicking to read about the program here.

Many folks think Green Ronin is a huge company, but we’re actually very small. The upside to this is that we can work closely with our GMs to grow this program; it wouldn’t be as successful without their spectacular feedback. And since it was our first big push, with setting up GM Badges and hotel reimbursement, it helped us make the 2017 Gen Con program even better.

Last year, we fielded 24 GMs running over 90 games. Some folks ran one or two games, and some ran more. Some folks ran 2-hour games, and some ran 6-hour games. Really, it was great to have so many folks concentrating on Green Ronin games. We were even in our own room in the Convention Center itself, which was WONDERFUL.

For the folks who signed up early, who communicated well with us about their needs and desires, it was super easy to accommodate folks, like subbing out GMs when we had scheduling issues. For folks to get hotel reimbursements, it was super easy! You just had to email me your receipt and we sent you the reimbursement! Almost everyone followed directions well so we were able to take care of just about everyone by the time Gen Con was all finished!

We had a lot of folks GMing for us who had never been to Gen Con before, or GM’d at a convention ever, which meant so much to us. And our experienced Veteran GMs were on hand to help out the new folks. The Freebooters are a small team, but a wonderful team! Heck, a bunch of new folks to our program even got together and split a room together! They held each other together while I was off doing Geek & Sundry and Gen Con Industry Insider stuff!

Many GMs kept things simple, and many of them printed out great color sheets, special hand outs, and whatnot. Some GMs used our published Quick Start adventures, some used their own home brew. Some used adventures which we haven’t yet published, to be the first to run said adventures.

Why am I tell you all this? Because we want you to run our games! Everyone is welcome, no matter your experience, or lack thereof. If you have GM’d a home game, you can GM for us! You can run what you want, when you want. 

And if you want to, we’ll arrange a GM badge for you, so you can get reimbursed by the Gen Con system, and we’ll reimburse you for part of your hotel.

  • For 12-hours of games submitted, we’ll arrange the GM badge.
  • For 16+ hours of games scheduled, we will reimburse your hotel based on ¼ of a regular rate.  As an example, if a room is $200 per night we’ll pick up your part, so $50 per night!
  • Green Ronin must submit your games to count towards the GM Badge reimbursement and hotel room reimbursement.
  • You are still welcome to submit games via your favorite game group or other game companies, but we will only pick up badges/hotel reimburse for our submitted games.

AND! Based on feedback from the 2016 GM Team, we’ll have ribbons and dice for you to give your players, plus a variety of other hand outs. And maybe something cool for YOU, too! We’re still hammering out those details.

If you’re interested in signing up, click here to fill out this quick contact form. Early submissions have started this week, and will run until Feb 19th. Regular Event submissions are due by March 26th, so we want to get your games in the system as soon as possible. I can help!

If you have general questions, you can email me directly! donna@greenronin.com

Ronin Roundtable: New Year’s Message 2017

New Year’s Message 2017

Welcome to the new year, my friends and fellow gamers! Here at Green Ronin we have been rousing ourselves from our holiday torpor and getting ramped up for 2017. As long time fans know, I traditionally write a message in January to discuss what we have coming up in the new year. And that is true but I’m going to do it a little differently this year. Today I will talk about what we have coming your way through the Spring, then in June I will do a second one of these that covers the rest of the year. So let’s get to it!

New Faces

In December Crystal Frasier came onboard as our new Mutants & Masterminds developer. She introduced herself in a previous Ronin Round Table, which you can read here if you’d like to learn more about her. We are confident that Mutants & Masterminds is in great hands with Crystal.

Today I’d like to welcome another new Ronin to the ranks: Malcolm Sheppard. He is a 17 year veteran of the game industry who has done a boatload of work for White Wolf and Onyx Path, amongst others. Malcolm will be doing design and development work for us on a variety of lines. You can think of him as a sort of developer-at-large. He’ll be working on Adventure Game Engine (AGE) games for sure, as well as some other projects you’ll hear more about later. Please help me welcome Malcolm to Team Ronin!

Atlas of Earth-Prime: Now Pre-OrderingMutants & Masterminds

We are kicking off the year with a major release for Mutants & Masterminds: the Atlas of Earth-Prime. You’ve seen parts of this setting before in Emerald City, the Cosmic Handbook, Hero High, and many other Mutants & Masterminds books, but now Earth-Prime is getting full campaign setting treatment. The Atlas of Earth-Prime releases in just two weeks. You can still get in on the pre-order now if you are quick about it.

In the Spring we’ll be following that up with Freedom City. This was the original campaign setting for the Mutants & Masterminds RPG going back to 2003. The new book brings Freedom City fully into Third Edition, and creates a triumvirate of super power with Emerald City and the Atlas of Earth-Prime!

AGE Games

Blue Rose the AGE RPG of Romantic FantasyThe big Adventure Game Engine excitement for the first half of the year is the release of Blue Rose, our RPG of Romantic Fantasy, in February. Blue Rose was our most successful Kickstarter to date, and we’re delighted to get this book out to backers and then released to the general public. The BackerKit went live over the weekend. While we typically do pre-orders through our online store, with Blue Rose we’re trying out BackerKit for that. If you didn’t back the Kickstarter, you can pre-order now at this link . You’ll note some follow up releases on the BackerKit page. We’re making Blue Rose dice with Q Workshop, Blue Rose conviction Tokens with Campaign Coins, and then an adventure anthology called Six of Swords. Those should all come out in the Spring.

For Fantasy AGE itself we’ve got Titansgrave: The World of Valkana coming in the Spring. This is a full campaign setting book that greatly expands the information in Titansgrave: Ashes of Valkana. A lot of stuff that was only hinted at in the show will be revealed in Titansgrave: The World of Valkana!

In other Fantasy AGE news, we’ll be creating a community content program for the game in conjunction with OneBookShelf (the parent company of RPGNow and DriveThruRPG). People have been asking us if they can publish Fantasy AGE content since the game came out and soon that will be possible. OneBookShelf already runs several of these programs, for games like D&D and the Cypher System. Ours will be similar to these but not identical. For starters the products you can do will be limited to settings and adventures because that is the support Fantasy AGE needs most right now. There will be more info about the program and how it all works when we launch it. That should happen in a couple of months.

Freeport Bestiary for the Pathfinder RPGFreeport and Pathfinder

Our big Pathfinder release this Spring is the Freeport Bestiary. The City of Adventure hasn’t had a monster book since Creatures of Freeport in 2004. The Freeport Bestiary brings together the setting’s many monsters and a bunch of new ones in a beautiful full color hardback. Meanwhile, the Return to Freeport adventure series continues. We’ve released three of these PDFs so far. The remaining three will follow over the next few months and then we’ll collect them all together for a printed book in June.

D&D 5E

You may recall that we worked with Wizards of the Coast to create two D&D books: Out of the Abyss and the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide. Now we’re following those up with D&D books of our own. The first is Book of the Righteous, which presents a fully detailed mythology and pantheon you can use in your campaigns. The original edition of Book of the Righteous was our most critically-acclaimed book in the d20 era. We did a Kickstarter for a new 5E version last year and it should be out in May. As with Blue Rose, Book of the Righteous will have a general release after books ship to Kickstarter backers.

I’m going to make an exception and discuss one Summer release because I know I’d get pilloried if I didn’t mention it. Of course I’m talking about Critical Role! We had originally intended to release this in the Spring but we’ve scheduled it for Gen Con instead. This is Gen Con’s 50th anniversary (and my 28th Gen Con!). We wanted a big marquee release for the show and the Critical Role: Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting book is a perfect fit. We want to make this a real event and hope to have the cast out to Gen Con again.

Love 2 Hate

Towards the end of last year we released Love 2 Hate: Politics, the first expansion for the game. We are following that up in April with Love 2 Hate: Comics. Both expansions have 108 cards. You can mix them in with the core game, or play with them on their own for a more themed experience.

Dragon Age and SIFRP

We have Dragon Age and A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying books in development but licensed game lines require approvals and how long those take can vary quite a bit. It could be one week or three months depending. So don’t worry, books are coming. We’ve just decided to wait until everything is approved before we make formal announcements about their release.

PDF Support

We have a variety of PDF releases planned to support our various lines. We have more Fantasy AGE Encounters and short Titansgrave adventures coming for Fantasy AGE, as well as the Short Cuts series for Pathfinder. We’ll also be continuing our series of Chronicle System PDFs, which provide non-canon rules support for A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying. In the past year we’ve released rules for magic (Chronicle of Sorcery) and gunpowder/firearms (Spark to Powder), for example.

Chronicle System: Spark to Powder (PDF)

Chronicle of Sorcery (PDF)

Conventions

As a company Gen Con is, of course, our biggest show. Last year we had a room dedicated to Green Ronin games for the whole convention and that was great. We’re doing it again this year, so if you’d like to run games for us please contact Donna. If you run enough games, we’ll cover your badge and even subsidize your hotel room.

Donna and Barry also run OrcaCon in Everett, WA (just north of Seattle). OrcaCon is happening this coming weekend, so come on out if you’re in the area. It’s the unofficial Green Ronin convention and most of our staff will be there. We’ve got folks running games and giving seminars, though personally I just want to play some games this year!

Green Ronin is once again a sponsor of the JoCo Cruise and Nicole and I will be on onboard. Haven’t heard of the JoCo Cruise? Well, imagine a convention on a ship and you’ve got a pretty good idea, except it also includes music, comedy, and more. If it’s nerdy, it’s probably happening on the ship! There are still cabins available (the cruise is in March) and this year we have the entire ship to ourselves. Should be a great time.

We’ll also be attending various trade shows, like GTS, the Alliance Open House, and the ACD Gamesday. If you are a game retailer, come see us!

More to Come!

So that’s what we have coming the first half of the year. We also have some exciting news to share in the coming months. We’ll be announcing soon a new card game we’re bringing to Kickstarter in April and a new campaign setting for D&D 5E. We’ve licensed a comic book for RPG treatment. We’ve also got another AGE game in development, as well as Ork, Second Edition. Following us on Twitter (we’re @GreenRoninPub) is probably the best way to keep up with our announcements or just bookmark our website.

This is Green Ronin’s 17th year in business. Thank you for your continued support over the years. I started the company as a side project and it’s become so much more than that thanks to you. Come back in June when I reveal our Summer and Winter plans. Until then, game on!

Chris Pramas

Two New PDFs: Rogues Gallery and Fantasy AGE Encounters

Today (along with a new Humble RPG Book Bundle) we are pleased to present two new PDFs–one villain for Mutants & Masterminds and an encounter for the Fantasy AGE RPG.

Rogues Gallery: The Dealer

Rogues Gallery: The Dealer

Rogues Gallery: The Dealer

Once a small-time crook, the man now known as the Dealer has spent his life bringing misfortune to others to stave off a supposed family curse! When he cheated his way into some winnings, he used them to become a super-villain to see what would happen with his curse if he could really spread his bad luck around!

Fantasy AGE Encounters: Drive for Justice

Fantasy AGE Encounters: Drive for Justice

Fantasy AGE Encounters: Drive for Justice

Our heroes are asked by a local sheriff to prove the innocence of an accused knight. Can they save him before it’s too late? Drive for Justice is a Fantasy AGE RPG adventure for heroes of levels 1-3.

Fantasy AGE Encounters: Drive For Justice (PDF)

Ronin Roundtable: GenCon GMing for Green Ronin

GR-Gameroom1If you are a publisher, you of course want people to have the opportunity to play your games at GenCon. You can run demos at your booth but the exhibit hall is no place for long form RPG adventures (it’s super loud and booth space is limited). Those are better handled as scheduled events. Finding good and reliable game masters for your RPGs can be challenging though. In past years we’ve had mixed success with our GenCon events. What I really wanted was a dedicated area filled with Green Ronin games. To get that, you have to have a certain number of events. Coordinating that is a job in itself.

Enter Donna Prior, Green Ronin’s events manager. I told her what I wanted and wow, did she deliver. We had over 90 scheduled events this year and GenCon gave us a dedicated room for them on the second floor of the convention center. Going into that room and seeing tables full of gamers playing Fantasy AGE, Dragon Age, Mutants & Masterminds, and A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying was amazing. Read more

Fantasy AGE Bestiary: Pre-Order, PDF, and Preview

Fantasy AGE Bestiary

We are pleased to open up pre-ordering for the Fantasy AGE Bestiary. As with all our Green Ronin Pre-Order Plus products, when you pre-order the print book through our Green Ronin Online Store or through a participating Pre-Order Plus retailer, you’ll be able to get the PDF for just $5.

Fantasy AGE Bestiary:

What does every fantasy RPG campaign need? Monsters! Monsters! Monsters! The Fantasy AGE Bestiary gives Game Masters a plethora of new foes to challenge their players, from classics like the basilisk and minotaur to new monsters like the eldritch crown and shard lord. Each creature is fully detailed, with background information, adventure hooks, game stats, and variants. This beautiful, full-color hardback is the first sourcebook for the Fantasy AGE RPG and an indispensable resource for Game Masters.

PDF Preview: Gatorkin

Like to try before you buy? Check out this free PDF preview of the Gatorkin.

Pre-Order the Fantasy AGE Bestiary today!

(Or buy the PDF for $16.95, if you prefer pixels to paper.)

Errata: Dragon Age GM’s Screen

Dragon Age GM's Kit, Revised (Pre-Order)

We messed up. When we made the Dragon Age GM’s Kit, Revised Edition, we inadvertently printed the screen with the spellcasting block from the Fantasy AGE GM’s Screen, which we created at the same time. Please accept our apologies.

We have created a PDF of the corrected spellcasting block, which you can print on a sticker and apply to your Dragon Age screen:

Dragon Age Spellcasting Sticker

The area on the screen to be covered by the sticker is 1.25″ x 3.25″, so you might want to print on a bigger sticker and trim it to that size.

Ronin Round Table: Share Your Enthusiasm

One of the best things about working in a creative field is getting to see how others interact with the thing you’ve put out there. When I first started working in the game industry we often didn’t know how things were being received in the wider world unless a letter came by postal mail from a fan or someone came up at a convention to tell you about their character. Simply having access to email and message boards expanded that contact beyond what we could have thought possible in those early years and today, well, today we have all of the above plus Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube, not to mention the explosion of convention culture and the ability to get together with people who share your interests however specialized or obscure they may be.

Gaming in particular ties into so many other creative pursuits! I was thinking about this earlier in the year while on the light rail to Emerald City Comic Con when I spotted someone carrying a prop that I instantly recognized: Bianca, the named weapon of Varric Tethras from Dragon Age. The prop-crafter stopped and talked with me about how it had been put together while I gushed my admiration for the end result. Bianca was later reunited with the Varric cosplayer they were meeting at the con and they were kind enough to send me some photos of the result afterward.

bianca-viv

Vivienne and Varric Cosplay Emerald City Comic Con 2016

 

Cosplay is a beautiful (and very visible) way fans express their enthusiasm for creative works that inspire them. Sometimes that enthusiasm confines itself much more directly to the game table. We were recently contacted by Freeport fan Russell Liley who wanted to share something he’d put together for his game group. Throughout the history of Green Ronin’s Freeport releases, the city’s paper The Shipping News has served as a way to dish out plot hooks, character tidbits, and flavor text to entertain and inspire readers. Russell went a step further and put together a PDF that could be printed up and actually handed out to his group. We were absolutely tickled to see it! He has kindly given us permission to share it at this link on the Green Ronin website.

 

Art is perhaps one of the oldest forms of fan expression. In fact, many tabletop RPGs have encouraged (or even “required”) players to not just describe their characters but to draw their characters (or, for those like me who have no artistic skills, choose some sort of representation for their character from existing art). The space for character illustration did not start popping up on character sheets by accident. Going back to Green Ronin’s earliest forums we were asked to provide a place for fans to share their art and that especially took off with Mutants & Masterminds fans eager to share their four-color (and not so four-color) heroes. Even with sites like DeviantArt playing host to amateurs and professionals alike, many people still come to the forums to share their latest character concepts. Some people have even gone on to take part in the Mutants & Masterminds open license to publish their work.

 

Twitter has been particularly good at connecting us with fans of Titansgrave thanks to hashtags. In addition to getting to see people excited about watching episodes of the web show, we’ve also gotten to see YouTubers discussing the show (such as the entertaining Titansgrave Diggers who had me on the show last August) and people doing all sorts of incredible art inspired by the world and characters, like this incredible sculpt of Laura Bailey’s character Lemley!

headless2

Lemley, work in progress

When I asked Gordon about his sculpt, this is what he had to say: “I have many projects on the go, but the world of Titansgrave and the character of Lemley inspired me to take on one more. In my optimism I thought that it would take me a couple of months to make it, and I could then go on to make the other characters. This has proven to be well below the amount of effort it actually required, but I am so pleased with the way it was going I have carried on regardless. I am making this sculpture out of Milliput, taking a leaf out of the hugely talented Jason Freeny’s book. Were I to do it again from the beginning however, I’d probably opt for something easier to work with, such as polymer clay.” If you want to see what Lemley eventually looks like with her head on, you can find more pics at Gordon’s Tumblr.

I guess what I’m getting at here is that we love to see your enthusiasm, how you’re going out there and making these things your own. Doesn’t matter how that ends up being expressed, your love for the things that make you happy makes the creators of those things happy, too. Sometimes the internet can function as an amplification device for unhappy feelings and unpleasant interactions but there’s a lot of good stuff out there to share and embrace. Those of us on this side of the creation equation couldn’t be more pleased and honored to see the ripples spreading out through the pond of our game-loving community and coming back around to us. Have fun out there everyone!

via GIPHY

Sky Captain Hana Cosplay as Dorian Pavus

Ronin Round Table: GenCon 2016 Roleplaying Games!

 

GClogo-header-2016-91a751cab7b3dc33dd0ac3b3b95595ac9c4e1b4bc5f42b6388531396cb8729beAs I’m sure most folks know, the events registration for GenCon 2016 went live on Sunday. As an aid to everyone who is interested in playing some of their favorite Green Ronin Publishing roleplaying games at GenCon—or trying out one they’ve never played before—we thought we’d compile a handy list of links to those games, by game.

What follows is not a complete list of Green Ronin Publishing games ato be had at GenCon. It’s just a collection of the games we’ve helped put together and coordinate for this year’s convention. See you there!

Reminder: While some of these games are already sold out (a big thanks to all of that enthusiasm!), remember that lots of folks over-buy, and then drop events as they figure out their schedule. Moreover, things happen and sometimes people aren’t able to show for a game, so make sure to pick up some generic tickets and if there’s a game you’re really interested in, show up to it and see if there are any slots unfilled when game time rolls around. Our GMs are only too happy to help.

Read more

Now Pre-Ordering: Dragon Age GM’s Kit

Dragon Age GM's Kit, Revised (Pre-Order)

Dragon Age GM’s Kit, Revised (Pre-Order)

The Dragon Age GM’s Kit, Revised is now available for pre-order. Also, when you pre-order through our Green Ronin Online Store, or from participating retailers, you’ll get to buy the PDF version of this product for just $5!

Dragon Age Game Master’s Kit, Revised
Authors: Chris Pramas and Dave Brookshaw
Format: 3-panel hardback GM Screen, 5 reference cards, and a 36 page booklet
ISBN: 978-1-934547-69-4

The Game Master’s Kit is a key accessory for your Dragon Age RPG campaign. It features a three-panel hardback screen that puts all the essential game info right in front you, and features a brand new 36-page adventure that takes your PCs into the Deep Roads. It also includes 4 quick reference cards that put the stunts and actions at your fingertips, and a combat tracker that you can write on with wet or dry erase markers. The Game Master’s Kit is the perfect complement to the Dragon Age Core Rulebook and will help you run your game with style.

Back in Stock: Dragon Age RPG Core Rulebook

Dragon Age RPG Core Rules

Dragon Age RPG Core Rulebook

The Dragon Age RPG Core Rulebook, hardback version, is back in print and available through game and book stores everywhere, and in our Green Ronin Online Store.

Dragon Age RPG Core Rulebook