Ronin Round Table: GaymerX (GX3)

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Steve's Icons players

Steve’s Icons players

As I write this, members of Team Ronin (Joseph Carriker, Donna Prior, and I) are finishing up the weekend in San Jose, CA, at GaymerX (or GX3). It’s our first time at the insurgent game convention, initially funded on Kickstarter to provide a dedicated space for LGBTQ gamers to do what we do: get together, geek out, and play games. It has since expanded to encompass this year’s theme, “Everyone Games,” welcoming all gamers to the table.

It has been a terrific con. I ran two games for the tabletop program: In “Shadows of the Singer and the Star,” for Blue Rose, a small group of Aldin envoys of the Sovereign’s Finest investigated the disappearance of two young men from a town and uncovers a far greater threat.

Donna's Titansgrave players

Donna’s Titansgrave players

In “Whatever Happened to Stonewall?” for Icons Superpowered Roleplaying, a team of randomly generated heroes (Lineage, Heavyweight, Insectoid, Insight, and Mantis) helped save the legendary lesbian hero Stonewall from the armored Invictus and protect some of New York City’s queer monuments from his destroyer robots. Both groups of players were enthusiastic and really threw themselves into the games.

It was my second time running Blue Rose using the Adventure Game Engine rules system at a convention, and it underlined just how well the system will work in the forthcoming edition. There were also games of Titansgrave and A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying on-offer from Donna and Joe, along with a room of Pathfinder and Dungeons & Dragons tables.

Queer as a Three-Sided Die panel

Queer as a Three-Sided Die panel

GaymerX offered a robust panel and seminar selection. We were able to bring the popular “Queer as a Three-Sided Die” panel we started at GenCon a few years ago to this con, where it found an enthusiastic audience. “Queer Divinities” talked about real world and fantasy mythology and theology and even got quoted in online coverage of the con. Sunday morning, Joe Carriker, Paizo’s Wes Schneider, and I ran a three-hour workshop on game-mastering skills, tips, and techniques, covering a wide range of topics, fielding questions, and sharing experiences along with our audience. The time flew by! GaymerX has a YouTube channel where they plan to share recordings of many of the seminars and panels.

Tim Mottishaw runs Star Wars for the game guests

Tim Mottishaw runs Star Wars for the game guests

Of course, the con wasn’t all about work. Our host, tabletop coordinator Tim Mottishaw, treated us to a game of Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars: Force & Destiny RPG and there were parties galore, from a VIP get-together to the cosplay prom and a drag show. By all reports, tabletop events and offerings did well at GaymerX. I certainly hope so, as I’d like to see them continue to grow and remain part of the vibrant, inclusive, fun-loving, creative community where everyone has a place at the table.

Looking forward to plans for next year’s GaymerX!

Ronin Round Table: Launching a New Game…in the Golden Age!

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MMGoldenAge62-Velasquez

As the Mutants & Masterminds developer, the gaming groups I play with are often treated to sessions of M&M, either to try out some rules or to enjoy some super-hero action. Recently, one of our ongoing non-M&M games was growing a bit long in the tooth and the players asked for something new. After exchanging a few emails and offering up some possible game ideas, we decided on a new M&M series. And surprise, surprise, they thought a Golden Age/WWII-era game sounded interesting. Another surprise, they thought playing a PL6 game might be interesting!

I’ve been thinking about PL6 super-hero games for a while now–not agents, superheroes–so I was pretty excited to get the chance to test how effective characters at that power level would be. I like the idea of lower-powered characters because opponents like thugs, gangsters, and the police are much more of a challenge. Or in this case, opponents like members of the American Bund, Fifth Columnists, and Nazi soldiers.

Once we’d settled on the Golden Age, I started doing some research and looking through source material to come up with some ideas. The first things I grabbed were my various super-heroic RPG books, including M&M 2nd edition’s Golden Age, but I also grabbed a couple of old (now very old) Champions Golden Age sourcebooks. I looked though the timelines of both to find events I thought might be interesting to feature in game sessions, coupled that with online research to figure out exactly what was going on generally in the war and finally to settle on the date I wanted to start the game: July, 1941.

I chose a date before the start of the United States’ involvement in the war because I wanted to have time to get the team together and show what life was like before the U.S. got involved. It also allowed the players to set up their characters’ lives however they wanted without needing to worry about the draft or other wartime conflicts.

During character creation, one of the players mentioned that he’d like to have this game move through generations of heroes. The same player also mentioned he liked the idea of going into outer space. With that in mind, I wanted to set up the series so it could hopefully move through multiple decades as well as into outer space. I still don’t have a 100% solid idea of what will end up happening down the line, but I know the heroes will be dealing with aliens and and I hope to have them create their own “legacy” heroes for adventures in the 1950s, ‘60s, ‘80s, and maybe the modern day.

Already in the first couple of sessions I’ve introduced a very active Bund chapter, super-powered Nazi agents, and hints of alien involvement (which the PCs picked up on immediately). Because the characters weren’t previously very well known heroes and didn’t know each other, I got them together by telling them they’d each received a note (in their secret identities) that directed them to meet with some others on top of a building in Freedom City. They all showed up, concerned it might be a trap and confused about who else they were meeting. That initial encounter immediately led to an encounter with the Bund and their Nazi contacts, which in turn led them to the Nazi’s hideout and the strange technology they possessed, including some “eisentruppen” (iron troopers/soldiers) and something they think is a partially-assembled portal.

After that encounter, their mysterious letter writer, who introduced himself as Augustus Cross, rolled up in his wheelchair, accompanied by his daughter Amelia. It turns out he’s precognitive and knew the heroes were needed to put right things that had started to go wrong in the timeline. He’s dying, but he’s written down his visions, which will be provided to the heroes even after he dies.

Not only did Cross allow me to get the heroes together, his letters allow me to direct the heroes to other adventures, but the “time” aspect of things let me introduce the idea that more than just the heroes’ time period is important to what’s going on. That, along with the alien technology, the Nazis, and the oncoming war, gives me a lot of different threads to work with when coming up with story ideas.

This is a pretty good example of the way I build a superhero series: talk to the players, come up with a setting, do some research, look at the characters, find out what the players want, create some far-reaching ideas, string them together into a web I can hang stories on, then introduce as many of those ideas early on, so the players and characters know what to expect in the future.

I’d love to hear about how you come up with ideas for your M&M series over on our forum, the Atomic Think Tank.

As an aside, I’m a huge fan of hearing about the characters people play in games, so I wanted to provide a list of the heroes in this game, in case you’re interested.

The Basilisk. A rich playboy and amatuer archaeologist who found a scroll that opened his mind, which somehow allows him to subconsciously read thoughts, so he can predict movements, avoid blows, and incapacitate nearby foes with psychic feedback.

Nemean. An investigative reporter of Greek heritage. She’s the current possessor of a ring made from the remnants of the Nemean Lion. It grants her great strength and invulnerability.

Professor Power. A scientist who was crippled in an explosion, but rebuilt using his own technology. He has a clockwork leg and an arm that can fire knockout darts or deliver a powerful jolt of electricity, and wears a force field belt, and jet pack.

The Sagebrush Kid. A gunfighter from the Old West, who encountered some supernatural things in the past, died, and came back. Now apparently immortal and with recuperative abilities, he does what he can to protect others with his six-guns and lasso.

Winged Hussar. A Polish pilot shot down in the war against Germany, but saved by the ghost of an ancestor. He can become ghostlike, raise mists to cloud an area, fly, wields a saber and pistol.

Ronin Round Table: Using Chronicle Creatures in SIFRP

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woodland-creaturesOver the past year-and-change, we here at Green Ronin have introduced a line we call our “Chronicle Creatures” – a series of PDF supplements featuring all sorts of creatures for the Chronicle System, the rules “engine” that powers our A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying.

Of course, these creatures are not from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire setting. Though that series has a handful of creatures both mythic and terrifying that have appeared in its pages, these never have. That said, there’s no reason a creative Narrator can’t make use of them for their personal chronicle, of course. One of the great pleasures of A Song of Ice and Fire is when its lost magic and myths make an appearance, often to the confusion and fear of its characters.

Here are some suggestions for using some of the content of our Chronicle Creatures PDFs in Westeros. Please keep in mind that these are very much non-canon, of course.

Chronicle Creatures are divided into three categories: “Beasts,” which are large and ferocious animals, like the direwolves of Westeros, without any overt sentience or magic; “Horrors,” like the dragons of Westeros, with distinct ties to magic and/or some measure of intelligence; and “Legends,” like the Children of the Forest or the Others, entities of magical potency whose existence has fallen into legend…until they make a come-back in your chronicle.

Woodland Creatures

Our first bestiary PDF, Woodland Creatures focuses on creatures that dwell in wooded or forested areas. It opens with some new rules, including Domain Drawbacks, a set of rules for training animals, and some basic stats for the sorts of regular animals that might be found in woodland areas (including bobcats, elk, hawks, owls, and the like).

The Beasts of this supplement fit very easily into Westeros. Many of the “dire” creatures fit very nicely into the wildernesses north of the Wall, where other giant beasts roam; the Battlehorn, a giant caribou or reindeer, the Devourer, a massive weasel-like beast, and the Dire Wolverine might all easily be found in those wintery expanses. Butcher Birds, massive carnivorous flightless birds, and Claw-Wing Lizards, which might be mistaken for small dragons, all fit nicely into southron climes, whether in the hazardous wilds of Essos around Qarth, or perhaps even in the hot mountains that separate Dorne from the rest of Westeros. Rounding out the Beasts is a handful of giant insects, from ants to spiders to wasps.

The Horrors of this supplement also have some excellent fits for Westeros. There are several strange fungi, plants and even diseases, such as Black Web fungus, the Cocoon Tree, Scavenger’s Rot, and the insidious Skullwort, all of which cause various forms of strange maladies and afflictions (including a weird zombie-like state for victims of Scavenger’s Rot). Mighty beasts such as Barghests and Gryphons (including a Greater Gryphon variety for truly majestic creatures) are found herein, as are the Weirdlings, the strange entity that results when a victim wanders into one of the pockets of old, strange forest magic in the deepest forests.

The Legends of these woodlands are frightful. Terrifying intelligences, such as the Crossroads Guardian, the Headless Knight, or the Hag of the Dark Woods await unwary travelers in any forest. Creatures closely tied to the forces of death and the otherworld, such as the Corpsehorse or the Tall Man make excellent terrors in places that have seen a great deal of death or that lay under curses. In contrast, the River Wardens are massive turtles that would be very at home in any large river – particularly the rivers of Essos that were once the home of the Rhoynar.

Mountain Terrors

This supplement focuses on mountainous areas, from icy places such as the Frostfangs beyond the Wall, to the hot dry mountains one might find north of Dorne. The introductory section (a free PDF) includes some normal animals of these areas, as well as animal training rules and some rules that focus on the hazards of high terrain, such as landslides and avalanches.

Its Beasts range from the cold-dwelling creatures such as Avalanche Wolves, whose howls bring down torrents of snow and stone from the ledges above their prey to the massive Stonehorns, dire rams whose horns are made of the minerals they eat from their environs. Flying creatures pose a risk here, as well, including the Needle Roc, a massive eagle with porcupine-like spines that sweeps past and evicerates its prey and the Skullcrackers, massive flying lizard-beasts who drop heavy stones onto their victims with frightening accuracy.

The Horrors here include strange creatures, from the Cloud Leopards that haunt fog banks and low cloud-cover becoming almost invisible and only partially solid within them to the slithering Snow Eels that worm their way through snow banks to the Thunderbirds that hunt when it is storming.

Finally, there are two Legends of the mountain heights. The first is the Alpingast, a beastly meat-eating humanoid that haunts high mountain passes and hunts with cunning ferocity. The second is far more mystical – the Devourer’s Shadow, a great two-headed vulture-like bird-beast whose body is almost never visible, though it’s great shadow gives its hunt away.

Ronin Round Table: AGE Encounters PDFs

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Fantasy AGE

Fantasy AGE

Hey folks, Jack here. I wanted to take a bit of time and talk about a series of upcoming PDFs for Fantasy AGE that be coming in the next few months. These are a series of short encounter-based scenarios that GMs can use to jumpstart a session or use to fill in between major adventures. They aren’t full adventures, but most can easily lead to them.

Originally this product was envisioned for Dragon Age. However, the realities of needing to send Dragon Age content to approvals with Bioware makes an even semi­regular PDF series very difficult. So instead, we’re taking the basic idea and doing it in Fantasy AGE, where the approvals step is absent from design and production.

Each encounter is designed to give GMs a set­up section to get the PCs involved, some optional or random occurrences that can make each longer, shorter, more dangerous, and so forth. Also included are suggestions of how this single encounter can spin off into a large part of a campaign. Each PDF usually details an initial encounter and then one or two logical follow up encounters that will resolve the problems or challenge presented.

So maybe while traveling through a war­-torn region, the PCs come across a band of refugee children pursued by a cult of religious extremists. The cult wants the refugees, believing them dangerous heretics possessed by dark powers. The children were being smuggled out of the war zone, but their protectors have been slain. What do the PCs do? Do they transport the children to safety? Find a place that will take them in? Turn them in for a reward? What random occurrences may happen while the kids are in their charge? These are the sorts of scenarios this series covers.

When possible, monsters and other items from Fantasy AGE are used, keeping these products concise and inexpensive. They’re meant to be affordable supplementary material for GMs to use as needed and we wanted to keep to that idea as much as possible. However, all of them have one or two “new cool things” that the encounter required. This might be a statblock for an enemy or monster, a magic item, or possibly even a new spell or ability.

The first three Encounters are currently in production (two edited and with layout, one in editing). I have two or three more already written which just need some small changes before they move down the line. So while we’re not ready to announce the exact release date for this series yet (or even commit to its exact title), they are pretty far along and the first will be arriving shortly.

Also, we aren’t committing to a particular number of encounters—we’d like to see how it does and make adjustments as necessary. We’d like it to be a popular series that grows into a sizable library of releases. However, first we just want to get some new content out to all the fine folks who have already picked up and are enjoying Fantasy AGE.

Ronin Round Table: Game Master’s Kits Are Coming!

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One of the most common questions we got after the release of Fantasy AGE was, “Are you going to do a GM screen?” At the same time our screens for other games had been going out of the print over the past couple of years. We have not had GM’s Kits for Dragon Age, A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying, and Mutants & Masterminds in stock for some time. We’ve been waiting for the right time to get these going again, and happily that time is now!

In the first quarter of next year, we’ll be releasing Game Master’s Kits for Fantasy AGE, Mutants & Masterminds, Dragon Age, and A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying. They have some common features. Namely, all have a sturdy, hardback GM screen, four double-sided rules reference cards, and a combat tracker. The latter is a card for keeping track of initiative and other combat considerations, and you can write on it with dry or wet erase markers. The Fantasy AGE one (which has only the above contents) is brand new, of course, but the other three are revisions of our previous GM’s Kits.

The original Mutants & Masterminds GM’s Kit included a 48-page booklet featuring the Quickstart Character Generator. This proved so popular and useful that we put it in the Deluxe Hero’s Handbook. It didn’t make sense to include the booklet when that info is in the game’s core rulebook, so the reference cards and combat tracker replace it.

The Dragon Age GM’s Kit also needed a revision. The original was done when only Set 1 had been released, so the screen was out of date. We’ve revised it to reflect Dragon Age Core Rulebook, and we’re also replacing “A Bann Too Many” with a brand new adventure.

A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying’s GM’s Kit will have the same basic content (short adventure, map of Westeros) plus the reference cards and combat tracker. We may replace the screen art (that isn’t nailed down yet). The adventure is the same, but we are going to duotone the art and print the booklet in color this time, just to snazz it up.

The GM’s Kits for Fantasy AGE and Mutants & Masterminds are at print now and should release in January. Those for A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying and Dragon Age are scheduled for March. Since both of those are licensed games, I’ll just issue my usual caveat that an approvals process is involved and this sometimes affects release dates. This is less an issue with the SIFRP screen, as it’s a largely a reprint, but the Dragon Age screen has a brand new adventure and associated art, which need a sign off from BioWare.

It is thanks to Dragon Age that all the new GM’s Kits are getting handy reference cards. That game was originally released as a series of boxed sets, which allowed us to easily include such things. Now that the Dragon Age Core Rulebook is out, we needed a new way to get reference cards for stunts and other things into people’s hands. The GM’s Kits proved the perfect place for the reference cards and the new combat trackers. Look for them all in the new year!

Ronin Roundtable: Scared, Hero?

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Supernatural Handbook

Supernatural Handbook

It’s late October, when thoughts turn to the Things That Go Bump in the Night and the variety of Halloween horrors we can bring … not just to parties and film-fests, but to the gaming table.

While Mutants & Masterminds might not be the sort of game that immediately springs to mind when you’re thinking about Halloween horror, not only does the superheroic genre have more than its share of ghosts, ghouls, and Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, but M&M has all of the tools you need to bring them into your game, with the Supernatural Handbook by Lucien Soulban. Here’s just a quick look at what the book offers by way of scaring your heroes:

Fear

The Affliction effect (Hero’s Handbook, page 97) can represent the impact of fear and horror on characters. Different creatures may inflict fear by their very presence and different situations may do so as well, just as other hazards inflict Damage. The general assumption in a Supernaturals series is that fear is a hazard just like any other, so most creatures do not pay power points for the “power” to terrify their victims, unless it is in some way special compared to other fear-causing hazards in the series. The typical fear Affliction looks like this:

Fear: Affliction (Resisted and Overcome by Will; Dazed, Stunned, Incapacitated)

So, when encountering a source of fear, the victims make Will resistance checks, with the DC determined by the source of fear, from DC 10–11 for a mild fright all the way to DC 30 for mind-shattering terror. The average should be around 10 + series PL. Falling victim to fear means the character is less able to act and victims get a new Will check each round to shake off the fear; incapacitated characters get a chance to recover each minute.

The Supernatural Handbook also offers an optional system for handling corruption, everything from slow moral decay to the body-horror of unrelenting transformations. When the heroes grapple with monsters, do they risk becoming just as monstrous?

But the book isn’t just limited to game-system tools: It offers extensive advice for Gamemasters on how to create and manage fear and horror in their stories, from a light touch to “blunt force trauma” and from playing with expectations and speculation to keeping players invested in the story and playing along.

It also offers a cunning “Build-A-Critter” series of trait packages, giving you the building blocks to put together endless monsters to challenge your heroes. This works great in conjunction with the prefabricated powers from the Power Profiles book (particularly things like Animal, Darkness, and Death Powers, to name a few). It includes a variety of monster archetypes, including my personal favorite: WTF! (free download)

The book offers the complete organization ARCADE (The American Research Center for the Arcane Defense of Earth) suitable as the center of an entire supernatural series or for inclusion in your regular M&M game as the secret supernatural defenders of the world.

Best of all, the Supernatural Handbook is on sale this week in both print and electronic editions for all of your Halloween gaming needs! Just visit the Green Ronin Store (for the print or electronic editions) or DriveThruRPG or RPGNow (for the electronic edition only) and best wishes for a super and spooky Halloween!

Threat Report for Third Edition M&M is also on sale, as are the Second Edition M&M PDFs Book of Magic and Time of Vengeance.

Check out the Supernatural Sale!

Ronin Round Table: Within the Coils – The World of Freeport Expands

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Freeport: The City of Adventure for the Pathfinder RPG

Freeport: The City of Adventure for the Pathfinder RPG

Freeport: City of Adventure is the biggest book Green Ronin has ever produced, and is a huge part of the Freeport Kickstarter we ran. While that Kickstarter still has a few straggling items to be fulfilled (we’re working on the Hero Lab files, the serpentman figure, Return to Freeport, and all the other rewards people still have coming), we also need to look at how we’re going to support the Freeport line going forward.

So far Freeport: City of Adventure is one of two big Pathfinder-compatible hardbacks we’ve released in the past few years, the other being the amazingly popular Advanced Bestiary. While those big books have been a lot of fun to produce and extremely satisfying to complete, they also take a lot of time and effort. Especially with a number of things taking longer than we’d hoped, it doesn’t seem like a good time to plan many more 300+ page books in the near future. But we DO want to continue to explore and expand the world of Freeport, and support the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

So, starting this winter we’ll begin releasing some short World of Freeport pdfs. These will be general Pathfinder-compatible products that present a wide range of game material (ranging from advice on campaign themes to new weapon enhancements and even new character classes) and detailing how that material can be used to expand the world beyond the City of Freeport. This will allow us to both offer new products to our Pathfinder fans, and see which of the places that we’ve only mentioned in passing in previous Freeport books our customers want to learn more about.

We DO have plans for more big, beautiful books ranging from a bestiary to possibly an expanded campaign setting, but rather than make everyone wait months in between every big release, we hope to establish some smaller, easier, more manageable options fans of both Freeport and Pathfinder can enjoy in regular doses. I’ll be watching fan feedback on these releases more intently than usual, so I can see if some concept or region becomes an early frontrunner for more products and greater expansion.

The World of Freeport is an amazing and dangerous place. We’d like to start to share more of it with you.

Owen K.C. Stephens

Pathfinder RPG Developer

Ronin Round Table: Let’s Get Cosmic

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Cosmic Handbook (Not final cover)

Cosmic Handbook


The Cosmic Handbook has been a popular product even before it was on the list of books we were working on. Fans have been asking for it since the second edition of Mutants & Masterminds, so at some point in the last few years, we added it to the schedule, wrote it, and are in the midst of preparing it for release!

This is the book you want if you’re planning to expand the scope of your game into the wider galaxy, leaving Earth-Prime behind to explore the wild frontier created after Star-Khan’s forces flooded in to fill the vacuum created by the destruction of Magna-Lor at the hands of Collapsar. It’s also the book you want if you’re running a series in your own setting, because it features an overview of cosmic stories and heroes, tips on creating super-powerful cosmic characters, along with sample archetypes, new equipment and vehicles, rules options to help you adapt to things like the vast ranges characters have to contend with in space, and information for the GM on how to run a game that’s exciting, challenging, and fun.

The Cosmic Handbook will help you run games in which your heroes have to deal with interstellar wars, face down cosmic elders, explore unknown space in their very own spaceship, act as galactic guardians (in case you’re into that sort of thing), and even play games set on alien worlds or in the far-flung, space-faring future.

Ray-Gun Hero

Ray-Gun Hero


We wanted to make sure the book covered as many different cosmic comic book character types, adventures, and settings as we could. We roped James Dawsey, Steve Kenson, Christopher McGlothlin, and Jack Norris into writing it and they really delivered.

Cosmic heroes run the range from power level 8 at the low end, for sword-and-planet style characters and progress all the way to power level 14 (or higher). We recommend starting at power level 12, a step up from standard PL10 M&M games, so characters are able to bring some serious power to bear when they need it.

The hero archetypes included in the book are: the Ray-Gun Hero, the Star Hero, the Cosmic Corsair, the Space Knight, the Cosmic Critter, the Galactic Peace Officer, the Space Demigod, the Space Soldier, and the Strange Visitor. There’s also a number of alien templates you can use to create your own coldly logical aliens, group-minds, insectoids, plant-like aliens, and many more.

As for the forces the heroes fight against, there’s a section that discusses popular cosmic-level plotlines and how to put them together, from alien invasions to ancient mysteries. Then there are the bad guys themselves, who get their own list of archetypes, including the Alien Supermind, the Avatar of Destruction, the Imperial Champion, the Space Dragon, the Devourer, the Galactic Tough Guy, the Renegade Space Cop, the Star Hunter, the Time Master, and multiple variations on each. Plus a selection of minions for your alien invaders.

And that’s just the first half of the book! After that we cover the cosmos as it exists in the Earth-Prime universe, including information on how things have changed since the appearance of Tellax the Redeemer (in Emerald City Knights) and the coming of Collapsar. These events have had a significant impact on the galactic civilization and have turned the galaxy into a wild frontier, ripe for your players’ heroes to make names for themselves.

As you can see, the art for the book is looking great and we can’t wait to show you the final table of contents and some other bits as previews in the coming weeks. Start thinking up some cosmic plotlines and get your friends ready for a high-powered, cosmic, super series!

Nanotech

Nanotech

Alien Supermind

Alien Supermind

Star Hero

Star Hero

Ronin Round Table: The Care and Feeding of Monster Design

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MedusaHeya folks, Jack here. I wanted to take a break from working on AGE and Dragon AGE content to talk to you a bit about making your own content for the Adventure Game Engine. Specifically, let’s talk about making monsters.

Since the recent launch of Fantasy AGE and Titansgrave: Ashes of Valkana, I get asked a lot of questions, from “When will they be in stores,” to “What the hell is Interlligence?!” People have a lot of questions about these books.

However, by far one of the most common questions I get asked is “so, any advice on making our own monsters?” Which makes sense. While both Titansgrave and Fantasy AGE contain some cool beasties, there’s plenty of room for more monsters, demons, and beasties. So for today’s Ronin Round Table, I’d like to talk a bit about some things to consider when building your own monsters.

Generally, it’s easy to make your own monsters in Fantasy AGE. Come up with a concept or borrow one from your favorite stories, myths, legends, books, etc… Assign statistics that match up to the rough idea of what your monster can do and then tailor it so that you’re not making it too tough or too easy on your PCs when they face such threats. Speaking of…

You might find that despite having a solid idea and being sure everything will work out, you accidentally made a monster that’s far too strong or weak for the PCs. There are several ways to do this, but some common mistakes to avoid are:

Making monsters who hit all the time or not at all. A really high Accuracy or Fighting is going to mean even very agile and defensive PCs will get nailed a lot. Remember the average dice roll with 3d6 is 11 and starting PCs usually have between 10 and 15 defense. Also, these numbers are slow to increase, so even more experienced PCs won’t become so much harder to hit without serious Ability increases, special items, and other advancements. So you don’t need to give most monsters Fighting or Accuracy of 5 or higher to hit often, and those with scores of 7 or above will hit very often, especially with appropriate focuses. Even a Fighting or Accuracy 1 monster with a focus for their main attack will hit a Defense 14 PC about half the time. Conversely, making monsters with very low Fighting and Accuracy can also be a problem, though it’s admittedly harder to do.

However, if you’re giving a monster -2 Accuracy or some similarly low Ability, consider if that will make them miss often enough they seem more like a joke than a threat.

Making monsters who do ridiculous damage or almost nothing. Sometimes you want a big scary creature who does tons of damage. A giant, dragon, and other big scary monsters should be scary and hit very hard. On the other hand, a swarm of rats might do only a bit of damage and serve to weaken PCs without seriously endangering their lives. Also, remember that damage is a combination of both the dice rolled and the Ability added in and how often you hit affects the damage monsters will do over time.

So a high Accuracy “minor” monster with a 1d6+3 damage attack and 4 Strength will being doing at least 8 damage every hit (1 on the die, plus 3 and then 4 more for Strength). That might be just want you want. Or you might find you accidentally made a minor creature than can kill a player’s unarmored low-defense mage far too quickly for what you had in mind. Likewise, a big scary beast with 3d6 damage and Strength 9 is likely really nasty (doing around 20 damage a hit). Just make sure that’s the effect you want for your monsters.

Ignoring or Overdoing Armor. Armor is both damage mitigating and a pacing mechanism. It often won’t stop a PC or monster from ever taking damage, but it increases the time it takes to damage and defeat a target in combat. So if you give a monster no or very low armor, you’re opening it up to every hit, no matter how small. This might be fine, but it means that anyone who can survive the creature’s attacks and damage can take it down reliably. This might not be what you want for certain monsters. On the other hand, very high armor can get frustrating. It might be tempting to give a heavily armored creature 10 armor rating (or even higher) but realize that without the right stunts or very high damage you’re setting up combats to be many rounds of “I hit and…nothing.”

Not Balancing Health with Other Factors. High defense or armor can make a monster a challenging foe. If combined with really high health, it can make them annoying. On the other hand, too little Health creates “paper tigers.” Again, if intended? That’s cool, but realize that many players expect to only encounter easily dispatched or incredibly tough monsters rarely and at specific times appropriate to the campaign. If your Lizardman lieutenant in a moderately difficult encounter has 150 health and Armor Rating 8 and Defense 17? Your PCs will get bored, frustrated, or discouraged long before they defeat this “mid boss” encounter.

Forgetting Powers and Special Abilities or Overdoing Them. A few cool special abilities, powers, and unique stunts goes a long way. Too many and you risk bogging down encounters. But having none of them makes monsters just collections of basic attacks and statistics. Also, don’t be shy about converting or borrowing powers from existing creatures. If you want a horde of dog-sized flesh-eating beetles to assault your PCs? Adapting Swarm Tactics from the Walking Dead entry in the Fantasy AGE Bestiary will work well and save you design time.

Ignoring the Utility of Reskinning. Sometimes a monster is just an existing one with minor changes and a new look. This isn’t “cheating”; it’s expediency. A terrifying battle-beast created by an evil sorcerer might just be a Demon Soldier with Wings, Blending, or other special abilities already detailed in the Bestiary chapter of Fantasy AGE. A flesh-eating giant “deep one” style humanoid might just be an Ogre with Aquatic and perhaps Bite and Claw attacks adapted from the Manticore entry. These extra abilities will make monsters tougher and you’ll want to consider than when balancing encounters, but it makes it fairly easy to come up with terrifying new threats for PCs to face in a relatively short time.

Also in general, it’s usually better to make weaker monsters than overpowering ones. If a monster is too weak in an encounter? Simply increase it the next time a similar creature is encountered and if anyone wonders, it was a young, inexperienced, or immature monster they faced before—this is the real deal. That’s not even a lie, as the first attempt was not as refined or evolved in many cases. It’s okay if the first demon bear-thing your PCs fight turns out to be a juvenile version of a much scarier threat. In fact, this can allow monsters to grow and evolve alongside your PCs as the campaign progresses.

So those are some of the basics. We’ll be presenting new monsters in the future, but we realize many GMs want to start hacking away at their basic Bestiary entries in the meantime. Hopefully this discussion will help them do exactly that.

Ronin Round Table: The Green Ronin Publishing Round Up

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The Summit is an annual tradition here at Green Ronin Publishing. Scheduled out for roughly the beginning of the fourth quarter of the year, it’s a time when the many far-flung Ronins converge on Seattle, for several days of planning for the upcoming year, allowing us to brainstorm new products, organize a schedule, and take stock of where the company and its Ronins stand.

Over the years I’ve been part of Green Ronin Publishing, I’ve come to distinctly look forward to these events, and with good reason. They’re not just a time to get planning work done (though we do plenty of that). That time is bookended by opportunities to socialize, to game, and in general to just spend time with one another–something that our Ronins don’t get much of a chance to do as a group, given how far-flung we are from one another in our day-to-day operations.

Naturally, we can’t resist recording the event on social media and the like these days, and I’ve had a couple of people ask exactly what happens at these Summits, so I figured I’d give a peek into what our time is spent doing.

The Summits are weekend events, so many of us come into town on Thursday and Friday. This means flights for some of us, though I’m lucky enough to live within a three-hour train-ride up the Washington coast from Seattle, personally (a highly recommended trip if you’ve never made it).

This year, we held the Summit at a large rental house, outside of Seattle proper, having grown too large in number to continue to invade Chez Ronin! So on Friday, after gathering the troops, we departed Seattle proper and made our way out to the countryside, to a big, beautiful house beside the Skykomish River. The rest of the evening was dedicated to settling in, catching up, and dinner with a big pot of Nicole’s chili.

Green Ronin staff photo, 2015

L to R: Steve Kenson, Nicole Lindroos, Evan Sass, Owen Stephens, Chris Pramas, Jon Leitheusser, Donna Prior, Barry Wilson, Hal Mangold, Jack Norris, Joe Carriker, Marc Schmalz

Saturday was our first work-day. Beginning with a simple breakfast (and some time watching the mist come off the river on the house’s ample back deck, tea in hand for me) we got into the process. Generally speaking, we spend an hour or so looking at each of our lines, examining where the current schedule is at (making adjustments as necessary) and coming up with ideas for however many titles we need for the upcoming year. Generally speaking, we all come to the Summit with ideas in-hand, so it’s a pretty smooth process. That evening featured marinated chicken tacos, some time beside the firepit, and even a few games here and there.

Sunday opened with an awesome pancake and sausage breakfast, courtesy of Barry and Steve. Sunday we reserved for topics not directly tied into specific game lines: discussion of new products and other brainstorming, a look at marketing and our volunteers and convention support programs and the like. Then – the new schedule. Having figured out what books we wanted to do for each of the lines, with a rough idea of when we wanted to have them, we slotted all of them onto a master schedule (the SCHEDULE OF DOOM according to the Summit’s schedule of events!). Finally, with all of our work officially drawn to an end, we broke out the grill and Evan and I grilled up some burgers and brats…okay, Evan grilled, and I basically handed him stuff.

With Monday as a travel day for most of us out-of-towners, it saw us up bright and early to close out the house and get to various travel depots. On the way home, I couldn’t help but recognize that the Summit had done its job in more ways than one. Yes, the accomplishments of hammering out the logistics of another year’s release schedule are there, certainly, but there was more. Having had the chance to spend great quality time with some of the best folks I know, talking about the games we love and the things we create? I always leave the Summit excited for what the coming year holds, looking forward to seeing some new books on shelves, and new additions to games I love.

And really, we can’t wait to share what we’ve got coming ahead with all of you.