Ronin Round Table: Green Ronin at Gen Con 2015

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Titansgrave​ is coming to Gen Con! Make sure to login to your Gen Con account and look for SEM1582558 to reserve your spot! Presented by Green Ronin Publishing and Geek and Sundry

Titansgrave​ is coming to Gen Con! Make sure to login to your Gen Con account and look for SEM1582558 to reserve your spot! Presented by Green Ronin Publishing and Geek and Sundry.

 

This year is going to be an exceptionally strange and exciting time for us at Gen Con. Not only is Team Ronin headed out in force, but we’re sharing space with Geek & Sundry, highlighting Fantasy Age and Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana! We’re so excited to have such great games for Gen Con.

Before I get into the fun things happening, I want to kindly let you know what our Customer Service & Sales responses will be slow, as we’ll be dependent on whatever internet we can find while traveling and while we’re all working the show. Online orders for in-stock items (or PDFs of course) will continue to go out on the usual schedule.

For those of you lucky enough to be attending Gen Con, stop on by and say hello at Booth #1509! We’ll be running demos of Walk the Plank, Love 2 Hate, Icons Superpowered Roleplaying, Dragon Age, A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying, Mutants & Masterminds, Ork!, and of course, Fantasy Age and Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana. Geek & Sundry will be featuring a photo booth, along with some great merchandise and surprises!

We also have volunteers running games at Gen Con, and we have some Seminars you don’t want to miss. If you didn’t get into a game, be sure to bring Generic Tickets to see if a spot opens up! There are quite a few sessions of games run by various GMs & Gaming Groups, and we have a list of the officially submitted games run by myself or our Freebooter Volunteer GMs! For the Seminars, there are currently spaces, but you’ll definitely need to pick up free tickets to attend!

Thursday:

  • RPG1575877 Blood in the Streets – DC Adventures/Mutants & Masterminds
  • RPG1575473 An Arl’s Ransom – Dragon Age RPG (at ConTessa!)
  • RPG1573267 Hell Comes to Squishy Man Town! – Ork! 2.0 The Roleplaying Game
  • RPG1576447 Fate in Freeport; The 1000 Year Storm – Fate System
  • RPG1575933 Shadows of Tanglewood – Blue Rose/True 20
  • RPG1576439 Titansgrave: The Rust Wastes – Fantasy Age
  • RPG1576440 Titansgrave: The Rust Wastes – Fantasy Age
  • SEM1578318 News & Updates on Green Ronin Publishing’s AGE System

Friday:

  • RPG1575878 Blood in the Streets – DC Adventures/Mutants & Masterminds
  • RPG1573275 Hell Comes to Squishy Man Town! – Ork! 2.0 The Roleplaying Game
  • RPG1576446 The Truth of the Fifth Blight – Dragon Age RPG
  • RPG1576441 Titansgrave: The Rust Wastes – Fantasy Age
  • RPG1576442 Titansgrave: The Rust Wastes – Fantasy Age
  • RPG1578320 Titansgrave: The Rust Wastes – Fantasy Age
  • SEM1578319 What’s New With Green Ronin Publishing!
  • SEM1582558 Titansgrave Q&A with Wil!

Saturday:

  • RPG1575905 Operation: Zandia – DC Adventures/Mutants & Masterminds
  • RPG1573282 Hell Comes to Squishy Man – Town!Ork! 2.0
  • RPG1575934 Shadows of Tanglewood – Blue Rose/True 20
  • RPG1576443 Titansgrave: The Rust Wastes – Fantasy Age
  • RPG1576445 Titansgrave: The Rust Wastes – Fantasy Age
  • RPG1578321 Titansgrave: The Rust Wastes – Fantasy Age

Sunday:

  • RPG1575906 Operation: Zandia – DC Adventures/Mutants & Masterminds

Thank you for your support, and we hope to see you at Gen Con!

Ronin Round Table: 15 Years of Green Ronin!

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Ork! The Roleplaying GameIf you asked me where I was 15 years ago on a given day, I’d mostly likely tell you I had no idea. July 13, 2000 though, I know exactly where I was and what I was doing. I was in Columbus, OH for the first day of the Origins Game Fair. I was there to work for my then employer, Wizards of the Coast. I had also started my own company on the side a few months earlier, however, and the printer was supposed to ship our first book to Columbus to debut at the show. I remember when the boxes showed up on the exhibit hall floor. I sliced one open to reveal the very first book Green Ronin ever published: Ork! The Roleplaying Game.

Many people think our first book was Death in Freeport and it’s an easy mistake to make. Death in Freeport debuted one month later at GenCon, 2000. It was at ground zero of the d20 explosion and put us on the RPG map. Ork was first though. It was a beer and pretzels RPG that I had designed with my friend “Crazy” Todd Miller. It came out of a memorable campaign that Todd had run back in New York City and I thought its light hearted approach to murder and mayhem might appeal to gamers looking to take a break from more serious games.

Death in FreeportWhen I founded Green Ronin, I thought I’d publish Ork! and Death in Freeport and then see how things looked. At the time the company was just a side project that Nicole Lindroos and Hal Mangold agreed to help me out with. I couldn’t have guessed that the three of us would form a partnership and that we’d still be in business 15 years later, or that the company would carve out an important place in the history of roleplaying games for itself. Hell, I wasn’t sure it would last one year, never mind 15!

I knew this anniversary was coming up. At our yearly summit last October I brought it up and said we should do something special to celebrate. A party at GenCon perhaps or at least a cake. Something! And the irony is that we’ve done nothing to mark this anniversary because we’ve been too busy this year! We had Freeport: The City of Adventure and the Dragon Age Core Rulebook to finish. We had Fantasy AGE and Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana to design. We had our first party card game, Love 2 Hate, to launch. And on top of all that, we had made a deal with my former employer, Wizards of the Coast, to work on some material for Dungeons & Dragons, 5th Edition.

The good news is that we survived all that! Freeport came out a few months ago. The Titansgrave show on Geek & Sundry is in the middle of its run and introducing lots of new people to the fun of roleplaying games. Fantasy AGE and the Titansgrave adventure book are both at print and will debut at GenCon. Dragon Age and Love 2 Hate have spent too long printing but they too are about to release. Our Kickstarter for a new edition of the Blue Rose RPG is happening right now and going great. Out of the Abyss, the super adventure we designed for WotC, is coming out in September. And we even have a new edition of Ork! In the works that will come out this fall. So while we may not get 5 gold and a party, we can at least look back on this year with a sense of accomplishment.

We’ve come a long way in 15 years and that could not have happened without the hard work of a lot of people. First, I’d like to recognize all the Ronins who have worked on staff over the years. Thank you Heather Barnhorst, Pauline Benney, Bill Bodden, Joe Carriker, Will Hindmarch, Steve Kenson, Jon Leitheusser, Nicole Lindroos, Hal Mangold, Jack Norris, Jim Pinto, Donna Prior, Evan Sass, Marc Schmalz, Rob Schwalb, Owen K.C. Stephens, Jeff Tidball, and Barry Wilson. You are all awesome!

Next I’d like to thank the many freelancers we’ve hired for projects big and small. Over the years we’ve worked with literally hundreds of writers, artists, editors, and cartographers who have made invaluable contributions to our games and books. We appreciate all your work and professionalism.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also thank our business partners. Big ups to Wil Wheaton and Geek & Sundry, the whole team at BioWare, George R.R. Martin, and DC Comics. Thanks too to Alliance Games, PSI, and all our friends in distribution and retail for getting our games out there to the public.

Lastly, the biggest of thanks to all the gamers out there who have supported us. You’ve backed us for 15 years and we would not still be here without you. I hope our games have brought you some fun and happiness. And I hope you’ll stick with us as we sail into the future!

Chris Pramas

July 13, 2015

[Ronin Round Table] Fantasy AGE: What’s Different from Dragon Age?

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Fantasy AGEThe Fantasy AGE Basic Rulebook will be releasing in PDF format and going up for pre-order soon. We will debut the game at GenCon, alongside Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana. The most frequently asked question I’ve been getting is, “How is Fantasy AGE different than Dragon Age?” Both games feature the Adventure Game Engine (AGE) so this is a natural question to ask and the one I’m going to delve into today.

Backgrounds

The first thing I’d like to talk about is backgrounds. In Dragon Age a background is basically a mix of culture, social class, and race. You might be a Fereldan Freeman, High-born Dwarf, or Qunari Beresaad, for example. That works because Dragon Age is set in a specific place: Thedas. Fantasy AGE, on the other hand, has no attached world. Its rules are meant to be used with a campaign setting that you choose or create. I thus did not want to assume too much about the culture of the setting.

Therefore Fantasy AGE breaks out backgrounds into three parts. First you choose a race. To make the game as broadly useful to gamers as possible, we went with the “fantasy classics” here: dwarf, elf, gnome, halfling, human, and orc (and Titansgrave adds saurians to the mix). You roll for your social class (outsider, lower class, middle class, or upper class), then you generate a background based on the class. This is meant to represent the career you trained for or engaged in before you became an adventure. Examples include hermit, laborer, merchant, and pirate. Your race, social class, and background modify your starting character in various ways: ability increases, focuses, and other benefits.

Abilities

The heart of any AGE game is the ability test. When you try to do something, you roll 3d6 and add the relevant ability (Communication, Dexterity, etc.). If your total meets or beats the Target Number, you succeed. If you roll doubles on the test, you get to do something cool as a stunt. Easy enough!

Dragon Age features 8 abilities inspired by the video game Dragon Age: Origins. They are:

Communication

Constitution

Cunning

Dexterity

Magic

Perception

Strength

Willpower

 

In Fantasy AGE there are 9 abilities instead of 8. They are:

Accuracy

Communication

Constitution

Dexterity

Fighting

Intelligence

Perception

Strength

Willpower

So you can see that in Fantasy AGE two abilities were added (Accuracy and Fighting), one was removed (Magic), and one simply had its name changed (Cunning to Intelligence). The latter is the easiest to explain. I simply thought Intelligence was a better name for the ability and conveyed its nature more clearly than Cunning. But why the other changes?

In Dragon Age Dexterity and Strength both do a couple of things. Dexterity adds to your Defense (making your harder to hit) and adds to your attack rolls with light melee weapons and missile weapons. Strength adds to your attack rolls with heavy melee weapons and damage to all melee and thrown weapons. All this has certain implications. First, it makes big monsters that hit hard but strike inaccurately harder to model. A + 8 Strength, for example, means +8 on the attack roll and damage. Fantasy AGE breaks this out into separate abilities: Fighting and Strength. Now it’s easier to represent something like an ogre, who might have a Fighting 3 and Strength 7. Second, Dexterity in Dragon Age is something of a superstat for rogues. In Fantasy AGE I thus decided to break it out into Accuracy and Dexterity. Now it’s Accuracy that adds to your attack rolls with light melee and missile weapons and Dexterity that adds to your Defense. The net result these changes means you have some real choices to make when you level up and get to increase an ability. As a warrior, do you want to hit harder or more often? As a rogue do you want to dodge more often or hit enemies more frequently?

As for the Magic ability, I cut it for a couple of reasons. First, to keep the overall number of abilities down. Second, because I felt everything it did could be modeled with other abilities: namely, Intelligence and Willpower. In Fantasy AGE your casting roll is based on Intelligence but your Spellpower is based on Willpower. In Dragon Age both of these are based on your Magic ability.

Magic

Speaking of magic, that’s perhaps the biggest change from Dragon Age. The basics remain the same. Mages have a pool of Magic Points (MPs) that they spend to cast spells. You can keep casting until you run out of MPs, and you can cast the same spell over and over if you want to. What is different is how you acquire spells. In Fantasy AGE there are magic talents, each of which corresponds to a themed group of four spells known as an arcana (Earth Arcana, Divination Arcana, and Fire Arcana, for example). When you get the novice degree of a magic talent, you learn the first two spells of its arcana. You get another at the journeyman degree and the final one at the master degree (as well as some other benefits). A level 1 mage starts with two magic talents at novice degree, which translates to four spells. Mages then acquire more spells as they go up in level by learning new arcana or mastering the ones they have.

Specializations

In Dragon Age you can customize your character with a specialization like Blood Mage, Spirit Healer, or Templar. You get one specialization at level 6 and another at level 14. Fantasy AGE retains the basic concept of the specialization but gives you access to them earlier. You get your first at level 4 and second at level 12. Since you can take your first specialization at level 4, I eased up on the requirements somewhat so it shouldn’t be hard to pick the specialization you want. There are four for each class, twelve in total. The specializations are Arcane Scholar, Assassin, Berserker, Duelist, Elementalist, Guardian, Knight, Mage Hunter, Miracle Worker, Sharpshooter, Swashbuckler, and Sword Mage.

And those are the biggest differences between Fantasy AGE and Dragon Age. As you can see, the games have the same core, but some slightly different expressions. If you’ve played Dragon Age, you’ll find Fantasy AGE a breeze to pick up. If you haven’t played Dragon Age or indeed any other RPG before, that’s OK too. Fantasy AGE is designed with new players in mind.

Ronin Round Table: Titansgrave Character Creation Day

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By Chris Pramas

Titansgrave CoverEpisodes 0 and 1 of Titansgrave debuted on Geek & Sundry last week and we’ve been delighted with the response. After working on this since last year, it was great to see the show begin and the way the community embraced it. For those of you not so familiar with RPGs generally and Green Ronin specifically, let me quickly answer the most common question we are seeing. Yes, you’ll be able to buy the Fantasy AGE RPG and yes, there will be a Titansgrave book to go with it. I’ve been working feverishly (sometimes literally) to finish them so we can debut them at GenCon in August. They will be in stores shortly thereafter. You can follow the above links to read about the Fantasy AGE and Titansgrave books in our online store.

So this week you were introduced to our fabulous players and their characters: Laura Bailey as Lemley, Hank Green as Aankia, Alison Haislip as Killiel, and Yuri Lowenthal as S’lethkk. Back in March I flew down to Burbank for a character creation day. Hank could not be there (we did his character over Skype), but the other players were, as was GM Wil Wheaton. While some people like to just make their characters at home and bring them to the first session, I prefer to create characters as a group. This lets everyone talk and bounce ideas off one another, which usually leads to stronger characters.

Wil started by giving the players some background on Valkana and explaining that it’s a science fantasy “swords and blasters” setting. I then guided Laura, Alison, and Yuri through character creation. They conveniently settled on warrior, rogue, and mage (the three classes of Fantasy AGE) respectively. Hank had previously made a rogue as well.

As for races, I explained that Fantasy AGE featured dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, humans, and orcs (the fantasy classics, if you will). Valkana also has saurians, who are a race of intelligent lizardfolk. I think it was Yuri who first asked about playing a mixed-heritage character like a half-orc. I like to accommodate players if I can, so even though I didn’t have rules for such at that moment I said they could do that if they wanted. And oh, they wanted. Half elf/half human? Too tame for our intrepid adventures! Alison decided Killiel would be half elf and half dwarf. Yuri got crazy with half saurian and half orc (you can see Hank’s amusing reaction to that in Episode 0). Laura, perhaps feeling left out as a plain ole human, decided that she was adopted by saurians. I rolled with all this and made rulings on the fly as needed. Later, as I was finishing Fantasy AGE, I made sure to add a section on mixed heritage characters to cover the bases.

After doing all the nuts and bolts work of picking classes, talents, spells, equipment, and so on, we moved on to goals and ties. This is an important stage of character creation in Fantasy AGE, as it helps flesh out the characters. Players create personal goals for their characters. Basically, why is your character an adventurer and what do they want to achieve? Ties are the things that bind the characters together. How did the group get together? What made them into an adventuring party? This is where a lot of the fun stuff you see in Episode 0 was first conceived. You can see by the end of that even though this was the first adventure of the campaign, the group already had a nascent identity. The character creation day was also crucial for Wil, who was then able to take what he had learned about the characters and think about ways to work that material into the campaign. As you’ll see in the coming weeks, this is something Wil is quite adept at!

With characters created, I flew back home from Burbank 12 hours after I arrived. I would return in just a few days for the beginning of the shoot. More on that another time!

To keep up on Titansgrave and Fantasy AGE news over the coming weeks, check back here or follow us on Twitter at @GreenRoninPub or on Facebook. The Titansgrave RPG has its own Facebook page, too.

Ronin Round Table: Blue Rose

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At the risk of boring the audience with back-to-back Ronin Round Tables focusing on Blue Rose, I really wanted to have a chance to say a few words before the Kickstarter for the new edition with the AGE rules goes up. Very soon now we’re going to be in the middle of Kickstarter craziness and, for the first time, I’m personally going to be managing the Kickstarter project on behalf of Green Ronin instead of our illustrious president Chris Pramas. Chris is eyeballs-deep in finalizing Fantasy AGE and tomorrow (assuming this posts as planned) will be the first episode of Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop RPG show Titansgrave: the Ashes of Valkana, which Green Ronin helped put together (and which Chris is also eyeballs-deep into finalizing for the accompanying sourcebook that Green Ronin is publishing). It seems only fair that someone else take up the management duties under current circumstances.

Knowing this duty was in my future made me introspective; more so than usual. In 2005, when the True20-powered edition of Blue Rose came out, I was very much in favor of doing it but it wasn’t a particular pet project of mine. I saw the value in creating a game that catered to the tropes and themes of the less-served side of fantasy literature, the “romantic fantasy” branch dealing less with battle prowess and conquest and more with relationships, alliances, striving for goodness, and creating community. We were already doing the grim and gritty-style of fantasy with our Black Company license, Chris’s ever-expanding Freeport setting, and our design house work on Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition for Games Workshop. Touching on this other style of fantasy just seemed to make sense! A rich fantasy life can take shape in a myriad of ways.

I really wasn’t prepared for the response we saw. We got a lot of positive feedback, people embraced the setting and wanted more, reviews praised the system and the beautiful art in equal measure. Another subset of people really, really liked the system work Steve Kenson had done with the True20 system and wanted THAT and only that, to the point of making ever-escalating demands up to and including threats to use the Open Game License that True20 was based on to strip the setting from the rules and release it with or without our involvement and whether we liked it or not. While certainly within the letter of the “law” of the OGL, it really seemed to violate the spirit of creative expression and sharing that had been largely respected by the community. It’s also around that time that Green Ronin underwent (and barely survived) what we’ve come to refer to around the office as The Osseum Debacle, which resulted in our fulfillment partners rather spectacularly going out of business and leaving their clients (Green Ronin being the largest) out to dry and out many, many thousands of dollars. It was not an ideal situation, to say the least.

Because of the Debacle, and the competing forces demanding our attention (while seeming unconcerned about the fact that these game releases were our livelihood) we didn’t get to do a lot of the things we’d hoped to do with the line. Even our best efforts at the time resulted in some cringe-worth mistakes and oversights in retrospect, though not necessarily the ones critics of the original setting harped on. Ten years along the landscape has changed quite a bit. Game companies and personalities have come and gone. Dungeons & Dragons itself has had two complete redesigns (the most recent under the editorial guidance of Jeremy Crawford, who coincidentally also edited and helped develop Blue Rose). “Romantic Fantasy” as its own literary genre is virtually nonexistent in comparison with young adult dystopias and paranormal romances springing up in its place.

And yet the tropes and themes of that branch we called “Romantic Fantasy” are more current than ever! Relationships and community, finding your own authenticity in the face of bigotry, presenting your best self and working for a better world? Those issues are in my news feed every day. Heroes fighting for the greater good are not the sole providence of comic books and they’re going to be taking their place in the new Blue Rose release. My abiding concern as we move ahead is to make sure we improve on our prior presentation. Happily, I can say that our working relationship with BioWare over the evolution of the Dragon Age property has been educational and inspiring and has definitely affected my attitude towards the Blue Rose reboot. The evolution from Dragon Age 2, where we saw trans characters as elven prostitutes played for laughs to Dragon Age: Inquisition where a significant NPC is revealed as transgender in a much more sensitive, and more importantly organic, manner was not only the right way to address a prior misstep but a deft handling of the issue that rippled through the development of the culture of the Qunari and resulted in a much richer background for the world of Thedas as a whole. That is what I hope to see from a Blue Rose reboot as well.

Of course, the world now also contains Tumblr mobs, irate Gamer Gate aficionados itching to move beyond name calling on forums to DDoS attacks, doxxing, and other direct forms of harassment, and people willing to strike up a call for boycott if your response to “sea lions” * on Twitter doesn’t meet with their approval. A decade ago I was probably brash enough that I would have flipped them a couple of birds and cursed like Chuck Wendig. I’ll try to maintain slightly more appropriate behavior this time around but mostly, I’m just eager for the chance to do this again and to do it even better. The Kickstarter launch won’t be long now and I can hardly wait to see who is going to join us in Aldea.

*please see http://wondermark.com/1k62/ for more on “sea lions” if you haven’t already.

Ronin Round Table: A Field of Flowers

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The first time I came out professionally was in a job interview. It was in the early ’90s, and I was in Chicago, at FASA Corporation, interviewing for the job of Shadowrun developer following Tom Dowd’s departure.

When I was asked if had questions, other than talking about the particulars of the job, I said (something along the lines of) “Well, yes. I’m gay. Is that going to be a problem?” See I was fairly newly out, just to family and a few friends. The prospect of starting a new life in a new city … well, I wanted to do it right.

As it happened, my interviewer didn’t miss a beat and didn’t think there would be any problems, and I honestly don’t think it had anything to do with my not getting the job (which, obviously, I didn’t. I was way too young and inexperienced. It went briefly to SR author Carl Sargent, and then to FASA designer Mike Mulvihill). Still, it was a big step for me.

Why am I bringing all this up? Well, as you may know, Green Ronin announced a planned Kickstarter for a new edition of the Blue Rose roleplaying game of romantic fantasy, and the fact that it’s late in getting going is at least partially my fault, as I’ve been busy with this other project you may have heard about. So Blue Rose hasn’t gotten my full attention until fairly recently. While I apologize for any delays, I think it will be worth the wait and, honestly, the timing couldn’t be better.

You see, it’s LGBT Pride month, which is, to me, the ideal time for me to be talking about and working on Blue Rose, a project that made such a concerted effort ten years ago to be one of the most inclusive RPGs in terms of gender and sexuality. Now, honestly, we fumbled the “B” and “T” parts of LGBT, and could do better with others, but part of the point of a new edition is to apply lessons learned and make a good game even better, and that’s certainly my intention.

Now, Blue Rose is not as much about “the gay stuff” as some of its detractors (many of whom haven’t even read it) seem to think. Indeed, we tried to make Aldis’ acceptance of same-sex and polyamorous relationships as integrated and “normal” as possible for the setting, without calling a lot of attention to it. So why keep talking about it? Because, while it might not be a huge part of the game, it is still a big deal.

How can I explain just how desperate I was as a closeted high school geek to see some openly gay characters in the games I loved? Not even as heroes—oh no, that would have been too much to hope for—just as people who existed in the world, evidence that, in my fictional fantasy worlds, at least, I wasn’t as alone as I felt in the real world. Seeing some reflection of yourself in stories: That kind of representation matters, especially to young people who feel isolated and afraid. It matters that when we talk about stories of adventure and heroism, we make it clear everyone can be a hero—or a villain, for that matter. We make it clear that you—yes, you—can be the hero.

Inclusion and representation—whether it’s gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, or any of the other qualities that make us who we are—have become much more widespread issues than when Blue Rose was first published a decade ago, and Green Ronin’s expansion of the Adventure Gaming Engine (AGE) system offers us a great opportunity to apply all that we have learned in the intervening years by returning to the world of Aldea and the Kingdom of the Blue Rose. It also allows us the opportunity to be more inclusive on the creative side of things, and we’re putting together a great list of creators interested in providing different looks at the world, its characters, and the kinds of adventures you can have there. Although the name of the game is Blue Rose, we want a garden of roses, an entire field of different flowers, to bloom, and we hope you’ll join us in making that happen.

I know better at this point than to give you an exact date, but I can tell you that the Kickstarter is coming soon, and to watch this space and Green Ronin’s social networks like Facebook and Twitter for an announcement as we get ready.

Ronin Round Table: Adventures in Television

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Hey folks, Jack here. So there’s been a lot of news lately in the realm of DC Comics and television. The finale for Arrow this season is already out with Flash coming soon. Constantine on NBC has ended but rumors of it coming back elsewhere or even crossing over with existing shows abound. Gotham is still running on Fox, CBS has announced it has picked up Supergirl, and the CW has announced Legends of Tomorrow, a show that brings together an eclectic group of heroes and villains for a time-traveling romp to stop Vandal Savage.

So…wow. If you’d told kid-me this would be the face of TV now? I would have been both thrilled and really skeptical. I would have assumed these had to be cartoons, because…the Flash on TV? Okay, maybe. After all, they did it before. But Green Arrow, Black Canary, Deathstroke, Ra’s al Ghul, the Suicide Squad, and many more making appearances? Yeah, sure….pull the other one. I mean, Katana even shows up.

With all that television superhero goodness I thought I’d take a step back from all the AGE and other cool stuff to discuss one of our self-contained products from a few years back, DC Adventures. Using the Mutants and Masterminds 3rd Edition system, DC Adventures is a 4 volume game that gives rules, setting material, and hundreds of heroes and villains from the DC Universe for use in campaigns. When the books were produced, Green Ronin decided to aim for iconic versions of the heroes and villains. So instead of only focusing on a character during a single run of comics, we aimed to produce more general and well-known versions in the hopes they could be more easily used for a variety of games, plots, and stories in multiple versions of the DCU.

Now that we’ve got a quickly developing television version of the DC Comics universe (DCTVU? Huh, kinda sounds like a Law & Order spinoff), I’ve been thinking how cool it would be to use DCA to run a version of that universe. At first glance this seems challenging. After all, the characters are from the comics and they aren’t exactly the same in many cases.

However, it’s actually pretty darned easy. Most of the characters, even if their backgrounds occasionally differ, are almost the same as their iconic comic versions in many ways that you can use the statistics for them in DCA Heroes & Villains, Volume 1 and Volume 2 and DC Universe (our setting and cast of character books). For example: Yes, Captain Cold in the Flash comics and Cold on the Flash TV show aren’t exactly the same when it comes to every bit of background, history, etc… However, when you look at both characters and what they do when interacting with the setting on an effect-based or mechanical level? They’re essentially the same. Comics Cold is a career criminal with a freeze gun and a strange sense of honor, TV Cold is a career criminal with a freeze gun and a strange sense of honor. His buddy Heatwave is bit a more bloodthirsty on TV, but he’s got the same gear and abilities. And so on.

Note that in some cases, especially with the heroes, some minor alteration is necessary. But those alterations are usually quite easy, simple acts of slight omission or downgrading a PL or two. For ex, young newly minted Flash Barry Allen might not be on the same level as Flash in his prime, but he’s got all the same abilities at a slightly lower (and constantly growing) level. Arrow is a bit more martial arts heavy than the iconic comic version but…he maps quite well to the Connor Hawke version of the character. Black Canary’s sonic cry is a device and she favors fighting batons, but she’s very much the same hero. Firestorm might not have busted out his matter manipulation abilities or phasing abilities yet, but his flight and fire generation are well-established—and who knows? We might see those powers next season and GMs and players could certainly have Firestorm and other characters develop these abilities over time. Most of the characters who have shown up on Arrow, Flash, and who are slated to appear on Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow are simplified, less powerful, or at times direct analogs for the versions provided in DC Adventures.

This was the sort of thing DC Adventures was made for. Adapting different versions of DC to your gaming table, and that includes the television shows. Admittedly, sometimes the adaptation is more extreme. The Atom uses a powered suit of armor with flight and energy blasts in addition to his other skills and abilities. And some supporting characters like John Diggle and Felicity Smoak would need to be created. However, even existing iconic characters already provided can be a real boon. Diggle’s combat abilities make him a lot like various trained commando heroes in the DC, such as Rick Flagg. And Felicity’s computer hacking and technical abilities are on par with Oracle’s, though she lacks her combat training and is not paralyzed. Supporting cast “dads” Captain Lance and Detective West are Jim Gordon like cops. And so on.

So if you’re itching to play in the ever-growing DCUTV world? Consider grabbing DC Adventures and giving it a shot. Sure, a lot of heroes have already shown up, but there are still plenty left. Imagine a TV Opal City with Starman and the Shade. Or maybe you want to take a shot at the Wonder Woman TV show that never got picked up a few years ago. A Suicide Squad spinoff on Arrow looks temporarily unlikely due to the upcoming feature film but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t make a great campaign.

The Flash (Barry Allen)

The Flash (Barry Allen)

The possibilities are varied and all the tools to do it are already there, minus a bit of time and imagination to “TV” up the characters. One fun way to help with this is to “cast” your favorite actors as heroes and villains in your own tabletop series. Want Damian Lewis to play the Question? Or believe they’s no better Warlord than Anson Mount? It’s all good. Also, much like modern casting directors, you’re not bound by gender and race limitations for many characters. Think it would be great to see Rosario Dawson as Big Barda and Joe Taslim as Orion in your very own New Gods series? Go for it. You’re not even limited by time and space: cast actors from previous series or generations in your “tabletop series” if you’d like, especially if they bring an iconic quality to the role. And casting your PCs and NPCs it’s just a fun mental exercise, but it can help players visualize the action better and help give the game a “TV” feel.

To give you an idea how this works, check out our free preview of the Flash (Barry Allen) and Reverse Flash.  Though this represents Barry at the height of his career, most of his special “speed tricks” under his powers are things he’s been learning in the first season of his self-titled TV show.  He’s also been getting faster. So taking Flash represented here, dropping some powers and PL and then adding to them during his adventures is a simple and effective way to turn DC Adventures into DC Adventures…in Television!

So with the TV season almost done and summer fast approaching, consider getting your friends together for your own “show” featuring your favorite DC characters with an unlimited casting and special effects budget—your imagination!

Ronin Round Table: Age of AGE

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By Jack Norris

So…wow. There’s been a lot of stuff released or announced involving the AGE (Adventure Gaming Engine) system lately. Lot of things going on and it can be hard to keep everything straight. So, for this week’s Ronin Round Table? Let’s recap.

Fantasy AGE

Fantasy Age is the AGE system reworked from the version used in Dragon Age to provide players and GMs with a broader fantasy experience, not linked to the world of Thedas. The rules will be  similar to Dragon Age’s rules, but with some changes to character creation, especially the magic system for mages. The first release for Fantasy Age will be its corebook, intentionally designed as a shorter, more streamlined book to help get you ready to play quickly.

Titansgrave

There’s been a lot of discussion on this already and more to come, but just recap quickly this is the setting for Wil Wheaton’s new RPG based Tabletop series. It’s a post-apocalyptic techno-fantasy in the vein of Thundarr the Barbarian. Titansgrave will use the Fantasy Age rules.

Blue Rose

So…Blue Rose’s kickstarter didn’t launch on April. That’s because between some high profile Kickstarters from other fine creators and companies and us working to get various other releases ready, the month just rushed by a  too quickly to run it right. However, it’s coming soon. Steve Kenson and I have been figuring out changes to the world of Aldis and recent events there while Chris and Nicole are discussing the logistics of the Kickstarter to help ensure things go well. Watch for an announcement and your opportunity to back the Kickstarter when it’s ready to go live.

Dragon Age

Lest anyone think I forgot. There’s Dragon Age, the game that started it all. The new corebook is out in PDF, has been updated with various fixes and corrections, and is being sent to print. The GM screen is next, with the included adventure in editing. Then we’ll have Faces of Thedas, which details various important characters and groups throughout the Dragon Age setting. All the first drafts are written and while development slowed briefly due to Titansgrave, Fantasy Age, etc… it will be picking up again soon.

So yeah, LOTS of AGE related material on the horizon. I’ll update folks with more information as it comes. It’s going to be an exciting year!

The Gauntlet: Moxtropolis

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This year Team Green Ronin is happy to be participating in The Gauntlet 2015, a friendly gaming-for-charity event that will pit us against other Seattle-area teams such as reigning champs Paizo Publishing, Bungie Studios, the Lady Planeswalker Society, GeekGirlCon, Valve, and many others in a tabletop game tournament on May 16th. Here’s a little more information from the organizers’ page:

The Gauntlet: Moxtropolis is a fundraising tournament for the benefit of Hopelink, a charity whose mission is to support homeless and low-income families on their way to self-sufficiency. On May 16th, 2015, teams will gather to compete in a contest of skill and chance at Mox Boarding House in Bellevue, WA.

Teams of four, from local community groups and businesses, will raise donations for Hopelink. These donations will unlock power-ups to aid them as they compete in a series of table top games to win glory, and victoriously hoist the Gauntlet! This event is sponsored by ENGAGE – Card Kingdom and Mox Boarding House’s charitable giving program.

Bungie has raised an incredible $23,546 as of this writing. Green Ronin’s goal is a little more modest. Team members Chris Pramas, Donna Prior, Nicole Lindroos and honorary-Ronin Ray Winninger all have individual fundraising pages and goals that tie back to the team’s page. Nicole set her personal goal at $3000 only to learn that last year many teams didn’t even raise that amount. However, Nicole responded with, “I do not [fool] around when I raise money for charity.”

Just $3.00 provides a meal for a family of four through Hopelink’s program. Consider a small donation if you can, and please help Team Green Ronin spread the word. Thanks!

http://thegauntlet2015.causevox.com/team/GreenRonin

Ronin Round Table: Titansgrave Details, Writing Team, and More

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Last week we were finally able to reveal our role in Wil Wheaton’s upcoming RPG Show, Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana. We’ve been working hard on this project for many months and were delighted and relieved for the news to go public. Nicole and I were in Burbank all last week for the filming, so we got to watch the reaction to the news from the set. Quite gratifying after months of secrecy!

Chris on Titansgrave set

Chris on the Set of Titansgrave

Last year, when Wil and I were first talking over the project, I noted that the schedule was aggressive. I may have even said “ridiculously aggressive.” Wil paused and asked, “Do you think we shouldn’t try to do it?” And I said, “We absolutely should. This could be the best thing to happen to RPGs since the publication of the D&D red box in 1983.” That may sound like hyperbole to you but I meant it then and I believe it even more after the filming. No one has done a show like Titansgrave before. We’re going to show a huge number of people how awesome roleplaying games are and what it’s like to play in a campaign. I think it’s going to be an amazing boost for the entire roleplaying hobby and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.

Titansgrave Sneak Peek

A sneak peek of the setting!

The show debuts on Geek & Sundry on June 2 and runs for ten episodes. At GenCon Green Ronin will release two books together: the Fantasy AGE RPG and Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana world and adventure book. Fantasy AGE is the next development of the Adventure Game Engine, the rules system I designed for the Dragon Age RPG. This is a core rulebook for the system and you can use it with a huge variety of settings. Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana is a book that features world information and supporting rules, and the adventures that are featured on the show. This means you can play your own version of the campaign the cast got to experience. Since each episode will be roughly 45-60 minutes, the book will include plenty of encounters new to viewers, as well as options for customizing the story for your group.

If creating a book like that in a short time sounds like a lot of work, it is! That’s why we recruited a crack team of designers to put the adventures together. These folks had short deadlines and limited world information when they started, so they deserve huge kudos for doing a great job in challenging circumstances. So who are these intrepid writers? Let me introduce them:

Keith Baker (Eberron, Gloom)

Leonard Balsera (Fate Core, Dresden Files RPG)

Logan Bonner (Pathfinder RPG Unchained, The Slaying Stone, Refuge in Audacity)

Will Hindmarch (Eternal Lies and Odyssey: Journey and Change)

Jackson Lanzing (Hacktivist, Freakshow)

Nicole Lindroos (Vampire: The Masquerade, A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying)

Robert J. Schwalb (Shadow of the Demon Lord, A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying)

Mike Selinker (Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, The Maze of Games)

Clark Valentine (Dresden Files RPG, Fate Accelerated)

Ray Winninger (DC Heroes, Dungeoncraft)

We also recruited cartographer supreme Andy Law (whose work you can see in the new Freeport: City of Adventure book) to do the maps and he did a stellar job on short notice.

All in all, a great team and we could not have done this without them. I’ve been developing the adventures, and working on world and story stuff with Ryan Wheaton, Nicole, and Wil.

Now that the shoot is over, it’s full steam ahead to finish the two books and get everything off to print in time for GenCon. We’ll have much more to share with you about Fantasy AGE and Titansgrave as the clock ticks down to their debut. Watch this space and our social media, and we hope to see you at GenCon!

Chris Pramas
Green Ronin Publishing