Ronin Round Table: Blue Rose Returns!

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Blue Rose RPG

Blue Rose

Ten years ago we published Blue Rose, the roleplaying game of Romantic Fantasy. The idea was pretty simple. While Dungeons & Dragons and many subsequent fantasy RPGs drew inspiration from authors like J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock, and Fritz Leiber, a different sort of fantasy fiction began to develop in the 80s—what we call Romantic Fantasy—and there wasn’t a game built off its common themes and tropes. We thought there were a lot of fans who’d want an RPG inspired by writers like Tamora Pierce, Mercedes Lackey, and Jacqueline Carey. And we were right. The game was conceived and published as a three book series, with a core rulebook, a world book, and a rules companion. Blue Rose was quite successful and for many years people have asked us if we were ever going to revisit it.

The short answer is yes! We are preparing a Blue Rose Kickstarter right now. Our plan is to do a new edition of Blue Rose powered by the Adventure Game Engine, the rules I designed for our Dragon Age RPG. Our goal is to launch the Kickstarter in April.

This is something we’ve been talking about for several years. The topic has come up at our yearly summit for the past two or three years. We all agreed we’d like to do it, but when and how were the questions that needed to be answered. So why now?

The biggest reason is that a lot of the issues we tried to tackle in Blue Rose have come to the fore in the public debate, in society generally and in nerdom. Diversity and inclusivity are now common topics of conversation, which was not at all the case in 2005. The idea that gay marriage would be legal in so many states in ten years certainly would have been a surprise to me back then. With the progress that we’ve seen in our politics and our art, a roleplaying game that lets you defend an egalitarian society without fixed gender roles seems like just the thing for the current day.

Of course, progress never comes easy. The simple idea that women should get equal pay for equal work—not to mention the opportunity to work in the fields of their choice—is crazed radicalism in the eyes of some. And while the Supreme Court may have declared that racism is over in the USA, anyone with an ounce of awareness can see that is manifestly not the case. That many of these issues are contentious is no surprise to us. Blue Rose itself was subject to a reactionary backlash from certain quarters. This sort of thing has just gotten worse, particularly in the video game arena, and politics in America has also taken an ugly turn. So while, yes, we have seen a lot of social progress, there is still a lot of work to do.

Now playing games is not going to change the world. That is down to grassroots organizing, voting, and political action. There is a saying though, that all politics is local and our neighborhood is tabletop gaming. We want this to be a better place and we think we can have some effect on it by publishing the right roleplaying game. We want there to be a welcoming place for women, LBGTQ folks, and people of color to enter the hobby. We want to promote the idea that roleplaying games are for everyone, that our hobby—our fun, creative hobby—is something that can bring us together rather than tear us apart.

So why now and why Blue Rose? That’s why.

This has turned into more a political statement than I had intended when I sat down to write. Rest assured that our goal here is to make a fun and playable game and we’ll tell you more about that in the coming weeks. For starters, I just wanted to let you all know about our plans and give you some insight into why we think this is the right time for the return of Blue Rose.

Chris Pramas
President, Green Ronin Publishing
Seattle, WA

Ronin Round Table: Movies, Plots, and the Art of the Steal

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Heya folks, Jack here. So with the winter movie season is winding down, with trailers for next summer’s big films burning up the interwebs, and the various summer movies from this year coming out on Blu-ray, DVD, and on various streaming services, I thought it would be a good time to talk about how movies make great inspiration for game plots.

Now of course movies and games aren’t the same thing. They have different structure, goals, and so on. However, what they both have is a need for at least some sort of plot. This can be tightly woven and intricate, or fast and loose. In RPGs the plot can, and often is, seriously informed by the actions of the players. But even in the sandboxiest of sandbox player-driven play, plots still pop up for PCs to deal with. Of course, coming up with plots for a game session can at times be daunting. Whether you’re pressed for time or just drawing a blank, sometimes you think, “So what could the PCs get involved with this week?” and come up empty. At times like this, try this: Go to the movies!

Okay, you don’t necessarily need to physically go to a movie theater. You don’t even necessarily need to watch a movie. However, try thinking about the films that stuck with you over the years and how to adapt them to your own games. Sometimes this is easy—it doesn’t take much to port Star Wars over to other types of sci-fi or even most fantasy. Other time this is harder or less direct, but it can still work wonders when you’re stuck for a plot for your next session.

So let’s look at some of my favorite films and show how they can be liberally ripped off, adapted, and tweaked to provide the basis for an RPG plot. Here goes:

Seven Samurai

I might be biased because I’m a Kurosawa fan but this film and its Western remake the Magnificent Seven, is one of the easiest and best films to borrow from for an “I need it by tonight” game session. There’s a village. There are farmers or other peasant types who can’t do much to defend themselves. Then there are marauders, bandits, or some other threatening horde. The only way the little guy is going to survive is if some stalwart heroes (or desperate mercenaries) step up to defend them. Throw in a few twists like a romance with a villager or a hidden cache of weapons and valuables the village seeks to keep from both the bandits and their PC saviors and you’re all set! Moving on…

Predator

The PCs are hired to take out an encampment or outpost of raiders, terrorists, rebels, cultists, or whatever passes for disposable mook villains in your campaign. In the wilderness around the encampment, they discover they aren’t alone. A terrifying and cunning monster is stalking the PCs, hoping to add them to their collection of defeated heroes and adventurers. The monster is stronger than they are and very hard to locate and defeat. Unless you want to risk killing several PCs in a single session, this plot probably works best with some NPC guides, henchmen, or other allies to whack along the way to keep things interesting. However, the basic plot will work for everything from horror to science fiction to fantasy.

Big Trouble in Little China

While in town to visit an old friend, the heroes are informed that their buddy is going to pick up their longtime sweetheart from the next plane, boat, spaceship, flying dragon, etc… However, an evil wizard or other superpowered tyrant shows up and snags the bride or groom to be (along with a few others) as part of some terrible wedding ritual that will increase the bad guy’s already impressive power. Together with an old wizard and some idealistic young warriors, the PCs need to save the innocents and defeat the villain and his army of powerful and strange henchmen. This works best if you can play up some sort of “fish out of water” element with the PCs. As this film was at one point being developed as a Western, it’s a safe bet you could adapt this basic idea to many settings and genres. Speaking of fish…

Jaws

A gigantic sea creature or other fierce man-eating beastie is attacking an idyllic town. The town at first denies the danger but once things get bad they need experienced warriors to hunt down and defeat the beast. Of course this involves seeking out the creature on its home turf and making sure the threat is ended for good. Move some of the action inland and this is also roughly the plot of Beowulf, though there was only one killer shark…until all those sequels. Not weird enough? Well how about…

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

I know, wait…what? Sure, this romantic comedy about a black doctor seeking to marry a young white woman in a period of racial intolerance, thus requiring the approval of her well-meaning but not quite as enlightened as they’d like to think parents, seems like it might not make the best RPG session. However, make it a brilliant but unlanded wizard who wants to marry a princess, or an elf warrior who wants to marry the half-orc chieftain’s daughter, throw in the PCs as friends of the suitor or the family, and maybe add a few relatives willing to stoop to murder or kidnapping to keep the would-be couple apart, and you’re ready to play.

Nightbreed

You really want to flip things from a standard heroic “let’s go kill the monsters!” story? What if the monsters were the good guys? They just want to be left alone and live their lives, but a crazed psychopath masquerading as a doctor or some other respected figure has manipulated the local authorities into wiping out the “freaks.” For their part, the monsters are wrestling with whether to go to war or run and hide, hoping their prophecy of a chosen one from the outside that will deliver them to a new homeland comes to pass—which is a great role for a concerned PC to play if one fits the bill.  If you’re planning on using this film for inspiration check out the recently released Director’s Cut that develops the monster characters and mythology in more depth.

Those are just a few of literally thousands of films you can adapt for rpg sessions in a pinch. And you don’t need to just use good movies either. In some cases, you can likely improve on the movie’s plot and execution. For example, I wouldn’t recommend watching Your Highness unless you’re feeling particularly masochistic, but the basic idea would work fine for a campaign arc.

Ronin Round Table: Discussing Dragon Age

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Dragon Age RPG Ultimate Edition

Dragon Age RPG Ultimate Edition

Hello, folks, Jack here. With the Dragon Age new collected core books coming soon I wanted to discuss a bit about what the books are, what they aren’t, and what changes you can expect.

First, let’s get this out of the way: This isn’t a new edition. There are a lot of reasons for that, the biggest being that we’d just released Set 3 and that would have been pretty jarring to jump to a new edition. So the vast majority of the rules and content remain the same.

So what’s different? Well, we’re looking at some minor tweaks and adjustments to things like experience. New monsters, specializations, and other additional content such as new campaign frameworks are being included. The biggest of these is a new starter adventure, Invisible Chains. We didn’t want to invalidate the game folks are already playing or make Sets 1-3 obsolete, but we also realize there are some places we can add some new stuff for even experienced players to enjoy.

However, if someone forced me to pick the biggest change, it’s in format and organization. With one book, everything is in one place and organized with that in mind. Don’t get me wrong; the sets were cool and fun and gave the game a very neat old-school and approachable feel. However, when the sets went out of print, it made more sense to put all the rules already in existence together in one product. So now all the levels, monsters, items, class information from the three sets will be combined into one place. Hal Mangold is currently hard at work laying out the new core and making sure all the collected material is presented in the most attractive and useful way possible.

Also, there have been some questions and confusion: There are two versions of the DA Core coming out. The first is the Ultimate Edition. The Ultimate Edition features a slipcase with a red leatherette bound book, silver foil stamped, with silver-gilded edges and a ribbon bookmark. So it’s very pretty. It’s also limited edition.

There will also be a regular edition hardcover that has all the same internal content, but is missing the external upgrades and isn’t limited edition. Again, these books have the same internal content, so you can buy either one that strikes you. Or hey, both if you like.

After the new core, we’ll be seeing among other things Faces of Thedas. I just got the first drafts from my writers and things are developing very well. In addition to stats and write-ups on some favorite and important characters in the Dragon Age world, we’ll see very useful discussions of how to use these NPCs to drive games, plots, and campaigns. We’ll also see discussion of important factions and groups in the world, such as various assassins’ guilds, spy organizations, crime syndicates, and the like. Rounding this out will be rules on relationships that can be used to provide mechanical augmentation, but not replacement, for roleplaying interactions between rivals, romantic interests, and trusted companions.

But wait… There’s more! Chris Pramas is also hard at work on the draft for Fantasy AGE, which will provide non-Dragon Age focused fantasy play for Age. This version will have some changes from the current system, especially when it comes to magic, which won’t necessarily be presented in other fantasy settings the way it is in Dragon Age. And this doesn’t even touch on some other projects we’ll be announcing soon.

Ronin Round Table: A Thousand Words

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“It’s a beautiful game.”

“Take a look at this!”

“Have you seen this?”

Like it or not, we often do judge books (and games, and other things) by their covers, and their interiors, and by their looks in general. Even the “retro” style game products that deliberately try to look like they were assembled on somebody’s typewriter or paste-up board and mimeographed are going for a specific look, recreating a particular style. Art and design have come a long way in the gaming hobby, and have tremendous, if sometimes unsung, influence on our products.

I wanted to be an artist once. I could draw reasonably well when I was a kid, but I didn’t really have the passion for art that it takes to be a professional artist, whereas I was able to turn my passion for writing things for the games I loved into a living. Still, having some small experience with the artistic process, I have a great appreciation for the work of artists, whose names are not as often associated with the games and worlds they help to create. After all, I’m willing to bet some of your fondest memories about your favorite games involve iconic pieces of art from those games—I know mine do.

We Ronin Round Table authors are pretty much all writers, however. Makes sense, given this is a column, and there are a lot more of us than there are artists in the company. In fact, only one guy on-staff is responsible for the artwork and the look of our books. That’s Hal Mangold, Green Ronin’s Production Manager, which means he’s layout designer, art director, and print buyer all in one. We have four developers to manage our game lines (Mutants & Masterminds/DC Adventures, Dragon Age, Song of Ice & Fire Roleplaying, and Freeport/Pathfinder) and one guy who takes all of the materials from those lines and turns them into finished products, with the able assistance of Marc Schmalz, our e-publishing manager. Small wonder he’s not writing too many online columns!

I’ll let you in on a little secret, too. For me, the art creation process for a book or game is a lot like exercise: I often hate going through the process (even starting the process), but really appreciate the results that make it all worth it. When they say “a picture is worth a thousand words,” they’re not kidding, because sometimes it feels like it takes a thousand words of description, detail, and references to convey those pictures we writer-types have in our heads that artists so remarkably turn into reality. We go through the process of writing and providing notes and guidelines and specifications for artwork, hoping we’ve explained things clearly enough. Sometimes, we don’t, and that’s usually on us when a sketch comes back and we’re, “That’s not quite what I had in mind…” or “If we could just change a few things…” and the patient, professional artists go literally back to the drawing board (or tablet) and make it happen.

More often than not, their efforts exceed expectations. When I worked with Dan Houser and Daniel Solis on the Assembled Edition of Icons Superpowered Roleplaying, for example, I described the concept for the cover: an homage to Giant-Sized X-Men #1, combining original iconic heroes with some of the new ones we created for the cover of Great Power. Continuity with the previous edition of the core book, but also a new, fresher look. What Dan and Daniel came back with turned out far better than the picture in my head (and the crude sketches and compositions I provided) and really fired my enthusiasm for getting the book finished. Indeed, the phase of production when sketches and concept art begins rolling in can really help to fuel the final push to pull the rest of the product together, in my experience.

More importantly, art so often has a powerful role in defining the feel of a game. The Blue Rose Romantic Fantasy RPG from Green Ronin would be a totally different game without Stephanie Pui-Min Law’s gorgeous covers and inspirational artwork, which drove elements of the design. Likewise, Hal made a deliberate effort for that game to engage as many female artists as possible to give the book a particular look and style beyond just our literary source material. The Michael Kormak and Slawomir Maniak covers for A Song of Ice & Fire Roleplaying and its Night’s Watch sourcebook, on the other hand, capture a whole different type of fantasy gaming, bringing the savage realities of Westeros to life.

I’ve lost count of the diverse, talented artists I’ve had the privilege to work with on Mutants & Masterminds, a game based on a genre itself drive by artwork: that of the comic books. Seeing character concepts for Threat Report spring to life from the drawing boards of the likes of Sean Izaakse, Anthony Castrillo, and Alberto Foche made those characters real for me in ways that just writing about them did not. Freedom City would not be the setting it is now without the defining work of Ramon Perez in bringing its diverse cast of heroes and villains to brilliant full-color existence.

I could go on and on, but I’m running out of space if I want this Round Table to be the equivalent of just one of the beautiful illustrations gracing the pages of our books. It truly does take a lot of words to paint a picture as detailed as some of those you’ll find in the best-looking games and books in our hobby. If you don’t already, the next time you pick up a new product (or look through one of your old favorites) glance over the credits for the artists as well as the designers and authors and consider the impact they’ve had producing something that brings our imagination to life in such a visual way. They may not be writing about it, but they’ve still got thousands and thousands of their own “words” in there.

 

Green Ronin in 2015

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Hello gamers!

It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were waiting to find out if the Y2K bug was going to destroy civilization, but somehow it is 2015 already. This is a milestone year for Green Ronin Publishing. We are now officially 15 years old! It was in February, 2000 that I decided to take the plunge and start a new company. By July we had our first game out (Ork! The Roleplaying Game) and then a month later we launched Death in Freeport, the book that really put us on the RPG map. Certainly I had no idea at the time that Green Ronin would be still be publishing 15 years later. So a million thanks to all of the gamers who have kept us going, as well as the legion of writers, artists, editors, and other professionals we’ve worked with over the years. We could not have done it without you!

So what do we have planned for 2015? Glad you asked!

Dragon Age

Dragon Age Core Rulebook

Dragon Age Core Rulebook

We are starting our Dragon Age line off with a bang this year. We are releasing a Core Rulebook, which replaces the game’s previous boxed sets (all of which are out of print). The Dragon Age Core Rulebook consolidates all the material from Sets 1-3 into one big 400 page book. It replaces the Set 1 adventure with a new one, since we figure The Dalish Curse is the most played Dragon Age adventure out there. There is a small amount of other new material (monsters, specializations), but the bigger change is that the game no longer assumes you are fighting through the Fifth Blight. That is one option of many campaign frameworks. The setting has matured quite a bit since the release of Dragon Age: Origins, so we thought it made sense not to tie the game to one particular time or event. The Dragon Age Core Rulebook is in layout now and will be going up to BioWare soon for approvals.

After that we’ll be releasing a new version of the Game Master’s Kit, since the old one is outdated and out of print. The new one updates the screen to represent the full game rules, and includes a new adventure as well. Then we have a sourcebook tentatively titled Inquisition that incorporates material from the recently released Dragon Age: Inquisition video game. As many of you no doubt know already, that game introduces a huge amount of new content and we want to bring as much of that as we can to the tabletop game.

Lastly, we turn to Faces of Thedas. This was originally a PDF series that focused on characters from the Dragon Age setting. Jack Norris, our line developer, is revisiting Faces of Thedas, this time as a full-on book. After three video games and several novels and comics, the setting has a lot of memorable characters and we want to bring more of those to the game. GMs can uses these characters in a variety of ways, and you can even play them if you want to.

Fantasy AGE

Since we first released Dragon Age, people have been asking us if we were going to release the game system—known as the Adventure Game Engine—separately from the setting. The answer is yes! Our plan for this year is to release Fantasy AGE, a core rulebook for the system that I am working on right now. This will be strictly a rule book with no attached setting. The core of the game will be well-familiar to Dragon Age fans but there are some differences, the biggest of which is the magic system. That of Dragon Age was meant to emulate how magic works in Thedas, so I am modifying it heavily for Fantasy AGE.

Our goal is to release Fantasy AGE in May. Then at the end of July we will release the game’s first setting book. This is our big GenCon release and part of something super exciting … that I can’t talk about yet. This will be the focus of our GenCon presence this year and perhaps the biggest RPG story of the year. Watch for an announcement in a few months.

Mutants & Masterminds

It is a great time to be a superhero fan, that’s for sure. We’ve got movies, TV shows, and Mutants & Masterminds! We’re starting out the year with The Cosmic Handbook, which developer Jon Leitheusser recently turned over to production. If you liked Guardians of the Galaxy, you’re going to love this book! Our other big project is Freedom City, the signature setting of Mutants & Masterminds since 1st edition. Now Freedom City will come to 3rd edition at last, in a book similar in format to Emerald City.

We’ll also be continuing the Atlas of Earth-Prime. This is a PDF series we started last year that describes the world of Freedom City and Emerald City in greater detail. When we’re done, we’ll collect the PDFs up into a print book, as we did with titles like Power Profiles and Threat Report. The Atlas of Earth-Prime should resume in a few weeks.

Pathfinder

Advanced Bestiary for the Pathfinder RPG

Advanced Bestiary for the Pathfinder RPG

Our Pathfinder plans have begun to bear fruit under the auspices of developer Owen K.C. Stephens. At the end of last year we released the Advanced Bestiary to terrific reviews. If you are a Pathfinder GM, you should seriously check out the Advanced Bestiary. It’s a tremendously useful resource that makes every other monster book you own more valuable.

We’ve also sent Freeport: The City of Adventure to print. This monstrous tome is the biggest book we’ve ever published. 544 glorious, full color pages detailing a setting that goes back to Death in Freeport 15 years ago. It’s classic fantasy + pirates + Lovecraftian horror. Lots of great Pathfinder content too: new classes, feats, spells, and more. The pre-order for Freeport is still going on, so you can get the PDF for only $5 if you pre-order the book now.

The follow-up is already in the works. Return to Freeport will be a six-part adventure series perfect for kicking off a new campaign. We will release this as a PDF series over the course of the year and then collect it up into a print book when it’s finished.

A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying

We have two releases planned for A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying this year. The first is Dragon’s Hoard, a 160-page adventure. This is written and edited and has been submitted for approval. Meanwhile, developer Joe Carriker is working on a Player’s Guide for the game. This is a rules companion with expanded options for, well, just about everything. As always with this game line, I must caution patience. We can’t really predict how long approvals will take, but will do our best to get these books out as soon as we can.

Joe has also been working on a series of PDFs in support of the Chronicle System, the game engine that powers A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying. We’ve released three of these already: Woodland Creatures, Out of Strife Prosperity, and Chronicle of Sorcery. The latter introduces a magic system for the game for the first time, so is well worth a look if you missed it. Expect more bestiary PDFs this year, as well as some other surprises.

Love 2 Hate Rules (PDF)

Love 2 Hate Rules (PDF)

Love 2 Hate

Last but by no means least is our first party card game, Love 2 Hate! We ran a successful Kickstarter for the game last year and it is scheduled to release in April. The rules are now online and you can learn to play in like two minutes. This game is obviously quite different from our usual RPG fare, but it’s a hoot and we hope you check it out.

And More!

At the start of this article, I mentioned our very first release: Ork! The Roleplaying Game. Well, it hardly seemed fair for Freeport to be the only 2000 release to get some love on its fifteenth anniversary, so watch out for a new edition of Ork! The Roleplaying Game this summer. Original mastermind “Crazy” Todd Miller has revisited this beer and pretzels RPG, so you can expect even more psychotic mayhem.

That is quite a lineup, but believe or not, there’s more! Nothing we can talk about right now unfortunately, but stay tuned for some exciting announcements over the coming months. What has Steve Kenson been working on the last five months? Find out in April!

Thanks for a great 15 years. Join us in 2015 for a host of gaming goodness!

Chris Pramas
Green Ronin Publishing

Ronin Round Table: Faces of Thedas

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Hey all, Jack here. Hope your holiday season is going well and you’re staying safe and warm. Been pretty crazy for a lot of people this season and here’s to your remainder of 2014 being a good one. With that said, let’s talk about something we’re going to see for Dragon Age in 2015—Faces of Thedas.

Last year we were going to start back up with the Faces of Thedas series, as started a while back in a different format with Varric and Tallis. That didn’t happen for a lot of reasons, and with the release of a brand new Dragon Age video game positively bursting with cool characters, we’re going to jump right to making it a whole book! This will actually likely be easier to accomplish for various reasons that aren’t nearly as exciting as the book itself, so I’m skipping that to talk about it.

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Ronin Round Table: Playtesting SIFRP

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As I’m finishing up the last round of edits for the very large A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying adventure series titled Dragon’s Hoard, I thought I’d talk a little about our playtesters.

In an ideal world in which tabletop roleplaying games were one of those massively financed entertainment industries, we’d have a crack team of paid testers whose day job is to pick apart the stuff we write and improve on it. Having worked in the video game industry before, I can say it was always kind of great to be able to shoot one of the testers an email, ask them to kick the tires on the latest build and get immediate feedback.

The reality of our industry, of course, is that we don’t quite have the ability to maintain something like that. We’re lucky, though, in that our industry has a consumer base that’s filled with people who love being part of the process, as well as getting the chance to see some of the material that’s coming out for their favorite game ahead of schedule. Hence, our playtesters!

The playtesters for A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying are a pretty diverse lot, with folks in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. They’re not just individuals—when I put my playtesting cadre together, I solicited for entire groups of playtesters. Which of course only makes sense: playtesters aren’t just beta readers, but are people who will take the rules that they’re given and put them through the process of actual game play.

Playtesters look for a couple of things. Rules solidity is of course a big one. We need to make sure the rules we’re using are on-target, whether newly created rules that need to be balanced against the rest of the system, or just making sure we’re using our already-existing rule-set consistently.

But playtesters do more than that: they also play through the material to make sure it’s actually enjoyable to play. At the end of the day, we’re creating games for people to enjoy, and that’s the first and last litmus test of our creative process: Is This Fun? Everything else is secondary to that.

Each playtesting group has its own personality, which is fantastic. Some groups are more interested in consistency of material to the book canon, for instance, while others are very strict rules people. Frankly, having this kind of diversity of gaming interest is to our benefit, and we’re grateful to these volunteers for the work and passion they put into these games.

If you and your group are interested in becoming playtesters, feel free to
drop me a line. It’s a simple process, involving the signing of a Non-Disclosure Agreement, and a little conversation between us. We’ve got plenty of really great upcoming material that’ll need its tires kicked, so if that sounds interesting, drop me a line! I’d love to hear from you.

Ronin Roundtable: Bring on the Bad Guys!

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Villains. What would a superhero game be without them? A lot less interesting, that’s for sure. Super-villains are the primary challenge for super-heroes, apart from stopping disasters and nabbing the occasional mugger or bank-robber. Villains and their schemes drive stories and the rivalries they build up with heroes become the stuff of legend. A hero is often defined by his or her "rogues gallery"—dark and twisted reflections of the hero’s own goals.

That’s why the "Foes of Freedom" forms a substantial third of the upcoming new edition of Freedom City. While the setting book still looks at some of Freedom’s heroes (past and present), the focus is on fiendish foes you can use in your own Mutants & Masterminds games, some 118 pages of them altogether!

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Ronin Round Table: We Have a Bestiary. And it’s Advanced!

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Over the next few weeks, print copies of the Advanced Bestiary are finally going to be getting into the hands of first, the Kickstarter backers, and then a wider audience. This is the first major d20 release for Green Ronin in a long time, and has been one of two things that have taken up most of my time since being brought on as the developer for Pathfinder-compatible Green Ronin projects almost a year ago. So having the book finished and in distribution represents a major milestone both for me, and for Green Ronin’s plans for Pathfinder-compatible content.

There are still some elements of this project being developed (the Hero Lab files, for example), but with the print book arriving in warehouses, a major stage of work is complete. The original Advanced Bestiary became one of the most popular third-party products for the previous versions of the game, and I have every reason to think the same will be true for our updated version. Now that people are beginning to get a look at the book, I wanted to take a moment to talk about it.

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Ronin Round Table: Threats of Thedas

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Hey folks, Jack here. I wanted to take my next few Ronin Round Tables to talk about some of the concepts and new content we’ll be seeing the new collected Dragon Age Core Rulebook. In the spirit of the most recent holiday, I wanted to talk about monsters, spirits, and demons, and how they’ll be presented in the book.

Most of the adversaries in the new core book are the same as those in Sets 1–3 of the Dragon Age RPG. Dragons, demons, and other monsters that have already appeared are collected and compiled in their own chapter. However, there are a few new features, creatures, and changes.

The first change is organization. All the adversaries have been reorganized by type. All the demons are together, all the dragons are in one place, and so on. This is in contrast to the Sets, which presented level appropriate threats in each set. It’s not a major change, but it’s one that makes the book more usable in a collected format.

The second change is practical. Without Sets to roughly divide up adversaries we’re including a new statistic for adversaries, a Threat Rating. This divides monsters up into four categories of Threats based on rough level ranges. Note this is a range, so it’s not an exact ranking. For example, Genlocks and Hurlocks are both Minor threats despite Genlocks being a bit weaker than Hurlocks. Adjustments like presenting foes in large numbers or making upgraded (Elite, Heroic, Epic) versions of them can adjust this rating, but it presents a baseline to assist GMs in determining if a given foe is challenging or overpowered for their PCs.

The third change is new content. We will be introducing new monsters from Dragon Age: Inquisition in an upcoming product but we’d realized to bring the bestiary of bad guys up to date with Inquisition we needed to add some particular adversaries, particularly those from Dragon Age: Awakening. Yep, the Mother and her creepy creepy Children will be showing up. So will the Architect and a few other threats.

I’m going to wrap up here with a shoutout: One of our new freelancers, Matt Miller, helped me bring these creatures to life. I’ve known Matt for some time now and worked with him on Trinity Continuum Core for Onyx Path. He’s one of several new freelancers who answered our tryouts and because we had serious time pressures to get this done, having him help was a real boon. We’re going to be seeing work from others who answered our tryouts in upcoming works—I’m still reviewing and putting together lists of other writers to work with and will be contacting more folks soon now that the core book is in layout and approvals.

Anyway, that’s the news of adversaries and threats in the new collected Core Book. I’ll be back soon to talk about some of the other things we’ll see as well as news on some upcoming products.