Idle Thoughts on Idol Pursuits (Ronin Roundtable)

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The shared world experience is an interesting one, something my earliest experiences with roleplaying games informed me about. After all, I started out playing around in imaginary worlds created by others, first as a hobby and later as a professional writer, so it’s a natural progression that now, other people are playing around in imaginary worlds that I created. One of the important things about shared worlds is that they’re like living things: They grow and change over time and, while you might help to create one, or even “raise” it, ultimately, it doesn’t belong to you and it can be better from a lot of different contributions.

Idol Pursuits, the Mutants & Masterminds novella from Nisaba Press, written by Michael Matheson, is an example of how those diverse shared-world contributions come together. Like the upcoming NetherWar adventure series for the Mutants & Masterminds RPG, the story of Idol Pursuits has its origins in the update of the Freedom City sourcebook (itself the origin of the Earth-Prime setting) to the third edition of the M&M rules.

One of the background elements that was updated in Freedom City is a change in the forces of magic in the world: The loss of Adrian Eldritch as Master Mage, followed by his successor Seven inadvertently becoming ruler of the Netherworld, forced to exile herself from Earth. Now sinister forces of sorcery that were once under control are rising in power. One strand of that story is told in NetherWar (NetherWar: Master of Earth is on sale NOW!), while others appear in M&M fiction like Idol Pursuits and the forthcoming novel The Doom That Came to San Francisco.

When there’s magic at work in the world of Earth-Prime, you can bet things are going to happen in Mystery, New Hampshire, a mystic part of the setting I first detailed in Altas of Earth-Prime, which is also the setting for Idol Pursuits. Just the place where you might expect a deathless vigilante dealing out harsh justice might come across a strange idol that everyone seems to want, and team up with a young sorcerer-detective and his sword-wielding barbarian protector. For me, it’s a fun experience to see Matheson’s Revenant, Kid Necro, and Ilkath, among others, meet up with some familiar Freedom City characters of my creation, mixed with other contributions to Earth-Prime like Scott Bennie’s specialists in magic and weirdness from Agents of Freedom, and some of Prof. Christopher McGlothlin’s creepy characters from Freedom’s Most Wanted, to name a few.

Intrigued? Well, no spoilers here, but if you’re interested in magic and misadventure in the Mutants & Masterminds manner, and maybe getting another perspective on the Rise of Dark Magic in the Earth-Prime setting, take a look at Idol Pursuits, the ebook and pdf are available today from Nisaba Press!

Mutants & Masterminds: NetherWar is Coming… (Ronin Roundtable)

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So what good’s an adventure if the story doesn’t roll on into the next one? What good is winning the battle while the war rages on? And how can real heroes keep the world safe when the position of the world’s guardian remains empty?

The NetherWar is upon us, to answer these questions.

NetherWar is a six-part adventure series for Mutants & Masterminds—five main stories and a prequel—that pits the heroes against the rising tide of evil magic on Earth Prime. The champions must prove their mettle by defending the world from newly-empowered villains and uncovering the legacy of protection Adrian Eldrich created before his terrible death. But they’re racing the clock as a diabolical shadow from the Master Mage’s past works to unravel those protections and rise on Earth-Prime as a dark god!

Over the coming months, you’ll run through the harrowing challenges and ultimately save Earth-Prime. The adventure begins with a flashback in this week’s Master of Earth, written by me, then continues next month with John Polojac’s Assault on the Nerian Nexus. The months to come will unveil The Pentagram Peril, Broken Strings, Bound by Gold, and finally conclude in Three Made One. There’s plenty of space in between each adventure to add your own adventures and plot points, or you can run the entire series back-to-back as an extended mini campaign, and each volume of the NetherWar arc will work as a standalone adventure if you only want little a magical peril. As a treat.

No Spells Required!

You can run the NetherWar adventure arc using your existing heroes, or build a new team to tackle the crisis, but magical powers aren’t necessary to save the world from the magic apocalypse. There are plenty of expert NPCs along the way to explain the magical history of Earth-Prime and plenty of ways to solve the various challenges without resorting to spellcraft, so feel free to bring your mutants, aliens, and cyborgs into the fight!

If you do want to use NetherWar as the kickoff for a magical campaign, NetherWar offers Bequests in each adventure—tiny bits of Adrian Eldrich’s legacy as Master Mage left behind for others to inherit. Your heroes can keep bequests in their trophy case as plot devices they can pull out for a Hero Point, or invest the Power points to make any bequest a normal part of their heroic identity. And the greatest bequest of all is up for grabs: The title of Master Mage of Earth-Prime! While bequests and the title aren’t central to the campaign, they provide a little something extra for players who get into the themes and legacies involved.

A Blast in the Past

With the Time Traveler’s Codex  available now, it’s appropriate that the NetherWar kicks off with a little trip to yesteryear in Master of Earth. A slight departure from our usual Astonishing Adventure offerings, Master of Earth flashes back to events we already describe in the Secret Past chapter of Freedom City, Third Edition and further details Seven’s climactic confrontation with the Dark Lord Una to save the earth after Eldrich’s passing. The players step into the roles of Seven and several members of the teenage Next-Gen to stop Una the Unrelenting from conquering Earth-Prime! You can play the adventure as a slice of history with the same outcome, or use the adventure with your own heroes to create your own spin on Earth-Prime’s recent past. While the heroes of Master of Earth—are set years in the past—don’t necessarily tie directly into those you might play, the adventure with help players understand the status quo of Earth-Prime’s magical community and how we got here.

Your Guide to Adventure!

 

NetherWar has a lot of moving parts and expectations, not to mention six parts stretched out over as many months. To help players and Gamemasters alike keep track of all those moving parts, we’ve assembled a FREE NetherWar Guide. This 15-page guide gives players the rundown on what they need to know and expect going into NetherWar as well as advice on what skills, Advantages, and powers might be helpful. If you’re building your team from scratch for this adventure series, it also offers five team ideas and five concept roles to help you define your place in the group. You can build your teams only using these concept roles, or combine them with roles presented in the SuperTeam Handbook to flesh out your place on the team and the story.

For Gamemasters, the NetherWar Guide also includes a section just for you! It includes an adventure-by-adventure preview of what to expect so you can start early seeding any plot points you really like. It also includes a brief who’s-who of NetherWar villains so you can read up on their history and start perfecting your voice-acting skills for the table!

 

If you’re worried about magical mayhem overload, don’t fret! We’ll have plenty of Astonishing Adventures to come that offer some mystical relief! Take off to the stars, battle aliens, and stop a supernova in the cosmic adventure Prodigal Sun, or take your campaign back to high school for a LARP gone terrible wrong in Bite Club, or confront a mischievous cosmic imp as you journey Into the Idiot Box! All these and more lie in the future!

The NetherWar has been a really fun project to bring to life, and I hope everyone has as much fun playing it. Hopefully this will be the first of many multi-part adventures yet to come for Mutants & Masterminds, so let us know what you think on social media and the Ronin Army forums!

Mutants & Masterminds: IT’S ABOUT TIME…(Ronin Roundtable)

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Alright, so Green Ronin has released the Time Traveler’s Codex for Mutants & Masterminds, and we’re all interested. Time travel is a big deal, but you look at this development and you think “What has this got to do with me? Surely time travel and Green Ronin are in the pocket of Big Chronomancy. How can I possibly make time travel work for me, the little guy running a hand-to-mouth wooly mammoth ranch?”

Well I’m glad you asked, friend, because the Time Traveler’s Codex has so much to offer you! It’s got advice and skills to help you survive down the timestream, with not one, not two, but THREE brand new optional skills to help bring history to life! Pair those with new advantages designed especially with the worldly time traveler in mind and you’ll never feel out of place even when you’re out of your era!

“But every book has skills,” you say…

You, the discerning player have your eyes open for value! As a wary consumer, you know that companies aim so much at Gamemasters and their deep, tearstained pockets. You say “Well the Time Traveler’s Codex gives my Gamemaster everything she needs to attack me with a cyborg and a sabre-tooth tiger at the same time! How do I stand up against that?”

With time powers, my friend, with time powers. While the indelible Power Profiles offers you an in-depth look at temporal powers, this handy volume introduces new uses like Time Tampering and every 90s kid favorite, Time Out!

“But Crystal”, you say, interrupting again. “I was never bitten by a radioactive sundial! I have no powers to call my own!” Lucky for you, this stark tome provides a veritable catalog of new equipment with which to kit out your character! And the list doesn’t just start with our top-of-the-line time machines (including the Time-Hopping Muscle Car; tell Sal I sent you to get a sweet, sweet discount and no money down), but indispensable tools of the time-traveling trade like the Chronal Scanner and the emergency Time Suit! Defend yourself with an array of time-traveling weapons, whether you’re freezing them in place with the patent-pending Chronal Sink or wiping out the past, present, and future of your obnoxious neighbor with the still-technically-legal Quantum Disruptor! And that’s before we open the back of the book and start exploring vintage innovations from Earth’s history. No extra charge for that; it’s a feature.

I can see it in your eyes: You’re on the fence, but still you wonder, Is. It. For. Me? Canny, friend. You’re canny and I like that, so here’s what I’m gonna do. Now don’t spread this around, because I could lose my job for what I’m about to tell you, but every single element of this book intended for Gamemaster use is available to you, the consumer! Certainly your Gamemaster can unleash a horde of flesh-devouring cockroaches from beyond the end of time, but with time travel on your side you can have that self-same horde as a loyal and colorful sidekick! Crack wise with a loyal Dread Pirate or have an Egyptian Sphinx prepare your eggs in the morning; it’s doesn’t matter, they’re you’re sidekick!

Now how much would you pay?

Well, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do! I’m gonna send you home—at no charge to you—with a hot sample to get you excited. One of the pre-made hero archetypes open to you: the Quantum Alien! Yes, that scion of an advanced race, whose very marrow is infused with the stuff of time travel itself! If this isn’t proof that your household is ready for time travel, then dear reader, you might as well stay in the 20th century!

AGE Specializations in Blue Rose (Ronin Roundtable)

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Today marks the launch of the Adventures in Aldea series, starting with the Mistress of Gloomhale Manor for just .99! (Previously published in the Six of Swords adventure anthology.) If you enjoy that one, be sure to check out The Sixth Beast, also on sale today, and come back each day this week for another Blue Rose PDF adventure!

Since this is Blue Rose week at Green Ronin Publishing, let’s take a look at some ways to adapt other AGE products into your games in Aldea.

 

From the Noble to the Spirit Dancer, the Assassin to the Inamorata, Blue Rose gives players an awful lot of options when it comes to choosing specializations. There’s pretty much something in there for everyone and every play style.

Though that doesn’t mean we can’t look to other sources for even more choices!

Consider, for instance, the Sword Mage (from the Fantasy AGE Basic Rulebook); how might such a specialization fit into a campaign set in Aldea? Well, firstly, the mage class doesn’t exist in Blue Rose, but the Sword Mage easily converts over to a class requirement of adept, with no other mechanical alterations necessary. Of course, the term, “mage” also isn’t used in Aldea, so a name change is in order. Maybe “Arcane Knight?” The word “knight” necessarily implies some kind of organization—a knightly order, as it were—so the title could certainly work if that’s the route you’d prefer to take. What if you’d rather not have to consider the implications of a new group of this sort in Aldis (or whatever other nation), however? Perhaps, then, you might consider calling the specialization “Arcane Blade,” which has the same essential meaning as “Sword Mage,” but with an altogether Aldean spin.

Pretty simple, right? But what about a specialization that doesn’t translate quite so neatly?

Let’s try the Marked (from the Fantasy AGE Companion), as an example. The basics of converting the Marked to Blue Rose are the same: change out the requirement of the rogue class to that of the expert, since those are essentially equivalent for our purposes (and keep warrior, as normal). The Banemark looks to be a little too potent, as written; why not choose “shadowspawn” and receive +2 to attack and damage the majority of creatures most PCs will be fighting in the average campaign? Instead, it might make more sense to divide shadowspawn into “beastfolk” (such as troglodytes, ettins, and harpies) and “shadow monstrosities” (mock hounds, wyverns, chaos beasts, and the like), to prevent a single Mark from providing too much of a benefit. Then, there’s the matter of the Mark of Magic, as there is no Arcane Blast equivalent for the adept class, making that Mark a bad fit for the setting. In its place, this might make for a more authentically Aldean body modification:

Soulbond Mark: Whenever using a relationship to generate stunt points (see Chapter Two: Character Creation, in the Blue Rose Core Rulebook), consider that relationship’s Intensity to be one point higher.

How about something even further afield from the normal Blue Rose experience: the Gunfighter (again, from the Fantasy AGE Companion)? There are no black powder weapons in Aldis or any of its neighboring nations, but crystons fit pretty well into that mechanical and narrative niche. Again, swap out rogue for expert as a class requirement. Also, rather than training in the Black Powder Weapons Group, it makes sense to switch to a requirement of one or more arcane talents (as this is necessary to wield a cryston, anyway). Beyond that, all that’s needed is to change every reference to ‘firearm’ to ‘cryston’ (and the name of the specialization to something like ‘Crack Shot’ or ‘Cryston Marksman’), and you’re good to go!

You might decide that these specializations have always been around, whether overtly or in secret, in your version of Aldea, or you might want them to be new developments—perhaps recently arrived on Aldis’ shores from far-away lands, or even from other worlds (like Yarrion, found in Chapter Nine: The Blue Rose Series, in the Blue Rose Core Rulebook), accessed through previously long-lost and forgotten shadowgates.

With a few tweaks, here and there, and a little bit of consideration as to how best to fit into the world of Aldea, you’ll find that most of the specializations from the Fantasy AGE Basic Rulebook and the Fantasy AGE Companion can work just fine for any Blue Rose campaign!

Modern AGE in Rough Times (Ronin Roundtable)

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Hello Modern AGE fans. I hope you are your families are doing well. COVID-19 has obviously made gaming tricky for some of you. As for me, I run my game using the Threefold setting most Tuesdays. I use Zoom with a little Discord on the side so I can see and hear my friends, who I miss dearly. I’m glad to have a way for us to share time together.

Five and Infinity

Second, I’m running through the adventures in Five and Infinity, the adventure book for the Threefold setting for Modern AGE. As our flagship setting, Threefold was always intended to get ongoing support. Unfortunately, COVID-19 had made printing and distribution all but impossible, even though the book was very close to print.

Thus, what we’ll be doing is releasing Five and Infinity online, in serialized form. Part 0 introduces a Threefold story generator, which we’ll share with you for the princely sum of… $1. The story generator allows you to roll up a basic outline for Threefold adventures, and the parameters are broad enough that much of it can be used for your own Modern AGE settings as well.

After that, each adventure will be released in turn. These adventures include two covering level 1-4, and one each for levels 5-8, 9-12, and 13-16. Loose connections between them allow you to turn Five and Infinity into a true campaign, but this is entirely optional; each adventure is also fully self-contained. And these adventures pack a wallop, since they include alien spiders, psychic terrorists, soul smuggling, infiltrating Hell and, to top it all off, the destruction of the Earth. Ron Rummell, Steve Kenson, Neall Raemonn Price, Crystal Frasier, Meghan Fitzgerald, and Jesse Heinig will guide you through it all. Watch for it.

Modern AGE Missions

Beyond the Threefold setting (though certainly compatible with it) we launched the Modern AGE Missions adventure series shortly before COVID-19 started to affect our operations. Warflower¸ the first mission by yours truly, is a scenario for starting characters that mixes alchemy, designer drugs, corporate espionage, and medieval swordplay You can pick it up in our store or on DrivethruRPG.

The next mission is due next quarter, and is an official adaptation of the infamous Feral Hogs scenario, originally run by the Dice Priori streaming gang. Members Chase Schneider and Matthew Foreman were kind enough to refine this post-apocalyptic, ham-plentiful scenario about guns, trucks, energy drinks, online retail distribution centers turned fortress towns, and 30-50…well, you know what. Look for it when it arrives in our store and DrivethruRPG.

Big Books

Let’s just say this isn’t an ideal time for hardcover releases. Yet last month we released Enemies & Allies, a full-fledged core sourcebook on creatures and NPCs for Modern AGE covering appropriate friends and foes for both down to earth and fantastic genres. Whether you need a cyborg to hunt the party or a mob doctor, this book has you covered with not only dozens of individual entries, but rules for the genres they exist in, and a section telling you how to build your own NPCs from the ground up. This book was in fact printed and distributed, but nowadays, it might be easier to get electronically from our store or DrivethruRPG.

Waiting in the wings, we have the Modern AGE Mastery Guide, a new book of options and advice for both players and Game Masters. This book is text-complete and edited, but is waiting for a better moment to enter the production cycle.

Modern AGE on Sale as Part of Green Ronin’s 20th Anniversary

One more thing! Be aware that until April 20, Green Ronin’s online store is running a 20% sale on numerous releases to celebrate our 20th anniversary. That includes the following Modern AGE titles (all electronic, because, well COVID-19 has not played well with shipping and distribution):

This is where we’re at, and this is what we’ve got. Be safe, and play well.

Mutants & Masterminds: Reign, Reign, Go Away

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Between last month’s new offering Rise of the Tyrant, and this week’s own The Reign of Cats and Dogs, the all new lineup of Astonishing Adventures is in full swing, with superhero action and adventure for your Mutants & Masterminds table. Rise of the Tyrant brought a sinister plot by an extradimensional warlord, using the puzzle-loving villain Conundrum as his pawn. Despite the high stakes, the encounters introduce new concepts one at a time, from combat to skill checks to investigations, making Rise of the Tyrant a great introduction to M&M for new players or players new to Third Edition.

The Reign of Cats and Dogs is about as far, conceptually, from interdimensional conquest as we can get. The heroes must keep the peace and find a solution as the city’s animals begin developing super powers in one of the weirdest adventures we’ve ever offered for any edition of Mutants & Masterminds, making the adventure a fun fit for any superhero team, but especially appropriate for Hero High teens hoping to keep things calm.

But this isn’t the first appearance of The Reign of Cats and Dogs. The adventure began years ago as a homebrew convention game I ran for various events and based entirely off a bade pun from my good friend, author and DJ, Miranda Sparks. When I was double-booked during one GenCon event, I needed Green Ronin to send a relief GM halfway through my game: None other than Steve Kenson, who managed to pick up my notes with no prep time and run with them. He later admitted that reviewing my adventure notes for that game are part of what convinced him I would make a good fit for the Green Ronin team and M&M in particular, so The Reign of Cats And Dogs is actually responsible for my current position as head of my favorite game line!

We have plenty more Astonishing Adventures lined up over the next several months to keep you entertained and the city safe, running the gambit from wacky fun to deadly serious confrontations between good and evil! I don’t know if this bizarre escapade will bring you the same good fortune it’s brought me, but I know it’ll at least bring you a few hours of goofy fun, and I hope you enjoy it as much as my convention tables have!

The Expanse: The Science of Story (Ronin Roundtable)

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It is often remarked that The Expanse novels are “hard” science fiction. While this may or may not be the case, it is undoubtedly true that the science is an important aspect. However, what really makes these novels shine are the characters and the story. If you want to delve into whether The Expanse is “hard” sci-fi or not, you can find endless discussions on the internet, but I’m not here to debate that. Today, I’m here to talk about how we try to capture the balance of science and story in The Expanse RPG.

Enjoy this sneak-preview of the upcoming Ships of the Expanse book! Cover Art by Ben Zweifel!

Some sci-fi and modern setting RPGs spend a lot of time focusing on the science and the inner workings of every gun, gizmo, and gadget. Finding how much detail is “fun” in a roleplaying game is a difficult tight rope to walk. Too much detail and the GM and players can end up focusing too much on the gadgets and not enough on the characters; too little, and the setting may feel to generic. With The Expanse RPG, we chose to focus on characters and the story. We’ve tried to give enough details to provide a rich setting without getting bogged down in the nuts and bolts. We are content to say that a ship has an Epstein drive without worrying about exact type of Epstein drive or that a ship has full PDC coverage without worrying about the exact number of point defense cannons a ship has. Rather than define particular types of pistols, rifles, or torpedo bays and require players to check off boxes to track ammunition, we use rules such as the Stunt System for special maneuvers and The Churn as a means to inject the drama of running out of ammo or weapon malfunctions.

Ultimately, a roleplaying game is about character interaction – either with their environment or other characters and NPCs. Epstein drives, PDCs, plasma torpedoes, spin gravity, and all the bells and whistles are cool and add to the story, but in The Expanse RPG, they take a back seat to the story and drama. Personally, I think if you look closely at the novels, the authors of The Expanse do much the same. The ships, weapons, and gadgets give the story context and a platform on which to stand. But it is the characters and their actions and interactions that form the core of the story. The Expanse RPG is designed very much with that thought in mind.

Players and GMs who want to add more detail to their campaigns are certainly free to do so. It is easy enough to come up with particular types of weapons by basing them on 21st-century weapons and using the Item Qualities listed in the core rulebook to spec them out. You can even come up with ammo quantities if you want. The same applies to spaceships. Different engine types could grant small modifiers, and you can decide how many torpedoes and PDC bursts a given ship can fire. Later expansions, such as the upcoming Ships of the Expanse will also delve deeper into the details of the mechanics of space travel.

Recently Steve Kenson’s adventure “Salvage Op”, which some lucky fans may have had the opportunity to play during conventions over the last year, has been made available for purchase! Check it out in our online store, or on DrivethruRPG.

“Salvage Op is a short adventure for The Expanse Roleplaying Game intended for a crew of four to six 1st to 3rd level characters. The characters encounter a small ship floating dead in space. Salvaging the ship’s cargo could be an opportunity for riches, but what danger awaits onboard? What happened to the crew, and why is it here? This adventure works well as a one-shot or can be easily inserted into an existing campaign.”

Fantasy AGE Lairs: The Night Market (Ronin Roundtable)

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This week I get to branch out from The Expanse RPG and explore one of the Green Ronin lines I’m less familiar with, Fantasy AGE.  Specifically, I’m looking at Fantasy AGE Lairs (Pre-order and PDF on sale now!).  I’m most familiar with the AGE system from The Expanse and Modern AGE but having read the core book cover to cover I’ve been dying to give Fantasy AGE a try. Since my writing time is precious, I was looking for something that I could pick up and use right away. Skimming through Lairs I saw right away that there was a lot of opportunity here for one shot adventures or side stories that easily be inserted into an existing campaign. Some have enough depth that they could even form the basis for a new campaign. Being a fan of the dark and macabre and both the book and movie Something Wicked This Way Comes I was immediately drawn to The Night Market by Mark Carrol so that’s where my journey into Fantasy AGE Lairs began. I try to avoid major spoilers but if you’re a player in a Fantasy AGE campaign and think your GM might use this book, I suggest stopping here.

The Night Market offers a rich and dark setting that can easily fit into almost any fantasy campaign. The Night Market moves about so it could set up near any village or hamlet. For that matter, with only a little modification, I could see using this lair in a Modern AGE campaign with a supernatural bent. The player characters come across a wandering market filled with curiosities: acrobats, fortune tellers, merchants with strange trinkets, and sideshows abound. Even without an adventure hook this is exactly the type of diversion that most players will immediately be drawn too. I’ve never known a group of PCs who wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to explore a mysterious carnival!

The thing I liked most about the Night Market is that the setting alone could provide hours of entertainment without ever introducing the adventure that is included. In fact, I could envision the market appearing multiple times in a campaign before the characters uncover its secrets and face off against the villain. The adventure is geared toward higher level characters although the lair itself could be used for characters of any level. Both enemies and possible allies are described in the setting with some of their motivations being left in the hands of the GM.

The adventure is fairly straightforward: people in the vicinity of the market have gone missing and while investigating the PCs meet a ghost (a victim of the main villain) who offers to help them. The powers behind the Night Market are not trivial and could prove to be a powerful and dangerous enemy. As I discussed earlier, this setting is well suited as a reoccurring villain and the Adventure Seeds at the end set this up well. The heroes may rescue the missing villagers and even overcome the villain but he may appear again in a different guise.

The Night Market is definitely one of my favorites and pretty much exactly the kind of entry I look for in a book like Fantasy AGE Lairs and I highly recommend this book for GMs who are looking for individual settings and adventures or just to fuel your imagination. I expect this setting or something close to it will show up in one of my games in the near future!

Check out our previous previews for Fantasy AGE Lairs:
The Battle of the Beleaguered GM
School’s. In. For. EVER!
Getting More than Gothic with the Ghoul Prince

And don’t forget that the Fantasy AGE Basic Rulebook is currently FREE to download!

Mongrelfolk in Blue Rose (Ronin Roundtable)

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I’m a dog person.

Thus, when I first started working on Blue Rose, it made me just a little bit sad to learn that Aldea had literal dog-people, but they’re shadowspawn monsters whose only avenue for participating in civilization involves hiring out as mercenaries to the most unscrupulous and undiscerning of employers. One of the themes of the game, however, is that no one is truly beyond redemption if they make the decision to champion Light, rather than Shadow.

 

So—presuming the choice to embrace goodness over evil—what, exactly, keeps a mongrel from being a player character? A lack of stats, that’s what.

Well, I’m here to fix that problem:

Mongrel

Neither human not rhydan, but instead something almost halfway between, mongrels have long plagued Aldea as the accursed creations of sorcery. Within them—in accordance with the wicked designs of the Sorcerer Kings who shaped their race amidst agony and misery—the reason and emotions of a sapient people war endlessly with the brutish instincts of beasts irreparably wounded in spirit, and most of them cannot reconcile these two conflicting natures, save through savage violence. Most, but not all.

One mongrel might’ve been taken in as a pup when their pack was destroyed or driven off, to be raised with the sort of love and kindness most of their kind will never know or understand. Another was perhaps found by compassionate Aldinfolk, grievously injured and frozen half to death, and nursed back to health, only to feel the inexplicable stirrings of a pack-bond with these gentle strangers and a desire to do right by them. Yet another might’ve simply always sensed that there must be something more to life than to hunt, pillage, and kill; some elusive yearning for nobler things that they found they could not satisfy in the company of their own kin.

Standing well taller than the average human and sporting the head of a dog or hyena, with mottled fur and canine lower legs, mongrels are utterly unmistakable as anything other than what they are. While they stand upright and have dexterous, human-like hands, they possess an inborn feral aspect that never entirely goes away, no matter how long they spend in the company of civilized people, and their voices have a growling, barking quality. To even the most personable mongrel, the world is as much a tapestry of potential threats as it is one of prospective friends.

Play a mongrel if you want a rough, primal character deeply in touch with their animal senses and instincts. Mongrels tend to be skilled hunters and fighters, typically favoring the expert or warrior classes.

Playing a Mongrel

If you choose to play a mongrel, modify your character as follows:

  • Add +1 to your Dexterity ability.
  • Add the Perception (Smelling) focus.
  • You have Dark Sight, meaning you are able to see up to 20 yards in darkness without a light source.
  • Your Speed is equal to 10 + Dexterity (minus armor penalty, if applicable).
  • Roll twice on the Mongrel Benefits table for two additional benefits. Roll 2d6 and add the dice together. If you get the same result twice, reroll until you get something different.

 

Mongrel Benefits

 

2d6 Roll Benefit
2 +1 Perception
3-4 Focus: Dexterity (Stealth)
5 Focus: Accuracy (Brawling)
6 Weapons Group: Heavy Blades*
7-8 +1 Fighting
9 Focus: Constitution (Running)
10-11 Focus: Perception (Hearing)
12 +1 Constitution

 

* If the class you choose provides this already, you can take the focus Fighting (Heavy Blades) instead.

This week is also your last chance to pick up the Blue Rose Bundle of Holding! Pick up the complete line of Blue Rose 2nd edition AGE products, as well as several of our fiction offerings from Nisaba Press, all while supporting the Pride Foundation. Don’t miss out on this amazing deal!

 

The Year 2000: Green Ronin Begins!

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Last time I wrote about the pre-history of Green Ronin, basically covering my start in the industry and how I navigated the 90s. When I left off the story, I was working at Wizards of the Coast. The first 18 months or so I was at WotC, I was working in what was still called the TSR Product Group (this later changed to Roleplaying R&D), writing various books for D&D and one for Alternity. During that period, WotC decided to spin up a miniatures division. They were looking to compete with Games Workshop, publishing both games and miniatures to support them. D&D miniatures, which had a long history back into the 70s, were also an important part of the plan. If you follow me on social media (I’m @Pramas on Twitter) you know I’m a huge miniatures fan, so it’s no surprise that I determined to join this effort. It took some doing, but I eventually landed a spot on the miniatures team and spent the rest of my time at Wizards working on the game that was eventually released as Dungeons & Dragons: Chainmail.

Chainmail is a huge story in and of itself, but I’ll leave that for another time and place. What’s important for our tale is that after some months working on the miniatures team, I found I missed doing roleplaying work. This brought my punk DIY instincts to the fore again, and I thought, “Well, why not start my own side company and keep a finger in the RPG pie?” In February of 2000, I decided to take this from idle thought to actual thing. I set up the company, got a bank account, and began to make plans. The first thing I wanted to publish was Ork! The Roleplaying. This was a lighthearted beer & pretzels RPG (now in it’s second edition!). It was based on some fun campaigns my friend Todd Miller had run back in NYC. I had Todd write up “The World of Orkness” while I designed the rules system. I slated it for a July release at the Origins game convention.

Meanwhile, back at Wizards, the Open Game License and d20 System Trademark License were first being proposed. The idea was to provide other companies a way to publish D&D compatible material. The fact that it was a free license created a lot of skepticism within WotC. I remember sitting in a big meeting with folks from R&D and thinking about the possibilities this could offer though. One point made was that WotC had difficulty making money off adventures, and this was something smaller companies might take up more profitable. Another point was that WotC was a big company and turning the ship to react to trends was a slow process. I thought, “Well, my company is small and agile! I should give this a shot.”

When the OGL and d20 STL were announced publicly, there was also a lot of skepticism from established RPG companies. Some saw it way to kill competition to D&D. Green Ronin, of course, had no established game lines to worry about, as Ork hadn’t even been published yet. I knew that the Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition Player’s Handbook would launch at Gen Con 2000 (along with some D&D minis my group was doing), so I decided to release a 32-page adventure that same day.

Working at Wizards by day did grant me some advantages. As a part of R&D, I had been involved in the playtesting and debates of Third Edition so I had a good grasp of the new system. I also knew WotC was taking a “back to the dungeon” approach for adventures. I decided, therefore, to offer something different: a city adventure. This would have the added bonus of creating a setting that could be expanded upon later. Now I didn’t want to do Generic Fantasy City #57, so I pulled some other influences into it. So what do you get when you mix D&D with pirates and Lovecraftian horror? Freeport: The City of Adventure!

That spring I wrote the adventure Death in Freeport. I wanted a cracking cover for it, and I thought it’d be great if I could get something by Brom, as he’d done the cover art for my AD&D book Guide to Hell. This was all done on a shoestring so I could hardly afford a new Brom cover, but I talked to him about it and we worked out something else. He had done a bunch of art for a collectible card game a few years before and I was able to license a piece from that for only $400. Later, I made a flier I taped up around Gen Con promoting this new adventure “from the writer-artist team that brought you the AD&D Guide to Hell.”

Need An Adventure for that New Edition?

I worked my contacts for the rest of the production of Death in Freeport. Nicole Lindroos, who had done the graphic design on the original edition of Vampire: The Masquerade, did the interior layout. Hal Mangold, who I had met when he was working on Deadlands at Pinnacle, did the cover design. The three of us would become partners in the company just a couple of years later. For interior art I tapped Toren Atkinson and Chris Keefe, who I had worked with at my first company. WotC friends Jennifer Clarke Wilkes and Todd Gamble did editing and cartography respectively. The whole thing came together very quickly because we had a hard deadline. We got the files to a Chicago printer in time to have it done for Gen Con. I took a huge gamble and printed 10,000 copies (pro-tip to small publishers: don’t do this in 99% of circumstances!). The printer actually drove copies up to Milwaukee for us and dropped them my hotel so we’d have them in time.

In July we released Ork as planned at Origins. It was modestly successful, pretty much what you’d expect from a new small publisher and their debut game. A month later we released Death in Freeport and that was something else entirely. It was an instant hit. D&D Third Edition was, of course, the big news of that GenCon and there were only two adventures you could get to go with it there: Death in Freeport and Three Days to Kill by Atlas Games. Just walking around the convention and nearby hotels, I ran across groups (sometimes just sitting on the floor) playing Death in Freeport with their new Player’s Handbooks. When distributor orders came in, it just confirmed what I’d already seen at Gen Con: the gamble had paid off!

By the fall of 2000, it was clear that Green Ronin had the potential to become more than a side project. More on that next time!