Ronin Report, July 10th, 2020

It’s been a couple of months since our last Ronin Ronin Report: new serialized adventures!Report so I thought I’d update you all on how the company is faring during the ongoing COVID crisis. In March and April things were dicey. When our warehouse shut down and we could not ship physical books anymore, that put us a bad situation and severely impacted our ability to bring in revenue. Team Ronin really pulled together though, and we were able to roll with the punches and make some contingency plans that helped us weather the roughest patch.

Thankfully, Alliance—the game distributor who warehouses our books—re-opened with new safety procedures in place in May. This meant we could begin shipping books again, both to customers of our online store and the distributors who serve game retailers. This was a big help. A couple of print jobs that had been put on pause were also able to get going again. Lairs for Fantasy AGE and the reprint of the Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide for Mutants & Masterminds both arrived and are available now. We also ran a successful crowdfunding campaign for the Book of Fiends on Game On Tabletop.

All of this means that things are more stable now than they were a couple of months ago. Does it mean everything is back to normal? Well, no, unfortunately not. Pretty much every convention in 2020 has been cancelled at this point, game stores are still struggling, and orders did not magically go back to their pre-COVID levels. We had to make some big adjustments to our schedule and have to be much more strategic about what gets printed and in what quantities. And yes, M&M fans, we will print the Time Traveler’s Codex! We just need to find the right time for it.

The hardest decisions we had to make regarding our schedule were pushing the Fantasy AGE Core Rulebook and Fifth Season RPG into next year. 2020 just Ronin Report: new serialized adventures!isn’t the right time for big launches like that, so we reluctantly made that call. On the upside, it does give us more development time on both projects and we are putting that to good use.

Overall, we are getting by but it’s not an easy time. If you’d like to support us, pick up some Green Ronin books from your local store or our online store. We also have some exciting stuff being serialized in electronic format: Five and Infinity for Modern AGE, the NetherWar adventure series for Mutants & Masterminds, and new Blue Rose Adventures. Nisaba Press, our fiction imprint, has released two new short story collections (For Hart and Queen for Blue Rose and Powered Up for M&M), and the superhero novel Sacred Band is also up for pre-order.

And there’s more fun stuff coming up. In August we’ll be launching Sword Chronicle, a full fantasy RPG built on the rules from our Song of Ice and Fire RPG. Ships of The Expanse will bring all the sexy spaceships to your Expanse games. Danger Zones will provide lots of interesting adventure locales for Mutants & Masterminds. And we’ve got a 20th anniversary surprise to boot!

We hope you are all staying safe out there. Remember to wear a mask when you go out and maintain social distancing. We know it’s hard for gamers used to sitting around the table together, but we want to see all your faces when this is all over.

Ronin Report: new releases from Nisaba Press!

 

 

Sword Chronicle: Feudal Fantasy Roleplaying Returns

The fury of battle. Court intrigue. Games of blood and status. That’s Sword Chronicle, a complete roleplaying game for the Chronicle System. We’ve been working on it quietly, with no official announcements before now.

Sword Chronicle: Feudal Fantasy Roleplaying

(not final cover)

Where’s the Hype?

Well, this is the hype. Sword Chronicle was designed under the radar as a response to the COVID-19 situation, which we’ve discussed here. We took a hard look at what we could do in this emergency, and this not only fit the bill, it sent a message that we’re not going to just survive, but survive aggressively, by producing a core rulebook.

The Chronicle System Returns

Originally designed for the A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying game, the Chronicle System was devised to work on multiple scales and fields of conflict, from duels to battles to courtly intrigue. Green Ronin’s license to make the game has concluded, and we remain grateful for the opportunity to explore Westeros through the game. But we’ve always wanted to support other settings for the Chronicle System. We started that with setting-agnostic Chronicle System material available through our website and DriveThruRPG. Sword Chronicle is the next step: a core rulebook designed to bring the Chronicle System’s unique characteristics to classic fantasy gaming.

What’s The Same, What’s Changed 

Sword Chronicle uses the Chronicle System you’ve seen before, but adds new elements to support fantasy games, including the following: 

  • Rules for fantasy ancestries, including elves, dwarves, and ogres 
  • A revised version of the magic rules first presented in the Chronicle of Sorcery supplement, integrated into the core rules 
  • Revised and reorganized rules for intrigue: the art of victory in the social arena 
  • The Shattered Era, an optional fantasy setting featuring 19 houses, the nonhumanoid kurgulan people, and the Breachlands, a region fit for empire builders and uprisings

Furthermore, while you don’t need to purchase Chronicle of Sorcery for magic rules if you get Sword Chronicle, all other published generic Chronicle System supplements remain compatible, including creature supplements such as Desert Threats and rules expansions such as Out of Strife, Prosperity. Thus, Sword Chronicle comes with immediate support. You can play it with one book, but the options are there.

Beyond the Sword Chronicle

Sword Chronicle is an expression of the “classic” Chronicle System, but there’s more to come. Don’t forget that The Fifth Season Roleplaying Game, which will use a version of the system tailored to the world of N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy, is on the horizon. It’s a good time to be a Chronicle System fan. Stay in touch—we’ll tell you when.

Ronin Army forums update: All Good Things…

Hello Green Ronin fans,

Today we have guest post from our stalwart forum moderator Fildrigar, on the status of the Ronin Army forums that have been down for the last week.


Ronin Army Gamer Badge

Green Ronin Gamer Badge

Greetings!

I’m Barry Wilson. You might remember me from such internet places as That One Wargaming With Miniatures Forum and Esoteric Prog Rock Fans Online.

I have a long history with, and a deep and abiding love of internet forums. Since I first discovered them in the Nineties, I have whiled away many an hour reading and posting on them. I never had the patience for IRC, far preferring the slower, more thoughtful discourse (and formatting options) forums usually provided. I’ve been moderating Green Ronin’s forums for around eight years now. 

Unfortunately, the time has come to shut down the forums. While it wasn’t an easy decision, it was necessary once we discovered a rather serious security vulnerability that made continuing to support the forum software an untenable position. We have reached the tipping point where the security risks involved with maintaining the forums outweigh the benefits. We tried to find a solution that would allow us to maintain the existing forums in read-only mode, but just running the forum software on our servers would pose too great a security risk. 

Forums have in the past provided a place for people to discuss our games. Increasingly, those discussions have moved to places like Facebook, Reddit, and Discord (and many, many others.) Places like these are allowing us to reach more fans than our small forums did. Searching Facebook for the names of our games will direct you to groups available there. There is also a very robust and friendly Discord community called the Green Ronin AGE Appropriate Discord. You’ll find some of your favorite Green Ronin staff regularly hanging out there to talk about the latest Green Ronin happenings.  

In closing, remember that we love you, keep on gaming, and we’ll see you on the internet.

Green Ronin 20 For 20 Sale

Green Ronin 20 For 20 Sale

20 For 20 Sale

2020 is Green Ronin’s 20th anniversary, and to celebrate we’re having a site wide sale of all our games and accessories. Everything in the Green Ronin Online Store is for sale for 20% off through April 20, 2020, except for active pre-orders like Lairs for Fantasy AGE and Enemies & Allies for Modern AGE. We really appreciate all the support you’ve given us over the years, so please enjoy some great games at a great price!

Happy Holidays from Green Ronin Publishing!

Everyone at Green Ronin would like to wish you the very best this Holiday Season, and we’ll see you soon in the new year!

Green Ronin Publishing will be closed from today, December 22nd and will return on January 6th.

PAX Unplugged and Freebooting

Green Ronin is very excited to be attending PAX Unplugged again this year. PAX Unplugged is Penny Arcade’s completely analog convention. It’s become known as the convention where people actually play games – a lot of them! Crazy, right? So, if you are in Philadelphia the weekend of December 6 – 8, please come join us and play some games.

You will be able to find us at Exhibitor’s Hall Booth 3649. Even better is that this year we will also have a table within the free play hall in an area designated for exhibitor demos. We will have our own dedicated table throughout the entire weekend!

Speaking of the demo table – we could really use a few more people to help us run games. Does this sound like fun to you? In addition to the fun of running games, Green Ronin will reimburse your badge and give you a t-shirt. Win-win for all of us!

If you’re already a Freebooter and interested, please contact me to discuss details.

Not a Freebooter but still want to run games for us? No problem! Becoming a Freebooter is fun, easy, and packed with perks. The first step is to fill out this form. If you want to help with PAX Unplugged, please also send me an email at freebooters@greenronin.com to make sure I expedite your application.

The Expanse RPG – Gen Con 2019

Finally, if you’re attending PAX Unplugged, please feel free to drop by our booth and say hello. Happy gaming!

Ronin Roundtable: Death Has Many Faces

The final season of Game of Thrones has special significance to those of us at Green Ronin Publishing, since we worked with George R.R. Martin on A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying when the successful show was just a concept. If you haven’t checked out the RPG—or even if you have, but your collection is incomplete—don’t miss out on the current offering from Bundle of Holding, available for the next week or so, where you can get all of the PDFs of the game line, including some Chronicle System supplements, for one bargain price.

Of course, a number of things about the world of Westeros and the saga of A Song of Ice and Fire have been revealed since the RPG core book was published, and Game Masters might want to add some new elements to their SIFRP games. In honor of one of our favorite Game of Thrones characters and the final season of the show, we offer a small additional quality.

 


Faceless Man (Fate Quality)

You are no one.

Requires Face in the Crowd, Furtive or Talented (Stealth), Treacherous, one or more Fighting quality, and sponsorship and training at the Temple of the Many-Faced God

You have mastered the arcane art of face-changing. If you kill a target, you can take their face and wear it, effectively becoming that person in appearance and voice. Under ordinary circumstances, this gives you a flawless disguise. Even those with reason to be suspicious of you can only detect something is amiss with Hard (15) Awareness (Empathy) test and even then may not realize the extent of your deception until it is too late. You automatically surprise anyone unaware of your true nature and gain bonus dice equal to your Cunning, in addition to the usual +1D.

You can save faces you have added to your collection, storing them for later use. It takes about a minute to don a face and assume its form, but you can remove a face you are wearing (ending the guise) as a lesser action, if you wish.


 

Chronicle System PDF: Desert Threats

Desert ThreatsToday we present Desert Threats, all-new bestiary content for the Chronicle System that powers our A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying game.

The desert feasts on the bones of those who venture into those forbidding wastes. Baking heat and scouring winds are only the most obvious of those threats; the wise know other, more bloodthirsty dangers await hidden from view. From the voracious djinn-hound to the whispered legends of the golden kraken, explore what lurks in these treacherous lands!

 

Ronin Roundtable: Green Ronin in 2018, Part 1

It seems like just yesterday I was wondering if this Y2K bug would indeed wreak global havoc (spoiler alert: it didn’t) while working on plans to start a new game company. Now here we are 18 years later and Green Ronin is still going strong. Although last year was challenging in many ways, we are starting 2018 in a great position. We have a bunch of projects nearing completion, fantastic new games in the works, and great prospects for the future. Today I’m going to talk about our plans for the next six months. I’ll then do another one of these in June to discuss the second half of the year.

The Expanse

Our biggest project this year is The Expanse RPG. We announced that we’d licensed James S.A. Corey’s terrific series of scifi novels last year and since then Steve Kenson has

been leading the team designing the core rulebook. In a few months we will be Kickstarting The Expanse RPG and the rules will actually be done before we even start the crowdfunding campaign. The game uses our popular Adventure Game Engine, as previously seen in our Dragon Age, Fantasy AGE, and Blue Rose RPGs. We’re excited to take AGE into the future! The Expanse RPG will release in August, debuting at GenCon.

Modern AGE and Lazarus

Want a new AGE game before the summertime? We’ve got you covered! Modern AGE launches in the Spring thanks to the hard work of Malcolm Sheppard and his team. The game lets you run games anywhere from the Industrial Revolution to the near future, with or without supernatural powers as you prefer. Concurrent with that we’ll be releasing the World of Lazarus, a campaign setting based on the amazing Lazarus comic by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark. Its compelling setting provides some timely commentary on current political trends and is a great place to tell stories.

Fantasy AGE, Dragon Age, and Blue Rose

Fantasy AGE and Dragon Age fans will be delighted to hear that two long awaited books are nearing release. Jack Norris and his team have finished the Fantasy AGE Companion and Faces of Thedas and both are now in layout. The Fantasy AGE Companion is the first big rules expansion for FAGE, offering up many ways to expand your game. Faces of Thedas brings a plethora of Dragon Age characters from the video games, novels, and comics to life, and adds some great new rules for relationships and romance. Speaking of romance and fantasy, Joe Carriker and his team have been working on the next book for our Blue Rose RPG. Aldis: City of the Blue Rose is a comprehensive sourcebook about the capital of the Kingdom of Aldis.

Mutants & Masterminds

We are kicking off 2018 with a bang with the release of the new edition of Freedom City, the signature setting of M&M since the game’s first edition. It releases to stores this week so now is the time to check out the city that started it all. Later in the Spring we’ll be releasing Rogues Gallery, a new collection of villains for your campaign. Crystal Frasier skillfully shepherded both of the books to completion, though they were begun by her predecessor. The first book she led from start to finish was actually the World of Lazarus but you’ll be seeing more of her vision of Mutants & Masterminds later in the year with the Basic Hero’s Handbook and Superteam Handbook.

Nisaba Press

Last year we hired Jaym Gates to start a fiction line for us, and this year her diligent work will pay off as Nisaba Press takes off. We will be releasing short fiction from our various settings monthly, and releasing two novels a year. The first will be Shadowtide, a Blue Rose novel by Joe Carriker. We’ll be following that up later in the year with our first Mutants & Masterminds novel.

Freeport and Ork

At the start of this article I mentioned the beginnings of Green Ronin back in 2000. The company’s very first releases were Ork! The Roleplaying Game and Death in Freeport, a modest adventure that launched our longest running property. The new edition of Ork is finished and entering layout. It’s great beer and pretzels fun. Return to Freeport is a six-part Pathfinder adventure coming later in the Spring in which Owen K.C. Stephens and his team really captured the feel of the City of Adventure.

SIFRP and Chronicle System

All good things must come to an end and such is the case with our beloved Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying. Our license expired in 2017 so there will be no new material forthcoming. We can continue to sell the books we’ve already released, however, so those will remain available to those who want to adventure in Westeros. Our series of compatible Chronicle System PDFs will also continue, first with Desert Threats, a new collection of creatures. Some of the rules material from our last planned SIFRP book, the Westeros Player’s Companion, will be released under the Chronicle System brand with the Westeros specific content removed.

To the Future!

As you can see, we’ve got an action packed six months ahead of us. Later in the year we’ve got excitement like the Sentinels of Earth-Prime card game and the Lost Citadel campaign setting for D&D 5E. Thanks for your continued support! We really do appreciate it. Here’s to some great gaming in 2018!

Ronin Roundtable: Sharing Your Passion for Games

Greetings, fellow game lovers! I’m very excited to be writing my first ever Ronin Roundtable. Some of you may remember a few months back that Donna Prior introduced me as the new Events Manager when she moved over to Catan Studio. (We still miss you, Donna!) Since then it has been a whirlwind of Gen Con, the annual Green Ronin summit, and coordinating for all the additional conventions we’ll be doing in the next year. I’ve found Green Ronin to truly be “dedicated to the art of great games.” We are passionate bunch: about our games, social issues, our chosen family, and about the joy this art of great games brings. It delights us when others share that passion! Art is a skill of creative imagination meant to be practiced and shared; that is the basis of the Freebooter program.

The Freebooter program has been around for a while, but due to Green Ronin being a small company, it has historically been difficult to maintain. Now that we’ve grown a bit, we have more resources to help support wonderful things like the Freebooters. So, we are striking while the iron is hot and doing an official relaunch of the program.

And do you know what? I love running Green Ronin’s volunteer GM activities. I’m excited to help people enjoy games. (Sometimes I think I might get more out of helping others enjoy games than I do playing them myself.)  I adore facilitating GMs finding a convention or Friendly Local Game Store to run games for people. It makes me happy to see people who’ve never met find common ground and joy over the gaming table. It’s one of the best feelings!

Want to share your passion for running games with others at conventions or at your FLGS? The Green Ronin Freebooter Program is a guide for volunteers running demos and events with Green Ronin games. Membership as a Freebooter requires commitment as well as knowledge of our games and passion to show it off to the public. The following are requirements for a Freebooter applicant:

  • Willingness to keep up to date with general program information and communications.
  • Participants must be knowledgeable about the setting, be able to explain game mechanics, and answer simple questions regarding Green Ronin.
  • Freebooters support an inclusive gaming experience.
  • You must have a passion for gaming and the product you are looking to support.
  • You must have a professional attitude and work ethic.
  • Must be at least 18 years of age.
  • Coordination, communication, cooperation, collaboration, and confidence are the guiding principles of being a Freebooter.
  • Members are expected to run demos at hobby stores and conventions and raise awareness of the games in general.
  • Submit event reports in a timely manner.
  • May possibly be enlisted by Green Ronin to assist during large events.
  • Also, to have FUN!

What Green Ronin game brings you joy? Are you drawn to the lush beauty of Aldea as portrayed in Blue Rose? Perhaps you hunger for more stories of Tal’Dorei now that Vox Machina’s campaign has ended. Or do you love to battle darkspawn in Thedas with Dragon Age? Maybe you yearn for your own sword and sorcery adventure in Fantasy Age. Does the piracy, and Lovecraftian horror of Freeport hold a special place in your heart? Mayhap you just want a light-hearted party game of finishing sentences courtesy of Love 2 Hate. Looking for an epic superhero story as offered by Mutants & Masterminds? Or possibly you hunger for the merciless, cutthroat intrigue of Westeros available in A Song of Ice and Fire. Did you love Wil Wheaton’s Titansgrave so much that you want to try the world out yourself? Or maybe you are a pirate at heart, interested in playing the fast-paced card game of Walk the Plank?

Plus, Green Ronin is continually working on new game systems and settings. Coming up soon and/or currently in production are The Expanse RPG, Freedom City for Mutants & Masterminds, Mutants & Masterminds: Rogues Gallery, Fantasy AGE Companion, Ork! The Roleplaying Game, Second Edition, Faces of Thedas (Dragon Age), Modern AGE, World of Lazarus, Mutants & Masterminds Basic Hero’s Handbook, Return to Freeport, and the Sentinels of Earth-Prime card game.

There are so many worlds to explore! You can share these wonderful, exciting experiences while making new friends and earning rewards through the Green Ronin Freebooter Program.

In addition to sharing games with others, Freebooters can also get these perks:

  • Freebooters can have their events added to the official Green Ronin Events Calendar.
  • Get a cool Green Ronin t-shirt! You’ll get one upon becoming an active member, and if you continue to be active, you can get more. Pretty sweet, eh? (Active membership means running games and submitting event reports.)
  • By running games, you can earn GM experience points, which can be turned into credit in our online store.
  • GM badge and/or partial hotel reimbursement at select conventions.
  • Access to Freebooter social media forums that provide support, advice, and encouragement.
  • The most basic perk of membership is involvement in the growth of Green Ronin games. In the future, there may be opportunities for Freebooters to playtest new material, write articles for the Green Ronin blog or other publications, and help plan large events.

 

We want our volunteers to have the best time possible while growing their own community, developing local events, supporting and building lasting relationships with local stores, and building their own hobby collection.

If this sounds like fun, please apply. So, what are you waiting for? For more information, look at the Green Ronin Freebooter Information Hub or just fill out the volunteer Freebooter Application form.

I look forward to meeting more new Freebooters. I’d love to help you find a place to start hosting games. Thank you for your interest in running games for Green Ronin Publishing!

Questions? Email Veronica at events@greenronin.com. Happy Gaming!