Tag Archive for: adventure

Sol System Preorders and The Transport Union Backerkit Campaign!

Sol System for the Expanse RPG

Available to Preorder Now!

As the pressure rises and the exodus through the ring gates continues, opportunities abound for shrewd crews willing to take risks on Earth, Mars, and in The Belt. The changes brought about by the discovery of the protomolecule continue to disrupt the status quo, and tensions between the factions are white hot. Sol System provides information on the governments, corporations, and factions that vie for power and influence, along with expanded rules for trade and running corporations and other organizations. This beautifully illustrated sourcebook opens new ways to play and exciting new details on humanity’s homes. Sol System also offers a plethora of new adventure opportunities—political intrigue, spies, strange cults!—and sets the stage for the Free Navy Conflict sourcebook.

Pre-Orders for the 112-page, full-color softcover book are live, and if you pre-order today, you can pick up the PDF for just $5!

If you can’t wait to get your hands on a copy of Sol System, now’s your chance! Preorder the printed book for $29.95, and for just $5 more you can add the PDF version of the book to your order and download it right away. Just watch for the pop-up window after you hit the “Add to Cart” button, and make sure to click the “Add to Cart” button on the pop-up window.

 

If you are looking to pick up just the PDF, you can do that now by visiting the Green Ronin Online Store, or pick it up at DrivethruRPG for $16.99

 

The Expanse Transport Union Edition

Sign up to be notified on launch, and GET FREE DICE!

Introducing The Expanse RPG: The Transport Union Edition!

The Transport Union Edition is an updated and revised core rulebook that takes you 30 years into the future of The Expanse storyline- and have no fear, it is 100% compatible with existing characters and ships!

The Transport Union Edition expands the background and rules but the core game of the original 2019 edition remains the same. Previous supplements like Ships of the Expanse, Beyond the Ring, and the Sol System remain great and useful resources. The Expanse RPG virtual tabletop is also being enhanced as part of the Transport Union Edition with full compendium support coming to Roll20, along with official support coming to Foundry, allowing you to play the game online with your friends wherever they are.

The Transport Union Edition will feature a new adventure PDF, new rules for cyber/bio augmentation for player characters, New ship types and expanded and revised ship combat rules, ground vehicle rules, rules for Earthers, Martians, and belters operating in different gravitation environments, and expanded equipment and tech including new item qualities!

Free Protogen Dice Set for Day 1 Backers! 
We’re funding this project through Backerkit, and you can sign up to be notified of the campaign kick off! Launch day backers will get a free set of Protogen dice and first crack at any limited reward tiers.

Learn more about The Expanse RPG: The Transport Union Edition and sign up to be notified today!

Now Available: Condition Cards for Fantasy AGE and Cthulhu Awakens

 

Fantasy AGE Condition Cards

 

Cthulhu Awakens Condition Cards

We added condition rules to Fantasy AGE 2nd Edition and Cthulhu Awakens to simplify the various strange and alarming things that can happen to Player Characters, their friends, and their enemies. Slowed by magic? Confused by a psychic attack? Frightened by gore—or cosmic horror? These now have set rules to drop on the affected character. Now we have an even easier way to keep track of conditions: Condition Cards!

Since complicated encounters can impose conditions and distract players, the cards serve as a quick visual aid for keeping track of them. Each card provides the name and game mechanics of its corresponding condition.

We’re releasing separate sets of Condition Card Decks for Cthulhu Awakens and Fantasy AGE, each in two formats: print on demand through DrivethruRPG, and as digital assets for Roll20.

The Fantasy AGE Condition Deck contains 84 poker-sized cards: 4 of each condition from the Fantasy AGE RPG, and 4 blank cards you can customize for your own.

The Cthulhu Awakens Condition Deck contains 64 poker-sized cards: 4 of each condition from the Cthulhu Awakens RPG, and 4 blank cards you can customize for your own.

Return to the Valley of the Whispering Titans for Fantasy AGE!

Return to the Valley of the Whispering Titans for Fantasy AGE!

Available Now!

Diehard Fantasy AGE fans remember the first edition book Fantasy AGE Lairs, a book that provided a group of unique locations and scenarios for Game Masters to introduce heroes to. Now that we’ve transitioned to the second edition of the game and the Fantasy AGE Core Rulebook, we’ve decided to return to a classic location from that book to commence a new stream of support for the game: Fantasy Age Journeys.

A Fantasy AGE Journeys supplement doesn’t just upgrade a prior location for the current edition of the game, however. In addition to that, and any tweaks and corrections, each Journeys book will expand its original location. And thus, we present to you…

Return to the Valley of the Whispering Titans

Long ago, sinister godlike beings, giants in the land, converged for unspeakable, dark business, combining their sorcery for some forgotten purpose. Centuries later, their skulls gaze over the valley their magic has corrupted. Now, evil whispers in the hearts of beasts, and would be hunters, foresters, and guardians of nature have become enraptured by the auras of the so-called titans. Some have become servants of the titans without knowing it, as their love for the valley becomes a compulsion to unleash horrors upon visitors. Others know the evil they obey, but they are skilled at pretending to be victims of the dark, or allies against it. When the master of the valley calls upon the powers of the skulls, what will the heroes do?

Return to the Valley of the Whispering Titans presents a supernatural wilderness location for Fantasy AGE, along with major adversaries, possible rewards, and two adventures—one where characters confront the Dark Druid who claims to be the master of the valley, and another where the forces of the valley rise, and risk resurrecting an ancient evil with the heroes’ own unwitting cooperation! A new adventure, treasure, and creatures expand the Valley of the Whispering Titans beyond its original first edition treatment.

Makes Some Noise With “The Heist” for Astonishing Adventures

As part of the Astonishing Adventures line for Mutants & Masterminds, we’re updating and re-releasing a few short adventures from earlier editions of the game for players who might have enjoyed them back then, or haven’t had the opportunity to do so in the fourteen years or so since the Third Edition of M&M launched.

“The Heist” was originally a sample adventure in the Second Edition rulebook, as a classic comic book scenario where two supervillains and their henchmen rob a bank. It was intended as a “teaching adventure” for players new to the game to learn the ropes, and you can still use it as such. It’s also a good sample adventure to use to give new players a taste of how Mutants & Masterminds plays, for conventions and demo games.

If you are new to game-mastering M&M, take a look at how “The Heist” is set up and its advice to Gamemasters, particularly the Involving the Heroes section and the Hero Points headers scattered throughout, which look at opportunities to introduce Complications and award players Hero Points during play. The second part of the adventure also contains two classic Challenge Sequences: A rescue from a collapsing building, and a chase scene to prevent the villains’ escape! Good examples of how to set up and run these staples of the game. There are guidelines to modify the adventure as well for different sized groups and different power levels.

We hope you enjoy this M&M “blast from the past” without needing the kind of hearing-protection that your heroes will, once Rant starts to make some noise!

Available now in the Green Ronin Online Store, and on DriveThruRPG!

A Grave Adventure Indeed

 

Fantasy AGE Dungeon: Menace of the Grave Warrens

Available Now!

While the new edition of Fantasy AGE has some great initial adventure support with “Set Sail for Breakwater Bay!” in the core rulebook, “The Breakwater Curse” in the Game Master’s Toolkit, and “Terror of the Ghost Ship” in the Fantasy AGE Quickstart, with more on the way, it doesn’t have a lot of “dungeon” style adventures as yet, something we look to remedy with the release of “Menace of the Grave Warrens”!

The adventure takes the heroes into an old goblin grave warren that has been invaded by a malevolent force, offering plenty of delving and navigating through dark tunnels and spaces. It is intended for 5th level characters, slightly higher-level than our starter adventures, for groups who have been playing Fantasy AGE for a while now or prefer to start at a higher level. It can follow up for groups who have played through the initial available adventures, especially if you choose to set it on Kassa, the island where Breakwater Bay is found.

The Kassa Warren

The goblin warren described in the adventure is quite self-contained: The whole adventure takes place within it, so you can place it pretty much anywhere you’d like in your setting. All that’s really required is a settlement nearby. The adventure assumes it’s a mostly-goblin settlement, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Perhaps the goblin warren is old and the settlement is new, built after the goblins who once lived in the area were gone, for example.

If placing “Menace of the Grave Warren” on Kassa Isle in the Stranger Shores setting, the warren could be near Tall Pines or Weston on the western side of the island, particularly if you decide there’s a substantial goblin community there. It could also be near the abandoned settlement of Sundown, perhaps connected in some fashion with why Sundown became abandoned. You can even set the warren not far from Breakwater itself, either in the North Woods or southwards towards Mount Kassa. It may be a venerated burial site for the goblin community of the town, now threatened. This lets you tie-in goblin NPCs from the setting like Thistle and Gont (from “The Breakwater Curse”) if you want.

You can also add a small goblin settlement on Kassa to be near the grave warren. There’s plenty of room along the Western Hills as well as Nordmarsh, the North Woods, or along Long Lake. Adventurers might be traveling through the area on some other business when news about the trouble in the warren reaches them, or they might go there specifically to investigate, especially if they’ve made a name for themselves on Kassa for dealing with supernatural trouble.

Wherever you choose to place the “Menace of the Grave Warrens” we hope it will be an opportunity for your Fantasy AGE heroes to delve deep into an ol’ fashioned dungeon adventure!


Menace of the Grave Warrens is available now in the Green Ronin Online Store, and on DriveThruRPG!

Tanks for the Feedback!

The Atomic Think Tank!

The Atomic Think Tank, the new Green Ronin Publishing community on Mighty Networks, is off to a running start! Named for the old Green Ronin web forums, the new Think Tank has different sections for each of our game lines, including Mutants & Masterminds, Valiant Adventures, The Expanse, Fantasy AGE, Cthulhu Awakens, Modern AGE, and Blue Rose, with more in the works. Community members are chatting away in the feeds of their favorite games, along with posting questions, and sharing ideas, characters, and questions. Streamers are posting their calendars and Green Ronin has offered some live events, including the launch of our new Engine online magazine for the AGE system, and our weekly Mutants & Masterminds Monday and ThursdAGE streams.

Of particular interest to me has been the opportunity to engage with a focused, dedicated group of M&M fans as I post various versions of the power effects from the game for discussion, getting feedback on what works, what doesn’t, and what folks think about the mechanics as-is and some of the options we’re introducing in Valiant Adventures. It includes things like:

  • Fatal, Higher Degree, and Increasing Difficulty Extras for Affliction.
  • Discussion of the optional Knockback rules, with several variations.
  • The Concealment Effect and targeting attacks.
  • Applying Comprehend Languages to non-verbal forms of communication.
  • Using Create Effects to make equipment or varying the volume to Toughness ratio of created objects.
  • Lethal vs. Nonlethal Damage Effects and using Valiant’s Bonus and Penalty Die mechanic for Area Effects.
  • A whole new version of the Deflect Effect using the aforementioned Bonus/Penalty Die mechanic and a once-per-Turn Reaction action type.
  • A surprising amount of discussion on Elongation and Extra Limbs! If you are a stretchy cephalopod, M&M fans have some thoughts about you!
  • Our look at Elongation led to a related discussion on the Reach Extra and the relationship between the two.
  • Some discussion of Flight and other Movement Effects, rolling right into a discussion on falling and impact damage.

Illusions, Immortality, today’s discussion on Immunity (including Valiant’s Resistance Flaw) … and we’re just getting started!

That’s not even counting all of the other content Think Tankers have been posting, or the game lines beyond Mutants & Masterminds. Safe to say our Atomic Think Tank is at critical mass to begin generating some reactions!

As things progress, we’ll be opening up the Think Tank to more and more members, eventually opening its armored doors to the public, once we’ve sorted everything into its proper place. If you haven’t already joined us, be on the lookout for an invitation on one of our live-streams or perhaps in your email from our online store! Know that, whenever you have a chance to check out the Atomic Think Tank, there will already be a lot waiting for you there!

Starting the Engine! Introducing the Official AGE System Magazine

 

Engine: The AGE Roleplaying Game Magazine

Available Now!

Right now, fans of the Adventure Game Engine tend to be scattered amongst its various games. After premiering the system with the Dragon Age roleplaying game, we evolved it into Fantasy AGE, Blue Rose, Modern AGE, The Expanse, Cthulhu Awakens, and the upcoming Fifth Season (preorders available!) roleplaying game. Historically fans have either stuck to single games or done some hacking with Modern AGE and Fantasy AGE.

Well, we want to change that a bit, and help build a pan-AGE community. One of the initiatives for this? Engine magazine, a source for articles about AGE games, with new rules, ideas, and commentary for all AGE System gamers. Issue #1 drops now!

In our premiere issue:

  • Apprehension: Rules for fear and dread for Blue Rose and Fantasy AGE, with notes for other games.
  • Enemies & Allies—The Nyx: A marine monster for Fantasy AGE or any other AGE game.
  • Frolic in the Vale: A boisterous faerie folk encounter for Fantasy AGE.
  • Masons & Mystics: The Architecture Arcana for Fantasy AGE and Modern AGE.
  • Taking the Scepter: Talents for rulers in Fantasy AGE.
  • The Thistle Cup: A fully detailed Aldis tavern for Blue Rose.

Use them as-is or use AGE’s hackable rules to fit them into your story, campaign, or world. We give you the fuel, but you start the Engine!

Pick up Engine #1 on our website, or at DrivethruRPG:

Face Fear and Fight Fascists with the Cthulhu Awakens Quickstart

Cthulhu Awakens Quickstart

The FREE Cthulhu Awakens Quickstart is Available Now!

 

Hagley, England, 1940: an idyllic village under the shadow of the Second World War. As its inhabitants watch the sky for the terrors of the Blitz, they have no idea other horrors lie beneath their feet. Long bound by forgotten rituals, an entity creeps closer to freedom as the Old Ways die, but it will be an attempted revival of those traditions, combined with an unnatural disaster, that unleashes the ancient God Beneath the Tree on the world.

Written by Stoker Award nominated author and internationally recognized folk horror expert Sian Ingham, The God Beneath the Tree is a quickstart: everything you need, from streamlined rules to starting characters, to play its included Cthulhu Awakens scenario. By playing, you’ll not only confront the ancient creature beneath Hagley’s trees but teach yourself Cthulhu Awakens, the roleplaying game of confronting Mythos horror across a Weird Century of strange histories and cult conspiracies. All you need is ordinary six-sided dice, something to write and record your character and their adventures, and up to five friends joining a Game Master.

The Cthulhu Awakens Quickstart is available in PDF and coming soon as a full-featured Roll20 virtual tabletop product.

The full version of Cthulhu Awakens and the GM Kit is now available in print, PDF and on Roll20, and hardcovers are on the way to retail game stores near you!

And speaking of Roll20, we have a brand new NPC Token Pack available for you today as well. Check it out!

Cthulhu Awakens NPC Token Pack for Roll20

Dare the Lair of the Horned Giant, and Enter the First Fantasy AGE Dungeon

Lair of the Horned Giant for Fantasy AGE 2nd edition!

Available Now!

 

As the new Fantasy AGE developer, I’m pleased to share something from the roots of the AGE system, updated for the 2nd edition of Fantasy AGE: a new adventure called Lair of the Horned Giant!

Long ago, a hero confronted a fierce challenge on the sacred fields of Kreyatos, and what transpired became the origin of a thousand legends—of sacred bulls slain, of a curse that fused victims with beasts, and of the Horned Giant and its cult. Now your heroes have come to investigate the legends at the fields themselves, where the cattle of the gods once roamed, and where the servants—or jailers—of a fallen hero, now given horns and an urge for bestial violence, dwell. But is there more to the Horned Giant? Beyond the rumored bull-man, what of the rumors of konotaurs and other beast-people?

Lair of the Horned Giant is an adventure our friend and very cool game designer Will Hindmarch originally created to support fans of the Dragon AGE roleplaying game who wanted to use it to adventure in other settings, but it was never published. I discovered it in our files, loved it, and updated it for Fantasy AGE’s second edition. It features an open-ended presentation like Fantasy AGE Lairs, a book for First Edition Fantasy AGE I really like, but it has a mythic resonance I think would go especially well with Fantasy AGE Trojan War, though it’s designed to slip into the classic fantasy worlds core Fantasy AGE supports.

(As I talk editions, remember that Fantasy AGE editions, and AGE games in general, are easy to convert between.)

This challenging adventure with shades of Greco-Roman and Middle Eastern mythology is best suited to characters of levels 8-10. It includes new creatures and magical treasures for Fantasy AGE suitable for a wide variety of campaigns. The mythology of the Horned Giant is even designed to be easily adapted for your own games, too.

This also inaugurates our series of new adventures called Fantasy AGE Dungeons, though some of these might not be “dungeons” in the usual sense. We’re currently working on another, Menace of the Grave Warrens, and I can’t wait to announce that too. Use them for one shots, side quests—whatever works for your table. Until then, challenge the cursed cult and dare the Bull of Heaven!

The Fantasy AGE Quickstart Arrives!

Fantasy AGE 2nd Edition Quickstart

A neglected ship sales the moonlit seas with no living crew to guide her. Can the heroes unravel the mystery? And more importantly, can they live to tell the tale?

New to AGE games? Looking for more starting adventures for your Fantasy AGE game? That’s the teaser for “Terror of the Ghost Ship,” the adventure included in the new Fantasy AGE Quickstart up above. It’s available today! Get it in PDF at the Green Ronin Online Store and DrivethruRPG —click through to wherever you want it from.

The Fantasy AGE Quickstart also contains streamlined rules and pregenerated characters for Fantasy AGE, the Adventure Game Engine (AGE) game of swords & sorcery adventure. The current, second edition of Fantasy AGE is an evolution of the rules found in Modern AGE, The Expanse Roleplaying Game, Blue Rose: The AGE Roleplaying Game of Romantic Fantasy, and others. The pregenerated characters, rules, and included adventure provide everything you need to run it except at least three six-sided dice, writing materials, and your friends.

AGE is designed to be intuitive and straightforward, while leaning into the swashbuckling side of adventure roleplaying with amazing stunts, cinematic combat, and a loose, four-class system that lets you shape a heroic archetype into a true individual.

After the adventure, move on to the full rules of the Fantasy AGE Core Rulebook. The Stranger Shores await—and that’s for starters. Adventures, new settings, and more are on the horizon, and we can’t wait to share them with you.

Tune in today (Thursday, 21 March 2024) at 2p Pacific, 5p Eastern for ThursdAGE, when Malcolm Sheppard and Ian Lemke join your host, Disembodied Troy Hewitt. We will not only take a look at the new quickstart, we’ll be talking about the future of the Adventure Game Engine!