Crowdfunding Archives • Green Ronin Publishing

Tag Archive for: Crowdfunding

February 14, 2024/in Green Ronin News /by Steve Kenson

While the Valiant Adventures Quickstart gives you a feel for what it is like to play a tabletop RPG set in the Valiant Universe, due to space limits it doesn’t provide character creation info or a deeper look at some of the signature Valiant characters. For some additional previews, we’re looking to do just that. This Valiant View is of the high-flyiong Faith.

Faith is our first psiot character, a definite archetype in Valiant Advenutures. Psiots are people with the potential for psionic powers, harbingers of the next stage of humanity. However, at this stage, few psiots “activate” and gain powers on their own, and the process of trying to force an activation is both difficult and dangerous, often ending in the subject’s death. Faith Herbert was one of the lucky ones, and she knows it.

So, Faith’s Abilities are overall decent, but not a major element of her character. She’s smart, determined, and personable, and has learned to defend herself a bit, but all-in-all, nothing outside of the normal human range of Ability Ranks.

It’s Faith’s Powers that are the focus of her character sheet. Her psiot ability is a psychokinetic “Companion Field” that allows Faith to levitate herself and other people or things in proximity. She has since learned to extend her Companion Field to both move more distant objects and to create a kind of repulsion field to block or deflect attacks and other sources of harm. Those uses go into an Array, based on what Faith is focusing on at any given moment; her Force Field protects her, while her Shield is a wider and stronger form of protection, but largely immobile since it requires more concentration.

Of particular note is Faith’s Boundless Optimism, giving her a Bonus Die on Will Resistance Checks against certain Effects, a version of the Resistance Power that models Faith’s ability to overcome personal obstacles, along with her Advantages.

Speaking of which, Faith has some Advantages involving the use of her powers in combat, particularly Evasion, Improved Disarm, Interpose (useful for her Force Field and Shield), and Redirect. She has a Benefit for her Secret Identity for the occasions when it has come in handy, such as when Faith was accused of a crime, and related Advantages like Connected and Well-Informed for both her journalist connections and her knowing a lot of other heroes. Lastly, Faith has some interpersonal Advantages: Extraordinary Effort for her unflagging determination, Leadership representing her ability to help other people overcome obstacles, Luck for her ability to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and a Second Chance Advantage that goes along with resisting attempts to manipulate her or get her to give up.

Faith’s Skills mostly involve her day-to-day training as a journalist and investigator, what she has learned as a hero in the field and, most of all, her boundless knowledge of pop culture and geek subjects, which the GM should find uses for in adventures much like Faith does in the comics. Her Complications mostly revolve around Faith being a good person who wants to do good and inspire other people to be better. She’s a true hero and ray of sunshine.

Check out the Valiant Adventures Roleplaying Game on Kickstarter now!

Valiant Views: Doctor Mirage

February 12, 2024/in Green Ronin News /by Steve Kenson

Shan Fong Mirage is our first mystical character, a significant element of the Valiant Universe as we’ll see. In terms of Abilities, Dr. Mirage is above average, but still a “normal” human in most regards. Her Awareness is considerable, related to her extrasensory gifts, and her Presence is as well, owing both to her power in the spirit world and her real-world celebrity. Given how important both Awareness- and Presence-based Skills are for her, it makes sense that Dr. Mirage has good Ranks in both, as well as Intellect.

Speaking of Skills, Shan’s are, as we mentioned, strongly focused on Awareness (Insight and Perception), Presence (Deception and Persuasion), and Intellect (Investigation and Occult). Of note is the Occult Skill, new in Valiant Adventures. It’s effectively an Expertise Skill, but with the importance of Occult Skill to so many characters and situations, it was easier to define and name it as a separate Skill of its own. Mirage also has some practical “adventuring” skills: training in Close Combat, Stealth, and Treatment.

For Advantages, Shan has several related to her status as a former celebrity, like Benefit: Famous and Contacts. Most of her other Advantages relate to her talents as an occult investigator, particularly Favored Foe: Spirits, Second Chance on Investigation Checks involving the paranormal, Trance, and Well-Informed, which in her case usually involves her connections to the spirit world and the Deadside. Of particular note is Mirage’s Power Stunt Advantage: This is an addition to Valiant Adventures that is similar to the Luck Advantage (which she also has) except it is “free” uses of the Power Stunt option of extra effort, reflecting Doctor Mirage’s flexibility as a sorcerer. She can be relied upon to pull off a couple of unusual spells or effects without having to worry about fatigue or having Hero Points on-hand.

Dr. Mirage’s powers feature her protective “working clothes” which provide Protection (and increase to her Toughness) as well as Resistance to Spirit Powers. This is another instance of the Resistance mechanic, based off the new Bonus Die mechanic in Valiant Adventures (see the Valiant Adventures Quickstart for details). “See Spirits” is pre-defined Senses Effect in Valiant, given how many characters have it, and Doctor Mirage is unusual in that she can enter the Deadside largely at-will, although only in spirit form while in trance. Lastly, she has a selection of common spells, which she can supplement with her Power Stunt Advantage, as well as actual extra effort and Hero Point spending.

What about Shan’s ghostly husband Hwen? For the most part, his presence in her life is covered by her Stubborn Complication (her devotion to him) and by her Contacts, Power Stunt, and Well-Informed Advantages, which can also reflect Hwen’s influence in the Deadside and his ability to offer insights and advice, along with the effects of spending Hero Points for Inspiration.

Check out the Valiant Adventures Roleplaying Game on Kickstarter now!

Valiant Worlds for Mutants & Masterminds

February 5, 2024/in Green Ronin News /by Steve Kenson

When the DC Adventures RPG premiered with what would be the Third Edition of the Mutants & Masterminds game system, it was the only version of that edition available. The stand-alone Third Edition Hero’s Handbook wouldn’t come along until the following year. But with the Valiant Adventures RPG, using a modified version of the M&M system funding on Kickstarter now, long-time players of the Third Edition may ask themselves “Can I just use Worlds of Valiant as an M&M setting sourcebook? Do I really need the new rulebook, if all I want is the Valiant setting and characters?”

The simple answer is: You don’t need the Valiant Adventures Hero’s Handbook to get use out of the Worlds of Valiant as a setting sourcebook for your Third Edition M&M rulebook(s). Worlds will contain the bulk of the information on Valiant characters and their different corners of the universe. While Valiant does make some minor adjustments to the Third Edition rules to better suit the setting, the material in Worlds will still be quite usable. The notable areas of “translation” are:

Skills: Valiant breaks a few M&M skills into smaller sub-skills; Technology into Computers, Electronics, and Mechanics, for example, or Vehicles into Driving and Piloting. Still, the names of the skills are quite self-explanatory, and you can use them as-given in the Valiant write-ups, or translate them back to their M&M equivalents on-the-fly quite easily.

Advantages: The largest number of new character traits in Valiant Adventures are advantages, many of them based on the rules options introduced there. If a Valiant character write-up has an advantage not in the Third Edition Mutants & Masterminds Hero’s Handbook, you can just ignore it, but getting and using those advantages (in Valiant or in your regular M&M game) is one good reason to pick up the Valiant Hero’s Handbook.

Powers: A few powers—notably Healing and Regeneration—are a bit different in Valiant, to go with the adjustments to Damage and Damage Resistance to suit the Valiant Universe setting. That said, their Ranks remain essentially the same, and you can easily convert them to their M&M equivalents, if you want. We’re also looking at presenting powers in Valiant write-ups a bit differently, with more prose explanations of what a character’s powers are along with the game-system notation of their Effects. This is more a change in presentation than mechanics, however, so it doesn’t really affect the write-ups’ usability—if anything, we hope it increases it!

The other things about character stats: Abilities, Ranks, Defenses, and so forth are all the same in Valiant as in M&M Third Edition, as you can easily see by taking a look at the characters in the Valiant Adventures Quickstart. We’ll also be showing off some sample Valiant heroes soon so you can get a sense for what the Worlds book will offer and how useful it will be to you. Take a look and … Stay Valiant!

Condition Cards Breakdown!

January 29, 2024/in Green Ronin News /by Alex Thomas

Hello Heroes! Now that we’re fully into the Kickstarter I wanted to write up some updates about all of the fun add-ons we’re including in this campaign. Mutants & Masterminds is a game that has a lot of moving parts and one of the things I really wanted to add to the game for Valiant Adventures Roleplaying Game was a collection of physical items that help with keeping track of everything. I started with a deck of Condition Cards because we already had one of those for M&M, but I knew it was going to need to be updated to reflect the changes we’ve made to some of the Conditions. These are meant to streamline the process of debuffing heroes and villains alike without having to go to the rulebook every time you need to remember the penalties of Compelled or Defenseless.

I did divide the conditions into two categories: Common and Uncommon to reflect Conditions that come up a lot in a given combat and some that are a little more character specific. Here is the breakdown for the two lists:

Common Conditions

Fatigued
Exhausted
Dazed
Stunned
Surprised
Incapacitated
Dying
Wounded

Uncommon Conditions

Prone
Compelled
Restrained
Transformed
Hindered
Blind
Deaf
Disabled
Impaired
Immobile
Defenseless
Paralyzed
Asleep
Bound
Entranced
Debilitated
Vulnerable
Controlled
Weakened

We’ve come up with two versions of this deck, one for Gamemasters and one for players. The cards are sorted into two tiers: Common and Uncommon Conditions. Common Conditions have five copies of each card. Uncommon have two. Injuries and Bruises have their own category because theoretically heroes are going to be suffering a lot more of these with the new lethal and nonlethal Damage tracks.

We’ve included 15 Injuries and 15 Bruises, 40 Common Condition Cards, and 38 Uncommon Condition Cards in the GM Deck leading to a total of 108 cards in that deck. The player deck has 32 cards: 5 Injuries and Bruises and 1 of each other card.

These decks are going to make gameplay even faster for new and experienced players and I can’t wait to see them at game tables!

In our next update, we’ll take a closer look at the brand new Playmat.

And as always, Stay Valiant!

Ouch that Hurts!

January 2, 2024/in Green Ronin News /by Alex Thomas

Valiant Adventures Roleplaying Game, coming soon to Kickstarter!

Click the image to be notified when the campaign goes live!

Hello heroes! It was an incredibly eventful back half of 2023. I went to U-Con in mid-November where I ran six M&M events, Galaxy Con in December where I ran two M&M events, and I ran a special event at Around the Table in Lynnwood, Washington over the last few weeks. As I said, these were all Mutants & Masterminds, but what I didn’t tell people until they sat down was that I was playtesting the new damage rules for our upcoming Valiant Adventures Roleplaying Game, and let me tell you, they were brutal!

These new damage rules are meant to simulate the grounded and dangerous combat of the Valiant Universe and it certainly did that in spades. Essentially, there are now two damage tracks: one non-lethal and one lethal that changes the way damage is applied to characters.

The new damage track is as follows:

Succeeding at a Toughness resistance check now incurs 1 Bruise (non-lethal) or 1 Injury (lethal) which reduces your resistance checks by 1.
Failing a Toughness resistance check by 1 degree incurs 2 Bruises or Injuries and the Dazed (non-lethal) or Stunned (lethal) condition.
Failing a Toughness resistance check by 2 degrees incurs 3 Bruises or Injuries and the Staggered (non-lethal) or Wounded (lethal) condition.
Failing a Toughness resistance check by 3 degrees incurs the Incapacitated (non-lethal) or Dying (lethal) conditions.

I quite enjoyed how the new damage affected gameplay. Every attack felt substantial, with both heroes and villains finding themselves in a lot more danger. It sped things up significantly (which as everyone who has ever played a “one shot” with me can attest to is a good thing for me.) The players really seemed to enjoy it when the villains were taking a lot more damage from each attack, not quite so much when it was done to them, but overall it felt in keeping with the tone Steve and I are trying to capture for Valiant Adventures. I did not show off some of the new things we have in store for Healing, Regeneration, and Toughness but I’m excited to see how those changes interact with the new damage.

I’d tell you more about some of my theories, but I can’t do that until we get a little closer to our launch date for the Kickstarter. Valiant Adventures Roleplaying Game is coming soon and we will be doing playtesting for it over on the Mutants & Masterminds Patreon. Keep an eye out on this space for more details as the Kickstarter gets closer and over on the Patreon if you want to be among the first to try these new rules out for yourself. Just make sure to pack some gauze and ice packs. I have a feeling we’re going to be beating up a lot of player characters in the next few months!

Mutants & Masterminds Reprints!

April 18, 2023/in Green Ronin News /by Alex Thomas

Hello heroes! I just wanted to pop by and let you all know that it is an exciting day for Mutants & Masterminds. Our new reprints of the Deluxe Hero’s Handbook, Gadget Guides, and Power Profiles are off to the printer and these amazing resources will be physically available soon. I’m personally excited because I’ll finally have my own copies of Gadget Guides and Power Profiles to finish out my third edition collection. Now is the perfect time to order your copies of these books to enrich your stories and to help your group get into the minutia of character creation to truly create the superheroes and villains of their dreams.

If you supported our Reprint Extravaganza Kickstarter campaign, or preordered through Backerkit, your books will ship as soon as we get them in from the printer. And if you missed our campaign, it’s not too late! Until May 1st, you can still Preorder the books RIGHT HERE on Backerkit. These books will also be available in retail stores soon, but we have had to adjust our pricing slightly. This will be the last time these books will be available at their original prices.

In addition to these amazing reprints, did you know we also have Mutants & Masterminds novels? Our fiction imprint, Nisaba Press, has several books, short stories, and anthologies available and this campaign saw two brand new books you can pick up. The Doom That Came to San Francisco by Richard Lee Byers, and Lost & Never Found by Aaron Rosenberg. These two books make up the Arcane Secrets Duology, and you can get them together at a handy discount.

Fifth Season Preview: When Are We?

February 23, 2023/in Green Ronin News /by Steve Kenson

Readers already familiar with the Broken Earth trilogy may wonder: When during the context of the novels is the Fifth Season RPG set?

As readers already know, the Broken Earth novels tell an in-depth story of their main characters and their story has significant effects on the world and its future. Therefore, the decision was made to set the Fifth Season RPG sometime prior to the key events of the first novel, The Fifth Season, although it’s entirely possible to set your Fifth Season campaign during the events of the novels, looking at how your comm deals with all that unfolds during them, if you wish.

The RPG looks at things on a much more local level than the novels, although you can decide to take the future of the world in an entirely different direction, if you want. One of the great things about roleplaying games is they place imaginary worlds into the hands of your game group, to spin out your own stories however you want. They also allow us to explore different aspects of a fictional setting in ways the source fiction did not, or only touched upon.

Wait… is that a Freeway?

Deadciv Ruins

One aspect of this for Fifth Season is the concept of “deadcivs,” long-dead civilizations and the ruins they have left behind. The history of the Stillness is tens of thousands of years, significantly longer than the entirety of recorded human history in our modern world. There have been many Seasons over that time, and untold numbers of comms and entire civilizations have come and gone, to say nothing of what may have existed in the time before stonelore was first recorded, in the lost annals of human history.

While most deadciv ruins have been buried, crushed, or otherwise destroyed by the churning, shaking, and thrashing of Father Earth, the potential for artifacts, remnants, or even some surviving locations of those lost civilizations is a rich field for Fifth Season Game Moderators. They can offer unusual places for characters to explore, filled with their own hazards. Unique items may intrigue and fascinate Innovators in the comm, while deadciv artifacts can be treasures to make a comm thrive — or lead other comms to covet what they have. With “sufficiently advanced technology” most deadciv artifacts can serve as the equivalent of “magic items” in a Fifth Season setting, although far more rare and more easily misunderstood than their fantasy RPG equivalents.

Fifth Season Preview: Game Play

February 22, 2023/in Green Ronin News /by Steve Kenson

Game play in the Fifth Season RPG proceeds on two distinct scales. The story of the comm unfolds in seasons, each of which is a “turn” of part of the year, and features an event, a check of the comm’s prosperity, and an opportunity for the comm to work together on an activity to achieve a particular goal. Within the unfolding of the seasons are stories focusing on the individual characters from the comm. These adventures are often tied to the events of the season, but not necessarily, and the encounters the characters have during them may have impact on the comm as a whole. In some cases an adventure is meant to address a misfortune suffered by the comm during a seasonal event, and may be able to mitigate that misfortune or eliminate it altogether.

Comm Turns: Seasons

A comm “turn” is a “season.” Ordinarily there are four seasons in a year. During each season, the GM rolls for a seasonal event, the comm makes a prosperity test, and can initiate a comm activity.

Seasonal Events

Seasonal events represent the random fortunes of a comm surviving in the Stillness. They are not the only things to happen in the entire season, just particularly noteworthy events. The Game Master rolls on the Seasonal Events Table to determine what the key event will be for that season and integrates the event into the narrative of the campaign as desired.

Many seasonal events are misfortunes that can befall a comm. These are similar to hazards encountered by characters but on a comm-wide scale. Misfortunes can weaken a comm, reducing its Stability and, if severe enough, even bring about the comm’s eventual dissolution. Also like hazards, many misfortunes can be mitigated or avoided altogether. This usually involves a test using one of the comm’s traits, although in some cases the Game Moderator may substitute an adventure for the test if characters intervene in the event.

“Everything changes in a Fifth Season”

Intervention

The tests and outcomes for seasonal events assume the comm is bringing what resources it can to bear, but that the player’s characters are not doing anything in particular apart from assisting like any other members of the comm. However, in some cases, the GM may wish to set up an adventure either based on the season’s event, or in place of it. In these cases, the player characters are said to be intervening in the seasonal event, and their intervention may affect its outcome. Essentially, the adventure takes the place of the usual test or tests involving the event and the characters’ actions decide its outcome.

Comm Prosperity

Once the event of the season is determined, the comm’s prosperity is tested. This is a measure of the comm’s overall success and survivability. Failure means the comm suffers misfortune and loses Stability. If the test succeeds, the comm continues to do well, at least meeting its essential needs, perhaps even succeeding well enough to apply an advancement to the comm’s Cache score.

Comm Activity

Each season, a comm can also initiate an activity, similar to a character’s action, such as Conflict with another comm or group, Growth to build up the comm, Improvement of one of the comm’s traits, Innovation to add a new focus to a trait, Preparation to add a bonus to the comm’s next prosperity test, or Recovery to restore lost Stability to the comm.

Comm Conditions

Comms can take on certain conditions to deal with a loss of Stability, like characters do to mitigate damage. The comm then needs to recover from the condition using the recovery activity. Conditions are not as necessary for comms to avoid Stability loss, as they tend to be more resilient than individual characters.

The Fifth Season

“Everything changes in a Fifth Season” according to stonelore, and that is true of Seasonal play and events as well. The Game Moderator ultimately decides when a Fifth Season occurs in the context of the game, although there is a guideline for a Fifth Season to begin as a Seasonal Event. During a Fifth Season, the difficulty of a comm’s tests increase, seasonal events differ, and the comm relies upon its Cache for prosperity tests rather than its other traits, and Cache slowly diminishes over the course of the Season. A Fifth Season makes it more difficult for a comm to survive, and to recover from its misfortunes. A comm with a strong Cache score can last through a Fifth Season … if it is not too long.

An Interview with N.K. Jemisin

February 21, 2023/in Green Ronin News /by Chris Pramas

We wanted something special for the last three days of the crowdfunder and here it is: an interview with N.K. Jemisin herself!

Check out the Fifth Season RPG on Backerkit now!

Crowdfunding campaign ends this Thursday! Signed Bookplate Bundles still available!

Q: Roleplaying games and speculative fiction are close cousins. What did you find most intriguing about bringing The Stillness to tabletop RPGs? Do you have any experience with RPGs yourself?

I played a little tabletop back in college — Marvel Superheroes, if I recall, and just a little D&D (back then it was AD&D). My group back then was mostly into adventure with a lot of fighting, which I wasn’t much into, but they were my friends. I had fun with them no matter what or how we were playing. Since then, I’ve been invited to join a couple of groups, but just didn’t have time — juggling two careers doesn’t leave a lot of room for leisure. But since I’ve ratcheted down to just one career, things are better, and I’m gearing up to join a new D&D group now. Also playing around with world concepts for if I decide to try GMing for the first time.

As for bringing the Stillness to tabletop, honestly, I’m still just fascinated by the idea of other people wanting to go to this place where the apocalypse happens every Tuesday! For fun! LOL. But I can’t wait to see people play it.

Q: You incorporated a lot of real-world orogeny, geology, volcanology, and plain physics into your novels. What was the most interesting thing you learned in your research for the Broken Earth?

Mount Rainier. This probably isn’t super interesting to other people, but I constantly see character in concepts and natural forces, maybe because I partially grew up along the Gulf Coast where hurricanes have names, and we speak of them like they’re people… or maybe just because I think like a fantasy writer. I’d been to Seattle before and just thought, “Ooh, such a pretty mountain.” Then I read up on it and realized it’s a Decade Volcano — one of the most potentially destructive mountains in the world. It could wipe out Seattle and Tacoma like that, in a variety of absolutely horrific ways. There are worse volcanic threats out there (there’s a chance the Yellowstone supervolcano could wipe out humanity), but the specific danger of Rainier is its beauty. People want to live near it, and I can’t blame them. I would love to wake up to the sight of that mountain every day — but a population that size in the vicinity of a mountain that terrible is a horror movie waiting to happen.

Nothing but respect for people who choose to live in such places. I get that the ephemerality of it is part of the appeal. I just prefer for my own natural disasters to be slower-moving, and not so apocalyptic.

Green Ronin is based in Seattle so we’re in the blast zone. Lucky us! Nicole, our COO, grew up in Oregon and she remembers the Mount St. Helens eruption vividly.

Q: The Broken Earth Trilogy tells a specific story, but game groups will create their own. What ideas do you think they could explore in the Stillness?

The Stillness is a pretty big world, and there’s lore throughout it that got alluded-to but not shown in the Broken Earth books. I’d love to see people play around with all that hinted-at stuff. What other secrets do the lorists keep behind their black-painted lips, and why must they stay secret? Were there ever expeditions that tried to sail around the great empty ocean that covers half the world, and did they find anything (maybe like an ancient city full of stone eaters) when they did it? You’ve seen some of the ways that terrestrial animals and insects change during a Season, but what about the plants or marine life? If a quiet farming comm discovers a huge and dangerous ancient ruin lurking underneath it, how do they deal with that? How do people have fun in a world that’s constantly on the brink of extinction? There’s lots to explore.

Q: Can you give aspiring Game Moderators a few things to bear in mind when they are making their own stories in The Stillness?

The cultures of the Stillness are different from those of our world in one key way: They understand that rapid adaptation to change is essential for survival. A typical comm’s structure is modular, with every resource — food, weapons, labor, knowledge — meant to be shuffled around as needed in the event of a Season. This means that comms which opt for democracy or consensus at ordinary times turn instantly authoritarian once Seasonal Law I declared. Hoarding or charging money for goods and services within the comm is instantly illegal. Having more children without permission is instantly illegal. A wealthy merchant becomes neither wealthy nor a merchant once the Season comes, because any resources they possess are confiscated for the community pile, and the merchant’s life becomes governed by their caste and its duties.
Every person is trained to expect this modularity from childhood, though some keep the lesson in mind better than others. The formerly-wealthy merchant knows better than to protest if their goods are confiscated — but they might do it anyway, because they’re used to the privilege of wealth. Too much protest means exile. Meanwhile, members of the Strongback caste are always aware they can be exiled if they aren’t willing to work and obey others. The partners of Breeders, if not Breeders themselves, must be prepared to accept non-monogamous behavior and to raise a child which might not be their own.
The people of the Stillness are exactly like us, psychologically — especially in being prone to react irrationally under stress. The onset of a Season is a critical time in which a community’s survival depends wholly on if its Leadership can overcome the natural human tendency to freak the hell out during an emergency. If they fail, the people of a comm could revolt against their Leadership, wasting resources and effort that should be spent on survival on infighting. Comms that do this rarely survive Seasons.
Good Leadership, therefore, requires a balanced approach, discouraging change resistant behavior while not being too heavy-handed. Too much authoritarianism, or totalitarianism, is inadvisable.
Seasonal Law is resource-focused but still explicitly anti-eugenicist. Bigotry, which is known to destroy or weaken communities, is illegal at all times. Disability is not a cause for exile in itself, though a disabled person must find a way to be useful; fortunately there are many necessary tasks that can be done by someone with limited mobility or cognition. Medical care is in a permanent state of emergency triage: those who can be saved more easily are prioritized over those who will need more resources or whose condition is more precarious.
Commless people aren’t all bandits. Many are “free spirits” who can’t or choose not to function within the expected modularity — or who want to develop their own ways to survive a Season. Some of those ways, such as those of the comm of Meov in the books, are viable — though the only way to be sure of viability is to wait for a Season and see.

Q: The Fifth Season RPG will be lavishly illustrated. Will this be the first time (apart from cover art) that readers will get to see visual interpretations of the Broken Earth?

No. The Subterranean Press special editions of the Broken Earth books feature astounding art by Miranda Meeks, and since the books have been published in many other languages, several of the foreign editions have had unique cover art that’s astounding. I also regularly see fanart from my readers that blows me away! But I always love seeing new depictions by skilled artists, and I’m loving what I’ve seen so far from you guys.

Q: We understand that the Broken Earth trilogy has been optioned for a television or streaming series. Can you tell us anything about the progress of that project?

Just that it’s not going to be a TV series anymore, but a feature-length film series; the rights were bought by Sony Tristar. I turned in the first movie script a few months ago. Beyond that, I can’t say, sorry!

No worries, a feature film series is exciting stuff! Thanks for taking the time to talk to us today.

Fifth Season Preview: Character Creation

February 16, 2023/in Green Ronin News /by Steve Kenson

Crowdfunding now on Backerkit!

Once a Fifth Season game group has created their comm (detailed in Fifth Season Preview: Comm Creation) they can get down to creating individual characters. Those familiar with Adventure Game Engine character creation know it often involves choosing a character Background, a Class or Profession, Talents or Specializations, and a Drive or Goals. The Fifth Season RPG is similar in many regards, with a few notable differences. Let’s take a look at the steps of character creation:

Step One: Concept

Come up with the sort of character you’re interested in playing. Talk with the GM and the other players in your group about your character concept and how well it will fit into the kind of game the GM is looking to run, the kind of characters the other players want to create, and the comm you have co-created for them.

What About…?

Orogenes and Stone Eaters? Yes, they’re mentioned in Fifth Season. The Orogene talent allows for the creation of feral orogenes, but there’s no provision to play a Fulcrum-trained blackjacket with one or more rings yet. Likewise, there are no rules yet for playing a Guardian, much less a nonhuman like a Stone Eater. The focus in the core game is on the human inhabitants of comms in the Stillness. Further development of character options will appear in later Fifth Season supplements.

Step Two: Caste

In the society of the Stillness, each person has a role to play in the survival and well-being of their comm. These roles are broadly defined by use-castes, or simply castes: the ways in which people are useful to society. People are generally born into the use-caste of their same-sex parent by default, although it is not unusual for someone to apply to change castes, or to be encouraged to do so, as particular talents or inclinations emerge as they reach adulthood or even later in life.

Fifth Season focused on five of the seven primary use-castes (the other two being Guardian and Orogene), as follows:

Breeders have a bonus to Perception and choose from the Companion, Crafter, and Safeguard specializations.
Innovators have a bonus to Intelligence and choose from the Geomest, Geneer, and Lorist specializations.
Leadership has a bonus to Communication and chooses from the Diplomat, Organizer, or Trader specializations.
Resistants have a bonus to Constitution and choose from the Caregiver, Cultivator, or Stalwart specializations.
Strongbacks have a bonus to Strength and choose from the Guard, Hunter, and Laborer specializations.

Step Three: Abilities & Focuses

All AGE system characters are defined by nine abilities. They’re scored on a numeric scale from –2 (quite poor) to 4 (truly outstanding). A score of 0 is considered average or unremarkable. The abilities are:

Accuracy measures aim and precision, and your ability to hit targets with lighter and ranged weapons.
Communication covers your character’s social skills and ability to deal with others.
Constitution is overall health, fortitude, and resistance to harm, illness, and fatigue.
Dexterity encompasses your character’s agility, hand-eye coordination, and quickness.
Fighting is your character’s ability in close combat with heavier weapons.
Intelligence measures reasoning, memory, problem-solving, and overall knowledge.
Perception is the ability to pick up on and notice things using any of the character’s senses.
Strength is sheer muscle power, from lifting heavy things to feats of athletics.
Willpower measures self-control, discipline, mental fortitude, and confidence.

In this step, you allocate points to your character’s abilities, modified by their caste. You also choose focuses. An ability focus (or just focus for short) is an area of expertise within the broader ability. For example, while Communication determines in general how effective a communicator your character is, the Persuasion focus describes a particular expertise in convincing other people to agree to the character’s proposals.

Step Four: Drive

Your character’s Drive describes what motivates them to act, to say “yes” to an opportunity. Drive gives you cues for action as a player and provides the GM with “hooks” to encourage your character to take action. While some drives are more common for particular castes than others—Leader for Leadership, for example—any drive can be combined with any caste or specialization as the player sees fit. Interpret your character’s drive based on their other traits.

Your Drive provides you with a quality and a downfall, one ability focus, and one talent.

Step Five: Improvement

In this step, round out your character’s traits by improving two of them. You can choose the same option twice, but the benefits don’t stack. So, while you can choose two Ability Improvements, you cannot apply them both to the same ability score.

Ability Improvement: Increase an ability score of your choice by +1. This can increase the ability to a score higher than 3.
Ability Focus: Gain a new ability focus of your choice.
Talent Improvement: Gain the novice degree in a new talent, or improve an existing talent by one degree.

Step Six: Finalize Abilities

Once you have allocated abilities and chosen caste and drive, along with their associated choices, and made your improvements, now it’s time to finalize your character’s abilities. You can make any tweaks or adjustments, shifting an ability point here or there, or changing around some of your focus or talent choices, to get the final set of your character’s abilities.

You also use this step to calculate your character’s secondary abilities like Speed, Defense, Toughness, and Fortune.

Step Seven: Goals

While a character’s drive moves them forward, the character’s goals are what they move toward. Ideally, goals should help to define what is important to your character, and offer the GM inspiration for stories and ways to involve your character in adventures. You’re asked to come up with at least one short-term and one long-term goal for your character.

Step Eight: Relationships

Comms are made up of people, held together by a complex web of relationships: parents and children, siblings and cousins, lovers and spouses, friends and rivals, and more. All of these various relationships define the comm and the place of the individual characters in it. Certain relationships are especially important to characters, and Fifth Season reflects that by giving those relationships a description (the relationship bond) and a numerical value (the relationship intensity).

Your Fifth Season character starts out with an intensity 1 bond with their comm, defined as they see fit, along with additional relationship intensity ranks equal to the character’s Communication ability score, if it is 1 or higher. Relationship bonds can be spent as bonus Stunt Points for actions related to that relationship.

Step Nine: Challenges

As an optional step of character creation, you can define one or more personal challenges for your character. A personal challenge is similar to the kinds of challenges the characters face and overcome in the course of their adventures, but this challenge is both specific to your character and something they carry with them wherever they go. It can show up in the course of the game, by your choice, to challenge your character. A personal challenge can be a physical disability, a psychological difficulty, or a social challenge, as you define it.

Encountering and dealing with a personal challenge in the context of the game provides a bonus to the character: they gain Fortune. The Fortune gained from overcoming personal challenges is temporary, so it can restore lost Fortune, but if it raises the character’s total over their usual Fortune score it only lasts until it is expended, then it is gone.

The key thing about personal challenges is that they arise as challenges only when the player wants. Otherwise, that aspect of the character still exists, it just doesn’t particularly pose a challenge. This allows players to portray characters who have particular qualities without feeling burdened by them, if they don’t want to be, or when they are not in the mood to deal with that particular challenge in game. We don’t always have the option of consenting to challenges in our real lives, which is why it is important to give players that option when it comes to their characters at the game table.

Step Ten: Description

Finally, you take the opportunity to gather up everything you’ve learned about your character during this process and put together a description of them: their name, what they look like, how old they are, what their personality is like, and some of their likes and dislikes. It doesn’t have to be long, just a paragraph or so to briefly introduce others to who the character is, just like you’re describing a character from a favorite book, movie, or television show. In fact, if you like, you can even “cast” an actor or personality in the role of your character and use that to enhance your description!

Next: With the comm and the characters in place, we look at moving the story forward on two different levels of game play.