It’s only the 11th day of Halloween, and we’ve really amplified the creepy for you! As many of you know, we are coordinating two Patreons, the Twilight Accord and Mutants & Masterminds! This spooky collaboration comes as a result of my role as a Captain of the Patreon TTRPG Creators A. Club (The A stands for Accountability). Originally intended as a short-term gathering of TTRPG creators on Patreon, the idea was to gather fresh perspectives from fellow creators, our group hit it off so well that we expanded our meeting time to 90 minutes and we’re still at it 6 months later.
Now, it’s a lot like a weekly gathering of friends, each offering their expertise, coaching, counseling, and creative problem-solving! So you can imagine, when I mentioned the high-level concept of a terrifying TTRPG Creators A. Club collaboration, this crew of RPG enthusiasts were next-level excited!
No Tricks, Only Treats TTRPG Creator’s Ring!
Here’s how it works: Every creator in this group has a free digital treat, and all you need to do is visit, and click! It’s a great way to catch up with some incredible TTRPG talent, some who have been doing this for some time, and some who are just beginning to focus on showcasing their work through Patreon — well, you will see for yourself!
I really wanted to show off each individual contributor to our collaboration – so as you click through to each Patreon for your free treat, take a moment to say hello, check out their work – and did you know you could follow their Patreon content for free?
You should do it! Oh look, here they all are now!
Conflux Creatures Terror Unto Madness: The Book of Aberrations Over 100 pages of improved monsters and new spells for 5e D&D
Everhearth Inn A spooky fantasy-inspired recipe to cook for your next DnD session!
Author’s Note: I pilfered this part from my weekly agenda email to the 72 person of the group
I volunteered to be an Accountability Club captain because I desperately needed to connect with people who understood what a unique proposition it was to operate a Patreon supporting a TTRPG project. More than just “another meeting”, the TTRPG Creators A. Club has quickly become the highlight of my week. The group consists of people from all experience levels across multiple disciplines – and the conversations always lead to interesting insights, as well as practical, material things people can do to take their respective Patreons to the next level.
So a huge shout-out to my A. Club Comrades. You are incredibly talented, wise beyond your years, joyful collaborators, with top tier spoopy content!
Tabletop roleplaying games can give us some funny ideas about languages and linguistics. At least, I know they did for me in some regards. Starting with a certain Popular Fantasy Roleplaying Game comes the notion that player characters are all multi-lingual, speaking three, four—as many as seven or eight languages fluently! This is often compounded with the notion that entire species share the same language, or that there are special languages for fantastic creatures from dragons to elementals to the denizens of different planes of existence.
Later RPGs have taken a more nuanced, and certainly more detailed approach to languages, including various levels of fluency, and things like complex charts showing the relationships between “language families” of earthly or imaginary languages, which may grant some greater understanding or closely-related tongues.
“I’m not sure what you just said, but I don’t care for your tone!” Art by James Ryman
The Modern AGE rules have a somewhat laissez-faire attitude about languages. The sidebar on page 16 of the Basic Rulebooksays characters should “be able to speak, read, and write whatever languages” they “would pick up due to their cultural and social class” suggesting a limit of three. The Linguistic talent in the game handles learning additional languages and requires a fairly significant investment, since talent degrees aren’t easy to come by, and each degree in the talent grants only one additional language. It would take a new specialization to create the true polyglot character who speaks a dozen or more languages.
Fantasy AGE likewise offers a Linguistics talent, for characters truly dedicated to speaking other languages. The game’s ancestries follow the fantasy standard of an ancestral language (all elves speak Elvish, for example) along with a “Common tongue” used and understood by everyone, for the most part.
Mutants & Masterminds treats language fluency as an advantage, one rank grants an additional language the character can speak, but each additional rank doubles the number of languages, so it’s fairly cost effective to create someone who speaks a dozen or more of them. Of course, in M&M, the ability to speak and understand all languages is on the table for just 2 ranks of the Comprehend power, so there isn’t a lot of point in having more than a few ranks in the Languages advantage, other than to represent the character’s own skill and knowledge.
Individual Game Masters have to decide the role languages—particularly unknown languages—will play in their campaigns. In some cases, the language barrier can be an important element of adventures or the setting. Others prefer to generally ignore the problem in order to get on with things; the Threefold setting for Modern AGE, for example, includes magical “universal translators” for characters working for the world-spanning Sodality, so GMs don’t need to worry about whether or not the characters speak any of the local languages—at least not until their translators are lost or stolen! Likewise, the Cosmic Handbook for M&M recommends Comprehend as a “default” power for star-spanning campaigns, unless you want to institute some form of “Galactic Common” that all alien species speak and understand.
When building worlds of your own for RPGs, you might want to give some thought as to how people say things, and what languages they are saying them in.
https://greenronin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Languages.jpg8061259Steve Kensonhttps://greenronin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/RoninBanner_2022_72.pngSteve Kenson2022-10-04 08:35:532022-10-04 09:33:12A Few Words on Languages
After 22 years in business, the Green Ronin warehouse is looking a little crowded. With reprints and new products incoming, it’s time to make more space! These deals are for print products only. With limited stock and priced to clear some pallets, this is a screaming deal (75% off!) you don’t want to miss. With that, we offer you the LAST CHANCE WAREHOUSE SALE!
Please note the sale does not extend to shipping, and shipping fees are determined by the carrier.
https://greenronin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/last-chance-75-off-sale-2022.jpg7221014Troy Hewitthttps://greenronin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/RoninBanner_2022_72.pngTroy Hewitt2022-08-30 08:20:562022-08-30 08:21:28Last Chance Warehouse Sale
In May, Green Ronin Publishing launched its Patreon for Twilight Accord: The Fallen City, a 5e fantasy setting and campaign that centers the experiences of LGBTQ+ heroes and community in that setting. A collaboration between tabletop industry veterans Steve Kenson and Joseph D Carriker Jr., the Patreon is intended to build a collaborative community of supportive patrons with input into the creation and details of this exciting new product.
In celebration of Pride month, Green Ronin Publishing has announced that all funds raised by the Patreon, during the launch and continuing over the course of Pride Month, will be used to hire additional queer creators to infuse Twilight Accord with their creativity and experience. In keeping with the collaborative intent of the project, Green Ronin Publishing will be working with patrons of Twilight Accord to understand their top priorities for additional content: writing, concept art, or concept cartography, and their choices will help guide the allocation of resources towards the hiring of interested creators.
Creators that would like to be involved can email twilightaccord@greenronin.com with their published credits and sample work. LGBTQ+ creators, including LGBTQ+ creators of color, are strongly encouraged to apply and are asked to include details on the aspects of the queer experience they would like to help include in the setting, its culture, and its characters.
Steve Kenson shares: “Everyone playing a fantasy RPG deserves the opportunity to be the hero of their own story. We want to create a setting and series of adventures where queer people of all kinds can do just that.”
Joe Carriker adds: “We’re really excited about this project. In the years I’ve been gaming, we’ve seen more and more games make a point of including queer people. It’s high time that we see some games that don’t just include us, but that are actively about us.”
https://greenronin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/5E_TwilightAccord_Logo_Square_small.jpg10001000Troy Hewitthttps://greenronin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/RoninBanner_2022_72.pngTroy Hewitt2022-06-21 07:24:532022-06-21 07:24:53The Twilight Accord Patreon: Paying It Forward for Pride
So, you may have heard or read about the new Twilight Accord Patreon launched last month to develop a queer-focused 5e fantasy setting and campaign. Given that the majority of the tabletop RPG audience is likely straight (although I’d like to see some proper demographic research, myself) I figured it was a good idea to highlight the “What Is Twilight Accord?” post and its FAQ, particularly the question, “Is this for me, if I’m straight?”
The answer is yes … and no. Okay, it’s complicated, but not that much. Let me explain.
The high concept of Twilight Accord is that the Twilight Advocate, the spirit of the Fallen City in the Gloom, calls out to kindred spirits, namely queer (LGBTQ+) people, who are the ones who have found and followed the Night Road to the city and founded the Twilight Accord. So the default assumption of the setting is that the vast majority of the Accord, and therefore its Champions, the player characters, are queer folk. Our stories are the focus of this campaign.
That doesn’t mean straight (cisgender and heterosexual or “cishet”) people are excluded. As the FAQ points out: “No doubt there are some cishet-folk among the Accord: family members or other loved-ones who accompanied them into the Gloom or otherwise found their way there, but they’re very much among the minority.” So you can use the Twilight Accord as-planned with some straight characters, if you prefer, it’s just not the focus of the setting. (We could talk a lot about how that is essentially the same kind of inclusion queer people experience with most tabletop RPG products that bother to include us, but that would be a whole other article.)
If you’re not looking for a queer-focused narrative, will you get anything out of Twilight Accord or supporting the Patreon? Yes. We already have planned a lot of 5e content for the book, including new subclasses, ancestries, backgrounds, spells, magic items, and creatures, along, of course, with an entire ruined city filled with monsters and challenges to explore. You can use all of this in a Twilight Accord game or in your own campaign setting, as you see fit. We’re playtesting this content at the Counselor and Champion tiers of the Patreon, and encouraging feedback about the design to ensure it’s the best it can be.
If you’re straight, will you be welcome in the Twilight Accord Patreon community? Also yes. We welcome everyone who wants to support and participate in this exploration of new territory. Again, turning to the FAQ: “We welcome everyone’s support and love our allies! There is a place for everyone, even if the focus isn’t necessarily on you. That said, we are not going to tolerate any homophobia, transphobia, sex-shaming, or misogyny on the Patreon (or racism, ablism, or agism for that matter). The reality and personhood of queer people is not ‘up for debate’ in any way, shape, or form, and we will gladly remove anyone who signs up just to stir up trouble.”
Folks who get in on the ground-floor of the Patreon will get access to all of its content, as some older posts may be moved “out of circulation” over time. So if you’re interested in what we’re doing, don’t miss out! Visit the Twilight Accord Patreon, check out the public posts, and sign up if you want to see more. You’ll be most welcome.
https://greenronin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/5E_TwilightAccord_Logo_Square_small.jpg10001000Steve Kensonhttps://greenronin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/RoninBanner_2022_72.pngSteve Kenson2022-06-07 08:01:282022-06-08 13:13:16Straight Talk About Twilight Accord
The guards shifted nervously, coughing a bit, breath fogging in the chill night air. They were all a bit uneasy, and with good reason. One glanced again at the wood piled and arranged in the courtyard, and thought about the hours until dawn.
“Some of them are little more than children,” he announced aloud to no one in particular.
“Then they can repent their ways,” the other guard replied, “and perhaps His Holiness will see fit to spare them, although if you ask me there’s no hope for their sort. Perverts. Unnatural. We’re well rid of them before they corrupt anyone else.” He spat in the dirt in disgust. The first man sighed and shook his head.
“I don’t expect there will be any mercy for any of them,” he said, “repentant or not…unless.”
“Unless what…?”
“Well…” the guard hesitated to go on. “You know. You’ve heard the stories.” That earned him a dismissive snort.
“Just stories. You don’t believe them, do you?”
“I don’t…” he began.
Then there was a deafening sound like thunder and the heavy wooden gates of the keep exploded inward, fragments raining down over the courtyard. The guards who were not knocked down by the blast stood in shock, mouths agape.
Figures appeared in the clearing smoke, wreathed in flames of seven colors that glimmered from their armor and weapons and in the hard glare of their eyes. They were not “just stories.”
“We are of the Accord and we have come for our people,” one of them announced. “Let none who hope to see the dawn stand in our way.”
The battle, if it can be called that, was brief, and so we were freed, and walked the Night Road to Gloamingate, to the promise of hope, freedom, and a home to call our own, if we can claim it—and we will.
Green Ronin publishes a lot of games. It figures: We’re gamers, and we like a lot of games! We also publish material for a number of different game systems. While the Adventure Gaming Engine (AGE) System sees a lot of use these days, and is as close as we get to having a “house system,” Green Ronin also supports the d20-based Mutants & Masterminds, the Chronicle System of Sword Chronicle, and standalone systems like Ork!The Roleplaying Game.
Among all of those game systems, Green Ronin also publishes material compatible with, or based on, the Fifth Edition of the World’s Most Popular Roleplaying Game. We have some experience in that area, having worked directly with Wizards of the Coast on the Out of the Abyss campaign and the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide sourcebook, and having worked with Matthew Mercer on the Tal’dorei sourcebook for Critical Role.
Our 5e products include The Lost Citadel, Book of the Righteous, the 20th anniversary edition of the Death in Freeport adventure, and The Blue Rose Adventurer’s Guide, bringing the romantic fantasy world of Aldea to 5e. We’ve just finished production on a new 5e edition of The Book of Fiends as well, and wanted to look at some of the ways you can mix-and-match our Fifth Edition offerings and use them in your own games. So, let’s take a look!
Blue Rose Adventurer’s Guide
The Blue Rose Adventurer’s Guide is primarily a setting book, in the vein of our work on the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide. It features material on the world of Aldea, particularly the nation of Aldis, the Sovereignty of the Blue Rose, and its surrounding lands. (You can find out much more about Blue Rose and its setting elsewhere on our website.) The goal of the Blue Rose guide was to introduce the world of Aldea to 5e players and provide an additional, alternative setting, rather than an alternate game system.
That said, the book does contain a wealth of game system material to account for the differences between Aldea and various other 5e fantasy settings. In particular, it offers new character ancestries (and its own take on handling ancestry) for the peoples of Aldea. Each character class has a new subclass suited to the setting, and there are unique backgrounds, specific modifications of the magic rules, magic items, and a Corruption system that reflects the power of Shadow, to name a few.
Even if you don’t use Aldea as a setting for your 5e adventures, the game system portions of the book are easy to import to other settings. The lands and peoples of the world of Blue Rose could also be places for plane-hopping characters to visit, or part of some distant land on the far side of the world where they currently adventure.
Book of Fiends
The Book of Fiends is a massive tome of the most vile denizens of the lower planes, not just the familiar demons and devils, but also daemons, qlippoth, Fallen celestials, and more. They range from minor low-level threats to godlike rulers of their own infernal realms and everything in-between. The Book of Fiends is a supplementary catalog of foes for a 5e campaign, especially one focused on fighting the forces of corruption and evil, such as Out of the Abyss, or a campaign like Descent into Avernus where the heroes descend into the lower planes themselves to fight their inhabitants! Who can’t use more fiends as foes?
The Book of Fiends dovetails with our Book of the Righteous in that they share the same basic cosmology. The Book of the Righteous works in conjunction with 5e planar cosmology and mentions the Abyss, Gehenna, Hell, and their various fiendish denizens, while the Book of Fiends details them. So the two books form two halves of the same cosmology for a campaign setting: the mythos and religion of the world and all of the forces of evil aligned against it.
The Book of Fiends connects with Blue Rose’s Aldea: The seven Exarchs, the great daemons of Gehenna, are also known as the Exarchs of Shadow on Aldea. The various daemons can serve as further darkfiends for your Blue Rose games, and you can plunder the dark depths of The Book of Fiends for other foes for your Aldean heroes. Fiends also offers its own Corruption system associated with infernal temptation. Use it in place of the Corruption rules from Blue Rose Adventurer’s Guide, or for a specific kind of corruption associated with the Exarchs and their minions.
The Book of Fiends also comes with a chapter of character options: subclasses, feats, spells, and backgrounds usable in any 5e setting where the forces of evil are abroad. The Blue Rose Adventurer’s Guide specifically points to them as possible options for corrupt and Shadow-aligned characters in that setting.
Book of the Righteous
The Book of the Righteous provides a complete pantheon and cosmology for a 5e fantasy setting, along with numerous interconnected deities, faiths, and religious practices. It’s a fantastic resource to mine for options and inspiration, even if you don’t adopt the entire thing wholesale.
Like Blue Rose Adventurer’s Guide and The Book of Fiends, The Book of the Righteous comes with a hefty rules chapter packed with 5e options: at least one new sub-class for every core character class, a dozen new clerical domains, five new paladin oaths, backgrounds, feats, spells, and magic items. It also has celestial and fey creatures associated with the gods and higher planes. The Blue Rose Adventurer’s Guide notes that many of these game options fit well into the world of Aldea and are quite useful there.
Death in Freeport
The 20th anniversary edition of the adventure Death in Freeport offers a self-contained, low-level 5e adventure set in the independent pirate city of Freeport. Since it is a tiny island nation, Freeport is easy to include in any setting you may wish, or usable as a jumping-off point to any mainland you want the characters to travel towards. Freeport’s temples and churches may be devoted to the pantheon from The Book of the Righteous (that’s deliberately left open for you to decide) and the eldritch horrors lurking in the setting can make good use of material from The Book of Fiends. As The Blue Rose Adventurer’s Guide notes, Freeport could well exist among the Pirate Isles of that setting, bringing all of its unique character along with it.
What’s more, Death in Freeport is not just adventure: It has an appendix with game information on the sinister Serpent People, two new magic items (the staff of defense and the wand of escape), and four new class archetypes: the Valor domain for clerics, the terrifying Buccaneer archetype for fighters, the cunning Alley-Rat archetype for rogues, and the preternatural Serpentkin sorcerous origin. Any of all of these could find use in any 5e campaign.
The Lost Citadel
The Lost Citadeldiffers from Green Ronin’s other 5e offerings, which are designed for use with the core rulebooks, whereas Lost Citadel customizes more of the class, background, and magic options to suit the setting, along with adding some new options. Nevertheless, all of these options are compatible with the core 5e rules, so you can import Lost Citadel character options into other campaigns or settings, if you wish. The same is true of the book’s extensive collection of creatures, especially undead, which can certainly inspire new unliving foes for Blue Rose, for example.
What’s more, Lost Citadel offers another system for measuring supernatural corruption (do we sense a theme here?). Called Woe, it deals with the price of magic and supernatural knowledge and of places given over to the powers of death and despair. It would be suitable for use to model the effects of some domains of the foes from The Book of Fiends or places on Blue Rose’s world of Aldea where the power of Shadow has grown deep, indeed.
This morning we have launched a crowdfunding campaign for a new 5E edition of the Book of Fiends on Game On Tabletop. It’s a great book and we hope you go check out the campaign. If you weren’t gaming in the early 2000s, you may be wondering what the Book of Fiends is exactly and why its return is exciting? Conveniently enough, my last post about the history of the company segues nicely into this, so pull up a chair by the fire and let me tell you a story.
Our first monster book for 3rd Edition. Published in 2001!
Last time I told the tale of Green Ronin’s big launch as a company in the summer of 2000. With the success of Death in Freeport, the immediate course was clear: more Freeport adventures! So we commissioned Terror in Freeport and Madness in Freeport from Rob Toth and Bill Simoni respectively. I would develop those books, but I also wanted to design something else. Since I had written the AD&D Guide to Hell, I decided something infernal would be a great (albeit unofficial) follow-up. And hey, I still had all my research books and notes from the Guide to Hell so even better. The result was Legions of Hell, Green Ronin’s first monster book. It included a bunch of new devils, and my take on the Lords of the Nine Hells. A subtitle on the cover pointed towards the future. It said, “Book of Fiends, Volume One.”
Published in 2002, and written by Erik Mona
Legions of Hell was another huge hit for us, so it didn’t take me long commission Volume Two. Demons were the obvious choice, so I hired my co-worker Erik Mona to write Armies of the Abyss, which came out in 2002. Erik would, of course, go on to great heights as the publisher at Paizo, but at the time he helped run the RPGA at WotC and Armies of the Abyss was his first RPG title credit. He had fun creating new demon lords and added a new type of demon called the qlippoth that would later migrate to Pathfinder via the Open Game License. Erik did a great job and the book was another solid hit for us. So on to Gehenna, right?
Well, yes, eventually but it was a bumpy road to get there. The first person I hired to write Hordes of Gehenna dropped the ball on the project and had to be replaced. That delay proved fateful because in 2003 WotC announced a 3.5 edition of the D&D core rulebooks. 3.0 books were still mostly usable but there were so many small changes in the rules that it became inconvenient to do so. I decided therefore that Hordes of Gehenna would no longer be a stand-alone book. Instead, it would become part of the Book of Fiends, alongside 3.5 updated versions of Legions of Hell and Armies of the Abyss. Those original books had been modest 64-page softbacks. Book of Fiends would be a hearty 224-page hardback.
The Original Book of the Righteous by Aaron Loeb, published in 2002
Three people were key to making the Book of Fiends a reality. First, there was Aaron Loeb, who had written the Book of the Righteous for us in 2002. This is a great book (already updated to 5E a few years back) that presents a complete cosmology, mythology, pantheon, and attendant churches. As part of that Aaron re-concepted Gehenna and that became the basis on which we built Hordes of Gehenna. Aaron’s partner in that was Robert J. Schwalb, who had begun freelancing for us in 2002 with the Unholy Warriors Handbook and would soon come onboard as our d20 line developer. Last but not least, there was Jeremy Crawford, who in addition to editing did much of the 3.5 updating the book required. Jeremy was very good with the rules, and—surprising no one who has worked with him over the years—he went on to work at WotC and is now the Leader Rules Designer for Dungeons & Dragons.
The original Book of Fiends, published in 2003!
Book of Fiends came out in 2003 to critical acclaim and great sales. Turns out GMs really love a book chock full of evil outsiders! The following year the Book of Fiends won an ENnie Award.
Today the Book of Fiends returns on Game On Tabletop!Rob Schwalb, who was on the D&D 5E design team, updated and expanded the book. It’s getting the full color treatment this time with all new art. And if we unlock enough Level Ups (what Game On calls stretch goals) we can add fun PC options, an adventure, and tie-in short stories from Nisaba Press (our fiction imprint). Are you ready for some evil? Because we’re bringing the evil.
https://greenronin.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Book-of-Fiends-social-image_1600x1600.jpg16001600Chris Pramashttps://greenronin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/RoninBanner_2022_72.pngChris Pramas2020-05-19 07:55:422020-05-19 07:57:01The Origin of the Book of Fiends (Ronin Roundtable)
All of us at Green Ronin wish a Happy Tal’Dorei Day to all Critters! To help celebrate, we’ve turned on ordering in our Green Ronin Online Store for the Tal’Dorei Campaign Guide.
https://greenronin.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/GRR3602_81.jpg8381Evan Sasshttps://greenronin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/RoninBanner_2022_72.pngEvan Sass2017-10-13 15:10:462017-10-13 15:10:46Happy Tal’Dorei Day! Campaign Guide Available Now
The most comprehensive pantheon in roleplaying games is back in a new edition for 5E. This massive tome provides more than 20 pick-up-and-play churches, whose organization and beliefs are described in lavish detail. These churches can be used in any campaign setting to bring a whole new level of detail to religious characters. Plus, for those who don’t have a complete cosmology in their game, The Book of the Righteous provides a comprehensive mythology that unifies all of the gods in the book. The original edition of Book of the Righteous was one of the most critically acclaimed books of the d20 era. Now Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition designers Robert J. Schwalb and Rodney Thompson have brought the new edition up to date with the 5E rules and the whole book is in glorious full color. The Book of the Righteous is truly a divine sourcebook like no other.
https://greenronin.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/GRR3601_200.jpg264200Evan Sasshttps://greenronin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/RoninBanner_2022_72.pngEvan Sass2017-07-24 11:44:582017-07-24 11:44:58Pre-Order and PDF: The Book of the Righteous for Fifth Edition
