Tag Archive for: Fifth Edition

Now Kickstarting: The Lost Citadel Post-Apocalyptic RPG

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Please back The Lost Citadel on Kickstarter

Now funding on Kickstarter, The Lost Citadel is a roleplaying game of post-apocalyptic fantasy, with rules adapted from the Fifth Edition of the World’s Most Popular Roleplaying Game. We would appreciate it if you’d check out the campaign and back it if you’re so inclined, and we’d love it if you were to share the above image, and a link to the campaign, on your social media pages.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/504269797/the-lost-citadel-post-apocalyptic-fantasy-roleplay/

Critical Role Release Plan

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Critical Role fans, you have questions about the release of the Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting book. So many questions! Rather than answer hundreds of tweets individually, I’m just going to lay out exactly what is going to happen with the book and when. Gather your party, because we are venturing forth!

The Basics: Critical Role: Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting is a 144-page hardback sourcebook. Matt Mercer wrote it himself, with assistance from James Haeck and development by Green Ronin’s own Joseph Carriker.  The book is full color throughout and features terrific art, as well as an awesome poster map by master cartographer Andy Law. The MSRP is $34.95 for the printed book.

Release Date: The book debuts on August 17 at GenCon. Note that it is NOT a GenCon exclusive! If you can’t make it to the show, you can still get the book from us, your local game retailer, and other sources. It should be in stores in the US and Canada by the end of August, and other countries in September.

Pre-Order and PDF: We will open up pre-orders in mid-July. We have a program called Pre-Order Plus that we use for most of our releases. Here’s how it works. If you order the physical book directly from us or from a participating brick and mortar retail store, you can get a PDF of the book immediately for only $5 more instead of its usual cost of $18.95. You’ll be able to buy the PDF separately at its regular price at this stage if you only want the electronic version.

If your local game store is not part of the Pre-Order Plus program, they can contract our sales team and sign up for the newsletter at this link: https://greenronin.com/retailer-support/.

Note that while we do sell into the book trade—so you can find our games on Amazon and other online vendors—the Pre-Order Plus program is only available through our online store and participating brick and mortar retail stores. (By brick and mortar, we mean stores that have a physical location, not online only sellers.)

GenCon Pickup: You will be able to pre-order the book, take advantage of the Pre-Order Plus program, and pick it up at GenCon. This will guarantee that a book will be waiting for you at our booth on August 17. There will be a special item in our online store for this when we open the pre-orders. Make sure you read the details at that time.

Shipping: We charge the actual costs of shipping. If you live overseas, this can, we know, be expensive. We do sell to international game distributors, so our best advice if shipping is too excessive for a direct order is to try to get your local game store to bring the book in. Stores in other countries can participate in the Pre-Order Plus program as well.

So that’s the skinny! To keep up on news about our Critical Role and other releases, bookmark this website or follow us on Twitter at @GreenRoninPub or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/GreenRonin. Watch for the pre-order going live in mid-July!

Ronin Roundtable: Critical Role – Vestiges of Divergence

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As we’re closing in on the finish line for Critical Role: Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting, I’m putting the finishing touches on the chapter that deals with the heroes of the land. Part and parcel of that hero experience is, of course, magic items, and Tal’Dorei has some very cool things to offer, in the form of Vestiges of Divergence.

For those not in the know, the Vestiges are holdovers from a powerful magical era. When found, their power is subdued, after long years slumbering. But as the hero accomplishes more and greater tasks, the magic of the Vestiges stirs and begins to rise, allowing heroes to advance these items first to awakened status and finally to exalted status through the performance of great feats or personal development.

 

For today’s post, I’m going to share with you the Pyremaul, a massive hammer filled with potent elemental power.

Pyremaul

Weapon (maul), legendary (requires attunement)

Forged from deep red iron, this massive hammer houses an ever-burning gemstone of orange flame. You have a +1 bonus to attack rolls made with this weapon. When you hit with an attack using this weapon, the target takes an additional 1d6 fire damage.

You can choose to have this weapon shed bright light in a 30 foot radius and dim light for an additional 30 feet. If you kill a creature with an attack using this weapon, the corpse is immolated, turning to ash.

Awakened

When a character awakens Pyremaul, apply the following changes to the item’s traits:

  • Increase the bonus to attack rolls to a +2.
  • Increase the additional fire damage inflicted by a hit to 2d6.
  • When you score a critical hit with this weapon, the target must succeed on a DC 15 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone.

Exalted

When a character exalts Pyremaul, apply the following changes to the item’s traits:

  • Increase the bonus to attack rolls to a +3.
  • Increase the additional fire damage inflicted by a hit to 3d6.
  • When you score a critical hit with this weapon, the target must succeed on a DC 17 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone. The target also suffers an additional 3d6 fire damage from the critical hit.

(It should be noted that this item is currently in-development, and this draft may not reflect its final description.)

Press Release: Green Ronin To Publish Lost Citadel Roleplaying Game

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

GREEN RONIN TO PUBLISH LOST CITADEL ROLEPLAYING GAME

COMPANY ACQUIRES EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS, WILL BEGIN WITH 5E ADAPTATION

 

SEATTLE, WA (01/24/17): Green Ronin Publishing announced today that it has signed a licensing agreement to release a tabletop roleplaying game sourcebook based on The Lost Citadel, a transmedia shared world. The dark fantasy RPG will draw players into the setting of Zileksa, a land ravaged by death and undeath, where all that’s left of civilization has gathered behind the walls of the last remaining city of the living. The announcement was made by Chris Pramas, president of Green Ronin, and C.A. Suleiman, editor of The Lost Citadel.

“We are eager to bring a new dark fantasy setting to roleplayers and to offer Fifth Edition gamers a world they haven’t seen before,” said Green Ronin President Chris Pramas, “Lost Citadel is a perfect follow up to our work on Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Dragon Age.”

“I came to know The Lost Citadel as a backer of the fiction anthology,” added Green Ronin General Manager Nicole Lindroos. “As soon as I saw it I recognized the potential inherent in the setting. I couldn’t be more pleased not only to bring Lost Citadel to roleplaying, but to have C.A. Suleiman himself on board as developer.”

“Since the Lost Citadel project went live, people have been asking about when it would come to gaming, and I’m excited to tell them that the moment has arrived,” said Suleiman. “As both a dark fantasy setting and a concept that’s expressly inclusive of women, I can’t think of a better fit for The Lost Citadel than Green Ronin, publisher of A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying and the Blue Rose roleplaying game. If their track record is any indicator, this could be the start of something big.”

Work is now underway on the first book, Lost Citadel Roleplaying, which introduces the setting and establishes its core rules and themes. It is scheduled for release in Winter 2018. All books in the series will use the Fifth Edition rules, but plans are in the works to offer fans of other popular RPG systems the means to play Lost Citadel games using those systems, too.

About Green Ronin Publishing

Green Ronin Publishing is a Seattle-based company dedicated to the art of great games. Since the year 2000 Green Ronin has established a reputation for quality and innovation that is second to none, publishing such roleplaying game hits as Dragon Age, A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying, and Mutants & Masterminds, and winning over 40 awards for excellence. For an unprecedented three years running, Green Ronin won the prestigious GenCon & ENWorld Award for Best Publisher.

About The Lost Citadel

The Lost Citadel™ is a transmedia experiment that harnesses the talents of writers, artists, musicians, and more, in a bid to explore the themes and aesthetics of a shared world. Founded in 2012 by C.A. Suleiman, Ari Marmell, and Jaym Gates, the project launched online and came to Kickstarter soon after, successfully funding the creation of an anthology of short fiction called Tales of the Lost Citadel, which featured the talents of a cast of veteran dark fantasy authors.

Contact Green Ronin Publishing

Nicole Lindroos
General Manager
nicole@greenronin.com
https://greenronin.com/

 

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Download a PDF of this press release

Tales of the Lost Citadel cover image:

Ronin Roundtable: New Year’s Message 2017

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New Year’s Message 2017

Welcome to the new year, my friends and fellow gamers! Here at Green Ronin we have been rousing ourselves from our holiday torpor and getting ramped up for 2017. As long time fans know, I traditionally write a message in January to discuss what we have coming up in the new year. And that is true but I’m going to do it a little differently this year. Today I will talk about what we have coming your way through the Spring, then in June I will do a second one of these that covers the rest of the year. So let’s get to it!

New Faces

In December Crystal Frasier came onboard as our new Mutants & Masterminds developer. She introduced herself in a previous Ronin Round Table, which you can read here if you’d like to learn more about her. We are confident that Mutants & Masterminds is in great hands with Crystal.

Today I’d like to welcome another new Ronin to the ranks: Malcolm Sheppard. He is a 17 year veteran of the game industry who has done a boatload of work for White Wolf and Onyx Path, amongst others. Malcolm will be doing design and development work for us on a variety of lines. You can think of him as a sort of developer-at-large. He’ll be working on Adventure Game Engine (AGE) games for sure, as well as some other projects you’ll hear more about later. Please help me welcome Malcolm to Team Ronin!

Atlas of Earth-Prime: Now Pre-OrderingMutants & Masterminds

We are kicking off the year with a major release for Mutants & Masterminds: the Atlas of Earth-Prime. You’ve seen parts of this setting before in Emerald City, the Cosmic Handbook, Hero High, and many other Mutants & Masterminds books, but now Earth-Prime is getting full campaign setting treatment. The Atlas of Earth-Prime releases in just two weeks. You can still get in on the pre-order now if you are quick about it.

In the Spring we’ll be following that up with Freedom City. This was the original campaign setting for the Mutants & Masterminds RPG going back to 2003. The new book brings Freedom City fully into Third Edition, and creates a triumvirate of super power with Emerald City and the Atlas of Earth-Prime!

AGE Games

Blue Rose the AGE RPG of Romantic FantasyThe big Adventure Game Engine excitement for the first half of the year is the release of Blue Rose, our RPG of Romantic Fantasy, in February. Blue Rose was our most successful Kickstarter to date, and we’re delighted to get this book out to backers and then released to the general public. The BackerKit went live over the weekend. While we typically do pre-orders through our online store, with Blue Rose we’re trying out BackerKit for that. If you didn’t back the Kickstarter, you can pre-order now at this link . You’ll note some follow up releases on the BackerKit page. We’re making Blue Rose dice with Q Workshop, Blue Rose conviction Tokens with Campaign Coins, and then an adventure anthology called Six of Swords. Those should all come out in the Spring.

For Fantasy AGE itself we’ve got Titansgrave: The World of Valkana coming in the Spring. This is a full campaign setting book that greatly expands the information in Titansgrave: Ashes of Valkana. A lot of stuff that was only hinted at in the show will be revealed in Titansgrave: The World of Valkana!

In other Fantasy AGE news, we’ll be creating a community content program for the game in conjunction with OneBookShelf (the parent company of RPGNow and DriveThruRPG). People have been asking us if they can publish Fantasy AGE content since the game came out and soon that will be possible. OneBookShelf already runs several of these programs, for games like D&D and the Cypher System. Ours will be similar to these but not identical. For starters the products you can do will be limited to settings and adventures because that is the support Fantasy AGE needs most right now. There will be more info about the program and how it all works when we launch it. That should happen in a couple of months.

Freeport Bestiary for the Pathfinder RPGFreeport and Pathfinder

Our big Pathfinder release this Spring is the Freeport Bestiary. The City of Adventure hasn’t had a monster book since Creatures of Freeport in 2004. The Freeport Bestiary brings together the setting’s many monsters and a bunch of new ones in a beautiful full color hardback. Meanwhile, the Return to Freeport adventure series continues. We’ve released three of these PDFs so far. The remaining three will follow over the next few months and then we’ll collect them all together for a printed book in June.

D&D 5E

You may recall that we worked with Wizards of the Coast to create two D&D books: Out of the Abyss and the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide. Now we’re following those up with D&D books of our own. The first is Book of the Righteous, which presents a fully detailed mythology and pantheon you can use in your campaigns. The original edition of Book of the Righteous was our most critically-acclaimed book in the d20 era. We did a Kickstarter for a new 5E version last year and it should be out in May. As with Blue Rose, Book of the Righteous will have a general release after books ship to Kickstarter backers.

I’m going to make an exception and discuss one Summer release because I know I’d get pilloried if I didn’t mention it. Of course I’m talking about Critical Role! We had originally intended to release this in the Spring but we’ve scheduled it for Gen Con instead. This is Gen Con’s 50th anniversary (and my 28th Gen Con!). We wanted a big marquee release for the show and the Critical Role: Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting book is a perfect fit. We want to make this a real event and hope to have the cast out to Gen Con again.

Love 2 Hate

Towards the end of last year we released Love 2 Hate: Politics, the first expansion for the game. We are following that up in April with Love 2 Hate: Comics. Both expansions have 108 cards. You can mix them in with the core game, or play with them on their own for a more themed experience.

Dragon Age and SIFRP

We have Dragon Age and A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying books in development but licensed game lines require approvals and how long those take can vary quite a bit. It could be one week or three months depending. So don’t worry, books are coming. We’ve just decided to wait until everything is approved before we make formal announcements about their release.

PDF Support

We have a variety of PDF releases planned to support our various lines. We have more Fantasy AGE Encounters and short Titansgrave adventures coming for Fantasy AGE, as well as the Short Cuts series for Pathfinder. We’ll also be continuing our series of Chronicle System PDFs, which provide non-canon rules support for A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying. In the past year we’ve released rules for magic (Chronicle of Sorcery) and gunpowder/firearms (Spark to Powder), for example.

Chronicle System: Spark to Powder (PDF)

Chronicle of Sorcery (PDF)

Conventions

As a company Gen Con is, of course, our biggest show. Last year we had a room dedicated to Green Ronin games for the whole convention and that was great. We’re doing it again this year, so if you’d like to run games for us please contact Donna. If you run enough games, we’ll cover your badge and even subsidize your hotel room.

Donna and Barry also run OrcaCon in Everett, WA (just north of Seattle). OrcaCon is happening this coming weekend, so come on out if you’re in the area. It’s the unofficial Green Ronin convention and most of our staff will be there. We’ve got folks running games and giving seminars, though personally I just want to play some games this year!

Green Ronin is once again a sponsor of the JoCo Cruise and Nicole and I will be on onboard. Haven’t heard of the JoCo Cruise? Well, imagine a convention on a ship and you’ve got a pretty good idea, except it also includes music, comedy, and more. If it’s nerdy, it’s probably happening on the ship! There are still cabins available (the cruise is in March) and this year we have the entire ship to ourselves. Should be a great time.

We’ll also be attending various trade shows, like GTS, the Alliance Open House, and the ACD Gamesday. If you are a game retailer, come see us!

More to Come!

So that’s what we have coming the first half of the year. We also have some exciting news to share in the coming months. We’ll be announcing soon a new card game we’re bringing to Kickstarter in April and a new campaign setting for D&D 5E. We’ve licensed a comic book for RPG treatment. We’ve also got another AGE game in development, as well as Ork, Second Edition. Following us on Twitter (we’re @GreenRoninPub) is probably the best way to keep up with our announcements or just bookmark our website.

This is Green Ronin’s 17th year in business. Thank you for your continued support over the years. I started the company as a side project and it’s become so much more than that thanks to you. Come back in June when I reveal our Summer and Winter plans. Until then, game on!

Chris Pramas

Ronin Roundtable: GenCon GMing for Green Ronin

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GR-Gameroom1If you are a publisher, you of course want people to have the opportunity to play your games at GenCon. You can run demos at your booth but the exhibit hall is no place for long form RPG adventures (it’s super loud and booth space is limited). Those are better handled as scheduled events. Finding good and reliable game masters for your RPGs can be challenging though. In past years we’ve had mixed success with our GenCon events. What I really wanted was a dedicated area filled with Green Ronin games. To get that, you have to have a certain number of events. Coordinating that is a job in itself.

Enter Donna Prior, Green Ronin’s events manager. I told her what I wanted and wow, did she deliver. We had over 90 scheduled events this year and GenCon gave us a dedicated room for them on the second floor of the convention center. Going into that room and seeing tables full of gamers playing Fantasy AGE, Dragon Age, Mutants & Masterminds, and A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying was amazing. Read more →

[Updated] Ronin Roundtable: Now Kickstarting! Book of the Righteous for D&D 5E

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UPDATE:

The Book of the Righteous Kickstarter campaign is now live, so please check it out, and give us whatever support you can. Thank you!

BotR

As fans of Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition no doubt know, Green Ronin worked with Wizards of the Coast last year to create two books for the official game line: the super adventure Out of the Abyss and the sourcebook Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide. This was a great opportunity for Green Ronin and gave us important experience with the 5E rules. When our partnership with Wizards of the Coast was announced, people wondered if we’d be doing more 5E books on our own. Green Ronin had made its name publishing 3E material as one of the first d20 companies back in 2000 after all. And my own history as a designer stretches back to Second Edition with books like Guide to Hell and Slavers. We decided to wait until WotC had announced the licensing arrangements for 5E though, and a couple of months ago they did just that.

I’m now happy to announce that we will indeed be doing 5E material and we’re going to start by revisiting one of the most critically acclaimed books we published during the d20 era: The Book of the Righteous by Aaron Loeb. Aaron texted me some months ago and asked, “Why isn’t there a 5E version Book of the Righteous?” I told him that I fully intended to make one if the licensing situation clarified. It did and now here we are!

Later this month we’ll be launching a Kickstarter for a new edition of this classic book. The mechanics will be fully revised for the 5E rules. You may have heard of the person designing the new rules material: one Robert J. Schwalb. Rob not only worked as our d20 developer for many years, but also went on to work for Wizards of the Coast and was on the design team for D&D 5E. Safe to say that the mechanics are in good hands with Rob and we’re always delighted to get to work with him again.

So what is Book of the Righteous? Simply put, one of the most comprehensive pantheons ever seen in roleplaying games. It presents more than 20 pick-up-and-play churches corresponding to gods that feature in most fantasy campaigns (god of war, god of justice, etc.). Each church features lavish detail, including in-depth information on its clerics, holy orders, dogma, prayers, and rituals. These churches can be used in any campaign to bring a whole new level of detail to the 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. That mythology, and its corresponding cosmology, is not tied to an existing campaign setting, making it as portable and useful as our long running Freeport series. If you want in-depth religions for your campaign, The Book of the Righteous is for you.

I’m excited to bring back the Book of the Righteous. It’s one of my favorite things that we’ve ever published and the original has been out of print for a long time now. I hope 5E fans embrace it the way 3E fans did before them. I’ll also be forthright in saying that this Kickstarter is a test of the 5E market for us. If the Book of the Righteous Kickstarter does well, that will tell us that there is demand for 5E material from Green Ronin. If you want to see more of that, back it!

Chris Pramas
Green Ronin