Fantasy AGE 2nd Edition Preview: Magic

Fantasy AGE’s magic system is getting a bit of a polish for the new edition. The fundamental rules are the same, but there are more spells and options for spellcasting characters. This preview is going to be a bit more straightforward, as we’ve made various adjustments across other AGE books, and took those efforts and […]

Fantasy AGE Core Rulebook

Fantasy AGE 2nd Edition Preview: The Latest in AGE-ology

This time around we’ll talk about some of the rules that are new to the 2nd edition of Fantasy AGE. As some of you may know, we’ve devised new rules across multiple Adventure Game Engine lines, including Modern AGE, Blue Rose, Cthulhu Awakens, and The Expanse. Many of these rules could be ported to Fantasy […]

Fantasy AGE 2nd Edition Combat Preview: Let’s You and Them Fight

What’s combat like in the new edition of Fantasy AGE? First of all, if you’ve played Fantasy AGE before, or any other AGE game, the basic procedure is the same: Roll initiative and round by round, take a major and minor action, or two minor actions. You attack using an ability + focus associated with […]

Fifth Season Preview: When Are We?

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 […]

Fifth Season Preview: Game Play

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 […]

An Interview with N.K. Jemisin

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

Fifth Season Preview: Character Creation

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 […]

Fantasy AGE 2nd Edition Preview: Advancements – and Damage!

Fantasy AGE’s new edition does its best to strike a balance between keeping the game familiar—so familiar that many elements from the old edition work with little to no adjustments—and making improvements in all areas. One of those improvements was giving characters more ways to distinguish themselves from each other right from the beginning of […]

Fifth Season Preview: Comm Creation

While the freely available Fifth Season Quick-start provides a substantial “test-drive” of the Fifth Season RPG (now crowd-funding on Backerkit) the Quick-start necessarily leaves out some things in the interests of space and getting folks up-and-playing the game as quickly as possible. For those interested in the Fifth Season RPG, we’re going to take a […]

Fantasy AGE 2nd Edition Preview: Staying Classy

Last time around we chatted about ancestries in the new edition of Fantasy AGE, which is just going through final production tweaking ahead of its PDF and print preorder release—soon! This time, let’s talk about classes Four Classes? We took a long time to get the new edition of Fantasy AGE together, and people wondered […]

Fantasy AGE 2nd Edition Preview: Ancestries

Fantasy AGE’s new edition is coming soon—and we’ve been remiss when it comes to telling you about it! If you didn’t get involved in playtesting, you may not be aware of some of the revisions in store. One of those is revised and expanded ancestries. Let’s talk about it. Ancestries? In the last edition of […]

The Fifth Season RPG on Backerkit is Live!

Join us for a special livestream with the developers and designers of The Fifth Season RPG!   The Fifth Season Roleplaying Game, now crowdfunding on Backerkit, is designed for you to play out adventures and stories set in the world described in the Broken Earth trilogy of novels by N.K. Jemisin—a world where constant and unstable […]

Fantasy AGE Core Rulebook

Fantasy AGE 2nd Edition Coming in February

If you are looking for a new fantasy roleplaying game, your timing couldn’t be better because the Fantasy AGE Core Rulebook is almost here! It will be available as a PDF and go up for print pre-order next month. With our Pre-Order Plus Program, you can add the PDF for only $5 more when you […]

The AGE System is a Map

Nothing quite starts off a new year like a cryptic blog post title, so here we go! Seriously though, I’d like to chat about how I feel about what the Adventure Game Engine is as it now powers a wider array of games than ever: Fantasy AGE, Modern AGE, Blue Rose, The Expanse, Cthulhu Awakens, […]

Fifth Season Crowdfunding on Backerkit

We’ve got some exciting news today! The crowdfunder for The Fifth Season RPG, based on N.K. Jemisin’s award-winning Broken Earth Trilogy, launches on January 24. Click here to visit the landing page on Crowdfunding by BackerKit, where you can sign up to be notified when the game goes live. You will also get a direct […]

Click for Initiative! Roll20 updates

Hey folks, Jonesy here with some exciting Roll20 updates! We are happy to announce there is now an official Fantasy AGE character sheet on Roll20. A few weeks back we did a soft rollout of the sheet to get some initial user feedback. Since then, we have addressed any critical issues, as well as some […]

The 3rd Era Mega – Bundle

I started Green Ronin in 2000, so almost 23 years ago now. Our first release was Ork! The Roleplaying Game, a beer and pretzels RPG I designed with Todd Miller (now in its 2nd edition). A month later we debuted our second release at GenCon, an adventure I wrote called Death in Freeport. This was […]

Terror From The Skies!

It’s anything but smooth sailing when a powerful storm strands an Atlantean diplomat on the surface world. With negotiations breaking down and a missing princess, it’s up to our heroes to find the source of this mysterious maelstrom and stop the Terror From the Skies! This is a Freedom City-based adventure for a team of […]

Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza

Interview with author Aaron Rosenberg

Earlier this week we shared the interview with Richard Lee Byers who wrote part one of the Arcane Secrets Duology, and now we’re back with Aaron Rosenberg, author of part two, Lost and Never Found! Tell us a bit about yourself and your work prior to this novel. Hm, okay, the short version, then. Born […]

Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza

Interview with author Richard Lee Byers

As you may already know, our current Kickstarter campaign for the Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza, also features two brand-new novels set in the world of Earth-Prime. Recently we had a chance to catch up with Richard Lee Byers, author of the first book in the Arcane Secrets Duology, The Doom That Came To San […]

Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza

Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza!

The Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza is now funding on Kickstarter! You can help us get long-demanded M&M 3E books back in print and pick up two brand new Earth-Prime novels while you’re at it! Mutants & Masterminds fans, it’s time to get many of our Third Edition titles back in print and to do […]

Mutants & Masterminds Gadget Guides

Gadget Guides: The Right Tool for the Job

You can tell that Power Profiles was written and produced serially, because we included “Armor Powers” pretty early on: powered armor is a common type of super-power in the comics, and it starts with “A” so it was right up-front on the list of power themes. However, it quickly became apparent that if we were […]

Mutants & Masterminds Power Profiles

Power Profiles: Giving You the Power

Used copies of Power Profiles have been selling for hundreds of dollars on auction sites. On the one hand, that’s flattering; it’s nice to have a book you wrote be in that kind of demand. On the other hand, it’s frustrating, because Power Profiles was meant to be the kind of useful resource every Mutants […]

Cthulhu Awakens: On Kickstarter Now

The Cthulhu Awakens BackerKit…Awakens. Metaphorically.

Cthulhu awakens literally, of course. In what seems like years ago due to pandemic and post-pandemic time dilation effects, but was actually through this past March, we ran our Kickstarter for Cthulhu Awakens, an AGE system game covering Cthulhu Mythos horror from the early years of the last century to the present: a period we […]

Patreon TTRPG Halloween Collaboration “All Treats, No Tricks” – Free TTRPG Downloads!

Hello fiends! 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 Few Words on Languages

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 […]

The Guide to Starhaven for Mutants & Masterminds

Bite-Sized Siege of Starhaven

Editor’s Note: This Ronin Roundtable is intended as advice for GM’s of Mutants & Masterminds, and it contains a few spoilers for would-be heroes in the Siege of Starhaven adventure.   Hello heroes! It’s great to be chatting with you all again after the spectacular extravaganza that was Gen Con. It was my first time […]

The M&M PDF Mega-Bundle

Where do I begin to tell you about how awesome the new M&M PDF Mega-Bundle offer from Green Ronin is…? Ah, yes—at the beginning! That’s certainly fitting, since the Mega-Bundle goes all the way back to the beginning of Mutants & Masterminds: with its first edition in 2002. (Have we mentioned this is the 20th […]

Last Chance Warehouse Sale

  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. […]

Wanted: Bounty Hunters – The Expanse RPG

Coming soon to the Green Ronin Online Store and DrivethruRPG, Bounty Hunters kicks off the new Trades of the Expanse PDF series of short, well, expansions for The Expanse RPG, looking at different trades and professions in the setting: how to create characters practicing that trade, game systems for handling their jobs, and adventure hooks […]

Visit Green Ronin at Booth 101, Gen Con Indy 2022

Gen Con Indy 2022

The Green Ronin Convention Crew reports from Indianapolis that Gen Con is going well! Alex and Jonesy are running sold-out games, and some products are already sold out as well. Here is a view, care of Disembodied Troy, of what’s for sale at Booth 101. Here’s a view from inside the dealer hall at Gen […]

The Guide to Starhaven for Mutants & Masterminds

A Haven in the Stars

It’s all Alex Thomas’s fault. We said so on Mutants & Masterminds Monday. Alex wanted to run a streaming game for Team M&M and asked “so what else do we know about this Starhaven place mentioned in The Cosmic Handbook?” To which Crystal Fraiser and I said, “Nothing.” The paragraph or so of info about […]

Gen Con ®

Gen Con Events!

Hello heroes! We are running some events at Gen Con this year! We are so excited for the chance to play with all of you. To help you find us, I have compiled this rough schedule of our events so you can come play with us at the con. I know our events are sold […]

Modern AGE, Four Years On: Modern Adventures

In my last two articles I talked about where the Modern AGE line currently stands with its core, setting-agnostic books, used to customize the game as you please, and its published settings, from sketches to two full-blown game settings: The World of Lazarus and Threefold. However, I ran long on the second article and didn’t […]

Modern AGE, Four Years On: Our Modern Worlds

In my last article, I talked about the state of the Modern AGE line as we move into its fifth year. I started out by dividing the line into two loose categories and exploring the first, of “core” book releases. While Modern AGE is completely playable with the Modern AGE Basic Rulebook, the other releases […]

Modern AGE, Four Years On: The Creative Core

Modern AGE is four years old! It was released back in June 2018, ahead of its formal debut at Gencon of that year. Building on the ideas of Fantasy AGE, Modern AGE was designed to work within the 200+ year span of the “modern era,” up to the near future. This was a bigger challenge […]

Six of Cups for Blue Rose AGE: The Storm of the Century and Other Stories

Six of Cups is Blue Rose’s second anthology of adventures (the first was, of course, Six of Swords). Of course, at center, this book is about providing a set of interesting, self-contained adventures for Blue Rose campaigns. Perhaps your group will play Sovereign’s Finest, traveling the lands, playing through all of these. Or, one or […]

Location, Location, Location

Add at least two dozen “locations” to that and you start to get the concept and usefulness of Danger Zones for the Mutants & Masterminds Superhero RPG. The sourcebook, a compilation and expansion of our long-running series of PDF products, takes a look at an oft-neglected element of superhero adventure creation. You guessed it: location. […]

The Twilight Accord Patreon: Paying It Forward for Pride

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 […]

Straight Talk About Twilight Accord

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 […]

Visit Green Roinin at Origins Game Fair 2022, booth 316!

Play M&M with One of the Developers at Origins!

Hello heroes! Origins event registration is currently open and I am deep in final preparation for my events at the con. I wanted to share my schedule here in case any members of our Green Ronin community wanted to share a table with me in June. I’m running a ton of M&M events spanning Earth-Prime, […]

Building Better Benefits

Hello heroes! I hope you’re having a great day out there in gamer land. Today I want to talk about one of my favorite advantages in Mutants & Masterminds. It’s an advantage that doesn’t immediately pop off the page during character creation, but it is perhaps the most flexible advantage. One that I find offers […]

The 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 […]

Secrets of Lemuria

<incoming transmission>   <handshake accepted… decryption protocol required>   <decryption completed>   “It’s been a long journey to the Ring gate and your final destination: Medina Station. Some weeks ago, you were all hired by an independent journalist, Sangra Velazquez, to escort him to a meeting on Medina with explorer/scientist Dr. Carly Toor. Sangra has […]

Neon Shadows

TL;DR – So can I use Cyberpunk Slice with Modern AGE to (ahem) run an urban fantasy cyberpunk game? YES! Grab both books (and maybe Modern AGE Companion while you’re at it) and you’ll rock it! With the release of Cyberpunk Slice for Modern AGE, AGE System players have a new resource for creating campaigns […]

A Slice of Cyberpunk Temptation, Coming for Modern AGE

Cyberpunk is one of the most popular genres in roleplaying games. Sitting as it does between the modern era and classic spaceships and aliens SF (though some cyberpunk, such as Schismatrix and Altered Carbon, incorporate those elements too), it’s a natural fit for Modern AGE. I was hesitant to add cyberpunk to Modern AGE because […]

Back Into The Expanse: Worlds and Systems

Some of you may have seen the recent actual play of Cthulhu Awakens that I ran in conjunction with the Kickstarter. I really enjoyed running the game, but after that brief foray into the realms of eldritch horror, I’m excited to say that it’s time for me to get back to The Expanse! During my […]

Beyond the Ring: Available Now

The ring gates have opened up opportunities on 1300 worlds for scientists, adventurers, explorers, and colonists. Royal Charter Energy is seeking brave and bold individuals of many diverse backgrounds for colony and mining operations beyond the rings. Be the first to set foot on a new world. Make new discoveries. Explore. RCE is currently hiring […]

Eldritch Texts in Cthulhu Awakens

  As we noted in our update about powers and eldritch workings, anyone can “cast a spell” in Cthulhu Awakens as long as they have a text to work from that contains the proper instructions rendered in a language they can understand. This of course leads us to the question of what these references are, […]

Eldritch Workings and the Powers of Cthulhu Awakens

  Cthulhu Awakens provides three options for characters seeking extraordinary powers. First, the Inhuman Legacy talent represents individuals who discover they’ve inherited certain strange characteristics. They might be related to ghouls, Deep Ones, or some other weird lineage. Second, some humans and other entities possess psychic disciplines, giving them the ability to alter other minds […]

Secret History in Cthulhu Awakens

In expanding the source material to cover the Weird Century, Cthulhu Awakens presents a world with a secret history, where the Mythos is never acknowledged in public life, but still represents a pervasive, dangerous influence. This kind of thing isn’t at all unusual for horror and urban fantasy—it’s hard to keep the world recognizable and […]

The Weird Century

The key setting concept of Cthulhu Awakens is the Weird Century, a rough period from the 1920s to the present characterized by rising Mythos activity. Isolated cults such as the Esoteric Order of Dagon become worldwide movements powered by advances in technology and global integration. Conspiracies attain greater sophistication and infiltrate governments, and governments themselves […]

Bonds: An AGE Mechanic Evolved

If you’re familiar with Blue Rose or Modern AGE, you’ve come across Relationships: a system that provides mechanical benefits based on your character’s powerful feelings for another person, whether it’s love, friendship, professional admiration—or deadly enmity. Relationships form the seeds of Bonds, a generalized mechanic used in Cthulhu Awakens that among other things, is used […]

Alienation: A Mind Adapted to the Unknown

Contrary to popular belief, encountering Mythos entities, reading texts that convincingly upend the supposed laws of reality, confronting the dark miracles of sorcery, or witnessing the dark miracles of alien gods do not drive you mad—at least, not in the conventional sense. “Madness” is used as a casual term for mental illness, a phenomenon that […]

Cthulhu Awakens Game Master’s Kit!

This morning we are pleased to announce that we will be making a Game Master’s Kit for Cthulhu Awakens! The Cthulhu Awakens Game Master’s Kit is a collection of resources that help you smoothly deliver terror and adventure to your players. It provides a sturdy Game Master’s screen that displays stunts and other essential Cthulhu Awakens information at a glance–and it keeps […]

The Cthulhu Awakens Menagerie

Cthulhu Awakens is a game of fear and weirdness, and that includes the people you meet, from mortal conspirators to otherworldly monsters. I thought folks might like to see all the listings with full game statistics provided in Chapter 9 of the book. Mundane Creatures: Entries that might exist even in a world without the […]

Cthulhu Awakens With Modern AGE

As part of the AGE System family of games, Cthulhu Awakens is substantially compatible with Modern AGE, our multi-genre modern era RPG. In fact, Cthulhu Awakens was originally designed as a Modern AGE supplement, but eventually merited being broken out into a dedicated game. Nevertheless, the two games are similar enough that we’ve offered Modern AGE books as part of the campaign, because it’s […]

The Expanse Meets Cthulhu Awakens!

The Kickstarter for Cthulhu Awakens, which brings cosmic horror from the unimaginable past, through the 1920s, and into the 21st Century, is now live! Both The Expanse RPG and Cthulhu Awakens are powered by AGE: the Adventure Game Engine, which opens new realms of possibility for both universes. The stars have truly aligned…. Part of the appeal of The Expanse are the elements of horror carefully […]

Weirdness Overflowing: Cults of the Mythos

  As mentioned in our last update on the subject, Weirdness Overflowing is a PDF supplement that grows with the campaign, adding new chapters as we go. The first chapter, which qualified backers will be receiving, since we have unlocked the first Weirdness Overflowing stretch goal, is Cults of the Mythos. This is exactly the kind of thing suited for an […]

The Gregarian – Cthulhu Awakens Entity Preview

When insects and worms feast on the remains of certain psychics, sorcerers, and certain strong-willed individuals, they sometimes copy the residue of that individual’s personality, and a Gregarian is born. These flesh-eaters develop a collective will, and even acquire some of the deceased’s knowledge. Here are the Cthulhu Awakens statistics for these entities. Gregarian Abilities […]

Blue Rose Meets Cthulhu Awakens!

What does Cthulhu Awakens have to offer players and Narrators of Blue Rose? A great deal, as it turns out, even if you don’t want Outer Gods and Great Old Ones threatening the world of Aldea. Let’s look at some of the possibilities: Bonds While Blue Rose has Relationships, Cthulhu Awakens has Bonds, a development […]

Added Ancestries for the Blue Rose Adventurer’s Guide

Other Fantasy Folk for Aldea The Blue Rose Adventurer’s Guide describes the romantic fantasy world of Aldea for Fifth Edition fantasy roleplaying. Aldea is a bit different from some fantasy settings, including the ancestry of its people: the Adventurer’s Guide describes the humans, night people, sea-folk, vata, and the rhydan (psychic awakened animals) of the […]

5E Jamboree!

Mix-and-Match Green Ronin’s 5e Fantasy Offerings 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 […]

Cthulhu Awakens: On Kickstarter Now

Press Release: Cthulhu Awakens Kickstarter is Live!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 02/15/2022 The Cthulhu Awakens RPG Kickstarter is Now Live!   Seattle, WA: Green Ronin Publishing is pleased to announce that the Cthulhu Awakens RPG Kickstarter, first revealed last month, launched today and its campaign will be live until March 23. Cthulhu Awakens is a complete roleplaying game where a diverse set of […]

Running a Shared Universe: Road Maps and Sandboxes

Hello heroes! I hope the multiverse is treating you well today. As some of you may know, in addition to working on Mutants & Masterminds here at Green Ronin, I run my own streaming network The Untold Stories Project. USP is something I started a couple of years ago with some friends of mine who […]

Mutants & Masterminds Deluxe Gamemaster's Guide

Synopsis Based One Shot Design

Hello heroes! Hope you’re having a great day out there in gamer land. As you may know, event submission is open for a few major conventions happening later this year, so I imagine quite a few of you are starting to put together the wonderful games you’re going to run this summer. I got my […]

The Cthulhu Awakens FAQ, Version 0.5

As we recently announced, we’re making a new standalone AGE System game, Cthulhu Awakens, which will start crowdfunding over at Kickstarter on February 15, 2022. Go here to sign up for alerts. But one of the challenges of the press release format is that we have just a page to present a mixture of high […]

Green Ronin Publishing Announces Cthulhu Awakens RPG Kickstarter

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 01/19/2022 Green Ronin Publishing Announces Cthulhu Awakens RPG Kickstarter Seattle, WA: Green Ronin Publishing is proud to announce that its latest AGE System roleplaying game, Cthulhu Awakens, will begin crowdfunding on Kickstarter on February 15, 2022. Cthulhu Awakens is a complete roleplaying game where a diverse set of protagonists confront the horrors […]

Device vs Equipment

Devising the Difference Between Devices and Equipment Hello heroes! Thank you for popping by the Round Table for one of my posts, grab a snack and settle in. I wanted to take a crack at answering one of the questions I see most often from the M&M community. That question being, “How do you differentiate […]

Bundle of Holding Encore!

The books may have come to their conclusion, but you can keep the story going at your own game table with The Expanse RPG available now for an amazing deal at the Bundle of Holding! Check it out Right Here! In case you missed it when this bundle was previously available at the end of […]

Assault on the Aerie

This week sees the release of Assault on the Aerie, the adventure I wrote for the Modern AGE Missions series. The brief was to write a “high-level” adventure, and Assault is recommended for Modern AGE characters of 13th to 15th level. But what does “a high-level adventure” mean in the context of the action-adventure style […]

The Expanse comes to Foundry VTT!

Introduction Earlier this year, there was a Ronin Round Table that introduced the VTT team. Since then, we’ve had the release of the Mutants & Masterminds 3e sheet on Roll 20 along with various Danger Zones and the Condition Cards. We have revisited Freeport with the 5e content, also on Roll 20. Ahpook and Jonesy […]

Beyond the Ring

<Incoming transmission.> It’s been a long haul, but we’re getting close to sending Beyond the Ring to print. This sourcebook advances The Expanse timeline, taking us to Ring space and the 1000 worlds beyond the rings. This book joins Abzu’s Bounty and Ships of the Expanse as the third major release for The Expanse RPG. […]

December Sale for Christmas

You may have heard recently that we are running a sale for the holidays, during the actual month of December! Several of us here at Green Ronin have chosen our favorite games, which you can purchase on sale during the month of December. Stay tuned here and to our social media pages to see what other books will […]

Rules Tinkering

Folks who know me know that I am a tinkerer when it comes to rules and game design: I love to play around with different ideas for how something can get done in the context of a game, and I have notebooks and digital files full of ideas and random thoughts jotted down about particular […]

Flight 1701: A New Modern AGE Missions Adventure!

A routine flight turns into a challenge to survive and humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrial life, as the plane somehow crashes on another world. The passengers and crew must work together to discover what happened, represent all humans while struggling to communicate with an alien people, and figure out a way to get back home. […]

Order in the Court! Danger Zones: Courthouse Now Available!

While superheroes are often involved in stopping crimes and capturing criminals, how many times have the heroes in your Mutants & Masterminds had to show up in front of a court? The latest release in our Danger Zones series, the Courthouse, raises just that question and provides plenty of resources for the answers.   As […]

Weapons and Tech in the Expanse RPG

“The Expanse RPG is designed to tell stories in the universe of The Expanse novels, not to be a tactical simulator.” I can’t count how many times I’ve written or uttered this phrase since becoming the line developer.  It’s the best answer I can give when people ask why The Expanse RPG doesn’t have a […]

IT CAME FROM THE INTERNET! VTT material on Roll20!

Today we have a special guest post by none other than Ahpook from the Green Ronin VTT Team! Lightning flashes and thunder crashes! Inside the VTT Lab at Green Ronin HQ, something moves… “It’s alive! Alive I tell you! ALIVE!” Happy October everyone! I have a Halloween miracle to share with you all. There once […]

Player or GM, the Modern AGE Mastery Guide is Here for You

I’m so pleased to announce that the Modern AGE Mastery Guide has gone to press, which means you can preorder the print version, get the PDF now as a $5 add-on with your preorder, or get the PDF on its own in our webstore or at DriveThruRPG. In case you’re curious, we’ve chosen a printer […]

Fantasy AGE Core Rulebook

Fantasy AGE Core Rulebook Cover Reveal

As Fantasy AGE fans know, we’ve been working on a Core Rulebook for the game for a while now. We decided it was time to bring together Fantasy AGE and Freeport, our signature fantasy city since 2000. More than that, we’ll be exploring many new lands in the world of Freeport through a setting concept […]

The AGE of Wonderful (and Misfit) Toys

So, backstage, we developers have been talking about the different properties of AGE as a system, and how they might be tweaked, expanded, streamlined, and generally fooled around with. This is a conversation that builds up when it interests us, or when various projects demand it, and it’s responsible for a lot of the work […]

Old Games Never Die: True20 Revised Rulebook available for Print On Demand

I’m certainly dating myself, but long ago, I loved to haunt the aisles of the games auction at Gen Con and to visit shops that had older and out-of-print games. It was how I got to see products that pre-dated my entry into the tabletop gaming hobby, or that I missed somewhere along the way. […]

Gen Con Report 2021

Another Gen Con is in the books, and what an unusual Gen Con it was, in many regards. As folks may know, this year Gen Con held a “hybrid” event, consisting of online and “pop-up” Gen Con events hosted by local game stores, in addition to the traditional in-person event at the convention center in […]

Book Mashup: Apocalypse Freeport

Andrzej was getting tired. He swept his greatsword in a figure 8, pausing to lean slightly to let a crossbow bolt pass him by and bury itself in the shooter’s friend, coming up the other side. He hated killing but the briefing said these people, filthy doublets, poor dentistry, and all, might destroy several universes. […]

Book Mashup: Vaporwave Rose, Part 2

Last time around I started this mashup between Modern AGE and Blue Rose without knowing how much I’d get into it. 90s cartoon romantic fantasy! The setup was so alluring I threw about a thousand words at it, so I had to break it up. Here’s the second part, but let’s go over the essentials […]

Book Mashup: Vaporwave Rose, Part 1

I really enjoyed writing Lost Ilium the other week. I didn’t know if the mashups were going to be a series, but I left room for it. Past Me was pretty smart it seems because I quickly came up with another idea. This time, we’re going to combine Blue Rose, Modern AGE, and cartoons from […]

Dive Into the Aquarium for M&M

The release of Danger Zones: Aquarium is a bit of time travel on our side of things, because Aquarium was actually the first of the Danger Zones written, used as an example of how to set-up and write about the other locations planned for the series. It didn’t end up being the first one released, […]

When the Developer Plays: More Miscellany, Rules and Talents!

Last time I talked about playing Modern AGE using the Threefold setting—and I mean, playing a character, not running a game, which you don’t see developers write about much—I started getting into a grab bag of insights. This time around though, we’ll be talking about how we’ve worked with Modern AGE and its supplemental rules […]

Book Mashup: Lost Ilium

So, I was going to talk a little more about my Threefold setting Modern AGE campaign, but, uh, I didn’t feel like it. Instead, I got a sudden notion to take a few different things I worked on and combine them. I’m going to call this Book Mashup, because these are books, and you can […]

Keeping the Creative Panic at Bay (A Ronin Roundtable Guest Post by ’Nathan Burgoine)

One thing about being a writer with one foot in queer romance and the other in queer spec fic is having two genres worth of Impostor Syndrome. I joke, but the truth is despite having published four novels, six novellas, one collection, forty-one short stories, and five pieces of nonfiction I’m not considered prolific in […]

When the Developer Plays: Miscellaneous Insights!

Over several articles in this series, I’ve talked about a few insights I’ve acquired playing a Threefold setting Modern AGE campaign in a bit of depth. Over the past while, however, things have become a bit more scattershot. So, think of this time around as a grab-bag of insights about Modern AGE and Threefold, and […]

When the Developer Plays: Let Me Tell You About My Character!

(No wait! Come back!) As many people know, telling random folks about your character is simultaneously the greatest temptation in RPG talk, yet the lowest form of discourse. However, since I develop Modern AGE I guess I can get away with it! Beyond that, there is honestly some broad relevance, since I ended up accidentally […]

So You Want to Play a Dimension Hopping Trickster God for Some Reason, Part 2: We Got Your Timelines Right Here

Last time on SYWtPaDHTGfSR, I chose an article series title that did not lend itself to a catchy acronym. I also explained how you could, if you were somehow moved by some unlikely situation that made the idea of a dimension hopping trickster god exploring timelines —such as Loki, say, if we were to look […]

So You Want to Play a Dimension Hopping Trickster God for Some Reason, Part 1: Making a God in Modern AGE and Threefold

Let’s imagine that somehow, the cultural zeitgeist has moved to the unlikely place of trickster deities jumping through alternate universes. How did this happen? Could it be that an exceptionally large media franchise owned by one of the largest entertainment companies in the world produced a show with this concept? But more importantly, do you […]

Biting Cold

Engaging setting details are one of the keys to producing exciting encounters and adventures in Mutants & Masterminds. Players will remember their epic fight atop a frozen crane which is buckling under the added weight of its ice, threatening to topple onto the streets below, a lot more than another battle in a 30 by […]

Ships of the Expanse: Torpedoes Away!

<Incoming transmission.> <URGENT! Imminent contact detected!> Ships of the Expanse is so close we won’t even experience any time delay on this transmission. Ty has signed off on the book, and it’s off to the printers. Since we’re so close, I thought now would be a good time to talk about combat. Let’s begin with […]

Prince of Tears from The Book of Fiends

Redoubt in the Mists

I don’t know about you, but from the very start of my career as a Game Master, I would steal from find inspiration everywhere: novels, comic books, television, movies, and, especially, other games. I mixed-and-matched elements from multiple superhero game settings and comic books with my own creations in my campaigns. I transposed and stitched […]

Ships of the Expanse: The Ships and Deck Plans

<Incoming transmission.> Although they come in the final chapter, the deck plans are very much the centerpiece in Ships of the Expanse. It is also, in part, the reason this book took so long to get out. Although the pandemic can take most of the blame there, making all these plans involved an incredible amount […]

Ships of The Expanse: Expanding How You Play

<Incoming transmission.> Ships of the Expanse is coming to a spaceport near you soon! In my last transmission, I presented overview of what all is in the book, but now I’m going to get into some of  the nuts and bolts. The Expanse RPG presents  a solid basis for spaceship rules. There is more than […]