The ramp up to the new Iron Kingdoms RPG continues at its glacial pace.
This and the new No Quarter article gives us our first glimpse at some actual hard facts. There’s at least four books planned, the die system is similar to Warmachine/Hordes, and it has classes.
Of course, the thing I hear the most about this product is that no one believes it’ll actually exist. But I think those days are behind Privateer Press. The people responsible for the delays in the original IK RPG no longer work there. The company has demonstrated their devotion to getting products out on time with the Warmachine/Hordes 2.0 book release (What, like out of 12-13 books, one of them was delayed? That’s a pretty good record.) So I believe this product will exist on the day that they say it will. My question is more about the support products – how often will they show up?
The weird thing is that I’m still not necessarily excited about this product. Even though I love the Iron Kingdoms and would place it as one of two settings from the d20 Boom that still interests me. And I think that’s because the previous iteration was just so thorough. There aren’t really any unexplored questions I have about the setting. The Character and World Guides of the d20 versions were ridiculously thorough. They still meet all my setting fluff needs (not to mention Five Fingers, the Monsternomicons, etc. etc.) Really, the only thing the game needs is a better mechanical basis…which its hopefully getting. But it’s kinda hard to get excited about a new version of math.
This is not to say that I won’t be getting this when it comes out. Just that I’m less excited than I feel like I should be.
While I remain skeptical that any new Iron Kingdoms RPG products will ever see the light of day, only part of it is lingering bitterness about the IKCG. Or the IKCG errata. Or Sign & Sigil. Or the Corvis book. All of which should have been out about nine years ago. Mostly I just doubt it’s going to be much more than WarmaHordes: The RPG, where you can brew up your own tournament-illegal warcaster and character solos and fight warjacks with your big-ass machineguns. Woo!
The more the minis games and satisfying the tastes of the minis gamers grew to dominate the fluff of the setting, the less interesting it’s gotten for me. Guns were rare and cool and kinda didn’t work all that awesome when I was first exposed to Western Immoren. Now every Trollkin and his dog has a machinegun. The blackclad druids and winter elves spun way the hell out of control (the Nyss thing I blame 99.5% on that one pic of a hawt nyss soceress from Lock & Load).
By: Burrowowl on February 8, 2012
at 1:50 pm
If I wanted guns to malfunction and just generally suck, I’d play Warhammer Fantasy.
By: markfender on February 8, 2012
at 10:28 pm
I suspect Warhammer Fantasy has lousy firearms for the same reason Privateer originally put forward for the Iron Kingdoms: they wanted the setting to be one in which a sword was still a fully viable weapon. So you get reliable firearms that don’t really do much damage over the course of, say, two or more combat rounds and as such aren’t something a practical-minded adventurer would specialize in.
You’re generally going to find two kinds of games in regards to weapons: games where guns work well and games where swords work well. Games that attempt to make both work well always, so far as I can tell, fail. The closest I can think of is FATE, but that’s more a matter of neither guns nor swords working practically at all.
So anyhow, with all the thematic drift that has happened since I was exposed to the IK, it’s going to take some selling for me to want to run an IKRPG game instead of, as you suggest, a Warhammer Fantasy game.
By: Burrowowl on February 9, 2012
at 3:09 am
I can’t wait, I think this will be as awesome as people are afraid to expect. I never played the original though I am familiar with the books. While I don’t think I am that excited about the math I do think that the 2d6 system is a robust one. It has an excellent potential and I guess that it may be adopted by a few more companies/games in the future.
By: Phil on February 8, 2012
at 4:46 pm