Renaissance News
Things to look forward to in the coming year!
Renaissance is a D100 roleplaying system designed for historical and fantasy gaming in the age of black powder weapons. It features familiar mechanics, grim and gritty combat, extensive period weapons and equipment lists, dozens of professions, and rules for factions and belief systems. It also includes two magick systems – Battle Alchemy and Witchcraft. Based on Newt Newport’s OpenQuest and released under an Open Gaming License, which allows companies and individuals to incorporate the rules into their own games, is also showcases the rules system of Clockwork & Chivalry 2nd Edition, the epic historical fantasy RPG from Cakebread & Walton.
Back in February, when we launched Clockwork & Chivalry Core Rulebook 2nd Edition, we launched the rules themselves as a free download. This has proven very popular, both with players and game designers. Here’s a round-up of what you can look forward to for the Renaissance system, from ourselves and other companies, in the coming year; more Clockwork & Chivalry material, a deluxe printed edition of the Renaissance rules, and several new backgrounds based on the Renaissance mechanics are among the highlights.
Kingdom & Commonwealth Omnibus I
Just released – an adventure supplement for Clockwork & Chivalry, which contains the first two adventures in the epic Kingdom & Commonwealth Campaign, The Alchemist’s Wife and Thou Shalt Not Suffer.
Clockwork & Cthulhu
Due imminently – a sourcebook which adds H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos to the alternate 17th century world of Clockwork & Chivalry. It can be used with either the Clockwork & Chivalry Core Rulebook, or with just the downloadable Renaissance rulebook. On top of new rules and source materials, it contains three horror adventures; The Doom That Came to Oxford, The Bay of Terror and The Whisperers in Furness.
Kingdom & Commonwealth Omnibus II
Another epic adventure supplement which continues the Kingdom & Commonwealth Campaign for Clockwork & Chivalry with two more adventures, No Man’s Land and Quintessence.
Renaissance Deluxe
September sees the launch of Renaissance Deluxe, an updated version of the OGL rules in print form. The deluxe edition will be expanded with new weapons and factions, and historical notes for the period from the Renaissance to the Napoleonic era, as well as new rules for Sanity (first introduced in Clockwork & Cthulhu) and Quick Combat. All rules are optional, allowing you to tailor the mechanics to your own campaign.
Dark Streets
In October or November comes Dark Streets:
London, 1749: A city of vice, crime and misery. Gangs of ruffians rule the streets, unopposed. Brothels proliferate. Child-beggars starve in filthy gutters. Corrupt night-watchmen and thief-takers turn a blind eye to wrong-doing. And dark creatures lurk in back alleys, called from beyond by the desperate with nothing left to lose.
But there is a new force on the streets of London; for the author and magistrate Henry Fielding has teamed up with his brother John to form the city’s first police force – the Bow Street Runners. The Fieldings have persuaded parliament to fund their crime-fighting endeavour, but they know that there is something behind the vice – for John Fielding’s blind eyes can see things that others cannot – things that man was not meant to know.
Dark Streets is a worldbook for the Renaissance RPG, in which players take on the roles of officers in London’s first, desperately small, police force, investigating the dark secrets behind the sordid crimes of eighteenth century London. Requires either the Renaissance Deluxe RPG core rulebook, or the free Renaissance RPG download.
More for Clockwork & Chivalry
Further Clockwork & Chivalry supplements are slated for winter/spring 2013 including the final two episodes of the Kingdom & Commonwealth Campaign, Hobbes: Leviathan and London Calling, plus an exiting new supplement being written for us by Jonathan M. Thompson of Battlefield Press, The American Front, which takes your Clockwork & Chivalry campaigns to the New World!
Realms of Gold
Also in the coming year, look out for the beginning of a whole new fantasy game line based on the Renaissance rules: Realms of Gold:
In 1492, a lone airship, blown off course from the Isle of Flowers across the wide Adlanssik Ocean, sighted unknown lands, far to the west. The battered vessel made landfall in Tharian, where the weary crew were greeted warmly by the lizard-like Gugumadz. They were given gifts of fine cloth, of primitive humanoid slaves, and most of all… of gold.
The countries of Oeroba, beset by plague and famine, began to look to the west for new lands to conquer. The High Theocrat of the Ecumene declared that the new lands belonged to the Church. The king of Anglanth disagreed, and declared his independence from the Ecumene, causing a hundred years of religious strife. Soon, wealthy landowners were throwing peasants off their land to make room for “low-brows” – primitive humanoid slaves from the New World. Gold was flooding in from the west and colonists were flooding out.
It is now 1602. In Anglanth, Queen Gloriana faces the prospect of civil war, as dispossessed peasants and a rising merchant class, encouraged by the industrious duergar, threaten to challenge the old royal order – and the aristocrats with faerie blood grow weaker as the paths to the Otherworld become harder to walk. Pirates of many nationalities raid the gold convoys of Esbania; colonists from all over Oeroba spread across the New World, encroaching on the lands of the Gugumadz and looting their crumbling pyramid cities.
Meanwhile, agents of the Gugumadz, shape-changing lizards of icy cunning and implacable patience, infiltrate positions of power, guiding the realms of Oeroba toward self-immolation.
Realms of Gold is a whole new fantasy world to explore. Featuring the Renaissance game system, it depicts a world of muskets and rapiers, airships and magick, as the upstart human nations of Oeroba face a lizard-race as old as time itself. As countries take up arms against each other, the rich and poor struggle for supremacy, colonists seek the New World for peace or plunder, the faeries and duergar struggle to retain a toehold in the mundane world and secret lizard overlords manipulate all from behind the scenes, it’s time to take up your flintlock, strap on your sword, gather your spellbooks and fight for what you believe to be right – whatever that might be!
Plus!
And as if that weren’t enough, other companies are adding products to the Renaissance game line. In the first quarter of 2013, Steam Driven Publishing will be producing two new games:
Victoria: Corsets, Clockwork and Steam
The year is 1875. Queen Victoria sits upon the Throne of the vast British Empire which touches upon most of the world. However, not all is the same as is known in our history. Victoria is called “The Eternal Queen” by her subjects as she seems to have not aged since her early 20’s and she is now in the 37th year of her reign.
Despite, or maybe because of, it’s power and influence Britain and it’s Empire are besieged on many fronts. The newly established Prussian Empire vies for control of Europe and an uneasy truce prevents open war yet again between itself and Britain although some skirmishes still occur in the Crimea where the 63rd Regiment of Foot and the 11th Hussars support their Ottoman and Russian allies. Fortunately these encounters have not reignited into all out war. In the far East the emerging Japanese Confederation has declared itself the ruler of the Pacific causing concerns about what their next move might be and the trading fleets of the west are falling prey to piracy yet again in the Caribbean Sea of the Americas.
In the skies, advances in engineering have granted the power of flight. Huge airships traverse the globe alongside the seaborne navies heralding a new era of travel. This in turn has opened up new avenues of potential warfare and this was demonstrated so effectively by the Prussian Air Navy during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 when an aerial attack was launched upon Paris devastating it and effectively destroying France as a true world power.
This is 1875 and these are unusual times: Never before have there been so may opportunities.
The final product will feature Salem model Marianne Bettano, artwork from Adrian Jones, Joseph Paul Roxburgh Dunbar and others.
All non setting specific material within VICTORIA: CORSETS, CLOCKWORK & STEAM will be Open Content.
Lead Developer : Adrian Gawain Jones
The Nordgard Sagas
The world of The Nordgard Sagas is inspired from the old European and Nordic myths and legends. It is a harsh cold world where danger waits for the unwary and foolish. the gods watch over all, rewarding and punishing those who catch their eye.
Great beasts stalk the frozen land, shaking the world as they go, shadow creatures wait in the dark and forgotten places to feed on those they catch.
Play a Human or one of the Half-Bloods, the unwanted offspring from unwelcome unions between humans and the likes of Trolls, Giants, Dwarfs, Alb, and Ogres.
The Nordgard Sagas will add a very different setting to the Renaissance line and include new rules for races, combat and drama.
All non-setting specific material within THE NORDGARD SAGAS will be designated Open Content.
Lead Developer : Chris Hilton
Plus More!
Battlefield Press will be releasing a Renaissance version of their popular Victorian fantasy game, already available in D20 and Savage Worlds editions:
Gaslight
A Victorian Fantasy where technology meets sorcery, where fantasy meets history. A world where Humans co-exist with Vampires, where fantasy meets history. Beast Men, Werewolves and Wildlings. A land of secret organizations and hidden agendas. Welcome to a Victorian world of magic, non humans and technology all trying to take their rightful place in society. Meet Vampire Detectives, Beast Men Sheriffs, and Wildling Rogues. Non humans in society exist from their counterparts in Victorian literature.
A Feast of OGL
All the Open Gaming License material from the above games is going to be collected in a central repository on the internet for free download, and will be available for others to use and adapt for their own D100 games.
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Well, that’s going to keep us busy! Hope you enjoy playing the games as much as we’re enjoying writing them.
– Peter Cakebread & Ken Walton
