12 Days of Christmas: Kings of War RPG

For the second of today's blogs, we're handing control over to Marc Langworthy - one of the chaps behind the upcoming Kings of War RPG.

We’ll all have entertained our own hopes and dreams for a special gift this Christmas. Peace on Mantica. Negan’s blessing. Maybe even a commendation from the Council of Seven over out latest Deadzone deployment. For me, however, there was no greater present than the ‘Let’s do it!’ from Mantic HQ when we shook hands on Kings of War the Roleplaying Game.

Despite the fact that the news seemed to drop overnight, the road to the roleplaying game has actually been a fairly long one. I was introduced to Kings of War by a good friend of mine (who also just happens to be a Mantic Pathfinder) a few years ago and immediately appreciated the coupling of tactical diversity and simplicity that the system offered.

Hooked by the aesthetics and gameplay, and being as much a storyteller as a wargamer, I immediately tracked down as much lore on the setting as I could. I hadn’t yet begun my career as writer or developer of roleplaying games, but here was a setting that was crying out for an opportunity to let players carve their own legends!

A few years later, with a few credits to my name as a writer for roleplaying games, I tracked down Ronnie during an exhausting UK Games Expo and asked if he would be interested in discussing the possibility of a roleplaying game for one of Mantic’s settings. He absolutely was, but a few other projects involving zombies and red-skinned, hornless devils meant it would actually be a few more years until we could seriously get the opportunity to talk about it further.

What a difference two years makes! With an ENnie award, an RPG system license, a successful kickstarter and membership on the Kings of War: Vanguard Rules Committee also now on my list of credits, I tracked down Ronnie at Essen and once again posed the question. The timing, it seems, couldn’t have been more perfect. To top it all off, 2019 marks Mantic’s ten-year anniversary as a games company. Being given the opportunity to be apart of this by producing Kings of War the Roleplaying Game is as much an honour as the actual granting of the license itself.

That’s the story behind the involvement of myself and Red Scar Publishing with the Kings of War the Roleplaying Game license, but what about the actual game itself? First, both Mantic and the Red Scar team are very passionate about close collaboration on the project. We’re all eager to ensure that the tabletop roleplaying game captures the visual imagery and textual depictions that players of Kings of War, Vanguard and Dungeon Saga have grown to love.

Second, we’re also keen to offer cross-compatibility with those previously mentioned platforms. Taking your adventuring party from the very personal experiences of a roleplaying game to the dungeon-delving antics of Dungeon Saga and the chaotic battlefields of Kings of War will be a very real prospect. After all, Kings of War is an epic setting that calls for impressive scope. And those will be some of the key themes of the roleplaying game: carving your own legends and kingdoms from its turbulent landscape.

There’s lots to do yet, and not much time to make sure it all happens between now and the kickstarter launch in August. All new artwork, further playtesting of our TriCore system and a raft of approvals need to happen between now and then, but with Mantic’s support and blessing, we are well-placed to make this roleplaying game worthy of a crown. In the meantime, make sure to sign up if you would like to be informed of development along the way and please stay tuned!