Green Ronin's Sword Chronicle Now Available

The Chronicle game system was the system which powered Green Ronin's A Song of Ice & Fire tabletop RPG. While ASOI&F is no longer available, Sword Chronicle is a setting-neutral ruleset with a similar feel.

There have been some small changes to things like how amour works and a few other things, but if you played ASI&F this will be familiar.

 PRESS RELEASE

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You’re no adventurer. You may have shaken blood off your sword after plunging it into an unholy beast, but the real monsters stalk the world’s thrones. You may have studied the unspeakable secrets of magic, but affairs of state have secrets that are no less horrifying, for they can turn a nation into a million-limbed juggernaut of war.

You belong to a noble house, and its fortunes rise and fall with your actions. You’re a lord, a knight, a servant in the shadows, or perhaps a sorcerer-sage, bound to a dynasty of rulers. A vassal’s honor binds you to obey those above your station, and the responsibilities of privilege make you well aware that your lessers prosper or suffer according to your will—or if you fail, in spite of it. Your people are yours to protect, but the world is yours to conquer. You’ve committed your house to the Sword Chronicle.

Sword Chronicle is fantasy roleplaying in Green Ronin’s Chronicle System, now customized for you to bring in your own worlds of intrigue-laden fantasy. Within this book you’ll find the following:

• A classless gritty fantasy roleplaying game, where words can be as powerful as weapons—and weapons enforce your words.
• Character creation that gives the heroes specific positions in a noble house of their own design.
• Rules for the fantasy ancestries of elves, dwarves, and ogres, and frictionless game systems for playing a character of multiple ancestries.
• Grim, dramatic combat where death is a risk, but profit comes from ransoming your noble enemies.
• Revised and reorganized intrigue rules for the Chronicle System, to give socially oriented characters real power.
• Mass combat rules fit for sieges and conquests.
• Subtle, powerful magic for the Chronicle System.
• Introducing the Shattered Era setting.

 

[Superchunk77]

Let's hope they do a revision of some of the combat mechanics. They're some serious balance issues from my reading and reading reviews of game play. I do own all of the GoT's material and it's actually a fascinating system but as I said there does appear to be some mechanics balance issues.

I thought GR put out some errata that fixed a lot of those problems. Some rewrites to some of the combat benefits, etc?

 

[Paragon Lost]

I thought GR put out some errata that fixed a lot of those problems. Some rewrites to some of the combat benefits, etc?

That's what I'm trying to figure out. Whether or not the revisions/errata corrected those issues that I read about. I've never actually run/played this particular game so I'm only going by what I've read.

 

[TreChriron]

The glaring issue with armor making you easier to hit thereby making you more susceptible to damage has been addressed. The Armor Penalty now only impacts your movement and Agility-based actions.

I was not really familiar with the system and I'm intrigued by the idea of using Abilities as a list (no real "attributes" in the classic sense) with specialties which can be invented by the GM/players as desired. It's a really cool approach.

The d6 system is a "roll and keep" approach, where you roll a number of dice = Ability+ bonus dice - penalty dice; you "keep" the number of dice = Ability. You then total the remaining dice attempting to exceed a target number (modifiers are usually against the final total vs. dice pool). It's elegant and quick.

The included Sorcery system is "low magic" yet very detailed. Lots of cool ideas in here. You can emulate many dark fantasy concepts. There are further details in the already existing Sorcery supplement which is a little more involved (but basically the same) as the one in the Sword Chronicle book. This is not D&D high magic.

The Intrigue system handles social interaction with the same gravitas most systems handle physical combat. There are plenty of disclosures to help new players understand the impact of social interaction and to recruit them into the idea of "going with the story" and perhaps losing some player-agency in support of the narrative. There are options to tune this to whatever level of player-agency the group desires.

The use of Qualities to determine your ancestry is super fun because you can make non-typical combinations like half-dwarf and elf. Ogres are not your typical brutes but instead a sort-of "fairy" magical bloodline of unique aspects. The combinations will be very interesting.

I'm most excited about the Community Content Creator program Green Ronin launched with this release. Fans and creators can publish their own Sword Chronicle supplements!

 

[Ace]

"Should" is a strong term. A lot of people, including folks I played with, resented the idea in D&D and AD&D that you'd spend multiple levels fighting orcs and ogres and giants and infiltrating tombs, and now you were ... management. I think that sort of play should be supported, but not mandated.

Or, it should form the core of its own game, as it is here.

I feel this way too. Back in the 70's and 80's when this was a big thing, management sims were not common and if you wanted that experience D&D and Traveller both provided good robust rule sets. Otherwise its was Hammurabi or Santa Paravia en Fiumaccio if you were lucky enough to have a computer.

Now there are plenty of sims and while action RPG's are out there, computers do the sims better but nothing beats the wild action and inventiveness of table top play at high levels.

Vin Diesel's-comment about "if you have any characters over eight level you are probably cheating" isn't true but high level play is pretty rare and while options for management are nice, I'd rather go squash Tiamat or kick a Lich in the teeth than run papers and paychecks, Greyhawk edition and I think many gamers feel this way too

For those that do not Sword Chronicle offers some super nice options which is great

 

[macd21]

Any word on this getting a print release?

 

[eyebeams]

Any word on this getting a print release?

I'm the developer. We're doing POD through DTRPG and currently figuring that out. We're also committed to offering a coupon to early PDF purchasers for the POD release. Details are still up in the air because among other things, we need to look at a proof before activating any POD options.

 

[macd21]

I'm the developer. We're doing POD through DTRPG and currently figuring that out. We're also committed to offering a coupon to early PDF purchasers for the POD release. Details are still up in the air because among other things, we need to look at a proof before activating any POD options.

Thanks! Good to know.