Invincible RPG Announced by Free League

Invincible, the comic book franchise made by Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman and artists Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley, is getting a tabletop RPG by Free League Publishing. Today, Free League announced that they are publishing a Year Zero Engine superhero game based on the Invincible comics franchise. The new game was designed by Adam Bradford, a D&D Beyond founder, along with Tomas Härenstam, the lead designer of the ALIEN RPG and other games.

A Kickstarter will launch later this year, with a Core Rulebook and Starter set planned. Notably, graphic design for the project is by Johan Nohr of MORK BORG game.

In a press release announcing the project, Bradford said “Invincible is my favorite comic series, and I’ve wanted to play in this universe for many years. The way the story unfolds in a sprawling saga over the course of 144 issues – without endless retconning – lends itself particularly well to tabletop roleplaying, and I can’t wait for fans to experience their own superhero stories with the game."

“One of my very first tabletop roleplaying games was the old Marvel Superheroes by TSR, and making a superhero RPG has been a lifelong dream. I think the genre, and Invincible’s more grounded and visceral take on it, is a great fit for the Year Zero Engine game mechanics,” added Tomas Härenstam.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Same problem with Star Wars RPGs, right?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Same problem with Star Wars RPGs, right?

Yep, all the damned Ewoks.

 

[Golden Bee]

Can't wait to see it.

 

[schneeland]

I think this is one of the few examples where I will not jump on the Kickstarter despite the game coming from Free League. I'm curious, though, how they will handle super heroes and their powers - so far I associate Year Zero with a lower power level.

 

[Reynard]

I wonder if the "stress die" mechanic is going to be more oriented around losing your [redacted]. That is a theme in Invincible.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

The thing I find about Invincible is that it plays out like a fairly typical superhero universe but with a big exception: there are what I'd call power tiers where it suddenly becomes incredibly deadly. You would have heroes battling foes at about their same power level and everything looks kind of silver age. And then someone more powerful shows up and it becomes very violent and deadly. That is really interesting to explore.

That's honestly how the majority of supers RPGs play out if you (and your GM) aren't very careful about character design. Some games (eg Champions) are better than others about providing warnings about unbalanced combinations and suggested limits on attacks and defenses, but even the best can still result in some horrible power imbalances even within the same powerlevel/tier/point budget. And some games (Heroes Unlimited, V&V 2nd ed) just plain don't try to produce balanced PCs and if you die it's back to character gen.

The hard part is keeping the casualty counts down to suit genre expectations, not making mismatches turn into bloodbaths. That's easy, even by accident - and a large part of what makes Invincible an unusual comic, because it willfully defies those expectations when it wants while adhering to them on the surface at least part of the time.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Yep, all the damned Ewoks.

Roustabouts.

 

[Mark Craddock]

I wonder if it will use the dice pool version or the newer one that has you roll different polyhedral dice?

 

[HorusZA]

I love most of the Free League games, but I have to wonder: are we going to get 0, 1 or 2 supplements before it quietly goes out of print? Does it matter?

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I love most of the Free League games, but I have to wonder: are we going to get 0, 1 or 2 supplements before it quietly goes out of print? Does it matter?

Licensed product, so that's likely to be the determining factor. How many are they contracted for?