And Here It Is - Wil Wheaton's TABLETOP RPG Show Is TITANSGRAVE: THE ASHES OF VALKANA

Wil Wheaton has made the official announcement! As we already know it's Green Ronin's Adventure Game Engine (AGE) which powers Dragon Age and the upcoming Fantasy AGE. The show is called Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana, and starts on June 2nd 2015.

Interestingly, Wil mentions that he worked together with Green Ronin to develop the Fantasy AGE system.

The world is written by Wil and his son Ryan, and is inspired by the 1978 Heavy Metal movie (I haven't seen it, sadly) and the 1980 cartoon show Thundarr the Barbarian (which I have also sadly never seen). Goblins with laser rifles, that sort of thing.

Watch the video below. And see here for all our fun, exciting clue-gathering and speculation which led to us figuring out eveything but the name in advance!

[video=youtube;4Er6gDch9Lc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Er6gDch9Lc[/video]
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[Stacie GmrGrl]

This is going to be a big year for Green Ronin.

 

[Paraxis]

Heh. He's wrong but in a different way. Most people put accent on the "ro", which they pronounce without enough elongation, and then say "nin" to rhyme with "in". Wil still doesn't elongate the "ro" enough, but he puts accent on the "nin" and then elongates that too much in order to get the proper "i" sound.

Basically, the correct way to pronounce it is 1) without any accent whatsoever, 2) lengthening the "ro" another half-beat, 3) slightly rise in pitch in the middle of the "ro" and maintain that pitch until the end of the word, and 4) pronounce "nin" like "ink" without a k. Google Translate has a good audio example (put "ronin" into a E to J search).

My google searches and japanese pronunciation guides say he is in fact saying it correctly. Ronin rhymes with spleen or green, so Green Ronin rhymes. Multiple places have explained that in japanese "i" is pronounced "ee".

I find it strange as I grew up on american action movies and tv and they don't pronounce it that way, but you learn something new every day today I learned the proper way to say ronin.

 

[Magistus71]

Here is Green Ronin's announcement.

http://greenronin.com/blog/2015/04/02/press-release-wil-wheatons-new-rpg-series-to-use-age-system/

 

[HobbitFan]

I am really excited by the news.

 

[Fildrigar]

This is going to be a big year for Green Ronin.

OH, indeed.

 

[Iosue]

It is, however, how the company chooses to pronounce it. It's not the actual pronunciation of the Japanese word "ronin", it's Green Ronin's pronunciation of their company name, "Green Ronin". So he's correct! And they're correct, because they can decide how their company name is pronounced, even if it is a word ordinarily pronounced differently.

Indubitably. However, I was responding to Paraxis's post about how Wil pronounced "ronin", not how he pronounced the company name "Green Ronin." As you say, Green Ronin is free to have their company name pronounced "Throatwarbler Mangrove" if they so desire. However, if Wil is pronouncing it as they prefer, and they reason they use that particular pronunciation is an attempt to more accurate pronunciation, then they have not quite hit the target.

Plus expecting accurate mimicking of another country's accent, in addition to the actual words, is a little too much!

If Wil had used the widely used loan-word pronunciation (rhymes with "in"), no one would have said a thing, despite it being technically wrong. The way he pronounced it gave the suggestion of a deliberate attempt (whether originating from Wil, or the folks at GR) at accurate mimicking of pronunciation.

My google searches and japanese pronunciation guides say he is in fact saying it correctly. Ronin rhymes with spleen or green, so Green Ronin rhymes. Multiple places have explained that in japanese "i" is pronounced "ee".

My 21 years of Japanese and degree in its language and literature say that he is not. (And Google Translate's audio example agrees.) It also says that ronin no more rhymes with spleen or green than "bed" rhymes with "aid". "ee" for "i" is a quick and dirty way to get a rough approximation, while avoiding pronunciation of "i" as in "it", "bit", or "wind". "I" in Japanese is pronounced like the "i" in "ink" or "drink" -- a very similar quality to "ee", but shorter, and certainly not rhyming.

Which is perfectly fine, by the way. If that's what Green Ronin want to call themselves, more power to them! It's just not any more correct than the other way.

I find it strange as I grew up on american action movies and tv and they don't pronounce it that way, but you learn something new every day today I learned the proper way to say ronin.

Hopefully from my post and/or the Google Translate audio sample, and not from Wil Wheaton's pronunciation...

 

[TrainedMunkey]

I believe that FantasyAge will be released soon, with the setting at GenCon.

 

[jwade1980]

*edit* Outsmarted

 

[variant]

The whole thing looks like a marketing gimmick. Even from the point that Dragon Age was on Tabletop with one of the designers of it being the GM. That would totally be fine, if they were upfront about it and if this show wasn't Kickstarted.

 

[Von Ether]

You might be right, but it might have been the other way around. They were looking to do one RPG episode on TT, picked DA because it was a hot property at the time and then things sort of evolved from there. The actual show to be kickstarted was TT Season 3. The RPG thing was just a stretch goal. Nearly everyone I chat with about KSers feel that they are rolling the dice and have no idea how it's going to play out. With that much of a gamble, I wouldn't say their planning on the RPG show proper was at a mastermind level.