Tomb Raider RPG Cancelled For Creative Differences

Evil Hat Publishing has just announced that the official Tomb Raider TTRPG has been cancelled.

Sad news: We are canceling the Tomb Raider RPG project. Due to creative differences we couldn’t get our vision to gel with the licensor’s, so we've chosen to part ways.

The stellar team designing this game put their hearts into making this an exciting, dynamic RPG of adventure and exploration.

We're proud of the work they've done and we plan to retool the project as a standalone game with a fresh, original setting.

You haven’t seen the last of it.

An official Tomb Raider RPG was originally announced by Square Enix in 2021 for the 25th anniversary of the property. 2023's Lara Croft's Mark of the Phoenix released as free PDF on the Crystal Dynamics website.

The Evil Hat version was announced in February 2024 as a full-color hardback book. The plan was to allow you to play Truth Seekers, allies and contemporaries of Lara Croft who Indiana Jones out hidden artifacts for the benefit of good.

Explore hidden tombs and uncover powerful secrets! Defy danger as you race to discover forgotten artifacts and prevent nefarious forces from exploiting them! Race to unearth secret artifacts and forgotten truths in order to save them from the nefarious forces that would exploit them!

Mystery awaits, and sometimes, the answers we seek can only be found in shadow…

In this officially licensed tabletop RPG you play members of the Truth Seekers: contemporaries of Lara Croft who strive to reveal long-hidden knowledge and thwart those who would steal and exploit artifacts for their own gains. It is a game of action, exploration, and self-discovery. Face perilous challenges and tough choices as you learn what it takes to be a hero.

Tomb Raider: Shadows of Truth requires 3-6 players, pencils, paper, the rulebook, and at least six 6-sided dice in order to play.

Your group will collectively create their Team using one of the Team Playbooks and then build individual Team members choosing from the Crafter, Scholar, Hunter, Companion, Legacy, Changed, and Reclaimer. One player, the Keeper of Truths, describes the dynamic and compelling world around the Team as they all make the connections which bring the adventure to life.

Collect Truths and draw upon your Maps, Aid, and Lore to boost your rolls as you race to enter the Final Tomb!

The Truth is hidden. The Truth is dangerous. And in the end, the power of Truth is what we make it.

 

[Reynard]

The short version is: Outgunned Adventure is a more streamlined version of the game that drops some of the more detail-focused rules of Outgunned (e.g. Outgunned:Adventure does have modifiers by distance for guns) and the focus of the book is also more on common tropes of the classic pulp action/adventuring genre (Indiana Jones and the like), whereas Outgunned (and the supplementary World of Killers book) target modern action cinema in the style of John Wick. You can import rules from Outgunned into Outgunned Adventure, but you don't have to - it's a self-contained game.

The longer version is: 2LM had a game called Broken Compass which focused on modern adventuring stories (it's effectively a Tomb Raider & Uncharted game with serial numbers filed off), but also had a companion volume for classic adventuring (called Golden Age). They continued to publish supplements for this game focusing on pirate adventures (Jolly Roger) and adventures in the style of Jules Verne (Voyages Extraordinaires). They also teased a game called Broken Compass RED at this time.
But first, they published/crowdfunded another game called Household, and for this the joint ranks with CMON, which were initially only supposed to supply miniatures for the game. However, apparently the collaboration did not work out as planned and 2LM and CMON parted ways not too soon after (I think it was a year or so). In the course of this separation, 2LM were able to get their IP for Household back, but not that for Broken Compass.
So when 2LM got back to their RED project after Household, they couldn't use the original rule set (they never disclosed the terms of the separation, but discussion on their Discord pointed towards some sort of clause in the contract that prevented them from recreating what they did before). So that's when Outgunned was born. Which was a pretty successful crowdfunding, while at the same time CMON did exactly nothing with Broken Compass.
About a year after Outgunned, 2LM then launched the Outgunned Adventure campaign. Apparently at that point they had figured that it was okay to do a game similar to Broken Compass again. Potentially because there were already talks behind the scenes, since during the Outgunned Adventure campaign they announced that they had bought the rights to Broken Compass back. However, since they had already established their Outgunned line and rule engine, they built the game on top of that and only re-used a couple of illustrations from Broken Compass. Broken Compass itself has been discontinued now.
And as you might have read here on the boards: 2LM are continuing their "season approach" and have crowdfunded another variant for super hero stories. I suspect they will continue this for a while.
Closing note: distribution was a major issue with Broken Compass - it was an excellent game, but very hard to get hold of outside the crowdfundings. This was now been solved for the Outgunned line as 2LM have partnered with Free League (if my understanding is correct, this works similar to how the Stockholm Kartell guys are working with Free League for the distribution of the Borg games).

Thanks for the detailed reply!

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

If I wanted to buy a TTRPG of pulp genre I would choose "Adventure!" by White Wolf/Onyx Path because I am enoughly used to storytelling system. If I buy a book I am interested into crunch or original fluff, because the background of famous IPs can be found free and easily in fandom wikis.

If we are talking about pulp genre, then I have to advice you a forgotten teleserie "Tales of the Golden Monkey". I saw it when I was a child, and I guess then I couldn't realize all the details.

Tales of the Gold Monkey - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

That was more or less the premise of the WEG Indiana Jones game.

Also the 40K RPG Dark Heresy, oddly enough. Never the Inquisitor, always an expendable stooge.

If we are talking about pulp genre, then I have to advice you a forgotten teleserie "Tales of the Golden Monkey".

Objection! If nothing else, people remember Talespin, which was Disney's Golden Monkey with anthropomorphic Jungle Book animals. Close enough.

 

[Kitsune]

They lost me the moment they stuck a woman with running blades on her legs on the cover. If they'd cared enough to spend five minutes researching the actual disability they would have easily discovered that running blades are only useful for, wait for it, running. Specifically running on a hard even surface with good traction. They are awful for everything else, and especially for clambering around in a ruin in the jungle. An actual prosthetic for that would have feet on it, because feet are important for things like standing and walking. The fact that they did not do that bare minimum research was enough to clearly tell me that they were the sort of people who viewed disabled people as a checkbox to flaunt for their product and not someone to be supporting.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

If we are talking about pulp genre, then I have to advice you a forgotten teleserie "Tales of the Golden Monkey". I saw it when I was a child, and I guess then I couldn't realize all the details.

Tales of the Gold Monkey was awesome. As a kid I wanted to grow up, learn to fly a PBY Catalina, and go island hopping around the Pacific looking for treasure.

Maybe I should still do that.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

They lost me the moment they stuck a woman with running blades on her legs on the cover. If they'd cared enough to spend five minutes researching the actual disability they would have easily discovered that running blades are only useful for, wait for it, running. Specifically running on a hard even surface with good traction. They are awful for everything else, and especially for clambering around in a ruin in the jungle. An actual prosthetic for that would have feet on it, because feet are important for things like standing and walking. The fact that they did not do that bare minimum research was enough to clearly tell me that they were the sort of people who viewed disabled people as a checkbox to flaunt for their product and not someone to be supporting.

Ugh. I don't remember even seeing a cover, but I wasn't looking for one either. That is indeed both disrespectful and intensely, almost willfully lazy.

 

[dragoner]

Tales of the Gold Monkey was an inspiration for my setting like a sci-fi version.

 

[MNblockhead]

I wrote half a comment being surprised that this company was still around, then realized I was thinking of Evil Genius Games, the company that was making and cancelling other modern action IP licensed products. I’m commenting now in case anyone else made the same mistake

Hey thanks, I made the same mistake. I was expecting this thread to go in a different direction. What shall I do with this bowl of popcorn?

I really wish that folks that license these IPs would quit thinking that they need to design Yet Another RPG Rule System(YARPGRS). Instead do something like Powered By GURPS and put a brief note in the front of your Core book that says 'To use this product, you also need access to <rule book name>.' Now most of your book can be spent on describing how Tomb Raiding works instead of being YARPGRS. Don't like GURPS? Paizo is a fair way down the path of having a universal d20 system between PF2 and SF2 and how they are interoperable with each other. Mongoose seems to be doing the same thing with their Traveller system.

I don't think that I would buy an IP game like this if it didn't come with the rule system. I wonder how many people buy games for IPs like this to run long and multiple campaigns. How many of these game go on to become successful lines with multiple follow up expansions and adventure material published? I personally tend to by games like this because I'm a fan of the IP and enjoy reading the books, but generally only run a short mini campaign or the occasional one shot. The ideal for me would be a rules‑light system that fits the theme of the IP well, some good lore and art, and an adventure or set of adventures beefy enough for a mini campaign.

 

[MGibster]

I am sure they had a reason, whether it was a good reason is another matter… I often wonder whether the increase in sales is enough to compensate for the licensing cost. We will never know, not sure even the publishers have a good idea about that in many cases

I just assume companies producing licensed games take that into account as part of their overall cost of production.

They lost me the moment they stuck a woman with running blades on her legs on the cover. If they'd cared enough to spend five minutes researching the actual disability they would have easily discovered that running blades are only useful for, wait for it, running. Specifically running on a hard even surface with good traction.

It's often fascinating to me what seemingly insignificant aspect of a game can drive people away from it. I cast no aspersions here, I do the same thing. I remember getting quite annoyed with a White Wolf book in the 1990s where it mentioned in the forward some proceeds of sales would go towards preventing the "murder" of wolves. I'm not pro-wolf killing, I just got annoyed because you can't murder an animal.

Sometimes when people are trying to be more inclusive they make errors. It's okay to point out those errors, but maybe give folks the benefit of the doubt.

 

[mamba]

I just assume companies producing licensed games take that into account as part of their overall cost of production.

they do, I am not sure they have a good idea of whether the license is worth its fees though. It’s one thing if you license a specific product, like Goodman does with the OAR line. It is quite another if you could release your own game in pretty much the same state with the license number filed off.

If you absolutely want to do Jim Henson’s Dark Crystal or Labyrinth go ahead and license it, but you could also do Land of Eem instead. Or Outgunned Adventure instead of Lara Croft. The more generic the IP is, the less reason I see to license it, and Lara is about as generic as it gets