Tag Archives: dragonbane

Free League Officially Releases Two New Open Game Licenses

Year Zero Engine

Free League Publishing has officially released its two new open game licenses for community creators: a Free Tabletop License (FTL) for the Year Zero Engine and a third-party license for their upcoming fantasy RPG Dragonbane. The Year Zero Engine FTL comes with an updated Standard Reference Document (SRD). All three documents are now available for creators to use.

Both new community content licenses are royalty-free and irrevocable, meaning that they can be updated but creators will always be able to use any published version.

The work on these new licenses was initiated in 2022, but was intensified during the debates in early 2023 around Wizards of the Coasts’ OGL v1.0, on which the previous Year Zero Engine (YZE) license was based. The two new licenses are completely independent, developed by Free League and the US law firm Nolan Heimann.

The new Year Zero Engine FTL is designed to be fair and easy to understand and use for community creators. It gives all creators an irrevocable, worldwide, and royalty-free right to use the Year Zero Engine Standard Reference Document (YZE SRD) and freely publish their own roleplaying material based on it. The YZE FTL can be found here.

Alongside the new YZE FTL, the YZE SRD itself has been given a massive overhaul and update, based on the developments of the Year Zero Engine in recent years. The new SRD adds rules for chases, vehicles, travel, and magic, and introduces the new “step dice” version of YZE found in Twilight: 2000 and the Blade Runner RPG. The new YZE SRD (version 1.0) can be accessed here.

The Year Zero Engine (YZE) in various iterations has been used in most Free League RPGs in recent years, including Mutant: Year Zero, Coriolis, Tales From the Loop, Forbidden Lands, ALIEN, Vaesen, Blade Runner RPG, and the upcoming The Walking Dead Universe RPG. The YZE is an accessible, fast and adaptable rules framework that encourages story-focused and player-driven playstyles.

Free League Launches New Licenses For Year Zero Engine and Dragonbane

Year Zero Engine

Free League Publishing has released two new open game licenses for community creators – a Free Tabletop License (FTL) for the Year Zero Engine and a third-party license for the upcoming Dragonbane fantasy RPG. The Year Zero Engine FTL comes with a massively updated Standard Reference Document (SRD). Free League is inviting feedback on all three documents before they are finalized and officially lau nched.

The work on these new community content licenses was initiated last year but was intensified during the debates last month around Wizards of the Coasts’ OGL v1.0, on which the previous Year Zero Engine (YZE) license was based. The two new licenses are completely independent, developed by Free League and the US law firm Nolan Heimann.

The new Year Zero Engine FTL is designed to be fair and easy to understand and use for creators. It gives creators an irrevocable, worldwide, and royalty-free right to use the Year Zero Engine Standard Reference Document (YZE SRD) and freely publish their own roleplaying material based on it. A draft of the YZE FTL can be found here.

Alongside the new YZE FTL, the YZE SRD itself has been given a massive overhaul and update, based on the developments of the Year Zero Engine in recent years. The new SRD adds rules for chases, vehicles, travel, and magic, and introduces the new “step dice” version of YZE found in Twilight: 2000 and the Blade Runner RPG. The new YZE SRD v0.9 draft can be accessed here.

Free League invites the community to feedback on both the Year Zero Engine FTL and the SRD on its forums. They will both be finalized and officially launched in a few weeks.

The Year Zero Engine (YZE) in various iterations has been used in most Free League RPGs in recent years, including Mutant: Year Zero, Coriolis, Tales From the Loop, Forbidden Lands, ALIEN, Vaesen, Blade Runner RPG, and the upcoming The Walking Dead Universe RPG. The YZE is an accessible, fast and adaptable rules framework that encourages story-focused and player-driven playstyles.

A Module for Dragonbane

Beside the YZE FTL, Free League has also presented a third-party license for the upcoming Dragonbane RPG, which was successfully Kickstarted last year. This license allows creators to freely publish RPG supplements explicitly compatible with Dragonbane, and to place the A Module for Dragonbane logo on the front cover.

A draft of the Dragonbane third-party license can be found here. Once finalized, it will also be translated for use in other languages – primarily Swedish, as Dragonbane is a translation of Free League’s new edition of Scandinavia’s first and biggest tabletop RPG Drakar och Demoner. Free League invites the community to feedback on the Dragonbane third-party license on its forums.

The Dragonbane license is intended for third-party supplements for the game, not new standalone games, and thus does not have an SRD. This license is similar to the Free League Workshop community content program on DrivethruRPG, but allows creators to freely choose where to share or sell Dragonbane modules without paying any royalties to anyone.


Dragonbane

Release: Q3 2023
A legend is reborn. Dragonbane is the new and reimagined edition of Sweden’s first and biggest tabletop roleplaying game Drakar och Demoner. A new take on the classic fantasy RPG full of magic, mystery, and adventure. The new edition is designed from the ground up to facilitate fast-paced fantasy adventures, with very little prep time and adventures that are a breeze to run.

Dragonbane

Free League Publishing teases its 2023 releases

Free League Publishing has lifted the veil as to what we can expect in 2023 with new games and expansions! This isn’t everything, there’s more to come but already there’s a lot to be excited for!

Announced Games From Free League Publishing 2023

Dragonbane

Release: Q3 2023
A legend is reborn. Dragonbane is the new and reimagined edition of Sweden’s first and biggest tabletop roleplaying game Drakar och Demoner. A new take on the classic fantasy RPG full of magic, mystery, and adventure. The new edition is designed from the ground up to facilitate fast-paced fantasy adventures, with very little prep time and adventures that are a breeze to run.

Dragonbane

The Lord of the Rings™ Roleplaying

One Ring to Rule Them All
Release: Q1 2023
Return to Middle-earth with The Lord of the Rings™ Roleplaying, a brand new adaptation of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien using the rules for 5E. Based on the second edition of The One Ring™ roleplaying game by Francesco Nepitello, the beautifully illustrated full-color hardback volume The Lord of the Rings™ Roleplaying contains everything you need to create exciting adventures set in the world’s most popular fantasy setting – six original heroic cultures from the land of Eriador, six new classes, a host of terrifying adversaries, and comprehensive rules for journeys, councils, wondrous artefacts, and the subtle magic of Middle-earth.

The Lord of the Rings™ Roleplaying

The Walking Dead Universe RPG

Fight the dead. Fear the living.
Kickstarter Coming Soon
The official tabletop roleplaying game for AMC’s The Walking Dead Universe is coming 2023 from Free League Publishing. The Walking Dead has always been about characters facing impossible life and death choices. In The Walking Dead Universe RPG, you can face these choices head on, putting yourself in the world of The Walking Dead – at any time in the timeline, encountering familiar faces and places and brand-new ones and, making the biggest choice: Who are you going to be? We have seen many stories in The Walking Dead Universe, now it’s time to see yours.

Enter the unforgiving, post-apocalyptic sandbox and learn how to survive and thrive in this new world order. No matter what, expect the stress and stakes to be high. Boasting a new spin on Free League Publishing’s award-winning Year Zero engine, players must not only hone their physical skills, but deeply explore what makes them tick – confronting how the hardships of this world naturally impact what they’re capable of, in the best and worst of times.

The Walking Dead Universe RPG

Zone Wars – A Mutant: Year Zero Skirmish Game

Release: Q4 2023
Lead a band of mutant Stalkers into the Zone and fight others to scavenge artifacts from the Ancients. Stake out your claim in the post-apocalyptic wasteland – or die trying. Zone Wars, a fast and furious game of tabletop miniature skirmishes set in the acclaimed Mutant: Year Zero universe. Designed to be played by up to four players, Zone Wars is all about embracing mayhem and emergent narrative to create a fun and fast-flowing experience.

Zone Wars - A Mutant: Year Zero Skirmish Game

PIRATE BORG

Release: Q1 2023
A scurvy ridden, rules light, art heavy RPG based on MÖRK BORG. A game about being a greedy, filthy scoundrel. No prey, no pay. Find a ship. Recruit some crew. Raid, pillage, plunder, and otherwise pilfer your weasley black guts out. Get a bigger ship. Kill some things. Upgrade your ship. Sneak into a fort. Raid a port. Acquire treasure. Bury said treasure. Become infamous. Search for someone else’s treasure. Flee in terror from unfathomable creatures from the deep. Drink all of the rum. Die on the high seas. Roll a new character and do it all again… For dead men tell no tales, so better get a live one as fast as you can.

PIRATE BORG is written and illustrated by Luke Stratton aka Limithron, who is known for his pirate-themed battle maps.

PIRATE BORG

Announced Expansions 2023

Forbidden Lands – Book of Beasts

Release: Q2 2023
Forbidden Lands: The Book of Beasts is a bestiary you can play. It presents a host of new monsters in great detail. Each beast comes ready to play with tailored random encounters, presenting the Gamemaster with a handy set of mini-adventures to go. The book also includes legends about each monster, introduces the option to harvest resources from slain beasts, and lets the player characters use their Lore skills to gain insight into a monster´s strengths and weaknesses. This will help them defeat – or at least survive an encounter with – the book´s monstrosities.

Forbidden Lands – Book of Beasts

Forbidden Lands – The Bloodmarch

Release: Q2 2023
With The Bloodmarch, the fantasy RPG Forbidden Lands becomes a lot stranger. The Bloodmarch is the name given to the volcanic region west of Ravenland, now accessible as the Shadowgate Pass is again opened. This ancient place of battle-ready horse riders and secretive dwarves is rapidly changing due to the demonic vegetation spreading across the land. Most see this red curse as a threat to all that is good, while others view it as a good thing – or at least a necessary evil needed to reach other goals. 

Forbidden Lands – The Bloodmarch

Coriolis – Wake of the Icons

Release: 2023
In dreams and visions, something calls out into the dark space of the Third Horizon – a new presence or something old? It may hold the answers for the future – about a prophecy, the Chosen and the coming Horizon Wars. Wake of the Icons is the third and final part of Mercy of the Icons, the epic and richly illustrated campaign for Coriolis – The Third Horizon.

Coriolis – Wake of the Icons

Ruins of Symbaroum – Adventure Compendium

The Ruins of Symbaroum – Adventure Compendium will invite you to everything from murder mysteries, to forest expeditions and witch hunts; set in cities, villages, and expanses of wilderness; treating you to encounters with dark¬minded cultists, roaring monstrosities, and raging abominations. The adventures of this tome explore the wide variety of stories that are waiting to be told in the world of Symbaroum.

Ruins of Symbaroum - Adventure Compendium

Ruins of Symbaroum – Call of the Dark

In the expansion Ruins of Symbaroum – Call of the Dark, you will find two adventures that in different ways relate to the growing internal divisions within the Ambrian realm.

The adventure Call of the Dark plays out in the northern territories of the Lost Land of Alberetor, where the player characters will accompany a lowborn noble who is looking to prove the status of her family.
The adventure Retribution initially deals with the search for a person who has gone missing in the city of Kurun, but is soon shown to involve events which may have serious consequences for the relationship between the peoples of the Davokar region.

Ruins of Symbaroum - Call of the Dark

Twilight: 2000 – Urban Operations

Release: Q2 2023
Twilight: 2000 – Urban Operations is a modular expansion focused on  urban environments. The expansion is loosely based on the classic module Free City of Krakow from the first edition of Twilight: 2000 RPG, but designed to be used in any city environment. The boxed set includes new combat and travel rules for urban environments, new factions for the PCs to tangle with, new scenario sites to explore, and introduces the new plot concept to create longer story arcs.

Twilight: 2000 - Urban Operations

Free League Develops Two New Open Game Licenses

Free League Publishing

Free League Publishing has announced the development of two new Open Game Licenses (OGL). One is a rework of the Year Zero Engine OGL, and the other is a new license specifically designed for third-party modules for the upcoming Dragonbane fantasy RPG.

The work on these new licenses was initiated last year but was intensified after the news regarding the update of Wizards of the Coasts’ OGL v1.0, on which the Year Zero Engine (YZE) license was based.

The Year Zero Engine in various iterations has been used in most Free League RPGs in recent years, including Mutant: Year Zero, Coriolis, Tales From the Loop, Forbidden Lands, ALIEN, Vaesen, Blade Runner RPG, and the upcoming The Walking Dead Universe RPG. The YZE is an accessible, fast, and adaptable rules framework that encourages story-focused and player-driven playstyles.

The new Year Zero Engine OGL is designed to be easy to understand and use for creators. It will give creators an irrevocable, worldwide, and royalty-free right to use Year Zero Engine Standard Reference Document (YZE SRD) and freely publish their own roleplaying material based on it.

Alongside the new YZE OGL, the YZE SRD itself is being given a major overhaul and update, based on the developments of the Year Zero Engine in recent years. The new SRD will include more rules variants and add rules for chases, vehicles, travel, and magic.

Beside the YZE OGL, Free League will also release a third-party license for the upcoming Dragonbane RPG, which was successfully Kickstarted last year. This license allows creators to freely publish RPG supplements explicitly compatible with Dragonbane, and to place the special A Module for Dragonbane logo on the front cover.

A Module for Dragonbane

The Dragonbane license is intended for third-party supplements for the game, not new standalone games, and thus does not have an SRD. This license is similar to the Free League Workshop community content program on DrivethruRPG, but allows creators to freely choose where to share or sell Dragonbane modules and without paying any royalties to anyone.

Both new Free League OGLs will be released in the next few weeks.

Unrelated to the two new OGLs, Free League currently publishes two product lines for 5E using WotC’s v1.0 OGL: The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying (based on the original game The One Ring) and Ruins of Symbaroum (based on Symbaroum). Based on the latest announcement from WotC, it seems like these two game lines can continue largely unaffected even after their updated OGL, but Free League continues to monitor the situation as more information becomes available.