A while back, we posted a news regarding Renegade Studios entering a brand new licensing agreement to manufacture RPG board games based on Hasbro properties. Transformers is one of them.
Creative talent at Renegade is working tirelessly during this ‘new normal’ period to complete their work and highlighted the same during an online podcast.
Elisa Teague, Senior Producer of Role Playing Games, stated the following:
“No, you’re not gonna be playing [as] Optimus Prime or anything like that. You get to pick up your own character. What kind of vehicle are you going to be? What is your motivation? What is your your rank? Are you an Autobot? What is your primary function? So, you get to create all of that and go off on adventures. That stuff is really exciting and it is coming along so amazingly and I just want to be out already, I know everybody does, but it’s been a joy to work on for sure.”
Additionally, she also highlighted G.I. Joe. It is likely that the gaming mechanic will be the same for the Joe brand as well.
AzT
https://twitter.com/pugsteady/status/1407112772589166592
pilot00
Agreed.
My point is that a single core rulebook cant by definition have enough variety to keep you going for a long-time. Yes we dont know what its about, but certainly they are not going to invent the replacement to the wheel. Given that a corebook will be about 300 pages (generous estimation) half of them are explaining the rules, one third lore/universe presentation, I cant see it as having enough stuff to keep it going for a long time with adds-ons/ companion releases.
I dont say it will be bad, I just fear it will be a novelty for sometime and then shelved. Which might as well been their target and its not a bad thing.
shellformer
If the book is easy to use with fundamentally compelling gameplay you won't strictly need a hell of a lot of extra material. D&D's flaws are not inherent to making an RPG. If the TF rulebook has decent rules for how to concoct some enemy transformers with a solid number of example robots to use immediately you can get quite a lot of life out of just one book. "Barebones releases"? We don't even know what the rules are about! We have no idea what kind of game they're really making.
Gen. Magnus
I'm not a fan of MLP, but I thought the same thing about the Tales of Equestria ttrpg. There are a fair number of books now and more releasing regularly. I don't disagree that it may be a one-off product, but I'm a-ok with that. The market for 80s nostalgia is big, and that'll help. It'll never be D&D, Pathfinder, Star Wars, etc., but I can see it selling pretty well.
pilot00
Ι am a fan of both/doing both, and I dont think this is going to work as most people think. If anything this is going to be a one off release. Even DnD requires tons of supplements to flesh out an edition and make it interesting and on going. Barebones releases are not going to help much, and by its target audience, its not going to generate THAT much attention in order to warrant more expansions etc. IMHO at most its going to be a novelty that interest will wane soonish.
Hooper_X
At least initially, that’s how the OG Marvel Superheroes RPG (with the Universal Results Table and the FASERIP stat blocks, one of my favorite systems of all time) handled it. There were character creation rules, but all the modules and pre-Gen content assumed you’d want to be “real” characters and were written and designed accordingly (and also, sneakily, were the only place to get official stats for some characters – you want to know how Alpha Flight stacks up, better buy the adventure featuring them!)
Hooper_X
lov too show up in threads and shit on things i don't care about
i'm cool
shellformer
and anyway, a good and interesting RPG will pick up non-TF fans who'll want to play something new
Gen. Magnus
The RPG market has seen a massive resurgence, so the audience is not a small one. The number of TF fans in the role playing world was shocking to me, so again, even if a subset of gamers and a subset of TF people (with an overlapping group) buy the game, it would be no small print run.
Oniconvoy
I’m sure the four people that buy this will be very happy.
Ramberk Magnus
Oh man, here I was hoping the author was chosen because of his merits. I’m bummed out.
shellformer
After briefly looking up what Mekton is, it would seem to me that the main reason Hasbro doesn't go with it is that they don't own it. The two latest releases in the timeline on wikipedia being "twenty years ago in Japan with USA TBA" and "been delayed for five years in a row" respectively probably did not help matters much.
I hope this game is good, and that it eventually includes pretenders and actionmasters.
Additionally, "inventing new transformers" is one of the few easily doable creative things for TF fans to do in a hobby that is otherwise consumption-based or dependent on some heavier modelling skills and tools. Skipping out on rules for making your own dudes would be a bad move. It'd be like Marvel making an RPG but you can't invent your own superhero, only play as the Avengers.
Hooper_X
I would be shocked beyond shocked if it didn't include stat blocks for Optimus, Megatron, and other notables, at some point. The Star Wars games from Fantasy Flight came out in 2013 and didn't drop stat blocks for Darth Vader until a year or two later and stats for Boba Fett, Han Solo, or Luke Skywalker until 2019.
But the point of those games was that you were a smuggler on the fringe or a Rebel pilot on the front lines, far away from such notables.
Depending on what kind of a "Transformers story" this game is trying to tell, you might be in an IDW-style "infiltration" unit and the closest you get to Optimus or Megatron is when Prowl sends you a message every so often with updated mission data… or you might be doing G1 cartoon silliness, or Bay-era small unit combat, or who knows until the actual book comes out.
Based on a very quick skim of the Altered Carbon rules, I think it's safe to say that they'll do their best to make it "feel right" and if you want to play as Optimus or Bumblebee or whoever, someone will very gladly stat those characters up for your use if they aren't in the back of the core rules. With the aforementioned Fantasy Flight Star Wars system, people were doing homebrew stats for Fett etc. almost as soon as the beta test materials dropped.
Endertrot
I mean, thats kinda always the thing with Tabletop RPGs of pre-established franchises. You've got both people who want to make their own characters, and people who want to play as already existing characters.
Donny Finkleberg
But why not make a game in which you can do both? And in answer to your question – if the mission involves any sneaking around or contact with humans, Bumblebee is going to be the preferred option. It all depends on the adventure context, presumably not every game is a pitched battle!
I disliked the way she seemed to think not playing as a favourite character is a selling point – maybe for RPG purists but certainly not for someone like me who may have decided to dip a toe in the RPG waters.
ZacWilliam
Liking just for mentioning Tryst.
-ZacWilliam, on topic I want to buy these RPGs and Board Games sooo Bad like right now. Hurry up!
THE-TRANSFORMER
Not really into the RPG games.
I'll probably get them cause Transformers and they might be good supplements?
However I'm more excited for their actual board games. Hoping for some goodun's there. I think they mentioned a deckbuilder when they announced the license? If it has coop that would be divine.
Beemer
Getting some real "QWOP" game vibes from that, lol.
Hooper_X
Kids on Bikes, which is from the same studio, has rules for running an ET or Eleven or similar character who is more powerful than the main players – everybody shares control and you hand it off to the player who has a certain “aspect” that is most relevant to the situation.
So for Computron, one player might be “calculator brain” and one might be “protect the weak” and one might be “optimal strategist” and depending on what you need Computron to do, the different players would “manage” him for that action.