And you thought Terrinoth made no sense

www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2020/...mQRRS76T9pz6otRWQh00

I have played KeyForge and like it; I think its a clever concept. But basing an RPG on it ???

At the risk of turning this into an FFG bashing session I have to wonder what they are smoking over there these days .

They’re developing their own IPs. Need something that isn’t Arkham and L5R. If they hadn’t picked up the Marvel license, Star Wars and Game of Thrones are looking a lot shakier than a year or two ago, and Lord of the Rings isn’t blowing the doors off. The breakup with Games Workshop isn’t a distant memory either.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Terrinoth makes sense, it's just boring.

I'm not sure how Keyforge would work as a setting for an RPG. It's incoherence is part of the card game's charm, but certainly does not make me curious about who/what the Roman dinosaurs are and why they have allied with the thief elves. A friend and I were just discussing how weird it was that Asmodee was going to try and base fiction in the setting and this is an even stranger step.

I'm with barrowdown--the incoherence of KEYFORGE is its charm. Like demons versus Martians (are they canonically from Mars? versus knights I think versus like... Hill Giants? and whatever else. It makes no sense at all. You can try to spin it as the Hub World or Nexus of Dimensions or whatever, but it all seems like a world without rules. How do you roleplay being anything?

"Rick, you're a toaster--not sentient though, just a device that heats bread; we'll see how things go on the sentience front. Moira: a mermaid, but with legs and feet where your arms should be. You can't breathe out of water and start the game dying, good luck! Tom, you are also a toaster, but in form and function you resemble the fractured core of a decaying neutron star..."

If this sells, anything will.

I don't see Keyforge as any worse than the Magic mythos. On the other hand, in my view everything WOTC has tried to do to make the Magic mythos mean anything (PLANESWALKERS) has also bee pretty iffy.

Gary Sax wrote: I don't see Keyforge as any worse than the Magic mythos. On the other hand, in my view everything WOTC has tried to do to make the Magic mythos mean anything (PLANESWALKERS) has also bee pretty iffy.

At least Magic post-Homelands is fairly coherent within a set. WOTC also was not making official Magic RPG settings until very recently (2018 for an actual print product, 2016 for a free PDF) and did not make prose fiction books until they had coherent sets. Keyforge is less coherent than the Revised-era Magic core set, which was definitely more Terrinoth-like in its generic fantasy-ness.

KeyForge as a setting is the gaming equivalent of “eclectic” decor in a family restaurant...old license plates, a picture of the Blues Brothers, a tennis racket, a fake jackalope with a cowboy hat, etc.

Since their Genesys RPG only uses FFG's in-house settings they don't have a lot of choices as far as adding new sourcebooks. Next will probably be the Discover: Lands Unknown sourcebook.

ChristopherMD wrote: Since their Genesys RPG only uses FFG's in-house settings they don't have a lot of choices as far as adding new sourcebooks. Next will probably be the Discover: Lands Unknown sourcebook.

Don't know about you, but I'm holding out for the Minotaur Lords sourcebook.

Michael Barnes wrote: ...a fake jackalope with a cowboy hat, etc.

Barnes will only accept real jackalope mounts in his family restaurants.

I like Keyforge's setting as a means of shoving in anything and everything for a card game, but they've been pushing it as an actual world for a bit despite the playerbase having no interest. I guess it was all buildup for this?

If you want a good sci-fi system Starfinder has been out and killing it for a couple years now. Why you would bother with this is beyond me.

edit: hahahahaha

There’s plenty of cross-genre gonzo settings in RPGs, so I don’t get why this is any different. TORG, for example. Even D&D has stuff like this with Spelljammer, Planescape, Barrier Peaks, etc. Or Gamma World or any other post-Apocalypse setting that mixes tropes for the amusement of the GM.

It might still be a bad game, but I don’t think it’s because of the premise here.

I've noticed in the last few years a lot of mindless "corporate synergies" going on when a publisher releases a game. They see minis games making $$$ so they put a ton of cash into minis, then they see RPGs are also currently super-trendy, so they announce an RPG spinoff as well. Modiphius did the Fallout minis game, then suddenly there was a Fallout RPG. Mantic did a new Kings Of War, then suddenly licensed a Kings Of War RPG. FFG was flogging their Star Wars RPG around the time they decided to become "the Star Wars company."

Most seems done out of convenience rather than out of any actual groundswell of popular desire.

DarthJoJo wrote: They’re developing their own IPs. Need something that isn’t Arkham and L5R. If they hadn’t picked up the Marvel license, Star Wars and Game of Thrones are looking a lot shakier than a year or two ago, and Lord of the Rings isn’t blowing the doors off. The breakup with Games Workshop isn’t a distant memory either.

I get they need IP they own rather than pay for. But as others have stated , this environment just seems too chaotic/incoherent as an RPG setting.