Back in 2017, we introduced Sig: Manual of the Primes. This cosmopolitan planar fantasy roleplaying game has been well appreciated over the years as people have used it to tell stories of family, faith, and faction politics. This colourful, hardcover book has been so well received that we couldn’t leave it alone. That’s why in 2020, we are inviting you to Sig with three new projects.

The current pandemic crisis has reminded us of the importance of community and escape into fantastic worlds. We invite you to play the game online using tools like Roll20, Zoom, or Twitch so that everyone can escape into this fantasy city for a few hours of adventure. 

We want to make this happen and we are happy to help by offering your entire group free PDFs of the game. Just gather a group of friends and companions and schedule a session. When you are ready to start, contact us at genesisoflegend@gmail.com with “Free City” in the subject line to get started. 

The Gnomes and the Winged are at war, and only you can find a path to peace. We are working with the excellent Luke Elias to write and develop this brand-new adventure suitable for one-shot games or to launch short campaigns. We will keep you posted when this new adventure is released but we can’t wait to share it with you.

Sig is a rough city. It’s a home for cutters and bashers, hungry for coin and glory. It’s a battlefield between the city factions as they fight over territory. It’s a city of gods, demons, and stranger things which lurk. No wonder that scoundrels and freebooters flock to the Nexus of the ‘Verse.

Ever since our original kickstarter campaign, we have dreamed of expanding Sig into new arenas. We saw the fascinating system behind Blades in the Dark, and recognized how it could align with the planar fantasy setting. We dreamed of planar heists, turf-wars in the ever-changing city, and the exciting lives of Freebooters.  We also realized that we would have to make some small adaptations to the system so that it would truly represent the planar fantasy genre, so we set to work.

Sig: City of Blades will be a stand-alone game that adapts the setting of Sig to the Forged in the Dark rule system. It takes a multi-part character approach similar to Nathan Paoletta’s Masks of the Mummy Kings or John Harper’s Danger Patrol. It restructures play around a single territorial map with key blocks of territory under the control of the different factions. The struggle for territory and position is fierce in Sig: City of Blades, and each of you belong to one of three minor factions who are seeking to grow. There is a lot to explore and enjoy with this game.

We are once again working with Juan Ochoa who is illustrating this book with his usual masterful skill. Here is a sneak peak at some of the artwork he already prepared for the game. 

I would absolutely love to hire him to produce more art for the project, but I need your help to make it happen. All of the proceeds from sales of Sig: Manual of the Primes in May and June of 2020 will go towards commissioning additional art for Sig: City of Blades. The Manual of the Primes is also currently 25% off the cover price, so it’s a great time to pick up a copy and tell your friends.  

I look forward to seeing you in the City Between, and planning our next heist together.

In the spring of 2019, we released a survey to collect information from a variety of publishers. We had a remarkable response rate, gathering information on 71 unique products from 47 unique publishers. This Survey has given us a remarkable wealth of information and it’s taken months to work through the analysis of the broad dataset.

We are proud to share this analysis into the tabletop RPG publishing landscape of 2019. We hope that this this analysis will help provide some insight into the the challenges and opportunities that the industry faces.

If you have any comments or questions about the survey, please feel free to contact me at genesisoflegend@gmail.com to discuss them. The dataset will be available for academic research purposes upon request.

If you find this analysis useful, I would love if you would sign up for our mailing list so that we can let you know about similar initiatives. Our intent is to begin releasing a periodic newsletter of RPG design and publication related information and we would love to share it with you. If you are interested, just fill in the form below!