Edge Studio has been quiet for much of its current existence. While Edge had an original incarnation making RPGs like End of the World, in its current version it’s the RPG arm of Asmodee, built up in part from the original Edge Studio but primarily from the roleplaying team of Fantasy Flight Games. Immediately after Edge Studio was formed they did little besides finish existing Fantasy Flight obligations, mostly in the form of Legend of the Five Rings supplements. While Edge was also responsible for releasing the Twilight Imperium supplement for Genesys and a few 5e-based games, there has not been an Edge-developed RPG system. Until now. Finally in broad distribution at the end of November, Arkham Horror is both a new swing at an old license but also a completely new set of RPG mechanics, the Dynamic Pool System. While the Dynamic Pool System certainly drinks from the same well as Genesys, for Arkham Horror it presents much simpler mechanics; there are no custom dice, only d6s, and while the game provides the comfortable framework of character classes there are really only two mechanical levers players need to worry about pulling, skills and knacks. All in all, it’s a simpler ruleset designed to be an easier way to play Call of Cthulhu. The question, of course, is if that’s something that we want.
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Adventures in Rokugan Review
This review is delayed, far from the “hot off the press” take that I had intended back some time ago. Instead this has been an article I have stewed on for some time. In 2020 there came an announcement that Edge Studios would be taking over RPG properties that had been held by Fantasy Flight, which includes two that I have written about extensively in the past: Star Wars and Legend of the Five Rings. Since the acquisition, the publishing has mainly been constrained to reprints of books in use and published already developed supplements that had been in the pipeline before the acquisition. It was a bit of a surprise to me that the first new material from this new studio was to take the setting of Rokugan and put it into the mechanics of 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons.
My reaction to reading it at first was, to put it politely, visceral.
Embers of the Imperium Review
Genesys was released in late 2017, and supported with four major supplements from 2018 through 2020. At that point, the generic RPG went dark. The Covid pandemic was certainly part of this, but it was first a symptom of the broader issues for the RPG business at Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). In the mid 2010s, Fantasy Flight was (excuse me) flying high; as both the licensor of Star Wars and several enormously popular RPGs based on Games Workshop properties, Fantasy Flight was one of the biggest players in the RPG space, but that turned around quickly and badly. When FFG lost the Games Workshop license in 2017 they had nothing left in the portfolio outside of Star Wars; their biggest other game, Anima: Beyond Fantasy had been discontinued the year before. The company wasn’t ready to give up on RPGs, though. They had bought the rights to Legend of the Five Rings two years before, and whether in an effort to maximize their investment or simply because of the sunk cost fallacy, they also invested in a new game based on the ruleset they used for Star Wars. Genesys came out first, while Legend of the Five Rings was ultimately released over three years after FFG bought the property.
Embers of the Imperium comes into the picture after several upheavals, only one of which was a pandemic. In late 2019 FFG divested themselves of their RPG business, shuttling it over to another division of their parent company, Asmodee. Edge Studios, a Spanish company which originally published The End of the World, was the new brand for Asmodee’s RPG line. How did it work? Hard to say. The company does have two 5e-based games now (Midnight: Legacy of Darkness and Adventures in Rokugan), so they might be making money. That said, they did not give up on Genesys. After being announced in April of 2021, Embers of the Imperium has finally been released.
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System Split Redux: Legend of the Five Rings (AEG and FFG/EDGE)
A while ago I had a bit of a hot take off the press. At the time I had played the Beginners Box for Legend of the Five Rings 5th edition produced by Fantasy Flight Gaming and then, in purely coincidental timing, played in a campaign of 4th edition that had been written by AEG. Excited, and with childhood memories rekindled, I ran to write up the differences I have seen between the two. So, why do I mention it?
It’s been a few years since that article was written, and the world proceeded to break time with the years of 2020 and 2021. With a slew of personal life changes, and with a need for incredible caution for social gatherings, my choice in games became dictated by what I could find online. Over the last two years, I’ve had a healthy diet of games run in 4th edition and finally had the chance to build characters and play in a campaign using the full 5th edition rules. As I reflected, I began to wonder: had I done a disservice by rushing to put something out? Sometimes we become too excited at a new prospect, and become so eager to champion it that we don’t get the full picture. There is also another element in play now as well: time. Back when I did my first crack at a System Split, FFG were the new kids on the block, with their hands on a shiny new property and some interesting ideas on how to freshen things up. Now, not only have they released the full rules and published several expansion books for Legend of the Five Rings and reorganized. EDGE Studio has now taken over the IP, and while books continue to be published, and the system itself remains mostly intact, I feel like it’s worth circling back and taking a deeper, more nuanced dive into the differences between the two systems. Overall, with some time and space, I have come to believe that FFG created their version with a firm eye on past editions, but there are noticeable differences that might sway both gamerunners and players in one direction or the other.
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Cannibal Halfling Gaming 