With the recent excitement over Paizo's Pathfinder RPG (it sold out of its first print run entirely) there has been some talk about whether or not Privateer Press' Iron Kingdoms setting will turn to Pathfinder. The Iron Kingdoms setting is also the setting for Warmachine and Hordes, but the RPG used the Dungeons and Dragons D20 open gaming liscense. So, it would make sense for them to convert to Pathfinder, since it seems posed to replace Wizards of the Coast as the D20 core book provider.
On the Privateer Press forums, not only has PPS Simon stated that they will not be converting to Pathfinder, he has stated that Privateer Press is currently working on their own in house system for the game.
From Simon's posts, we know only a couple things. It is definitely not D20. I have mixed feelings about that, since I've been playing the Iron Kingdoms RPG in D20 for a long time, and I rather like the system with the fixes.Whimper- So that means you guys are definitely working on a proprietary RPG system for the Iron Kingdoms? Thanks for confirming it!
PPS Simon- Yes! But it's going to be a little while, which is why we haven't made a really serious announcement yet. So you're going to have to be patient!
At the same time, I do see that some game mechanics were kind of shoe-horned into the system (the D20 rules make little sense in context of the Warmachine rules and fluff). An in-house system could probably make the game feel more like IK.
But this announcement is every kind of unofficial, so the whole thing is up in the air for now. All we know now is that the Iron Kingdoms books will return to print someday. The property has not been abandoned.
I spoke with two of the PP guys at Baltimore Comic Con about the in house rpg. With the relaunch of Warmachine and Hordes in process now, we shouldn't expect a new rpg ruleset until 2011, but they said that the company would certainly continue the rpg, it is being developed, but they are focusing the bulk of their resources on the tabletop games over this next year. They won't give any further information until closer to release, but I would expect something being announced in the fall of 2010.
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