With credits on a wide variety of different tabletop roleplaying games, such as the Fallout Roleplaying Game, Dishonored,Vampire: The Masquerade and Paizo’s Starfinder, it was little surprise that author/RPG designer/novelist Alison Cybe’s newest tabletop roleplaying game, Shield Maidens, published by Mongoose Publishing, would garner a lot of attention. The Kickstarter campaign for this amazing Viking neo-noir/cyberpunk effort published by the company that also brings you Traveller, Paranoia and other RPGs was fully funded after just one day. With four stretch goals already unlocked and the next stretch goal, an amazing printed Gamemaster’s Screen coming up, we would love to invite you to cover this great news, schedule an interview and/or send you an advance review copy of the game if you haven’t gotten one yet.
About Shield Maidens
In Shield Maidens, players take on the role of warrior women selected by the Norse goddess Freya to save Yggdrasil – the cosmos, which includes all nine realms – from dying. Additionally, the Allies stretch goal, the first PDF supplement that got unlocked, allows them to also play Shield Maidens’ male Resistance allies, who are enhanced with overclocked chrome. Standing against them is Fenrir, which not only controls the entire mega-metropolis on Midgard, but also continuously roams the cosmos to mine for Ymir’s blood, needed to power most of its technology.
Aside from Fenrir, danger looms everywhere, from the strange creatures and mutants both underneath the city and in the wastelands outside of its dome, to the haughty elves.
In a world where the gods have split into two factions, the dwarves have evolved into powerful energy beings, gargantuan trolls are able to survive even the harshest of winter storms and the Jötunn stand undecided, the Player Characters are sure to be In the centre of a great many exciting adventures and gaming sessions.
Stretch Goals
As already indicated above, our Shield Maidens Kickstarter project has already unlocked several stretch goals.
The PDF supplement Allies allows player characters to play male Resistance members. These brave fighters follow multiple gods and form sects to garner divine favour.
In the full PDF adventure The Sun, the Fenrir Empire has cut power in the Shield Maidens’ home zone, leaving them to secure the Ymir’s Blood necessary to fuel the district, including its weapons, homes and hospitals.
PDF supplement Dataforge: Trolls covers these gargantuan creatures in detail, including how they use the bones of their prey to mark their domain boundaries.
In the second full PDF adventure, The Banished, three exiled Jötunn have arrived in Midgard to seek an honourable death in combat… but, unfortunately, their presence has attracted the attention of Fenrir, while the Resistance is seeking to recruit these powerful creatures in order to better wage battle against the empire.
Our next stretch goal is our printed Gamemaster’s Screen, which provides well laid-out tables and a summary of the most important game rules on one and gorgeous art by Mark Graham on the other side.
Mechanics
In Shield Maidens, each character is identified by both Branch skills and sub-skills. The TTRPG uses a 2D6 roll-over mechanic, with tests made by adding two six-sided dice, adding the appropriate Branch skill and sub-skills, and trying to pass a set Difficulty number.
On top of that, Shield Maidens are able to use their unique Guardian Shields – some of the most powerful weapons in Yggdrasil – and substitute a D6 with a D8. However, if they roil an 8 on the Shield Dice, a flare occurs. This can cause a wide variety of unintended side effects, such a boiling seas, destructive earth tremors, plumes of fire or blazing lights that can be seen for miles.
Get on Board!
With only 9 days left, we would love you to cover Shield Maidens and the latest news before we wrap up our Kickstarter campaign. Please share with your listeners, viewers and/of followers and send us a link or PDF of what you published! Of course, the entire Mongoose team – including Alison Cybe, Mongoose Managing Director Matthew Sprange and artists extraordinaire Mykyta Vasylchuk and Mark Graham – is available for comments and interviews, and we have advance PDFs of the Shield Maidens Training Guide available for reviewing purposes. As soon as we go into print, we will have print review products for you to look at as well!
Please send any and all comments and requests to:
Dirk Vandereyken
+32 (0)494 38 27 44