Mantic Games are a British war game publisher founded by former Games Workshop MD Ronnie Renton. They’re known for games like DreadBall, Kings of War and Warpath.
Kings of War is a tabletop wargame which was first released in 2010, then raised $354,997 on Kickstarter in 2012, then $366,547 for a second edition in 2017 as well as $272,409 for the skirmish game Kings of War: Vanguard in the same year. Mantic have now announced a Kings of War RPG is coming.
The lead designer is the ENnie award-winning Marc Langsworthy. It was Langsworthy who pitched the idea for the Kings of War RPG in the first place and so has won the project on behalf of Red Scar publishing, his company. In a blog post at Mantic he says;
A few years later, with a few credits to my name as a writer for roleplaying games, I tracked down Ronnie during an exhausting UK Games Expo and asked if he would be interested in discussing the possibility of a roleplaying game for one of Mantic’s settings. He absolutely was, but a few other projects involving zombies and red-skinned, hornless devils meant it would actually be a few more years until we could seriously get the opportunity to talk about it further.
What a difference two years makes! With an ENnie award, an RPG system license, a successful
kickstarter and membership on the Kings of War: Vanguard Rules Committee also now on my list of credits, I tracked down Ronnie at Essen and once again posed the question. The timing, it seems, couldn’t have been more perfect. To top it all off, 2019 marks Mantic’s ten-year anniversary as a games company. Being given the opportunity to be apart of this by producing Kings of War the Roleplaying Game is as much an honour as the actual granting of the license itself.
The license mentioned is probably the 2d20 partnership with Modiphius which Red Scar secured in 2017. Langworthy is responsible for the art direction and line development for the system and he’s worked on Mutant Chronicles 3e, Conan: Adventures In An Age Undreamed Of Roleplaying and Corvus Belli’s Infinity the Roleplaying Game. However, 2d20 isn’t the system mentioned at the end of the Kings of War RPG announcement.
There’s lots to do yet, and not much time to make sure it all happens between now and the kickstarter launch in August. All new artwork, further playtesting of our TriCore system and a raft of approvals need to happen between now and then, but with Mantic’s support and blessing, we are well-placed to make this roleplaying game worthy of a crown. In the meantime, make sure to sign up if you would like to be informed of development along the way and please stay tuned!
TriCore hasn’t been mentioned on Mantic’s blog before and doesn’t appear to be mentioned on their main website at all.
