01 December 2011

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Cakebread & Walton have taken Newt Newport’s excellent OpenQuest system (essentially a ‘rules light’ version of RuneQuest, with some bits from Stormbringer thrown in), and retooled it for Renaissance-era fantasy role-playing. Their new system – called, appropriately enough, ‘Renaissance’ – will fuel the second edition of their excellent campaign setting, Clockwork & Chivalry.

Today Cakebread & Walton announced some exciting news concerning Renaissance and Clockwork & Chivalry at their website:

Cakebread & Walton are pleased to announce the launch of the Renaissance System Reference Document, available for free download. The Renaissance system is a new D100 system based on Newt Newport’s OpenQuest, and is designed for historical and fantasy gaming in the age of black powder weapons. Released under an Open Gaming License, which allows companies and individuals to incorporate the rules into their own games, it features familiar mechanics, grim and gritty combat, extensive period weapons and equipment lists, dozens of professions, and rules for factions and belief systems. It also includes two magick systems – the powerful battle alchemy first introduced in Clockwork & Chivalry 1st Edition, and a streamlined and expanded version of the witchcraft rules from the Silver Oggie Award-winning supplement Divers & Sundry.

Renaissance can be downloaded in two forms: as a zip folder containing all the Word files needed to introduce the rules into your own system, or as a printable PDF for use at the gaming table.

Also released today is a 40 page preview of the forthcoming Clockwork & Chivalry 2nd Edition Core Rulebook, due out from Cubicle 7 Entertainment in January. This 400 page rulebook incorporates the Renaissance system into a fantasy world of mud, blood, mayhem and magick, in an alternate 17th century England where the giant clockwork war machines of Oliver Cromwell do battle with the battle alchemists of the Royalists, and Adventurers struggle to survive in a world of religious persecution, splintered politics, corruption, ghouls, witchcraft and chaos.

The Renaissance system will form the engine for all future Clockwork & Chivalry releases, as well as other exciting new Renaissance products for 2012 and beyond. Products in the pipeline include the first four volumes in the Kingdom & Commonwealth campaign re-released in two omnibus editions (currently in preparation), followed by the final two adventures in the series, Hobbes: Leviathan and London Calling; a series of “pick-up-and-play” books for the Renaissance system, including Clockwork & Cthulhu and Clockwork & Deviltry; and a new “airships and flintlocks” fantasy world, Realms of Gold, featuring, faeries, shape-changing lizardmen, plunder, pirates and revolution in a world almost, but not entirely, unlike our own.

I’m especially intrigued by the reference to a ‘Clockwork and Cthulhu’ book, which is something that I would snap up in a second!

Overall, I must say that it is good to see that Cakebread and Walton not only have survived the unexpected early end of MRQII, but now are authors of their own destiny with Renaissance!

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I'm a Canadian political philosopher who lives primarily in Toronto but teaches in Milwaukee (sometimes in person, sometimes online).