We caught up with Free League Publishing CEO Tomas Harenstam at Gen Con for our annual interview, and talked about the RPG market, new aliens and more on the road map, and the best places to start with Free League.
ICv2: We always like to start out by asking your opinion of the state of the RPG market here in the U.S.
Tomas Harenstam: It seems to be pretty healthy. After a peak during the pandemic, it’s been flattening out, but we’re doing well. It seems to be, right now, for us, a healthy, steady level.
Do you think that pandemic peak was that people were buying products they would have bought anyway, just buying them faster, or did you get new customers?
We got a few new with a lot of online gaming, but also just people looking for things to do. Now, that has calmed down a little bit.
You’ve got a steady flow of Alien products. Your license is from the movies, but did you get any lift from the Alien: Earth TV show, which had the property getting more visibility?
It definitely brought the franchise to the forefront, and it did get some more attention. It’s a cool addition to the line, and we’re looking for ways to incorporate that. That was a bit of a prequel, so it’s not set in the same year in the universe as our game, but there’s stuff in there that we can definitely work with to add to the game line as well.
You have access to that material?
Some of it, yeah. Definitely.
Great, because there’s a bunch of cool new aliens.
Yeah, there is. We haven’t added those yet, but that’s something we’ve been discussing, because that’d be nice.
You’re launching Invincible: Superhero Roleplaying here at the show (see “’Invincible’ Heads to Retail“). We were curious about the sell-in on that; in the comic side of our business, it’s such a huge property. How was the response relative to your expectations?
It’s been good. It’s not the biggest seller ever. Comic book or superhero RPGs are a bit of a niche thing compared to fantasy or sci-fi, and we’re seeing a little bit of that. We have some hardcore Free League fans who are like, “OK, this looks really cool, but I’m not into superhero RPGs, so this is not for me.”
Even though the property is huge, in the RPG side of superhero fandom, there is overlap, but it’s not complete. Here at Gen Con, we see good interest, and outside of the original Kickstarter that we did, we’re also seeing the interest growing after that. There’s a lot of potential for the line. We just need to work a little bit more to find those fans of the comic book and animated show to find their way to the RPG. That’s what we’re doing.
Do you have any distribution in the comic stores? Universal?
Yeah, we do work with Universal, but on the gaming side. We don’t work with dedicated comic distributors, even though that’s something we’re looking into. Mainly, it’s RPG gaming hobby channels as it is for our other games, but there might be some work that we could do there to get a broader reach for this particular title.
This fall, you’ve got an anime-style game range coming out. Tell us a little bit about that.
It’s Twilight Sword (see “’Twilight Sword RPG Starter Set’”). It’s designed by our partner, Two Little Mice, the Italian studio that we work with (see “Free League Partners with Two Little Mice”). It has that anime style and based on its original property, but it harkens back to video games, like Legend of Zelda and other games like that; it has that style and feel to it.
It’s coming out in October in general launch. That anime, manga-style game in RPGs seems to be a growing niche. That’s interesting to see, and we have a great partner to do that. They’re doing a great job with that game, and we’re happy to publish it and distribute it with them.
They made Outgunned before, which is a really good game, a cinematic adventure game. We’re releasing and publishing it with them as their distributor and publisher, so it’s also available (see “New, ‘Outgunned’ Core Rulebook”). They’re a really good small Italian studio, really high-quality stuff, both on art style, writing, everything.
Then you’ve got a Moorcock license. Tell us a little bit more about the Legends of Stormbringer (see “‘Legends of Stormbringer RPG’”).
That’s been a dream for a long time, that’s one of our passions. There’s several old Stormbringer games going back to the 80s from Chaosium. Even Games Workshop did an edition. We’ve been toying around with the idea for years. Now, we got a chance to sign the license and connect it with our Dragonbane game, which is a good fit for Stormbringer.
It’s the same engine, right?
Yeah, since Dragonbane has roots in basic role-playing as well (even though it’s not that anymore, it has that DNA at its core), so it’s a good fit for Stormbringer. We’re really moving into that now, working on that line. Looking forward to getting more details out on that soon.
Earlier this year, you opened up more of your games by making them open game licenses (see “Free League Expands Game Licenses”). What’s the response been, are you seeing some proliferation of new products from other companies?
Yeah, it’s been great. Primarily, we’ve done it for Dragonbane, but I also now opened it up for Coriolis, and that’s taking off as well. For Dragonbane, we’ve seen a lot: Kickstarter crowdfundings, but also small, big, all kinds of games, so that’s really expanded the line with a lot of high-quality stuff.
We have the range of expansions now for Dragonbane that we could never have done before, and most of it is really good. It’s been a big success for us and fun for others as well. They can just go there and publish stuff for Dragonbane, they don’t even need our permission to do it, which works well.
How about Coriolis? Has there been any action on the open game license for that game?
There’s been some. It’s much newer, and it’s less known, but there are a couple of titles out and more coming, both for the original Third Horizon version of the game that came out in 2017, and then the new version that came out last year, The Great Dark.
Then MÖRK BORG seems like it’s been quiet the last few months. What’s going on there?
It’s one of those games that just there’s not a lot of official material. That studio has done some stuff, but mainly it’s been third-party stuff that’s been crazy for MÖRK BORG, and that keeps the game very much alive.
It keeps doing really well for us, selling very well year after year after year, even though it’s been around now for six years. It’s still doing really well, even though there’s not that much new official material. It’s taken a life on its own, so it’s doing well.
For a retailer that might be looking at Free League and trying to decide what to carry, what’s your best-selling licensed line and your best-selling house line?
For the licensed lines, I don’t know which one is actually selling the most, but Alien and The One Ring are definitely the top two. For our own original lines, Dragonbane is probably the best seller, Vaesen also, and then MÖRK BORG. It’s not one of each, but those are definitely the top sellers, licensed and original.
Anything else we should know about upcoming products from Free League?
We’re releasing Invincible: Superhero Roleplaying, our first superhero role-playing game. That’s coming out and will be followed by a range of expansions. Then we just today announced two new big expansions for The One Ring (see “Three ‘The One Ring’ Products”). One is called The White Tower and the Hall of Gold, which is an expansion focused on Rohan and Gondor. It’s a big expansion like the Moria book, and then a bestiary, they’re coming out together. We hope to release them sometime in the spring, so they’re on the way. That’s the big next step for The One Ring, which will be a big step for the line.
Are those going through crowdfunding first?
That’s the idea. We’re doing a BackerKit crowdfunding for those two this year, in September, so that’s coming pretty soon. The pre-launch is open for that. Also, we’ll have retailer options through the crowdfunding as well.
Spring is the trade release?
That’s the idea, Q2 probably. We don’t have a date set, but around there.
Source: ICv2
