A new Tomb Raider RPG is in development, and fans can test it soon
The Tomb Raider franchise, as reimagined by developers at Crystal Dynamics, will be brought to life as a new tabletop role-playing game called Tomb Raider: Shadows of Truth. But don’t expect anything as simple as a 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons clone. While combat and exploration are more or less settled science in the world of TTRPGs, Lara Croft’s latest effort hopes to uncover the far more precious treasures of open-ended narrative design and character development.
The game, which has already been in production for over a year at Blades in the Darkpublisher Evil Hat Productions, will blend two groundbreaking RPG systems: Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark. The goal is to create a modern and inviting expression of the Tomb Raider universe. Polygon recently spoke to the game’s team, including Evil Hat founder Fred Hicks, Tomb Raider franchise narrative director at Crystal Dynamics John Stafford, and the game’s lead writer, the authorof the Hellboy-inspiredApocalypse Keys, Rae Nedjadi.
“We have this really curious thing at Evil Hat where generally anything licensed that we’ve done [...] the licensors have sought us out,” Hicks told Polygon. “This was true with The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game that was the inception of the company in the first place. Crystal Dynamics emailed us one day, and [...] when an opportunity like that comes knocking you take it seriously.”
“Meeting with them, I got a sense that they understood the franchise well, they understood how we approach storytelling, character-based storytelling,” said Stafford. “We love characters to have beginning, middles, and ends, and choices they make, and they’re mirroring that in the design. That was appealing to us, that it really marries well with how we like to tell stories.”
Nedjadi, a self-described Tomb Raider fanboy, clearly relished the opportunity to work on the project, a process that kicked off with an epic replay of the original video games.
“Lara has been several different people
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