There’s been a fair amount of speculation about the future of the Iron Kingdoms, a campaign setting by Privateer Press ever since the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons was announced. They had put any publication of stand-alone books for the roleplaying game on hold, shifting their creative efforts entirely towards their miniatures wargames and drizzling out some RPG material in their magazine. But no word was forthcoming regarding the future of the d20 3.5 RPG product.
Now there’s word from Doug Seacat, their lead writer:
There has been considerable speculation and expectations about the RPG line so I wanted to clarify the situation before GenCon. As our fans know the RPG line has won a number of awards over the last several years and has earned a dedicated following. We have great appreciation and fondness for the readers who have stuck by us despite the occasional long wait between these books. It has been gratifying to have the support of people who have eagerly devoured every scrap of setting information and RPG rules we could produce.
As you are aware, we put future book publications for the RPG line on-hold after we determined that 4th Edition was a reality. With the future status of 3.5 edition uncertain and not knowing the shape of 4th Edition we decided it would be a mistake to invest further time and resources on upcoming products. After evaluating our options we have decided not to adopt 4th Edition for the Iron Kingdoms. We will not be converting our material for the Full-Metal Fantasy line to that system. We will continue to provide periodic RPG articles in No Quarter Magazine for the foreseeable future. This will be the best place to find information pertinent to your Iron Kingdoms campaigns in the months ahead.
As we have additional news or information related to the RPG line or pertinent to our existing books, including those which are currently out of print, we will let you know either here or in No Quarter Magazine. We are definitely aware of the difficulties being faced by those seeking the out of print books in particular.
No 4th edition, but no word of what we’ll be seeing aside from 3.5 articles in No Quarter Magazine for the foreseeable future. No big announcements in the works, either.
Seeing as I like 4e, and I like the Iron Kingdoms setting, but am more or less fed up with the d20 3.5 ruleset and do not care for homebrewing massive quantities of game information, this probably means that I will not be running an Iron Kingdoms game for the foreseeable future (by which I mean when the Privateers publish something other than 3.5 or Pathfinder).
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
That doesn’t mean I won’t run anything, just that it almost certainly won’t be Iron Kingdoms. There’s too much to the setting that would merit brewing up new classes, new skills, new feats, new paragon paths, new items, carefully striking out a bunch of the existing classes, races, skills, feats, items, and would generally be a gigantic pain in my ass. Heck, I never even finished my attempt to convert the IK over to FATE, and that system’s simple with practically no math to dredge through. I love the setting, but I know there are limits to my work ethic when it comes to hobbies.
Yeah but E6 for Iron Kingdoms would be great!
Actually I happened on this thread by mistake and while I may be quite late on saying this, I still hope it’ll reach your ears as it were. A couple guys (whom as I understand it work for Privateer Press but I’m not 100% on that as I’ve only found the site myself this last week) have been converting IK into 4e its not yet finished but the more support the better. The web site is http://www.bodgedtogether.com and I’m sure if they can get enough people geared up for it (no pun inteded) PP might make it official.
Not too late at all; I leave comments open on old posts for this very reason. I remember seeing Bodged Together way back shortly after it launched. It looks like a lot of thought and work has gone into it since then. So far as I know Privateer Press has been stringing its RPG fanbase along with vague promises of considering developing a unique game system for the Iron Kingdoms once the development burden of Warmachine and Hordes as simmered down a bit.
I’m not holding my breath.
Thanks God! This awfull mechanic wont desacrate this awesome setting. Glad they moved for their own mechanic
I haven’t seen the new IK roleplaying game so I can’t really comment on its quality relative for 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons. I think there were a number of ways that 4e could have been a better fit for the setting than 3e was. Considering the direction they have gone with the miniatures games, I’m not sure I’m interested in laying out ~$70 for the new book.