Zweihander: Grim and Dangerous RPGthe original tabletop system at the heart of groundbreaking titles such as Flames of Freedom And Blackbirds, is back on the market. A new crowdfunding campaign for the second iteration of the game, called Zweihander reforged Edition, launches today. Polygon spoke with creator Daniel D. Fox to find out more, including how things almost completely went off the rails in 2022.
It’s not often that a new tabletop role-playing game can get past the Dungeons & Dragons of the world, but that’s exactly what happened Zweihander. After taking home the golden Ennie Award best game of 2018the author and designer from Kansas City turned his victory into a role in Andrews McMeel Universal as director of the company’s young games division. Then, just a few years later, everything – including his role at the company – fell apart. The reason? Fox tells Polygon that it had a lot to do with the price of paper at the time.
“Even though we exceeded our revenue expectations,” Fox said, “this is a 30-employee company in a new industry. They are great at what they do. They are not very good at new business. So I had a long talk with the president of the publishing company, and he (decided we had to) wrap this up.
The news came at an inopportune time near the end of the pandemic, just as interest in non-D&D tabletop RPGs was starting to increase. It also for a time torpedoed the production of another high-profile crowdfunding success, To the motherlands. And while that project quickly found a new home at Green Ronin, Zweihander itself remained floating on the edge. That is, until Fox met the team at World of game design.
“Zweihander falls under the World of Game design umbrella,” Fox said, “so they are the owner and publisher.”
However, Fox still has plenty of creative control. Together with collaborators Kate Bullock and Anna Goldberg, Fox is putting the finishing touches on the revised game – work that he has had to put aside for far too long.
“We’ve had all this community feedback, from all these playtesters,” Fox said. “We’ve been collecting all this information over the last six, seven years from people who played Zweihander, and there are also a lot of things we wanted to change.”
In addition to revised and more colorful art, Fox said much of the game’s flavor text is also being rewritten for a modern audience. The game also takes an even more aggressive stance towards character deaths.
“What’s interesting about it Zweihander is that most RPGs really focus on the kind of zero-to-hero momentum,” Fox said. “So D&D, Pathfinder, those are great games. I play them. I love them. But (…) what if it wasn’t zero-to-hero and zero-to-one? What if you played flawed, tragic characters who weren’t trying to change the world, but the world was trying to change them? And what would that journey look like for that character – or in this case we call them survivors. What would that journey look like for the survivor if they were to kind of fight against this evil and these things that are almost trying to turn them into the monsters that they themselves were fighting?
You can learn more about it Zweihander renewed edition on the campaign page, where there is a link to it a free “session zero” quickstart document. The campaign runs now through April 7, with delivery expected in February 2025.