Strange & Grim – New Tabletop RPG Published by Luke Gygax

If you’re looking for something fresh in the realm of tabletop roleplaying, you might want to check out Strange & Grim, a dieselpunk (it’s like steampunk but with more smog) RPG with some horror elements that should be coming to Kickstarter on October 11, 2022.

The game will be built upon Everyday Heroes, an adjusted D&D 5E ruleset positioned as a successor to d20 Modern, and published by one Luke Gygax, who you may know as Gary Gygax’s son. Here are some additional details on this whole arrangement:

San Mateo, CA – Evil Genius Productions, the maker of the Everyday Heroes™ tabletop roleplaying game, has announced at GenCon that it is launching a 3rd party licensing program allowing game publishers to create their own roleplaying adventures utilizing the Everyday Heroes’™ rules system.

The program allows licensees to take advantage of the company’s Product Identity, published and in-development rules mechanics, and gives publishers the right to label their products as compatible with the Everyday Heroes™ system. There is a one-time application fee of $50.

This program aims to recreate the expansive publishing ecosystem that was based on d20 Modern. Over the years, d20 Modern spawned hundreds of amazing games such as Adamant’s Thrilling Tales (2005-2007) and Mars (2006-2007) line, Green Ronin’s varied d20 Modern rules and settings, which culminated in Damnation Decade (2006), and Mongoose’s new editions of the classic Macho Women with Guns (2003, 2005).”

“I’m hoping that anyone with an idea for a modern roleplaying game will come to us to help them realize their vision, said D. Todd Scott, Owner of Evil Genius Productions. “I, for one, can’t wait to see what people come up with.”

Gaxx Worx™, a new games publisher launched by Luke Gygax, has signed up to use Evil Genius’ 3rd party license to launch Strange & Grim. According to game designer, Matt Everhart, “Strange & Grim will be a campaign setting that combines the adventure and wartime elements of Hellboy/Indiana Jones plus the horror elements like the Void, Event Horizon.” The Kickstarter will launch in October 2022.

As part of this program, publishers can also opt into a co-marketing agreement. If elected, Evil Genius will promote its partner’s adventures to the Everyday Heroes™ customer base and sell the products on the e-commerce platform. Similar to other online marketplaces, Evil Genius will keep 30% of the sales price and offer the rest to the publisher. The application for the program can be found here.

Today, Evil Genius Productions also announced today it’s hiring of Owen KC Stephens as Editor-In-Chief. Mr. Stephens is a well-known developer who has worked at Wizards of the Coast, Paizo Publishing, and Green Ronin Publishing and worked extensively on the d20 Star Wars, d20 Modern, Everquest d20, Pathfinder, Starfinder, Freeport, and Fantasy AGE game lines. In addition to being Editor in Cheif, Owen KC Stephens will also be the lead writer for Kong: Skull Island.

“I’m thrilled to be joining the team creating Everyday Heroes™ and its officially licensed action-movie Cinematic Adventures™,” said Stephens. “Everyday Heroes is inspired by the d20 Modern RPG from the early 2000s, and I worked on a number of books for that line. I’ve always had a love of modern roleplaying systems, and I’m super-excited by what I have seen of Evil Genius’s updated take on the genre using 5e-compatible rules.”

Then, there’s also this Polygon interview with Luke Gygax that sheds some light on this new project. A quick excerpt:

“Magic has become more accessible,” Gygax said. “So you’re seeing industrialization of magic. So besides high fantasy magic — like somebody who could cast spells or throw a lightning bolt from their hands — there’ll also be that magical science, that aethertech, which is essentially magical technology. So you might have a lightning-bolt gun that a craftsman is able to manufacture.”

“It’s kind of a mix of Hellboy meeting Indiana Jones and throwing in a layer of a little bit of a horror touch in there as well,” he added.