After years of writing, playtesting, rewriting, more playtesting, drawing, rewriting, drawing, yet more playtesting...you get the idea...
Sonic: Tag-Team Heroes is now publicly available, free of charge!
On 2/2/22, "Hedgehog" Day no less! But what exactly is Sonic: TTH, and how did it come to be?
Sonic: TTH is a tabletop roleplaying game set in the world of Sonic the Hedgehog. It is not the first of its kind, but to my knowledge it is by far the most ambitious. It boasts a robust ruleset comparable to many major RPGs (in terms of quantity of content, you be the judge on quality!) and has the distinction of being a completely original system rather than an add-on to an existing one. Plus it has some sweet cover art!
It started on a whim back in 2017 to run a one-shot homebrew with some friends. I looked online for existing Sonic TTRPGs, but I couldn't find anything that satisfied my needs. There were smatterings of forum posts with people spitballing ideas and PDFs that had sets of rules lite games that were vaguely Sonic-esque, but nothing that felt like a complete experience. So I took on the daunting task of building an RPG system from the ground up.
The result was the oddball BLURR system, a unique mix of D6 and D10s. I chose these dice because I figured they would be most easily found in large quantities. The session itself was a madcap romp full of memes and inside jokes, the rulebook was sparse and written mostly for my own reference, and the game balance was unrefined. Still, it was fun, but after finishing the evening, the game was shelved and quietly forgotten.
Over the next few years, I occasionally looked back at the untitled game I had created, considered dumping the rulebook on a forum somewhere and letting someone else polish it up. But I realized that was exactly what everyone one else had done, and to date no definitive Sonic RPG had materialized anywhere that I could find. It was during the pandemic, however, that I really gave the game a fresh look. I decided to dust it off and flesh it out just enough that others could easily homebrew it. Add character creation rules, create some NPCs, refine the format of the rulebook. Before I knew it, the rulebook had been completely overhauled, top to bottom, tripling in size!
At this point, I figured I might as well go all the way and go out of my way to make as complete of a product as I could. I made an adventure module to go with the game as well as actual play videos to help new players understand how the game plays on action. As a last minute idea, I designed this website to pull all these elements together.
Sonic: TTH has been a labor of love, I hope some of you guys out there will enjoy it!
So, what's next?
Well, for starters, letting people know that this game exists! I have plans for videos and other exciting promotions in the not-too-distant future to raise awareness.
Once people start playing, I hope to collect feedback and start creating new content. I have plans to create a Quick Start adventure for the game that can be picked up and played through in just a few hours. Beyond that, I'll keep that to myself for now.
Keep on rollin'!
- McShmoodle
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