Announced three years ago this month, it looks like The Witcher tabletop roleplaying game is finally going to make it to release. R. Talsorian Games has posted a short announcement that the game is now hitting the printers and books will be available for purchase at GenCon in August, with PDFs available at the same time or shortly after. Once the full print run is delivered to their warehouse, books will also be available at the company’s web store. The announcement was accompanied by a preview image of the game’s layout.
Officially titled The Witcher Role-Playing Game, the pen and paper RPG will use a version of R. Talsorian’s in-house Fuzion game system, though little has been released about precise mechanics aside from some scant details about deadly combat and the feel of the world. The game is set between video games The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3, with some modularity to reflect The Witcher 2’s multiple possible endings. Players will be able to create a variety of Witcher races and archetypes as characters, including the eponymous monster hunters.
The game’s development process has been long. It was announced in 2015 and originally scheduled for release in 2016, with R. Talsorian Games founder and Cyberpunk 2020 creator Mike Pondsmith serving as lead designer. But Pondsmith consulting with CD Projekt on Cyberpunk 2077 clearly took more time than expected, and The Witcher Role-Playing Game is finally arriving a couple years later.
Frankly, nobody in tabletop games would be surprised by the delay. Projects stretching years past the expected release is common in a field comprised almost entirely of one-to-three person companies and dominated by a few huge and popular games like Dungeons & Dragons.
This isn’t the only game R. Talsorian has scheduled for this year. Their updated version of Cyberpunk 2020, titled Cyberpunk Red, is due out at Christmas.