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What happened to the Girl Genius RPG?

Agatha I think I’ve mentioned it before that I just love Phil and Kaja Foglio’s webcomic Girl Genius. I actually started reading the comics back in the day, when they were only available in print. I have a soft spot for the Steampunk genre and I fell in love with Phil Foglio’s comics when I first saw “What’s New with Phil & Dixie” in Dragon magazine.

A long time ago Steve Jackson Games and the Foglios announced the Girl Genius Sourcebook and Roleplaying Game. While I doubt that GURPS is the perfect fit for the pretty weird Girl Genius World, I was overjoyed that I would be able to play or run adventures in the world of GG soon. Or so I thought. It has been a couple of years since the announcement and the GURPS Girl Genius game is still missing.

My guess is that between the work on the actual comic and the novelization (I found this blog post which gives a few details) there’s not much time to work on the RPG. And I fear they don’t want to release the RPG before all the open questions in the story have been answered. Perhaps if the current story arc comes to an end, we’ll finally see some news regarding the RPG.

But perhaps some of my readers have more information on what the status of this project is. If so, please let us know in the comments below.

On the other hand, do we really need an official Girl Genius RPG? Don’t get me wrong, I would love to play a GG game and I am sure I will buy the GURPS Girl Genius book as soon as it’s released, but with all the free RPGs and the background information (in form of the comics) already out there, don’t you think the interested fan shouldn’t be able to come up with some homebrew solution?

In an earlier post I recommended the use of Savage Worlds for such a game, but today I would probably opt for a more freeform system. RISUS would probably work very well and reflect the tongue-in-cheek nature of the comic. What do you think?
Stargazer

Michael Wolf is a German games designer and enthusiast best known for his English language role-playing games blog, Stargazer's World, and for creating the free rules-light medieval fantasy adventure game Warrior, Rogue & Mage. He has also worked as an English translator on the German-language Dungeonslayers role-playing game and was part of its editorial team. In addition to his work on Warrior, Rogue & Mage and Dungeonslayers, he has created several self-published games and also performed layout services and published other independent role-playing games such as A Wanderer's Romance, Badass, and the Wyrm System derivative Resolute, Adventurer & Genius, all released through his imprint Stargazer Games. Professionally, he works as a video technician and information technologies specialist. Stargazer's World was started by Michael in August 2008.

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2 comments

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Risusmonkey

I remember the lead up to the theoretical release of this game. Disappointing that it never saw the light of day. I agree, though, that RISUS would be a great choice for running a game in the setting.

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    Anonymous

    As far as I know SJ Games still plans to release it in the future, so it’s not cancelled yet. But there’s no planned release date either.
    Reply