Fans of the original Pillars of Eternity TRPG will be pleased to hear there’s a potential rework coming for the pen-and-paper game, as recently teased by lead designer Josh Sawyer. Having been silent about the potential redesign for some time, he suddenly decided to drop a bunch of screenshots of the official design document on his Bluesky account yesterday.
So of course we’re here having a nosey look, to see if we might be looking at best tabletop RPG material.
Ten years back, when asked if there were any plans for an Eternity tabletop RPG, Obsidian Entertainment CEO Feargus Urquhart told PC Gamer “absolutely on the tabletop roleplaying. We’re not sure yet how we’re going to do it, we were kind of going back and forth on, do we use the game’s rules, do we use someone else’s rules, do we come up with another set of rules?”
Since this little hint back in 2015, a bunch of unofficial tabletop content has appeared around the popular game. That filled the gap until those who bought the Explorer’s Pack with Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire CRPG were graced with an officially licensed, apparently rather difficult to find and now entirely free to download Pillars of Eternity pen-and-paper system. As the Obsidian site notes, the system was “developed from the ground up by Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire lead designer Josh Sawyer and other members of the Deadfire design team.”
That was back in May 2018. Since then Sawyer has tossed around the idea of a potential Eternity pen-and-paper rework on his social media, despite many fans believing the game had been pushed aside and forgotten about.
A year ago, fans were perplexed when it looked like Sawyer had gone back and deleted all his previous posts about the game.
Then, just yesterday, fans were hit with a sneak preview from out of the blue when Sawyer posted on his Bluesky account with insights into some of the changes expected.
In reply to one of his posts, a fan asks “What’s the skinny on the PoE TTRPG?” to which Sawyer replies “Still editing it. Too much text!!!” He then throws the screenshots our way, and fans are absolutely eating up the changes.
“I laughed my ass off at the reputation page”, says user Brianne H.
This was in response to the fact that “when a player meets an NPC for the first time, the GM decides how likely the character is to have heard something about the PC” because it has implications as to whether your other party members have been going around saying nice things about you.
Posting a link to the Ringing the Bell reputation system, user TheDevTeam says “Hey, I recognize that reputation system”.
To which Sawyer himself replies saying he didn’t know about that system, but admits “I did steal/adapt it from another (CRPG) developer I saw post on here.”
There’s no set release date for the upcoming changes to the Pillars of Eternity TRPG, but keep an eye on Sawyer’s Bluesky feed and you might get some more drip-fed to you.
For more recommendations, why not check out the best card games or best two player board games.
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