‘Tales From The Loop’ & ‘Alien’ RPG Publisher Launches New Open License And SRD
Free League, publishers of the Alien RPG and Tales from the Loop, has released a new open license and SRD for its Year Zero Engine.
New community content licenses dropped from Free League Publishing. You might recognize them as makers of the award-winning Tales from the Loop or Alien RPG. Also the newly released Blade Runner RPG. Or perhaps their upcoming Dragonbane fantasy RPG. Their biggest claim to fame is the Year Zero Engine at the heart of most of that.
The Year Zero Engine has delivered cinematic experiences distilled down to tabletop portions. And now, Free League Publishing has a new open license, a “Free Tabletop License” for the Year Zero Engine, as well as an updated SRD.
All of this, of course, comes not long after the community uproar about Wizards of the Coast’s proposed changes (since walked back) to the Open Gaming License 1.0a. Alongside the upcoming YZE FTL, there’s also a third-party license for the coming Dragonbane RPG too. Let’s take a look.
Free League Releases New Open License
You can take a look at the FTL right here in its entirety. But in a nutshell, it boils down to the same as many of these licenses. You can recreate the text of the YZE SRD, as well as providing notice that you’re using the license and agree to certain restrictions, most notably in being restricted from claiming that Free League “endorses, sponsors, or is affiliated with your game.”
This is, as Free League notes in the FTL press release, a draft and is open to feedback from the community about the Open License. At press time it wasn’t intended for use.
The other big piece of the pie here is the Year Zero Engine SRD. This 45 page document boils down the flexible rules that power many of Free League’s RPGs. These include sections on creating player characters, skills and specialties, combat, damage, and magic, as well as travel.
It’s quite a bit of rules to play with, though compare to a full RPG and you can see the work that goes into customizing the engine to fit a genre/concept. And for Free League’s upcoming Dragonbane RPG, a separate third-party license can be found here. It’s a royalty-free way for third-party publishers to get in on that Dragonbane action.
Happy adventuring
