Faith Hunter’s Rogue Mage is a book series and tabletop roleplaying game, and both would have been featured at JordanCon 2020 along with Faith’s full catalogue. As originally planned before COVID-19 forced the cancellation of JordanCon 2020, Faith Hunter was announced as the Author Guest of Honor and the co-designer and co-author of the Rogue Mage RPG, Christina Stiles, planned to attended as a guest. This combination offered a rare chance to meet the authors and play their RPG. During the convention, they planned to talk about all of Faith’s books, run sessions of the game, and announce the next stage of the Rogue Mage RPG. Before JordanCon canceled, Christina took time from her schedule to talk about the game, where it’s been, and what’s coming up, and I want to share that today, April 16th, to celebrate their accomplishments and to mark the convention that would have started tomorrow.
“JordanCon is a fantasy literature convention founded in honor of the late author, Robert Jordan. Jordan was the author of the best-selling The Wheel of Time series.” I attended JordanCon 2019 and wrote about the gaming that happens at the show (here).
[NOTE: This interview was conducted before the cancelation of JordanCon due to COVID-19. The interview and post-script are presented in their original form. However, JordanCon related events and dates mentioned in this interview are no longer valid. JordanCon will return in 2021.]
EGG EMBRY (EGG): Christina, thank you for talking with me about the Rogue Mage RPG. I’ve enjoyed your work so much that I reviewed your essay collection, Medusa’s Guide for Gamer Girls – Gaming with Kids, at EN World. For those that don’t know Faith Hunter’s Rogue Mage book series, or the RPG, can you talk about the premise and why it’s a great tabletop roleplaying game?
CHRISTINA STILES (CS): Thanks for the kind words! Faith Hunter’s premise is that the seraphs have come down to judge the masses, setting off an apocalypse. The world is in a mini ice age, and new races have come about from the creation energy expended in the purge. Faith’s main character, Thorn St. Croix, is such a new race, a neomage. Because her race wields magic, they are supposed to be kept in check in Enclaves. Yet, Thorn is a rogue mage in that she lives freely among others.
I was a fan of Eden Studios’ Armageddon setting that C.J. Carella had written, and I had seen the In Nomine RPG that had been out. Here was a twist on the idea of angels and devils/demons battling, and I thought it was cool enough to make an interesting game. Who doesn’t enjoy some post-apocalyptic gaming, after all, and throw in a battle between Light and Darkness. Cool. I felt I could run with that.
EGG: How did this project come about?
CS: I had met Faith at a book signing at a local Rock Hill, SC, bookstore. The manager there knew I wrote roleplaying games. Raven Blackwell, a gamer and fan of Faith’s series, had said to Faith that she should make a game from her fiction, but Raven was not fully comfortable with writing it, though she wrote gaming material. Since my background was game writing, we started discussing the possibility, and Kickstarter made it a possibility. I brought in some of my favorite people, like editor Spike Y Jones, and artists Peter Bradley, Rick Hershey, and Jacob Blackmon, along with Emily Mottesheard, and we made it happen.
EGG: This came out in 2012. For the engine, Rogue Mage is based on an earlier version of Mutants & Masterminds. Let’s talk a bit about the system and how it brought Rogue Mage to life? What are some of the standout features of this RPG?
CS: So, D&D went Open Gaming License (OGL), and some creative people did some interesting things with it—which I foresaw would happen, though I had vehement online arguments with folks who believed the OGL was nothing without the official D20 License that connected it to D&D. Let’s just say, Christina was right. Anyway, Steve Kenson had done some awesome things with a streamlined True20 system, and then he set his sights on a superhero game that would also only use a d20. I thought that the characters had a lot of superheroic aspects to them, and the game allowed for higher power levels of play, so that the GM could feasibly decide to just run a game of some kylen (part seraphs) and beings of Light/Darkness if she wanted. Though I set the damage to lethal, this superheroic idea just really stuck with me, and I liked that you could build your character within your racial template with character points any way you wanted—so points system rather than level system. I admit that I was a little influenced by White Wolf ideas of abilities costing more as you gained more power, which is not so M&M, but that is what I went with at the time. I have not received any complaints on that. Most people just mainly did not like M&M second edition’s damage system. I’m going to do a new version in third edition soon.
EGG: You’re not just the co-developer and co-author of the game, you’ve also written Rogue Mage fiction. Where did that appear? Have any of the NPCs from your adventures crossed over into the fiction you’ve written?
CS: Yes, I believe if I had never become so enamored with RPGs, I would have naturally become a fiction writer. In my very young days, that is what I wanted to do with my life. Instead, I became attracted to games and logic and programming and data. Yet, when Faith said she wanted to open the Rogue Mage world for others to write in for two anthologies (Trials and then Tribulations) that would be collected into an omnibus called Triumphant, I knew I had to write some fiction for it. I have a story in each anthology, so two in the omnibus. One, “Two Mules for Brother Hope,” is based on the pre-generated characters used for the games I run at conventions. Brother Hope has always been one of my favorite character concepts, so he became my protagonist. “Defiance” involves a seraph-touched character named Alaska Jones, who causes an uprising in a soldier-camp for supernatural kids.
EGG: For fans interested in getting all of the Rogue Mage RPG books and supplements, there’s a discounted bundle from Misfit Studios. What are some of the highlights of the bundle?
CS: It has the core books, an adventure, separate PDFs on monsters, and an adventure.
EGG: At this point, some reader is wondering why we’re talking about an RPG based on the last version of M&M that came out in 2012. For me, it’s because it ties into JordanCon (April 17th to the 19th in Atlanta), a convention you, Faith Hunter, and I are attending independently (Faith as the 2020 Author Guest of Honor, you as a guest, and me as a fan and GM). You’ll be there running Rogue Mage, correct?
CS: Yes, I plan on running three games of Rogue Mage at the show, and I hope to game with you and others there.
[INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: These sessions and their premise are available here, here, and here.]
EGG: I’m looking forward to it! Are you planning any Rogue Mage RPG announcements during JordanCon?
CS: Yes, Faith and I have been discussing reissuing the game in M&M 3e, and I want to do a version in the Open Gaming version of D&D 5e. That latter will take more time to get the details down. I’m a fan of Savage Worlds and Starfinder, too, so you just might see some conversion material there, as well.
EGG: Beyond Rogue Mage, you have other RPG projects coming up. Tell me what you’re working on?
CS: Well, my pending divorce (which will be completed by JordanCon) added a lot of upheaval in my life over the past two years, and the day job keeps me rather busy, but I’m wanting to finish some projects I still have open from previous years, like getting The Book of Passion to print and putting out its companion bestiary, and then getting out The Ultimate Witch book. Those things are in addition to getting out some new Rogue Mage material. I also want to try my hand at more fiction—and possibly some historical writing.
EGG: Thank you again for talking with me! I’m eager to join in on one of the Rogue Mage sessions at JordanCon. For fans interested in following you, Rogue Mage, or Faith, where can they go?
CS: I no longer keep a web page, so just friend me on Facebook at Christina.Stiles1. Medusa is my avatar. I tend to talk a lot about books and cons I attend there. There might be the occasional whining. I have an author’s page, too, and we have one for Rogue Mage there, as well. Faith keeps her page [here].
The Rogue Mage novels are available via Amazon. The Rogue Mage RPG is available through DriveThruRPG. Faith Hunter and Christina Stiles will be at JordanCon April 17 to 19, 2020 at the Crowne Plaza Ravinia in Atlanta, Georgia. You can play Rogue Mage with Christina Stiles here, here, and here.
In addition to Rogue Mage, JordanCon 2020 features tabletop gaming arranged by Ryan Szesny as well as RPG creators such as Will Kenyon, Phillip Schultz, and Michael and Paul Bielaczyc who will run their RPG, SagaBorn.
[NOTE REPEATED FROM ABOVE: This interview was conducted before the cancelation of JordanCon due to COVID-19. The interview and post-script are presented in their original form. However, JordanCon related events and dates mentioned in this interview are no longer valid. JordanCon will return in 2021.]
Egg Embry participates in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program and is an Amazon Affiliate. This program provides advertising fees by linking to DriveThruRPG and Amazon.
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