Free League is one of tabletop roleplaying’s most consistent – and busy – publishers. Throughout 2024, it dropped several expansions for its most popular existing titles, plus all-new tabletop RPGs like The Electric State (yes, the one that’s getting a blockbuster movie). With further expansions to its spin-off skirmish board game released in 2024, the publisher also looks to be branching out in the tabletop space.
2024 was a busy season, but 2025 looks to be even busier, if Free League’s numerous announcements and Kickstarter campaigns are anything to go by. Back when the weather was a bit warmer, we caught up with Free League CEO Tomas Härenstam to discuss what the tabletop RPG publisher was up to in this year and the next.
WG: Blade Runner: Replicant Rebellion is in production, and February 2025 is the estimated launch date. It takes a very different approach from the core books – where can you see the Blade Runner RPG going after this release?
TH: What we wanted to do with Replicant Rebellion is to give another way to play in the Blade Runner universe. We intentionally designed the core game to focus on playing Blade Runners in investigation-style scenarios, because we felt that was the perfect starting point and an intuitive way to play based on the films.
But even when creating the core game, we felt there was also room to play other types of characters. Rather than making a more broad core game that could, perhaps, be too unfocused, we decided to create this expansion. In Replicant Rebellion, you play operations instead of investigations. The idea is that operations can be shorter and a bit more straightforward than case files that are played in the core game. They can be a lot of fun, but they’re still work – operations are easier to prepare.
One of the things we hope going forward is that the case file approach to playing Blade Runner will continue – we’ll publish more official case files – but also, parallel to that, we’ll have the Rebellion track where you can play rebels underground. Perhaps it’ll be easier for the community to create materials for themselves as well, because [operations] are less work-intensive to create.
In previous interviews, you’ve mentioned that the Blade Runner RPG is one of your favorite things you’ve worked on. Is this still the case?
Personally, on the game design side, I’ve worked mostly with Blade Runner, Dragonbane, and, to some extent, Alien. It’s hard to choose, but those are still very much my favorite titles. I’ve enjoyed the Blade Runner films a lot throughout the years, so it does have a special place for me in the portfolio.
You’ve previously talked about communities building on these games after they’ve released, and it’s been over a year since Free League announced free tabletop licenses for Year Zero and Dragonbane. What were the major successes of launching those licenses?
Generally, they’ve been working well. There’s been lots of activity with the Dragonbane license, both in English and in Swedish, since that game has a long Swedish legacy and tradition. I think it’s been a lot of fun, for Swedish creators and internationally, to publish things using that license.
There’s been a bunch of Kickstarters for different projects using both licenses, which is great because it means there are more expansions for the games than we can actually create ourselves. Overall, it’s been extremely positive to see all of that happen.
The only issue we’ve been having, which kind of comes with the territory, is that there are some limitations for what you can and can’t do with a license. And there are always going to be borderline cases – we get questions asking ‘can we do this?’ or ‘can we do that?’ within the scope of the license. We’ve had to answer some questions on that, but overall it’s been fairly light – a 99% positive experience.
Most of this year’s Free League titles are expansions for existing games. Is it challenging to expand so many games at once?
It is. Quite a few of us in the core team enjoy trying new stuff and designing new games, so for quite some time, the natural approach when we finished one game was to do another.
But in the end, that meant the portfolio grew, and we have something like 12 or 13 games – and we still really enjoy them all. We felt that maybe we’d have to take it easy with new titles and support the game lines that we already have. We really enjoy them, and there is a community for them, and we need to take responsibility for nurturing those games that are already there.
We won’t stop making new games, but the focus has switched a bit to supporting games rather than publishing completely new games all the time. For the last year (and going forward), we have done a decent job with that. We had quite a lot of expansions and modules coming out for almost all of the game lines that we have.
We also have, in that general field, a new edition of Coriolis coming up. That’s another way of supporting a game line – we launch an entirely new edition of a game, which is fairly natural for these games that have been out for a number of years. Coriolis came out in 2017, so by the time the new edition comes out, it will be eight years old. We have learned so much in that intervening time, and the community has grown, so it’s going to make sense for some games going forward to have a new edition that incorporates everything we learned.
Coriolis is a flagship game for Free League, and the publisher has a lot of history with the game, so it must feel quite special to return to it in Coriolis: The Great Dark.
Yeah, it definitely is. The new edition we did has some pretty drastic changes. It’s still the same world and core game mechanics, but it’s a fairly large shift. There have been mostly positive but mixed reactions from the community, because we’re taking a big step and moving on from The Third Horizon, where the original game was set.
Some people have been playing in The Third Horizon for years, and The Great Dark moves into a different part of space. It also changes the tone of the game to be even more focused on exploration, and that does change things quite a bit. That will raise questions. I think the community has come around to what the new game is, but when we first announced it, we got quite a few raised eyebrows. Hopefully, when it comes out, the community will really enjoy it.
Another game that’s quite special to Free League is Mutant: Year Zero, which has taken quite a different direction with the release of Mutant Year Zero: Zone Wars in 2023. Going forward, do you think you’ll further expand the product line for Zone Wars?
I think so. There’s nothing yet that we have decided 100% but we are definitely looking into it. Of course, there’s already one expansion that means you can play with four players at the same time. But what we are discussing is a smaller expansion that maybe adds one more faction – or even smaller ones with a monster figure and a few scenarios attached to it.
You’ve also got a limited history of expanding your other RPGs into tabletop games. Can you see more of those in your future?
Possibly. We do have some ideas in that respect. Tales from the Loop [The Board Game] was an interesting experiment. It’s a nice, fun game – though, in hindsight, maybe it’s a bit more complex than it needed to be. We are looking into doing more board games, but we’re also talking to other companies, because we’re also open to partnerships with other board game publishers who want to create board games based on our brands. We’re also looking into perhaps doing more skirmish games like Zone Wars.
However, we’ve realized that our main strength – what we’re best at designing – is RPGs. Dipping our toes into other areas is a lot of fun, but we’ll do it carefully and slowly. We won’t change and become a board game design company; we’ll remain focused on RPGs and make non-RPG games that are clearly tied into games we already have.
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