Lara Croft's Tomb Raiders

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Lunar Ronin

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Tomb Raider. Multiple PC and console video game series. Mobile video game series. Three live action films. An upcoming animated television series on Netflix. Now... a tabletop RPG.

Square Enix announced today a new tabletop RPG, Lara Croft's Tomb Raiders. No release date announced (outside of "this winter holiday"), nor pricing.


We’re super excited to reveal Lara Croft’s Tomb Raiders, a tabletop adventure that lets you team up with Lara.

Lara Croft’s Tomb Raiders is a passion project of Senior Technical Designer Matthew Gaston, who has been developing it since 2007 and playtesting internally since 2009.

In Lara Croft’s Tomb Raiders, players will assume the roles of fictional characters in the mysterious world of Tomb Raider. These characters work for Lara Croft, who has more leads to follow than she has time to follow them.

Players will explore ancient sites to discover information and artifacts – guided by the campaign’s Raid Master. Campaigns will focus on knowledge, language, and investigative skills in addition to action-oriented skills to keep it true to the franchise roots.
 
The Square Enix newsletter has some info on this, pretty much all fluff and nothing about the system. In it, there are three bestiary entries. Even zooming way in I can't make out the system. I see the following for the "zombie" entry...

Attributes: B3 E5 Q1 P1 C1 W1 D0
Combat: Defense 1, Resilience 4, Wounds 10

These are followed by a bunch of skills and some "special" stuff like "simultaneous attacks", tactics, environments they're found in and "lore" (which looks to be the skill needed to learn about them).

EDIT: Just realized the OP's link is to the same newsletter, where you can check out the thumbnails I pulled the above from.
 
This tweet from the Tomb Raider Twitter feed mostly echoes the press release, but adds the very important word, "free".



A reply tweet says that it'll be a "holiday gift" and names the first adventure as Lara Croft's Tomb Raiders: Mark of the Phoenix.
 
I await a Witchblade/Tomb Raider sourcebook. The way Croft got written out of the Witchblade continuity was hilarious to me.
 
I know Tomb Raider through the movies, but know nothing about the Witchblade continuity. Care to elaborate?


Sure! But please understand my only knowledge of it comes from the Witchblade appearances, which is also where all my knowledge of Tomb Raider comes from.



After Top Cow got the rights to Tomb Raider they soon after started having her crossover in Witchblade. As I don’t have everything Witchblade I can’t say if it was a retcon that they always knew each other, it got handwaved, or what, as the earliest team-up I have they seem to be familiar already.



I’ve been told that in some of the appearances their interactions were less like heroes teaming up, and more like they were dating each other. I can’t make any comment on that, but I do know that at cons some of the Top Cow staff would indicate they were a couple. Bear in mind that this was around the time someone asked one of their editors how they would sum up Witchblade to a new reader, and she replied “She, like, totally fights evil and stuff!” (That went on to become a meme for years in Wizard Magazine, but I digress). Whether they were ever officially a couple, or staff were just saying it to draw interest in the series, I can’t say.



What I can say is that there was a crossover between them, the conclusion of which was in the main Witchblade series. Witchblade is convinced Croft has been crushed to dead, and is utterly devastated…for about five minutes. After that she seems to utterly forget about Croft, who never appeared in the main Witchblade series again, and AFAIK never again appeared in the Tomb Raider series. Checking before I posted this, I see there was a one-shot crossover book in 2005 which I never knew existed before.



Talking to fans back in the day, a lot thought Eidos was upset about the relationship and had it squashed. I’m more of the camp that Top Cow hadn’t discussed crossovers with their own properties when working out their licensing agreement. If you do a search you should be able to find the accounts of the issues with their handling of Fathom and Rising Stars, which along with something else I noticed on my own, makes me feel it was licensing issue.



And now I have an urge to use the E-Bay gift certificates i have gathering dust to buy the Tomb Raider comics and see what they were like.
 
The bad news: the release date has been pushed back to "early 2022".

The good news: cover art!

83d303_a004704f50854070a1daecd06a4a5e65~mv2.jpg
 
Hey, I bet you all forgot about this, too:


I can confirm that the download file contains the corebook as well as the adventure.
 
I wonder if their licensing agreement is coming up and they won't make the fees. Better to release your work and get it into the world (for future proofs) than do all that and not get a thing.
 
Hey, I bet you all forgot about this, too:


I can confirm that the download file contains the corebook as well as the adventure.
Thank you:thumbsup:!

Free, huh? Interesting choice.
I wonder if their licensing agreement is coming up and they won't make the fees. Better to release your work and get it into the world (for future proofs) than do all that and not get a thing.
Guys, it was announced that this is going to be free...back in 2021, if you look at #6:grin:!
 
Hey, I bet you all forgot about this, too:


I can confirm that the download file contains the corebook as well as the adventure.
So I guess it’s not getting a retail release then?
 
Sure! But please understand my only knowledge of it comes from the Witchblade appearances, which is also where all my knowledge of Tomb Raider comes from.



After Top Cow got the rights to Tomb Raider they soon after started having her crossover in Witchblade. As I don’t have everything Witchblade I can’t say if it was a retcon that they always knew each other, it got handwaved, or what, as the earliest team-up I have they seem to be familiar already.



I’ve been told that in some of the appearances their interactions were less like heroes teaming up, and more like they were dating each other. I can’t make any comment on that, but I do know that at cons some of the Top Cow staff would indicate they were a couple. Bear in mind that this was around the time someone asked one of their editors how they would sum up Witchblade to a new reader, and she replied “She, like, totally fights evil and stuff!” (That went on to become a meme for years in Wizard Magazine, but I digress). Whether they were ever officially a couple, or staff were just saying it to draw interest in the series, I can’t say.



What I can say is that there was a crossover between them, the conclusion of which was in the main Witchblade series. Witchblade is convinced Croft has been crushed to dead, and is utterly devastated…for about five minutes. After that she seems to utterly forget about Croft, who never appeared in the main Witchblade series again, and AFAIK never again appeared in the Tomb Raider series. Checking before I posted this, I see there was a one-shot crossover book in 2005 which I never knew existed before.



Talking to fans back in the day, a lot thought Eidos was upset about the relationship and had it squashed. I’m more of the camp that Top Cow hadn’t discussed crossovers with their own properties when working out their licensing agreement. If you do a search you should be able to find the accounts of the issues with their handling of Fathom and Rising Stars, which along with something else I noticed on my own, makes me feel it was licensing issue.



And now I have an urge to use the E-Bay gift certificates i have gathering dust to buy the Tomb Raider comics and see what they were like.

NB. I am aware I am replying to a very old comment, just putting this knowledge out there for the benefit of my fellow man.

As someone who has read every Witchblade comic (I make no apologies), I can confirm that there was indeed a story where they first met as strangers. It was a one-shot called Tomb Raider and Witchblade by Michael Turner. Note that this is not the same as Witchblade and Tomb Raider, which came out shortly later and in which they are already best friends after their singular meeting.

There's nothing in the comics that ever implies they're a couple, though there's definitely cover art that shows them hanging around together in lingerie, which I suppose could give that impression. That's just what Top Cow did in the nineties, though.
 
I have the two omnibuses of the original Witchblade series, each of which is the size of a phonebook for a major metropolitan area.

With this Tomb Raider RPG being free, I'll at least skim it and mine for ideas.
 
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