The Pondsmith family has been making a mark on the tabletop gaming since R. Talsorian Games published Cyberpunk 2013 in 1988. In the decades since then Mike and Lisa Pondsmith’s son Cody has joined the ranks in at the company as well, pitching and beginning work on The Witcher tabletop role-playing game as a teenager. Now, hot on the tails of the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit release, R. Talsorian has taken the first steps to a widespread release of a project very close to Cody’s heart – an original IP that he’s been working on for quite some time.
Videos by ComicBook.com
ComicBook’s The Character Sheet podcast was able to speak with Cody about that new IP – Shadow Scar – which recently handed out its QuickStart as part of Free RPG Day with its aggressive release schedule looking to complete the next step during Gen Con. As Cody describes Shadow Scar, the new tabletop game is “a game of intrigue and espionage across a multiverse of worlds.”
“You play agents of a secret agency called the Shadow Scar Agency who are trained in Ninjitsu techniques and sent out into a multiverse of worlds to hunt down monsters and ghosts and spirits from Japanese mythology and keep them from causing chaos across the multiverse,” he continues.
Cody’s game was first conceptualized due to the game designer watching (and loving) Naruto at 11-years-old, and while it was originally created as a Naruto roleplaying game there’s obviously been quite a few stages of evolution over the years, ultimately shaping up to be Shadow Scar. “There’s a big part of me that’s just kind of fascinated and a little blown away that something that has kind of been kicking around in the back of my head for years and years and years is officially going to be a published game that people are going to be able to buy and run for their friends,” Cody responds to ComicBook in the video, sharing his excitement at seeing Shadow Scar finally publish.
“I’ve been personally running this game for years and it’s interesting that soon I will be able to hear about how other people run it, to hear stories from other peoples’ Shadow Scar games, which is really both sort of a humbling experience but a fascinating one. I really want to see how people interact with this thing that has been a foundational part of my life for such a long time.”
Be on the lookout for more updates on Shadow Scar in the future as its release calendar is confirmed and carried out.
