This Gotham City RPG offers something for every type of Batman fan

Holy crowdfunding campaign, Batman! Two years after raising nearly $1.5 million for the Batman: Gotham City Chronicles role-playing game, the team at Monolith Board Games is crowdfunding an expanded Skyline Edition. For this campaign, Monolith Board Games is trying to reach all types of tabletop players and offer them a way into the iconic DC setting.

Monolith, known for its games based on classic IPs like Conan and Berserk, first explored Gotham City in a board game six years ago. While the Kickstarter campaign from two years ago paired the tabletop RPG with an expansion to that board game, this crowdfunding campaign (hosted on Gamefound) focuses solely on the role-playing game — though there’s an emphasis on making the game enticing for a range of play styles and audiences.

A major feature of Batman: Gotham City Chronicles is that the setting stays consistent, but the game allows you to look at the city from three different perspectives: the Streets, the Shadows, and the Wonders. In the streets, you play as everyday people that make the city run — like journalists, lawyers, or social workers — while brushing up against its darker side. In the Shadows, you can lurk in the criminal underbelly on either side of the law. The third playstyle, the Wonders of Gotham, has players don the costumes of the supernatural powers at play in the DC Universe.

The crowdfunding campaign offers two distinct play experiences: The Skyline Box and The Sidekick Box. The Skyline Box offers a story-focused experience, with physical editions of a core rulebook, a setting guide, and an adventure book. The setting guide includes nearly 180 locations, 90 characters, and 33 factions; while the adventure guide has seven standalone adventures, a three-act vigilante campaign, and a five-act detective campaign. The Sidekick Box is targeted at tactical gamers, with 127 miniatures, nearly three dozen maps, a deck of “Ways” cards thats offer character abilities to reflect different styles of play, and three sets of dice and corresponding trays.

Following such a resoundingly successful first campaign, it seems Monolith has pulled out all the stops for this one — going so far as to commission an actual play from Pixel Circus — known for its inclusive, high quality production — to showcase the game. Tightly edited, fully costumed, and set-designed, the Gotham City Chronicles actual play features the Wonders of Gotham mode with Micah Burton (Critical Role) as Catwoman, Xander Jeannette (Geek & Sundry) as Dr Freeze, Dre Ronayne (Candela Obscura) as Poison Ivy, and Carlos Luna (Dimension 20) as Two-Face. GM’d by Pixel Circus founder Saige Ryan, the adventure lasts about the length of a Batman film while showing off the system with some top-tier performers.