As the creator of Head Shot, the zombie apocalypse hack for Cortex Plus (and updated for early Cortex Prime drafts), I of course have some thoughts and feelings about the news that Fandom has purchased the Cortex RPG system and hired on lead developer Cam Banks as Creative Director. I’ll touch on the news, what I think about it, and the future of not only Head Shot but also other projects that I had in the works for Cortex RPG.

Read on!

Cortex RPG Logo

Cortex Acquired!

First the news: if you haven’t heard, Fandom bought the Cortex RPG system and hired on Cam Banks as Creative Director. Okay, now I’ve said that twice. Anyway, Fandom also recently purchased Cursed, the team behind D&D Beyond, and incorporated them into Fandom Games. Fandom and Cam have stated that their number one priority is to fulfill the overdue Cortex Prime Kickstarter, and that the books (and PDFs, which they have confirmed will also be fulfilled) will form the basis for the system as Fandom will use it going forward: “Fandom plans to publish our own games in the future using the Cortex system.” Fandom doesn’t just run D&D Beyond, they also own Wikia, so pretty much every media franchise in existence exists in some form on a site powered by Fandom.

Confirmations & Best Guesses

Fandom’s Adam Bradford (General Manager of Cortex Prime and D&D Beyond) and Cam have both confirmed that, “…[U]nlike with the D&D books, there’s no standing restriction on [selling PDF format versions of the books] with Cortex.” Adam has mentioned a few times that he is a big fan of PDFs, in fact: “I will say that I am personally a fan of PDFs. Infer what you will from that…”

The Cortex team is going to finish the Cortex Prime releases…probably sooner rather than later (my best guess: Feb 2020). They’ve already made announcements of new team members (Tina Lam Collier has been brought on as Art Director, for example), and Cam had more or less finalized the rules text several months ago. As a Cortex Plus Creator Studio creator, I’ve had an eye on what’s going on with Spotlight development and can say that Cam never once slowed down on working on the Kickstarter, despite the lack of KS updates for some periods of time (notably when Cam and his family were moving to another country, which is never an easy task!).

The bad news (which might only be short-term) is that, “As part of this transition, all sales of legacy Cortex products on DriveThruRPG.com will end on September 30th” according to the press release. That means the Firefly Roleplaying Game, Leverage The Roleplaying Game, the Dragon Brigade releases, and likely all fan-created (namely Black Wing Productions’ licensed releases) and Cortex Plus Creator Studio releases will be gone after the 30th! Pick them up now and they remain in your DriveThruRPG Library forever; if you like POD (print-on-demand), don’t forget to get both the PDF and Print versions! I mention “short-term” because it’s possible Fandom will work out license renewals in the future, but that seems unlikely (except for Firefly, for which the signal never seems to be stopped, as it were!). The Creator Studio’s fate is nebulous at this point, but Cam has mentioned he’ll be reaching out about that in the future to creators like myself, and with the success of DMsGuild, Storyteller Vault, and so on, I can only imagine good things will happen here.

So a quick run-down:

• Cortex Prime Kickstarter fulfillment now has a bigger team, and they are dedicated to releasing ASAP, from a nearly-if-not-entirely finalized manuscript of the rules.
• PDF fulfillment is guaranteed to backers, and looks like it’s almost a certainty as part of the release plan going forward.
• Cortex RPG releases do not operate under the same rules as D&D Beyond, and therefore that release strategy should not be seen as a template for what Fandom will do with Cortex.
• Existing Cortex releases will be gone after September 30th: the licensed product (Firefly, Leverage, etc.) likely forever, but the Creator Studio stuff is likely to come back again in some form, if not the exact same form.

Cortex Prime Kickstarter

Thoughts & Feelings

I wonder if the fact that Wikia (owned by Fandom) compiles dedicated fan resources for what feels like every franchise ever will be problematic with licenses at some point? Or is the fan-driven element baked in enough that they won’t run into any trouble?

The Cortex Prime KS is pretty late (over a year), but I’ve seen much worse and gotten great products all the same. The fact that it just got picked up by a team with lots of resources, has new folks being thrown at it immediately, and had nearly finalized (if not completely finalized) rules, all makes me highly confident we’ll be getting what we backed very soon. Remember, too, that everything I’m typing is days after the announcements, and announcements usually come days or weeks after the details were finalized, so headway has already been made behind the scenes. We’re in a great place!

Jeremy of Blackwing Productions has posted that he’ll be focusing on Savage Worlds while the Cortex details are being hashed out. Sad to see some of the licenses and licensed products going away or put in a nebulous state. But that’s the nature of these things: best to prioritize the Kickstarter materials and then work with the fans and creators to deliver content supporting that foundational release.

Head Shot! A Zombie Apocalypse Hack for the Cortex RPG

Head Shot & Other Projects

Now I get to be a bit more personal! Head Shot has treated me well and I fully intend to support it once Cortex Prime drops, even if they don’t hash out a creator program of some kind, since I can just release a free rules update PDF on my website. But I fully suspect they’ll have a program in place, and I’ll be happy to jump on board.

It’s worth noting that I still haven’t broke even on Head Shot‘s production, however, so future projects will necessarily have to be taken with caution. On the flip side of that, I’ve got two huge things going in my favor, I think:

1. My own abilities to handle more of the production of my releases means they are way cheaper.
2. Fandom buying Cortex almost certainly means a significantly bigger audience, so I should be able to recoup my expenses more easily.

Since I already own the layout for Head Shot (thanks to the amazingly talented Craig Judd), it’ll be a piece of cake putting together an updated version of that release that still looks great, and probably contains quite a bit more material this time around! My Cortex Plus Cheat Sheets can get an overhaul, although that may actually be a bit more difficult given the more “plug and play” nature of Cortex Prime: I’ll have to judge how to handle the modularity, or just stick to making cheat sheets for my specific game releases.

I have other plans for the Cortex RPG, and everything about Cortex Prime has been positive for those plans, even despite the delay in release. I have long mentioned in a “megadungeon drama” game, and it’s sitting at about 30% completion. Every update to the Cortex Prime rules has brought some innovation that I can use in that game, and it’s shaping up to be something I can hopefully finish very soon after Prime releases and some sort of creator studio thing is unveiled. If none ever is, this release will see the light of day in the form of notes and documents, so it’ll still get out there.

I’ve reviewed Cortex-related releases in the past, and published shared documents, compiled resources, and even Firefly GMC stat blocks. None of that stuff is going away; you can find the Cortex Plus stuff here, and you can find Cortex Prime material here. It’s mostly the same stuff, right now, but that’ll potentially change in the future.

Join the Community!

I’ve also become one of the moderators on the Cortex RPG subreddit. Join us for all the latest news, great fan-made hacks and other content, and more!

You can also check out the fan-run Discord as well as the official Discord for Cortex RPG. Both are pretty active already, though I recall murmurs of them being combined at some point.

The official Cortex RPG social media accounts are @CortexRPG on Twitter and the Cortex Prime page on Facebook.

That’s It…?

Feel free to pick up my Cortex Plus (and Prime-compatible) releases while they’re still available until September 30th! I’ve reduced ALL the prices!

What do you think of all of this? Feel free to sound off in the comments!

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Happy gaming to ya!