Tomb Raider fans have plenty of reason to be excited recently. Square Enix have made several announcements celebrating the series' 25th anniversary with sales, an update on that Netflix anime, and even some long-awaited ports of certain titles to the Nintendo Switch. But tucked away in those announcements is something tabletop RPG players will enjoy: an officially licensed Tomb Raider tabletop RPG.
As stated on the official Square Enix page, the name of the game is Lara Croft's Tomb Raiders. In this RPG, you and your group have been specially trained by the iconic Lara Croft and work alongside her. They follow up on leads to exotic treasure and long-forgotten artifacts that she is unable to seek herself. There are only so many hours in the day after all. These delves into the unknown are narrated and dictated by the Raid Master, and will challenge players' skills of exploration, investigation, and language, as well as action-oriented skills whenever giant spiders, undead, or inexplicably alive dinosaurs show up.
The Tomb Raider RPG has been a long-gestating passion project. It was spearheaded by Crystal Dynamics' Senior Technical Designer, Matthew Gaston, who has been working on the series since the 2013 reboot up to Shadow of the Tomb Raider. It has been in development since 2007 and has been internally playtested since 2009. While we don't know a whole lot regarding the mechanics of the Tomb Raider RPG, we do have some images from the book as promoted on the website as well as the official Tomb Raider Twitter account. It doesn't appear to use any familiar or popular system like the 5e OGL, but from what we can tell, it covers the tone of Lara's adventures quite well with challenges like giant bears, swimming with sharks, and snake-headed mummy men. It also helps that the artwork for the book is credited to Kameliya Minkova and comic artist Johann BLAIS.
Square Enix have confirmed that the core rulebook as well as its first prewritten adventure, Lara Croft's Tomb Raiders: Mark of the Phoenix, will be available during the Holidays later this year.
