Bring Gotham City To Your Tabletop With This Batman Role Playing Game

It’s very likely that at some point in our lives, everyone has pretended to be Batman. If not the Caped Crusader directly, then maybe a member of the Batman Family such as Nightwing or Batgirl. There is also something to be said about taking on the role of one of the Rogues Gallery like Catwoman or Joker, too.

There have been official DC superhero role playing games in the past. There was even one that spun off from the Mayfair Games line that focused on Batman released right around the legendary 1989 film. But now there’s one that focuses solely on the Dark Knight and his brooding hometown of Gotham City.

A few years ago, Monolith Edition released Batman: Gotham City Chronicles The Board Game which allows players to throw down on the streets of Gotham as iconic heroes and villains. Then the company released Batman: Gotham City Chronicles The Roleplaying Game to allow players a change to create their own characters and stories. Now the company is crowdfunding Batman: Gotham City Chronicles Skyline Edition which combines the two games into one Bat-sized package.

The company provided me copies of the current edition for review. There are three books for the game; a core rule book, a guide to Gotham City and a collection of adventures. PDFs of the game books are available now, but backers of the crowdfunding can get physical books, miniatures of their favorite characters and more.

Batman Gotham City Chronicles Role Playing Game Core Rulebook

The basic mechanics of Batman: Gotham City Chronicles The Roleplaying Game will be familiar to anyone that’s played Dungeons & Dragons recently. Taking dramatic actions requires a roll of a d20 with the addition of a modifier from one of six attributes. Characters have hit points, levels and other familiar elements.

One of the first differences in the game is the concept of tiered characters. Players can choose to play normal citizens of Gotham, highly trained vigilantes or even full on superheroes. They can also choose to play a known character or create their own.

Characters are built by choosing Ways, which function like skills, feats and class talents that modify dice rolls. They represent the training and experiences the characters have, whether its years of investigating crime as a GCPD officer, time spent in a ninja monastery or being exposed to Joker’s laughing gas and having an unusual reaction.

The most fascinating rules that I read dealt with character Ethics scores. Instead of a flat alignment, each character has a number that reflects how they feel about important themes in the comics, such as Order and Crime. These numbers can impact dice rolls based on the actions characters take.

Batman Gotham City Chronicles Role Playing Game Gotham City Guide

This book details Gotham City as a setting for the game. Gotham is, in its own way, just as important of a character to Batman stories as the titular character. This books features famous locations like Amusement Mile, Arkham Asylum and of course Wayne Manor.

There’s also information on the organizations that vie for control of the city. Not only enemies like the Religion of Crime and the Court of Owls but also also allies like the Birds of Prey and Teen Titans. These can all make great rivals for the criminal mastermind gangs as well.

Many characters in the Batman universe have taken new identities or revived old ones. The book talks about the people who took up his cowl when Bruce Wayne was unavailable. It also details the other identities, like Robin and Clayface, where multiple people have taken the name.

I really liked how the information included in this book cited specific issues to provide contect for the history. It’s also stuffed with a massive amount of character write ups of many famous Gotham faces. It’s nice to see classic characters get attention as well as newer players like Signal.

There are also a few unexpected ones such as members of The Suicide Squad. I also enjoyed different writeups for Batman, such as during his Year Zero era or the older version seen in The Dark Knight Returns. Seeing these different versions make it a little bit easier to set this game in specific era of the comic book.

I did, however, feel like this was the weakest of the three books. There are some strange omissions, such as a missing a section on the GCPD or mentioning groups like the Titans and Outsiders without writing up many of the members. And releasing his book without an index full of page references for quick lookups of profiles is a nefarious plot worthy of the Joker.

Batman Gotham City Chronicles Role Playing Game Adventures

The third book provides adventures that let players jump into playing the game. They highlight the different ways players can use the rules. Rather than the classic zero to hero progression many role playing games use, the adventures here highlight not just the different tiers of play but also the types of stories hat can be told.

There are one shots built for specific character types such as members of the Birds of Prey or GCPD. There is also a short campaign where players get mixed up in a competition with the famous criminals of Gotham as they compete with one another to see who will be crowned the monarch of the criminal underwold. The stories do a great job bringing together these colorful characters that feel like the comics.

There is also a one on one story for a single player and Game Master featuring Batman undercover. My favorite of the adventures is a hunt for a kidnapped Bruce Wayne that brings together an oddbal collection of characters. This story mixes different tiers of play to let regular people and street level superheroes come together to save the day.

I was surprised that there wasn’t an adventure that allowed players to join the colorful criminal world of Gotham City. I hope that we see something like this in an upcoming expansion. Until then, the folks at Pixel Circus can show us how such a story might turn out.

Batman: Gotham City Chronicles Skyline Edition is crowdfunding through January 21st, 2025.