Blade Runner RPG’s first expansion evokes the original film’s ethical dilemmas and empathy for replicants
Study up for your Voight-Kampff test.
Blade Runner’s official tabletop RPG will release its first official expansion next month, allowing players to send their Runners into a thorny situation involving corporate espionage, rogue technology and fundamental questions about humanity.
Fiery Angels, subtitled “Case File 02”, hits retail on April 2nd and continues the story introduced in Blade Runner RPG’s core rulebook. The party of PC-controlled Blade Runners, employed as police against Replicants who break the laws (or seek freedom), will be thrown into the thick of it after questioning someone caught breaking into the Memory Vaults owned by the Wallace Corporation.
The precipitating action sounds like it follows the same themes as Ridley Scott’s original film, wherein Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard is forced to capture or eliminate a quartet of Replicants on behalf of dirty cops and dirtier corporate interests. Fiery Angels will enmesh the players in a world far bigger than any individual and one that cares little about their humanity.
Although Fiery Angels is written to directly follow Case File 01: Electric Dreams that was included in the starter set, creators Tomas Härenstam and Joe LeFavi have designed it to work as a standalone narrative and perfectly fine entry point into one of publisher Free League’s most popular recent releases.
Also like the starter box, this expansion will contain eleven handouts displaying photographs, artefacts, building diagrams and other information that players can use at the table. The included scenario book will provide ample information about characters, events, case leads and locations around the city. Some of those non-playable characters will appear on 14 custom cards that can be used to keep track of important faces. The last inclusion, a specialised manilla envelope, let the group keep their collected evidence neatly stowed between sessions.
The Blade Runner RPG isn’t the first major film franchise to be adapted to the tabletop by the Swedish RPG company - that honour lies with Alien - but it is a high-water mark in their production. Free League won several Ennie awards in 2023 for the game’s design, presentation, cartography and layout, while fans have praised its capture of the 1987 and 2017 films' dour, melancholy view of society in a not-too-distant 2037. Case File 02: Fiery Angels hits retail on April 2nd, but preorder for the box set is already open on Free League’s website.