Bandes On The Run

Over the years investigations have often played a key part in our role-playing games, though generally speaking the focus has been on the threat of sinister cults in thrall to eldritch gods than the more glamorous possibilities a life of mystery offers.  All that’s set to change with The Troubleshooters, a new RPG from Swedish designer Krister Sundelin.

A veteran of the Swedish RPG scene, Sundelin’s resume includes titles for publisher Helmgast such as iron age adventure game Järn and Hjältarnas Tid, an introductory RPG of epic quests for hidden treasures.  Believing the fantasy genre to be ‘kind of crowded’ and always looking to try to create something new, Sundelin found inspiration for his new game in he colourful worlds of Franco-Belgian comics, or bandes dessinéess.

In Francophone Europe bandes dessinéess are very much a serious business, considered to be ‘the ninth art’, and a world away from the world of superhero and their capes. Whilst most English speakers will know of Hergé’s boy detective Tintin, bandes dessinéess encompass a vast range of genres and styles that, over the years, have ranged from saucy sci-fi strips like Barbarella to countless espionage thrillers and criminal cat-and-mouse capers. 

It’s the latter of these, series like Yoko Tsuno and Spirou & Fantasio, that Sundelin initially turned to when he conceived The Troubleshooters. With the exception of a French language game based on the Valérian strip, Sundelin realised that wasn’t anything based on the comics he loved and the jet-setting adventures and criminal shenanigans their protagonists often find themselves involved in.  ‘I had a lot of Spirou books and I wondered why there wasn’t a roleplaying game for it,’ he explains. ‘Finally I got tired of waiting.’

Taking further inspiration from the likes of James Bond, The Saint, Arsène Lupin the Third and The Avengers (the old, British, black and white spy show) and games like Call of Cthulhu, the old James Bond RPG, and even the Star Wars D6 game, Sundelin set to work and quickly found a home for the project with his old publisher Helmgast,

‘Two years ago I went to Helmgast and I showed them the first sketch of the cover,’ he tells me. ‘Everyone said, “Tell nobody about this. It is so good and simple an idea that everybody would steal it if they knew.’”’

It is easy to see why that initial sketch would provoke such a reaction from the Helmgast team. Ronja Melin’s cover art perfectly captures the style and the tone of euro comics. Likewise the interior art of the book is equally impressive and, in addition to just being beautiful to look at, does a lot of work establishing the feel of the game.  

‘It doesn’t matter if you haven’t read anything from the source material,’ Sundelin says. ‘I think you could get what the game is about just by looking at the cover.’  

Sundelin describes Melin as a bit of a chameleon and shows me the illustrations she had previously done for Järn and Hjältarnas Tid which, whilst also beautiful, are in a completely different style.

‘When I asked her if she can do something in the French and Belgian style she said, “Why not?”’ he tells me and looking at the finished book Melin’s confidence was well deserved. Sundelin points to a French review of The Troubleshooters which laments how it was produced first by a group of Swedes and not a Frenchman.