Hello! It’s Friday, and that means we’re due another RPG news round-up.
Routinely Itemised: RPGs contains bullet-point summaries of tabletop news on Geek Native and from around the web. If there’s a good RPG news source that you know about, but which never seems to get mentioned here, then maybe I don’t know about it. Please let me know!
It’s nearly the end of the month which means we’ve the RPG Publisher Spotlight to think about. This week that light shone on Parts Per Million and if you want to know about solo RPGs then Peter Rudin-Burgess is a designer worth knowing about.
You can see the candidates for next month’s Spotlight and previous winners over at the spotlight page.
Despite it being the end of the first month of the year, we’re still getting some 2020 stats, and they’re impressive. We’ve got Kickstarter and D&D money to look, and we’re into megabucks.
Win $50 of geeky coffee | Aramini Circus
RPG news from Geek Native
- Geek Native previewed Plus Three Press’ 5e Crystalpunk setting.
- Wizards of the Coast introduced some more race tweaks and some new character options to playtest in Gothic Lineages.
- Mighty Narwhal revealed the cover of their forthcoming MORRA Cinematic Universal Gaming System.
- Quality Games revealed art from their forthcoming Lex Arcana “Dacia and Thracia” and “Italia” projects.
- Blackfisk Publishing released a free micro-RPG called Godtale.
- Acheron Books released their spaghetti fantasy Brancalonia for 5e.
- Flavour text subscription site dScryb got its first update.
- Here Be Taverns launched to let you quickly generate fantasy taverns.
- Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman won’t talk about their legal squabble with Wizards of the Coast, but now it is over they have confirmed a new classic Dragonlance trilogy.
- Wizards of the Coast released Deluxe D&D 3.5 character sheets for free. (Update: No longer free)
- The One Page Dungeon Contest winners have been announced with 50 free to download one-page dungeons available.
- The Bundle of Holding has a Palladium Books’ Mutants and Ninjas deal.
- Icho.io is hosting a Layout Level-up bundle which offers 67 games for $20.
- Humble Bundle has a 5th Edition Dungeon Extravaganza.
Spotlight:Parts Per Million
RPG news from around the web
- Modiphius shared a teaser of their 2d20 Achtung! Cthulhu Quickstart.
- In an article on the Los Angeles Times, Liz Schuh from Wizards of the Coast revealed that D&D revenues were up 35% in 2020 YoY and online play up 86%.
- Dicebreaker’s Editor-in-Chief Matt Jarvis wrote up Tabletop games raised $236m on Kickstarter in 2020, another record-breaking year.
- d100 News’s James Graham wrote up this stat heavy review of RPGs on Kickstarter in 2020.
- Paizo shared Pathfinder Society: Digitization Update.
- Cubicle 7 will welcome undead PCs to Soulbound and announced Blackened Earth, Champions of Death and Champions of Destruction.
- Chaosium extended their “Stay In and Game” Warehouse Clearance Sale.
- Goodman Games will, for a limited time, include free stickers with purchases over $15.
- WBUR, an American news station, looked into The “Critical Role” of Dungeons & Dragons During The Pandemic.
- Isaac Vega, the co-creator of Dead of Winter and Forgotten Waters and started a new game studio with Lindsey Rode called Rose Gauntlet Entertainment.
RPG reviews and interviews from around the web
- Angel’s Citadel reviewed Edge of the Sun.
- The Citadel also reviewed Mal’Vandal’s Mythic Vade Mecum.
- Calamity Hyena reviewed Thousand Year Old Vampire.
- Sean Hillman reviewed the Platinum bestseller The Gray Merchant of Asphodel.
- Antonio S reviewed Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades: Wuxia Roleplaying.
- Tomas Gimenez Rioja, writing for Tribality, reviewed Tome of Beasts 2.
- Nerds on Earth reviewed Cyberpunk Red.
- Cedric Chin reviewed Towns & Taverns – Books of Battle Mats.
- Charles Dunwoody reviewed Robert Sulivan’s Inn Between Worlds.
- Bleeding Cool’s Joshua Nelson interviewed Loresmyth with Remarkable Cults Kickstarter Launches March 4th.
- Egg Embry, over at d20Radio, interviewed Chris Haskins of Nord Games about Dangerous Destinations.
RPG new releases
- Cubicle 7’s Wrath & Glory’s Forsaken System Player’s Guide is out and an electrum bestseller.
- Cubicle 7 also released the Soulbound sourcebook Doomed Lands.
- Gamehole Con and Anthony Joyce’s latest tier 4 D&D 5e adventure contains Ed Greenwood’s contributions and is already a copper bestseller. It’s A Convergence of Gods.
- A silver bestseller, Chris Gidlow’s RuneQuest sourcebook for urban adventures Citizens of the Lunar Empire is out.
- Coldlight Press has released the Pay What You Want The Outsider’s Doom.
- Gun Metal Games released Interface Zero 3.0: The Game Master’s Guide to 2095
RPG ideas, tips and discoveries
- Ben and the Genre Police looked at how Apocalypse World forever changed character generation with Working From The Same Playbook.
- For Dicebreaker, Kiran Trivedy opined Vampire: The Masquerade shows the right way to confront an RPG’s problematic past.
- Eric Silver, writing for Alma, suggested that Dungeons & Dragons Has an Antisemitism Problem.
- Roll20’s blog offered up 5 Marketplace Modules To Get Started with Dynamic Lighting.
- Gnome Stew’s John Arcadian wrote up A Super Simple System For Contracts in D&D 5e (or nearly any other game).
- Power Score RPG shared The Best 5e Dungeons & Dragons Monsters Not in the Monster Manual.
- Coleman Gailloerto offered up “Pocket” Tabletop RPGs With Five Pages Of Rules Or Less.
RPG Crowdfunding
You can see those Kickstarters and other crowdfunding campaigns that caught Geek Native’s attention over at Kickstarter watch. Here are some industry projects worth a mention;
- Sandragon has a primal setting with novel races suitable for both D&D and GURPS systems called Atlantis: Frost and Flood.
- Jonathan Green, an author with more than 70 books to his name, is crowdfunding the rules-light HEOROT – Role-Playing in the World of Beowulf Beastslayer.
- Darkraven Games has put together a collection of sound files in the
Grand Festival of the Imperial Wizard – Awesome RPG Audio - XploringMap is on Kickstarter with an adventure, battle map and mini bundle called The Old Mine.
- Written for Necrotic Gnome’s Old School Essentials is a wilderness exploration and domain management system. It’s Into the Wild.
- Silver Vine Publishing’s second attempt to translate this innovative Japanese tabletop RPG is doing much better. The tiny goal has been met, and Kickstarter has awarded it a “Project We Love”. It’s second time lucky for Summon Skate – an Indie Japanese RPG Translation Project.
- Venger has funded Saving Cha’alt.
- Shawn Michael Hescock has a complete set of models with sats. They’re the Dice Mimics Miniatures Set.
- Infect3d1 has 10 snowy and icy themed maps. The collection is The Ice Kings Lair + Icy Horrors.
- Morrus and EN Publishing have another success on their hands with Archetype Anthology: A Dozen Subclasses for D&D 5th Edition.
- Joseph Carr is funding a 30-page kaiju fighting zine that uses Fate. Meet
The Unquiet Earth: A Fate Adventure in the Sengai Jidai. - Born as a way to go PAX South, overwhelming demand has resulted in a Kickstarter for D&Tea: Thematic teas for your RPG.
- Seaweaver is on Kickstarter for a new RPG set in the distant future where humanity and gods now work together. It’s Voices of Crearé A Table Top Roleplaying Game.
- Freedom Triplett is crowdfunding a supplement for Pathfinder called Lost Legacy: Racial Handbook.
- Vulcan Forge wants to enhance your table with Tabletop Gaming Vault and Dice Towers.
If there’s a source or news you think is worth monitoring, please get in touch or leave a comment below.
