Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for the 26th of February 2022, and the title of this episode is “Perspective”
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #137]
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Shawn Merwin is in the spotlight this month, as voted for by Patreons.
The interview with Shawn is live. We talk about how he was one of the first to publish in the DMsGuild and how writing a solo project differs from his work at Ghostfire Games.
We also talk about the future, including, just briefly, on Kickstarter.
It’s a weird week to be talking about games and geeky topics at all, to be honest. As the start of Routinely Itemised touched on, this week is the start of a land war in Europe. Of tanks. Of shelling. Of death.
It’s wrong to ignore that. And yet, in my weekly game over Discord, we’ve taken the unusual step of declaring it free of politics and war-chat. We need to escape and hide for a bit, and we’re thankful that we can!
I don’t know what that means for this podcast. We’re still in the pandemic, but I don’t sign off the podcast urging people to wear masks anymore. COVID-19 was never a taboo subject on Audio EXP. Should the war be?
I did get a little heavy on the blog. I got more than one email about an offer from Atlas VPN to give free accounts to journalists in Ukraine.
I noticed that the PR team seemed to be coordinating the offer and was torn between the chance of this being a cynical effort to sell software on the back of horrible suffering or a company’s most agile team reacting in heartfelt sincerity to a crisis.
I wasn’t even sure how much a VPN would help in the ongoing cyber warfare, although mine does offer some infosec protection, so I suppose many do.
There are about three to four disclaimers on every page to say that any link on Geek Native might be an affiliate link. This is often determined in real-time, and after behind the scenes deals, I’ve no control over it. I took the chance to remind readers of this with a hand-typed note at the end of the Atlas VPN article. It would be typical of me to take a poke at a company for making money during the war only to stumble into doing the same myself.
However, this week’s title, Perspective, wasn’t coined with VPNs in mind. It comes from social media rows earlier this week. Cubicle 7 announced Doctors and Daleks and Twitter erupted.
Doctors and Daleks is a Doctor Who RPG powered by D&D’s 5e.
It’s okay not to like D&D or 5e.
It’s okay not to like Wizards of the Coast or Hasbro.
It’s okay to like them too or have no opinion.
Weirdly, all seems to be controversial. Cubicle 7’s decision to have a version of Doctor Who on 5e seemed to conjure up floods of toxic comments.
Regular listeners will know my stance; the existence of a game you don’t like should not threaten or upset you at all. You should worry more about human suffering and super-powers at war.
Of course, it would be hypocritical of me on a self-funding, loss-making podcast to say people shouldn’t share their opinions, and I’m just saying there’s a way to do it without being a jerk. You can have thoughts without needing to articulate them as a personal attack.
I’m also not saying you shouldn’t be critical of people. I’m critical of Nazis. There’s no debate in my mind whether it’s acceptable to punch a Nazi. Punch them. Get slugging.
What I’m saying is that it’s all about perspective.
Shall we move on? Shall we talk about Children of Earte instead? That’s a big new actual play Twitch show. Yes, it’s 5e; no, it doesn’t seem to be D&D.
Deborah Ann Woll, a confirmed gamer known from True Blood and Daredevil, will run it.
One of the players will be Adam Bradford. He’s one of the co-founders of D&D Beyond but left the company to join Demiplane.
Since then, Demiplane has grown and got involved in more projects. It’s Demiplane’s Twitch channel that’ll host Children of Earte.
It’s a gamble, but it feels like a savvy move. It’s absolutely going to put Demiplane on a lot of people’s radars if the show takes off and grows in popularity.
Okay, if that’s D&D and the TV screen medium, what about D&D and paper.
Artist Steven Cummings is a talented illustrator who’s worked on some of Jim Zub’s Evil at Baldur’s Gate comic series.
Steven’s put the original paper sketches for the comic up for sale. I presume he’s entitled to do so. I’m less sure whether this sort of thing appeals to tabletop gamer geeks in general or whether it’s exclusively comic book collectors.
Jim Zub’s star seems to be constantly on the rise, but I’m not sure these pages have been snapped up. I imagine sketches of comic books, even published ones by reasonably big names, are relatively common because many are needed just to bring comics to print. I’m no expert, but I also presume that a generous supply depresses the price of things.
On printed things, printed copies of Darker Huer Studios’ Haunted West RPG are on the way.
This is a weird west game that takes the time to amplify, rather than whitewash, the role of people of colour in America’s old west. And yes, there were Twitter rows about that too.
The news is that RTG, the Cyberpunk publisher helmed by Mike Pondsmith, will distribute the game.
I think that’s the first time RTG has acted in this way.
It could just be a case of a medium-sized publisher helping a smaller one out.
However, it’s not impossible that RTG has logistic aspirations and could do this for other publishers. One to watch, certainly.
The other bit of Cyberpunk and RTG news is that Cyberpunk RED now has dating rules. You can download those lifepath/datepath optional rules from RTG’s site for free.
In truth, it’s been a busy week for geeky tabletop news. Let’s pick some and get into a World of Darkness story that I think should have more coverage.
A company called Xplored will make a game called Vampire: The Masquerade – Milan Uprising.
That’s probably a board game. You see, Xplored makes those electronic boards that I spent much of 2021 predicting would be a feature of 2022 because of the relationship between hardware and subscriptions.
You buy the board hardware once, and then the system, known as Teburu in this case, runes the game, acting as NPCs, revealing the story, and essentially being the GM or storyteller.
And the deal between Paradox and Xplored is a multi-game one.
Milan Uprising is a Teburu game, but the Xplored CEO took the chance to mention roleplaying when talking about the deal.
Even if there’s no new as-we-know-them Vampire RPG variant on the way in the deal, systems like Teburu will surely blur the distinction between board and roleplaying games.
Another bit of news from the tabletop games meet technology corner of the hobby comes from Roll20. The virtual tabletop’s co-founder and CEO Nolan T Jones is stepping down. He’ll still have some role, but not as CEO.
Jones will be replaced by ex-Googler and University professor Ankit Lal. Ankit is a product guy, and he worked on GSuite, aka Google Workspace.
Since we’re talking about making digital things better, let’s also talk about making physical things better. The good news this week is that Hasbro is stepping up their commitment to do that.
The D&D owner has joined the Science Based Targets initiative for sustainability. That means important commitments like getting rid of plastic in all their packaging.
It means less corporate handwaving and greenwashing because those Science Based Targets are stricter than what a PR team might suggest.
Before we get on to the bundle deals this week, there are at least two freebies worth giving a shoutout.
First up, there’s the Baby Monster version of Zargoth’s Tome of Familiars out this week. It’s a preview of the Tome of Familiars and worth it just for the cute baby monster pictures alone.
There’s also the re-release of the 1999 quickstart to D&D from Wizards of the Coast. It’s the Crypt of the Smoke Dragon and it’s free now from the DMsGuild.
Those two bundles are both at the Bundle of Holding.
One is for the card-based crime capers of Fiasco 2020.
The second is for Elephant and Macaw Banner, an RPG set in 16th century Brazil, deadly and refreshingly not all Western and Tolkien styled.
And on that note, let’s wrap there, keep safe and see you next week.
Start up a conversation in the comments below.
