Audio EXP Podcast: #197 – Deals for good or evil

Welcome home.

This is Audio EXP for the 20th of May, 2023, and the episode title is “Deals for good or evil!”

[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #197]

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Zotiquest Games is in the Spotlight this month, as voted for by Patreons.

There are two tiny tweaks to the usual Audio EXP podcast format that I want to do this week. Well, three if you count the addition of the word ‘Podcast’ into the blog post title, which seems like a glaringly obvious error it’s taken nearly 200 episodes to address.

The first of the proper two is to talk about Zotiquest Games. It’s the 20th, two-thirds of the busy month, and I’ve not gotten in touch. Not beep, not a whisper or even a nod from them.

I’m contacting a designer based in Italy and don’t think I’m getting through.

I hope I’m not calling quits too early, but my gut feeling is that we won’t make contact, and I should push on with an RPG Spotlight piece without them.

It’s a shame, but it’s happened before, and there’s usually stuff to say.

It’s not just my gut feeling; next Saturday is the 27th, and then it’s the 3rd of June. There won’t be a podcast on the 3rd because I’ll be at UK Games Expo. Instead, I’ll be putting reels and other videos of the giant even on social, which should be fun, but does eat into the usual schedule.

I’ll get to the second at the end of the podcast but I want to talk about some deals and other geeky news.

The first deal is centres on Evil Genius Productions, who make the 5e modern mashup Everyday Heroes, and who has the license to RPGs like The Crow, Highlander and Escape from New York and others.

Evil Genius are rebooting the d20 supplement Urban Arcana and are hosting a competition as part of that. People have had the chance to submit 200-word pitches for a contemporary fantasy setting, ten winners have now been announced and will be paid to expand on that pitch.

At the end of the process, there’s a cash payout and a contract for the winner to write up their setting for the book.

In a deal, Geek Native’s been able to reveal the ten Urban Arcana semi-finalists. These people will now be paid to expand their idea and progress in the contest.

I won’t list all ten, but if you entered, or know someone who has, visit the blog to find out if you know the finalists.

Also, I won’t read them all out on the podcast, but we do have all ten pitches on the blog as well. They’re a great read, so pop over and let us know what you think.

We did two posts because we didn’t want to link the authors’ names with their pitches, and there’s no connection in the order they’re listed. We gave the pitches nicknames or headlines and put those in alphabetical order.

It’s a bit of an experiment, but it seems to be working well.

Another experiment on the blog this week was a new way to vote on stuff. As usual, I connected Google Polls with Google Sheets and published the results as live graphs.

The proof-of-concept question is which fantasy lineage would brew the most potent beer?

You have three choices; dwarf, halfling or orc. Currently, it’s not a hotly contested vote, but orcs have it.

If you want to see who currently has the lead, pop over, or, better still, cast your vote and let me know what you think of the hacked-together process. But; be kind.

I guess that’s kind of a deal; between Google technologies and the blog.

One absolute deal is that between Free League Publishing and UK Games Expo. That’s the very same Expo that Geek Native will be at so hit us up if you’re going and want to say.

The deal Free League has made is to run the first-ever Alien RPG Master tournament there.

That’s right, competitive Alien RPG play. We’re not talking about card games, board games or wargames but tabletop RPGs.

I guess it could work in cinematic Alien games where it can become a fight to survive. However, there’s a nice catch. The winner of each round at each table is the player their fellow players voted through, and it’s a sort of collaborative competition.

If the worst thing that happens in a successful model taking off here is that people try to be a popular player, isn’t that a good thing?

Or, if you’re looking for an anti-deal of sorts, what about Living Nightmares? Alternatively, this is a deal between an RPG publisher and you.

Living Nightmares is published by Gildor Games, behind the Elemental RPG. Gildor already offers many supplements for free, but the twist with the low-cost Living Nightmares, a collection of spooky monsters, is that for each DriveThruRPG ‘bestseller tier’ it achieves, they’ll add to it. That’s possible with digital products.

As a result, if you buy the game now, and presumably, it could be made more expensive later because it’s worth it now, it’ll only get better.

I think this model is called buyfunding, and it could work with an ashcan or beta RPG, which edges towards a final stage with purchases, but Living Nightmares is good to go now; it just promises to get better.

The buyfunding model is a variant I wish both Itch and DriveThruRPG-Roll20 offered better support for. Both those platforms already offer a Pay What You Want model, though.

We did also cover a Pay What You Want RPG on the blog this week, and that was Lost Roads of Lociam. I paid $5 but could have paid nothing and got more than 100 pages of RPG.

Lost Roads of Lociam is a successful Kickstarter set in a world where magic is real but unpredictable, dramatic and dangerous.

Like dinosaurs.

Okay, that’s a bit of a stretch of a connection but I did want to call out we’re at the 30th anniversary of Jurassic Park.

In a merch post, one which some purchases could make Geek Native a few pennies, I listed various Jurassic Park deals at geeky retailers.

Merchoid as a very limited collectors’ edition weekend ticket, LoungeFly is sure to sell out of their dinosaur goodies and RSVLTS has sold out on the “Clever Girl” shirt that costs an arm and a leg I might have bought.

While we’re still on deals, Crunchyroll’s new owners, Sony, seem to be showing their chops as we’ve already seen a slew of partnerships with the month of Ani-May and now one with the language learning app Duolingo.

If you’re a Crunchyroll subscriber, you get some Duolingo Super access for free, and there are anime-inspired phrases. It feels like a sensible partnership to me.

At the start of the podcast, I said there were going to be two small tweaks, and here is the second. I want to talk about breaking news that I’ve not yet covered but am tempted to.

The news is that Steamforge Games and Kickstarter have signed a deal. It’s been covered by ICv2.

Steamforged has promised to be exclusive, and Kickstarter has agreed to help with content.

My thoughts went to dark places, although I can see how Kickstarter helping with inclusive and training content is great. By dark places, I mean this; isn’t Kickstarter supposed to be neutral? Doesn’t Kickstarter help cross-promote campaigns and even approve, or not, campaigns from other publishers competing for the same customers as Steamforged Games?

Is this a balancing act Kickstarter can pull off and convince others they are balancing it successfully? Why can’t Steamforged just do more of this sort of content without signing their next four games to Kickstarter? Why can’t Kickstarter not just help promote this sort of content without asking for an exclusive?

So, my question is this; should I post on this, or do you see Geek Native as more of a place to discover stuff rather than read about thoughts and opinions as I’ve just outlined? If you think I should leave well alone, then please howl.

As usual, there’s the bundle news to cover before we sign off, and this week I’ve picked on. That’s at the Bundle of Holding, now, there’s a site with many partners and deals, and I’ve picked Arc Dream Mythos.

That’s Delta Green and Pagan Publishing content in the form of THe Unspeakable Oath and Dreamlands.

And on that note, let’s wrap up there, I hope to see you at UK Games Expo and, at the very least, next week.