Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for the 2nd of September, and the episode title is “Secret Projects”
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #208]
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Coyote and Crow is in the Spotlight this month, as voted for by Patreons.
Geek Native’s podcast and blog supporters really do make a difference. Contributions help pay for commissioned art and writing, which, I hope, means money going back into the tabletop hobby.
Patrons also get to vote for October’s RPG Publisher Spotlight, and the candidates are;
As a thank you, Patrons will be getting Sneak Energy packets sent to them this month.
Since we spoke last, I’ve been to Tabletop Scotland in Perth, for the last time. We filled the Dewar’s Centre, where curling takes place, with stalls, stands and people playing tabletop games.
It was a great year, with food trucks added, a pick’n’mix cleverly set up by the in-house pub, and we started on Friday evening rather than Saturday morning.
But we won’t be back. The cost of living crisis in the UK has rung the death knell for the Dewar’s Centre too often, and we’ve been lucky with last-minute reprieves. I understand why the organisers have felt they had to find a new home.
That new home is my home. Tabletop Scotland is coming to Edinburgh and, in 2024, will be held in the Royal Highland Centre. That’s the venue of the world-famous Royal Highland Show, not the Highland Games, but the agricultural side of the business and a chance to go check out the best-of-breed highland cows, see sheep shearing, traditional and modern practices.
That’s not happening while Tabletop Scotland is on, thank goodness, nor will the Edinburgh Festivals, as the gaming convention is sliding back to September when it’ll be cheaper.
One of the companies I talked to in Perth was Honeybadger Games. They make edible dice and meeple already, but if plans hold, they’ll be making edible games in a few years, too.
What do you make of that? Would you buy a game that you ate and destroyed to play? Or, like an advent calendar, would it depend on the cost?
Another company I spoke to was Hive Mind Games, who have just finished a Kickstarter for the 5e setting Blood & Glory. Imagine your players washing up on the chilly islands ruled by brutal Viking-like warriors.
Imagine also those blood-obsessed Vikings are also vampires. That’s Blood & Glory, and there’s a free introduction called Gateway to the North out now for download.
You might be wondering where Bronwen was while I was out and about in Perth? Did I leave the creative director behind?
Yes, I did. Bronwen was celebrating her birthday and had this incredible cake which recreated that scene in Jurassic World where the dinosaurs are running from the volcano.
To repeat, Bronwen’s birthday cake was a volcano, and it was incredibly impressive and shows that there are always reasons for having a handy supply of model dinosaurs.
If you are a Jurassic Park or World fan, then, as Bronwen wrote up, RSVLTS has a new dinosaur range out. I’m very tempted, but that company’s magic fabric is not cheap!
It’s not all been fun and games, though. The news broke that Scottish RPG indie Handiwork Games had been hit by thieves. A whole shipment of RPGs was sent to the US, stolen, and sold on the black market.
In response, Handiwork is ensuring backers get replacement copies and delaying the retail release until that’s done. However, the next project is King Beowulf, and they’ve made free teasers of that available.
Now, the move from Perth to Edinburgh was one of the Secret Projects that this week’s podcast references. Another is Project Blue Moon.
Cody Pondsmith, son of Cyberpunk Mike Pondsmith and author of The Witcher RPG, is working on a new tabletop game.
That’s what Project Blue Moon is. Geek Native and others noticed the file name of the teaser picture, wondered and now publisher RTG have confirmed.
We don’t know much about the game but the teasers so far are invoking dreams and darkness, fantasy and reality, spirits and god wars.
October means Halloween; Geek Native will do our usual Masks countdown, but it you want something on-theme, and soon, then Bronwen recommends Hellboy Web of Wyrd which is out on the 4th. That’s the game where Hellboy is voiced by the late Lance Reddick.
There’s some freebies to catch up on as well. 9th Level Games took their Free RPG Day offering and made it available to everyone and kept the price at zero.
That means you can pop over to DriveThruRPG and grab the Mazes Zero Prep Introduction if you fancy.
Fiona Shades Stories’ Adventure College Student Handbook Sample isn’t fresh out, but the core book is on the way, and the preview is free to download. I think it’s worth checking out.
I’ll struggle to pronounce this but The Basic Expert has a teaser for the coming Kickstarter and the Aztec-themed Macuahuitl.
Perhaps the biggest freebie release of the week, though, is Kevin Crawford’s Cities Without Number. That’s the cyberpunk sibling to Stars Without Number and Words Without Number. There’s a bigger but priced version of the RPG available too.
In bundles, on the Bundle of Holding, there’s the Barbarians of Lemuria spin-off Everywhen. There’s also the 5-star gold rated bestseller The Nightmares Underneath tabletop core rules and supplements, which merges horror, fantasy and home.
There’s even a comic-book, and RPG blend with Atomic Robo, that’s an award-winner.
Meanwhile, on Humble there’s a megabundle for Dungeon Crawl Classics.
For Wheel of Time fans, there’s also a deal with Dynamite for comics of the series.
And on that note, I easily squeezed two weeks of content into the sub-10-minute mark. I was too brutal! But I’ll be back next week for more and see you then.
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