Audio EXP Podcast: #231 – RPG Publishers Reassemble!

Welcome home.

This is Audio EXP for the 24th of February, and the episode title is “RPG Publishers Reassemble!” 

[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #231]

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Terry Maranda won the February vote and was a delight to talk to.

Terry’s an art director who worked on Warriors of Waterdeep and is now pushing a speculative evolution project to life through some fantastic designs and a patron community. 

Oh yes, we absolutely talked about what on Earth speculative evolution is and how we put 5e stats to it.

There wasn’t a podcast last week, as I foreshadowed, as Bronwen and I went to the charity supporting Capital Sci-Fi Con here in Edinburgh, saw some celebs, resisted spending too much money, and popped some coverage on social media. 

Afterwards, we found an underground mini-golf venue full of talking heads and dinosaurs and played a few rounds. As you do.

In the previous podcast, which, therefore, was recorded about a million years ago, I pointed out that Wizards of the Coast seemed to have pretty much not done anything special for D&D’s 50th birthday.

Now, they’ve announced D&D Lego, D&D Converse, which are shoes, Quests from the Infinite Staircase, which are adventures for levels 1 to 13 and Vecna: Eve of Ruin and that’s an adventure for characters level 10 and up.

They’ve also decided to stop printing D&D in Portuguese.

Is that enough? Despite not all the new core rulebooks being due out in 2024, they seem to be calling the new prints D&D 2024. I guess that’s to make sure we don’t call them D&D 5.5 or D&D 6.0.

Wizards of the Coast ally company UltraPro has announced Premium book covers for the Player’s Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide. They’re over £40 each. 

I suspect that’s too much money for most people to make their D&D books look good but those of who travel with rulebooks often might consider it worthy protection.

Bronwen and I both found some interesting alternative shopping ideas, which we’ll get on to later in this catch-up podcast, but I want to first get of D&D and talk about other games.

There’s a new Tomb Raider RPG on the way, called Shadows of Truth and its from Evil Hat.

I had to check the official Tomb Raider Facebook page for upset fans and found what I was looking for, with people complaining the book didn’t seem to feature enough Croft and had too much diversity instead.

Oh dear. I mean, they’ve not even read it yet. Lara Croft is on the front cover and that’s pretty much all people have seen of the book, although we know characters will be peers of the tomb raider rather than the titular character.

You don’t have to wait for the next one, although you might have been waiting more than two years already, as Shadow of the Weird Wizard is now out on PDF.

The game is set in a fantasy world after the ruler, an unstable sorcerer, vanishes and leaves chaos in their wake. The TTRPG has made the Top Ten list of most anticipated game for a few years. It’s reviewing well.

Shadow of the Weird Wizard is based on the earlier Shadow of the Demon Lord and my briefing notes say it’s a less grimdark setting.

Also now less grimdark are the remains of Grim and Perilous Studios. The Zweihander specialist publisher is shutting down, but most staff are moving to a newly created Cannon Otter Studio.

Why the change? It’s a chance to move the focus off the dark and into other RPGs. The first project, one based on Mark of the Odd is called Teenage Oddyssey.

Cannon Otter Studio is the first of the two publishers reassembling the podcast references’ titles. Here’s the second.

Mindjammer Press has merged with Typhon Games.

Mindjammer has a had a rough ride, with a death in the family and a relocation but kept on, picking up Kickstarters and I imagine dealing with impatient backers.

Typhon Games is new and working on When We Die as a first project.

Now, Sarah Newton of Mindjammer is joining Garry Harper and Jason Juta at Typhon as a director.

I mentioned some weird shopping finds and so let’s dig in.

Bronwen surfaced Drawing Prompts for Extremely Weird People.

You don’t need to be a wizard here, or I imagine, even a person; just something that can read and draw.

The prompt I especially liked was;

Walrus with monocle surprises fisherman

I don’t know if we have an RPG published called Monocle Walrus but give us time.

I saw, and was tempted by, but resisted, a One Ring large enough to light a tabletop. It’s a 20cm wide Ring of Power lamp.

However, the prize for odd purchase goes to some official D&D merch. Wizards of the Coast will let people dress up as in an inflatable Beholder costumers.

You wear the purple and eye-tentacle blob over your top, and it will look extremely interesting. I think eating food at Halloween parties might be a challenge, but you will win plaudits.

Coming up next is a long outro of bundles, freebies and a competition.

Buckle up!

In the Bundle of Holding, there’s the Legendary Ultimate 5e deal, named after the publisher Legendary and their Ultimate range.

There’s a few days left to get the American Gods-inspired Sig: Manual of the Primes bundle from Genesis of Legends.

I’m a fan of the Merry Mushmen’s OSR zine Knock!, and all three issues are in the Bundle of Holding. I’ve also just noticed that my intro to that offer was cut in half, likely due to a late-night copy and paste error by me. Oops. I’m sure I’d written something clever. Okay, that sounds less like me. I’d hoped to have introduced Knock! with the same care and attention that go into the books but failed.

Lastly, in the Bundle of Holding, but certainly not least, there’s their 11th birthday bundle which Grant Howitt makes possible. Typically Grant’s one-page RPGs are pay what you want or part of a Patron but here they’re $1 or $2 for the tiers and after the money processers take their slice of cash, all the revenue from this bundle goes to charity.

In Humble, there’s a comic book bundle for anime lovers from Ablaze that supports the Starlight Children’s Foundation.

There’s also a Humble mega bundle for Paranoia’s 25th birthday, which is an RPG I’ve fond memories of, and the core rules are in the three tier offer.

Gosh, that was a lot of bundles, so let me tell you about the Dark Age of Man quickstart which is free. It’s a nice story.

The Dark Age of Man is a new tabletop RPG from Jason Graham and Del Branham and while that’s a minimalist game a fan was able to condense the core rules to just two pages. Those two-pages are now the official quickstart.

Lastly, if you’re in the UK and into Francis Ford Coppola, we’ve a Blu-ray competition to win the new Reprise cut of One From the Heart.

On that note, enjoy the leap year week, and I’ll see you next week.