Audio EXP Podcast: #237 – Adventure of the Black Company Apes

Welcome home.

This is Audio EXP for the 13th of April, and the episode title is “Adventure of the Black Company Apes” 

[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #237]

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Greyplains won the April vote, and I am in touch and the ball is in my court. Hang me with and we’re in with a good chance of getting a Q&A with Jacob live.

I was delighted this week when I read an interview with Dungeons & Dragon’s Game Design Architect at a branding website when the interviewer asked “What do you actually do?”.

Chris Perkins was good and honest with his answer. Firstly, he admitted this meant a lot of management and meetings. Secondly, he made the point that he finds the time for creative input into the game.

Would you rather be a game designer with absolute control of a small RPG or the Game Design Architect of a powerhouse brand followed by tens of thousands?

Here’s another ‘would you rather’ for you. Imagine you’ve just landed the rights to turn a cherished book into an RPG. Do you spend an absolute age on it, making it as good as you can but eating into significantly into years you secured the license for before publishing it, or do you create the best possible game you can at a pace which lets you publish something for fans and with plenty of runway for supplements in the future?

Arc Dream Publishing, that’s Shane Ivey and Dennis Detwiller of Delta Green fame, have gone for the former. They’ve secured the rights to Glen Cook’s dark military fantasy The Black Company and won’t be rushing.

The pair will be running playtests but won’t publish a timeline for an expected release or a crowdfunding campaign. Arc Dream Publishing is taking its time.

I don’t know the books but I keep hearing about them, and I’ve found them on Audible. That’s a temptation. I notice the audio recording is 14 years old.

Magnetic Press Play are back doing RPGs. I was writing about them three years ago when they released Carbon Grey, then got the license for the very popular anime series Lupin the 3rd. They’re the publisher who brought West End Games’ D6 back to Kickstarter but I thought they’d gotten out of TTRPGs.

I was wrong.

This week they’ve announced they’ve secured the license to the Planet of the Apes and that their TTRPG will use the Magnetic Variant of the D6 System.

I think Planet of the Apes will make for a great setting. I’ve not seen any of the new movies, but it’s true. I’ve seen the old ones. As there’s so much to the franchise, there’s no one character that defines it, and therefore, I think plenty of room for the characters.

Contrast that to, for example, the Supernatural RPG, or the Buffy RPG and the various Doctor Who RPGs.

Cryptozoic as also announced they’ve secured a big license for a new 5e-powered TTRPG. I’ve just outlined two different types of franchises; one with a big world that doesn’t lean too heavily on certain characters to define it, and one that’s all about a coterie of characters.

Cryptozoic’s new 5e game is Adventure Time: The Roleplaying Game. There’s already over 10,000 followers on the Kickstarter pre-launch page.

This week’s RPG news is not all about chunky license deals, though. Pleasingly, Monte Cook Games has released a free online character builder. It’s for the Cypher System, which is one of my favourites, and it means it’s not that little bit easier for gamers and gaming groups to try all the games that use the system.

In more good news, DriveThruRPG and I think Fantasy Grounds are running a sale on the Fallout TTRPG from Modiphius.

I like Fallout. Back in the era when I had spare time, I even played computer games, and I like the 2D20 system, too. Have I seen Amazon’s new TV series?

Nope. Not yet. If I finish up this podcast before 1am then maybe I’ll treat myself to episode one. Or is is good enough to be an 2am treat? Let me know.

And with that mention of a TV show we’ve proof that we’ve managed to cover more than than just tabletop games this week. At least, Bronwen has, who noticed the latest news on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Last Ronin live action film. It’s going to be R-rated.

Bronwen also has a Hasbro story and it’s not D&D. We’re getting a Monopoly movie and it’ll be produced by Margot Robbie.

I liked what Robbie and own production company did with Barbie. Will something similar happen for Monopoly? Almost certainly as the board game was invented by Lizzie Magie, an early female pioneer of game design, who was quickly removed from the credits as the game passed around owners.

I wrote about this a few years back and then Hasbro didn’t mention her at all.

Furthermore, the original Monopoly was designed to teach people about the dangers of capitalism. Yeah, there’s been a few changes to it since it escaped Lizzie’s hands.

Will Hasbro take this route? Will they change the game back and credit its creator? Hmm.

Let’s start our outro, but we can do that and linger on creators for a bit longer. Did you know that Sir Terry Pratchett co-created a TTRPG? He worked on the Discworld RPG. That’s the same one from Steve Jackson Games, the one that uses GURPS, and right now, it’s in the Bundle of Holding.

Also, in the Bundle of Holding, there’s a Dark Eras bundle. That means games like Chronicles of Darkness and supplements taking us to the vampires in Elizabethan London or Mages in the court of Alexander the Great.

Lastly, there’s the limited edition of the RuneScape Siren bundle on Fanatical.

On that note, let’s hope it stops raining, and I’ll see you next week.