Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for February 8th, and the episode title is “Slime and dinosaurs”.
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #274]
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Dunderdagar won the RPG Publisher Spotlight this month.
I’m just back from Comic Con Alba and normally, there isn’t an Audio EXP podcast on a convention Saturday but we’ll manage here.
Comic Con Alba is what I’ll call a hyperlocal convention. It was held in a community hall in Leith, which is a famous part of Edinburgh or a stubbornly independent village resisting the merger with the city for hundreds of years. You pick. It’s a Scottish thing.
Inside this Comic Con, I found more comic book stalls than merch and I found, to my delight, that most visitors were young teens in cosplay. Back when I set up Geek Native I was trying to recruit people to to the RPG hobby and geekdom in general. Now, we’ve a good new generation on the way. That’s nothing to do with me, but I was worried whether some of my hobbies would have a future, and today I’m reassured.
You can see a short video from my trip on TikTok.
Now, last night as I was deep in the task of writing up the RPG newsletter/Friday post that is Routinely Itemised I noticed some of the new books on DriveThruRPG were not new and had a strange “Retailer Version – Publisher Fulfilled” tag.
So, I stopped compiling my summary to write one more news story and this is what I think is going on.
DriveThruRPG is letting people sell or find RPGs from print runs that would have otherwise gone to a bricks and clicks retailer or perhaps a publisher’s own webshop.
Normally, if you buy a softback or hardback from DriveThruRPG it is a print-on-demand. I think with “Retailer Version – Publisher Fulfilled” the publisher has to get the book to you themselves, without DriveThruRPG’s help, but they have sold one more book from a stock they’ve already paid for and that’s a big deal.
I think the timing is important too because international trade might be going pear shape.
I don’t know if DriveThruRPG will keep this but I’m pleased to see them experimenting and I hope they do find a new way to make money together with publishers.
Embers of Humanity are being radical with money.
Firstly, the quickstart is out as a Pay What You Want. The full rules cost $5. However, people pay more than that every month as a contribution to John Hedge, Brian Ashford and Colin Richards project as part of a Ko-fi community. That’s a bit like Patreon.
Secondly, the trio will publish all the finances. There’s a public spreadsheet, albeit with placeholder data so far.
The RPG itself is about apocalypse survivors working together to build a community. It’s a hope-filled game, not a dark one.
Bronwen, who has been a plague-zombie for what feels like many years now, found the strength to write up the Jurassic World Rebirth trailer.
I’m glad she did. I watched the thing thinking “Is that Scarlett Johansson?” and, yes, it is.
It’s a mixed review of the trailer. I liked Johansson’s performance, but that’s not why I wasn’t sure who it was – I think that was due to the baseball cap. I don’t like baseball caps any more.
The dinosaurs look great but, yes, once again, we humans seem to be making things worse by being greedy and going where we should not.
What about feet in slime? Is that another example of humankind putting itself somewhere we shouldn’t?
In this case, it’s some Slimer shoes from Fun.com and their Ghostbusters collection.
I think my favourite are the Stay Puft trainers because it looks like your feet are transforming into the destroyer.
There’s a few bundle deals to catch you up on. At the Bundle of Holding, there are several deals for Hero Systems games including a new Campaigns Collection with Cyber Hero, Horror Hero and Ninja Hero.
There’s also a deal called Punch Nazis! You know, it’s what Indiana Jones would do and countless other heroes.
This deal has a whole host of TTRPGs with a strong resistance theme and money going to support the Center For Constitutional Rights.
If you are in a country where a billionaire has deployed private security to keep your elected officials from their work, that might be of interest.
Here in Scotland and in the UK there’s no single written constitution in the first place, but we do have a patchwork of rules including the Acts of Union 1707 and the Scotland Act 1998 which all combine into something the fills the legal void.
Lastly, on Humble and celebrating 45 years, there’s a grand ElfQuest bundle of digital downloads.
On that note, keep safe, and don’t annoy the dinosaurs.
