Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for May 3rd, and the episode title is “Star Wars Day and Bad Passwords”.
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #285]
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FGG Games won the RPG Publisher Spotlight this month.
Regular listeners will know that I’ve not yet got in touch with the publishers. I’ll do that shortly, and with UK Games Expo reason for me to out of the city in the final days of May, I’ve even less reason to hang around.
As usual, I want to thank all our patrons who voted. May was a tie and on Geek Native’s Instagram account, you can see the video of the dice rolling in favour of FGG.
Patrons have access to a private page on Patreon.com to cast their votes. So far, Diane Ramic is out in front by one vote.
May the 1st was World Password Day and Geek Native sent a lot of PR about it. Lots of VPNs have taken action.
Instead, I coded the Bad fantasy password generator and fully expected to get one angry email about it. So far, so good, as there hasn’t been a peep.
There’s that iconic chapter in Lord of the Rings when Gandalf figures he only needs to say “Friend” to access the Mines. That’s the concept here. So the widget jokingly pretends to be a high-security password generator. It’ll actually give you suggestions like friend, or 12345, or admin.
Don’t pick these as passwords.
There are actually several high profile shops in the UK who are fighting off, to greater or lesser success, cyber attacks and Geek Native’s archive of news stories reminds me it’s been six years since Wizards of the Coast had to issue a cybersecurity alert when the decommissioned DCI system was breached.
May the 4th is Star Wars Day and we already have some sci-fi content up on the blog. One of which is a guest post from Cthulhu Dark designer Graham Walmsley who is working on Cosmic Dark and wrote for us seven ways to make space scary.
One tip is to use people close to the PCs, and this works very well as a way to build out characters. For example, perhaps PCs start to hear the voices of long-dead lovers or family members who couldn’t possibly be on the spaceship.
We’ll get to actual Star Wars Day content in just a bit but first I want to loop back to the ongoing saga with Diamond Comic Distributors as the situation there has got worse.
When we last talked about the takeover or rescue deal, Alliance had won the battle and then walked away from the deal. Now the company has filed a complaint with the Court.
The problem? Alliance said that Diamond Comics lost their logistics deal with Wizards of the Coast and had tried to hide that from them. They’re annoyed and it might well end Diamond.
A better takeover deal and partnership this week comes from Roll20 and Demiplane who are now integrating their tech.
A key aspect of this integration is cross-platform sync, so if you have game titles on one platform, you have them on the other, too.
Before we get into the bundle deals where we find the Star Wars Day news let’s also mention Kickstarter’s tariff tool. It’s coming.
The tool is a way to let project organisers ask backers for more money. It’s going to be part of Kickstarter’s new pledge manager and you need to be using Kickstarter’s system, not a rival like BackerKit, to get access.
How people will respond to being asked to pay 145% of the cost again, which is what happens if the game is being made in China and shipped to the USA, remains to be seen.
The first bundle, at the Bundle of Holding, is sci-fi but a very different one. It’s Coyote & Crow and imagines the future without imperialism.
The other, launched today on Humble, is The Essential Star Wars Collection in which hundreds of dollars of Stars Wars content is yours for bucks. However, you do need a Kobo account to read the content.
On that note, may the Force be with you, and see you next week.
