Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for June 14th, and the episode title is “Is Exodus WoTC’s secret TTRPG?”.
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #290]
[Also on Stitcher | Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
Diane Ramic won the RPG Publisher Spotlight this month.
I’m chatting to Diane and should get something live this month, even though we both seem to be really busy.
Last weekend I recorded the podcast before going to the Edinburgh Cymera Festival. That’s for horror and sci-fi authors, but it was packed with tabletop games and, as it happened, some bombshells.
There, I found out that Wizards of the Coast paid for a new TTRPG, and it’s not in any way D&D.
The timing was perfect as Geek Native contributor Sergio Salvador had contributed an excellent thought piece on Peter F. Hamilton’s The Archimedes Engine which will also become the Exodus computer RPG.
The computer game company Archetype Entertainment, which also created Exodus, developed a tabletop RPG to accompany it. Wizards of the Coast owns Archetype and recruited sci-fi authors to contribute to Exodus.
Honestly, I think this makes the Exodus TTRPG the most high-profile yet oddly unknown roleplaying game of the year.
During the same panel, Peter F Hamilton talked with Adrian Tchaikovsky about games. Amazingly, Peter does not play, but Adrian is a big fan and was clear that he really wants a particular project he is considering to be a tabletop roleplaying game first and a novel after.
In a separate session, Sebastien de Castell was also asked about tabletop games. He said that more than one game publisher had approached him about a Greatcoats RPG.
The catch? Once a novel is optioned for film or TV then the rights to potential TTRPGs tend to get caught up in that deal. I infer Traitor’s Blade and others have been optioned, or the publishers think it might happen, and so Sebastien can’t say yes to a TTRPG deal.
Sticking with book news but moving on to events outside of Cymera, the Horus Heresy sequel Era of Ruin was responsible for Warhammer.com going offline.
You can still buy the book from Amazon, but Games Workshop had plans to sell a limited edition. However, professional resellers, ticket scalpers, and the like had set up a number of bots to bombard the site and attempt to buy all the rare books.
Games Workshop’s techs responded by pulling the site offline to weather the storm. We’ve seen this tactic in the news here in the UK in the last few weeks. Two high-street stores, Marks & Spencer and the Co-op, were both attacked by cybercriminals. The Co-op simply pulled the switch, while Marks & Spencer, with more money and technology, fought off the attack. However, it was the Co-Op that was back up and trading first.
In the case of Games Workshop, you can still not obtain the limited edition Era of Ruin book, but they have set up a special email system for you to re-enter the queue and register your interest.
We’ve more tech stories worth mentioning, and I’m going to start with the battle between the mighty ChatGPT and a humble Atari 2600. The modern titan was put up against this 50-year-old console in a game of chess.
ChatGPT lost, lost soundly and moaned about it too.
It’s a timely reminder that many generative AIs are trained to show you what you want to see, and that’s not always the same thing as being right.
Also, while I’m here, Geek Native has had an AI content policy in place for years; it’s public, and it’s also comprehensive because we recognise that technology like spell checkers, spam filters, anti-virus software and load balancing pretty much falls into the same not-really-AI, not yet anyway, as some of these more famous AIs. Our policy is simple: we’re not replacing people with generative AI. If we ever use generative AI because we don’t have a person available to do the task, we’ll be transparent about it.
I used AI in a story coming up in a bit, but not to generate it.
Bronwen shared a great example of some of the current dangers of AI. There’s this spooky video of entirely AI created people in fake hostage videos, fake crypto bro videos, fake endorsements and all sorts of scenarios where you can imagine duping someone with a realistic human would be horrible.
My use of AI this week was in a debate about whether a woman should wear a t-shirt that read Dungeon Mommy – Roll for Mercy.
The question sparked a significant debate on Reddit, and eventually, the original poster decided not to wear the t-shirt as planned, but only wear it with friends.
However, I copied the comments into a text file – and, yes, I don’t do that again because it took an age – and then asked Gemini to analyse whether the comment was pro or anti-t-shirt.
I put the results into a table and animated the votes as they came in. To begin with, the “Don’t Wear the T-shirt” advice had the lead, but as the day passed, more and more people came out in support of the t-shirt.
Before we get to this week’s outros, I’d like to highlight my attempt to define the different types of board games. I’ve built a wee infographic that says the parent categories of types are;
- Eurogame
- American-style
- Wargame
- Abstract Strategy
- Co-op
- Party Game
- Legacy
I’ve put sub-genres like 4X or deck-building games into the family tree where I think they go and then, using a few attributes, define and defend my choice.
I did it more as a personal challenge to organise and display the info but pop over to the blog and let me know if you agree with the approach.
I’ve three bundle deals for you for the outro, and two are on the Bundle of Holding. There’s a new deal for the sci-fi Coriolis RPG and one for Green Ronin’s Fantasy AGE 2e.
There’s one on Humble with about two weeks left on the clock, and that’s for both D&D and DCC GMs, which is called Monsters, Traps, & DM Tricks.
Lastly, it’s the Maori New Year, and so KiwiRPG Week is on again. I’ve included links to the Twitch streams on the blog, along with a list of the featured games.
That’s all from me today. Tabletop Scotland opened up event tickets just a few hours ago, and everything is flying out the door. Keep safe and speak later.
