Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for June 28th, and the episode title is “Before Lucca”.
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #292]
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Diane Ramic won the RPG Publisher Spotlight this month.
Diane has a colouring book on Amazon called Dragons & Dragons & Dragons, but it was her sci-fi and fantasy stock art that caught Geek Native Patrons’ attention.
I think one of the reasons for this is that Diane thinks about physics and biology when designing creatures. You can be confident that her xenobiology won’t embarrass you if you use the stock art to show players what the encounter looks like.
Bronwen also handled a big interview this week with Monkey from Dusk Wave Arts. Monkey is a developer for Stuck in the Present, which is demoing on Steam, which is a psychological side-scrolling horror. We wound up talking about one of the characters, who is called Fae, because here in Scotland, fae are a supernatural people.
Not to be outdone, but I also had an interview with indie designer Sebastian Yue. I met Sebastian at UK Games Expo and it was great catching up after the show. Sebastian’s game is The Model Minister, which is a third-party adventure for Spire.
And speaking of UK Games Expo, it’s worth noting that the biggest and baddest of all the geeky conventions is coming up. I wrote up a Lucca guide for Geek Native. The giant event runs from July 5th to July 24th. Yes, three whole weeks.
In tabletop games, we’re expecting a lot from Asmodee Italia and Bandai Card Games but there’s also the indie TTRPG Wildsea and a D&D crossover.
Each Lucca pays homage to a country, and this year, it’s France and the French Kiss. I don’t see that taking off at Birmingham.
I didn’t see Synethics get a mention in Lucca press; that doesn’t mean Dark Horse isn’t taking the new series there, but the sci-fi got a mention at Geek Native.
Synethics is written by J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5, and will explore what it means to be human when the world is dying.
Guest author Toni Struder has also been thinking about conventions and how to navigate them. There’s an excellent article on the site on cosplay, looking good and staying comfortable. I’m all about staying comfortable, or at least coping with all the trappings that a blogger needs to cover the event.
Last week we were talking about Evil Hat backing out of Tomb Raider and how I thought that setting-based series made for easier tabletop conversions than character-based ones. Case in point, Cubicle 7 has released a second edition of The Laundry TTRPG.
Charles Stross’ series certainly has characters in it, but it’s also very much about this Lovecraftian world and red tape. It’s easy to go from reading the books to imagining what an adventure would be like.
Unusually, a fashion post caught my attention that wasn’t a t-shirt. Merchoid, they who pay affiliates so little, but at least have an affiliate program with a range of USA-style Warhammer 40K sports shirts. I think my favourite is the Space Wolves but mainly because it’s least likely to get mistaken for a Scottish football top and therefore cause me grief.
Lastly, there’s a bundle to tell you about, and that’s Cawood Collection at the Bundle of Holding. There’s something like 1,000 pages of monsters.
That’s a wrap. Keep safe, and see you next week.
