Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for August 30th, and the episode title is “Ill-considered politics and AI”.
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #299]
[Also on Stitcher | Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
Infinite Reimagine won the RPG Publisher Spotlight this month. The interview with Michael Sayre is now live, and in it, we discuss digital-first publishing. It’s a marketplace consideration for Michael, given the logistics challenges within countries, such as the drama with Diamond Comic Distributors, and across borders, particularly in light of the American tariff problem.
These are problems that publishers, as well as buyers like you and me, are wrestling with in the hobby. As a hobby, we’ve become the poster child for ill-considered politics.
Patreons can vote for next month’s winner in their private poll. The shortlisted candidates are:
I also tweaked the Geek Native code base this week so that now, randomly, not always, but sometimes, Patrons in the Town Hall get a personal thank you on the bottom of blog posts. It’s long overdue, but the coding had thwarted me until now.
Let’s start this week’s highlight show by mentioning J.D. Maxwell and Grimwild.
Sadly, J.D. Maxwell is missing. We know because there’s an outstanding Kickstarter for the physical edition of Grimwild to fulfil.
It’s not uncommon for Kickstarters to take money and then never deliver the product. It’s not even that rare for people behind the Kickstarter to stop communicating.
People are a little bit more concerned about J.D. because not only is this out of character, but also because the Kickstarter was going well, and the printers even had the games ready to go. If the artists and other people involved in the project could legally authorise it, then the Kickstarter could progress.
Hopefully, J.D. is okay, but those others on the project have said he was going through some real-life changes just before communication stopped.
In better news, Chris Spivey is joining Arc Dream. It’s a great match. Not only is Chris a creative brain he also has a knack for logistics. With games like Harlem Unbound, he created and delivered mythos RPGs, and now he’s joining Arc Dream, who publish Delta Green, as production director.
I hope this means Arc Dream can continue to make progress with the Black Company TTRPG. They did say they wouldn’t be rushed, but the Black Company, perhaps the first ever grimdark fantasy series, is special to me and many other fans. We are allowed to be impatient.
A tabletop game that I did not see coming, but which was listed on DriveThruRPG this week, is Blacksad.
I discovered Blacksad only after the computer game bugs had been ironed out, and it provided fans with a fantastic detective thriller in which the main character definitely isn’t Batman, but a black cat man.
Blacksad is a comic book, an award-winning one, first and foremost. Now, through Spanish publisher Nosolorol, it’s also a tabletop RPG. I’ve already seen social media comments along the lines of “just take my money”.
In contrast, there’s Victoriana, a tabletop game of fantasy and steampunk, which I already had. This week, Cubicle 7 released the 5e version. That’s to say, the D&D fifth edition rules that I wasn’t sure Victoriana needed.
I’ve managed a rare review, and my thoughts on Vault 5e: Victoriana are that the D&D engine does not make it a lesser game but does shift the focus, for me, away from politics and social intrigue and towards action and adventure a bit more. It’s not just the rules set, but the setting spends more time setting up and describing different sides in the battle of order versus chaos.
Speaking of chaos, I’m still catching up with Gen Con news. It’s not decided yet, but I may taper my August 2026 plans to avoid diving straight into Edinburgh Festival madness and save time for gaming news.
For example, this week I wrote about Sword World receiving an English translation. There’s a free quickstart out.
Sword World is a popular TTRPG in Japan. I think we’ll see more games from Japan get English translations in the next few months. In this case, Sword World is also the game that inspired the excellent anime Record of Lodoss War. I feel that alone makes it desirable.
Another piece of Gen Con news is Miko Chess Grand. This is an expensive chessboard with a so-called AI in it. You can play against the AI or, if you want there’s a cool feature in which you can watch live streams of chess masters playing as the pieces on your board move.
That’s the thing. This Miko AI product is the first I know of that allows the computer to move itself as a result of its own decisions. I think for Miko Chess Grand owners the pawns moving across the board will be the first time ever in their home that an AI made a physical change.
I wonder if this is the future that geeks in the 1970s imagined for us?
Rebellion, the British publisher, has delved into its archive of 1970s comics and compiled a collection of Action comics. At the time, there was a moral outcry at the violent comic, and it got banned.
In a practised bit of marketing and PR, Rebellion have therefore put all the Action comics that got banned in the 70s into this single volume you can pick up later this year.
In my near future, next weekend, there’s Tabletop Scotland. It’s the largest D&D convention in the UK, and by that I mean it has the most Adventurer’s League games.
Tabletop Scotland is also a Premier Organiser, which means it has a piece of Forgotten Realms to shape as they and Wizards of the Coast please. That area is Murghom.
So, if you want to see the part of the Forgotten Realms that Scotland controls, you can check out the map on the Geek Native blog.
There are already three adventures for it.
- The Grand Bazaar of Skalnaedyr by Colin Tweddle.
- Trouble in Kobold Crown by Richard Green.
- Sands of Talos by Ian Hawthorne.
There are two bundle deals and a competition for our outro.
Both bundles are from the Bundle of Holding, and both sets of two.
The first is from Zozer Games, who have Hostile on offer. Hostile is a sci-fi RPG powered by Cepheus Engine and inspired by movies like Alien. If you’re enjoying Alien: Earth and don’t have a system for it then there are four tiers here that might solve that problem.
The second is from Gallant Knight Games, who have their Tiny Dungeon mega back, along with their TinyZine for a total of three tiers.
The competition is for £50 to spend at our Tabletop Scotland sponsors, All Rolled Up. To enter, you just have to estimate how many die you have. However, you get lots of bonus points if you snap a picture of All Rolled Up at Tabletop Scotland and share it with us.
One thing to highlight is that world trade is in a mess right now. If you are spending money at All Rolled Up, whether it’s this £50 or not, make sure the British publisher and shop can send to your country before you do.
That’s a wrap, there won’t be a podcast next week as we’ll be at Tabletop Scotland but I promise we’ll catch up afterwards and I’ll let you know how it went.
