Welcome home. This is the 300th episode of Audio EXP, the Geek Native highlights podcast. It’s September 13th, and the episode title is “The Aftermath”.
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #300]
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There was no episode last week as Bronwen and I were both at Tabletop Scotland, which is the largest D&D convention in the UK and, I think, the third largest tabletop games convention.
I got to march around and pester publishers for news, which I did as a form of tough love because I wanted to feature as many games in the blog as possible. Bronwen had a sweet discount offer for advertisers, and together we spent a long weekend trekking backwards and forwards to the Royal Highland Centre. It was intense, but great.
The last podcast was called Ill-Considered Politics and AI and, gosh, we still have plenty of that to talk about. Following the shooting of a right-wing extremist in the United States, more than one tabletop games company, designer, or owner has taken to social media to reveal they are on Team Evil. Or, at least, a terrible judge of character.
We’ve got better things to talk about today, so let’s get cracking.
First up is our interview with Than Gibson, of DMing the World Press, who won the RPG Publisher Spotlight.
The interview with Than is already live. We discuss the upcoming post-alien invasion TTRPG, Xenosalvage. I also have a video of Than talking about emergent gameplay and solo gameplay in another sci-fi title called DarkSpace.
Yes, that means the October voting is open. This month, I’ve added a random adventure to the post about this. Click the button and you’ll be a sidekick in an adventure featuring one of our Patreons. It’s not a regular style of Patreon reward, but isn’t that a good thing?
The candidates for October are;
We wrote up two surveys since the last podcast, and when they go back-to-back, they’re kinda weird. I suppose the main thing is that while both talk about gaming, the first is about computer games and the second about tabletop games.
Firstly, a study from the University of Stirling and Cardiff University of over 1,000 female gamers found that nearly a third felt guilty about playing. Why? These women thought they should be doing household chores instead, or with family, and nearly a quarter thought they should be working instead.
When was the last time you felt guilty about playing a game?
Secondly, a survey from StartPlaying, also of 1,000 people, but this time tabletop roleplayers, found that nearly a third of in-character romance led to real-life attraction.
I’ve been lucky enough to do quite a lot of interviews recently, so let me cherry-pick some highlights for you.
Kenna Alexander of Coyote & Crow told me how sometimes collaboration partnerships boil down to whether or not good people are involved.
I like the pun. The use of the word boil was appropriate because we were talking about Friday Afternoon Tea, a company that makes gamer tea.
Rori Montford, who is Kickstarting a paranormal drama called Asher’s Ridge, sold me on the idea that games can be both something which can be picked up, put down, and also sometimes lingered over.
Tyler Crumrine, who has a Kickstarter for three RPGs at the same time, linked that back to their time working in theatre, in which you would plan a whole season of content to entertain subscribers.
Josh Fox, of Black Armada, is crowdfunding a gothic sci-fi tabletop RPG and we talked about the balance of a dark but not hopeless future. It’s about creating a world that the characters feel is worth protecting.
There’s no Kickstarter yet for Danse Macabre, but it’s coming, and in the meantime, I talked to designer Chris Pickett. Apparently, the art from the 14th century, the time of the plague, shows some really creepy dead, and from this we get the game’s undead.
I also had a quick catch-up with Umut Comak, who recently left DRS Publishing. We know his new company is Feymere and that the first game won’t be a TTRPG. Instead, Mounshade is a two-player board game.
As you can tell, a lot of those interviews happened because there are Kickstarters to promote. In contrast, the Melsonian Arts Council has somewhat abandoned Kickstarter and crowdfunding to do their own thing.
In this case, their own thing means getting a new warehouse and with plans to open it to the public later, and then launching hybrid crowdfunding and pre-orders on their own website.
Basically, the books will be printed anyway, but if you cough up early, then you get a discount. The first two books Melsonia are making this way both have long names, so let’s give both a go and see how badly I trip up. There’s;
- Witch-War to the Vale of Forbiddiction and Beyond
- The Perilous Pear & Plum Pies of Pudwick
I got a good look at the current project of another of the UK’s innovative publishers at Tabletop Scotland. The company in question is Caeser Ink, and I got to flick through Thou Shall Not Suffer the Wycce. That’s a Doomsong adventure.
Characters are essentially witch hunters. The game comes with a very impressive candle, which you burn to act as a countdown timer. As sections on the carved candle are reached, conditions in the doomed world change.
Speaking of Tabletop Scotland, again, I put together a single interactive summary post with the attendance figures. The convention grew again and nearly broke through 7,000 at the turnstile.
My attempt to make the write-up interactive was to do a word count and link that to searches. So you can hover over “sci-fi”, for example, and see search results for the posts I assigned that keyword to. Then I put interactive dice that you flick around with your mouse on the graphic.
Look. It felt like a good idea at the time, but, yeah, I’m no front-end and it’s a little shonky. Nevertheless, you’ll have to bear with me as I continue to make clicks to Geek Native interesting and worth it. Why? It’s a response to those AI Overviews that merely summarise the news, keeping clicks and depriving indie news sources like Geek Native.
We’re not the only ones thinking about the rise of AI. This week, Roll20 and the DMsGuild announced a Baldur’s Gate Game Jam. You can take part by submitting DMsGuild content for the city in 25 pages or fewer, except if you use AI. While the DMsGuild does accept and sell AI-generated content, it’s been banned from this jam.
Dragon Con was not having any AI content either. Last week, the convention in Atlanta deployed a police escort to remove an artist who was believed to be selling AI art from a booth there while representing it as their own. There’s social media footage of people cheering the event.
Before we get into the outro of bundles, and there are quite a few, I want to quickly share my thoughts on Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, as I was lucky enough to get an advanced stream. Don’t watch this if you’ve not seen any Demon Slayer yet. Don’t start the series here.
For the rest of us, though, it’s a visual feast which kills off some popular characters and introduces some new powers. I enjoyed the fights more than the flashbacks and am both relieved that there’s more Demon Slayer still to see and frustrated at where they left it.
In bundles and at the Bundle of Holding, there are the biggest series of offers I can remember the website offering. It’s a whole Rifts Worlds week, and there are so many deals on offer that I coded a table of contents for it all. If you need the core rules or pretty much any of the supplements, then now is the time.
There’s also a two-tier offer on the Fragged Empire 2e.
Meanwhile, with not much time on the clock, there are three Humble deals to call out.
There’s the Pathfinder Primer Bundle to get you started in D&D’s long-term and historic rival.
Bronwen wrote up the ultimate guide to Tabletop RPGs, Worldbuilding, and Folklore, which is a collection of books to empower creators.
Lastly, there’s also a big offer of Dungeon Masters Guild curated content.
If all that totals up to be rather too many bundles and not enough money, then good news, as there are still seven days in which you could win a £50 All Rolled Up voucher. Just find the post on the blog to enter.
That’s a wrap, and all being well we’ll be back on track with a regular podcast in the run up to Halloween and then Christmas. That said, I am doing a charity hike tomorrow to raise money for a local dog and cat home and the Scottish weather is threatening to turn it into a marathon-long tough mudder course, so let’s see how that goes before I make any promises.
Take care, stay clean.
