Welcome home.
It’s November 1st, and the episode title is “Civil Disobedience and T&Cs”.
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #307]
[Also on Stitcher | Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
Oh, did you hear that. Intro music! Yours truly managed to forget to add that last week. Did you notice? Anyway, moving on….
Eric Bleney won the RPG Publisher Spotlight vote for this month. Eric doesn’t know yet because it’s only gone the 1st of November and I’ve just calculated who our patrons voted for.
Here in the UK the 5th of November is Guy Fawkes Night, when we celebrate the Gunpowder Plot or the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot, and it got me wondering why so few fantasy RPGs have any sort of similar celebration in their setting. Lots of games have had titanic battles in their backgrounds but rarely do people in present day ever mark the occasion and certainly, anything that smells like civil disobedience tends not to feature in fantasy.
However, on DriveThruRPG there are games like Brinkwood: The Blood of Tyrants about rebels fighting off dangerous vampire overlords, Hard Wired Island a sci-fi/alternative future cyberpunk game that rebels against society and Spire: The City Must Fall a highly rated game about overthrowing cruel high elves.
Maybe it’s all or nothing when it comes to rebellions in RPGs and I’ve a few more suggested games on the Spotlight page where I move from Eric Bleney winning the November vote and to Guy Fawkes night coming up on the 5th.
Since we’re back to the Spotlight let’s take a look at the candidates for December. They are;
Patrons can vote at Patreon and via a vote link. As usual, you can get all the deeplinks from the transcript and you can get that from the shownotes.
Sometimes reading the notes is worth it. This week I got an email from Wizards of the Coast to say they had simplified the terms and conditions of D&D Beyond. On a whim, I clicked and read them and in capital letters across the new rules was that D&D Beyond users would automatically be opted into a class action waiver, would agree to arbitration in any dispute and would forfeit equitable relief if Wizards messed anything up for you.
Good on Wizards for putting the big news in capital letters but I think the email lowballed the significance of the legal update. The new T&Cs also hide the fact that you can opt out if you email the right address quickly enough.
Some followers on social media have told me they’re going to cancel their D&D Beyond account but, to be honest, I’ve not seen much upset about the new rules. I suspect it’s because people aren’t worried. The worst-case scenario for D&D Beyond users is likely to be frustrating but not life-affecting data loss.
We’ve just made it through Halloween and there’s plenty of bundles and other offers marking the day. If you’re a publisher or retailer who managed to avoid emailing people with pun-laden specials then well done.
I’m highlighting Modiphius, who have made a good tradition of doing free material for their World War and Lovecraft mashup TTRPG Achtung! Cthulhu. This year, the two freebies is the monster book Artic Abominations and the adventure A Cold Day in Hell.
A company that also got my attention for doing good is Jagex. They operate the immortal MMORPG RuneScape.
Right now there’s a community vote on microtransactions. You know; a little money spent here and there to get a little thing, but it soon adds up and the smell of pay-to-win grows.
In RuneScape it’s a system called Treasure Hunter that’s unpopular and if 100,000 people vote for it to be removed then Jagex will remove it. That’s a big vote but it would give Jagex clarity on just how unpopular the feature really is or whether protests are just coming from a vocal few.
We had MCM Comic Con London this week and I think the big news was Final Fantasy VII Part 3, the remake, isn’t cancelled.
Also at the event Jennifer Hale, aka Mass Effect’s femshep predicted AI was coming but that human voice actors would be around for many years.
Karl Urban told fans of The Boys that in season 5 we’ll find out about his character’s scar and attendees were treated to the longest yet screening of Predator: Badlands.
Also in entertainment, Bronwen spotted the latest One Piece poster and the news we’ll have to wait until March 10th to see it.
We have Luffy alone and in a bleak island. Drum Island? Probably. Season 2 should also give fans the live action Tony Chopper and won’t that be an interesting character for the special effects team!
For our outro we have two bundles to highlight. The first is Bronwen’s write up of the Critical Role comic collection at Humble. That’s a chance to own them all for just over a tenner.
The second is Cthulhu Reborn, horror TTRPGs, over at the Bundle of Holding.
On that note, that’s a wrap, take care and tune in next week.
