Welcome home.
It’s November 29th, and the episode title is “Is the World of Darkness in trouble again?”
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #310]
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Eric Bleney won the RPG Publisher Spotlight, and the interview is live on the site.
Eric’s latest Kickstarter, Filth Below Gallows-Ford, has successfully funded and has nearly 300 backers. We know Eric has lots of ideas for 2026, including a complete campaign and printed scenarios. So, we’ll see him crowdfunding next year.
It’s nearly the end of the month, and if you’re a patron, then there’s still time to vote on the December shortlist, or if you missed that, the first Spotlight of 2026.
For December, the candidates are;
This podcast asks whether the Word of the Darkness is in trouble again so let’s go there.
For context, the World of Darkness is the setting for famous RPGs like Vampire and Werewolf. In 2006, CCP Games bought White Wolf Publishing, scooping up all the World of Darkness Games.
CPP who pubilsh the famous MMO Eve Online spent years trying to make a World of Darkness MMO work.
Then, ten years later, in 2015, Paradox Interactive bought White Wolf from CCP. Once again, the computer games publisher wanted to use the World of Darkness for computer games, and a few years later, Geek Native was able to blog about the gameplay trailer for Bloodlines 2.
It was not plain sailing. In that time, there had been drama about editions of the tabletop games being too edgy, perhaps trying to cash in on actual and contemporary human suffering, and attracting the wrong sort of interest from far-right elements. The company outsourced the production of World of Darkness tabletop games, with mixed success, to partner publishers.
Then, earlier this year, Paradox announced it would take all development of the World of Darkness in-house. They appointed the respected Jess Lanzillo as the new Creative Director. LinkedIn says she’s still there.
However, Bloodlines 2 was very painful to make and not as successful as Paradox needed. This week the publisher officially wrote down 355 million Swedish Krona as a loss on the game. That’s about £26 million.
Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive, said of Bloodlines;
The game is outside of our core areas, in hindsight it is clear that this has made it difficult for us to gauge sales. Going forward, we focus our capital to our core segments and, at the same time, we’ll evaluate how we best develop World of Darkness’ strong brand catalogue in the future.”
Let’s hope the decision in May to bring White Wolf back to life was made in conjunction with this evaluation of the World of Darkness. It would certainly make the tabletop publishing unit easier to sell.
Paradox has essentially said they’re not going to be investing in games like Bloodlines again. They’re going to think about what to do with the World of Darkness as a whole.
The other story that made me worry this week is hopefully a false alarm. The UK has announced it will set a charge for all items shipped in from abroad, even those costing less than £135. Currently, anything less than £135 is exempt from customs duty.
At face value, this might mean that backing board games on Kickstarter will now also mean paying customs duty.
There are three “howevers” coming up, so let’s go through them in turn!
These changes will come into effect in 2029, if the plans go without a hitch.
However, the customs duty on board games is currently zero, and there are no plans to change that classification. So, paying 0% in 2029 is the same as being exempt from customs duty in 2025.
However, if your Kickstarter pledge has t-shirts, dice trays, dice or extras like that, then those will have customs to pay.
However, suppose the couriers who have to shuffle all the paperwork find the process way more complex than before. In that case, there may be blanket increases in processing fees regardless of the official customs duty.
It hasn’t been all researching British trade law just for the sake of one blog post – and that’s a blog post in which I remind you I can’t offer financial advice – I also spent ages researching Old English for one blog post.
The post in question argues that Old English is perfect for D&D and fantasy settings. I learned this week that Bochord, aka Book Hoard, is the Old English for Library.
I found some sites online that offer other translations, although I struggle with the pronunciation of some of the weirder words.
Shields, or some of them, can be called Rands, and some swords are Bills. Bards can be called Scops (Shop) and healers called Laece (La-chuh), and, yes, it’s from this we get the word leech.
Anyway, I’ve a few more tables of translations, and I’ve cited my sources so you can be confident I’m not an AI making this up. Mistakes are entirely human here.
Speaking of which, I looked at the quickstart to Ted Hayes’ Sentients RPG. The idea is that you’re playing an android, you’re self-aware, but society does not believe you. You’ve got your programming and society to fight on the way to freedom.
I also looked at the quickstart for the Broken Lands from Carlos Ferrer, which is also set after a fall but is a fantasy setting. The Broken Lands themselves are an area between two superpowers that are growing tense with one another.
I’m hoping that by reviewing quickstarts, I can look at more TTRPGs each month and make a few recommendations. It should be swifter and cheaper than buying whole RPGs, which I struggle to find the time to read.
I did find time to write up two Bundle of Holding offers. There’s the Magical Land of Yeld, second edition, in which characters have to get home before they turn 13.
There’s also the Thanksgiving-timed Cornucopia 2025 with some great games in it, including the full rules for Sentients, but also Doomsong, Punk is Dead and Break!!
On that note, take care and see you next week as we start the last month of 2025.
