Welcome home.
It’s January 24th, and the episode title is “Cthulhu School and the He-Man mess”
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #318]
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d20play won the RPG Publisher Spotlight. Not to be bleak, but there’s no sign of life from them. However, we’ve put up the GearGames Spotlight sans interview.
The piece features on the RPG, which introduced GearGames to me, which was the anime steampunk Vulcania, and on the follow-up game High School Cthulhu, which is a mix of Buffy and cosmic horror.
We know GearGames are alive as and well as not only are their social media ticking over, but we can find Eventbrite free tickets for European play sessions in Friendly Local Gaming Stores.
On the subject of ‘Hey, is this publisher still making games?’ I’ve been working on a very long list of publishers as a follow-up to the big New Year analysis of which games sold the best in 2025.
I’ve got, I’m not joking, over 20,000 publishers in a spreadsheet, and I’ve been working out which country I think they’re in. Next, I want to try assigning a chance that they’re still active. I could put the two together and work out which countries are big in TTRPGs, and for example, pull up lists of publishers outside the USA, those native to Greenland or Italy. Is this a daft idea, though. Would you be interested in any of this data?
The first rumours of a new He-Man film date back to 2007, when it was reported that John Woo was involved. Then, in 2009, it was reported Sony Pictures took over. Then, in 2012, Jon M. Chu was apparently in charge. Then in 2014, it was reported that Jeff Wadlow was in charge and rewriting the script. In 2015, Christopher Tost was rewriting the film and then in 2016, McG would direct and rewrite the film and in 2017 it was announced the movie would be released in 2018.
That didn’t happen and instead, Aaron and Adam Nee would direct the film and in 2019 it was announced that Art Marcum and Matt Holloway would rewrite it. That same year it was confirmed Noah Centineo would play He-Man, in 2021 he was no longer playing He-Man.
In 2022, Netflix bought the rights from Netflix and we had the animated series. In 2023 and after spending $30m on the film, Netflix cancelled the film.
Later that year, Amazon MGM Studios bought the rights and in 2024 Travis Knight replaced the Nee brothers as writer and also became the director. Would you believe it, but this version of the film is finally coming out, and we have the trailer on Geek Native.
I enjoyed the trailer. Jared Leto is unrecognisable as Skeletor, which is a good thing.
Amazingly, what wasn’t film that got my heart racing this week? On Monday, I went to see a mystery film, which turned out to be Chris Pratt‘s Mercy.
At the time, Mercy hadn’t had a general release. I had signed no embargo, had no contact with the film’s PR company and there was not even a request to the audience not to talk about the film. So, on Monday night at about 11pm I got home and blogged a review about Mercy on Geek Native and sister site Edinburgh Reviews.
Google News picked up the Edinburgh Reviews coverage but not the Geek Native one. About 24 hours later, Edinburgh Reviews had an email reminding us there was an embargo in place. I could have stuck to my guns and pointed out that I bought a ticket and saw the movie with everyone in else in the cinema and that I hadn’t agreed to any embargo.
Instead, trying to be responsible, I pulled the review at Edinburgh Reviews and replaced it with a coming soon notice. I left Geek Native’s review live.
I give the movie a C+. I think the idea that any audience in 2026 will sit down and believe the proposition that an AI judge couldn’t make a mistake was wishful thinking. And if you assume the AI judge has made a mistake, then a lot of the movie is padding. However, to be fair, it’s not at all clear at the start whether the AI judge is wrong and Chris Pratt’s unlikeable character is pro-AI.
Sticking with the unpopular subject of AI for a minute longer… do you know what happened when scientists made AI play D&D?
It happened. Scientists wanted to see if modern AIs would follow rules and test the limits of Large Language Models. What they found was that AIs would follow the rules of D&D but also they’d be prone to the dramatic. Paladins, for example, would start delivering heroic speeches, and Goblins might waste actions by taunting players. It wasn’t all stereotypes, though, because modern AIs would still mess up and attack dead enemies.
As a reminder, if you want to support modern creators, you might want to reconsider running and blockers or paying for generative-AI creations which cost the publisher nothing.
A creator to support is Duncan Rhodes, whom we got to talk to this week about The Creative Game Master’s Guide to Extraordinary Locations.
Duncan is a traveller and a writer currently based in Barcelona. His book has a foreword by Ed Greenwood and is all about making locations enjoyable in D&D. Importantly, this is not just about combat but also about social interaction and exploration.
I wondered whether Duncan was using a secret weapon in the book, which is his background as a professional travel writer and I think I was spot on. You can read the full article on Geek Native.
There are other names of note this week. First up is Erin Roberts. Erin is a talented writer who many D&D fans might know from Journeys through the Radiant Citadel and then Dungeon Delves. The first book introduced Erin’s Godsbreath setting, the second returned to it.
Needless to say, the speculation, which I added to, is that Wizards of the Coast wants to develop Godsbreath further.
However, I don’t think Erin is a one-trick pony. I’ve never bought a D&D book for the setting, might make an exception for Godsbreath because, as a Scottish person, the idea of a Gothic American South-based world is very far from my base of familiarity. I do buy D&D books when I know the creators are talented, and Erin clearly qualifies.
Wizards of the Coast have been on a hiring spree, replacing some big names who quit or were let go, but Hasbro has been busy too. Doug Bowser is now a board member.
Until recently, when he retired, Bowser was the boss at Nintendo America. It’s safe to speculate that Hasbro are interested in Bowser because they’re interested in computer games.
In other TTRPG news, because it’s never just about Wizards of the Coast, PEG has announced a 30th-anniversary edition of Deadlands.
Deadlands is a weird west Savage Worlds game, which means zombie cowboys and that sort of thing using the Savage Worlds system. What makes the 30th edition special is that you don’t need to have a copy of Savage Worlds; this edition will contain the core rules. I think this is a reflection that Deadlands may be as famous as Savage Worlds is.
The bad news from the TTRPG scene is that DriveThruRPG are pushing the prices of print-on-demand up. The increase won’t be automatic unless the publisher is now selling books at a loss, but the ecommerce site has encouraged writers to check their margins and increase if necessary.
We’re onto the last section with some bundle news, and I only got around to writing one up this week. That’s at the Bundle of Holding, which has an offer on the huge Halls of Arden Vul. If you want an OSR mega-dungeon, then this is a siren call.
That’s a wrap, keep safe, fight the good fight, and see you next week.
