Welcome home. This is Audio EXP, the weekly podcast from Geek Native. I am your host, Girdy, and today is the 29th of August, 2026.
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #346]
[Also on Stitcher | Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
This week, we examine the destructive corporate pipelines targeting out-of-print gaming history, cover White Wolf adjusting its mechanics following early community feedback, look at legendary fantasy designers reuniting for a new setting edition, and celebrate Chaosium launching an entirely new original game line.
Before we get to the news, our August community spotlight is officially in the books. Our wide-ranging interview with Paul Vincent of Table Cat Games is live on the site. Paul gave us a remarkably honest look at the grind of small-press production, reflecting on his synthwave retro-thriller Street Wolves, the standalone Zero Hour project, and the sheer discipline required to run small-scale crowdfunding fulfilment without burning out. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the practical business of self-publishing.
With August wrapping up, voting is currently open for our September spotlight. Head over to our nomination page to cast your vote for one of this month’s five independent studios:
Our lead story this week exposes a destructive threat directly targeting out-of-print physical gaming history. Tech sector AI developers are buying up out-of-print physical tabletop RPGs and destroying them in bulk scanning machines. To acquire high-quality, human-written text untouched by synthetic generative models, tech brokers are using automated ISBN crawlers across platforms like AbeBooks and Biblio to purchase physical books published between 1980 and 2015. Because many niche 1990s sourcebooks had print runs of only 500 to 2,000 copies and never received legal PDF conversions, feeding these physical books into automated guillotine slicers to rip off their spines permanently erases them. The practice is now facing antitrust petitions to the FTC, with civil society groups arguing that destroying non-renewable physical literature creates an anti-competitive data moat that locks gaming history away from the public forever.
In major publishing news, veteran horror studio Chaosium is branching into fresh territory. Chaosium has launched a free 62-page quickstart for Time Without Tide ahead of its September crowdfunding launch, marking the debut of a brand-new, original intellectual property for the publisher. Developed over nearly a decade by Australian designer James Coquillat, the game completely steps away from the studio’s traditional d100 percentile engine, using a bespoke d6 pool system focused on light management and survival in a ruined, fog-covered world.
Over in classic fantasy design, key creators behind TSR’s legendary 1991 Dark Sun setting are joining forces once again. Timothy Brown has announced a new 5E edition of Dragon Kings with original creators Troy Denning, Brom, and Rich Baker. Launching on BackerKit this September, the release brings players back to the desolate, low-resource world of Khitus. Unlike the 2014 edition, this standalone hardback integrates setting lore directly with 5e rules, featuring six unique ancestries, over thirty monsters, native psionics mechanics, and conversion guidelines for 2E roleplaying games, all supported by more than sixty human-illustrated pieces of artwork.
In rules development, design choices are shifting quickly over at White Wolf. The open alpha playtest for Vampire: The Masquerade 6th Edition closes today, with designers officially dropping the Drama mechanic following community feedback. The team reacted quickly to alpha reports that the abstract pacing element created too much distance between players and their characters, proving that early table feedback is actively shaping the next edition.
In pop culture auctions, a famous piece of cinema history has changed hands for a fortune. Steven Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park mosquito-in-amber walking stick prop has sold for 400,000 dollars at a Los Angeles auction. Used by Richard Attenborough on screen as John Hammond, the piece remains one of the most recognisable physical artefacts in modern film.
Closing out our local updates, Edinburgh is transitioning from festival season straight into convention mode. We filed a late theatrical review for Extra Lives: The Interactive Video Game Concert at the Edinburgh Fringe, analysing how the live performance blends classic chiptunes with real-time audience voting.
Meanwhile, transport across the capital has cleared a critical hurdle. Princes Street tram lines have reopened following a major city-centre fire, ensuring clear travel routes for Tabletop Scotland next weekend. The convention runs from Friday the 4th to Sunday the 6th of September at the Royal Highland Centre in Ingliston, and with the tram lines running smoothly, attendees travelling from the city centre or airport will have uninterrupted public transport straight to the venue.
That is it for this week. Thanks for listening to Audio EXP. For all the links, the spotlight interview, and full stories, head over to Geek Native. Next week is Tabletop Scotland. Thanks to our event sponsors, Thistle Tavern, the team will be there, but we’ll try to do a podcast anyway.
