Welcome home. This is Audio EXP, the weekly podcast from Geek Native. I am your host, Girdy, and today is Saturday the 7th of November, 2026. This week, we examine platform policy changes exposing private tabletop chat logs to automated web crawlers, track indie storefronts purging AI slop, dive into mutual aid and post-war sci-fi mechanics, and celebrate our slumbering dragon roasting tens of thousands of unlucky thieves.
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #355]
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Before diving into the news, we have a community milestone. Our patron ballot has officially closed, and Arcane Brewery has taken the win as our celebrated honouree for the November RPG Publisher Spotlight! We are beginning our outreach to the team to line up our deep-dive discussion later this month. In tandem, the nomination poll is already active for our next round on our December RPG Publisher Spotlight ballot. The five independent studios seeking your backing this month are:
- Armored Storyteller Publishing
- Weird Adventures by Martin A. Cubas
- The Obsidian Die
- Mindplaces
- The Northern Realm Inc.
Over on Geek Native’s live fake webcam, our slumbering beast has had a ferocious weekend. We have rolled out fresh chapter progress tracking to our live diorama, and the Wyrm Watch dragon webcam has officially incinerated over 47,000 greedy adventurers. The automated rogue keeps testing the beast’s perception every couple of minutes, and while a few lucky thieves manage to escape with pocketfuls of treasure, the casualty count continues to climb. Pop over to the site, inspect the live ledger, and watch the d20 stealth rolls play out in real time.
Our lead story this week exposes an acute privacy dilemma unfolding across tabletop social networks. A major Discord discoverability change will expose tabletop RPG chat archives to automated AI scraping and public search engines. Discord is rolling out public web discoverability for non-adult servers with over 1,000 members, allowing external search crawlers to index message histories. While individual users can toggle an account-level opt-out, the setting is strictly forward-looking; it does not retroactively scrub years of historical messages, worldbuilding notes, or informal playtest discussions already posted in major hubs like the official D&D or Pathfinder servers. Unless users manually delete individual past messages, backlogged community conversations remain vulnerable to commercial crawler extraction. In other words, your chat will become training data.
In contrast to backlogged chat exposure, independent distribution platforms are taking aggressive countermeasures against synthetic floods. Itch.io has deleted terabytes of AI-generated spam while enforcing mandatory generative AI disclosures across all tabletop roleplaying game listings. The digital storefront introduced mandatory disclosure flags across physical games, comics, and books, purging vast quantities of low-effort algorithmic shovelware. By pairing mandatory metadata with search-level filtering, the platform is protecting discoverability for genuine human designers who rely on the portal for small-press sales.
Turning to mutual aid within the creative community, we sat down for an essential conversation with the charity supporting creators in crisis. We published an extensive interview with Hal Greenberg and Connor Bates on how the RPG Creators Relief Fund manages hardship reserves and freelance precarity. Greenberg and Bates explained how the non-profit vets emergency medical and financial grants for tabletop freelancers, pointing out that because many independent writers lack statutory safety nets, regular bundle contributions and dedicated reserve funds are critical to keeping creators afloat during sudden emergencies.
In game design deep dives, we continued exploring post-alien survival rules. We caught up with designer Julien Frid to break down the intuitive d6 mechanics and post-war setting of the Sine TTRPG. Frid detailed how the system intentionally steps back from tactical bean-counting like tracking rations or individual bullets, opting for a cinematic resolution curve that leaves combat veterans room for social reconstruction, trade negotiations, and quieter character moments. Furthermore, you can find a video of that interview over on TikTok or Instagram.
On the corporate and retail front, a pioneer of geek chic fashion faces major uncertainty. Australian apparel label BlackMilk Clothing has entered voluntary administration after seventeen years of trading. Renowned for its printed nylon leggings and official licensed collaborations spanning Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, and The Lord of the Rings, the brand remains operational while administrators evaluate financial restructuring options. Bronwen is upset, but let us not count BlackMilk out yet.
In multimedia horror acquisitions, comic storytelling is moving straight to the silver screen. Blumhouse Atomic has signed a first-look deal with James Tynion IV’s production banner Tiny Onion to adapt horror comics including Exquisite Corpses. The partnership deepens ties between the prolific creator and the horror production house, establishing a direct pipeline for independent horror adaptations.
For theatrical stage oddities, festive pantomime is taking an adult, sci-fi twist. Doctor Who icon Sophie Aldred is narrating an adult London pantomime titled It’s Behind Who, lending her classic Ace credentials to an irreverent, late-night seasonal spoof.
We’re not going to London, but this month Scotland Loves Anime will do, and then the anime festival will return to Edinburgh. As we did last year, we’re running SLA-ed, an unofficial competition for the best anime to air in the Edinburgh leg. Unlike the official vote in our poll, you can vote for any of the anime that airs during the Edinburgh week.
Finally, we close out the show with two exceptional digital bundles:
- Grim voidfarers can scrounge, survive, and suffer with the Death in Space bundle on Bundle of Holding, picking up Free League’s gritty, low-tech space survival game and supplements.
- Old World veterans can grab forty years of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay in a massive Cubicle 7 collection on Humble, securing an enormous digital archive of grim and perilous adventure modules at a steep discount.
That is it for this week. Thanks for listening to Audio EXP. For all the links, interview transcripts, and live dragon updates, head over to Geek Native. Until next week, stay geeky.
