Routinely Itemised: RPGs #1

Friday’s are a good day for a recap of the news of the week.

In Routinely Itemised that’s exactly what we’re doing. Under the supervision of Mr Root, we’ll take a look at news from Geek Native and around the web.

In particular, in Routinely Itemised: RPGs we’ll focus on news from tabletop gaming. Okay, that’s hard to define but let’s start with traditional RPGs like Pathfinder and Vampire the Masquerade and expand ever so slightly to include accessories and websites that you might use to play those games. Kickstarters too? You betcha.

We won’t get everything as too much happens (in a good way). Let us know, using the comments below, highlight stories from this week that Mr Root missed out. Are there any good sources of RPG news that you think the Geek Native team (ahem, me) should keep an eye on?

RPG news from Geek Native

• We had Free RPG Day! As is our tradition, we benchmarked the number of free RPGs at DriveThruRPG and counted an impressive 8, 948. A new high.
• Vampire: The Masquerade became only the second RPG to win the Origins Award for Best RPG twice.
• Board Game Geek and Barrage suffered review bombing from any Kickstarter backers.
• Roll20 added Acquisitions Incorporated to their collection. Want to see what it looks like?
• The contraversial Dyskami announced Big Eyes, Small Mouth Naked.
• Wizards of the Coast had to deny they were planning on changing the Ranger class in D&D.
• After a long silence, Nightfall announced SLA Industries the 2nd edition would launch a Kickstarter this September.
• Bloomsbury owned Osprey Games will get into tabletop RPG publishing with two new games this year.
• Warlord Games and Mythicos Studios came together to create Warlord Mythicos Studios to bring RPG venues to a city near you.
• Catalyst Game Labs announced the first ever BattleTech Kickstarter and a free product available now in their store.
• Meredith Gerber and Joseph Carriker compiled this list of LGBTQ+ creators.

RPG news from around the web

• Pathfinder 2 is open for pre-orders, writes J.R. Zombrano at Bell of Lost Souls.
• Milton Griepp at ICv2 reports that GAMA’s new directors won an uncontested election.
• Gale Force Nine has some D&D goodies coming and Dracs at OnTableTop took a look at them.
• WizKids will release Pathfinder Battles: Legendary Adventures Goblin Village Premium this September and at ICv2 Tim Smith picked up the story.
• Modiphius picked up Liminal and at Bell of Lost Souls J.R. Zambrano covered the story. You can check out Geek Native’s March review of Liminal here.
• Adam Brown at Tabletop Games UK took a look at Green Ronin’s Modern AGE Companion.

RPG ideas, tips and discoveries

• The Genre Police looked at dystopian RPGs sharing GM tips and techniques along with game suggestions.
• These D&D 5e character sheets from Brett Bullions are gorgeous.
• Xenomorph encounter going as badly as you feared? Here’s the Alien RPG critical injuries table.
• Still trying to keep your character alive in Alien? Here’s an early look at the vehicles you can hide in.

RPG Crowdfunding

You can read up on Geek Native’s hand-picked campaigns here or catch-up with interesting projects we missed in the bullets below.

• EN World’s Morrus launched A Touch of Class to bring 9 more classes to D&D.
• Jim Pinto’s King for a Day (revised) is on Kickstarter and doing really well.
• Did you miss the Rifts for Savage Worlds: America Kickstarter? Pinnacle Entertainment Group is accepting late backers via PledgeManager.
• Doctor Danny Devine’s taken Chickasaw Cultural Improvement Game: The Worry People a Native American Role-Playing Game to Kickstarter but despite the long campaign length it really seems to be struggling.
• Dungeon Notebook’s Tome of Delving funded in 8 hours and offers to upgrade your character sheet.
• Even quicker, Micronomicon: A Compendium of Magic for Tiny Dungeon 2e funded in 3 hours.
• The ‘mature’ D&D RPG module The Folio (nudity, horror) missed its Indiegogo goal by a tiny amount. It’ll print anyway as it was on flexible funding.

What are your news highlights from the RPGscape this week?