It’s October and all of a sudden everyone is talking about Halloween.
The horror and supernaturally themed Kickstarters are appearing, GMs are plotting scary scenarios, and web hosts are breeding an army of mutant bandwidth bills that feed on blogger blood.
The start of the month also means a new RPG Publisher Spotlight poll for Patrons. This is your chance to help pick the indie studio Geek Native interviews (if possible) and writes up. Last month, we had Fat Goblin Games in the spotlight and October’s winner will be announced soon.
Welcome to Routinely Itemised. In this weekly column, you will find a catch-up of headlines from Geek Native and around the web about tabletop roleplaying games and their industry. Routinely Itemised is designed as a catch-up. The column tries to make sure you didn’t miss out on anything unusual, or as something to scan and get on with the important business of actually playing some games.
RPG news from Geek Native
- D&D official has a new playtest expansion with new options for Wizards, Clerics and Druids.
- Wendy’s (the burger place) released an RPG called Feast of Legends. It’s nearly 100 pages long, but, yes, it’s marketing.
- The D&D powered StarGate RPG is now taking playtesters.
- A UK gaming convention called GamesFest starting sharing extremist political and racial views. They’ve now been removed from social media.
- Ulisses North America has bought the sci-fi steampunk RPG Space: 1889.
- Mongoose Publishing has unboxed their Sea of Thieves RPG.
- The popular and free city generator Watabou released a range of updates.
- Virtual tabletop Astral has released a large update to how they use dynamic lighting.
- Quality Games revealed four covers for their forthcoming Lex Arcana RPG line.
RPG news from around the web
- Chaosium will release Highwall Inn as a free HeroQuest Glorantha adventure for #WeAreAllUs in memory of founder Greg Stafford.
- It’s bad news from Hero Lab as they have to lay off staff and cancel Realm Works.
- Joseph D. Carriker introduces the anthology Sovereigns of the Blue Rose.
- Wade Rockett wrote up some Pirate Ghosts stats for 13th Age in time for Halloween.
- There are riding dinosaurs in Eberron and Bell of Lost Soul’s J.R Zambrano digs into the WizKids new dino line of models.
- Paizo shared their October update.
RPG ideas, tips and discoveries
- In a guest post for Geek Native, Broken Dice’s Brooke Junker offers tips on how to create believable female characters in RPGs
- What happens when a deity dies? DND Speak wrote up 100 ideas from Reddit.
- The ever-resourceful Mike Shea shared great tips on making great handouts.
- Benjamin Riggs muses on that time Random House sued TSR for over $9M.
- Dungeon Solvers look into the recharge mechanic for D&D 5e.
- Clave Jones from Nerds on Earth shares a total beginner’s guide to painting miniatures.
- DM David discusses how Dungeons & Dragons got its ability scores.
RPG Crowdfunding
As is always the case, you can whiz through Geek Native’s write-ups of hand-picked crowdfunding campaigns in Kickstarter Watch.
- Gods and Masters is an urban guerrilla fantasy RPG for Savage Worlds.
- Scott Taylor is funding The Folio as a set of 1e and 5e adventures.
- The Bane of the Ancients is a Mutant Crawl Classics module inspired by zombie horror from Gaming Honors
- Dundas West Games are kickstarting Ross Rifles, an RPG set in the Canadian trenches of the First World War.
- Secrets of the Underdark is a set of adventures for D&D from Midnight Tower.
Gamerati News Update
Too busy to read? In just over 5 minutes Gamerati’s Marcelo Ferrari will walk you through the week that’s just gone.
What are your news highlights from the RPGscape this week?
