Hello and welcome to the first Routinely Itemised of 2020. It’s a year format that speaks of natural twenties and so let’s hope it’ll be a good one for native geeks!
Here at Geek Native, I started the year by writing up efforts to improve transparency on the blog and summarised other changes on the site. One of those changes is the corrections page where I’ll log post-publication updates to articles.
The RPG designer who wrote Cyberpunk 2020, Mike Pondsmith, introduced the year with a countdown to the dark future. I can’t think of many other people in the gaming industry better placed to be 2020’s herald!
It’s also a new month, and that means Geek Native’s patrons can vote for which publisher to feature in the spotlight. Please do.
Lastly, if you want to subscribe by email to just Routinely Itemised then this hack should help.
That’s that for the introduction. As always; let us get on with the RPG news summary!
RPG news from Geek Native
- A fan-project has converted 1, 400 “lost” D&D 4e magic items to D&D 5e.
- Asmodee is looking for professional GMs for paid gigs running shows online.
- Palladium Books have released a free to download a 60-page preview of Garden of the Gods.
- An art gallery preview of Book of Seasons: Solstices.
- Crooked Dice announced plans to release this Great Cthulhu miniature.
- A fan project to convert Dark Sun to D&D 5e is looking great.
- The Lizard Man Diaries gave us a way to randomly generate spaceships.
- Someone found the time to try and work out what the most popular D&D memes were last year.
DriveThruRPG’s best selling RPGs of 2019
This section is the grand finale of our look back at a year worth of DriveThruRPG data.
- DriveThruRPG’s best selling RPGs of the decade!
- The top ten selling generic / other / multi-genre RPGs of 2019.
- The top ten selling ‘other’ fantasy RPGs.
- The top ten selling sci-fi RPGs.
- The top ten selling cartoon and anime RPGs.
- The top ten selling family RPGs.
- The top ten selling horror RPGs.
- The top ten selling modern genre RPGs.
- The top ten selling pulp RPGs.
- The top ten selling superhero RPGs.
- The top ten selling western RPGs.
RPG news from around the web
- EN World looked behind ICv2’s paywall to share the news of the best selling RPGs of the last quarter. D&D is top, followed by Pathfinder P2, Shadowrun 6e, Vampire 5e and then Star Wars.
- Pelgrane Press published ways to make levelling up monsters in 13th Age more straight forward.
- Christian Hoffer, writing for ComicBook.com, noticed that professional AEW wrestler Brand Culter was joining the D&D stream Droaam and Defiance.
- Cubicle 7 recapped on their free Warhammer FRPG resources.
RPG ideas, tips and discoveries
- Josh Fox talked about How to play the traitor and still get to be a hero in RPGs.
- Charles Dunwoody helped us with Learn to GM using Mutant: Year Zero.
- Geek Native kicked off a blog carnival on Random Encounter Tables in RPGs.
- Over at Nerdarchy, Doug Vehovec explained how to play D&D for the rest of your life for free.
- Matt Miller of Game Informer compiled a suggested list of the best role-playing game releases of 2019.
- Chaos Magick User explored traps in an article called It’s a Trap! To Roll or Not To Roll.
- Fed up of mainstream media running articles about gaming being popular now, EN World’s Shane Stacks released a surprise edition of the Fumble.
RPG Crowdfunding
Kickstarter is doing “Make 100” this month and so watch out for projects that are strictly limited to 100 copies being made available.
You can see those Kickstarters and other crowdfunding campaigns that caught Geek Native’s attention over at Kickstarter watch. Here are some industry projects worth a mention;
- Thom Wilson has a Make 100 project for a system-neutral TTRPG adventure designed by backers.
- Jason Henderson has a Make 100 project called The ‘Big Book’ of DnD 5e characters that will have 600 PCs inside.
- David Eldred is looking to fund his Make 100 project, the Sorceress for RPG Battles.
- Bob Ash’s Make 100 project is Character Portraits & Tokens.
Gamerati News Update
Once again, let’s visit Gamerati’s Marcelo Ferrari for a quick video catch-up too. He chats about The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories for RuneQuest by Chaosium, Sidereal Confluence and The Galactic Corps.
If there’s a source or news you think is worth monitoring, please get in touch or leave a comment below.
