Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for the 24th of June, 2023, and the episode title is “Sex, subs and cease “
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #201]
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Lone Colossus Games is in the Spotlight this month, as voted for by Patreons.
The interview with Josh Rosing is live, and we covered various topics. Lone Colossus Games has a tabletop RPG for youngsters coming out called Wyrmlings, and that took us on to the subject of dragons.
I asked why dragons seem everywhere in human culture, and Josh had a good insight, having read that snakes and large predators have been a significant threat to humans all over the place and for so long that those fears made their way into our stories.
However, it’s not dragons in the dangerous title of this Audio EXP podcast. There’s a mention of sex, and let’s hope that doesn’t anger the censors.
It’s Pride today, and perhaps that’s why various blogs were thinking about tabletop games and relationships.
I couldn’t help but notice that Ana Valens at The Mary Sue asked Do We Need More Romantic and Thirsty Tabletop Games? while at Dicebreaker Alex Meehan noted Roleplaying is the perfect medium for stories of sex and romance – so why is the genre so underserved on the tabletop?
Firstly, do you agree? Are romantic relationships or one-night stands underrepresented in tabletop RPGs? Does your D&D Bard behave?
Perhaps it’s just the publishers who tend not to see the need to do stamina tables of that nature in their books – although such games do exist.
If you want to keep up with the weird and wonderful RPG finds that team Geek Native, that’s Brownen and I, or tips we get from readers, but don’t get written up into a piece of their own, then the Friday summary of Routinely Itemised is the place to watch.
There’s also a curation and inspiration channel of the Geek Native Discord, which, yes, is still in soft launch after several years. It turns out that running a community takes loads of time. Who knew? But I sometimes pop in weird science, history or world-building ideas in there.
Speaking of weird science, I think much of the Western world has been discovering about the deadly science of the deep sea and the shocking fate of the Titan submarine.
Bronwen noticed a game-maker lamenting a spike in sales. The game in question is Iron Lung and it’s a submarine horror.
David Syzmanski tweeted to show the boom of Steam-downloads of the game with the comment, “This feels so wrong”.
There are stories this week with a happy ending. We started off with attack lawyers in action as The Polyhedral Knights, a small indie studio, found themselves getting a Cease and Desist letter from Renegade Game Studios.
Or, more precisely, from the lawyers the bigger publisher pays to look after them. The problem was a game called Renegade City that Polyhedral Knights had crowdfunded.
The lawyers thought gamers might confuse Renegade City with Renegade Game Studios and, we should also say, brands have to be seen protecting their trademarks, or it can weaken their attempts to defend their IP in the future.
The good news here is that Polyhedral Knights must put a disclaimer in their game and carry on as usual. I’m glad team Renegade where able to nudge their lawyers into compromise.
In this podcast of highlights, we don’t just mix bad news with good news, we also mix looking backwards with looking forwards. So let’s pick two trailers that appeared on Geek Native this week.
Bronwen, who isn’t much of an anime fan, noticed Netflix’s live-action for One Piece.
That’ll be the sort of success that Netflix wants to see and an example of the live-action adaptation crossing fandoms.
I liked the trailer, too, and it was far less zany than the anime can be. We almost ended without seeing Luffy’s odd power in action. That also meant we didn’t see much of the non-humans.
The trailer I picked was also a Netflix one and an adaptation of the Chinese sci-fi The Three-Body Problem. Netflix is using the numeral and tweaking the title to 3 Body Problem.
It looks surreal, and I’ve read the series, so I can tell you that can be misleading, although there are undoubtedly weird moments. I hope it’s a good adaptation, but I’ve not even watched much of the 2023 season of shows, so I’m terribly behind.
A project from Wizards of the Coast and publisher Andrews McMeel is another for-the-future story, new in the UK but which has been on pre-order for at least a short while in the States.
Together the two will release Year of the Monsters. That’s nearly a monster a day, with the weekends getting a dragon, and yes it’s a 2024 calendar.
The idea is that you tear off a slip of Paper each day to reveal the monster behind it, and they’ll work through or, at least, from the catalogue of beasties on D&D Beyond.
I think it’s weird the blurb mentions D&D Beyond at all, to be honest. Why not just say “Dungeons & Dragons”. How many brands do Wizards want?
365 monsters is a lot but not an endless supply. Marking Bronwen’s 50th post is a look at Endless Paper. If you want, you can put endless monsters there.
Endless Paper in a canvas on which you can zoom in infinitely, not necessarily on a loop, but in and in. As Bronwen points out, in theory, you could spend a lifetime drawing pictures of pictures within pictures.
Or monsters hiding behind monsters, hiding behind monsters.
One last story, and a monster story, before we get to the outro of bundles and deals. Monte Cook Games have released a free preview of Old Gods of Appalachia.
That’s a Cypher System powered-RPG of the horror podcast of the same name and the full game is coming soon.
In bundles, let’s start with what’s going soon and that means Humble’s Ultimate RPG Guides book deal. Want to create better characters or campaigns? Adams Media hope their books will tempt you.
In the Bundle of Holding, there’s a flash sale on BattleTech Shrapnel. That’s the official magazine that started as a crowdfunding stretch goal and has kept on going but you’ve only a few days left to catch this offer.
You have got a few weeks to check out the mega bundle for the European RPG The Dark Eye. The English books are also in the Bundle of Holding this week.
Lastly, over at DriveThruRPG and from Tabletop Gaymers Inc you can save hundreds of dollars in two bundles Gayming with Pride 2023 Pristmatic and Gayming with Pride 2023 Kaleidoscope.
As ever, links are in the transcript, and you can get to that through the show notes or just web search for Geek Native and dive in.
And on that note, let’s wrap up there, be kind, and I’ll see you next week.
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