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This is Audio EXP for the 15 of July, 2023, and the episode title is “Coming Soon”
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #204]
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The Grinning Frog is in the Spotlight this month, as voted for by Patreons.
I remember joking last week that the ball with The Grinning Frog interview was in my court. It still is. I’ll get my act together, and in the meantime, I’ll point out that the York-based publisher’s latest Kickstarter is Starship Scavengers.
In Starship Scavengers, we’re playing one of the few people brave enough to explore ruined spacecraft. It’s a solo game set after the fall of the galactic human empire.
Speaking of Empires, we’ve had Prime Day from Amazon since we last spoke. Geek Native called it Big Heckin’ Two-Day Prime Day Sale for mathematical reasons.
I bought a lot, but it wasn’t a great event for Geek Native’s affiliate money. Perhaps we’re less keen to throw money at the retail machine.
I wrote up our board game finds with games like Pandemic, 7Wonders and Scythe at half price or thereabouts and wondered why I’d buy these games at any other time of the year. I do, I guess, to support friendly local gaming stores.
There’s another reason why Amazon might be cut out of the loop. Gamers buy stuff while it’s fresh and hot, book it when it’s just announced as Kickstarters often become, and when we’re fortunate, get involved even earlier.
Urban Arcana is an excellent example of that. There’s a new version of the D20 Modern book on the way, not through Wizards of the Coasts but through Everyday Heroes publisher Evil Genius. They’ve been running a money-and-publication-awarding competition for a setting for it. Geek Native is lucky enough to be hosting the final voting round.
The Shadows Surrounding setting is currently ahead in the votes, but I think it’s still all to play for. By letting people see previous rounds, I can also see that some folk are disappointed that their favourite settings haven’t made it this far. Oh well. Such is life. It’s more important to congratulate everyone who participated in good faith and the three current finalists.
Urban Arcana is coming soon. So is the Marvel Multiverse RPG’s Spider-Verse Expansion which was confirmed this week. For that matter, the Marvel Multiverse RPG is due out in the first week of August.
The Spider-Man book is slated for next year and will let you create your own multiverse version of Spider-Man. Perhaps Spider-me would be one who shot knotted and messy microphone cables everywhere and found himself in a hostile triangle with the villains of Loudness and Volume.
Also coming soon is some tech for Pathfinder and Starfinder. I was surprised to see how far this news travelled. Paizo is teaming up with Mirrorscape, and this will put both RPGs into the Augmented Reality platform.
The hype has been predictably harmful to the ‘metaverse’, but I suspect interest in viable augmented reality, even virtual reality, lingers. We’re edging toward it.
In good news, Mirrorscape embraces open licenses.
Dreams and Machines is coming soon too. It’s a tabletop RPG that picks off after and perhaps just before a war between human kind and the robot horrors we built.
Do the usual of web searching for Geek Native or clicking through the shownotes are ways to get into the free preview available now.
The game is coming from Modiphius. In fact, it’s the seven-year-long project of Chris Birch, the company’s co-founder.
It’s also a hopepunk game. Life in the setting might be very foreign from today, and danger looms, but perhaps we, the human race, will make different decisions this time.
Also coming soon from Modiphius is a new Star Trek Adventures RPG. Captain’s Log uses stream-downed 2d20 rules and is optimised for solo play, though you can have friends involved.
There are four books for the four flavours;
- Original Series,
- Next Generation,
- Deep Space Nine,
- Discovery
Sticking with the Coming Soon theme but getting a little weird, what about Uncaging Nicolas. This is a one-page RPG due out this month from Jes the Human. In the game, Nicholas Cage is trapped in a multiverse of Nicholas Cage films. Characters are versions of Nicolas Cage who have been hired to uncage Nicholas Cage from the movie trap and put him back in the right movie.
Is Halloween soon? Well, it’s coming, and you can pre-order stuff for it now. I’ll admit to being a bit tempted by Funko’s 13 Days Spooky Countdown calendar. Warner Bros shop called it an advent calendar, which isn’t quite right but does express the idea of gifts behind little doors. In this case, we get a horror mini pop every day for the 13 days before Halloween.
Geek Native, of course, traditionally does with this with the 12 Masks of Halloween.
Let’s edge from Coming Soon and into Buy Now. If that sounds all very capitalist, then let me counter by saying one of my favourite posts this week came from a friend of Geek Native, Murdo Borland, who is a stylophile.
That’s someone who thinks a lot, knows a lot, and cares a lot about pens. Murdo put together five of the best pens to gift to the Dungeon Master in your life.
Some of these pens are practical, like erasable ball pens, and some are gorgeous, like the Benu Talisman in Dragon’s Blood.
Another discovery post was from Bronwen and her eye for art. It’s Mark Bell’s JAWS print.
Most listeners will know The Great Wave of Kanagawa. That’s that tsunami print of white and blue against the sombre yellow background. Bell’s print has the wave form into a titanic shark and come crashing towards the struggling fishing boat.
Rivaling JAWS, beating it in terms of popularity with readers, and another favourite of mine was Bronwen’s discovery of the Dungeons & Dragons’ Ultimate Pop-Up Book.
I’m not joking, but this book page turns into castles, towers, dungeons and tombs that rise from the page in 3D majestic glory. Imagine your players’ surprised reaction.
Before the outro there is a book mystery I want to scratch up and may explore – er, once I email The Grinning Frog back, of course. That’s with the adult RPG Defiant.
The Game Machinery publish Defiant and are busily gearing up for another Kickstarter. This week Magpie Games announced that they’re making Defiant available. It’s almost as if they’re publishing it or a print partner, but their blog post and shop shelf don’t mention The Game Machinery. It’s listed on the site and for sale as one of their products.
I’m sure it’s just a distribution deal, but it confused me.
Right, the traditional outro to the Geek Native podcast has freebies and bundles.
In freebies, let me call out Necrotic Gnomes’ Dolmenwood preview. That’s spooky British fairytales and folklore with the Old-School Essentials system.
In bundles, I need to catch up with Humble, but I can confirm a generous Root RPG deal in the Bundle of Holding. That’s pretty much all the books you need, including the core rules, for $15.
And on that note, let’s wrap up there. The next episode is coming soon, this episode was also Coming Soon, and I’ll see you next week.
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