Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for the 18th of November, and the episode title is “$43bn per day”
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #218]
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TheNatOne is in the Spotlight thanks to votes from Geek Native’s generous patrons, and I’m already talking to the publisher. It shouldn’t be long now.
So, yes, there wasn’t a podcast last week. Sorry, I always knew that would be likely, but I forgot to say so.
The last podcast was plagued with gremlins; perhaps they’re 17th-century monsters, too, and the distraction beat me.
Why no podcast? Team Geek Native was at Scotland Loves Anime in Edinburgh, a charity festival that brings feature-length out of Japan.
Blue Giant, a jazz anime, won the audience vote and The Concierge, a luxury shop anime, won the Jury vote. That’s unusual, the same anime typically takes both.
My review of Macross Plus: Movie Edition got Geek Native in trouble at Facebook. Actually, the appeal is still pending.
Frustrated at the characters in this Top Gun in space anime, I used the fighter pilot thumbnail and ran the subtitle “Men are idiots” because all the men in it are idiots. Macho idiots.
Facebook says this is hate speech.
I’m glad Meta is looking after the rights of anime characters. That’s money spent wisely; look at what’s happening to X, once known as Twitter, without that sort of moderation. This week, Steve Jackson Games announced they’re abandoning the platform because of it.
I don’t think Meta makes $43bn per day, though. That’s what a study from Atlas VPN has calculated it would cost if the internet went down for just one day.
The UK would be third hardest hit, followed by China, although there’s quite a gap, and the country that would suffer the most is the United States.
Bronwen, new to Scotland Loves Anime, ducked in for a bit and helped keep the blog going which such finds as the long lost original Star Trek Enterprise model.
I had no idea it had been missing, but it has, and now a model with a credible story is on Ebay. Rod Roddenberry’s, Gene’s son, seems to be saying careful but encouraging things.
Bronwen also decoded and ranked gaming’s most confusing acronyms.
Apparently, in the UK the most confusing term is NPC. It’s also the most confusing term in the US, Canada and Australia.
Gosh, I get RPGs aren’t as popular as I thought. In fact, RPG, the acronym, is in the top 10.
The widget from Letter Solver, which animates these charts, also has a dating section, and I’m amused to see FWB, Friends with Benefits, which is even more confusing to people.
Or, if these top ten lists aren’t your thing, then Bronwen also looked at popular Christmas movies before providing her own horror and alternative picks.
Yes, Die Hard is there, but so is Violent Night and Gremlins. What would make your festive recommendations?
I had to follow up with some Christmas content of my own, and Lightspress Media, the RPG publisher, came to my rescue with the release of Santa Claus conquers the martians.
That rules-lite RPG is a homage to the old movie, which is now in the public domain and perhaps still a cult hit in some quarters.
Now, since we’ve slid on to RPGs let’s talk about World of Game Design. I hadn’t heard of them before, I admit it, but they do seem to spend some time behind the scenes with things like convention and Kickstarter support, logistics and the like while also running an online shop and producing some content.
World of Game Designs will now release Zweihander Reforged. That’s the next Edition of Zweihander, and they’ve bought the rights from Andrews McMeel, the publisher who stepped into RPGs a few years ago. Andrews McMeel now seems to be stepping back, and I could have told them there’s no money here, but there you go.
From the world of RPGs and the chaos of NuTSR, aka TSR 3, 4 and 5, or something like that, is the news that the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum is up for sale. The asking price is $5m.
The value of the building is a fraction of that, so the difference belongs to the value of the business, which means the Museum’s contents, the turnover of the retail unit and the value of any associated conventions, bookings and memberships.
NuTSR is bankrupt, so the Hobby Shop must be a separate business, although we’ll have to see whether or not the two have overlapping ownership causes any issues.
Frankly, the NuTSR politics is not my tribe, so I hope the Museum somehow passes to someone more relatable.
In the spirit of dungeons, though, let’s talk about Matthew Lillard, Bill Rehor and Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!.
That’s the new D&D show on the new Dungeons and Dragon Adventures streaming channel on Freevee. Freevee is a new, free, thing from Amazon.
Matthew has been very generous with his interview time, so we tried to ask questions other people hadn’t. He’s just released whiskey through his company Find Familiar Spirits and since we’re in Scotland, we asked whiskey questions to see if there was a spark of passion there. Maybe so, but trying to find out which side of the chill filtered debate he was on wasn’t the way to go.
Bronwen asked about drag and Dragula, which was a better angle.
I know, I know; I must remember to ask on the Geek Native Discord first.
There are two weeks of bundles and competitions to catch up with, so let’s dive in.
Firstly, and finishing soon, there’s an Oni Press deal on Humble for loads of Rick and Morty comics.
In the Bundle of Holding, there’s a deal for all the d20 Ultimate Guides Mongoose produced, with content from Green Ronin, Monte Cook, Mystic Eye, Fantasy Flight and Alderac that are not lost. That means you can download 9 d20 era supplements, as 5 have been lost.
There are two bundles for TORG; that’s the Possibility Wars RPG.
There are also two bundles for City of Mist from Son of Oak Studios, which includes the starter kit and core rules.
On DriveThruRPG, where there are loads of bundles at any given week, there’s a short-lived one for Doctors Without Borders that costs $10 and is worth more than $150. It contains 5e, Monster of the Week and Fate supplements.
There are a few days left in Geek Native’s Augmentors competition. That’s UK only and is a young adult steampunk-ish adventure.
Lastly, and because our Prime Day efforts seemed to please some people, we’ve set up a Black Friday megathread and have been busily updating it. For example, we’ve got the start date of the D&D Beyond sale, but there’s nothing confirmed for DriveThruRPG, although it is coming, and Amazon is already running. We’ve also got non-RPGs such as Argos, Waterstones, Apple, Sony, Funko and others.
On that note, keep safe. I hope the bouncers let you into the nightclub, and see you next week.
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