Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for August 24th, and the episode title is “I want that snail”
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #252]
[Also on Stitcher | Spotify | Apple]
Schwalb Entertainment won the RPG Publisher Spotlight this month.
That interview is live, and Rob was kind to us. We find out that he was angry after doing all that work on D&D 5e for Wizards of the Coast only to be let go and that he took some of that anger to his grimdark RPG Shadow of the Demon Lord.
Since then, he’s also published the less grim but still dark Shadow of the Weird Wizard. Since things come in three, and it also seems to be a new edition season, I asked what his plans are.
Firstly, he clearly stated there are no plans for a second edition of Shadow of the Demon Lord. I’ll quote him;
I’m not in the business of selling the same thing to my customers over and over again.
Instead, we’ll get Abaddon: The Angel of the Void, and this is the first podcast ever to reveal that in this upcoming game, characters are survivors in a space station which demons have breached. Rob says it’ll be ultra-nasty fun.
Okay, on the topic of tiring fun, let’s talk briefly about the madness of the Edinburgh Festival season and actual plays as live shows.
Bronwen and I are still alive. This is not a podcast from a zombie, and if it was, then it would be Bronwen, who ran off B12 days ago, which is the vitamin you need to;
- Think
- Regulated your DNA
- Produce energy
So, yeah, quite important. Don’t worry, though; she is recovering. Unfortunately, none of the actual plays of tabletop roleplaying games we got to at the Fringe were very good. It’s a challenge to an hour and only an hour of entertainment with a tabletop RPG.
Do you think it’s possible? Can an actual play be done in an hour, where that hour starts with players sitting down, the concept introduced, and characters described?
We also didn’t get to Chaosium’s Edinburgh Festival show despite talking to them about it. That’s a blow. And perhaps there were good actual play shows this year that we didn’t see or happened on a different night at the ones we did get to. We can’t be everywhere all the time, but we tried.
It’s 100% related to the fact that Geek Native published its first-ever review of a bottle of wine. Not any old wine, I’ll say, but Iron Maiden Darkest Red. It has a special wrap on the bottle with Eddie as a samurai warrior, and I bought it mainly because it was getting lots of negative reviews. Eddie, by the way, is the band’s skeleton heavy metal mascot.
It turns out that it’s actually quite a nice wine. I’m no wine expert, but I had it with some steak, and it was a good pairing. By the time I had written my review, the star rating on the wine seller’s website had picked up, too. It turns out that the early negative reviews were from fans hoping for a collectable bottle. Not me, not dozens of others. I drank it and recycled the bottle two days later. Sorry, Samurai Eddie.
Hopefully it will be before December when I get to sit down with a glass of wine again. In December, I plan to have a glass in my hand for Secret Level.
The studio that did the amazing animated short stories anthology Love, Death + Robots has been hired by Amazon to do, that’s right, an animated short stories anthology.
The twist on Secret Level is that each story is based on a computer game. There are games like Pac-Man, The Outer Worlds, and Unreal Tournament.
There’s also Warhammer 40K and Dungeons & Dragons; both these tabletop games have computer games, after all.
The trailer looks great, but it’s heavy on the tease and light on the story. I’m sure we’ll get another one. Games Workshop said their own in-house team worked closely on the project, and in part, that was to make sure it was all lore correct and on-theme.
I think that’s a good decision by Games Workshop. Expectations must be kept.
Maybe I’m having a negative podcast but I had high expections for Blood for the Blood God. No, legally, this is nothing to do with Games Workshop and chaos gods.
Blood for the Blood God is Gunship’s new single and the music video was released. Directed by the talented Seth Ickerman I thought it had all the ingredients for greatness.
I’m afraid what we got was some AI-generated fractal art, and while that’s legally safe from Game Workshop’s attack layers, I was underwhelmed.
There’s an RPG coming out for which people clearly have high expectations, and that’s Ars Magica Definitive Edition. It has thousands of people signing up for the crowdfunding alert when the campaign goes live.
Ars Magica is a pioneering tabletop RPG that introduced troupe-style play and a unique magic system, making it a landmark in narrative-focused gaming.
https://www.geeknative.com/167984/drivethrurpg-launch-cosmic-horror-and-cthulhu-mythos-rpg-sale/Other TTRPG news this week includes DriveThruRPG’s Cosmic Horror sale.
If you’ve been trying to review Edinburgh this month then cosmic horror feels right but surely we’re still miles away from Halloween when the sale would be better timed?
No, I disagree. GMs need to have read the books, thought up adventures and prepped. Mid-August is the time to offer discounts on bundle deals on games like Hellboy, Regency Cthulhu and Never Going Home.
The Friday RPG round-up also had news that Goodman Games will be rollng out their organised play, which will delight Dungeon Crawl Classics fans.
Paizo also rolled back their controversial changes to their community use and fan content policies. That seems to be a rule RPG publishers need to learn – once you set out rules for the public to follow, then it’s probably a bad idea to change them, even if your finances are tangled.
Now, we’ve pretty much only got the bundle deals to get to and I know I’ve not mentioned anything about the snail temptation.
No, not food.
No, not a cute anime character toy or Jellycat to hug.
It’s an Xenomorph snail that’s got my attention. Take the head of an Alien from the series and blend it onto a snail. Make that large enough and robust enough that you can use it as a garden gnome, and that’s singing a siren song to me.
I can’t even fit it in my flat. I want to hide it in the garden I share with a bunch of elderly neighbours. I’m a bad person.
In bundle news, the Bundle of Holding has the World’s Largest bundle again. That’s a misleading name, kinda.
That bundle has a huge mega dungeon it in and other similar products. Start now and you might still be exploring it through Halloween.
Sadly, the last bundle to mention is Meguey Baker vs Cancer. That’s the same Meguey Baker of lumpley games. It’s a generous bundle with over $200 in savings, costing only $25. As usual, I don’t like the idea of making affiliate commission on these sales and since the site pops the tracking link in any way, I’ll find a way to donate any sales back.
On that note, keep safe, be well, don’t explore the garden and see you next week.
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