Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for October 12th, and the episode title is “The buying season”
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #257]
[Also on Stitcher | Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
Steve Hatherley won the RPG Publisher Spotlight this month.
I’m in touch with Steve, and the ball is in my court, so I’m sending over some questions. Steve might have interesting to say about LARPs and TTRPG, so I might go there.
Have you ever done any live-action roleplay? I’ve been to The Gathering twice, about a million years ago, and have spent many nights in pubs while pretending to be a World of Darkness vampire. I’ve done nothing in about twenty years, though.
I’ve emailed Cannon Otter Studio the Geek Native Patreons to send a copy of Teenage Oddyssey too, so if a coupon code for the game turns up in your inbox, that’s why!
Cannon Otter Studio‘s Skin City is currently live on Kickstarter.
When you first hear about Skin City, the last bastion of humanity, and the supernatural horrors outside the walls, your gamer mind might well assume the game will be able to struggle to keep the city safe.
No. In the game, you’re the skeletons disguised as humans trying to get into the city and sabotage it. If your meat suit gets damaged, it doesn’t harm you, but as you get revealed as the monster beneath, it makes your mission much harder.
I think it’s a neat idea.
Another publisher who impressed me this week was RTG and Cyberpunk RED‘s lead developer J Gray. The company has been writing about the new rules in Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn.
Firstly, the new rules add value but are optional so you don’t need to buy the book.
Secondly, the vast majority of the new rules have already been given out as free downloads in Cyberpunk RED DLC content. DLC, in this case, meaning PDFs.
That’s a nice approach. The book has unique content; it’s not a paid-for clip shop of old releases, but the rules that people might grumble if they feel they have to pay again for something to be complete are available for free.
I do ask myself what I’ll pay for in the world of TTRPGs these days. Yes, I’ll pay for Core Rules. No, I don’t need any more.
I’ve never really been keen on pre-written adventures. If I’m GM then the adventure will be one I’ve enjoyed writing.
In my student days, when I was doing those Vampire LARPS, I would eagerly buy the next Clan book, but now that business model becomes a challenge. If the rules are important then they should be in the Core book. If they’re optional then I probably won’t splash the cash. The danger is that the publisher needs to up the stakes and release optional rules, let’s call them ‘big gun rules’ that players want access to for their sake, so GMs feel compelled to buy them. I think that happened with some Clan books. That’s a challenge because people tire of that quickly.
I think RTG’s decision to give core but new rules away for free is better.
Green Ronin’s BackerKit campaign for The Expanse RPG Transport Edition comes to mind. It’s backwards compatible and the new edition keeps the game up to date with the series it’s based on, advancing the plot line.
That also feels fair to me.
As Bronwen blogged, Free League Publishing’s next edition of the Alien RPG, the Evolved Edition does something similar and adds in Alien: Romulus content.
I note that Free League have delayed the launch of that Kickstarter to better listen to the community, they say, and to work with 20th Century Studios.
This week, Chaosium announced the community content program The Companions of Arthur.
Like many other community content programs it’ll be hosted by DriveThruRPG and will let people write and sell Pendragon content.
If we stick with our RPG business ponderings then we can see that community content programs help ecosystems grow around the game and keep people engaged.
It’s DriveThruRPG that gets a cut in sales, though. Do Chaosium? Well, if I was Chaosium, then I would have negotiated some! This is speculation because it’s in neither company’s interest to draw attention to it.
I’m reminded of Fandom’s attempt to create their own market around Cortex. That didn’t work out; Cortex was sold to Dire Wolf Digital, and we’ve not seen any life on the RPG’s socials in over a year. Lots of very intelligent people have been involved. Creating a new RPG is hard, and creating one coupled to the launch of a new marketplace must be a nightmare challenge.
In other publishing and Bronwen-penned news is Rebellion’s cute little monster stunt this week. That’s the Rebellion who publish 2000 AD and Judge Dredd, the Rebellion who bought the second oldest TTRPG in the world, Tunnels and Trolls and has been very quiet about it ever since!
Anyway, this week, Rebellion is launching a new graphic novel line for kids called The Monster Fun Collection, and they have big billboard posters in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow from which you can tear off your own A3 sheet of comic book goodness. I think that’s an excellent way to get people curious, get kids’ attention, and perhaps summon up a bit of nostalgia from parents too.
This week we’ve had Prime Day, a chance for blogs like Geek Native to earn some pennies to pay towards the hosting cost. We don’t use Patron money for that.
Despite the importance of the shopping festival, we actually ran an equal amount of of, shall we say, alternative content. We started with Anyone but Amazon as a megathread of other timely sales. For example, we had deals from Exalted Funeral, Fantasy Grounds, Redbubble and Alienware.
I also got so far behind with Bundle of Holding coverage that I did a megathread of those. Still live today are deals on the sci-fi Beam Saber, horror in Kenneth Hite’s Cthulhu, conspiracy and occult threat in Unknown Armies and cartography in 0One’s horror maps.
Since we’re on to bundles, let me tell you about an incredible Jurassic World deal in Humble. It supports Girls Who Code, too.
Lastly, and part of Paradox’s Month of Darkness, there’s a Humble deal on the World of Darkness. This is unusual as it has more than one physical product in the top tier with shipping options for the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia but not Europe or Scandinavia.
On that note, sleep is good, and see you next week.
What are your thoughts? Strike up a discussion and leave a comment below.
