Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for November 2nd, and the episode title is “Mini dragons versus heat monsters”
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #260]
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Sketchy Van RPG won the RPG Publisher Spotlight this month.
Patrons get to vote, and I’ll give you the shortlist in just a tick first. I want to remind people what happens to Patron money. Since the inception of the Patron program we’ve made it clear that these funds go on commissions for articles and art.
At the time, and today, that was to support the tabletop industry, not website hosts or software companies. Now, with generative AI being super controversial, that seems like a good decision.
Having allowed ourselves that pat on the back out of the way, here are the candidates for December. They are:
I got the interview with Steve Hatherley, the October winner, up just before the end of the month.
In it I asked about the choice of Fate Accelerated for Other London and Steve said;
It’s a light system sold as a pay-what-you-want which was important for him. Fate Accelerated is published under a Creative Commons license, with easier stats for NPCs and everything written in plain English to make conversions to other systems easy.
Those all feel like compelling reasons to me.
While I talked to Steve, Bronwen talked to Patrick Padla of Dusk Wave Arts. He designed Barheim.
I’ll let you read the whole piece, but there’s a question about soundscapes, and that’s not something we often talk about in tabletop games. Patrick talks about the importance of picking the right audio cues to signal when the boss in Barheim is almost defeated. I’ve put hours into the game, and I can tell you how important it is because it affects your tactics and your relationship with the game.
Bronwen also had the world exclusive on gaming legend Ian Livingstone stepping into the Young Dragons ambassador role.
Young Dragons helps kids in London with special educational needs get access to tabletop games and with specially trained DMs. As regular listeners will know, the evidence that games are really helpful in enhancing problem-solving and social skills is solid now.
If you’re in the area and can help, being a Young Dragon storyteller is a paid gig.
This week we also concluded the traditional 12 Masks of Halloween. I kicked off the fortnight with a look at the traditional roles of masks for Halloween and finished with speculation on a cyberpunk future.
Sadly, in Edinburgh, we had a civil disturbance in some parts of the cities with youngsters on mini riots. I don’t suppose that, but I do understand the pushback against authority, and I led my speculation on the future role of masks as concealment from surveillance. In fact, if you’ve seen Ghost in the Shell, then you may well remember how freaky the Laughing Man was for authorities.
The tension between rebels and authority is very Star Wars, and Bronwen had news of Marvel’s launch of Jedi Knights. That’s a new comic book featuring Jedi like Obi-Wand and Mace Windu.
The comic book picks off before The Phantom Menace, so the Jedi are the authority.
I also had a bash at some comic book stories. I’m perhaps most pleased by the discovery of the Venom Christmas sweater because it has a Venom head emerging from the front. That’s exactly what might happen if you’re seen Venom: The Last Dance. I’m afraid I’ve not read any comic books with symbiote to know whether that’s paper accurate.
I also attempted a more high brow article with a piece on the rocky history of EDI comics. The acronym stands for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Sadly, those are words that trigger some comic book fans who don’t like change.
My point, though, was that go back to the 40s and before the awful Comics Code Authority, and you had progressive comics pushing boundaries, and by the 60s, you had politically incorrect comics making woke political points.
Woke is not a pejorative.
These days, we even have ways to make comic books more accessible with technology, like guided viewing on the Kindle and people like Patrick Padla of Dusk Wave Arts doing audio versions of their comics.
In RPG news, we have Two Little Mice returning to Household and with a free-to-download introduction to The Garden.
Thanks to Halloween we also have a Containment Breach from Modiphius and for Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20. That’s a free adventure and there’s years of free Halloween Horrors for the game which we linked to from the blog.
Sticking with Cthulhu, there’s also a free quickstart for Trail of Cthulhu 2nd edition from Pelgrane Press. That project is on BackerKit, funded, and with a few days left to run. There’s time to embrace the darkness if you want.
Before we get on to the one bundle I’ve written up this week, I want to talk about Phlogiston Warmies review from Bronwen. A few weeks back, I talked about some monsters you could microwave, heat up and cuddle. Well, Bronwen went and got the flame-themed monster to review. You can see the critter in Bronwen’s horror house; that’s to say, our resident artist has many horror posters at home to keep this monster happy, and she seems to be pretty satisfied with the Warmie, too. The one caveat is that she needs to keep it separate from the mini dragon which is her monitor lizard, or she will never see it again.
And that bundle? It’s Corsairs of Cthulhu, which is a third-party pirate-themed expansion for Call of Cthulhu.
On that note, keep safe, beware fluff stealing monitor lizards and see you next week.
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