Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for December 7th, and the episode title is “Did D&D win?”
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #265]
[Also on Stitcher | Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
The World Anvil won the RPG Publisher Spotlight this month.
Amazingly, I’ve already got questions over. Why the rush? Because it’s December, and calendars are turning into flaming balls of ruined plans. Logistics rebel and journeys deteriorate into gruelling adventure challenges. I very much appreciate The World Anvil team getting back to me so swiftly; let’s hope the questions are just as swift.
It’s the start of the month, and I should now move onto which publishers are in the running for the Spotlight, but I just want to stick with Christmas plans for a bit.
Do you know the game Whamageddon? It might be a quirky British thing. It’s a solo game in which you’re knocked out as soon as you realise you’re listening to the original Last Christmas track by 80s band Wham!.
I’ve tried to add character classes to it. For example, you can play as a Necromancer and, with someone’s permission, if they’ve been knocked out, raise them from the dead so they can get to Christmas on that second chance but as a zombie.
More on zombies later.
Whamageddon: The RPG is a daft idea, but, today at least, I’m toying with whether I could expand on it and return to it in 2025. If you have any ideas, let me know.
So, back to the RPG Publisher Spotlight and, as usual, patrons can vote in the private poll.
The candidates are;
I try and add some RPG ideas to the announcement posts, and this month I’ve speculated on sci-fi apocalypses. You know, nanite plagues and the like. I don’t think we’ll get there in 2025 but, 25 years after Y2K and the rise of AI, it now feels at least academically possible.
Isn’t that a cheery thought? There are scenes in Godzilla Minus One that look apocalyptic. We’ve brave Japanese civilians trying to rebuild their homes in a ruined city.
The film, which I recommend seeing, is so good and so successfully retro that Toho released a black and white version cleverly called Godzilla Minus One Minus Color. This week, the Collector’s Edition boxset was released, and that’s the only way to get the black and white edition for your home. At least, that’s what the press release claimed. I’ve seen people suggesting some workarounds since then.
If Godzilla Minus One was a recommended movie from this year then Bronwen’s flagging The Invisible Raptor as a candidate for next year.
It looks daft, and Sean Astin is in the cast.
In the 50s there were movies like Forbidden Planet and The Quartermass Xperiment in which the monster was invisible and, sometimes, flying. Why? Well. I can’t help shake the idea that it saves a lot on the budget!
The Invisible Raptor, in contrast, cuts people open and somehow steals shotguns from people. That’s a special effects budget right there.
Sticking with money, the academically impressive The Economist magazine wrote up D&D for the 50th anniversary. Makes sense. The title? How did “Dungeons & Dragons” win?”.
Urg.
I make that noise out of instinct. I’m used to saying that games like D&D aren’t about winning. In this case, I’ll say that the TTRPG marketplace battle isn’t over yet.
I’ll acknowledge that D&D has reclaimed it’s top spot in recent years. It did slip, Pathfinder did pull ahead but first Critical Role and then Stranger Things put the famous name back on top.
D&D 5.5, or don’t call it D&D 6, makes D&D more vulnerable than it’s been in years, but I don’t think the challengers like Black Flag or ORC are pulling ahead.
D&D is winning, according to The Economist, by being pop cultural relevant. They talk about Dimension 20 and The Twentyu-Sided Tavern.
They channel Jason Tondro at the end, asking “Are we still nerds if we’re cool?”.
Jason, we’ve always been cool.
Another D&D story this week is the deal with Games Global.
They’re an iGaming company and iGaming means paying money to play trival games like fruit machines to try and win money. Hasbro has will do a game with Neon Valley, a Games Global company.
Neon Valley are about games played outside the USA, where the Christian right means there’s a strict anti-gambling code and maybe they’re on the ball with this one. Hey, a stopped clock is right twice a day.
It’s also PAX Unplugged. Geek Native, of course, are not there. However, we’re getting press releases from tabletop companies at the expo and Evil Genius Games let us know about Return of the Living Dead the TTRPG.
I asked, “Wait, weren’t you caught at a Web 3.0 conference after you promised not to do Web 3.0 stuff” and was gently pointed at their tech stack which, yes, is free of Web 3.0 stuff.
By Web 3.0, I mean NFT and Blockchain. I think the term no longer fits. Web 3.0, in retrospect, will be AI, but that’s a different debate.
Return of the Living Dead the TTRPG will also have a VR game and a movie. I wish I’d asked whether PCs would be zombies. I guess we’ll find out, and I could still email in again… maybe I should?
Another bit of PAX Unplugged news is that Shadow Scar won’t be there. That’s the new anime-inspired TTRPG from R. Talsorian Games, they of Cyberpunk and The Witcher. It’s just not ready yet, and I know I’d prefer a good game to a ready for marketing event game. However, the Character Creation rules are out, and free, and available from DriveThruRPG.
Another TTRPG partnership this week is between Two Little Mice and Free League Publishing. You’ll remember that The Mice bought back Outgunned, the pulp adventure RPG, from CMON. Now they’re part of the Free League Workshop which means the Swedish will be helping sell the game.
After PAX Unplugged and for Total Con, Solarian Games have announced the tabletop awards The Golden Fez. They’re open for applications already, so get your game nominated.
The ‘Everlasting’ category is suitable for games published before this year. Do you think D&D will win? If not, who will?
In freebies, even if it’s a few weeks late, what about A Monster’s Tail by Five Point Games. It’s a Powered by the Apocalypse game heavily inspired by, hopefully legally distinct enough, Pokemon RPG.
The quickstart is generous in that it’s over 100 and has loads of content but I think the project is ambitious. Just how many Pokemon, sorry, Gemnon do you think they need to illustrate and stat to make the game feel real? There are 30 in the free quickstart, and they say it will be over 70 if and when the core rules come out.
I think there are over 1,000 Pokemon now, not including regional forms, mega evolutions or gigantamax forms.
Lastly, and a Cyber Monday deal is a cyberpunk fantasy offer for Shadowrun 4e. There are two in the Bundle of Holding.
On that note, keep safe, catch them all and see you next week.
Got any exciting geeky news or useful RPG tools? Get in touch through the contact form.
