This is Audio EXP for December 28th, and the episode title is “Is this real data?”.
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #268]
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The World Anvil won the RPG Publisher Spotlight this month and the interview with founder Tommaso De Benetti is live.
In a section we don’t often have in the interview we chatted about how there’s another The World Anvil and how the two appeared and grew together but unaware that there was growing confusion on Google. If it’s World Anvil Publishing, then we’re talking Broken Tales and Bitter Chalice, if not, it’s world building software.
The candidates for January are;
Geek Native’s awesome patrons can vote for the first 2025 winner over on Patreon.com.
It’s that weird limbo between Hogmanay and Christmas so you think we’d have been taking it easy. Oh no. Team Geek Native has been dealing with family; in Bronwen’s case, that includes a cheeky little dragon. I’ve eaten my weight in cheese on multiple days, and I’ve started to share the new lists of best selling RPG products from DriveThruRPG.
Over the last few years the excellent team at DTRPG have been kind enough to give us just the headlines. It’s a different landscape today as OneBookShelf, the company who ran DriveThru, Storyteller, DMs Guild and others are, along with Demiplane, part of Roll20.
We’ve got different lists. We’ve not interrogated the Roll20 team with over-the-holiday-demands of “Hey, this doesn’t look possible. Explain yourself!” as that’s neither festive, fair or part of the deal but the three top tens we’ve shared so far have sparked conversations.
Let’s start there but just do three top threes.
The top three selling products on DriveThruRPG this year, regardless of when they were first published, are;
That’s confusing because “Deft Steps Light Fingers” is a recently published module, but it’s possible.
The three best selling products published in 2024 are;
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Deft Steps Light Fingers.
- The Painted Wastelands.
- Glory to the High One.
That’s confusing because “Glory to the High One” didn’t make the previous list, and beats some that did in this list. Again, depending on what counts as a sale in this list, it’s still possible.
Finally, the three best selling Roll20 modules on DriveThruRPG this year are;
Iron Crown Enterprises, who publish Rolemaster, will be delighted by beating Marvel and Free League.
So, I believe the data is real but just obscured by the lack of context.
Outside these lists and on RPG news that broke on Christmas Eve, Dream Realm Storytellers have a brutal Viking 5e setting called Svilland, which is getting turned into a computer game. A computer card game, at that. As Hasbro will tell you; there’s big money in those games when they work out.
Bronwen, who’s not much of a Who fan, wrote up the new colourised classic, which seems to confirm the renegade Timelord, the War Chief, was actually The Master all along. That clue was added by the BBC by swapping in The Master’s theme tune.
For me, though, the biggest and best change was the switch in the visuals when the Second Doctor was shown possible future faces and the special effects wizards had popped in more recent Doctors. It’s time travel made real through editing.
I watched the Doctor Who Christmas Special and thought it was okay. I certainly didn’t fall asleep in it which I did once, so that’s a start. Mind you, I also watched Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl and had no problem with it, but that seems to put me in the minority. Perhaps I’m being too kind because of the pun.
Given that the talented Peter Sallis died in 2017, you might be wondering who voiced Wallace. That would be a British actor called Ben Whitehead who actually had other voice parts in the previous Wallace & Gromit adventures The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and A Matter of Loaf and Death.
Anyway, enough obscure British TV trivia because there’s still time to tell you about three free to download quickstarts I’ve written up this week.
There’s Tales for Gamers’ Medieval quickstart. This project is about a year late, but here now, and with it, hopes to keep the promise of brutal and realistic 5e rules appropriate to the setting.
There’s also ACE Games’ Inkforged in which people are whisked away by The Book to become adventures in The Realm.
It’s been out for a while, but I finally also got around to writing up Dragonslayer, which is unrelated to the other Dragonslayer RPG or the 1981 movie. Even if the fonts look similar.
On that note, keep safe, don’t try to solo pizzas bigger than your table and see you next year.
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