Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for February 22nd, and the episode title is “Battle makeup and headsets”.
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #276]
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Dunderdagar won the RPG Publisher Spotlight this month.
In the interview with Jörgen I asked about being an indie publisher in Sweden during the era of Free League Publishing. He’s full of praise and full of love for the giant.
What’s Free League’s secret sauce? Jörgen describes Free League Publishing as players creating for other players.
I’m just back from the Edinburgh Indie Gamers meet-up. It’s our second last one at a zero waste cafe with resistance stickers on the wall but, sadly, bereft of funding after the latest cuts, I fear we’ll be looking for a new home. It’s a shame because there are people who would live more sustainably and help others if only it was a little bit easier and that’s what these places enable.
We played Dread. That’s the tabletop roleplaying game governed by the cruel physics of a Jenga tower and I brought our alien-inspired game to a dramatic and deadly end by collapsing the bricks. Sorry crew, I killed us all.
On that note, Bronwen blogged about Alien: Rogue Incursion which is a VR game for the Meta Quest.
Given how intense Dread alien can be I’m not sure I’ve got the guts to enjoy a VR Alien experience. Still, anything that helps nudge VR towards mainstream will surely help maintain investment in the technology.
I’m actually bullish on headset technology because, whereas TVs are communal, they are also expensive and take up loads of space. If the future brings low cost headsets, then that opens up interesting possibilities for education as well as enterainment.
A sci-fi game I looked at is This Is Where The Stars Died. It’s set in the year 5300AD the galaxy is ablaze.
Scott Malthouse’s game is a solo wargame and does not need models. It’s an interesting debate as to whether it’s actually a wargame at that point, but it’s absolutely tactical and about winning a war.
Bronwen wrote about the limited edition release of Street Fighter Game Beauty. It can be a beautiful game, but this is a makeup collection from the people who previously brought us the Attack on Titan makeup set.
Bronwen also interviewed Cornelius Jeffrey Burns about a forthcoming TTRPG called Wanderverse. Cornelius is essentially pitching an action point economy with a time factor. I’m a bit cynical as to how original this is but Bronwen, who has about a year of light tabletop RPGs experience, has fresher eyes. It’s actually interesting to see how people brought into the hobby by big games like D&D react to alternatives. Certainly, tonight, Bronwen was the steady hand and sole survivor of our Dread game.
Expect a crowdfunding campaign for Wanderverse later.
I talked to John Non of Tales of Ereden about Fate of the Stormwailer. That’s in Kickstarter right now.
It’s a 5e adventure in which the players end up investigating a giant who can change the weather. There’s a twist, of course. The Kickstarter campaign asks for £600 and is running during the zine fest, so there are lots of eyeballs on Kickstarter and lots of competition.
I think it’s worth checking out. And, just to be clear, we’ve Stormwailer ads running on the site right now because we finally got the system to work while respecting super tough mega tight privacy requirements.
That’s not all, I also spoke to Tucker FitzGerald about the pending crowdfunder for Hinterdom.
This is a hopeful TTRPG that works hard to avoid colonial tropes. In other words, your heroes won’t be exploring new lands, slaying the natives and taking over. You might, however, be the natives and coordinate a defence of your village.
I asked Tucker if the game was a push back against some real-life news events we’re living through. It is.
There’s no interview on this one, but I had to note the writing retirement of Paul “Wiggy” Wade-Williams. He’s still going to be part of Triple Ace Games but, following his stroke, won’t be writing games. Previously, he was Creative Director at Pinnacle Entertainment.
Before we outro on two bundle deals I want to point out that the Samurai Pizza Cats are back. Most of the original voice cast are back too, and I mean both the English and Japanese cast. The cats are back as a computer game which you can wishlist on Steam today.
The first of two Bundle of Holding deals is Girl by Moonlight which is a magic girl TTRPG from Evil Hat that’s Powered by Darkness. An interesting mix.
Lastly, and for the first time in four years, there’s a Mutant Crawl Classics deal complete with core rules.
On that note, keep safe, support your local cafes and see you next week.
