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This is Audio EXP for March 1st, and the episode title is “Heresy and card games”.
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #277]
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Stonehome Games won the RPG Publisher Spotlight this month.
We’ve not told them this yet, it’s only the first, but we’ve released the shortlist for April and also included a quick post on building materials appropriate for high and late medieval Europe. Why? Inspired by the name Stonehome, of course.
The candidates for April are;
As usual, podcast supporters can vote, but anyone can nominate a candidate for next month. Just leave a comment.
I think the biggest news Geek Native carried this week was the Horus Heresy RPG.
We can’t call it a Warhammer 40k RPG because it’s set in the Warhammer 30K universe. However, it certainly defines 40K.
The Cubicle 7 game starts with the PCs caught up in the opening battle of the Civil War. It sounds exciting. I note, though, some comments we’ve had from people wishing the publisher would support Soulbound more. I get it, I prefer classic Warhammer to the others. However, I do wonder how much call Cubicle 7 have over any of this or whether it’s directed by sales and Games Workshop.
On that note, there’s a Warhammer 40K TV show coming. How much do you want to bet that Henry Cavill’s sci-fi will be the Horus Hersey now?
Interestingly, there’s no mention of a Kickstarter or BackerKit crowdfunding campaign. This game is coming.
In contrast, Free League Publishing has announced the Invincible RPG.
They already have Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead as an RPG and will bring this superhero story to Kickstarter. I’m sure it’ll smash targets.
I must admit, I don’t have the Walking Dead Universe so I don’t know how or if it focuses on named characters from the comic books or show but I imagine it does not have to. I can’t imagine that for Invincible. I think the characters in this series define the universe and I always worry that makes for an awkward TTRPG.
I sometimes wonder whether that main character problem is why there are so few anime-inspired RPGs.
I wrote about Sweet this week. I didn’t write about the Dark Horse comic app shutting down; I ran out of time, but Sweet should launch this year and be an alternative. It signed Image comics this week.
Sweet is a subscription-free comic book reader that supports sidescrolling and does so from left-to-right and right-to-left. Therefore, it should be great for Western comics and manga. Yeah, that’s why I mentioned the lack of anime-inspired TTRPGs a minute ago. I call that a clumsy attempt to turn this highlights show into some sort of narrative.
I can stick with anime and manga as I move onto Bronwen’s cover of the new Yu-Gi-Oh collection from Mondo.
Yes, there’s a large model of the Blue-Eyes Dragon, but for the most part what’s happening here are Yu-Gi-Oh cards turned supersized so that the work as posters. It’s a fanastic idea and while I’ve not seen it done before i’m sure it must have been because it’s so obvious.
Let’s stay with collectable card games because Geek Native also had news about Project K.
Project K is the code name for the forthcoming League of Legends card game. Previously, Riot had denied the game would get a worldwide release when news of the Chinese release came out. Now we know that some English-speaking markets will get the game once they work out the rules and pick the title.
Riot are cautious about naming those English-speaking markets and this is just my speculation but I suspect they’re worried about the potential of tariffs making the game expensive for League of Legends fans in the USA.
If you’ll allow me more speculation, then I’ll talk about Lost Odyssey: Godfall.
Godfall is a charity one-shot actual play from Pathfinder and a host of stars. I mean Matt Mercer, Deborah Ann Woll from Daredevil, Felicia Day from Supernatural, Brandon Routh, who was Superman in Superman and Reggie Watts.
What’s my speculation? I note that it’s a one-shot in two parts, and one part is VR. I like the sound of virtual reality streaming, although I’m a theatre-of-the-mind style of tabletop roleplayer. If I had VR TTRPG technology, I might imagine people would object to change, and therefore, the way to get around that would be to introduce it through celeb-filled special events and then slowly push it into the mainstream.
Before we get into the one bundle I wrote up, I want to mention that Chaosium turn 50 this year. On Geek Native, there’s now a “Wish Chaosium” button, and, well, let me say you have to be brave to push it. Find it via the links in the show notes, and if you do push it then just sit back and watch.
The bundle deal is a group of adventures from the Potbellied Kobold, which you can get from the Bundle of Holding.
On that note, keep safe, don’t invade Ukraine and see you next week.
