Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for March 15th, and the episode title is “Yoto does D&D as GAMA shortlists rivals”.
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #279]
[Also on Stitcher | Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
Stonehome Games won the RPG Publisher Spotlight this month.
The good news is that I’m mid-Q&A with Stonehome’s Drew, but that’s also the bad news. You’ve heard me say this before: the ball’s in my court.
I’m late, in part, because work had a St. Patrick’s Day pub crawl on Friday. Yes, I know, Geek Native is Scottish but we like to support our Irish brothers and sisters as appropriate.
Did you know that the real St. Patrick wasn’t born in Ireland, but was a Roman Brit who was kidnapped by raiders. The myth about chasing snakes out of Ireland is about chasing evil from Ireland; sadly, in this case, the so-called evil was probably the native religious belief.
Scotland has St Andrew, who was Greek and is shared as the patron saint of various countries, including Russia and Ukraine. Awkward.
I don’t often talk about crowdfunding projects on the podcast, but Hero Forge caught my eye this week as being innovative.
Typically, Hero Forge lets you design a mini for free using your web browser and then, for a small mountain of cash, get a colour version of that mini 3d printed and sent to you.
Previously, I’ve talked about the wisdom of Roll20 getting into this area and using the model design tech for their character builders like Demiplane.
Hero Forge have found another route. They can now 3d print dice. It takes special printers, but they’ve made it work.
As a result, you can design your own 3d insert for balanced gamer dice. For example, you can have you Warlock’s familiar in the dice you use to play the character, or your Dragonborn’s head in the d20 you use for dramatic roles.
As a rule, I like “Sell One Make One” as an approach because it feels a less wasteful approach to consumption than mass production. That’s why you can find Geek Native’s store on Redbubble.
I am a little worried about the booming industry of artisan dice makers you can find on Etsy and across the internet but I think there’s room for both. All we need is tabletop games to remain popular enough for gamers to crave mathrocks.
Also, if I had to pick just one survivor in head to head battle; I’ll go with the little guy each time. But, as I said, I don’t think it’ll come to that. Instead, we’ve got some hardware innovation in the physical space of tabletop gaming and that’s rare. Well done, Hero Forge.
On a similar note, there’s now an official interactive audiobook adventure for D&D. It’s for kids.
With the right license, the for-kids smart speaker company Yoto has published Forge Your Quest. You can buy it now.
The Yoto is a smart speaker without a screen which does not need an internet connection and is therefore unable to connect small people to the dangers of the open web. Instead, they can face the dangers of the Undermountain in a far more age appropriate way.
I think we’re someway off from seeing audiobooks winning TTRPG awards though.
GAMA have released the finalists for the 2025 Origins Awards. The full list is on the blog and we’ve a mix of games like D&D 2024, Cowboy Bebop, Pathfinder, Mothership, Star Trek and others.
I’m not sure how important it is for D&D 2024 to win but it’ll be headlines either way. There will also be two winners of the RPG section; one voted for the jury and one by the public.
On the blog this week, I interviewed Fern of Studio Hex about a game called Hellborn Descended.
It’s an adult take on stories like Hazbin Hotel where the PCs are mercenaries fighting in Hell’s many wars. I think the art is stunning, and I discovered that Studio Hex found the artist, Helena Santana, on Fiverr.
If you don’t know, Fiverr is a market where people offer to do things like write, design, voice-over, etc, for a little cash. Hence the name. For years, I would say it had a less than shiny reputation and some people worried it undercut professionals but I think we’re in a different era now. Now artists compete against generative AI, and Fiverr connects people to people.
My bright idea this week came from beer glasses. There are two sizes of customisable beer glasses on Firebox and both feature a loading health bar. Firebox has “Dad Joke loading…” printed on them but you can customise to your own wishes. What about “Patch applying…” or “Inventory consuming…” as alternatives?
In bundles, I found time to highlight the Bundle of Holding’s deal on Tiny Supers and I think it’s worth checking out at least one of the Tiny d6 games.
Lastly, and timed for the D&D Beyond sale on the Shadow of the Dragon Queen, Humble has a three-tier deal on ePubs from Dragonlance.
On that note, keep safe, beware Kenders and see you next week.
