Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for March 29th, and the episode title is “Cheese and Gary Con”.
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #281]
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Stonehome Games won the RPG Publisher Spotlight this month.
In a conversation with Drew from Stonehome we talk about Dromaria, the free campaign setting they have online, and plans to expand on it. As ever, you can find out more on the blog.
It’s the last week to vote for April’s candidate and you can do so at Patron. The candidates are;
I’ve been super busy these last few days with the day job and it feels like a slow news week. In part, I think, that’s due to publishers and gamers being at Gary Con and WonderCon. Both are big enough to be Don’t Miss events, but neither one is known for big announcements.
The announcement I did notice from Gary Con was about the late Chaosium’s Greg Stafford getting the E. Gary Gygax Lifetime Achievement Award. About time. Don’t you think?
I suppose “about time” is what fans of Elizabeth Moon’s Pakensarrion books might say. That’s the series that started with the Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, but I’ll admit I’d not heard of them.
The old fantasy series about a young woman becoming a paladin hit my radar for the first time this week with the announcement from Brittannia Games that they had signed the TTRPG license to release Paksword.
The British publisher makes Chivarly & Sorcery.
Paksworld will be developed for two systems. One system is their Skillshape and the second the version of 5e governed by the SRD 5.2 document.
The complex state of 5e OGL’s is the focus of our next story. Wyrmworks Publishing is crowdfunding but already released Free5e.
You can get Free5e for free but you can also support it. The point of Free5e is to be accessible for everyone, and includes in terms on money, and it’s an open system which supports 5e spinoffs such as Tales of teh Valiant and Level Up: Advanced 5e.
You can find it on Kickstarter.
In other TTRPG news, and perhaps on the obscure side, David Stewart II’s publishing empire includes companies like Magnetic Press Play, who have roleplaying games like the Planet of the Apes in their roster.
In a merger of responsibility and likely economies of scale, the comic book publisher, Oni Press, will take on the distribution of Magnetic Press’ books. There will be some marketing bonuses too. I imagine, in part, this is due to the Chapter 11 filing of Diamond Comic in January, a move which shook the market in the US.
Speaking amount moving, Bronwen did the influencer thing and snapped some photographs of herself on an exercise bike at the gym. Let me be clear. It wasn’t one of those types of photographs.
Instead, she was modelling for a review of a t-shirt from The Spark, a woman-owned company, which read They Can’t Burn Us All and depicts woman chanting in a ritual circle. We’ve blogged about them before. I have an anti-Patriarchy tee from them, which I wear and generally get angry responses from men.
My own contrabution to life-finds this week was much smaller. All I found was a magic sword. By magic sword, I mean cheese grater, and my cheese grater, I mean a cheese grater that’s shaped like a magic sword. Guess what? It looks neat and grates cheese.
Lastly, in discounts, I wrote up the Bundle of Holding offer for Into the Wyrd and Wild. That’s a whole RPG and supplements in a single-tier offer. It’s a zero-to-hero deal.
On that note, keep safe, eat cheese and see you next week.
