Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for April 5th, and the episode title is “Retirement and reviews”.
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #282]
[Also on Stitcher | Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
Keith DEdinburgh won the RPG Publisher Spotlight this month.
The good news is that I’m already in contact with Keith.
Thank you, as ever, to Geek Native’s Patrons for your support and votes in the poll. The May link is live on Patreon, and the candidates are;
Wikipedia says Chris Perkins is 57. The Canadian is no longer the creative director of D&D. He has retired. In many ways, he’s going out strong and as D&D turns 50.
I wonder if this is a retirement in which Chris fades quietly into the background to get out of the harsh glare of fan fury or whether we’ll see him again. There’s no wrong choice here. I can imagine he’d want out from the dramas the industry likes to brew, but it would be a shame to never see him again.
Bronwen wrote up the news, quoting Chris from BlueSky where he says; “See you in the Feywild!”
Chris Perkins isn’t the only retirement story this week. ICv2 has the news that Amy Lowe has resigned. Amy might not be a household name like Chris Perkins but she was the marketing and communications manager at GAMA. That’s the game makers association out of America and Amy seems mighty mad at them.
She says it’s a silo’d organisation, and broken, she says there’s rampant gatekeeping, toxic leadership and it’s a place where insecurity masquerades as control.
There does seem to have been some changes in GAMA. Executive Director John Stacy did provide a statement in which he explains the organisation has nearly doubled in size and made some structural changes. He also thanked Amy for her brief time with GAMA and wished her well.
Ouch.
Sometimes timing matters because GAMA managed to communicate this week without their comms manager. They came out against Trump’s tariffs.
You can read their statements on Geek Native, and I’ve pulled their two closely but not exactly aligned releases together. To paraphrase, GAMA notes tariffs will make the cost of board and card games higher, which will hurt sales and jobs, and there’s no way to make these games in the States yet.
Outside the tabletop space, Bronwen was one of the first people to watch and review Crunchyroll’s new The Beginning After the End anime.
It appears to be a reincarnation anime, perhaps an isekai and these are new genres to Bronwen and it’ll be interesting to see what she makes of the series with that in mind.
I reviewed Deep Regrets, a board game we saw first at Tabletop Scotland, and I enjoyed it. You play as Lovecraftian fishers who have to risk hauling dangerous and odd creatures from the sea, trading them in port for new gear and with your sanity on the line all the time.
I also reviewed the Dungeonmeister’s RPG Sticker Book which was an easy call. What could go wrong with stickers? I have them everywhere. I recommend combining them with cheap poker chips for quick markers.
In local news, Chaosium will be providing next week’s Compulsion with a support package. That means there’s $500 worth of products from the publisher available. We’re also starting the convention off with a talk on horror.
In bundles and at the Bundle of Holding there’s the voidmining game Stillfleet on offer and two deals on the Hong Kong action movie Feng Shui RPG.
Meanwhile, there’s the computer game bundle Dice & Destiny on Humble and for Steam fans.
On that note, keep safe, and see you next time.
