Fantasy Flight miniatures games are handing over management to Atomic Mass Games also owned by Asmodee. They had success last year with Marvel Crisis Protocol. This will include their Star Wars games, X-Wing, Armada and Legion. Fans seem to be happy with the move. Many modern boardgames are having new branded editions using Disney IPs, including Star Wars, Marvel and Disney Parks. Is this a good move to get more people into the hobby? Does this mean these modern games are considered classics? Or will this ruin the experience and players will feel they have outgrown them? Also, Disney has stopped paying royalties to Alan Dean Foster for his novelization and sequel novels for Star Wars and also the Alien franchise. What does this mean for copyright and the future of creatives writing for established IPs? #DisneyMustPay #atomicmassgames #starwars #alien
Former Blizzard executives and World of Warcraft directors, Chris Metzen and Mike Gilmartin, are starting a tabletop company, based on their Orange County gaming club, called Warchief Gaming. Critical Role launches their own publishing company called Darrington Press. They have four titles scheduled for 2021 releases including RPG, boardgame, and card game titles. Should Wizards of the Coast be paying attention? Our topic for this week is Gatekeeping, its origins, and difficulties in tabletop games as well as other popular culture.
#criticalrole #blizzard #gatekeeping
Games Workshop licensing is now open to proposals for merchandise using the Warhammer IP. This includes crowdfunding those projects on Kickstarter. The authors of the Dragonlance novels, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, are suing Wizards of the Coast due to the breakdown of the revision process for the first draft of the first book of the, now in doubt, next trilogy of novels. Our topic this week is about using horror in your tabletop games. What are the considerations and how should you pace a one-shot or campaign?
#horror #dragonlance #gamesworkshop
Hasbro has revealed their plans to “reprint” Heroquest through their HasLab crowd-funding-like website. Honey & Hot Wax is an anthology of sex-positive roleplaying games. The collection of games varies from 2-player to games needing 6 to 12 players along with a facilitator or two. It is published by Pelgrane Press and was edited by Lucian Kahn and Sharang Biswas with a foreword by Naomi Clark of Consentacle. An open license for creating content for Mork Borg, the award-winning game published by Free League. The latest Adventurer’s League Guide contains new custom racial ability score rules. This gives us a preview of the new rules that Wizards of the Coast will be adding to 5E in the release of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything coming soon. We lament the failure of 2020 as the year of Dune, with only the boardgame reprint being released while the Denis Villeneuve feature film and Modiphius 2d20 system will not be released until next year.
The DriveThru RPG website is previewing its long-overdue redesign. Free League released a new adventure module for their Alien RPG called Destroyer of Worlds. It is a boxed set and features the colonial space marines prominently. Stay frosty. They also released a starter box that is a collection of the game accessories they previously released along with custom dice and a condensed rulebook. Dark World Studios will be running a crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter for their Acheron RPG. Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden is the newest campaign module for 5E of the World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game. Buy us a copy and force Chris to review it! Ultraviolet Grasslands by Luka Rejec has a free player’s guide available and the physical game is available at the Exalted Funeral webstore.
Morning Coffee for a New Lover is an RPG by Nathan Black printed on an actual coffee mug. The Dead Milkmen have written a D&D 5E module called Lost Tomb of the Bitchin’ Chimera named for their track Bitchin’ Camaro on Kickstarter. The Wretched RPG by Chris Bissette is also on Kickstarter for its second printing and other stretch goals. Humble Bundle and Frog God Games collaborate to bring you a big sampling of OSR (Old School Revival/Renassaince) starting at only one dollar. Featuring Swords & Wizardry, Castles & Crusades and Borderland Provinces.
Free League is developing a new version of Twilight 2000 that was funded on Kickstarter. It will be a boxed set and was developed in collaboration with Game Designer’s Workshop. The Chronicle system that powered Green Ronin’s A Song of Ice and Fire RPG will now be available as a setting neutral ruleset called Sword Chronicle. There were some minor to armor and intrigue, but it will play very similar to the first incarnation. Thousand Suns RPG by Grognardia Games and designed by James Maliszewski is worth a look if you are looking for a scfi system that was inspired by the “imperial” science fiction of the 1950s and 60s. It uses a 2d12 system called the 12 Degree system. Chris will play in a session of Visigoths vs. Mall Goths by Lucius Kahn @oh_theogony. Plus a quick explanation of what the medals awarded to DriveThru RPG sellers mean. #indiegames #greenronin #twilight2000
Following the miniatures skirmish boardgame, Mantic is following up with a Hellboy TTPRG designed by Marc Langworthy of Red Scar Publishing. It will launch on Kickstarter and be powered by 5E of the World’s Greatest Role-playing Game. Amazon releases Starfinder audio game for Alexa. Featuring the voices of Nathan Fillion and Laura Bailey. GenCon Online releases the winners of the 2020 Ennie awards. Again this year Free League is a big winner with the Alien RPG and Mörk Borg. Thousand Year Old Vampire and Ironsworn Delve were also winners. As of this release, the Star Trek 2d20 Humble Bundle is now concluded, but the PDFs are available on DriveThruRPG and the free quickstart is on the Modiphius store. The Masters of the Universe going to be a pen and paper RPG power by Cortex Prime. Legends of Grayskull will be published in 2021 and will include a 250-page hardcover guidebook with pull-out maps, a digital companion, a community content creation and sharing platform, and an organized play program.
A new TTRPG based on the new A24 film, directed by David Lowery, “The Green Knight” starring Dev Patel as Gawain. The Green Knight: A Quest for Honor RPG will include a Game Master’s Guide (with Rules of Play, Official Encounters, and A24 Bonus Quests), Map of the Realm, 5 character sheets, and a 20-sided die. NBCUniversal is entering the comic book industry at possibly the worst (or best?) time with the talents of Grant Morrison. Their fist title penned by Morrison will be Proctor Valley Road, the story of a group of girls that are suspected in the murders of teen boys. Hasbro is flexing its IP muscles by combining My Little Pony and Dungeons and Dragons. They will release a set of 5 4 1/2 inch ponies themed on the Rogue, Barbarian, Druid, and Wizard character classes. The set will also include a d20 and a pony-themed GM’s screen. Hasbro is also producing a new board game named “Dungeons and Dragons Adventure Begins”. This game is one of the only D&D items to be branded Hasbro as opposed to Wizards of the Coast. It includes 4 plastic miniatures, 4 20-sided dice, game tiles, and cards. The game is cooperative and made for 2-4 players ages 10 and up. Another D&D gateway product that will probably not find the same young audiences as the amazing Dungeon! or Heroquest games.
Orion Black quits their position at Wizards of the Coast and releases a long statement explaining why. An open letter to Games Workshop is posted as a response to their “Warhammer is for everyone” inclusivity statement and especially the ending ” You will not be missed.” Critical Role responds to a claim fo unpaid employment. Dungeons and Dragons now prints a legacy disclaimer on all of their digital publications prior to 2014. Quest, an adventure game, not an RPG, by The Adventure Guild has been released with ambitions to also create a publishing platform. Will the tabletop hobby see its own “Epic Gamestore” muscle in on DriveThruRPG?
