Up next in 10
This month on Tavern Watch, we discuss the messy release of D&D's 2024 edition, which was staggered out into 2025... and seems to have lost some hype in the process. But Wizards of the Coast could turn things around, with an upcoming live action D&D show on Netflix and two new Forgotten Realms books coming out late this year. Plus all the games we're looking forward to, in which Liz could probably spend the entire show talking about Magpie's Fallen London Kickstarter (but doesn't).
Subscribe to Tavern Watch in your podcast player of choice!
RSS: https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/674cf5861c6967d814005868
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3qIQaOPskXoKmqqOqNYz1k
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tavern-watch-podcast/id1788120623
Go to https://blizzardwatch.com for the latest news on all Blizzard games and don't forget to check out our Patreon if you like what you see and want to support our efforts! https://www.patreon.com/blizzardwatch
Discord: https://discord.gg/MY9p4d7t8U
X: @BlizzardWatch
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:01
[Music]
0:27
heyen wellmet traveler welcome to the tavern did you know this is the place where
0:32
more than half of the greatest adventures in history have begun but before those adventurers took their first steps they watched and calculated
0:39
who would join their party why look over there there's a mighty barbarian from the Frozen lands strong Mighty full of
0:47
honor and wisdom I happen to know that one they go by Matt
0:53
Rossy and look over there to the right that woman working away on her mechanical dog she's Hunning witty and
1:01
I've seen her bounce more than her fair share of Nells out of here before I can even blink I have to know that she goes
1:08
by the name Liz Harper and me oh my name is Joe prz and
1:14
I'll be your Tavern key welcome to Tavern watch Hello
1:20
everybody and welcome to an episode of Tavern watch I'm one of your Tavern
1:26
Keepers Joe Perez and with me as always my partner in crime Liz Harper and
1:31
joining us today is Phil rrick who is quite into tabletop games and all things
1:38
of that Variety in case you didn't know so first of all thank you both for joining us today it is always a pleasure
1:45
to chat with you Joe fantastic to be here wonderful I like talking with Nerds that like the stuff that I do it makes
1:50
my life so much easier yeah nerds being nerds that's
1:56
what we're here for indeed and as I just spent my day currently uh I started my day playing uh Magic the Gathering and
2:02
eating pizza like a teenager uh I figured this is a great way to round out my evening so what have you guys been
2:09
playing like what I know we just got done uh with a recording uh session a
2:14
live play session for triangle agency which we can maybe get Phil to talk about a little bit um which I'm still in
2:20
the process of editing because I found some fantastic music and have to do some voiceover work for it um but like what
2:28
are you guys into what you playing what are you reading what what's on what's on the table for you I guess we'll start
2:34
with Phil okay uh well like you said we just wrapped up triangle agency which is a fantastic game can't wait for you guys
2:41
to hear that um just uh yeah it's going to be very cool uh think like uh SCP and
2:48
control mixed with like weird corporate stuff all Severance or uh other shows
2:54
like that uh it's going to be a good time um as for actually playing right now um I'm in a uh a couple of I'm inan
3:02
one 5e game that's kind of hitting its stride now we're kind of mid levels we uh we had the plot McGuffin things are
3:09
happening that's fun um and I've been playing a traveler second edition game
3:14
which is for people who have't experienced traveler it's a game that dates back to the 70s and it's in like
3:19
its second edition at this point but um you could die with your character
3:25
creation oh second edition patched it out now you can only come out grievously in oh that's no fun or actually and this
3:32
one hits a little too close to home in medical debt because who working for at the time fixed it for you um but we're
3:40
uh we're I I set an interesting challenge for that to try to make a character who was literally no good at
3:46
combat whatsoever because we had a lot of characters who were taking like skills and weapons and like military
3:51
career paths and everything I'm like I'm going to make a lawyer oh so yeah we have like we have
3:57
like a lawyer and a PR person and then like the muscle um we have a very interesting crew um and as for reading
4:05
besides the affirmation triag agency I've also been looking through uh the Ashan version of realis which is a game
4:13
from the people the people who make friends at the table which uh I will probably talk about later because I
4:19
think I stuck that in our topics um realis is a very interesting diceless
4:25
storytelling system that is 100% my BS so um yeah it it it's it's very it's
4:32
interesting the inspiration and how that shaped the whole game but we can get into that later uh what have you been up
4:38
to Liz uh well I have a dolman wood game going that's kind of very old school DND
4:43
D and it's very fun because I am playing uh gri grimlin grimlin which is a cat
4:50
person and I'm an enchanter and I have absolutely no useful combat skills so
4:56
it's when I'm there it's like everyone else is killing things and I'm mostly getting the crap beaten out of me if I
5:03
get in anyone's way so it has been very fun but it's you know what it's like playing games we can organize like one
5:11
game a month and so the story moves forward at this glacial Pace um I mean
5:17
it's no surprise to either of you that I have been reading up on the new fallen London game which just went live on
5:23
Kickstarter uh made by Magpie I'm very excited about that I have started reading the Quick Start but I haven't
5:30
gotten through all of it yet and uh I was watching the live play earlier today they released a live play um with some
5:37
great folks in it that uh I have been enjoying but I actually had to turn it off because I had to show up and talk to
5:43
you guys uh and I have been combing through
5:50
TOS uh so I think I mentioned this in one of our podcasts I'm currently looking at uh maybe trying to run
5:58
something for kids on brooms which I think is a really neat game um it is
6:04
part of the basis of stuff like uh you may have seen on like Dimension 20 uh
6:10
where they did play kids on bikes uh I think they did play kids on brooms at one point and then the don't stop
6:15
blowing up is based off of that system as well uh but I really enjoy it it's very simple it doesn't require a whole
6:21
lot of brain power to really muscle your way through and then lends itself very much to collaborative storytelling which
6:28
is a lot of what I'm into uh I'm still working on the finer details of a game
6:33
that uses uh CU Space Cowboy for the boots on the ground portion of it but then flips to Lancer for the ship and
6:42
Mech combat uh because it's a little more detailed than CU next uh CU Space
6:47
Cowboy uh so I'm looking at that and then currently I have been asked by one
6:53
of the folks from my shop to come in temporarily they're doing a world of Darkness game um and I haven't played
7:00
world of Darkness since like 2001 2002 something like that um me either at this
7:06
point yeah but they they really wanted somebody who is not like a teenage child
7:13
uh in the game for at least at least a couple sessions to kind of like get people like on track and I was like okay
7:19
well maybe I'll do that and I started looking at how things have changed uh and my favorite Clan actually has been
7:25
updated to be part of the camarilla and I'm super excited um they're now called the Banu hakeim and I've been reading
7:32
all about them and how they've changed and evolved and made them way less problematic than they were originally
7:38
were when they were released um which makes it very fun for me because it was
7:44
always like I always like them because they were this idea of uh trying to think how to phrase this they were like Templars almost they were like Arbiters
7:51
of of justice and like like Hardline as far as like rules of Life go even in
7:56
undeath uh and often referred to as like clean ERS or situational fixers and I
8:02
always like that cuz they would just no I don't care if you're one of the quote good guys you did something stupid you
8:07
need to pay the price uh and so I was like H maybe I'll float this by them and
8:12
I'm I'm and so far they're like yeah please do this yes please keep everybody inine we want this so I might do that
8:19
for a little bit so that's that's what I've got on my docket and a little bit about what I'm looking forward to which
8:24
is going to be our second topic here and I want to I want to give this to Liz and I want Liz
8:30
gush because this is something that I know uh I never played the web based
8:35
game uh my partner did I never did um so I know very little about it so Liz let's
8:41
talk about that Kickstarter from Magpie Fallen London the role playing game go
8:47
just have as much time as you want with it so fall in London is based on a
8:54
little web game that is it's got to be over a decade old and the premise it's
9:00
just a silly little game that you go in it's kind of a card game you get cards you play them each card is a story you
9:07
go through these little story lits that send you around the world you have stats that you advance you have gear that you
9:14
collect and the entire premise of the game is that you're in Victorian London
9:19
except Victorian London was pulled down into a cavern by bats 40 years ago as of
9:25
the time of this setting and things have gotten a little appeared since then just
9:31
a a tiny bit so death is no longer a necessity exactly the uh the Neath as
9:40
they call it is ruled over by the masters of the bizaar strange cloaked figures that they their their desires
9:48
are a little confusing at best and they're they're very menacing they're
9:53
claymen people literally made of clay there are the tomb colonists who are
9:59
people who have died and returned so much that they are just literally falling apart so there are these sort of
10:06
bandaged not exactly Undead because death is not really a thing there are
10:12
the rubbery men tentacled creatures and uh there are the rattis
10:18
fabber who are just they're just rats except they're rats that talk they're very industrious but it's it's this
10:25
Victorian London setting where everything has just it's gotten a little Weir weird and so in the beginning you
10:31
know it's just this cute little web game you're playing through these little stories except now it's been around for
10:37
so long that the stories have branched and gotten huge and have gone in all
10:42
sorts of different crazy directions so it's turned into this vast world and
10:49
it's a great world to tell stories in they've had a few video games uh sunless
10:54
Seas sunless Skies they've had a recent one mask of the Rose which was really
11:01
fun it was kind of a dating Sim in Fallen London that uh took place right
11:06
after London fell so they've already got this world that they've been exploring
11:11
for many years and exploring in different formats but it's one of those settings that's going to be great for a
11:17
tabletop game because there are room for stories stories of all sorts and in the
11:24
game you are going to be a member of a concern a group of people who are
11:31
dedicated to one thing so I think that starts it off nicely because you can
11:36
have all of these different characters but you're starting off saying okay we're in a group and we have this goal
11:42
to do a thing whatever your goal is maybe you want to hunt the most dangerous creatures of theath maybe you
11:48
want to end death maybe you want to return to the surface uh so you have
11:53
some greater goal and I think that kind of keeps it maybe a little focused but I
11:59
mean the best part is that this is a world based on stories and this gives us a a Fram set for telling more and new
12:07
stories of our own and I'm just I'm really excited to get into this and check this out and explore stories that
12:14
you could tell in this world that uh fail better games who has made fall in London for all these years have been
12:20
telling for over a decade now so I am just so excited this is this is a great
12:26
place to to set a story like there have been some tabletop games that it's like
12:32
okay I love this thing but is it going to work as a game and one of the recent
12:37
ones was welcome to nightville welcome night to nightville recently had a crowdfunding campaign for a tabletop
12:43
game and I love welcome to nightville I'm interested to see what happens here
12:49
but it's like okay what it's an interesting world but what what space is there for other stories besides this
12:56
sort of straightforward straightforward is the wrong word this Narrative of you know the radio host and the small but
13:04
beautiful desert town that uh that they're talking about week to week so
13:10
I'm I'm interested in some of these but Fallen London just you can just immediately see the potential and how
13:15
many different places there are to go and tell stories about and invent weird
13:21
characters and do weird things so I I think that's what makes it great is that it's this great setting that has all of
13:29
these narrative possibilities interesting characters the campaign has already blasted past its Kickstarter
13:35
goal it uh started asking for $50,000 and it's uh it's closing in on
13:42
700,000 right now so and it's only been live a few days at this point five days
13:50
and gosh and I feel like so Magpie also did Avatar Legends which I I think you
13:58
are prob all familiar with that one it was a record setting Kickstarter and it
14:05
feels like they're following that same formula except like they were prepared
14:11
to go over this $50,000 goal and I felt like with Avatar they maybe weren't
14:17
prepared but it's like every time they hit a new Milestone it's like okay we're going to have a new character uh a new
14:23
character that we're going to roll out the character that could be the benefactor for your concern or a character you might meet or so they're
14:30
just every kind of mini goal they hit they have something new already planned
14:36
out and it's things the world of the game has already hinted at but they're going to flesh it out so you can play
14:42
with it easily in the tabletop game so it's like every even though they were
14:47
only looking for $50,000 every time they hit a new Milestone it's like oh great there's
14:53
something new and exciting there waiting for us that sounds I don't I'm really
14:58
interested in I think uh I think my partner's probably going to go all in on the uh the kickstarter at a certain
15:04
level if not already I'm looking over at the couch at them right now like falling London that's that's the
15:11
nod uh so we will definitely have it in the house so I'm looking forward to uh to looking it over uh also I just I I
15:19
keep looking at stuff like that I love physical books and I love the concept of this seems like it's going to have a
15:24
really wild aesthetic and I'm really into to that type of thing so I'm
15:31
looking forward to getting my first look at it I guess would be the best way to phrase it so super excited about that
15:39
well when we have something more than this quick start which I I think character generation is one of the most
15:45
fun parts of any game seeing what your options are seeing what directions you can go the quick start right now only
15:51
has pre-generated characters but as soon as we get something that doesn't have
15:56
pregenerated characters where we can play with that space and make our own characters I'm definitely running a game
16:02
with this but it's also not do out until 2026 and that feel so far away I want to
16:09
play it right now yeah it's like a present it's like a present for future Liz it's a it's a it
16:15
is it yeah that's how I think of kickstarters at this point so now we
16:21
know that that's what Liz is looking for is there anything else that you were looking forward yeah this one has really dominated my attention so not at the
16:29
moment all right what about you Phil you looking for anything in particular um I mean I'm I'm I don't think I'm as
16:35
excited as Liz for the fall in London Kickstarter but I am interested I have uh I have backed it at the at least get
16:41
a corebook level and I really keep looking at that really cool deluxe edition it is nice um let's see I've
16:48
been looking at so we got character generation rules finally for uh legend in the Mist uh which is um so son of Oak
16:56
games made city of mist which was kind of an nor detective uh SL urban fantasy game um and then their most recent game
17:06
is legend in the Mist which is a described as a rustic fantasy uh think like uh the hobbits leaving the sh for
17:12
the first time or like the first book of The Wheel of Time that kind of feel of like normal people taking their step
17:17
into a broader World um is kind of the feeling they're going for with uh um legend in the mist and we finally got
17:24
character creation rules for it um we tossed around the idea of doing a uh doing a shot with the quick start for
17:31
that but it was a limited to three people um which plus a DM which was a
17:36
little tight for uh a blizzard watch recording um because you like to get everybody in who wants to play cuz scheduling is tough and getting people
17:43
in when they can get in as you know also a priority for us um but now we have
17:49
character creation rules uh fully fleshed out and that's really the part we're missing to be able to play the uh
17:54
the quick the the quick start adventure with um and actually son of Oak has
18:00
another product coming out soon in between uh city of the or city of mist and legend of the Mist they released a
18:06
game called other scape I think it's other scape I always get the name um it's a yeah it's other scape kind of an
18:13
I guess I would call it an urban fantasy cyberpunk game like the only game I've seen that kind of comes close to trying
18:19
to tread the same mix of fantasy and cyber Punk that shadow run has taken on
18:25
um the idea being that these things that represent stories and legends and myths have always existed in the background of
18:30
the real world but um things just get to a certain point with technology where people are distracted enough that these
18:36
mythic forces can actually kind of like make themselves known and be like you know movers and shakers in the in the
18:43
world again um others scape has a couple setting books coming out and one of them
18:48
very interesting to me is they are publishing others scape Cairo um and they're actually getting like actual
18:55
Egyptian native authors to work on this with them so it's not just you know a bunch of people from the West writing
19:02
about Egypt so you don't get like you know as much as I love it the mummy um
19:07
like people who actually know the country in depth and who love it and who are bringing it into this cool Urban nor
19:13
cyberscape setting so I'm very interested in others scape Egypt coming out soon uh I don't and I mean of course
19:21
uh like I said I've been when I said earli I've been reading the Ashan version of realis eventually that'll have a published version probably year
19:29
or two from now so looking forward to that I guess very nice uh one that I was
19:34
looking forward to this year which I mean it's supposed to be releasing this year I believe it's up for pre-order now
19:39
uh had another it was another one that had a uh very successful Kickstarter uh
19:46
and uh was created by one of my favorite uh ttrpg companies exalted funeral uh or
19:51
at least through them there the ones that ran the the kickstarter is dolman wood um I'm not sure if either of you
19:57
are familiar with that at all a little mhm I for those of you that are at home
20:02
uh it's a fantasy Adventure game uh set in a world inspired by fairy tales and
20:08
folklore of the British Isles I kind of like games that look at fairy tales
20:14
because I think that a lot of games I'm trying to think how to phrase this and I and I apologize words are hard I like
20:20
when they lean into that because I think it's C it keeps that culturally aware I
20:27
guess would be the best way to put it like it put it forward and I think when you think of fairy tales you often think
20:33
of like the stuff we saw on Disney right and the truth is most of them are way Grimmer and very much more dark than you
20:41
originally anticipate and a lot of them lend themselves really cool to like or
20:46
to really cool settings or really interesting adventures and I think it could be a lot of
20:51
fun so I missed the kickstarter um but the pre-order for dolman wood is up now
20:57
and I'm pretty sure I'm going to wind up grabbing the uh core box set which has the three books which players book The
21:03
Campaign book and the monster book which uh is really all you need to play there's also other stuff available but
21:09
they have a really really really pretty uh leatherette slip case version with
21:15
very sexy covers on the books and uh I a sucker for pretty book covers like super
21:21
super super sucker for it mhm hey Liz this game also has galin
21:27
just like the uh the other game you're playing so it does weird yeah I really like this approach of taking a look at
21:34
local local non-generic fantasy and Fairy Tales um vison I think is how you
21:41
say it by um fre league is another cool one in the Spain because it uses um like
21:46
Nordic fairy tales as its basis um so it ends up it's it's not what you would
21:51
even think of as like a St it's like urban fantasy but steeped in Nordic fairy tales so it ends up being it it
21:58
also ends up being pretty cool um although the game itself kind of falls down on points from what I understand but the idea is very good the other one
22:07
that I thought was interesting too that I came across that I believe is also due out this year if not already out I have
22:13
to double check but I think it was also again a Kickstarter that was very
22:19
successful for what it asked I think it asked for $800,000 and got uh something in the
22:25
tune of $4.6 million um um which is draw steel um which has one very interesting
22:34
concept that I think I really dig for certain games which is your characters do start at level one but you're already
22:41
a hero you might even be locally famous so it's your characters are basically
22:47
made to be not just weaklings at level one it really plays into the old concept
22:53
of when you were a level one character in like D and D you were a hero you should be hero you should feel you know
23:01
powerful enough or at least not scared to go and explore Dungeons and then everybody else in the world was
23:07
essentially level zero um other other games have done that like Dungeon Crawl and and a bunch of others but I like
23:13
games that do this and I'm very curious about it because a lot of the artwork
23:18
looks like this interesting combination of like your classic fantasy art and
23:24
like with elements of like some art deco in there um it is not afraid to have
23:29
various different uh art about like different characterist characteristics
23:34
like people with different skin colors or maybe it's a female dwarf that's on there instead of just a regular random
23:40
generic fantasy dwarf uh like I like those types of ideas and I still really do enjoy fantasy quite a bit so I'm
23:48
probably going to check this out as so that's also on my hor was there anything else you guys were interested in or or
23:55
that's coming up that you might have feelings about I
24:00
guess I'll I'll take silence as a not uh and now for the hot topic that we
24:08
were going to talk about and we almost talked about during the podcast and then we stopped ourselves uh so all these
24:15
games are coming up but one game that is releasing at least just finished releasing its monster manual uh was the
24:22
DND D books the new edition of DnD 5.5 or whatever you want to call it um I
24:29
think it's interesting and we talked about this a little bit and I'm kind of curious your thoughts on it one thing I think that is a detriment to how they've
24:36
been releasing these books not only the uh economy of time between the players
24:41
handbook releasing then the dungeon Masters Guide then the monster manual is the fact that in the past like I think
24:48
3.5 is arguably the most successful version of D and before fifth edition and fifth edition I think became very
24:55
successful just because of the compatibility and third party access that had to it if that makes sense um
25:02
but in Third Edition and 3.5 they released all three books at the same time there was no gate between them
25:08
there was no time limit they just all released at the same time you were able to buy all of them so you were able to get your players handbook you were able
25:14
to have your dungeons Masters guy and you a have your monster manual all in front of you at the same time instead of waiting months and in some cases longer
25:20
because they got pushed back until they released and I think on top of already the bad press that the that Hasbro's
25:27
been getting uh and people already looking at other games I think this is sort of like this
25:33
is something that I think they should have just put all three books out at once and been done with it and just let
25:39
people pick them all up at the same time instead of trying to space them out because I think it did more harm than good for them I'm curious what you guys
25:46
think certainly one thing it did for me personally is that I was you know really
25:52
interested in seeing what the final version of these rules came to be after following all of the Unearthed Arcana
25:57
they were releasing all the play test documents I wanted to see the finished product and so I went out on day one and
26:04
I bought myself a player's handbook and I do think the new books are very good I
26:09
think these are good but they aren't a radical change over the old books this is just refining and consolidating rules
26:15
it's fifth edition revised and it's good but I have not felt the need to buy the
26:21
other two books so it's they've stretched out the time period to where
26:27
you're not that interested anymore it's like the initial hype has come and gone
26:33
and we've only just had the monster manual release so yeah it's the excitement died
26:41
particularly when kind of the first round of reviews came out for the first book and they were a little tepid I
26:47
think it's a very good book but it's not it's not a revolutionary step forward which I think some people expected or
26:54
wanted at the very least or wanted but you can't overcome that first impression
27:01
and with so many months between each book I I don't think people were drawn back I think it's a big problem I almost
27:08
want to put the blame for this it has broke is this feels like a product release that didn't understand its audience yeah and I'll point at another
27:15
release coming down later this year to explain why I feel like that so if you're releasing a new set of the core
27:21
books that aren't really a revolution more of a nice update SL refile just you
27:26
know dotting your ass across te you're looking to you're not really looking to
27:32
sell this to everybody who already has one you're looking to bring in new players because it can it can admittedly
27:38
be hard I mean it's not like there's any lack of D and D books out there but if you want to bring a new player into the Hobby in this day and age you're going
27:44
hey I need you to go buy these books that are 10 years old at this point um so you can play this game with us um now
27:51
we've got the new books with the shiny new covers and but like the weird
27:56
dribbling out of the books and then the fact that and this is what I wanted to harp on the starter set doesn't come out
28:03
until September of this year almost a full year after the players handbook released do they release the starter set
28:10
it's like we want to get you into the game but we're not going to give you an easy way to do it until maybe a full
28:16
year after you've bought into our neish ecosystem of books um and I just like I
28:22
said this feels like a Hasbro decision because this feels like something where they're just like all right we just got to keep the product releases rolling we
28:28
have to keep them coming out and we don't have any concept of how of how
28:34
games actually work in the real world because we're busy playing with our 30 to 40 friends who all want to use AI
28:41
um like I mean I don't know and I think in some I think to some degree some of
28:47
this has also been um like they can't and I won't say can't they don't release small products anymore with d and d I
28:55
can look back at when I started um months ago in the Stone Age where we rubbed two rocks together to form our
29:01
dice um and TSR would throughout the year have what what Wizards of the Coast
29:08
now calls an adventure um but like one small like one single Adventure you
29:14
could send people on and it's like maybe you pick that up and maybe you bring it to your gaming table and you've got a little product a little new thing you
29:19
can pick up every month or so to keep people interested you've got you know magazines with new stuff coming to to the table for the DMS for players Etc um
29:27
which ALS so got me very falsely excited this year when one of the products on the 2025 release was Dragon Anthology
29:33
I'm like ooh an anthology of dragon magazine no no sit down nerd um but it's it's
29:41
it's a weirdly sparse release schedule it doesn't seem to have a good audience in mind and as interested as I am in one
29:49
of the products coming out late this year that also means that people like me who are willing to spend money on D and
29:54
D fifth edition stuff haven't bought a product in close to two years at this point like I'll probably pick up the
30:00
Forgotten Realms book when it comes out later this year I haven't gotten any I haven't got any of the new books and I feel no need to do so um yeah and that
30:08
that because I haven't felt like the target audience for this I haven't felt like I needed it yeah and I think that's one of the things that frustrates me
30:14
especially like being in the retail space as well is I love products that I can go when somebody says where do I
30:21
start well you start here here's your here's what you need here's everything you need to start it started way back
30:28
when they did the starter editions if you remember those they were only available at big box stores for the
30:34
longest time we couldn't get them as local game stores you remember like the ones were at Target or whatever yeah
30:39
they were at Target in Walmart and Barnes & Noble and they were exclusives for like six months and so I didn't have
30:47
a beginner product to hand people or Point people to when they were coming into my shop saying my kids's interested
30:53
in playing D and D where do I start with them and you know then they start do
30:58
this and it's like okay well you can get the players handbook now because this is the new edition this is the only one we're going to have now uh but you can
31:05
get the old Edition that I have sitting on the shelf for the books that uh are going to be coming out like I have the
31:10
old dungeon Masters Guide and the old monster manual or you can wait till the new ones come out and I can tell you the
31:16
number of parents that said no that's okay I'll wait or no that's okay maybe we'll we'll find something else and
31:22
that's fine because I think there's a ton of great games out there and I think everybody should experience them but
31:27
also D and D is still the 9,000lb gorilla in the room it's ubiquitous with tabletop gaming you go into a store and
31:35
even if like a person who knows nothing about gaming knows that D and D exists and if they're trying to buy something
31:41
for somebody that they love or a gift or whatever I want to get something like D and D from for so and so it's easy to
31:47
point them towards it and I think Phil you hit something right on the head there everything has to be a large product release and these I think they
31:56
tried treating them like that but they're not and to lizz's original point they're refinements that are replacing
32:03
the old books with new like better layouts better art better production
32:09
quality and in some cases streamlined rules for better or worse I'm looking at
32:14
you Ranger class um one but I love Hunters
32:19
mark one thing I think these books are actually really good at is they're great for new players they are these are great
32:26
books for new players these consolidate things that were from like xanathar's guide they're from Tasha's cauldron for
32:32
everything and it takes these rules that have been scattered across Bunches of books and supplements over the years and
32:40
it puts them in one book it puts them in this new players handbook this is a great book for new Dungeons and Dragons
32:47
players and I it made sense for me to buy it I don't have a physical copy of the player's handbook had a digital copy
32:54
but sometimes it's nice to flip through a paper book mhm and it made sense for me to buy it and I think anyone who is
33:01
interested in Dungeons and Dragons interested in learning it for the first time this is a fantastic book but it
33:08
hasn't been marketed like that yeah and I think that's its big problem and I think that's a frustrating thing for me
33:14
because I agree with you I think these books are really great for new players I think they do a lot of good for like
33:20
people that are interested in jumping on and the fact that they weren't all released at the same time they're not
33:25
being marketed in that way I think is very frustrating because again people who already have the books I'm not
33:32
buying the new ones I've had my my players handbook I've had my you know
33:37
dungeon Masters Guide and my monster manual since the very beginning I've have every book that they've released up until I think plane plain Escape is the
33:45
only one that I don't have um because somebody bought the fancy slip case uh
33:50
that was on our Shelf before I could get to it um but like I don't need to go and buy
33:56
them and that means that these are not necessarily making like Phil said and like you said Liz we're not necessarily
34:03
the perfect target audience some folks will buy the books because they're new and shiny but the vast majority of us
34:09
are like well the rules are the same why am I going to buy another book but give me something that I can just sell to
34:15
people or Point them here's everything you need to start playing in one convenient $100 bundle and it's it's so
34:23
easy at that point it writes itself right it sells itself at that point um
34:29
and we see this all the time with other products that has Rose done as well right like in the past wizard of the
34:34
coast had a like I'll use Magic the Gathering as an example they used to have things like they called them game
34:39
nights boxes and some of you may remember this uh they also had two player dual boxes and battle boxes and
34:46
what they were is they were sets of cards that were designed as a board game experience to introduce people to the
34:53
game and it had everything you needed to play it had all the rules for it it took you through a game step by step and then
34:59
you just played from there on and they were cheap like it was $20 to get five
35:04
decks and you sat down for family game night and that was the entire intention those sold like hot cakes you couldn't
35:11
keep them on the shelves dual boxes you couldn't keep them on the shelves and it wasn't because they were printing high quality cards in there that everybody
35:18
wanted it was because it was an easy thing for somebody to buy if they wanted to start
35:24
playing they did this sporadically over the last couple years like they did starter Commander decks which were 20
35:30
bucks and you got a A like a very beginner friendly commander deck to learn how to play commander and then
35:35
they never did anything else with it like they haven't produced it anymore they they don't it because everything
35:41
has to be this big Titanic release and I think they're it's or it's the orborous
35:47
right it's the serpent eating its own tail at this point they got so big that it looped around itself and now is
35:52
eating its own tail uh and slowly killing itself which is just it's wild to me it's it's wild I want to I want to
35:59
call I want to call this out too I wanted to I blamed Hasbro for this and I thought well let me go back and see what WIS to the coast did in the past because
36:05
you talked about the 3 to 3.5 upgrade and I would like to shout out robsworld dorg for having the 3.0 and 3.5 release
36:13
schedule in a PDF form on this website um so this is in
36:19
2003 um we are still releasing books for third edition um but uh starting with
36:25
the monster manual 2 in the middle at late September or late September 2002
36:31
was already updated to 3.5 and then products that came after came out after B of Val Darkness races of fairon the
36:37
unapproachable East ghost walk all already updated to 3.5 So when you buy 3.5 you've already got an ecosystem of
36:45
products to go and then they immediately put out the dungeon master guide in June of 03 and the monster manual players
36:50
handbook both the next month followed immediately by the dragon Lance campaign setting boom boom boom boom you are
36:57
ready to go this this weird stringing out of products is well not only that but like
37:02
not not how they used to work but look what they started with they started with the dungeon master guide so one person could start running the game and it had
37:09
everything you needed in that book to convert whatever little bits needed to be converted for 3.5 in it so that you
37:15
didn't have to worry about the other two books until they released like that was a smart release cycle and yeah it wasn't
37:21
it was close enough that I would call it at the same time right it was within a month of each other so yeah there they
37:26
were yeah that one was in June and two were in July and I would bet that they were probably no more than two weeks
37:32
apart each yeah and I remember in July walking into media play of all places um
37:39
and seeing an entire row of nothing but the three book slip cover uh bundles
37:44
just sitting on the shelf next to the individual books I remember that and the and then the special editions they made
37:50
they didn't come out for another year but they came out all at the same time once again they let a year go by they
37:56
put out more products they let people get into the Hobby and they're like oh uh people are talking about 3.5 here's another chance to get people in here's
38:03
all our special editions all at one and I think this Segways nicely into the one of the news topics here having a product
38:09
that's just ready to go off the shelf is a really smart thing to do when you're doing stuff like I don't know making a D
38:16
and D liveaction TV show that's going to be on Netflix like that news drops and
38:21
you mean to tell me that that's not going to generate Buzz or generate some sort of attention especially with the
38:27
success of things like Vox Machina and other other products that are D andd related that are out there that have
38:33
been doing Gang Busters so like yeah and and I mean I guess we can talk about
38:38
that too cuz I don't know if we know very much about it but I mean they're still producing other content for other
38:44
streaming services or other other things and you have well again the D and D live
38:50
action which in theory uh we I don't know if we know when it's supposed to be coming out but it's in the works so
38:56
within the next year or two right I don't know this was actually the first I heard about it same really um yeah I I
39:05
had not heard of any D and live entertainment products uh since honor among Thieves and it feels like it' be
39:13
so easy to keep going in that same vein for you know for a TV series yeah apparent uh yeah apparently it's but
39:19
Hasbro is obviously you know wanting this done uh but Shan Levy and Drew crll are going to be helming the the product
39:27
uh this is stranger things Deadpool and Wolverine uh and uh Drew Drew CLL is
39:33
from we crashed um and then has raw entertainment and the series is supposed
39:38
to take place uh in basically this the standard bog set of D
39:44
and D that was released way back when um but we don't know too much more about it
39:50
just that it is in the works and in the pipeline so however long that takes I will say variety has reported that it
39:56
will be that it's currently titled the Forgotten Realms and that could be interesting
40:03
because the books wizard the coast is releasing at the end of 2025 are about
40:09
the Forgotten Realms it's two Forgotten Realms books that's uh really elaborating on the world and building it
40:15
up so as was the movie by the way honor among Thieves was based in the forgot
40:20
Realms that's it's kind of become their core World in fifth edition so if you
40:26
were to time these together close together that could be a great push it's
40:32
like oh you like this TV show well here are the books to tell you more about it and but Wizards has been doing such a
40:39
lousy job at timing things lately so I don't know I don't know yeah it's it's
40:46
an odd one cuz like you said right right there like time it so that you're releasing the series close to when this
40:51
book is released and then release the book instead what we're going to get is the book at the end of the year which
40:57
we'll talk about here in a second because it's another great segue thanks Liz um well we're gonna get this book at the
41:03
end of the year and then we don't know when this TV show is going to release and this is going to be the same thing
41:09
that happened with the D and D movie where like the D and D movie is good and
41:14
the honor among Thieves is a good fun funny movie it is exactly what you would
41:19
expect if you were a group of people playing a tabletop game with all of the Goofs and and weirdness that comes with
41:25
a bunch of people playing D andd together it was perfect at capturing that it didn't do well for Hasbro uh
41:33
didn't make as much money as they thought it was going to be because they didn't Market it right they also didn't time it with any releases or give you
41:39
anything aside from it's a d and d movie come watch it buy this gigantic plushy that's a red dragon like literally they
41:48
they they they seem to just completely forget how to actually advertise us and
41:53
maybe it's because they fired everybody that does know how to advertise in in string stuff stuff together which you know that could be the case um but yeah
42:00
and the Forgotten Realms adventure Guide which again is supposed to be releasing at the end of this year um is going to
42:05
bring back a bunch of different rules that we've experienced over the years uh and it is also going to resurrect some
42:11
stuff that we haven't seen since third edition uh in particular evil Dr Stat block is going to return for the longest
42:18
time fourth edition and fifth edition Dr while they did have a stat block or
42:23
player character you could play as a draw as one of your lineages um the old school like truly lawful evil Dr uh is
42:32
now going to return in the Forgotten Realms rule books because they were a chief foil they were one of the major
42:38
bad guys from that setting so they're bringing it back which I think is pretty interesting I don't know what you guys think about the book coming out I like
42:44
this it's um so the way they've been doing the way they've been setting things up and I agree with this approach
42:50
is things that you can play with they're not attempting to ascribe moral culture
42:55
moral Dan to entire species which they have done a lot in the past and Bravo
43:01
Wizards for shaking off 30 plus years of Orcs are evil and dumb um but this is a
43:07
book specifically about the Forgotten Realms which I find it aside a little bit to say I still find it weird that for the last 10 years Wizards has made
43:15
this the default assumed setting for every product and never put out a book about it so you're kind of picking up forgotten real business pces not
43:21
technically true because the sword Coast adventuring guide is literally forgotten there's a lot more to the Forgotten
43:27
Realms in the sword Coast desp what Wizards would like you to believe um I agree but the DRL of meno baren who have
43:34
a very malevolent culture um are a important part of the Forgotten Realms
43:40
and so I think this is interesting to have back because this isn't saying hey Dr are evil because they're Dr this is
43:46
saying hey the Dr from the underd dark and the Forgotten Realms are evil because they are bad folks so like they
43:54
come from a culture that has some very twist practices and
43:59
beliefs ra salvator and Ed Greenwood would like words with them yeah I'm sure um but yeah it's
44:08
interesting to see that return I'm not surprised to see it um I hope that the context that it's in is not lost in the
44:16
argument about this and so people go aha evil Dr back on the menu so guess we'll see but it will be nice to actually get
44:23
a full release of a Forgotten Realms book although one thing that does make me very sad about this is I still want a
44:29
greyhawk book because greyhawk feels like the setting that they've just completely chosen to forget exists and
44:37
some I feel like it has to happen though because this is now the now greyhawk is the assumed uh setting in the DMG which
44:43
is interesting right cuz it blew my mind it's in the DMG and greyhawk is supposed to be the setting but we haven't had a
44:50
greyhawk book or gadgeteer or anything since third edition like there was
44:56
nothing for it in fourth Edition cuz they defaulted to Forgotten Realms and fourth and like in as far as I'm
45:01
concerned greyhawk has some of the best Pantheon for for D and D gods that have
45:07
ever existed uh so like I'm I'm really sad that we don't have that yet maybe one day hopefully soon we'll see uh the
45:15
there's another release coming up and this one is not for DN D and uh I know some people are excited about it
45:20
probably a little bit more than I am um it's going to be the dagger heart which is coming out in May who would want to
45:27
talk about that let's go with Liz I mean I'm excited for this one certainly
45:33
because this was made by some of the people behind critical role and it feels like a book that's just really designed
45:40
for the kind of Storytelling they do on critical role which I have always enjoyed that it's designed for telling
45:47
epic stories and baked into this is a way to build a world together not just
45:54
say okay here's the world here's your Forgotten Realms handbook and this is what the world is like it's as you
46:00
create your characters you're talking about say okay my character is from an island in the middle of the ocean and
46:06
it's seaf Fairing and they've just discovered the main continent and so now that you say that that's in the world
46:13
it's you're building this space together it feels like a game that's really designed for a specific kind of
46:19
collaborative storytelling and I think that's very interesting and I'm interesting to I'm interested to see
46:24
where they take this right Phil Matt yeah I'm I'm interested I I said I
46:30
enjoyed running it um for our uh when we played it on the podcast although I feel like it had some rough edges um I've
46:37
been kind of tracking its uh tracking it as they've done iterations which um not
46:43
I guess super common among well more common these days for big RPG releases they did a lot of those iterations in
46:49
public there were a lot of releases of play test material after revisions complete with patch notes like a piece
46:54
of software which is kind of cool um I think it's interesting I think I would run it again um I don't know if it would
47:00
be my go-to for a fantasy system at this point but I think it's got a lot of interesting things that uh at the very
47:06
least I'll pick it up and steal for other games because that's pretty much what all DMS do right I I think the
47:12
biggest problem with it is that it's coming out in such a crowded Market we're in a time when there are so many
47:18
great games out there that it's hard to you know find your Niche I think the
47:23
biggest problem with it is that in some ways they're not ambitious enough with it um it is very determined to give you
47:30
the ability to run a fantasy game that is not very different from D and D while
47:36
being very different from DN D like it's it kind of reminds me do you guys I
47:41
don't know those probably wouldn't remember this but do you guys remember when Monty cook games was putting out Arcana Unearthed yesh and they were
47:47
trying to do an alternate PHP with different classes but exactly the same mechanically yeah they wanted to do like
47:53
a more more ed Greenwood inspired Dark World type stuff and and I mean some of
47:58
the stuff was cool I I used it in some of my games I still say that the best Ranger that they ever had in Third
48:03
Edition was actually from The Wheel of Time RPG that they put I would agree you know it was actually much better than
48:09
the one in the PHP but with dagger har it's a very different system it's mechanically very different but look at
48:16
the playable races look at the you know it's it's basically we want to keep our
48:22
campaign world that we have been developing for a while so we've made this system that will allow you to to
48:28
still have all these characters but it's different and I feel like you could have
48:34
done a lot more with it the the problem I'm having is I've been reading a lot of other games that are kind of like trying
48:39
for the more flexible approach sort of like the the what I like to call the uh the many strange children of gerps
48:47
because that's kind of what gerps tried to do back in the day to try to be like every you know if you want to do this
48:53
you can do this with gerbs if you want to do that you know granted it always required another book but regardless
48:58
they were trying for that kind of flexibility I feel like um like the cipher system is a good example where it
49:04
tries really hard to be to work for everything but it's still crunchy so that makes it a little weird um I feel
49:11
like dagger har was in a good place to be in between the powered by the apocalypse type where it's all playbooks
49:19
and like you guys have you guys have seen um Prowlers and Paragons right yeah I don't know if it's Prowlers and
49:24
Paragons or not but yeah I just I've just got it the other day and I was looking through it I'm on a I'm on a superhero RPG and it's like that system
49:32
is sort of the old D6 with uh dice pool system like kind of like the West the
49:37
you know the the West End games uh but it's it's different in terms of how it runs it kind of has that sense that
49:44
Senti in sensibility thing where you have like you know this die roll like a four is good but a five is bad but a six
49:50
is good um it kind of has that element to it so it's a little more tactical it feels like in between those
49:57
you could have put dagger heart because dagger heart has its weird its weird dice system where like I remember when
50:03
we were playing it I rolled two ones and I thought oh well that's great I just completely flubbed this and you were
50:08
like no no you you suceed a crit yeah it's getting the the same number on both
50:14
dice isn't it you're open to your fear D yeah yeah I didn't know that I was like completely like oh I just I just did
50:20
that and you're like no that's good I'm like and it's getting away from you know
50:26
just higher number better it leads to more narrative stuff it's it's kind of a Hallmark of of narrative games that you
50:33
can have conditional successes and this you can describe how those work um to use masks as an example I really feel
50:40
like dagger har mechanically is is very similar to that like it's it's not the
50:45
same system obviously but it's in that path but they're using it to tell D andd stories and I get why they're doing that
50:52
but it feels like okay this this could be a lot more interesting than you are letting it be if if that makes sense
50:59
yeah I think I think part of it is that it doesn't feel at least to a broader spectrum of folks like it has its own
51:06
identity and no it doesn't and I think that's doing its a disservice because I think there are a lot of really cool
51:12
elements to it but and again this is just what I hear at the shop right um we
51:17
have a group of people that play every Friday and they always talk about other games they rotate their game systems and
51:23
one person one of these six people were super into dagger heart and everybody
51:29
else was basically just kind of meh on it and when asked to describe it he
51:34
really didn't have a way other than saying it's like DND D but and I feel
51:41
like when that's your only way to start a comparison and I'm not saying this is true universally I'm just saying this is
51:47
what I what I've overheard it it I think it's an interesting uh mindset because
51:53
then you're immediately comparing it to D and D and essenti that's kind of where it was birthed from um versus when
52:01
reminds me of Pathfinder to a degree where Pathfinder started off as as being D and D it was exactly the same and now
52:07
over time it's developed into another Direction but Liz pointed out earlier that the the the market is thick with
52:15
fantasy RPGs right now so putting out another fantasy RPG when you have a system that could very easily have been
52:22
able to do just about anything you want to do that sentient dinosaurs with their own xiety game yeah use this absolutely
52:29
could have been built that flexibly and then they didn't and they just put in Poss go ahead list I'm sorry possibly
52:36
the problem with this if you want to frame it in that way is that there's not
52:41
it doesn't have like a distinct World part of the game is building the world
52:46
and building the characters which I think is really cool a really cool way to tell epic stories in which everyone
52:53
is participating but it doesn't it doesn't have like that setting that's a cool hook you know what it reminds me of
53:00
a lot in that regard do did did anybody but me play The Dresden Files tabletop
53:06
RPG and fate system no I read it but I didn't play it I played the Fate system but I didn't do the Dresden but that's
53:12
just cuz I don't like Dresden which is fair but one of the things that I think is if you are picking up like a game like that you want to play in that
53:20
Universe in that City and certain games like an dagger had I think subscribes to
53:26
the in a certain level it's all about mutually building the world but the problem is is by doing so you're not
53:34
starting from a place of like an identity and with the dresin files one of the reasons that game didn't do so
53:40
hot uh even though it had a lot of really cool stuff is that you spent half of your character building session
53:46
building whatever City you were going to be in because it wasn't just set in uh
53:51
you know the home city of uh the dresen files Universe because dresen was already already there um and so like the
53:59
city was its own character and by the time you started looking at that a lot of people are just like I don't want to
54:05
do that I just want to throw spells or fight goblins or turn into a werewolf or or whatever the case is um and I think
54:12
that's a it's a weird problem to have but like then you have games like when we talked about world of Darkness at the
54:18
top of it world of darkness is set into real world cities but has its own flavor and distinct sort of identity before you
54:25
even worry about in the city and so everything that you do with it is based
54:30
off of whatever City you're working in and it's really easy to apply the the the camarilla or the sabat layer to it
54:37
so Dart I think could have benefited a little bit more from maybe a bigger push
54:42
to to highlight its differences and not just sort of let it be defined as DND
54:48
but see I think that I think the world buing aspect of it is actually a real strength for it I think so I just feel
54:53
like they limited it to be you know with the tools in that play test and with the
54:59
tools that'll most likely be released when it comes out you can make a a pretty like I as my wife put it David
55:07
edings esque fantasy world sure and that kind of a dig because you know David eding is not not our favorite but it it
55:14
you can make you know oh I understand this it's a fantasy world like all these other it's it's it's just you could have
55:20
put more Concepts in here to have weird stuff and what's really weird is that they do have those Concepts in the few
55:26
places like there's you can be a magic robot and we know why that's there but it's a lot more flexible and a lot more
55:33
interesting than the place they got it from you know I'll just say it they're cooler than the war forged they're you
55:39
can be like a tiny little weird one or you can be a big robot made out of alabaster who thinks he's a god you you
55:45
can there's a lot of flexibility to it I just feel like they could have done more with it um in in a market where we've got like you know you you guys talked
55:52
about the uh I just think in general it's you know there's a lot like there's a lot of fantasy out there right now um
55:58
and and a lot of also a lot of licensed stuff so in a weird sort of way I don't
56:03
know it feels like there's a lot you could like about dagger har and I certainly don't think it's a bad game I
56:09
think we generally had fun when we played it it just feels like I think I'll be happier when they start putting out gerps like slat books I guess it
56:16
keep coming back to that it's like it's like mini it's like gerps all over again I don't know I I feel like there's room
56:21
for that in this setting there's certain games where I really feel like it works yeah and I mean we'll see what happens
56:26
after it releases and what they do for marketing it afterwards but again also it's one of those things where and I've
56:32
commented on this before darington press is really hard to work with as a
56:37
retailer um so I'm really curious if they're just going to rely on direct sales and direct marketing uh because I
56:44
think I've emailed them I think over 20 times at this point just trying to get a merchant account so I can like carry
56:50
their product because people ask about it and I just they just don't get replies like I don't know what else to
56:56
do so yeah it does it does sort of feel sometimes like it's more of a vanity project than it is like to be a business
57:03
yeah and that that's also go ahead listen I think y'all are selling it short I mean it's a unique gameplay
57:09
system that has that feels like it Blends a lot of things and I think that
57:15
World building aspect is a big that's its that's its core Focus it's designed
57:21
for World building and telling stories so see I think we should someday we should contrast it versus Candela
57:28
obscura because I've that's the system that every time I look at it I'm like o now this is really interesting and I
57:35
think it also has a lot of a lot of blades in the dark to it also yeah I like can see that particularly with
57:40
blades there's a lot about kind of building out your group and building out your team of course candala has that as
57:46
well and just sort of building your place in the world together as a group
57:52
masks does that it's one of the things that I like about masks quite a bit um masks takes place in generic
57:58
superhero land but your group gets together and talks about their characters and decides how they hook
58:04
into each other and then you by doing that you start building the world um I definitely think that that's a it's a
58:11
it's a very strong thing for any game that does it right I definitely think dagger har has the potential to be really good there I just want to see
58:17
them take it further away from its roots I guess is what I'm saying not that it's bad um I do not think it is bad I
58:24
actually like I said I liked a lot I have a lot of ideas for it like I made like 20 characters remember I was like
58:29
just making characters constantly like oh I made another one like yeah I I do think there's a lot to Fair uh I will
58:36
say that I think we're running out of time but I do want to T touch on one last thing here which I think is is
58:41
interesting and probably is worth talking about uh which is the ne Awards rejects all AI created submissions pause
58:49
next year after being publicly shamed for sort of allowing it this year which
58:55
is something we've been about off and on for months now the whole idea of uh AI
59:00
generated content creeping its way into tabletop uh being a problem and here's a
59:06
really good example of it being a problem uh and people having to call somebody else out on it in order for it
59:13
to be recognized or at least publicly shamed enough to be acknowledged as a problem so I'll let you guys talk about
59:19
it cuz I don't know who put this in here but it's it's fascinating to me that we're already seeing this pop up that
59:25
was me so the so last year the NES had no guidance whatsoever um regarding AI
59:32
created AI created AI assisted submissions um and I guess I'll stop here to say if people are not familiar
59:38
with the NES they are kind of the uh the tabletop Industries uh Grammys SL uh you
59:44
know Oscars this is the game games that can win in any kind of become a household name in some circles um it's
59:51
at least the Golden Globes yeah this is where you start this is where things like Shadow dark um start to enter the public Consciousness uh of Gamers um so
1:00:00
their guidelines for this year that they added um were kind of wishy-washy in
1:00:05
that they do require people to note which elements of their submissions are AI generated this year and good on them
1:00:13
um you cannot win for the category that was generated by an AI so if you created a tabletop product um and you had an AI
1:00:22
designed cover art and you submitted it to the NES you cannot submitted to or win best cover art if a if chat gbt
1:00:30
helped you write your rules you probably can't win best product but maybe you can win best cover art um but it's just like
1:00:37
this weird honor System where they're requiring authors to stayed upfront which parts of their product were AI
1:00:45
generated or AI assisted and they're relying essentially on the honor System instead of doing the smart thing which
1:00:51
is what they're doing next year after people called them out on this weird um this weird system and basically just
1:00:57
said no next year like the n's is about creativity in tabletop games AI is about
1:01:02
AI is the plagiarism machine that hallucinates and gets things wrong so it should not be in this space and so next
1:01:08
year in the 2025 26 um submissions for next year um they are completely Banning
1:01:15
any AI assisted or created submissions um for nominations for awards and like I
1:01:21
think I think the way they did it this year was an interesting attempt to walk a line I also disagree with it I think
1:01:27
it should have just been banned straight up from the start um and so I'm glad to see them taking this stance but I kind
1:01:33
of hate that they didn't take the stance until people called them out on it which I don't think you should have to
1:01:39
brow beat people into submission to do the right thing as weird as that sounds no I mean the the only thing that
1:01:46
I'm really worried about is it's going to get to a point where and this is a really quick side tangent but I you've
1:01:52
seen the things where like they're starting to employ like AI detection software in like colleges and things
1:01:58
like that where it tries to look for like speech patterns or written patterns to see if also a very good it's also a
1:02:04
very good neurod Divergence detector yeah because people with ADHD and autism get caught on it all the time exactly
1:02:11
where I was going to go with that and there's a lot of that in the tabletop Creator space where a lot of us are not
1:02:16
exactly neurotypical uh I was just going to say if you if you're looking for neurodivergent people in the in the
1:02:22
gaming industry I think it's very easy it's like throwing a sock full of catnip a bunch of C throw a rock just throw a
1:02:28
rock you'll find somebody and that's another thing they could have easily gone down the road of oh well we're going to run all your products through a
1:02:34
uh you know through it through one of these detectors and that is equally bad so yeah or relying on judges to flag
1:02:41
this kind of thing which is not something they did because the any awards are also volunteer only and they did not want to put the onus for that on
1:02:47
the judges which good on them for that too at least yeah I mean it's it is sticky I I mean you called it a
1:02:54
plagiarism machine and that's not wrong uh that's that's basically it it's
1:03:00
sometimes people don't seem to get it because they just think of it as the you know well it draws pictures for me or or it just rephrases what I wrote but it's
1:03:06
not just rephrasing what you wrote uh people are like putting in like 300 words into chat GPT and spitting out
1:03:13
3,000 word papers um the thing is stealing uh at one point I remember they
1:03:19
were talking about how chat you know not chat GPT the other one the the other big one doesn't matter gramer
1:03:26
grar grammarly will like is sitting there using it's using words and phrases
1:03:31
that it got from specific um you know elsat preparation tests and the person
1:03:39
pointed out you don't have the right to any of that you did not pay for this
1:03:45
this is stolen and that's the problem a lot of people don't understand how much stealing is necessary to get this thing working like it's not like they're going
1:03:51
to like you know they're not they're not downloading all the stuff that's free on the web from the Gutenberg project and
1:03:57
feeding that into the machine they're they're stealing people's work I mean the argument in court cases the argument
1:04:05
of the AI industry is that it cannot do this without stealing work there's a significant court case going on on right
1:04:11
now I believe between open Ai and the New York Times is that correct yep as
1:04:17
long as there as long as other re recent ones that are also hitting Because deep
1:04:22
seek is now getting sued by open Ai and there's whole it's yeah it's getting it's getting our laws
1:04:28
are not suitable to this thing the the these these learning algorithms we did not prepare for them we were busy
1:04:35
worrying that the machines would take over our military and bomb us all into the Stone Age we were not worried that
1:04:40
the machines would basically steal all our work and tell us that they came up with it which is like you so human of
1:04:46
them really ultimately we weren't and it's people keep thinking AI is such a
1:04:51
misnomer we keep using it instead of you know more accurate but long ER things that people don't really understand like
1:04:57
you know talking at a a a learning language module or uh you know an art
1:05:03
collator uh it's like some person once said this is like seeing something you know somebody making a collage out of
1:05:09
like comic books and then telling you it's a comic book so seeing that in the
1:05:15
RPG space especially since Wizards of the Coast was saying was making some big noises about how great it was going to
1:05:20
be to have ai because they had that backlog of modules they were going to run through it I remember like feeling
1:05:25
spine get cold listening to that conversation it's like so every module is going to be the Lost caverns of
1:05:31
Hamlet now it's going to be you know Temple of Elemental Darkness you
1:05:38
just we're so desperate not to like to pay anybody for doing anything that we're just gonna like have everything
1:05:44
suck just so we can not pay anyone for it just it I think people think it's an
1:05:49
exaggeration to say all AI does is steal things but it literally steals things
1:05:55
that is is the AI industry literally argues in court that it can't make AI
1:06:02
without stealing copyrighted material that that's the only way you can make AI
1:06:08
so this is they they cop to having stolen content but they say well this
1:06:14
wouldn't exist if we couldn't steal anything we want to that is that is the industry so yes it is very worrying with
1:06:21
this when this comes into tabletop because it means more hom
1:06:26
more syy more it boring content but it also makes me wonder what's going to
1:06:32
happen when companies like Hasbro who are very keen on using this to create tabletop content then find that their
1:06:37
tabletop content has been used by another AI to create other tabletop content for another company and the
1:06:43
legal battle that will from there because eventually eventually everything is just going to eat everything else but
1:06:49
yeah not to end on a downer of a note there are still plenty of very creative
1:06:54
uh and passionate people in the tabletop space we've talked about several kickstarters at the beginning of this uh
1:07:00
which showcase exactly that and I highly encourage folks out there to look at what's being created look at those
1:07:06
kickstarters obviously look at it with the fine tooth comb or at least a grain of salt making sure that it suits your
1:07:12
needs but there are plenty of people who are making wonderful tabletop content that is not using copyrighted or stolen
1:07:19
material um and as a matter of fact there's plenty of stuff we could have continued to talk about today we had
1:07:25
plenty notes on plenty of other stuff and news items uh but we are currently at time so I'm going to end it there so
1:07:31
I'm going to remind everybody that blizzard watch is made possible due to the generous contributions at patreon.com blizzardwatch your continued
1:07:38
support means that this podcast site and Community is able to thrive and grow blizzard watch supporters enjoy exclusive benefits like early access to
1:07:44
the podcast better chance at having your question answered on our podcast or the q& and ads resight experience if you
1:07:49
have questions for any of our podcasts want to make sure that you know that you can send those into podcast blizzardwatch dcom specify the that it
1:07:55
is for in the subject line and any special pronunciation of your name if there is something you want us to cover
1:08:01
on Tavern watch uh a game that you're passionate about or a project that's out there that maybe we haven't mentioned
1:08:07
yet or that you think would fit our our radar send it in you get an email us you can also hit us on Discord we have the Q
1:08:13
and podcast questions Channel same rules apply as the email and if you're a patreon subscriber is a way of saying thank you for helping us keep the lights
1:08:19
on we have the patron q and podcast questions Channel where we tend to look their first for questions and topics as
1:08:25
a way of saying thank you for helping us keep doing what we love doing but I'm gonna end it there I do want to thank
1:08:30
Liz Matt and Phil for joining me today uh and I'm looking forward to doing this more regularly because there's so much
1:08:38
coming down the pipeline this year and I really want to talk about all of it because there's so much there's so so
1:08:44
much but that folks we'll catch you next time
1:09:13
sh
#Online Media
#Online Video
#Roleplaying Games
#Virtual Worlds
#Adventure Games