Looking forward to playing Rebel Scum (but you can’t buy it on DriveThruRPG)

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[Music]
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hail and well met traveler welcome to the tavern did you know this is the place where more than half of the
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greatest adventures in history have begun but before those adventurers took their first steps they watched and
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calculated who would join their party why look over there there's a mighty barbarian from the frozen lands strong
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mighty full of honor and wisdom i happen to know that one they go by Matt Rossy
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and look over there to the right that woman working away on her mechanical dog
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she's cunning witty and I've seen her bounce more than her fair share of nerd wells out of here before I can even
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blink i happen to know that she goes by the name Liz Harper
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and me oh my name's Joe Perez and I'll be your tavern keeper
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welcome to Tavern Watch hello and welcome to Tavern Watch a
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discussion about all things in the gaming space i'm one of your hosts Joe Perez and joining me as always are Liz
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Harper our boss and uh enjoyer of things that are artificer yes yes yes i still
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have to wait until August that's forever away for the official uh D&D artificer
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to come out but uh you know it's gone probably and then uh joining us as always is Matt
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Rossy the barbarian uh in all aspects how you doing there Matt um yeah bad i'm
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fine let's go brain brain not work and Phil will be
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joining us again we don't have a class for Phil quite yet we'll figure that out at some point I am sure yep uh probably
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wizard uh the the s the the traditional giant nerd I guess fair enough well
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let's start as we always do with the wonderful topics of Well what are you reading right now so who wants to start
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what anything special on your desk or plate phil you're usually reading something i am uh I uh so in this case
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what I am reading is a new supplement for uh Fabula Ultima which builds itself
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as a TTJRPG a tabletop game designed to specifically emulate Japanese role playing games uh
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they have put out the third in their series of what they call atlases which is a um so the the the the core rule
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book for Fabul Ultima is pretty generic it's like here is here is what this role playing game kind of is and here's kind
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of a core of everything and then they have what they call atlases which are like a sub a more specific genre um that
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also emulates specific types of games so like they have the high fantasy atlas which is exactly what it sounds like uh
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the techno fantasy one which for leans more towards like uh games like Fantasy Star um and they have a new one coming
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out of Gen Con this year the uh the natural fantasy atlas which uh um I
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don't even really know how to describe it their their definition of it is really different compared to usual um I
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don't even know if I would describe it as similar to Rustic Fantasy like Legend in the Mist uh but it presents some neat
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new character options and I noticed that the PDF for it was on sale well ahead of Gen Con meaning Gen Con is basically
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just here for the physical copies uh so I bought the PDF of that and I've been browsing through it uh my favorite is
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that it adds a new character class uh that you can pick which is the gourmet
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which is uh you know your think your typical JRPG character who is mixing ingredients and whipping something up in
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the middle of combat and then force feeding it to an enemy to I don't know light them on fire or something uh so
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yeah I've been uh I've been reading through I've been rereading through Fabula Ultima it's kind of I'm kind of
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like permanently cycling one of three games that I'm thinking at all times about starting a longer running campaign
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of and Fabul Ultima is kind of at the top of the street oh fair enough liz you
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got anything on the desk uh well I'm I'm still reading up on Daggerheart now and
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then uh I've been watching Critical Roles doing a playthrough of an Age of Umbra campaign which is one of the
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Dagger Heart settings so I'm I'm trying to understand everything that's going on uh I also picked up for free RPG game uh
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free RPG day which was last week I believe uh a demo a demo booklet for
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Otherscape which is by Son of Oak it's a mythic cyberpunk RPG and uh I really
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enjoyed Son of Oak's uh system when we played Legend in the Mist that was really fun and interesting so they also
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have Otherscape which is cyberpunk and what's the other one city of Mist which is urban fantasy noir which I am really
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interested in i might I might have to pick that one up matt are you uh have
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you cracked anything open uh I've been reading the Fallout RPG uh and I'm in
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part of that is just because I like Fallout but also because um I kind of on
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this weird kick of different ways to do post-apocalypse and to do like do you do
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like an actual post-apocalypse where the apocalypse happened or do you do it like I I remember talking about this with I
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think with Joe but it might have been like the whole group uh I still think to this day that Cyberpunk 2077
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as a video game is a Fallout game it's just in slow motion it's the apocalypse
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is happening very slowly you know and and to be fair I also think that the
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world we live in is is somewhat post-apocalyptic it's it's just again very slow um it keeps happening it's
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just happening you know not so much in nuclear bombs raining down on us i hope
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not gotten this wood here but for some reason that made me go back and get Gamma World like out again cuz I've got
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I've got the all the Gamma Worlds i don't know if people know what Gamma World is it's basically
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uh it's sort of a the bit the first real serious science fiction science fantasy
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game that that TSR Tactical Studies Rules put out back in the like early
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like early 80s and then they every so often they'd put out a new version they used to do it almost always as its own
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game but then they did it I think the last time they did it they did it as a fourth edition uh D&D
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adaptation and they didn't they haven't done anything with it since i don't think they ever will do anything with it
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again but I like looking at it just because of all the stuff that there's stuff in it that Fallout obviously takes
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like there's there's there's a group of like people who want to control technology and who wander around calling
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themselves knights and it's like it's the Brotherhood of Steel that they're practically identical um so I've been
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just basically running through and comparing them and the ways that each one is superior like I think that Fallout is a much more easily understood
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game world like Fallout you you know what they are you know what everybody is it also it also has a lot of name
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recognition you know that's part of it it's been around for a while and it's been a big video game franchise so we
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you say you know Yeah whereas in Game of World has the batters who are talking badgers who are evil um and it's it's
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like Fallout has a little bit more nuance plus the the whole altern
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the the future post-apocalypse has imagined in the 50s sort of sensation to it whereas Gamer World is just you know
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throw everything in a blender and see what what sticks um yeah Gamer World
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Gamer World gets pretty gonzo we played the We played the 4E version and it is
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uh I don't I don't know if I would go so far as to call it wacky but man it got real close like you especially
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especially the fourth edition one it had some very randomly generating characters uh well yeah that's the whole deal like
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the mutations you can get a mutation where you just have a nose growing out of your chest yeah i think I forget what
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somebody was was like one of our characters was like a bird who like had a laser gun gra like a bird man had a
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laser gun grafted into his right arm or something I don't know it was We We did it one time for like a oneshot it was It's It's
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It's a game I still think about in that it's it's kind of weird and gonzo and cool but I Yeah I don't think they'll
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ever do anything with it ever again no it's pretty much it's done uh but like I said there's the batters there's like
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all sorts of weird stuff in it but at the same time there's a lot of stuff that you can see in other games that can't have come out um but also say this
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the Fallout RPG is a surprisingly good system like I was not expecting it to be a good system like you can actually just
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play it well I mean it's it's it's in the same vein as the Star Trek and and a bunch of other stuff like it's the
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Modifius stuff so it's is it one of those is it a 2D20 yeah it's a Miffas game okay yeah those are generally
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pretty solid and then me the Hey that's me i was going to say me the uh the thing that I've been sort of uh kind of
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getting into is I just started reading through the Electric State role playing game um I like stuff like this and yes
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there is a movie on Netflix that I've heard is absolutely terrible and that is
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not what this is based on as a matter of fact uh this is actually based on an art
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book uh that was in the same sort of like I I can never pronounce it as Simon
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Stalinhog um yeah I think Stalinhog yeah so this is not the first game that's
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based off of one of their art books as a matter of fact if you've ever heard of Tales from the Loop Tales from the Loop
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was something that was born about by this super like surrealist like
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1980sesque uh hyper modernized like what if the
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retro future modernism of the '50s carried into the '8s type thing with a little side of weird uh and the art book
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was absolutely phenomenal well a few years later about three years later the electric state was released uh moving in
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the timeline up to about the 90s um where it's like it's a dystopian 90s at
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its most bleak uh so like the gloom of Twin Peaks the detached alienation from Nirvana's Never Mind with a plot that
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reads like the X Files and the Lawnmower Man is how it is described at least the art book and they released a uh tabletop
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game based off of this art style uh and I actually really like that i like this
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idea of art sort of informing a game and
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giving a direction for a game because you can write rules all day long and at the end of the day rules to me don't
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matter um and as a matter of fact like you're seeing that more common in a lot of the books that are released uh we'll
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probably talk about this in a little bit but like even Daggerheart has something about that in their their forward um
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where it's like rules are by their very essence a framework they are not
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necessarily absolute some people may consider them that but it's it's sort of
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like just kind of to get you where you're going and this is sort of like the epitome of that it's based off of
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Free League's Year Zero engine uh so Mutant Year Zero Tales from the Lube Alien RPG Bladeunner RPG if you've
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played any of those you'll know what this is about and it's all about focusing on the journey and what you
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experience along the way and how that changes your character how that changes
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your perspective uh all on a journey of finding out who you are who your friends are and what you do when sort of what
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you think is reality sort of collapses around you and I really like that so
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this is something that once I'm done reading through it it may get thrown into the uh the group of of stuff we may
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be running in the future because it's really neat um and you only need D6s to
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play it because you know I like those types of games it's real simple and usually people have D6s so but yeah
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that's what that's what I've been up to and uh hopefully some other folks will start reading stuff like that too so I can talk about it with people because
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it'd be great uh also throw out there that if you want to watch some media based on Stalin Hog's uh work yeah skip
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the uh skip the uh skip the terrible movie uh the Russos should not have been directing that and uh go back to 2020
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when Amazon Prime did an eight se an 8 episode adaptation of Tales of based on Tales of the Loop tales from the Loop
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yeah Tales from the Loop yeah much better but uh also know that that was from 2020 you're probably never getting another season but it was much better
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than the Electric State movie oh yeah so yeah that that's what we've been doing and that's what I've been uh reading and
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uh yeah there you go we normally go through the rest of these questions but I think we've got enough to talk about that i think we're just going to move on
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to uh sort of our topics starting with I think the major one from today uh that I
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think we all have feelings about uh is that Drive-Through RPG delisted a
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totally not Star Wars game because of political messaging phil actually brought this up to our attention so I'll
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kick it over to to him to get the ball rolling on that yep so this game uh the game in question is called Rebel Scum it
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is published by Ninth Level Games the same people who bring you the other polymorph games like Pigeons 11 etc etc
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um Rebel Scum does warn you upfront that it is political it is also an obvious homage to not quite to uh Star Wars and
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uh its action figures there's uh the author's forward asks you if you want to punch a space Nazi right in their stupid
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jack booted spa space Nazi face uh it tells you up front it's not for people who believe in uh white power vaccine
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deniers bigots of any kind and cryptofascists like it's it's made no secret and it's
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been on the platform actually for several years it but it appears that a
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few people uh took issue with the message in there specifically with some
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wording of what rebel scum calls its enemy faction uh the Republic with a K
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uh and so people evidently uh complained and drivethrough RPG took it down and
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when asked about it their partner relations lead basically said that you know if there are three reports then
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they take something down and also that they could not they offered a compromise which is to take the forward down and
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put it on their code with a QR code for people to scan and go read it if they wanted to and that if they kept it they
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would have to leave political messaging uh alone in games from quote the other side unquote so they basically fired off
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a slippery slope argument and kept it down so Rebel Scum is actually now kickstarting and now also has the uh the
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the thing on their cover the game that has been banned from Drive-Through RPG which is I don't know if people are
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really aware of this is also owned by Rol 20 as of a year or two ago so Uhhuh
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i mean the problem is that with any kind of anything like this it is exactly a slippery slope what
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you know are you going to ban actual Star Wars games because this is just
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this is just a different way of saying okay we've got good guys and we've got bad guys and the good guys are rebels
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fighting an evil empire you know yeah especially considering also I want to
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just point out this game has been on drive-through RPG since November 9th
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2021 like it is not a recent thing this is not something that was up there and
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it just missed review or whatever the case is no it's been up there for almost 4 years and
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that is it's very telling uh as far as why now all of a sudden
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it's become a thing that uh drive-through RPG or really roll 20 is
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worried about yeah and there's also I mean there's like Yeah i don't know this
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whole thing is this is just a disaster it appears that the literally the entirety of the complaint is that they
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call it uh is that they are calling their enemy side uh the Republic on purpose because and I'm going to quote
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from the uh forward here uh I have called the Republic the Republic so that
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we can say I punched that Republican in the face this is deliberate end quote and it appears that Roll 20 is treating
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a political party now as a protected class that they can delist content for
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this is also this you want to be like super sensitive about this kind of thing
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the enemy faction in Star Wars the Empire has literal stormtroopers
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the word storm troopers subtle yeah it's like they're the Schultz Stafle guys i
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It's not complicated they are fascists they've always been fascists that's the point you even have
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the hamfisted and you know I like the prequel movies i've been on I've been on record of saying I like the prequel
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movies but the hamfisted George Lucas dialogue of and so freedom dies with
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thunderous applause it's not even trying to to hide this and the idea oh no
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Republicans get their feelings hurt so we're going to ban this book uh I feel
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like to a certain degree it's just like it's partially the crowdsourcing of what's objectionable like they just take
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it down because three people objected to it i can get three people to object to anything
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like three three people didn't like it okay there are there are three people out there like you you name something
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and I can find three people who will tell you it's bad you know the internet has proved that there are entire groups
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for this so it's basically just Roll 20 saying we you know we throw our hands up we wash ourselves of any responsibility
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this is what happened because you know you the readers you know said that this was objectionable it's just it's just
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sad and weird it's like yikes it's the sort of thing that can embolden
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people to complain to get content that they do not like or do not think is
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acceptable removed and that is uh uh that can be very very bad messaging and
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it can get a lot of diverse content and uh it can it can be a real I was I was
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going to say it's very I agree with you 100% straight up also this is going to
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be really damning for probably drive-through RPG uh maybe not at first
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but as this story spreads among the tabletop community because it will spread among the tabletop community um
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I'm not sure if they've noticed but the folks that tend to play these
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types of game and spend a lot of money uh on like these types of things are not
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exactly shy about saying "F you." and going and finding another way to go get
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it especially when they feel like uh things such as I don't know freedom of expression are being suppressed uh with
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some slippery slope argument right and I I also think it's interesting that uh
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this particular company uh that you know uh 9inth Level Games uh is going to have
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no problem finding other distributors for their stuff as a matter of fact uh I
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know for a fact that they've already linked up with Asthmoay who is one of the largest like North American
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distributors of tabletop products at this point currently has the largest warehouse in North America uh for this
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stuff and I believe is linked with a lot of German-based companies uh they already have the pre-order for the
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Rebels second edition role playing up and ready to go right and finding places to host and sell the PDFs elsewhere
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won't be a problem and I think that drive-through RPG and Roll 20 is
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probably going to see some backlash from this i think I'm done spending money there
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like and I know that I'm not the only one i mentioned this at my shop and a lot of
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people were like "Oh yeah no no we're good we're good." Uh so we'll we'll see
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but it's just it's such a weird move because I I I guess I understand trying
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to bury your head in the sand and not you know and try to appease whatever but like no don't don't don't effing do that
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yeah and I also want to emphasize that this is not something that happened this week which is the wildest part this uh
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this happened a month ago and only came to light because of a comment that Ninth Level Games left on their it.io io page
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for this game from somebody who was looking to buy it and couldn't find it and then it got picked up by sites like
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Rascal News this week so this is yeah this is not this this move has happened
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about a month ago and it like I guess I don't know uh I mean ninth level could
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have also been uh you know shouting this from the hills but apparently they actually took multiple steps to meet
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with roll 20 representatives to figure out if there was some way to work around this andor you know to see if they would rather not uh hide their head in the
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sand for those sweet sweet fascist bucks but uh apparently they uh seem to think
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that staying strictly politically neutral uh when all art is political is still a feasible position so um plus the
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idea money yeah and there's that argument of if we let them do this we'll have to let everybody do it and it's
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like first off okay let's let's go put out the role playing game that's that's
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unabashedly pro-fascist unless does Judge Dread currently have a role playing game i think he does it does and
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he's absolutely fascist um the the game
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world the world of the characters is one of of like brutal bleak un unabating
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fascism um it's not presented as a good thing and that's the thing uh so like
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imagine you could ban Warhammer 40k for this you could ban anything for this the
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idea that oh well if we let you do this it's like there's it just it's absurd
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it's absurd to say that you first if if we let them do this we'll have to let everybody do this cats and dogs living
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together hysteria it's like I'm going to just say this i am never going to be
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particularly afraid that fascists are going to do anything interesting artistically speaking that they're going
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to put out a game and like I'm forced to engage with it because it's just so good that's not going to happen so go ahead
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let let them make their fascist game for fascists uh just that that whole idea that the
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slippery slope argument really bothers me because it is so intellectually dishonest it it is and there's there's
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more fallout from this too potentially to happen right because now this the the company One Bookshelf which is the
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parent company for Drive-Through RPG RPG Now War Game Vault uh as well as several
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other community contentbased programs like the DM's Guild uh as well as stuff
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for Fantasy Flights Games The Genesis Foundry are all done under one bookshelf
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uh a lot of those companies and a lot of those game types are not exactly afraid of political messaging i don't know if
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you've ever played a war game ever at any point in time like Matt's pointing out 40k it's not the only one uh Kings
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of War Conquest uh Malifox uh War Machine Hordes uh they all have
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like very like political messaging inside of them and they may not call it by the same names we do but they're
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there right like it is it is very clearly that and if it's only the name that they're triggering off of boy
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that's we that's that's shallow but they also have a very deep partnership with
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Wizards of the Coast and that is also extremely problematic wizards already
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has a ton of stuff like just a black marks on their name to begin with like Hasbro has not exactly been known for
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making good choices in the the gaming space through Wizards of the Coast as of late uh especially with like a lot of
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the D and D stuff and the role playing stuff and the fan generated content all the stuff with the SRD and everything else that happened before this is just
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another thing like oh you're a very good close partner with this company that wants to censor stuff well they're
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probably going to have to look at your content now too or maybe they don't because you have that close partnership uh and that's the way this works i I I'm
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Yeah and Liz you were saying something well I do want to tell people that if you are interested in playing Rebel Scum
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which the book describes itself as an anti-fascist space opera then you can
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still buy it directly from 9inth Level Games that is ninthlevel.com and 9inth
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is uh the letter 9th level.com uh you can buy it in print and PDF there so
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it's it's not completely impossible to find it's just no longer on this huge
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platform for digital tabletop books mhm mhm yeah so that's I think that's our
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big big news item does anybody have anything else to say about that i guess no i just hope that maybe this maybe
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this will spur the right people to maybe we can finally get an alternative storefront to uh drive through RPG and I
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know someone's going to say "What about it.io?" Itch.io has the same discoverability problem as Steam but now
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also for tabletop game that's honestly I'd love to see another
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dedicated online space yes how about Steam steam was released no Steam has
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released these two RPGs two tabletop RPGs they've released two of them why not more go ahead New Bite out some more
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money just seriously oh man table Steam let's go
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but I think we can move on to less less bad decisions by Roll 20 News well
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I don't know about that because the next one is also sort of in an interesting space regarding that uh our first news
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item is probably also one of the bigger ones that I know a lot of people have been talking about jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins have left Watsi to go work
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at Darington Press uh yeah uh so I'll let you guys go ahead and start with
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that one we do want to say that Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins left and then
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I think Chris Perkins said he was going to he was retiring yeah one of them was
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retiring he stayed retired for about three months yeah and so just this past week we got
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news that they're joining Darington Press which is of course the printing company that's involved in Critical Role
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that has mostly published board games up until Daggerheart and of course
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Daggerheart is kind of the new hotness right now so it is interesting to see
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that they have grabbed two of the biggest names in tabletop gaming right
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after Watsy uh Let Them Go we've been seeing a lot of top tier talent walking away from
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Wizards of the Coast so it's it's very interesting to see Darington pick up these two big names and you you wonder
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what's So what's what's next what's next they're clearly plan they clearly have big plans for more tabletop if they're
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picking up these guys i can't wait for all the new playable Cobalts that get killed like really quickly
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that's going to be amazing look with that with that voice he was doing they deserved it
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uh the thing is about this is that it kind of goes back to something we've been talking about for a long time in
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that there's like there's the old saying of like you know inside everyone there
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are two wolves sort of thing and it's usually like you know one that does this one that does that inside Wizards of the
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Coast slash Hasbro in relation to D and D there are two basically two completely
28:30
different companies there's the one that employs people that like to make to make role playing games and then there's the
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people who want to destroy that so they can try and like sell you like a weekly subscription to Dungeons and Dragons um
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these two forces are in opposition and unfortunately right about now it feels an awful lot like Hasbro has completely
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thrown its for its full support behind you know the idea of commodification uh
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in a way it's sort of like the cash shop from Diablo Immortal uh so yeah it's
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just it is wild to see Perkins and and Crawford just going over to what was not
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even an existing game company two years ago like this didn't exist two years ago
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maybe it may be more than two years now like I don't remember the first Darington Press game uh but it's you
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know Dagger Hart's been in development for about 2 years it just it is surprising and it does make me wonder
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like how much we've seen in terms of play test stuff like when we did the Daggerheart game we had two play test
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play test classes when we Now there are Yeah now there are two more play test
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classes out uh Daggerheart hasn't has been out what a month six weeks yeah and
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a half yeah a and there are now four new classes in play testing uh two of the
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classes have already gone through multiple iterations and there are six new ancestries and six new communities
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all in active play testing right now this is not a game that is sitting still this is not a game that released and is
30:10
like "Okay we're done this is it enjoy our game." This is a game with it looks
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like big plans to keep growing whereas you look at Wizards of the Coast they're
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releasing fewer books they're losing all of this top tier talent they have fewer
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future plans than they've ever had they just killed their virtual ta their big virtual tabletop project i don't feel so
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much like Hasbro is trying to monetize it to death i feel like it's being left
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to die by bleeding talent and having fewer and fewer releases which is sad
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yeah they've uh I was going to say it wasn't like her name's not on this but I think recently like the head of the D&D
30:54
product line actually just left too the the V I think VP of product I forget her exact title uh but yeah I guess it's not
31:02
a conspiracy until she also turns up at Darington also the timeline the timeline Darington Press was founded in 2020 and
31:09
released their first where they they basically it seemed like were created to publish uh Alexandria books uh before
31:16
those started coming out in partnership with Watsi on the Tal setting reborn was Darington directly um and then 2023
31:25
uh as you said they did some board games 2023 they did Candela uh was when the first Candela obscur material came out
31:30
so about 2 years uh doing RPGs and to be fair Jamie Crawford and to to expand a little Crawford and Perkins aren't
31:37
specifically coming over here to work on Dagger Hart not even necessarily to work on Candela they are here to uh help
31:43
Darington Press kind of grow overall as an RPG publisher yeah one is a creative director
31:49
sorry one is game director yeah which is which is good they do actually have fairly different
31:55
backgrounds which I didn't realize until I was digging into this to write for the site that uh Yeah chris Perkins as creative director and I believe he's the
32:01
one who started at Watsi back in the late 90s as the head of periodicals you guys remember Dragon magazine uh whereas
32:09
Jeremy Crawford came on mid fourth edition as um essentially like lead rules editor and has always been
32:14
involved with the rules sides of the game so it wouldn't it wouldn't it would not surprise me to see Jeremy Crawford's
32:20
uh work more directly on some of these existing games while maybe Chris kind of helps add new things to their roster um
32:27
it's pretty cool and I guess whether you'd like or don't like what they've put out right now it's always cool to see somebody who kind of has the uh the
32:34
hutspot and the talent to uh take a swing at uh Hasbro they could use some competition frankly well and I think
32:41
it's going to be less taking a swing at Hasbro and more just picking up the pieces right like Yeah and again I I and
32:48
this is somebody who I I sell a lot of of Hasbro products like that i'm not
32:53
going to like claim I don't or anything like that but like looking at this in
32:58
seeing the release schedule for the different content and and the length of time it takes for sort of like the stuff
33:05
to come out and the uncertainty of the products availability and how quickly things change it's not the same company
33:12
that it used to be and we've been talking about that for a while um but I do think it's just very I think Liz is
33:19
more right i think the a lot of the decisions are it's a company that is slowly
33:25
leaving its products to die and maybe it's because they think that they can
33:31
get AI to do the rules or that they can you know get AI to do art or and and do
33:37
the writing and and and everything else i would not be surprised if that's an internal directive um and why a good
33:44
chunk of people are trying to leave or are not terribly upset when they do uh
33:49
get told to leave or that they're dismissed um so seeing folks move over
33:55
to Darington Press while I may not be the biggest fan of Daggerheart as an as a a a product I do think that having
34:03
another option besides just Piso and Watsi is fine i think that's healthy and
34:08
I think having another place where creative designers and uh RPG creators
34:13
can go is a good thing and seeing folks that were uh you know incredibly
34:20
important in the identity of D&D move on to something else one who had
34:27
been retired for 3 months and said "No I'm coming back." Either was they either showed up with a truckload of money or
34:33
they showed up with a mission statement he agrees with and that's exciting to see i agree uh we we also kind of have
34:40
another pillar uh coming out soon i didn't slip this in the notes because I didn't know the exact date until today
34:45
but apparently um MCDM's Draw Steel is slated to come out in about two weeks um
34:52
which will kind of be the third of our big like uh our big temple releases coming out of the OGL fiasco you know we
34:59
had Cobalt's Cobalt's Tales of the Valiant which already came out we had Daggerheart which came out a month or two ago and now we're actually looking
35:06
at Draw Steel coming out in about a month uh which has been an I would say
35:11
an interesting one to follow in development because it's it almost followed like an even more developed in
35:18
the open trajectory than Daggerheart did which had a lot of very publicly available and wellplayed play tests uh
35:24
draw steel like has had I think the interesting pairing of Matt Kovville's
35:31
like experience and vision and then James Intricaso has been doing a lot of the rules side of it um and so like it's
35:39
been developed in the open on their Patreon uh I think their Patreon backers actually might have had basically the
35:44
final version of the game for several months um but it's looking like Draw Steel may release on or about July 17th
35:52
and that's another interesting uh offshoot of all this to come out and again give another another entry into
35:59
what previously would have been called the fantasy heartbreaker space because these are the games people put out and they poured their heart and soul into
36:05
and then they never quite you know managed to manage to to live up to the the 800 lb gorilla of D and D but more
36:11
and more these heartbreakers are just looking like compelling games on in and of their own yeah yeah and I think the tabletop space
36:17
has really shifted over the last I mean we can we can go as little as like the last 5 years right more people are
36:24
looking at other games that are not D and D uh more people are looking for those smaller games the Heartbreak games
36:31
uh they're more there's a more of an appetite for it now than there ever was before so it's it's exciting like this
36:39
news is is really what it is to me it's excitement for the potential future of the tabletop space yep even even if D
36:46
and D uh you know just kind of sits up there and does their three releases a year and doesn't generate the kind of
36:52
excitement they used to there's still a lot going on in Tabletop to be excited about that's cool also to be fair DD
36:58
they've actually had like six or seven releases uh on the schedule for this year um although one of them it's like
37:08
two of them are both uh for Forgotten Realms players guide Forgotten Realms you know game master guide sort of thing
37:15
and one of them is a Lurin crossover for uh Magic the Gathering that they haven't
37:20
given us a release date on yet because I keep pushing Lin back for Magic and I think they're trying to line those two up yeah so that makes sense that's
37:27
that's not it's not a ton of releases and it's certainly nothing like I remember when we were talking about like
37:36
you know I remember like you know Tales of the Radiant uh of the Radiant Citadel I think it's called came out and it was
37:42
like just one of like six releases within that two month period yeah and
37:47
not just little things you know like right now we're looking at the Eberon book coming out in a couple months and
37:54
that's supposed to be not a whole big adventure or source book it's a it's a
37:59
smaller book that uh so it it feels like
38:04
releases have been scaled back releases have been spread out more of course we had the 2024 edition that is famously
38:12
still not entirely out and will not be out until late this year when they release the starter set which I think is
38:19
due out in what september september something like that so we're still uh let's see July August September we're
38:25
about 3 months away from the starter set for the game that came out last year yeah uh yes the 2024 edition the Heroes
38:32
of the Borderlands starter set yeah it's also named that so I keep thinking it's an adaptation of the Borderlands games
38:38
um yeah no from Borderlands this is the keep on not the uh the the S i I'm Yeah
38:45
I I just I do feel like there is I'm trying to think of the right word for this and unfortunately I'm not feeling
38:51
great so my brain's like spinning like a you know hamster on a cage but there's a definite sensation of we don't know you
38:59
know there there's a line in in of all games Mass Effect 2 where they say at
39:04
one point you know this has generated a swift but confused response
39:09
and I feel like this is like D and D right now is in the middle of this swift but confused response where it's like we
39:17
know that stuff isn't going the way it was going and our response is to kind of
39:22
just do whatever we can think of and we're going to we're going to come up with all these different ways to slow
39:27
things down and I I don't I have to wonder if Joe's right about how much AI they're trying to use
39:35
and I haven't actually read anything yet that felt like it came out of chat GPD
39:40
but I know that I'm probably going to sooner or later because at one point they were straight up saying "We have
39:46
all this this you know great stuff we can mine with our AI programs." Oh that
39:51
was Christopher
39:56
i know we're going there sooner or later though i mean I think the good thing about Dn D if you want to say there's a
40:02
good thing about D and D right now is that we have all of the rules for D and
40:07
D both 5e the original 5e and the 2024 edition are available through Creative
40:13
Commons those cannot be taken away those we can use those for whatever games we want to play they can be used for any
40:20
kind of adventures people want to write those are there no matter what Wizards of the Coast does no matter what Hasbro
40:26
does they're out there and there are still games being made for them beyond Wizards of the Coast the community
40:32
making games is out there still thriving and I think it's thriving even more
40:38
since Wizards dropped the ball so you still have so many options here even if
40:43
you just want to play D and D if you just want to play 5e which frankly 5e is
40:48
the game so many people know it's an easy game to pitch to your friends because everybody knows how to play it
40:55
and you can jump into it really easily yeah uh and that's not to say that D and D is going to be uh drying up on any
41:02
content anytime soon either uh one of the things we did see or at least I I happen to notice is that uh there's new
41:09
content being produced for it still in this case there was a new unear arcana uh that it's available that has seven
41:15
new arcane subasses uh which is if that's your sort of thing
41:20
uh here you go um it's Arcana Domain Cleric Arcane Archer Fighter Hexblade
41:27
Patron Warlock Conjurer Wizard Enchanter Wizard Necromancer Wizard Transmuter Wizard uh which I'm just going to go
41:34
ahead and say those should have been in the core book but uh Tattooed Warrior Monk and Ancestral Sorcery Sorcerer so
41:43
there's still content coming out and it looks like some of the stuff that people were wondering why it was missing uh is
41:48
making an appearance back uh although it is uh again funny to me that uh four of
41:56
the main schools of wizardry uh were missing until just now i will say that
42:02
these four have benefited from maybe a little more time in the oven um they all have changed in a fairly significant way
42:08
because these four uh necromancer especially um were ones that maybe so
42:15
like necromancer had a cool fantasy but the actual gameplay of being a necromancer didn't really feel like one
42:20
until like level six um whereas the others were all just kind of halfbaked anyway and they all have cool new
42:25
features like uh the new transmuter now gets a version of their like no they
42:31
used to get their philosopher stone feature level 14 basically they now get a baby version of it at three so you
42:36
immediately feel like you're doing something cool there and the arcane archer can use its ability more than twice yeah arcane archer now gets
42:43
charges equal to their int bonus um so another another fighter subass that also
42:50
wants int uh the necromancer actually like starts right off the bat with resistance to necrotic damage which is a
42:56
really strong feature um they and then focuses on making undead thrs as they go
43:01
up uh enchanters no longer have that creepy thing where they can enchant you by gazing at you um they do get some
43:08
face skills right away which is cool um and they get uh they get the ability to
43:14
I love this cuz wizards normally have super underused bonus actions i know I'm going depth on this mission uh
43:20
immediately after you cast an enchantment spell using an action in a spell slot you can take both disengage and dash as a bonus action your
43:27
enchantment wizard cast an enchantment spell and then gets the heck out of there which is cool and conjurers are
43:34
conjurers have gotten a little bit more of a focus on teleportation I guess just kind of on their the school of bending
43:40
time and space but they can also do it right away uh unfortunately it's an action uh but you know sometimes your
43:46
wizard just really needs to misty step away uh yeah there's some cool ones there there's also a a tattooed uh a
43:52
tattooed monk which is another cool subclass which I think is new to 5e uh
43:58
it kind of reminds If it's not new to 5e then it comes from something pretty old i don't remember it uh existed in fourth
44:05
edition i think it was a premier class or prestige clash on third yeah it was
44:10
yes 3 that's the one I'm thinking of uh they're a little limited but um you know
44:16
they're monk are primarily there to do uh melee damage but now this one can also diversify like uh you can and
44:23
they're that's a little bit more than just having a spell like if you have the crane tattoo at level three you know the guidance can't trip but also when you
44:30
miss with a flurry of blows you have advantage for anything else for any other attacks in that flurry of blows so
44:37
and Matt pointed out the arcane archer that was always kind of an underwhelming subass they actually not just Yeah
44:43
especially in Fabby not just more uses they also don't have an arcane shot die much like the uh the uh the monk's
44:50
unarmed die so that their arcane shots are also just more powerful period uh so this is a this is cool for the the magic
44:58
archer fantasy i mean I don't think that the arcane archer even now is particularly overwhelming it doesn't I
45:04
don't read this and go "Oh my I'm everyone's going to want to play an arcane archer." But at least it's not ridiculously bad yeah it's it if you
45:11
want if you want to have the fantasy of being like I am you know green arrow but magic um you can do that now and it
45:18
doesn't suck you don't automatically look around the table and go why am I just slightly worse than everyone else why didn't they just roll a ranger why
45:25
why why didn't I just pick a r why didn't I just pick you know the gloom the gloomstalker it's the gloomstalker
45:30
ranger i could have done that i could have been an assassin rogue but no I decided I had to be an arcane archer
45:36
yeah also and if anyone like me attempted to look at this earlier in the week and was 404ing it is available in D
45:41
and D beyond i have it open right now i I saw this news go out early in the week and I couldn't get the couldn't get it
45:47
and it was kind of annoying because I really wanted to see what they did to the necromancer i think also we should point out before we move on to other
45:52
things that they also got rid of a lot of their talent that was working in fields that had nothing to do with putting out the actual games mhm like uh
45:59
for example Todd Kendrick who used to do all their videos gone yeah it there i
46:05
guess with the I guess with people I guess one hopeful way to look at it is with people kind of leaving out of the
46:10
top but you still have the people around who have the day and day work of making D and D maybe we'll see some new uh some
46:17
new and interesting talent kind of step up and take the rudder because I know that uh Crawford and Perkins specifically want to stick around until
46:22
that got the 2024 edition out the door basically um but but Wizards is still full of people who you know presumably
46:29
want to make a good game not looking at you Chris Cox and your 30 to 40 friends who can't wait to use AI um so maybe
46:37
maybe we'll see some of the some more you know some people step up to kind of apply a new say a new direction uh to D
46:44
and D which isn't a bad thing for a game to have after it's been out for a decade let someone else step up and uh steer
46:50
the ship for a while yeah uh and then I just want to mention real quick here a little bit of uh other Hasbro news cuz I
46:58
think it's interesting but also kind of weird uh I talked about this the last time uh Final Fantasy uh released a
47:06
well- Hasbro and Wizards released a Magic the Gathering Final Fantasy set uh which is very well done very very good
47:13
but also uh what is called a universes beyond set it's a setting that does not exist inside the traditional canon lore
47:20
of the Magic the Gathering universe uh and it is currently now the bestselling Magic set of all time having just beaten
47:28
Lord of the Rings uh another Universes Beyond set uh which released about a
47:34
year ago two years a year and a half ago something like that i think it was a year ago uh and was quickly the
47:41
bestselling set of all time and again because these are universes beyond and it's not necessarily people playing the
47:46
game that are buying these driving those numbers through the roof uh and because
47:51
uh Wizards of the Coast is owned by a capitalist overlord uh they see this and see dollar signs so now we have more uh
47:58
Universes Beyond coming out this year uh as well as probably well into the future with Spider-Man uh being shortly uh on
48:07
the list here uh the next set is in Universes Within but then Spider-Man releases then Avatar the Last Airbender
48:14
will be out later this year and uh they just announced a Sonic the Hedgehog secret layer set which are specialty
48:20
cards that are made primarily for collectors with art that will never be a full set uh because sure why not uh so
48:28
the identity of magic not just uh not just D and D seems to be in uh peril i
48:34
don't know if that's the right word yeah flux would be a neutral way to put it peril is an interesting one peril was
48:40
the one I thought when I saw the uh Spongebob Squarepants secret layer it's like
48:46
Yeah see see secret layers don't secret layers don't scare me as much because those are like okay these are just like special printings of like cards that
48:52
already exist they're not new like mechanically new uh but like the Universes Beyond sets the full sets are
48:59
mechanically new most of the time so like Final Fantasy put a bunch of new mechanics in there will be new mechanics
49:05
in Spider-Man there will be new mechanics in Avatar the Last Air Bender uh so like it's for one thing this is
49:12
the monkey paw curl uh effect and I like to say because in the 90s I know when Magic was just starting everybody's like
49:18
"Hey wouldn't it be cool if we could have you know Transformers and Magic or whatever like insert thing here." Uh and
49:25
you got it and now the the faucets's been opened it's just doesn't seem like it's going to turn off uh but we'll see
49:30
because every integration every Universes beyond is a collaboration so
49:37
it costs them money and costs licensing and the interesting thing here and and
49:43
then I will move on is that when I say that these are universes beyond sets full sets these are standard legal sets
49:51
which means that they now have a commitment to print these for 3 years
49:56
because standard is now 3 years long before things rotate out so
50:02
they're making these really large commitments and making a really large licensing uh like partnership with
50:09
whoever they're licensing the IP from that they didn't before cuz formerly Universes Beyond sets were like "Oh this
50:15
is a commander product we print it until we're done and then we're done." Or this is a secret layer it's printed until
50:21
it's done printed and then it's done these have to stay around now and this is the first time we've started seeing
50:28
this so I don't know how this is going to work out and what that money
50:33
relationship is going to be with the licensing IPs especially with like Sony
50:38
is pretty precious with Final Fantasy and while this is really really good it couldn't have been cheap disney is not
50:45
cheap period and they own Marvel and Spider-Man and
50:50
then the uh Nickelodeon uh I think it's it's Viacom uh I think may I can't
50:57
remember I might be wrong owns Avatar the Last Airbender and when we talked with Brandon Conway about that like when
51:03
they were doing the the tabletop RPG they were involved like they had to sign off on things and they hold that very
51:11
very precious and same thing here so like I'm going to be really curious to
51:16
see how Hasbro comes out the other side of this one yeah I uh Yes you are correct that is now well it was Viacom
51:23
now it is Paramount i guess technically still owns Avatar which is even worse
51:28
yeah this will be interesting to see because one I'm a quick anecdote about this from a friend who went to some of
51:33
the releases for Final Fantasy um it's been interesting to see the reaction to some of these sets because so square
51:39
Square Enix was in on the uh development of this from the beginning they were they were actually fairly hands-on back and forth with wizards about certain
51:45
things even up to it including translations of cards and providing and providing original artwork too as well
51:51
yeah yeah yeah but it's been interesting to see people who are familiar with Magic but who don't know anything about
51:58
Final Fantasy picking up some of these and not understanding how cards why cards act like they do um my favorite
52:04
example of this is Kane from Final Fantasy 4 um as a unit he basically
52:09
betrays you if you if you deal damage to an opposing player I think you draw cards and then he switches control um
52:17
and it's it it's it's been an interesting reaction because anybody who's familiar with the Final Fantasy
52:22
story of Final Fantasy 4 is like "Oh yeah obviously Kane's whole big story arc is he betrays people multiple times." But people who have no idea how
52:29
this goes like "Why would I ever want to play this knight who immediately switches sides as soon as I use him to
52:36
deal damage?" It's it's been fun to see but um looking looking forward to your
52:41
uh not legally distinct Spidererson deck uh when when that UB comes out oh yeah
52:47
oh yeah uh so I think we'll move on from there uh real quick and talk about something that I think is also really
52:52
interesting we talked about uh play tests for Daggerheart with new classes coming out starfinder actually has a
52:59
couple new ones coming out as well one thing that was missing early in our play test through it was uh tech classes they
53:05
existed but they weren't really changed from uh the first iteration uh so now
53:11
we're actually seeing uh those get released in particular uh the mechanic and the technommancer uh so there's play
53:19
tests of that which I think is really really interesting uh because they are going to tune up those classes they're
53:24
going to try to make them feel more in line with the others uh and I think that's really cool because I always
53:30
thought and and maybe Matt has a feel about this as well uh maybe you do as
53:36
well Phil but the technical classes in Starfinder were always some of the most
53:41
interesting to me because they sort of blended that that mix of science and f and fantasy the techno mage in my
53:48
opinion always had the most there was room for a lot of different interpretations of how this is working
53:54
mhm um like you could you could argue that this techno mage is literally using
54:00
magic to control technology whereas this techno mage isn't using any magic at all it's all just technology they just
54:06
approach it in a magical way kind of like that Babylon 5 group the ones that were like you know they'd show up babble
54:13
weird incomprehensible things and like poof off and and they they like you know we're like magic people but it's science
54:20
um there's a lot of room for different interpretations of that class it's one
54:25
of the I think it's one of the best designed classes but unfortunately when
54:30
they updated to the new version of Starfinder it broke the class um so
54:37
that's not you know that's to be expected to some degree you're going to break stuff when you come up with a new addition of a game and it's weird
54:43
because Starfinder the first Starfinder was halfway to the Pathfinder 2E which
54:50
is the current rule set they're using so yeah I think to a certain degree it was
54:55
expected that they would break these classes i am glad that they're finally getting them out the uh the mechanic is
55:02
just straight up fun it's just a it's a neat class uh I I don't have anything
55:07
really to say about it but yeah it's just one step closer to Pathfinder second edition full release and I am
55:13
excited i want it to come out because um once it's out you can you can use all
55:19
this stuff in your Pathfinder game like straight up the the rules on it will be completely currently Starfinder requires
55:26
a fair amount of adaptation to go to either uh Pathfinder 1 or Pathfinder 2
55:31
like you'd have to to make some you know choices and change things around but the
55:36
stuff in Starf Fighter 2 is going to be like straight up conversant with Pathfinder 2 and I like that cuz I would
55:44
totally let people play a mechanic or a technommancer or any of them in my regular Pathfinder game i would have no
55:50
problem with that i'd use the mechanic to be the artificer for Pathfinder you know there's no reason you can't uh so
55:57
yeah I think that overall I've really liked what they've been doing with the Starfinder um play test why the word
56:03
play test would not come out there um I just generally like how they've been
56:09
adopting that thing that a lot of smaller companies have already been doing and you mentioned it Phil mentioned it with uh Draw Steel like
56:16
these things are much more public than they used to be um I I definitely don't think Piso is even close to the level of
56:22
of you know allowing the the the players to access the game that MDM did they
56:29
their theirs is kind of nuts but it's still a pretty public play test for Piso
56:35
uh much more so than they've ever done before so I am very interested in that mhm this is This is one of the first
56:41
play tests I can think of from Piso where you didn't have to shell out to buy the play test from them necessarily yeah exactly liz you were gonna say
56:48
something i mean I do go ahead uh yeah I do want to say that this has actually been in play testing for a while they
56:54
started um you know we played a game of Starfinder which was using kind of the first version of the play test rules and
57:01
as you all mentioned didn't have all of the classes and then they rolled out tech class play testing uh in April I
57:08
believe to add these two classes to the 2E play test and one of the great things
57:14
is as you say you could download the rules without paying for it though I walked into a store last week and I saw
57:20
a copy of the play test rules in a physical book that you could buy and I was like "Wow." Okay wow
57:28
but also also all of this was in Demiliplane so you could go into Demiplane and look up rules and search
57:35
for things you wanted and use the character creator to make characters really easily and I do enjoy Pathfinder
57:42
but there are a lot of rules and a lot of options same for Starfinder so that
57:48
made it much more approachable and much easier to test so the actual books the
57:53
final Starfinder 2 ebooks are due out at the end of July at least most of them I
57:59
believe uh there is you know the pocket edition the the books that are not
58:04
slightly less gigantic those aren't due out until September but the rest of them
58:10
the player core is coming out in July actually you know I've been I've been
58:16
giving Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast a lot of crap for the lengthy D&D 2024
58:22
release schedule this is also a staggered release with uh Starfinder Player Core July 31st Starfinder GM Core
58:31
August uh and uh Starfinder Alien Core in October
58:38
and Starfinder Galaxy i don't know if that's part of the 2E release but that's coming out in uh you know August also
58:46
it's it's not this year and a half we've seen for Watsi but I was going to say between these books that
58:53
it's not a it's not a specifically part of the roll out of 2E but it's just a book for 2 yeah but the thing the thing
58:59
I think here is I think I'm more okay with this compared to what Wizards did not because it's all happening within
59:05
one year it's well it's happening within a year but also like it you have the
59:11
tools already available for like running the game once the first book drops and
59:17
you can like Matt just pointed out earlier this is fully compatible with another game that is already fully released so if you need GM information
59:26
you can look at the GM guide for Pathfinder and it will have a lot of the
59:31
stuff that you can potentially use it may not be specifically science themed or sci-fi themed but you'll have the
59:38
tools to do rules and things like that right like that stuff already kind of exists that you have the ability to
59:45
access it and I believe all that stuff is is available on the Archives of Nethus for free anyway so like you have
59:51
access to this information for free already to run the game once the first book drops so I think I think that's the
59:59
the distinction that that makes a big difference for me because wizards changed just enough with the way classes
1:00:06
stat blocks monsters experience and everything else works that you really couldn't do anything until you got the
1:00:12
other books and when you could do stuff it was very very limited to whatever was contained inside of those books so I'm a
1:00:18
little more okay with this not you know I'm not going to cut them you know and say that oh this is absolutely perfect
1:00:24
because they're not all releasing at once but they're within a month of each other so like I'm okay with that yeah
1:00:31
and and and the least essential one I would argue is the one that's coming last their alien book which I'm guessing is the Starfinder equivalent of the
1:00:37
Monster Manual yes you know what's right there the Pathfinder 2E version of their of their monster manual which you can
1:00:43
then reskin to be aliens yep easil easily the least essential of the three
1:00:48
books and it's the one that's not coming out within a month of each other yeah two months and you've got you've got the
1:00:53
two that you really need to run Pathfinder so or excuse me Starfind
1:01:00
also I want I want Matt to run that game again so I can actually play it i unfortunately had to miss the last one we did it sounded like a complete blast
1:01:07
it was I'd be more than happy to but you know I I do want to get back into it
1:01:12
maybe but I'd like to do it once the full rules are out and we can we can see everything this is a 464
1:01:21
page book so it's hefty if you buy the if you buy the hard coverver version you
1:01:26
could probably injure someone possibly yourself with it uh and it it's uh
1:01:32
retailing at $69.99 which is up there but also it's a 464 page book it's a
1:01:38
huge book and that that's just Piso though i could defend my home with the Pathfinder 2 ecore rule yeah I was going
1:01:44
to say the Pathfinder 2 core core rule book is massive uh like guys guys I'm
1:01:50
looking right now at my bookshelf and if we're talking massive terrifying rule
1:01:55
books that that could kill people with with contemptuous ease I want to point you guys to Exalted third edition no you
1:02:02
absolutely you can bring that up as many time i just want I just want to point out that with like your book Exalted and I will say with the Piso books when I
1:02:09
spend $70 on a book I feel like I've actually got my money's worth out of it yeah you got you got 70 bucks worth of
1:02:16
book there and I look and I looked at like and not to keep crapping on on Watsi but like when I looked at what you
1:02:23
got for the price of those books it didn't feel like they were absolutely gorgeous books but it didn't feel to me
1:02:29
justifiable in the cost maybe maybe that's just me but no I don't i have them right here um aside from stuff like
1:02:38
the you know the Greyhawk map for no reason i We're going to go for no reason we
1:02:44
know the reason cuz originally originally Greyhawk was supposed to be the default setting for the new the new uh the new world and then they didn't do
1:02:51
it yeah but I mean they there's a thing they could have done where they could have changed it for a Forgotten Realms map or something uh but regardless
1:02:58
whatever uh I do think that those books are I I I I hate to say this because we
1:03:03
have been kind of down on Watsi today but I never saw the reason for the new
1:03:10
edition since it's not a new edition and say what you want about 3.5 but 3.5 felt
1:03:17
like a significant change yeah it was that really addressed it addressed a lot of problems uh it made grappling
1:03:25
slightly less soul destroying to do like I don't feel like any the 2024 edition
1:03:33
is significantly better than what we had and that required a
1:03:38
whole new series of three books i to do this i do for all my criticism want to
1:03:44
get in here and stand up for Watsy because while I think it was misadvertised as a new edition these are
1:03:51
books that bring together the rules from a bunch of different books these consolidate rules from the original
1:03:57
Players Handbook from Zanithar's Guide to Everything from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything from all of these different
1:04:02
rule books are now together in a couple of books so you don't have to buy these
1:04:07
books and these rule expansions you can just buy the book and I think that after the game is 10 years old I think that's
1:04:13
a very reasonable thing to do but they advertised it as a new edition and not
1:04:18
just we dusted off the rules and put all of the player rules in one book and put all of the GM rules in one book yeah and
1:04:25
and I mean this is maybe my criticism of it because like I felt like the advertising was not a lie until later
1:04:31
like I think Yeah i think everything was they changed direction well they changed direction after they fired 1100 people
1:04:37
uh so I'm I'm relatively confident that that played a role in the decision to not make this a new Eternal Edition like
1:04:44
they expected it to and instead made it 5.25 right so like I just just my my
1:04:51
crit my my two cents there but I get what you're saying and I don't want to take away from the fact that they are gorgeous books i just don't know that
1:05:00
$60 for something that feels incomplete they aren't wrong feels incomplete
1:05:06
versus the $70 which is a little bit more that I know that I will be paying for for Starfinder but Piso has a
1:05:13
wonderful history of releasing a book that feels meaty and complete and is not missing anything when a book is released
1:05:21
so and I mean to be fair these are the same people that started making you know 3.5 so I'm not terribly surprised by
1:05:27
this uh and then I just want to go ahead the the D and D books are so gorgeous
1:05:34
the ones you get from your friendly local game stores are just gorgeous alternate covers and well I have I have
1:05:40
my Pathfinder books they're very nice they are frankly nothing on these special edition covers from the Wizards
1:05:46
of the Coast books uh but uh there you are yeah and then I think the Dragon
1:05:52
Dell's just released i think we have it sitting on our counter right now gorgeous book would not would not pay
1:05:58
the the full price for it myself uh just it it feels difficult to give Watsi
1:06:06
money right now because they're not coming out with anything big and exciting this year's release
1:06:11
schedule well Matt did point out earlier that there are quite a few things coming out this year it's just not it's not an
1:06:18
exciting year and saying "Hey here's a book about dragons." Okay well here's a book with 10 adventures in it here you
1:06:24
go okay like that's that's That's That's fine that's fine i'm not super excited
1:06:29
about it that's fine that's uh okay i'm not rushing to pick it up nope i will
1:06:35
say again that I was way more excited for this book when the original title came out as Dragon Anthology and I thought it was literally going to be the Anthology of Dragon magazine i was very
1:06:42
excited for that as a product i mean honestly I'd be if they were to release
1:06:47
something like that i I mean that would be great but I don't know that they that they will i don't know that they own all
1:06:53
of the rights anymore to all of the Dragon magazine publications i don't know either i know the Well because Yeah
1:06:59
a lot of that probably goes to the uh who aren't there anymore or who are deceased and now it's down to their uh
1:07:06
uh you know down to whatever their um I lost where that sentence was going anyway you're probably right that's what
1:07:11
I'll say uh I do want to just touch on base on real quick on at least a couple other little things that are at least
1:07:17
uppers or stories with a little bit of a lift to them uh Cobalt Press is also not being quiet in what they're producing at
1:07:24
least they're not sitting idly by uh they have their game masters guide uh which is releasing which is uh a lot of
1:07:32
stuff that some of us DMs have been doing for a very long time now codified in a set of rules that you can easily reference for newer players like I'll
1:07:38
I'll bring up the skill challenge thing if you've ever listened to our D and D live plays if you listen to the recording that we did for for my D and D
1:07:45
game Otherworld um one of the things I had folks do was a skill challenge encounter instead of just a straight
1:07:51
combat encounter uh and while D and D does have uh supplemental rules for that I don't know if they're in the books
1:07:58
that released I don't remember um the last time I remember these being in a D and D book was actually in fourth
1:08:04
edition yeah that's what I thought this was skill skill skills challenges were how fourth edition uh mechanically
1:08:10
handled non-combat but still skill involved uh you know challenges or scenes or
1:08:16
whatever and I don't remember if these are hardcoded in fifth edition there
1:08:21
might be like you know you can have them make skilled challenges and try to make them do a set number of checks which if
1:08:27
that's a mechanic does that sounds familiar then you've probably played an indie RPG in the last decade and and recognized the concept of clocks yeah
1:08:34
and and this one is releasing this as a uh it's uh they jokingly call it fantasy
1:08:41
races uh not because it's a book about fantasy races but because it's a book about races in a fantasy world where
1:08:47
like zoom zoom races not not like oh it's an elf uh so it's called chasing in
1:08:54
the inferno is an adventure inside of the book uh it's the in the Labyrinth Adventures book that is now in this uh
1:09:01
which is a giant relay race that requires you to have characters that uh you know essentially are set throughout
1:09:07
for handoffs and like you would exactly a relay race but everything is proportionate to your skill checks and
1:09:14
so like here are your obstacles here's what you need to do to overcome it here are your options tell me what you have with it and it uses everything like your
1:09:22
passive initiative uh uses round base initiative which is a whole new initiative uh set that again I believe
1:09:28
existed in fourth edition and has not existed since uh but is being resurrected here so like it's nice to
1:09:34
see some of the stuff that that sort of fell to the wayside finding a new home
1:09:39
and being reintroduced to people who maybe never got to experience it or that cool stuff that you know you could do
1:09:46
with those things so I'm super excited for that i'm super excited for Cobalt Press releasing this i do want to point
1:09:51
out really fast uh one of the things Cobalt Press has done that's pretty cool is they've put out their own version of
1:09:58
5e that they allow it's basically the rule system for Tales of the Valiant and
1:10:04
they allow anybody to use it and they can just use it just pretty much the way that Creative Commons licensed for 5e
1:10:11
and 5 uh 2024 but what's really like is they say that you can create and publish your own Black Flag role playing content
1:10:17
with no chance of anyone telling you that you can't so like right on their page they're being snarky and and I'm
1:10:23
down for it quite frankly um I like that so I just wanted to point that out i think it's pretty cool yeah I'm not
1:10:29
surprised since they're one of the three that I one of the three I alluded to without explaining it and just to kind of assume that our listeners uh knew
1:10:36
what Tales of the Valiant was so sorry about that that's on me but yeah this was this was kind of the first out the
1:10:42
gate after the OGL fiasco and like they they openly advertised that stuff for Tales of the Valiant is also compatible
1:10:48
with 5e but they yeah they also have that uh kind of a snarky uh thing about
1:10:53
their licensing which is I I don't know it's cool i like them cobalt is cool and then we have uh the last thing which I
1:11:00
think is a great way to to sort of end it is that there's a bunch of community-based and smaller company
1:11:06
based uh releases and content that is 5e compatible uh specifically they call out
1:11:12
5e uh because we don't really have a new nomenclature to call the new game from so 5e it is forever eternity uh do you
1:11:20
like orcs well there's a game called or there's a book called orcs and orcs uh you can go through all sorts of
1:11:26
different flavors variants of orcs and orc culture uh and magic items based on orcs you like orcs yeah we we learned
1:11:31
that you like orcs we put orcs with our orcs so you can orc while you orc i love that they just call this book orcs and
1:11:37
orcs it includes 70 new magic items along with it as well which I'm super super super here for uh you have fairy
1:11:44
tale classes which is slowly releasing various different uh old school fairy tales as playable classes inside of
1:11:51
Dungeons and Dragons uh the one that is highlighted here is dream walker uh which is basically you know what exactly
1:12:00
what it sounds like the these are the ones that you would see in folklore that would enter dreams and and mess with
1:12:05
people in their dreams while they're sleeping uh so that's really cool the Clockwork Conspiracy is a steampunk D
1:12:11
and D adventure timed uh at least right now as this is a homebrew beginner friendly oneshot adventure uh that is
1:12:18
right before Eberon releases which is perfect timing uh so do you like steampunk do you like being in a weird
1:12:24
city do you like mechanical spiders that you might have to stomp uh instead of regular spiders well here you go this is
1:12:30
for you uh and I like the fact that there is a massive and this is not the
1:12:36
only stuff there's there's plenty of other ones as well um but there's a very
1:12:41
healthy community of people making compatible content for Dungeons and Dragons even if you know Wizards shits
1:12:49
the bed completely and just stops making anything worth picking up people are
1:12:55
still making stuff that you can that that are that is new and interesting and
1:13:01
potentially very very cool for you to look at and it looks like they're releasing it not through things like Drive through RPG so you know added
1:13:08
bringing it full circle added bonus do any of you have any any thoughts on that i in a similar vein uh another thing
1:13:15
Wizards of the Coast is doing is on D and D beyond you're seeing a lot of thirdparty books that are then easy to
1:13:22
use in the Wizards of the Coast character creator or the D&D Beyond
1:13:27
Character Creator uh character options like uh there are the Dragonheim books
1:13:33
are all here that's the game that the dungeon dudes were playing which I think is really fun oneshot Wonders from
1:13:39
Cobalt Press uh it just there not cobalt press roll and play press too many words
1:13:46
too many words in my head there are all of these third party things including new classes a couple of weeks ago Matt
1:13:51
and I were talking about how uh the gunslinger wizard uh Dn D Beyond sent us
1:13:56
an email about the gunslinger class but that's not something that Wizards of the Coast wrote that's a third party
1:14:02
supplement that you can get through DND Beyond so I think one good thing about
1:14:07
Wizards of the Coast itself producing not as much exciting content this year we are seeing tons of third party
1:14:14
content available through D&D Beyond and there's just this is there's so much
1:14:19
cool 5D stuff out there so it's great it's great more games more games are
1:14:24
great if we're going to talk about stuff D and D Beyond is doing that's good so if I'm going to actually say something
1:14:30
nice about Wizards here I guess um the ruins yeah the Ruins of Simbar uh got
1:14:36
released on D and D Beyond it's a complete setting book for a completely
1:14:41
different campaign world that's not a one that Wizards owns in any way shape or form and it you can get complete
1:14:47
access to it on D&D Beyond and that's kind of nuts uh and it's not the only
1:14:53
one that they've done they've they've actually also done the malady of Minara
1:14:59
they they've done quite a few so yeah it's it's really it's interesting to see
1:15:04
them doing this because it does have that ability to allow you to to play
1:15:11
other things with your in your Dungeons and Dragons so yeah I I also think that the Dungeons and Dragon stuff is is
1:15:17
pretty good quite frankly it's just straight up good so I'd also uh I'd also like to call out the the 5e uh
1:15:23
compatible Lord of the Rings game that came out a few years ago is entirely integrated with D and D beyond and uh
1:15:30
also a small a more smaller release OIMA which is kind of a uh half fantasy half
1:15:36
modern studio Ghibllyesque uh game yeah it's it's very jibly coded
1:15:42
just from the art but it is also uh again Oojima is on DD Beyond so that's
1:15:49
cool actually I just realized they have this this thing that's a thinly veiled Monster Hunter uh tabletop game like
1:15:56
literally the Monster Hunter video games but top on tabletop called Heliana's Guide to Monster Hunting that's on D and
1:16:02
D beyond now too it came out in March of 2025 so fairly new uh and also
1:16:07
Humblewood from Hit Point Press is also on D and D Beyond there are all these One of the things
1:16:14
that's so great about digital tools is you can go in beyond just having a PDF
1:16:20
having a PDF is nice but a digital toolbox like Dn D Beyond you can go in and search for things search for
1:16:26
abilities you can add abilities to a character sheet without having 20 books sitting out on your desk and easily
1:16:32
integrate third party content into a 5e campaign so I think it's really cool
1:16:38
that they're throwing more content on here and I I do kind of feel like this is sort of shoring up maybe a weaker or
1:16:46
less exciting year for D and Directly from Wizards of the Coast cuz there's a
1:16:51
lot of exciting stuff out there just maybe maybe a little less from Wizards the future is bright just got to know
1:16:57
where to look but I think that's going to do it for us today friends i do want to thank you for joining us as always
1:17:03
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message us on Discord well with that folks we'll catch you next time
1:18:09
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