Up next in 10
Are TTRPGs taking a turn away from crunchy to bring us more narrative-focused one-shots?
Apr 2, 2025
While there are still plenty of crunchy tabletop games out there, lately we're playing a lot of shorter TTRPGs that lean into narrative elements — and are easier to schedule than long form campaigns. We talk about our recent Pigeon's 11 game, the cozy fantasy of Legend in the Mist, and the Nebula-nominated Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast. Also, we're apparently going back to Eberron this year in a surprise D&D book that wasn't part of the original 2025 release slate.
Plus the speedy demise of Sigil, Wizards of the Coast's Unreal-based VTT that launched and laid off its staff within a month. Yikes.
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Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:01
[Music]
0:26
hail and well met traveler welcome to the tavern did you know this is the place where more than half of the
0:33
greatest adventures in history have begun but before those adventurers took their first steps they watched and
0:39
calculated who would join their party why look over there there's a mighty barbarian from the frozen lands strong
0:46
mighty full of honor and wisdom i happen to know that one they go by Matt
0:53
Rossy and look over there to the right that woman working away on her mechanical dog she's cunning witty and
1:01
I've seen her bounce more than her fair share of nerd wells out of here before I can even blink i happen to know that she
1:07
goes by the name Liz Harper and me oh my name's Joe Perez and
1:14
I'll be your tavern keep welcome to Tavern Watch
1:20
hello and welcome to another episode of Tavern Watch where we discuss all things related to tabletop i'm your host Joe
1:27
Perez one of several hobby focused folks from Blizzard Watch uh and I've got my marvelous co-host with me today that one
1:34
giggling there is Liz Harper she is the uh one that keeps us all in line uh how
1:39
you doing today Liz hello i'm doing pretty good uh we've got the original barbarian himself Matt Rossy how you
1:46
doing Matt i just realized the last night while I was watching Godzilla X
1:51
Kong the new empire that it's actually a Conan movie it really is and God Kong is
1:57
Conan and I don't know who Godzilla would be in this scenario like some friend of Conan who also hates him but
2:04
regardless it was just once that popped in my head that that's what I was watching i it was like "Wow this is
2:10
actually really well done." And then you realize the Conan movies are D and D movies oh yeah but I've already known
2:16
that and for that matter The Mummy is quite frankly the ultimate it's the it's the greatest indie movie ever made yeah
2:23
yeah absolutely and that sign of ascent uh and an agreement with us on that uh
2:29
Mummy movie is Phil who's joining us yet again uh I think at this point Phil's basically our tabletop fourth uh fourth
2:35
chair and I think that's just how this is going to be and I'm okay with this how you doing Phil i got my fourth chair
2:40
i'm good i'm good is is Godzilla subai in this i don't think Subetai I don't
2:45
think Superai hates Cod enough no I I get you i get why you'd ask yeah they
2:50
get along too well though not only that Godzilla is way bigger and stronger than
2:56
so it's kind of like Wilt Chamberlain was in in the Con and the Destroyer ex
3:01
in ex including the part where they turn on each other fair enough although neither of the Con movies have a giant
3:07
moth that shows up and makes them play nice that was the weirdest part of the of the movie for me was when Mafra just
3:14
shows up and is like "Stop fighting." And I swear to God Godzilla was like turns to Kong and it's like "You're lucky my chick's here." Like total like
3:21
you know that's my girlfriend i have to be nice to you well maybe they'll make a maybe they'll make a Godzilla and King
3:26
Kong role playing game if they haven't already i'm actually looking at the Kaiju Fighter uh yeah we're going to
3:32
talk about what we're reading so I'll we'll I'll talk about it well why don't we just transition into that so I guess the the first question for the table as
3:38
always is what are you currently reading so Matt go ahead uh I've been digging into the Catalyst Game stuff because
3:45
they they republish two of my favorite games um they they rep they do like a lot of Shadow Run stuff including the
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fifth edition um which is not my favorite edition just because I haven't really read through it but uh I do like
3:57
that they have all that Shadow Run stuff i'm sad that they don't also have the rights to Earth Dawn i know somebody
4:03
else does um but it's always felt weird to me that they're not the same place anymore but they also have the
4:08
Battletech and Mech Warrior stuff these are all old Facet games all of them shadowon was Mech Warrior battletech
4:15
were um I've been going through them all basically because there's the Kaiju
4:21
fighter game but that's you fighting Kaiju and I don't want to fight Kaiju i
4:26
want a game where we just play as Kaiju like you know and there's not as many good ones there's there's Daikaiu Moashi
4:35
which I've not gotten to play yet but it's a it's a game about giant monsters it's a little bit more like the movies
4:41
than I like though because it has a lot of dumb humans in them well the good news is is there's a game that was on
4:46
Kickstarter last year and I think it should just be releasing right about now uh that's in the era D10 system that is
4:53
literally just called Kaiju you play as Kaiju yeah I haven't seen that one yet but I I of course will dig it up when I
4:59
get to it yeah just let I am totally down for you know anything but I Yeah
5:05
like I'm saying I'd love to see an actual kaiju game honestly I could just build one
5:11
there's so many uh RPGs out with like open systems now i could I could
5:16
literally just find one's I could do like what do you call it uh oh heck I can't remember the system and I show
5:22
Power by the Apocalypse i could easily see a Power of the Apocalypse book has just got kaiju archetypes for you to
5:28
play well there's also a lot of uh there's a lot of other games that sort of have rules that are easily adapted or
5:33
already have frameworks for it like Lancer believe it or not has like a kaiju module because essentially you
5:40
just treat the kaiju as if it was your mech um and then you just go from there um there's also Everyday Heroes which
5:47
has a a game based around Kong Skull Island uh that's Evil Genius Games
5:53
pacific Rim has a game that actually has both aspects of it i was actually looking at that because the uh the uh
6:01
Battletech stuff they have the Mech Warrior book which is using a modified system and it's it's really interesting
6:07
actually cuz it's it's a narrative RPG it's not just an RPG it's a narrative RPG can you imagine the Battletech art
6:14
role playing game turning into a narrative RPG that's kind of nuts and and not in a bad way at all that's a
6:20
great thing to do i think it was a wonderful decision it's just that I'm looking back at from the lens of a
6:25
14-year-old me walking into the arcade in Providence and if you don't remember the arcade it was big mall in Providence
6:32
uh it's it's I think it was the oldest mall with a roof in in North America but
6:37
anyway they had a role playing game store up there the guy who ran it was really bizarre well that's that's that's
6:43
a shock to everyone who's ever run a a a game store huh that the guy running the game store i'm looking right at you
6:50
right now Joe i know as I say this I'm I'm aware but he always had a the hand
6:55
like he would always point me to something new and weird I had never seen like he's the one that got me Nexus the Infinite City he got me into that game
7:02
yeah well we can talk about that later but there is literally I have one regular customer who I do that I do that
7:07
with and he curses me and loves me all at the same time oh yeah you're you're a demon i'm the pusher yeah u but that's
7:14
what Matt's reading and what he's into we'll go with Phil what are you uh what are you cracking open these days uh
7:20
let's see so I've been uh cracking open
7:25
uh one that I'm actually playing in real life which is Mongoose Traveler Second Edition traveler is fun a little
7:31
crunchier than I'm used to uh but very interesting system once you learn it oh you mean Oh I thought you were saying
7:37
Mongoose Traveler but you're saying Traveler yeah by Yeah there's Okay you had to hide me there for a second there
7:43
is it's it's a it's a habit I picked up from my from my game master I'm guessing to differentiate it from another edition
7:48
that occurred somewhere in the middle there i don't know enough about the history of where Traveler has been um
7:54
and then let's see i know we'll talk about this later but since it got nominated for a Nebula I have been
8:00
rereading my copy of Yasaba's Bed and Breakfast uh very fun little uh kind of cozy indie game uh that has apparently
8:09
gained some attention lately and I don't know I've just been um I've been reading
8:14
a smattering of things that I've picked up in different sales recently yeah kind of all over the all over the place right
8:19
now all right Liz what about you uh well I'm reading Legend in the Mist which uh
8:26
I like the vibes i like the vibes i I haven't read enough of it to tell you about it but uh uh that's all I got i
8:35
start reading this one the vibes are very on point yeah and uh I I like the
8:40
book the book you're reading the book and it feels like you're reading a comic book because it just has tons of art
8:47
interspersed with you know explanations and statuses and so I think it's
8:52
formatted in a super cool way um but you know part of the problem with the
8:58
tabletop games I've just I've just come out of running to Polymorph system games
9:04
which uh the book for the polymorph system games that's we ran a game of pigeons 11 i think we might talk about
9:10
that a little bit and uh we ran a game of sentient sensibility and uh a
9:15
polymorph system game am I saying that right mhm the system they the system
9:20
they run on is it's very free form it's very narrative focused and you know the
9:26
books for them are like 60 pages so you get they're not very crunchy they're the
9:31
opposite of crunchy they're creative and crazy and going into a game that is like
9:37
lots of rules lots of stats not that it's complicated necessarily but it's
9:42
such a it's such a different class of game and you get like 300page rule books
9:47
i'm actually not sure how many pages this is but it feels like a lot because I've been doing these really short
9:53
narrative games so I am I am interested in getting into something new this is I think it's going to be a fun one yeah
9:59
it's a lot i I think uh I think I think the first chap I think the entire first chapter of Legend of the Mist might be
10:05
as long as most polymorph games because but that's because it's in addition to being a comic as you said it's also a
10:11
choose your own adventure game that teaches you the rules of the game which is really which is amazing uh speaking
10:17
of I mean let me just really quick before we get on to whatever we're about to do uh I just checked the uh table of
10:23
contents for again a narrative role playing game called Mech Warrior Destiny
10:28
241 pages for again it's a narrative game it's
10:33
supposed to be rules light given that it's Mech Warrior I wonder how much of that is backstory of the Mech Warrior universe because I know there's a lot
10:39
going on in me i can tell you right now that it is a lot of backstory of the
10:44
Mechar yes i was going to say speaking of uh like reading a comic book going back to Liz's comment I currently have
10:51
purchased to probably nobody's surprise the latest uh expansion to the Marvel
10:56
Multiverse role playing game uh which is Spider-Verse um which anybody who's
11:02
listened to anything we I've ever produced on the internet knows that that is a huge deal uh and was an immediate
11:07
purchase for me it literally has a hundred pages of characters 100 pages
11:12
dedicated to nothing but playable characters including such deep cuts as
11:17
Cardiac who some people may remember from the '90s uh and if you don't uh it
11:22
is literally a doctor who decided to go into uh crime to you know help other
11:28
people uh because Robin Hood is a thing at the time in the '90s uh and then also
11:33
some other deep cuts like Duck Door Doom uh which if you've ever watched Spiderham or Red Spiderham uh that is Dr
11:41
doom but as a duck uh because why not every variation and flavor of all of the
11:47
Peter Parkers including the early day Peter Parkers from the original comic strips uh and like everything in between
11:54
it is pretty comprehensive in all of the characters that it it pulls in from the
12:00
the multiverse including all of the Sinister 6 uh a bunch of different variations from different worlds it's
12:05
really really cool um out of all the ones that they've put out so far this is
12:10
probably my favorite book and it's not just because it's Spider-Man but because a lot of the other ones like even the
12:16
X-Men like there were some okay deep cuts in there but not as much as I would have expected this is just like I mean
12:22
they even put Spider Boy in here and Spider Boy is like newish like the the the Bailey Briggs
12:28
spider boy so I'm actually really excited about that i just started uh cracking into it last night uh and I'm
12:34
actually looking forward to getting a game together at the shop uh because again I help run a comic shop so of
12:42
course I'm going to want to run a comic based game um and my buddy Justin uh is
12:48
he he just lost one of his gaming group he just retired and moved uh to a different country and he's feeling a
12:55
little bit down and I want to like surprise him and be like "Hey what are you doing this Friday?" "Oh great you're uh staying in the shop we we're uh we're
13:01
playing SP we're playing uh Marvel Heroes here you can play as Kingpin go and just watch him watch him be happy."
13:07
So but that's what uh that's what I'm reading what I'm looking forward to and I'm not really playing anything right
13:13
now because the last game I got to play was Pigeons 11 uh so as grateful as I am for that I didn't really get to to do a
13:19
whole lot of uh playing recently time time is the the true final boss of all
13:24
role playing games i I am ostensibly playing in a Dolmanwood game but one of
13:30
our players dropped out due to life and it's like we're in this kind of limbo
13:36
where okay do we try to keep going with one less player also this player was the
13:42
heavy hitter in the group can we so yeah and I haven't played in like six weeks
13:47
and it's like I But I want to know what happens when we explore this ancient tomb and definitely don't all get killed
13:54
cuz I have no combat skills that's always the problem you know you want to play games and how do you how do you get
14:00
the people how do you get the people in the time it's so challenging yeah and that's why I think like there's been a lot of uptick in drop in dropout games
14:07
or a lot of games like we talk about we're going to be talking about Pigeons 11 here in a second cuz I want Liz to gush about running the game um but like
14:14
smaller simpler games and I shouldn't say simpler games because they can be as complicated as you want them to be but they're games that lend themselves to
14:21
one shot or quicker sessions like you know I literally have the I I think I talked about this the few recordings ago
14:29
the physical print version of Cocaine Owl Bear it's not meant to be a long-term campaign it's meant to be like
14:34
a one shot where you and a bunch of other animals are coked out doing doing crimes and weird stuff right like it
14:40
it's not anything longterm but that's really popular these days and one of my other one of my really good friends uh
14:48
helps run another shop in the area that specializes in these types of games and like him and I were talking the other
14:54
day about how much of an uptick he's seen in sales of like these pamphlet
15:00
style or one-page style games where you know it's these are quick easy to run
15:06
they don't require a lot of time they don't require any prep which I think that's the big thing uh and I know we've talked about it before and Matt and I
15:13
generally don't do like we we do what I call bullet point prepping a lot of the time um because we never know what the
15:19
players are going to do but a lot of people really feel like they have to like plan everything and that can make some games really really daunting um no
15:26
no don't do it don't don't plan everything that way lies madness yeah that way lies madness like a magical
15:32
city that your players will just never go to well hey you know I got you on something else it's true i just I ran
15:38
half of the adventures I was going to run in the magical city on that boat i just put them on the boat okay you want
15:44
to be on a magic boat that's fine we can do that well yeah i mean what's really funny is that that that's the thing
15:50
about running a role playing game at all right your players don't actually know how much prep you've done nope so if
15:58
you've got stuff prepared and it's it's all earmarked to be in the dwarf kingdom and they don't ever want to go to the
16:03
dwarf kingdom you can just take that stuff and switch it to the elf kingdom mhm you know it's not whatever if they
16:11
don't know you know make the the players can think they have agency and think they're just we're not going to go to
16:17
the magic city we're going to get on this pirate flying boat instead and uh
16:23
you know yeah you know it's the DM can be you can be flexible in running a game
16:29
and you not just say "Okay the players didn't want to do what I put in front of them oh my game is over oh I've got to
16:35
come up with a whole new thing." No you can be flexible and say "Okay well we're going on this pirate themed adventure
16:40
now but you know I planned this fight with this and this and that." Well you know now maybe that's on a boat in the
16:46
ocean maybe that's on an island they're going to run into you know you can have set pieces and and be flexible about
16:54
where you put them in your world since Liz is currently talking I think it's a great idea to get her to start talking
17:00
about Pigeons 11 um well Pigeons 11 the challenge that I have with a game like
17:06
Pigeons 11 is that it has a a really lack of rules and I I really like having
17:12
a framework of what to do and like how things are going to work if that makes sense i I like games with a few more
17:19
rules because they give me some guidelines to work in and Pigeons 11 is
17:27
basically you know everybody's got a single die dm doesn't roll any die and
17:34
it's all about storytelling it's all about storytelling which means there are
17:39
very few game mechanics there are very few rules i mean there are a handful of them to kind of educate play but the
17:47
structure of the game is completely free form you know there's not a beginning middle of the end and so I it's a game
17:53
called I guess I should start at the beginning it's a game called Pigeons 11 it is about being a bird and doing crime
18:00
that is what you were there for you are a bird planning a magnificent bird heist
18:06
that uh you know maybe you're raiding the buffet table at a casino and while you're there you're just going to like
18:13
steal the whole like cash cart out of the vault or something you know it's you're there for the food because you're
18:20
a pigeon but also maybe there's something really shiny over there that you go to so it's and it lives in this
18:27
world that is more than a little comical because you are a bird but no one
18:33
notices you're a bird unless they like look closely it's like they think you're totally normal that you're a bird inside
18:38
a casino or whatever and so it leads itself to a comic kind of
18:45
storytelling that's but it's just it's it's completely it's only framed in by
18:52
your creativity and I went in and I had the thought okay well we're we're here we're
18:57
Blizzard watch what are we going to play let's let's go to a video game convention because the setting is it's completely
19:04
agnostic you can put it anywhere you can do a museum heist you could uh you could rob a train do a great train robbery
19:11
kind of thing you could do anything and uh I decided okay well you know this kind of this is kind of our thing video
19:17
we're going to we're going to do a video game convention and one of the interesting things is I thought you know
19:23
I should I should flesh out kind of this world cuz I I made it kind of a little alternate world and you know I should
19:30
come up with some games where that that are on display in the convention i should do this i should do that and I was thinking I should do all of these
19:36
things and I did i did a little bit i did a little bit of work on on kind of what was going on at the game convention
19:42
in case anyone wanted to explore it i came up with a lot of characters that no one interacted with but I had them in
19:48
case the story went in that direction uh but the the joy of a nar narrative game
19:54
like this is that it is collaborative storytelling and that your players can come to the table virtual table and they
20:03
bring the stories so I didn't come up with a whole fleet of games that were on on display at this convention but the
20:10
players sure did yeah it was it was very it was very very very full of bread buns
20:16
it was great yes yeah i did not I did not come loaded with a hundred bread
20:22
related video game puns but uh everyone brought them so that's that's the joy of it
20:29
you're telling a story you're telling it together and I've come up with some things but it's like the players are coming up with some things and a free
20:36
form narrative game like this really lets you do that you're not there's
20:42
nothing there's nothing in your way because there it's a very rules light system and you can just tell a story
20:48
have fun i thought it was pretty great yeah I mean we had a lot I mean I I don't want to speak for everybody but I had a lot of fun playing i thought it
20:53
was great uh I thought I was trying to let other people participate more uh
20:59
just simply because we had a few folks with us that uh in a couple of the other games I think I don't know if they weren't comfortable yet or if they're
21:05
still trying to get their their feet wet with like the group dynamic uh but I was really happy to hear them talking more and participating more they felt way
21:12
more at home with it i think part of that has to do with the decision that you made to have it just basically
21:17
heisting a game convention which I thought they were much more comfortable with so good job on that and that
21:22
decision-m but it was a lot of fun it and I like those types of games i like games that are like rules lightish
21:29
because it just becomes a wacky fun time like if you listen to our Sunshine Sensibility I I absolutely adored that i
21:37
I like I was so into it i think Matt was too we had a we had a pretty good time
21:42
and like we just came up with stuff on the fly right and those are the type of games that are fun to me i like
21:48
collaborative storytelling i think that's one of the most fun parts of role playing games and so yeah I always did
21:55
dinosaurs off on people it's true you did and other prehistoric animals i don't actually don't think
22:00
there were that many dinosaurs uh in the the robots that we had there was mostly
22:06
like I had a a Gorgonopsid and somebody had a wolf so there was a bunch of stuff
22:11
but it was still fun so for listeners at home if you want to listen to stuff uh
22:16
Sentai and Sensibility is already out you can check it out on our Tavern Watch feed which is the feed you were listening to this on just you've got to
22:22
go back a few podcasts and Pigeons Leven we will be releasing very soon so look
22:29
for that probably next week as you are listening to this indeed all right well I think that covers just about
22:35
everything unless there's anything else anybody wants to add oh I do want to give a shout out to Steam Forge Games uh
22:41
real quick not a sponsor but if they wanted to sponsor us y'all come talk to me um they are the now proud owners of
22:49
Privateier Press's game line uh which if you are familiar with what they produce
22:54
they produce chiefly it was originally War Machine hordes and War Machine yeah Hordes and War Machine which was the
23:00
chief competitor to Warhammer 40k uh they also have the Iron Kingdoms tabletop role playing game uh everything
23:07
all of this was bought out by Steam Forge Games because Privateier Press was in a rather difficult financial position
23:14
uh this is really good for all of the enjoyers of this uh content because all
23:19
of the production all of the publishing and everything else is going through Steam Forge Games which is uh solid
23:26
they're they've been solid for years they have good distribution lines they have good relationships with the distributors for local stores and unlike
23:32
other game companies Catalyst um they believe that local game stores are important and want to make sure that
23:38
they can get games into them because without those games they understand players or those stores that players don't generally get uh access to their
23:46
games and a shout out to them because I they are releasing a new two-player box this month for uh War Machine and Hordes
23:54
this is the Horde side of it but they've already done the war machine side and this is uh essentially uh cat dragons is
24:00
the best way I can explain it and pirate trolls uh and I got my hands on the
24:06
pirate trolls early they're absolutely lovely models uh and are going to be a dream to paint up once the weather
24:12
allows me to actually go outside and prime like a normal human being uh so shout out to them and if you are
24:17
interested in Steam Forge games or in Privateier Press games you can now find them through Steam Forge which means
24:23
that they're actually available and the supply lines are actually good so that's just good news for everybody i forgot to
24:29
put that in the news section but then I looked over at my desk and saw the giant shark troll that I had just assembled last night and was like I should
24:35
probably mention this so that people understand that like it's a good time to be a fan of privateier press stuff so
24:41
there you go oh and Iron Kingdoms they're just releasing a new a new setting I think in a couple months i
24:46
think it's in the works right now so but that's not the only news we've got a ton of it and uh I'm going to let other
24:52
people talk here because uh I don't have anything nice to say about this next one uh and I'm hoping somebody can be a
24:58
little more constructive while I have some of my thoughts so Sigil the virtual tabletop that was being developed by
25:04
Hasbro Wizards of the Coast I'm going to mainly focus on the Hasbro portion of this uh released and nobody knew about
25:11
it because it got zero fanfare there was no PR from Wizards about it uh there was
25:16
an email back in February that was asking for beta feedback that Liz mentioned uh and then uh not only did it
25:22
release to zero fanfare they laid off 90% of the dev staff so about 30 people
25:28
which is a lot for such a small development team again 90% um and it's I
25:35
guess the plan is to leave it available but there's going to be no future development plans for it so this grand
25:41
AI adventure that they were going to go on with uh you know virtual tabletop and and letting you play the game as if it
25:46
was on the tabletop virtually uh the grand experiment failed before it ever launched or at least that's what they
25:52
decided cuz that's a thing though who wants to talk about this before I go on a rant sigil is really interesting in
25:59
that it did have some grand ambitions of recreating a tabletop experience on your
26:05
computer with uh it ran in Unreal Engine 5 which meant you could have these great video game style graphics obviously
26:12
we're coming off of Balders's Gate 3 everyone is super into D&D video games because Balders's Gate 3 did so
26:19
amazingly and you're you're recreating something like that where you can tell your own stories and do that inside this
26:28
software and it look like a video game but you have your own miniatures that have a little bit of animation you have some spells built in and this is a
26:36
really ambitious idea this is also something I feel that no one actually asked for that it was a product in
26:44
search of an audience because I think a lot of people who are playing games virtually what you want is better maps
26:52
better ways to deal with your party better ways to look at character options and spells you know you are looking to
27:00
cover these basics how can you share a map with people who are not in the same room how can you share your character
27:05
information you're looking for these virtual tabletop basics this is virtual tabletop very complicated and it didn't
27:13
do a great job of integrating stuff from you know it integrated some stuff from D and D beyond like character sheets but
27:19
it wasn't it wasn't 100% this feels like a like an early draft of something that
27:24
could have been really cool yeah it wasn't something for me that integration
27:30
that integration with D and D Beyond I thought was like one of its biggest selling points right because uh right
27:35
now if you've ever played in a virtual tabletop and I'll just throw this out there for like uh Roll 20 or or Foundry
27:43
Virtual Tabletop Foundry or any number of other ones there are third party plugins that you can add to your browser
27:49
or that you can add to um whatever you're working with with that virtual tabletop to pull data in from D&D Beyond
27:56
it's not naturally integrated and so the idea of having something that didn't rely on a third party was very big for a
28:01
lot of folks um like when we were doing the uh Wild Beyond the Witch Light uh
28:07
live stream stuff not for this site but I was in a a live play group for for another one um we all had this stuff
28:15
installed on our browsers to transfer data back and forth because it was the only way to do it efficiently and
28:20
effectively so that even like the person running the game had access to the data and then that also meant that they were
28:26
spending a lot of time customizing maps and the idea that oh it could just pull in maps from the resources that you get
28:32
on D&D Beyond because every module you buy every every book you buy has maps
28:38
and not and reducing the amount of setup time in there was a really big selling point and I think it could have been
28:44
really really cool and really really good if it was Wizards producing this back in the early 2000s versus Wizards
28:51
owned by Hasbro now because it became all about that dollar that bottom dollar and not about making a good product i
28:57
think and what gets me is they have they have a good product that you can use as a VTT and that already integrates with
29:02
D&D Beyond it's D&D Beyond Maps it's already there it's amazingly easy to use
29:08
and so they were essentially competing with themselves with a half-baked product that I'm sorry Hasbro was never
29:14
going to put in the money to bring this up to be the level of say Tailspire which anybody who's seen Dimension 20 knows that there is a room and an
29:20
audience for a 3D uh like virtual tabletop system but there's already a
29:26
good one yeah you're saying this I I mean the thing is that over the past few
29:32
years D&D Beyond's mapmaking tools have gotten a lot better they have started including maps with books they've also
29:39
started going back to old books and adding maps so DND and their um you know
29:45
creating your own maps making scenarios all of those tools on Dn D Beyond have
29:51
gotten better and if you want to run a game those are kind of the basics you need so they did this thing that was all
29:58
fancy graphics high system requirements technical glitches when they already
30:04
have such a solid base product it just feels like this is a little halfbaked it's going out a little early and I
30:12
don't the audience I don't think the audience was there and certainly not
30:17
with the level of buggess it came out with yeah I think the audience could have been there for something like this
30:22
because I think uh way back in the day and and I know Matt and I have talked about this and I I know Phil will
30:28
remember this as well in the times of third edition and 3.5 you got the
30:33
cgrapher disc that came with your players handbook and that was some of the still have it yeah still have I
30:39
still have it as well but it was one of the greatest set of tools that digitally had ever been made at that time digital
30:45
character sheets digital map making digital world building all on a program that ran on your computer and I think
30:52
having something that is made by Wizards first party there's always going to be a
30:57
market for that there's always going to be people that are interested in that and they could have done something really cool by spending the time and
31:04
doing a longer development on it but I think that's the problem with these these things need longer developments
31:10
and if you don't give yourself that long development you don't give it that time to to percolate there's just nothing for
31:16
you to do like it it it'll have those glitches it'll have problems it'll have you know issues and high requirements
31:23
because you're not optimizing it and it's really sad cuz like I'm not going to lie I was a little bit excited like
31:29
Liz is saying that they're nobody asked for it and that's true but some of the best things that we've gotten in terms
31:35
of like role playing or just content in general nobody asked for so like it
31:40
could have been really really cool it just wasn't it just and they never gave it the chance it was dead on arrival
31:46
which is a shame but kind of what I've come to expect from Hasbro which is the cult at this point so
31:53
I wanted all right i just I've been thinking while you guys been talking about it about like how it had a lot of
32:00
potential but wasn't quite there yet and so forth is like the thing that really comes to my mind is the marketing on
32:06
this was abysmal yeah i mean they started off they started off well like
32:11
they had this big thing they were showing everybody I think two three years ago now they were like this will
32:17
be the future and it's coming for the 50th year of Dungeons and Dragons which casing it did look cool and then nothing
32:25
crickets just silence and clearly they had a team working on it because they just fired all of them so they were
32:31
there we we know they exist because now they don't um and I just every time I think about it I'm like you keep talking
32:38
about how it's I think the statement that you made that really made me stop and really start thinking of it was that
32:43
it was a a solution in search of a problem that that that nobody had asked for this and I think I don't think it's
32:50
necessarily that nobody was asking for it although I certainly do agree with you that no one was i think it's that it
32:56
didn't it it didn't understand the assignment like it's trying to make this
33:02
beautiful graphically inclusive looks like a video game VTT all of which is fine but it's barely a VTT mhm it
33:12
doesn't have the functionality of roll 20 roll 20 which is not that functional
33:19
you know when I when I when I look at your VTT and I say "Well I could do this easier on on roll 20." Even roll 20
33:25
wants to slap me even roll 20's like "No you can't you can't pop." No actually we do do that
33:31
better what happened we We're the best at not being good at these things how did they come in and swoop in looking
33:38
that good is great but it needs to not just look good it needs to be useful and
33:44
not that it couldn't be used you could use this i've been looking at it i've been playing with it the past couple of
33:49
days when I could you could use it but you'd immediately start pulling like if
33:54
you had hair you'd start pulling it out because it's just there's just I'm sitting going it's is it's harder to
34:00
figure out how to change the size of something in this than it is in in rule
34:05
20 like if you're using Foundry you would not switch from Foundry to this no
34:11
matter how pretty it is you know what I mean and the other thing is uh I don't think Liz couldn't have used it if she
34:17
wanted to cuz there's not there's no Mac version well it's Unreal Engine so it has pretty high system requirements in
34:24
the first place and you can't play it on the Mac which I understand that's not a dealbreaker for a lot of people i
34:29
wouldn't have been using it though i'm not the target audience you can't use it on a browser when a lot of VTTs are
34:35
browserbased to make them easily accessible to more people yeah i mean you want to be able to run it on your
34:40
Chromebook yeah yeah i think M was right like they by not marketing it they never really
34:47
had a chance to get the target audience because they never got it they never put it in front of you to go "Hey here's here's why you would want this cool
34:53
thing over something else." And then now there isn't one like when I saw that beta email go out back in February I
35:00
didn't really look into it cuz I'm not I'm only in one D and D game right now and we're using Fantasy Grounds but I
35:06
was like "Well that's cool maybe they'll get some feedback and it'll be cool in a year or two when it releases." And then
35:12
when I got the news they'd laid off 90% of the team I was like they released it when Yeah exactly that was the other
35:20
problem with it it's like in order to find it I had to like go hunt in pecking through the internet it's like there was
35:27
I don't know where I would go get this thing if I wanted to it's a D and D Beyond dnd Beyond yeah and uh they are
35:34
going to keep releasing some things for it that were already developed there's apparently a skeleton staff to continue
35:42
support for it and to release work that's been finished or mostly finished uh but yeah we can't expect any future
35:48
development on it that's good you want your development team to be resistant to piercing damage that's fine
35:55
unfortunately they don't have climb speed oh well it's not the only weird project coming out this this year i mean
36:02
I'm hoping this isn't a sign of what's to come for other folks as well uh but
36:08
until this was mentioned here I forgot that this was even happening uh apparently there's an Eberon book
36:14
releasing this year and uh yeah like I know that they had quasi mentioned it at
36:19
some point uh but I had no idea did Did any of you i did but only because I'm a
36:26
literal maniac for Eberon and I still only found out the day before Liz posted
36:32
the link i was gonna I was like dealing with my wife and she wasn't doing well and we you guys all know about this but
36:39
I came in to tell you guys I literally logged in to tell you guys about it and Liz had already mentioned it and I was
36:44
like I could in bed I could have stayed in bed man I didn't have and that's like if I only find out about it the day
36:52
before Liz finds out about it liz who does not care about Eberon that's fair about Eberon have you ever played You
36:58
have played Eberon uh no i've played every version of everyone that's come out okay it's it is safe to say that you
37:05
are more knowledgeable about this than I do but it nothing to do with knowledge it's just that I'm I'm literally a maniac for this i wanted to know about
37:12
it i was looking for it and I only found out the day before you posted the link which meant you knew about it around the
37:18
same time I did cuz you you found out about it the day before you mentioned it you know what I mean and that's not
37:25
great marketing again I really feel like whatever they did over at Wizards of the Coast like did they kill the marketing
37:31
department yeah they did got laid off no 100% do you guys not remember that like
37:38
I remember them laying off many of them they kept all of their PR and all of their marketing folks got laid off
37:44
that's why there's no more like Dragon podcasts and stuff like that that was the Christmas layoffs wasn't it yeah it
37:49
was that explains it i kept I kept figuring trying to figure out how much was even left so yeah that's that
37:56
explains a lot i Yeah I found out about this because I saw I saw the um the Unearthed
38:05
Arcana about artificer so I'm like wait there's unearthed arana about artificers what and it was at the bottom of a D and
38:11
D beyond newsletter and so I went and looked at it and then I saw you know there's there's a video on their YouTube
38:19
page talking about it and I'm like listening to him talk about the artifacer and he says this will be in our Eberon book releasing later this
38:25
year and I'm like what there's an Eberon book but you because they Wizards of the
38:31
Coast announced their slate of 2025 books and we in fact talked about this in our last podcast saying it's kind of
38:37
a slow year you know they're finishing to release last year's D&D edition and
38:43
they're doing they just finished yeah they're doing a dragon anthology and they're doing Forgotten Realms which I
38:49
think the Forgotten Realms books seem really cool but that was supposed to be the whole year but apparently in January
38:55
they announced at a press event that oh yeah we're doing an Eberon book we're doing an Eberon book and it's a little
39:02
unclear what this is going to look like uh Ian News said this about it at one
39:09
point Eberon Forge with the Artificer was described as Zanithar's guide to everything book but specific to Eberon
39:14
the book will also have a different page count and price point than typical D&D
39:20
rule books although no further details were given you know this reminds me of that statement that's a similar
39:26
statement to what they made in third edition when they were releasing the gadgeters and the gadgeters were half the price of a hardcover book and but I
39:33
but knowing Hasbro it's not going to be the half the price it's going to be double the price or something yeah yeah so I I'm very confused as to what we're
39:40
getting i I think Eberon is a really interesting setting i think steampunk settings are really interesting because
39:47
they hit that border between magic and technology which I think is a really
39:52
interesting space to tell stories and to talk about technological advancement and
39:58
how that works in a fantasy world i think that is super cool i want to play a game set in Eberon help me out here
40:05
also I want to play an artificer they are great so I am glad to see they're doing updates there but now I know
40:11
they're releasing an Eberon book i'm excited about it i still have no idea what they're releasing well this is the
40:18
weird thing i was going to say here's the weird thing from my aspect i run a game shop i didn't know this was coming
40:24
nope i have And it's due out in Go ahead it's due out in August yeah i have no solicitation for it and usually like
40:31
usually Wizards gives you like a six-month window to like six month or more window to like order something and
40:38
it's like what are you doing like it it's this is this is baffling
40:44
like this is I I joked I joked about this in in chat but I really does feel
40:49
like Hasbro is is speed running Ruin Watsy and all goodwill any%
40:55
cuz like see go ahead Matt i I I'm going to point out something that I think is related to the kind of weirdness we're
41:01
seeing they're doing a a a Forgotten Realms book which is you know fine whatever they basically put Yeah but
41:08
they put in the DMG a complete Greyhawk setting mhm did you know that no and
41:15
I've been asking and I've been begging for a Greyhawk book i meant before it came out did you know that i I know that
41:20
people who got the book read it and found out they talked for the entire PR cycle for the DMG which got more PR than
41:27
this book did um that Greyhawk was going to be the new setting in the DMG they they talked about the PR cycle where did
41:34
they talk about it uh on DD Beyond and the videos on YouTube everywhere that they talked about the content of the DMG
41:40
they discussed the Greyhawk was going Think about what would have happened when they had a marketing they would have been everywhere they did this was
41:47
all last year before they were fired at Christmas yeah and that's the thing I just even with that this was something
41:54
that that caught a lot of people off guard i know this because I was looking at the uh well the the Eric Noah site
42:02
which is not called that anymore but you know and it's just so weird to me that they did that that they just put all
42:08
that stuff in the DMG and it's interesting because now the DMG actually has a setting in it yeah the DMG had the
42:15
setting for Greyhawk yeah but then there's supposed to be a box set yeah well it hasn't happened yet yeah it when
42:21
you buy the DMG now though you you get a campaign setting that's interesting and it makes bit of sense and yet barely
42:29
even noticed it the Forgotten Realms books that you two are coming out of that they did Crin a little while ago
42:34
and now that's basically completely forgotten they have done nothing with it since i I don't know what they're doing
42:40
with their book releases i feel like just two years ago they had a great momentum going and Joe was talking about
42:46
the speedrun thing i feel like they went from having this great momentum and great release schedule to just like it's
42:54
crazy now listen I don't want to I'm not going to try to beat dead horse because like we've talked about it a lot but I will I will point out that this is
43:01
everything we called out right like and we're not the only ones every content producer everybody who plays these games
43:06
has done the same thing during the pandemic when Wizards of the Coast made a billion dollars in profit for Hasbro
43:14
that's when the downfall started because up until that point Hasbro had been ignoring Wizards of the Coast and
43:21
focusing on their toy brands and the other IPs that they own and their crossovers for things like Nerf uh and
43:27
and all sorts of the other stuff like the fort the Fortniteification of Magic is not a mistake because the Fortniteification of Nerf happened first
43:34
and Hasbro wants to make all the money and the minute the minute Wizards hit that billion dollar mark during the
43:41
pandemic uh from selling wi uh D and D books because of Critical Role success
43:46
and uh all the other tabletop like live plays that happened uh magic selling out
43:51
like hot cakes because people were at home building decks and playing on spell table and had extra money from if you
43:58
were in the states from the stimulus stuff that was going out um Hasbro saw that and like great all of our
44:03
businesses need to be billion-dollar businesses and just mind this for everything it's worth and that was the the the first mark of death against like
44:11
how things were and so now you see it everywhere it's the bottom dollar it's the bottom line it has to be maximized
44:19
um they want to leverage anything that makes it cheaper to produce and maximize the profit uh that's why e even now as a
44:26
shoprunner I have a hard time carrying in their product because most of the people that are going to buy the product from me have already bought it from them
44:33
because they get the PDF with the book and they get it 2 weeks early and it's not always the case sometimes they throw
44:38
us a bone and it's like oh you can get this at your local store s you know before you can order it online that is a
44:43
rarity right and then now you see all these other IPs coming into like Magic and they're doing it because they're
44:50
selling that product space like this year we have Spider-Man coming which okay I'm going to be a filthy hypocrite
44:55
about all that one but that's a whole other story um but Final Fantasy is releasing in a couple weeks and or not a
45:00
couple weeks six weeks eight weeks something like that um and then there's another Universes Beyond happening later this year 50% of the content they
45:07
produce for Magic the Gathering is not Magic's IP and that's not accidental and that didn't exist at all as a thing to
45:14
worry about in this quantity outside of Secret Layers before Hasbro noticed that Wizards made money and every decision
45:20
they've made since then has been trying to squeeze as much juice as they can out of this IP at the cost of the IP and it
45:29
sucks because people who love the stuff like us people who grew up with the stuff people who like me who D and D
45:36
literally saved my life as a kid as a teenager if it wasn't for D and D I would not be here talking to you it's
45:43
hard to see all this stuff like just not get the attention and respect I think it
45:49
deserves and as long as Hasbro is in charge I don't think it ever will like the the whole Greyhawk thing having it
45:54
released Greyhawk was one of the the OG settings it's like it wasn't like the OG but it was one of the OG it's where uh
46:01
one of the things where Gyax actually ran uh his campaign world it's where a lot of the iconic spells that we we know
46:08
today came from and having it in the Dungeon Masters Guide brilliant absolutely brilliant have a setting
46:14
there absolutely great and then there's supposed to be a box set that people have seen and we've heard nothing about i don't have any solicitation for it i
46:20
have no clue when the Greyhawk book is going to come out it'll probably be like the Ebron thing it'll be announced like "Oh it's going to release in 4 months
46:26
and nobody's going to know what's coming because they've gutted everything so that there's no information anywhere
46:31
about any of this stuff." So I'm sorry i'm I'm got on my rant i was trying not to but it's like it's painful to watch
46:37
cuz this is stuff we love at least to me it is so Oh yeah i definitely agree that it's painful to watch it but I also
46:44
think it's just I I've wanted for a very long time to see some of the stuff that
46:50
we're seeing yeah like not just not just big rivals like Piso and second tier
46:56
like um Green Ronin or what have you but the the the flourishing of smaller uh
47:03
you know easier rule systems games the fact that there's like entire publishers like um May you know like the ones that
47:11
do masks and Avatar they they can they can exist in the current ecosystem and
47:18
unfortunately it feels like D and D had to take a hit for that to happen yeah i think because it was just too
47:24
overwhelmingly big i think there's an element of that right i think there is definitely an element of that and it's it's sort of the inevitable thing and I
47:30
don't want to sit too long on it because we have got some other stuff that I would like to talk about that is positive but yeah I you might be right
47:37
it and the way that the market was is in order for those little ones to get attention the big one had to fall but I
47:43
just wish it would have fallen just out of its own popularity or something like that not because somebody decided that
47:49
it needed to sell the the ivory tusks as it were yeah it's It's sort of like they got the goose with a golden egg and
47:55
rather than be happy with golden eggs I got the thing open to see where the gold is uh you're not wrong i do we got to
48:01
talk about Go ahead sorry i am still excited about Eberon i would love to play an Eberon game when this comes out
48:08
i would too matt I had that wonderful Warforge character we love Eberon yes I'm very excited about that run an
48:14
Eon game i would love to play an Ebron game yeah so we can talk about that when the book's out but I do want to talk
48:20
about something that I think is a little uh a couple things that are I think again more positive speaking of smaller
48:27
games uh I just want to mention this real quick uh we're also seeing the emergence of fifth edition or whatever
48:33
they're calling it now we'll always call it 5e compatible stuff is still coming out regularly uh and we're starting to
48:39
see things like right now uh the the now there's a new campaign setting based
48:45
around Slavic and Balkan folklore uh yeah Zamaron is actually been on my radar for a while i'm totally into that
48:51
stuff um what's really interesting is that it is like you pointed out it's a it's a it's a 5e compatible thing it's
49:00
basically it's basically the original 5 rules more than it is the more updated
49:05
stuff just because that's what they had when they were working on it um they have obviously made some efforts to make it compatible with the new stuff too but
49:11
what's really cool about it is that Slavic and Baltic stuff does not get nearly as much despite despite how much
49:18
of it winds up in in pop culture and media right like you know Yeah well you
49:24
like Peroon's one of my favorite ridiculous gods yeah yeah just because he's like he's like Thor if Thor were
49:30
drunk all the time like it's just so like Thor but but not it i don't know how to explain it there's a lot of cool
49:37
stuff like one of the things I'm loving is that it taps into stuff like the the whole idea of the witch in the big
49:44
walking house yep the Baba Yaga thing baba Yaga is in a lot of D and D but not all the other stuff like there's not a
49:50
lot of Kashi the Deathless or the Firebird or Pushkin type stuff and this this really does have all these
49:57
interesting tinges of that kind of stuff and it's even got a Legends in the Mist version which is really cool to me like
50:04
there's a dual they're going to have dual system content so it's going to have Legend in the Mist stuff right next
50:09
to its D20 fifth edition type D and D stuff which is fantastic
50:15
yeah no because I mean Liz was just talking about Legend of the Mist which is itself like a a second RPG built on
50:22
the mist stuff um isn't there a previous game for that i can't remember the name but I know there's a previous game what
50:28
uh there's two there was city in the mist or city of mist which is their urban nor investigation supernatural
50:34
system and then there is cyerscape which is a uh the only thing I've seen that comes close to shadow run in terms of
50:40
combining mystical and uh cyberpunk settings tor man that's true i will
50:48
every is amazing legend of the Mist has uh Son of Oak and
50:53
Legend of the Mist have been plugging this Kickstarter extremely heavily on their own highly successful Kickstarter
50:59
yeah and they should be because their content is going to get here too and I think that's amazing i love the idea of
51:05
there being two different kinds of rules that you can use with a game i think
51:10
that's awesome um yeah so there's a Legends of the Mist video right here on the page for uh I can never say this
51:17
word zeanora yeah Zamora and it's just it's really neat there's just a lot of
51:23
cool things about this book uh just looking at the at the uh Kickstarter which is already funded uh it's got all
51:29
this like really weird monster hunting there's bogateers in there um there's
51:35
just there's a lot of cool things they have stuff that is very much fantasy and
51:41
will be recognizable to you if if your only experience is D and D but is very
51:46
different from anything you usually see in D yeah uh and the puppet magic is terrifying they call it puppet magic but
51:53
it's it is terrifying i do the idea of somebody doing puppet magic and it's it's with the puppets you're using
52:00
puppets for this just go watch the puppet master movies yeah it's it's it's got some stuff it's got some creepy in
52:06
here and Joe and I have talked a lot about that that how we feel about horror but I think this is a really good way to
52:13
bring horror into a a fantasy role action role playing type situation
52:18
because you can still fight this stuff but it's creepy even if you do you do not feel like this is something that's
52:24
just I'll just smash it cuz you know dang well that that puppet thing isn't killable it's a puppet you know so
52:30
there's there's some some crazy stuff to this there's straight up folklore magic which is really cool there's just a lot
52:36
of stuff and they have got a ton of stuff for curses too i'm just really excited about this i can tell because it
52:41
it is it is a it's a mythos and and like a it's a fairy tale/ mythology that we
52:49
don't get a lot of over here like in in in Northern Europe i mean northern Europe gez northern North America we
52:56
don't get a lot of that stuff so well something that I think on a completely different vibe and I'm going to poke
53:02
Phil about this one uh is Yaziba's Ben Breakfast which was nominated for a Nebula award for best gamew writing phil
53:08
what is this game yep so this is the second game from uh Jay Dragon who
53:15
previously did Wonder Home and Wonder yep and is now the creative director for
53:20
Steve Jackson Games uh Yazuba's Bed and Breakfast the best way I would describe it is this is like playing in a Studio
53:27
Ghibli movie um it's a little it's it's it's one of those more free form games Liz isn't super fond of but um the idea
53:34
is you get you get the book you get a preset group of characters which is both the residents and the extremely weird
53:40
guest list of a bed and breakfast somewhere on the east coast owned by a witch named Yazaba who uh allegedly
53:47
traded her heart for the bed and breakfast but you also get characters like Girtchard a teenage runaway who
53:52
lives in the laundry room or Hey Kid a demon who uh was abandoned on the doorstep as a baby and grew up in the
53:59
bed and breakfast and is literally called Hey Kid or Parish uh the night former knight uh who is now the chef of
54:05
the bed and breakfast also he's a frog and you get like each chapter and there's also a ton of guests too and the
54:11
guests are all super cool and have their own reason for being there um and then as you each chapter of this book um
54:18
which much like um Triangle Agency there are sections that can be unlocked later spoilers have come to role playing games
54:24
now um but like each one is like a little scene like there's one uh and it
54:29
kind of dictates like which residents people can play so you have kind of an everchanging cast of characters instead of playing one character like one of the
54:36
first chapters is Gertrude and Hey Kid are required and then anybody who is too
54:41
playful to be cooped up um you're basically trying to entertain Hey Kid on a rainy day um or there's one where uh a
54:48
little more serious when Yaziba's shadow escapes from her and is kind of wrecking the place and scaring guests and it's up
54:54
to uh Yaziba and her robotic maid to try and catch it again um just lots of
55:00
little like cool scenes like that um and that's pretty much like what most of the chapters are about they're all they're
55:05
all themed around different characters there's a lot of different like you know identity stuff like with the robot they
55:11
all play a little differently like the robot maid has has literally her her character sheet page has programming on
55:16
it and as she grows and advances her programming changes and if she ever has a conflict she has to ask someone to
55:22
change her programming because the robot is still trying to figure out who she is things like that um it's just like it's
55:28
a very cozy kind of homey game um it really does have like a big Studio Ghiblly vibe very rules light very kind
55:34
of improv group storytelling uh you know everybody's everybody's bed and breakfast is going to be a little different you've got your cast you've
55:40
got your setting but everything's going to be kind of different depending on who you play it with um and I've actually been flipping through it again recently
55:46
because there are rules both for playing with small groups large groups online and also playing solo this is the kind
55:51
of group I can't really get people interested in i can't really get people interested in to play it with me in real life but I am very interested in I might
55:58
start playing it solo um and it's it's just a really cool kind of cozy kind of
56:04
I would say necessarily upbeat but um just kind of a cool little uh a cool
56:09
little setting well-ritten characters um and like each of these little chapters is just different enough that even
56:15
though you're you know you're it's not just completely free form you're doing you're doing something cool in each one and I'd say it might uh just kind of a
56:22
little positive game in uh I like it not necessarily so positive real world
56:27
i I like it because it definitely starkly contrasts with the the next thing that I'm going to talk about briefly which is Fallout oh yeah
56:36
which is really just a positive glowing thing in a world at this point it might be um well it's glowing
56:44
yes uh the Fallout RPG which uh as I believe this was a note added by Liz is
56:49
definitely not new it's been around for a while as a matter of fact I I have the entire collection sitting both digitally
56:55
and on my shelf because I absolutely love the 2D20 system um is I got my my
57:00
Fallout stuff when they did a sale they did a Humble bundle as well yeah the Humble Bundle that's where I got mine
57:07
but the interesting thing here is that it's integrating with Demilane which is really really big so part of this is
57:14
because um they've had some integration in the past with Fantasy Grounds as the
57:19
primary virtual tabletop system that they produce their virtual tabletop content for and the Fallout system has a
57:25
lot of virtual tabletop content and I mean a ton of it like there's at least I think a dozen modules uh books settings
57:34
uh campaigns maps everything that you can import directly into Fantasy Grounds uh but now with Demiliplane it gives you
57:40
the option to actually have another avenue to uh have simple PDF copies of
57:45
the stuff which most of their virtual tabletop stuff does do a pretty good job of that but not all of it um and have a
57:53
way to manage your characters and and that makes it just much much easier than trying to integrate it because as much
57:58
as I love virtual tabletops Roll 20 and Fantasy Grounds character sheets are hot
58:04
garbage i don't know why they are just absolutely god awful i think you are
58:09
over praising them when you say they're hot garbage i feel like they're very old cold nonful like a wow boss this is
58:18
garbage on fire that you don't want to be on fire it's trying they're trying to
58:23
garbage it's I mean the problem with something like Roll 20 is that it is an older
58:29
system it's a clunky system and D and D Beyond came out and D and D Beyond had this very streamlined character creator
58:36
which Demilane is very similar to and it makes it makes a whole gaming world more
58:43
accessible when instead of reading a 300page rule book or more you can go to this character creator and say "Okay I
58:50
want to make oh these are my race options oh these are my class options oh these are the spells I can use these are
58:55
the abilities I and it's all there and you can do it click through and you can learn more later learn as you go learn
59:02
as you create characters i think that does I think that has done huge things for tabletop gaming and letting people
59:10
get into it yeah I agree the the we've talked about it before it reduces the barrier to entry and anything that
59:15
reduces the barrier to entry means more people play it and like Phil's problem with getting people to play something
59:20
like you know Yaziba's bed and breakfast uh but being able to play it solo is great i can't play Fallout solo and
59:27
getting people to play Fallout is a huge pain because uh nobody wants to buy the books or character creation uh being a
59:33
struggle also you've never actually offered Joe said to me Matt would you like to play in Fallout i'd be at your
59:39
house in a suit of power armor you know this so I don't know why you're acting you guys are like I can't find people
59:45
you I heard a couple of you say this now i'm sitting here going you have not mentioned this to me i would have been
59:51
there regardless the struggle in real life is is is there and having something
59:57
where people can easily be walked through character creation is good and Demi if you don't Mhm i totally agree
1:00:03
i'm trying not to interrupt you cuz I know I just It's It's one of those things demilane does a good job it's
1:00:09
still They're still working on it and tweaking it and uh making it as good as it can be and it's still constantly
1:00:15
evolving and I think it'll be fine and the more games that integrate with it the better it is um there are a couple
1:00:21
other things I just want to touch on real quick uh and then I think cuz we're running short on time here go ahead Liz
1:00:27
i do want to add one thing about the Fallout is that it's in early access on Demiliplane but because it's just
1:00:33
launching on Demiliplane they are selling it as a bundle with the Demiliplane version PDF version and Roll
1:00:39
20 version for $35 worth every penny and that's worth every penny and if you want
1:00:45
every single Fallout book not just the core rule book that's $99 which is it's
1:00:50
money but it's less money than you would pay if you were buying all of these things i think it's less than buy it's
1:00:55
less than buying two D and D books yeah so it's fair but Demi plane PDF and Roll
1:01:01
20 i love that those are all bundled together so you have options on how to read it and where to play it someday
1:01:06
I'll get someone to bring game all right well we got a couple other things just to touch on real quick before we uh we
1:01:12
call it there uh Shadow Dark who wants to talk about that i'll talk about it since I put it on here uh just barely
1:01:18
beating out Fall in London in the Magnus Archives shadow Dark got our first million-doll tabletop Kickstarter of the year woo uh in that they are finally
1:01:25
releasing their second big product and official setting uh the Western Reaches well official I say um so this takes
1:01:32
kind of the implied setting from the Shadow Door Core book and the three zenes that they've released so far the three Cursed Scroll Zenes uh then they
1:01:40
are releasing three new new issues along with this and it's coming out as a nice hardcover sandbox setting for uh Shadow
1:01:46
Dark um and yeah it blew through its funding very quickly um and it is uh
1:01:53
just kind of cool to see more support for this game i'm I'm particularly excited more about the Zen than the uh
1:01:59
giant uh core rule book uh Cursed Scrolls are uh inexpensive and you can
1:02:04
usually pick them up directly from the same place you can get Shadow Dark the Arcane Library or Drive-Through RPG and
1:02:10
they always just have like every one of them comes with like new classes new settings a complete hex crawl that's uh
1:02:16
stated out that you can use mini adventures and uh they're all very flavorful so uh cool to see this uh very
1:02:24
uh I would say bigname indie game as weird as that sounds um getting further support though all right and then last
1:02:32
on the list looks like this was uh added here we have a Frost Haven Tactical CRPG coming out based on the Gloom Haven
1:02:38
Frost Haven board games uh yeah I added that yeah well so what's going on with that it's basically um it's
1:02:44
simultaneously a really cool thing to get more exposure towards the the Gloom Haven Frost Haven games of all types um
1:02:52
but it's also basically an incredibly cynical attempt to grab some of that Boulders Gate 3 money and and repute
1:02:59
repute but I don't mind that because we're not going to get any more Boulders Gate 3 there will be no expansions for
1:03:06
it um despite being the most successful game of 2024 it's effectively done i
1:03:12
mean they're still putting out patches for it and so forth but you know what I'm saying there won't be any more of this so we're seeing games like Salasta
1:03:18
come out solasta is literally just 5e and they're putting out Solasta 2 which is literally just 2024 you know using
1:03:26
the rules uh that they released through um creative comments this is basically
1:03:31
just trying to get more attention at people who like video games but also
1:03:37
like role playing games or tabletop board games and that's something I find
1:03:42
interesting too is that the the line between pen and paper role playing games and board games is getting blurry
1:03:49
there's a lot of games that are kind of both and uh Gloom Haven/Frost Haven's a really big example of that in my opinion
1:03:56
and to a certain degree a game like this is is what it's basically sooner or
1:04:02
later somebody is going to realize that Neverwinter Nights which is still out by the way it's still getting content
1:04:09
released for it in 2025 uh they just got a new DLC and they'll have another DLC
1:04:15
coming this year that game had a had an editor that allowed you to basically run your own D&D games through Neverwinter
1:04:22
Nights which is exactly what Sigil tried to be and sooner or later some game like
1:04:28
this is going to come along and realize that they can do that and that's what I think is interesting about this uh Frost
1:04:35
Haven game it's got all these functions that are very similar to that kind of experience it's got a build your own
1:04:42
outpost system um it's got the you know importable co-op multi multiplayer um so
1:04:48
you can get up to four players playing this game together like a party um there's just a lot of stuff you can do
1:04:55
with it eventually someone is going to make a mod for it where it's going to have its own you know which is what
1:05:01
they're doing in Balders's Gate 3 right now and sooner or later somebody that isn't Wizards of Coast is going to make
1:05:06
something that it can be used the way they wanted Sigil to be used and who knows they might even mod Sigil because
1:05:13
it's Unreal Engine 5 and seeing Frost even come to this is just really
1:05:18
surprising to me really not a game I would have called getting a tactical RPG but it's a perfect game to pick to make
1:05:25
a a tactical RPG because it is itself basically a tactical board game so it
1:05:30
works really well i was going to say you mentioned something and I think it's going to be absolutely hilarious because what eventually will happen is the
1:05:36
developers that they just laid off from Sigil will probably just make their own version of of Sigil and make it work
1:05:42
because we literally have seen that happen how many times at this point i mean yeah we have but also because those
1:05:49
developers know the game and they know the system they just made which was
1:05:55
released already and it's Unreal Engine 5 so even if they can't use any of the code that they've been using to make
1:06:01
Sigil it's Unreal Engine 5 they can make something else in Unreal Engine 5 it's
1:06:06
not going to be a strain on them liz you were saying something uh I was going to ask what is Frost Haven i do not know
1:06:12
what this is you know you remember Gloom Haven uh no okay okay well Gloom Haven
1:06:18
came out as a board game that was very heavily fantasy role playing uh skewed for lack of better word it's you play
1:06:23
these characters in this gloomy world and you go forth looking for adventure and treasure and all that stuff frost
1:06:29
Haven is another dark fantasy version of it should also mention that is is it is a persistent world where the game is Oh
1:06:36
interesting the game changes as you play and keep going yeah you literally don't have to stop a persistent world board
1:06:42
game yes yes it's also available on Steam by the way they have a digital version of it the Steam version is very
1:06:48
very well done and also like takes away a lot of the extra bookkeeping and rule
1:06:54
memorization that you might have to do for the board game version and also doesn't weigh 80 lbs if you want to take it to your kind like when I want to play
1:07:00
Scythe i'll play it on I'll play it online versus taking it with me yeah yep well and for that matter I mean that's one of the reasons why this is a good
1:07:06
thing for for Frost Haven because and and it's combination of what Liz was talking about before when she said it's
1:07:11
it's good to have something like D and D Beyond or Nexus because they have they take away a lot of the bookkeeping
1:07:18
playing Frost Haven this way which already feels like an upgraded Gloom Haven let's be honest because it handles
1:07:23
a lot of it handles a lot of things better and take playing Frost Haven that way you're going to end up basically
1:07:29
using it for your single player and co-op multiplayer and once you start playing co-op multiplayer in it you are
1:07:35
an adventurer you know it it it and since it's a persistent world you can keep playing it and playing it and
1:07:42
playing it it'd be like imagine how addictive cyberpunk would would be if you could just keep going forever and
1:07:48
you didn't have to start over if you wanted to see stuff like think about this that there is there's a lot of good
1:07:54
things about this i'm very happy about it frost Haven is very well done the arts are be beautiful it's a good game
1:08:00
that I never got to play because I don't know enough people playing board games and yes I should have called you guys um
1:08:05
Yeah because we can play on Steam yeah before we hoist me on my own petard uh but yeah no it's it is a cool game it is
1:08:12
hard to explain it's sort of like D and D very light it kind of reminds me of
1:08:18
back when D and D was just a chain mail edition it almost feels a little bit like that where it's just it's got more
1:08:25
rules than your average RPG but less rules than your average RPG at the same time it It's Yeah it's the board
1:08:31
gamification of it which I think is fine mhm yeah all right but I think that does it for us unless anybody has anything
1:08:37
else they want to add here at the last second all right well then friends Blizzard is made possible due to the generous contributions of
1:08:43
patreon.com/bizzardwatch your continued support means that this podcasting community is able to thrive and grow
1:08:48
blizzard Bot supporters enjoy exclusive benefits like early access to our podcast a better chance at having your question answered on our podcast or the
1:08:54
queue in an answer site experience if you have questions for us here please send them in i wanted to actually do
1:09:00
questions on Tavernatch and I know we have a ton of people that that do listen uh to this and our tabletop uh players
1:09:07
of any type uh send them in it's podcastwatch.com specify the show that it's for the subject line as well as any
1:09:14
special pronunciation for your name you can al also hit us up on Discord the Q and podcast questions channel is open
1:09:19
for everybody same rules apply if you happen to support us on Patreon as a way of saying thank you for helping us keep the lights on we have the patron Q and
1:09:25
podcast questions channel set aside where we tend to look there first as that special extra thank you and uh you
1:09:31
can also send us messages on Patreon liz sends those to us she does it's it's great we make her do stuff it's
1:09:36
fantastic uh but I think I think that's going to do it folks we we'll see you on the next one and uh special thanks for
1:09:43
Phil for joining us i enjoy having another another voice that likes weird games on this podcast oh I got all kinds
1:09:49
of weird games fall in London made a million bucks this year yeah dude and
1:09:54
we're going to be talking about that at some point all right friends oh yeah we got We got a year got to wait a year for
1:10:00
these to come out though i want to play them all now we got plenty to talk about within that year all right everybody
1:10:06
we'll catch you next time [Music]
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