345 | [[TRYING AGAIN]] Sage Advice, Polygon Layoffs, Roll20/Demiplane Integration

Music. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Morris' unofficial tabletop PC talk.

I am Russ, aka Morris, or Morris, aka Russ, and with me this week is... PJ Coffey from the Southampton Guild of Roleplayers, also from Humber and Hacking, TTRPG Design. Joining us now, we also have a very full rare sunshine, who, wherever she goes, she always brings weather with her. It's the one, it's the only, it's... It's me, Jessica, from EM Publishing. And because we're having nice weather in the UK, I made myself a fruity mocktail for the podcast recording.

I feel slightly... Hey, PJ got what to do? I've got my pint of water. I feel... I'm envious. I am envious of your beverages. Long as it's been said, Morris, you are not as fruity as PJ and I. Clearly, clearly not.

Oh well anyway anyway anyway we have got some opportunities to talk about this week, yes so should we do that yeah yeah i think that's reasonable yeah should we do that okay then where would you like to start well before we start i just want to say i'm going to remember to do it this week because i always mean to do it when we at the beginning of the show not at the end yeah we are streaming live friday 2 p.m uk time 9 a.m eastern time in the us and

we're on youtube twitch and facebook so if you want to join us live please do you're more than welcome join in the chat you can ask questions make comments and it's all a load of fun it's a party and some people have fruity drinks and some people yeah you too can bring a fruity drink you can bring a fruity drink if you wish yeah someone can bring me a fruity drink that would be marvelous, Well, had I known in advance, I would have.

You have two bold-trained dogs. Surely this is a self-solving problem. I've got two what? Okay, you've got two dogs. How about that? My innate honesty overcame me. I'm sorry, Russ. Anyway, yeah, we are recording live. You can join us for the live recording every Friday. If you prefer to listen to the podcast, that's just fine. Hello, thanks for listening.

Let's talk about the news that is of tabletop roleplayings and games. Yes, and let's talk about Sage Advice. I'll take some sage advice from you. Okay. On anything or just D&D? If we could make it TTRPG related, it would be better for the listeners. Michael White is best for exorcisms. Not legal advice then, or medical advice? No, we don't do that. Am I thinking of the wrong sort of sage? Probably.

Okay. Unless we start talking about, I suppose, D&D sage advice, which has traditionally been the realm of Jeremy Crawford, where he very patiently answers questions from people on the internet, demanding that he provide precise and detailed answers to what are supposed to be natural language rules. Mm-hmm. And then people complain about those answers. Oh, yes, yes, me too. I think he's wrong on many occasions.

So the Sage Advice compendium is on D&D Beyond, and it is basically a compendium of questions and answers. It's an FAQ, basically. So it's not errata. They've got errata as well.

A lot of it specifically this is wrong replace it with this this is just sort of higher applications or okay things that people frequently ask or you know things about um it's been around forever um it originated in dragon magazine back in the 80s as a literal people would write in and they'd publish it in the magazine with the answers so this is kind of what it is now and as peter just said up till now jeremy corkman's been doing it,

Because Jeremy Corcoran is leaving or has left Wizards of the Coast now. He's exited. I don't know. I don't know who's doing it now. It's a mystery. However, Sage Advice has just been updated for the 2024 rules.

Ah. Somebody's doing it. Or maybe Jeremy did it just before he left. Who knows? Oh. So you can pop along to D&D Beyond. We will have the link in the show notes. And it's quite long. There's quite a lot of stuff in there. I mean, for example, there's clarification that actions and bonus actions aren't interchangeable because that comes up often. And some people ask, can you promote a bonus action or use an action to do a bonus action? I mean, that's no, apparently.

Correct. It is no. Yeah, that would be my understanding as well. The reason I imagine people ask it is because in 4th edition, you could. They called them free actions or minor actions. They called them minor actions. Free actions are things like crying. Yeah. Weeping in despair, that sort of thing. Or giving a 20-minute monologue. That's a free action too. Especially if you're a villain. Oh, yeah. So in 4e, with your major action, you could also take a minor action.

If you wanted to. You could basically promote a minor action. But you can't do that. In 5e. But they've specifically clarified this in response. and the fact that people ask this question. Can you do that? Fair enough. Things like the stun condition no longer prevents you from moving. Is that change intentional? Which is an odd question. Yes. The answer is yes, it's intentional. Well, I mean, I don't know why you find it an odd question because that seems like a fairly major difference.

I think most major changes are probably almost certainly intentional. If you sort of saw some tiny little changes which could be sort of like a typo or a grammar change i could see that being is that intentional but if it's an actual major change like that i think it's almost certainly intentional russ i i'm sure i'm not alone in thinking this but like as any classic gm will know it's like are you sure you want to do that it's always a valid question hmm.

And the response of yes to that question is also valid. Yes. Yeah, oh, absolutely, absolutely. Valid, but not without consequences. Yeah. Also, you can say, you think where I'm going. Yeah. Yes, you can certainly try that. I'm not going to stop you trying it. Yeah, yeah. You can certainly move whilst then. Okay, you've got moved whilst then has the now official rules. Okay, good job.

I wonder if that's good. out. My way of doing that as well is like, what's your passive intelligence or wisdom or whatever? And they'll be like, hmm, so your character would be aware that doing this would result in this. No, no, no, sorry, I don't mean to derail. It's the pipeline of information between your brain and the player's plane is always like a little bit smaller than you'd like it to be.

Often constricted as it is to voice and so forth. It's like trying to see the world through like a drinking straw. Until we get those neural implants where we can just like give you an info dump straight into your brain. Oh, gosh. Great demolition, man. Hmm. Anyway. Onto the inside of some people's brains. Amen. Or anybody's, quite frankly. Yeah. I mean, some people are completely a-fantastic, which means that when they close their eyes, all they see is blankness.

So you wouldn't have any sort of vision that would appear. As other people can just see things straight in front of them without even having to close their eyes. My brain is constantly, I really would like it if I could just like switch it off. It would be amazing.

But hey. Such is the world we live in. So anyway, about sage advice, what's the news about it? Some other questions. Well, it's been published for 2024. Oh, got it. Other questions like, if I'm hidden and a creature with blind sight or true sight sees me, am I still hidden? So the answer to that is no. Yeah. because they've got the invisible condition. But that seems pretty obvious. Wait, but is that not hidden from other people?

Well, you see, that's why they've changed it to giving you the invisible condition because that's a binary thing. You either have it or you don't. Whereas hidden, you could sort of say, is a relative term. Yeah. So, the answer they gave is no. Being hidden is a game state that gives you the invisible condition.

If a creature finds you you're no longer hidden and lose that condition as explained in the hide action, so I mean if one creature finds you you are no longer hidden I guess they could yell out to their mates in a second hmm, Yeah. Okay, that seems like quite a significant thing. It's a simplification. I mean, it is a thing that on E-N-World gets discussed a lot. People have strong thoughts and feelings about how hide and invisibility interact in 5e.

I mean, I guess that's the way rules are written, but the great thing about role-playing games is that your table, if you all agree we're going to play it like this, you can change it. Yeah. If your table all strongly believes that actually the hidden rules shouldn't work like that and you all agree, have that. I think this is more sort of, if you're doing convention play or you're doing Adventurers League, it's more important to have a agreed upon.

Yes, methodology. Well, I mean, this removes things from the GM's hands. Like, say, like a trivial example would be, say, you had like a freeway meeting, and the player was trying to sneak up on people, possibly someone who is not an ally of the players but is not a fan of the person they're talking to might have the passive perception to spot the player or have the blind sight and so forth, would they then feel obliged?

The rules is written now. They'd be able to point them out. They'd automatically be pointing them out and say, yes, there is someone over there. Do you know what? The rules are written now. I think even an ally would. Yeah. If a creature... Yes. Does it specify a feature time? Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about that either. I mean, like I say, there's like a difference in scale. If you're paying for like, I don't know, an indie adventure or a Foldy print at home, 32 pages, I expect...

Ambiguity i want to house rule it it's fine i find clarification by looking i have found clarification and i'm going to put it down the road yeah i'm going to put it up on uh on the screen there give me one second um so here we go this i looked at the hide action rather than the sage advice and this is the clarification i'm oh i'm sorry pg you're hidden behind that thing I'll give you a look. That's okay. You stop being hidden immediately after any of the following occurs.

You make a sound louder than a whisper. An enemy finds you. You make an attack roll or you cast a spell of the verbal components. That's just an enemy finds you. Yeah, so in your example, PJ, that would be fine. I would not count. Oh, PJ left. Fine. Hopefully they will return. Yeah, hopefully, hopefully, hopefully. Right, we've also got things about things that cause benefits to damage rolls on spells and spells that have multiple rolls, such as scorching ray.

Yeah. So if you have elemental affinity from the Draconic Sorcery, you add your charisma modifier to damage rolls. And the question is, do you add this modifier to each ray that hits? I mean, yes. The answer is elemental affinity benefits one damage roll per casting of a spell, even if the spell allows more than one roll. Oh, okay. So for a sorcerer with elemental affinity as their charisma, what apply to only one of the rays of a scorching ray?

Do they have to decide which ray that is before it hits, or do you decide after and see? Because if you have spells where you roll for the damage, you know, where you... Yeah, yeah. Um, I do not know. I doubt it depends on how Elemental Affinity reads, I guess. Yeah, I suppose this is specifically talking about Elemental Affinity, but I was thinking of other spells that, yeah, have multiple targets or things. Definite downgrade for Elemental Affinity.

I would, of course, leap to Agonizing Blast as my basis of comparison. But you do add your Charisma Verness to every single Demetrol. What did you use? I don't know. 2024 rule set. I'll have to have a look at the SRD see what it says. I've got a clarification on how bark skin works with shields cover and other AC modifiers I've got something about Savage Attacker feat applying to the rogue sneak attack or the paladin's divine smite What are you doing to sneak attack?

That's relevant to me So Savage Attacker applies only to rolls of the weapons damage dice not to extra damage that a feature like sneak attack or divine smite Mike Grant. Wow. That's a hell of a very great. Yeah. I mean, Sneak Attack's already doing so much damage, I guess, you know. Savage Attack specifically lets you re-roll, I think it was ones and twos. Yeah.

So, if that's for all the dice in the Sneak Attack and all the dice in the Smite, that is quite cool and makes it pretty much worth taking. If it's like, well, I've rolled a one or two on a D8 or a D10 or something, re-roll it.

It's a lot less impressive and for a full feat which is replacing an ASI I'm like that's okay anyway, yeah yeah i'm uh i'm playing a rogue in our birthday night game and have fun oh so much damage yeah so much damage and i've just got on a shadow blade which allows me to teleport up to 10 feet and attack with advantage which basically is free sneak attacks all around.

We've just had a new player join our eberron my long running Eberron campaign and they're playing a rogue and it makes me wistful looking across the table being like, oh, I like playing rogue. Wish I was playing a rogue. But I play rogues a lot, so it's fine. I'm looking at the 4th edition, Stealth Rules, as opposed to the 5th edition, just for a point of comparison in the 4E Rules. It's long. It's like an entire page. Detailed.

I don't want to go through it, but really I think it's basically probably a lot clearer but it is more complex. It's covering every sort of use case. Yeah. But it's definitely clearer I think. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think people will be arguing about 5e stealth forever. Yeah. And then you look at the shadow dark stealth balls which I can't remember what time but they're very simple and just work. Yes. Well, I mean, it's robust, but I'm sure you can find Edge Base there somewhere.

But it's a lot less of a complicated game. And sometimes you want the complications. Yeah.

Do we have any of the news, or was that it for this week? That's it for the week, yeah. We've lots of news. We've lots and lots of news. As we work our way through them, let's switch and swap a little bit, because I've got like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, seven or eight things there. You've got one, two, three, four, five. You've got about the same number on there as well, PJ. So do you want to do one of your ones there? Well, I thought it might be fun, so let Jess have a go.

Do you want to do it on Josh? Sure. I have, I'll bring news of Baldur's Gate, because that's a thing that I like. When is a bit of the rust brought to the table as well? And it's that Baldur's Gate DLC would have been boring is the clickbait headline, which I don't necessarily disagree with if you read past the clickbait headline.

And this clickbait headline came with this interview for the Larian CEO, who was talking about the Baldur's Gate 3 lifecycle and, you know, about how game development passion works. And yeah, and so because it's such a popular game, everyone's like, why don't you do DLC and make loads of more money?

But in summary he's kind of saying because it wouldn't be interesting because when people, finish the game you're so overpowered and it's just you know dlc afterwards doesn't keep you coming back and draws you in and things like that and also if you think about all the updates like recently they launched the patch 8 update for bolster's gate 3 and that was massive and it was all for free and historically a lot of those things would have been dlc like extra subclasses you know things

like that would normally be on dlc but they've just given it to us But he was talking about how game design needs to be fun for both players and developers. And traditional DLC would not have been exciting for the developers, so that's why they chose not to do it. I mean, Man's Wearing looks like La Palma there, doesn't it? Yes. Here we go. This is what you said. Full quote, yeah. Do you want to read it out? It's Ben Vink, the Larian CEO.

And he says, DLC is boring, is the honest answer. We try to be in the DLC business. Talked about that with BG3. There's just no passion. I mean, happy player, happy business. But you also need a happy developer for a happy player. What we're doing now makes developers way more happy. We heard it's what we were supposed to do. You know, huge game, huge hit. And you're going to make DLC this and DLC that and DLC there. The money's going to pile up.

You think, yeah, we'll just make some DLCs. But then the... Oops, it's cut off there. What's the rest of the quote? In the comment below. In the comment below. And then the... I can't find it. Sometimes I think you realise what we're doing. And then you realise, what are we doing? There we go. And in the moment, right. So the answer to that is basically developers don't like doing it. That's what you said. It feels like the cash grab that it is, I think, a lot of the time as well.

I'm sure they could have had loads of stuff. They could have made loads of cool hats for your character to wear. And I'd probably abhorst them, because who doesn't love a cool hat, Russ? It's all Russ wanted when we played Baldur's Gate. It's true. I did want a hat and I didn't find one. I gave you a hat from the very beginning. Yeah, but it wasn't a pointy hat. I know because we had to look for it. We should have another go at Baldur's Gate sometime. That was fun.

That save I did, I think, is died because... No, it hasn't. It's still there. We all died, but we can resurrect. I am happy to play any time. Anyway, but yeah, so that was kind of the big Baldur's Gate news. Related to that as well, Larian is hiring, Larian Studios, in their, and I noticed it because it's in their UK office, and it's tangentially related to RPGs because they are hiring story development leads.

So these are they have two similar roles there's a story development leader another one based in the story team which i can't remember because i don't have in front of me but pretty much this job is all driving world building and storytelling initiatives so you're the team responsible for all the narrative contents and making sure the arcs are consistent and you manage editors and writers and things like that so there was a lot of overjack with rpg writers because if you've edited or

written rpgs a lot of these skills and the things they're doing overlap so i thought it was interesting so if you worked in story development narrative direction or creative leadership yeah that is that job is available on the larian if you go to larian.com and they have a career section you can find it there and i just thought that was interesting and maybe if people into their role-playing games that could be an interesting overlap yeah

that would be people listening to this podcast if you're not into all playing games you're listening to this podcast welcome i don't understand it but we're glad to have you here anyway yes absolutely but that is my boulders gate 3 news of the week i want to ask will morris apply to larian studios oh lol that was just play the game in the chat the answer to your question is of course no. I was about to say you're busy i've got things for you to do.

You have several jobs you do here you can't do anything else i have a company to run. I like my job I do enjoy my job I wouldn't want to do something else except for being an astronaut that's the one thing I would do.

Really? No Taylor Swift, but there we go. Yeah, so let me smoothly segue from talking about game design and so forth and RPG adventure design to talking about Heart of Darkness. Heart of Darkness? Yes, it's an upcoming Kickstarter, which I thought was quite interesting. I thought I'd bring it to the attention of people because of this interest that it evoked with me.

I mean it's a dnd adventure campaign and those are not uncommon no offense it's like you know but i see a lot of these on kickstarter oh and this one's actually started oh i'm excited the things that caught my attention about it was the way it's explained its layout of what's going on about the adventure like having pronunciation guides making sure that you've got the text tables and illustrations is the right place at the

right time it's really a sandbox but if you are to go to a location all the it's it's saying that all the information you'll need will be on the page that you go to rather than having to flip back and forth throughout the book nice and, that looked really good it's like got different color schemes and they've really thought about how to make this more accessible and a way to get into it it's a parish designer and victor the navy pink.

Sitch i think it is but yeah it it looked like a really good way to i i'm like i don't really know too much about the actual story but the way you would run the game the ease of use, is i think quite exciting and i think that's one of the uh research interests of mine like one of the focuses for ttrpgs going into the future which is the easier it is to use the better it is because i've run some older ventures and i did not enjoy my experience, well layout is so important so so so

important uh yeah and it's a skill as well it's really hard to do i mean not just not just from a technical point of view just you know manipulating the software and making it look good but having the eye to do that and understand how a page flows and where the eye goes on the page and how white space works and all this sort of stuff is really, you know it's just difficult stuff.

Yeah having the tables and the flow charts in place strategic use of box text because if you have box text and it's not clear that it's box text which I know sounds wildly stupid to me to say I have come across adventures where there's a read aloud section and then it goes into spoilers. Yeah. Which is You don't want to get that wrong when you've got it in front of you and you're yeah.

Yeah it's an easy mistake to make i can it can ruin your experience and make you just feel awful as a gm whereas like you know having having these things to prop up your skills is nice yeah and good and i think it's like something that we as designers should be aiming for yeah and certainly i'm i'm a lot more inclined to back this quick start than with any of a five-year adventure, simply because of the evident thought that they put into making it a good idea to run,

Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Francita in the chat says layout is fun with a hard work and Francita is an art and layout manager. Yes. And does amazing, amazing, amazing work. And yeah, let me tell you just how hard it really is. And you know, it's not, it's not something you can just start doing and know how to do it. You've got to learn how to do it. It is a skill.

Hmm. It is a skill. It is a skill. I'm not good at it at all. I mean. No. I think I've got an eye for it and I can look at layout and I can say that looks good or that doesn't or the white space is off on that or that's too close. You know, that sort of thing. I can look at it and spot problems. What I can't do is do the layout in the first place. Yeah. I can also do that, but I don't know how to fix the problem as well. Yeah.

So, like, and that's where the skill comes in. I think it's easy almost with anything to look at something and say it wasn't good. Like, how many people go to watch a film or read a book and be like, I didn't like this because it wasn't...

Well made or whatever but then knowing how to make it is a whole different thing yeah I think people know what they like what's pleasing to their eye, sometimes they can identify why that is and sometimes they can't but it's more of a technical thing isn't it it's all part of the nature of criticism.

Within TTRPGs not criticism as in I didn't like that, that was rubbish but more as in how can we make it better, almost like literary criticism but like many ways what does it mean and how can we better do it and like movie criticism talking about cinematography and so forth so yeah I welcome this as like evidence of the evolution of TTRPGs as an art form, that's why I caught my eye yeah that sounds interesting thanks for sharing that's

Heart of Darkness do you say Kickstarter that is it's actually on Kickstarter and is live as we speak yeah 224 pounds of a, £1,588. What's that? So that's... Oh, it's... I don't know what PLN is. PLN? But they're going for £8,000 PLN. No, I don't know what the currency means. Last I heard it was a Zloty, but I'm very out of date. Yeah. So there we go again.

So just play the game posted in the chat. Russ Morris, Britain's first astronaut, bringing tabletop world-playing games to a whole new world. I hate to break it to you. We've had lots of astronauts. Let's not have Tim Peake coming around. Tim Peake getting across with you. Yes. Yeah. Right. Okay. I think it's my turn. Should I do a news item? Yeah.

Okay. Which one should I do? I think let's talk a little bit about news outlets. More specifically. Yes. Good. News outlets. outlets so so so so we've got some bad news broke yesterday polygon has just been hit by a mass wave of layouts and now this is because it's been sold to the valnet group which is a group that owns outlets like game rant comic resources and a whole bunch of others a whole load of a whole load of So they tend to require these sites and then often then,

It's followed by a big round of layoffs. Yeah, they fire all the journalists that are writing the content that people are going to the sites for. And then they're so surprised as it's like a viewing thing has dropped off. Who could have thought that getting rid of the content creators would make it worth it? Yeah, yeah. So Polygon was acquired by the Varonet Group and immediately we have a big wave of layoffs.

Various people from Polygon, staff members from Polygon, posting on social media that they've lost their jobs and they're looking for work. From our point of view, the TTRPG point of view, obviously that's only a tiny part of what Polygon did. Polygon obviously covered like culture and video games and all sorts of stuff. It's a fairly big outlet. The TTRPG editor, senior editor, was Charlie Hall.

And I think you will have seen articles by Charlie Hall over the years, who must definitely have done, who has reported, I am no longer with Polygon, my home for nearly 13 years. I am proud of what my colleagues and I accomplished over that period. Also, I'm especially proud of the role the Vox Media Union and Writers Guild of America played in it all, organized now. I am immediately available for hire. Wow. Okay. Yeah, so that's a sad day for, you know, I think,

you know, obviously its TTRPG coverage is going to go. It's going to be gone now. Yeah, that's an interesting statement. I mean, I don't know anything about it, because I've seen that people are upset. But it sounds to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, but what Charlie is saying there is they were sold off because they were unionized. And this is like having a resort. No, he did mention he was proud of the union.

He's one of the founding members of the Vox Media union. That's why he's proud of building it. Vox Media being the group that owns Polycom amongst others or that used to own Polycom before they told us about that is that correct? Right. I was just trying to make sense of what he was saying, sort of what they were saying from the... I don't think that's what he was saying. Oh, okay. I think the Farnet Group just, you know, tends to require these properties and... And asset strip them.

What's the word? Enchitification is the word, isn't it? The doctoral process, as we like to paraphrase it for our American listeners, is where a company draws you in and then slowly makes the conditions worse until like it makes it worse for the sellers and it starts to make it worse for the buyers the the readers and so forth so this this may be a speedrun of such process or it may just be your standard venture capitalists doing venture catalyst things although how they're hoping

to profit from just firing everyone i don't No, they've just bought the place. Now, see, this happened a lot over the last year or two. Look at this. This is the casualty list over the last couple of years. Polygon, IO9, Dicebreaker, ComicBook.com, Gizmodo. Yeah. All of which were sold to other larger organizations. Except I'm not sure that Comic... Yeah, I think ComicBook... I'm not sure where the ComicBook.com was. But all of them... I've basically shuttered their tabletop gaming coverage.

Icebreaker went away pretty much completely. It just stopped last year. Io9 and Gizmodo, that was back 2023, I think. Lynn Cordega worked there. That shuttered the tabletop gaming coverage. Yeah, Lynn left after having broken the whole OGL debacle, being their first and doing some of the best reporting. Yeah. Arguably at the height of their professional career and then gets there. I don't know if they broke it. I think that was the Roll for Combat podcast. Broke it.

Oh, okay. Definitely came in quickly and did a lot of very, very good work. Yeah. Very good work. Yeah. I think, you know, give credit where it's due. Roll for Combat. Yeah, yeah. Did great that one.

Yeah, and comicbook.com, of course, used to cover D&D and stuff like that a lot. And Christian Hoffer. Christian Hoffer used to work at Comic Book. Now works for us over E-N World, which is nice. Yeah, like the tabletop outlets, tabletop role-playing game outlets are really shrinking. I mean, obviously there's E-N World, which we hope listeners are aware of. Otherwise, Bethany has Morris' unofficial tabletop RPG news. Mm-hmm.

And there's Rascal, which I have a subscription to because that's pretty interesting. And there's what, Bell of Lost Souls? Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, most of these are, some of these are sort of like a lot bigger than, say, a niche site that just covers TTRPG news, like, like, but I did make a list when Dicebreaker closed. So last year, of the ones that I could think of that kind of covered RPG still. And now looking at that list, I'm rather than ever going now.

So we had E.N. World that was here, us rpgnews.com which is also operated by us we've got Battle of Lost Souls does a lot of.

ICV2 kind of industry level coverage I wouldn't go there to find out about the latest releases but if you're interested in the industry the important release is basically a year after everyone else hears about it because they report on it just before it goes into retail whereas we report on it when they're announced originally yeah yeah yeah we sometimes get people ask us why haven't you reported on this thing that icv2

is reporting on i said well we did a year ago when it was news yeah yeah now it's for olds, yeah yeah and then we've got a rascal um which was set up by linkerdega and some other journalists which is a great a great site wonderful site i think i think lynn has since left if I recall correctly. Still, well, not left, but I think has got on a job. I believe in Hollywood as a screenwriter or something like that. I'm not sure exactly. And that obviously has to, you know, prioritize the focus.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But there's a good team there at Rascal. Yeah, yeah. I have no compliance. Yeah. Yeah. We've also got tabletop gaming news. We've got Kisara Guild, Bleeding Cool.

I don't know if Bleeding Cool still covers GT RPGs. leading cool yeah that's kind of movies more than you know and pop culture i don't know how much i'm just looking at it now so we've got comic book industry remembers black mirror comic the gilded age season three previews of batman comics american horror story 3 grand theft auto 6 so it's yeah yeah.

There is some if you google rpgs it will tell you that tariffs are bad it will let you know about the secret doors contest that we covered every week that's for the mega dungeon urban shadows getting a second edition then monty python has a new rpg yeah this is and daggerheart apparently is getting a new rpg and things like the dragon bane quick start so yes they do do rpg news I would struggle to describe them as being hugely current.

Yeah. I think that's like ICB2 in that it reports when stuff's going into retail and it hits the distributor catalogs rather than when something's announced in development, hits Kickstarter, that whole year or two before that we cover. But it does make it even harder for indie games and publishers to stand out. I recall that there were a lot of questions. There was an article not too long ago where people were like,

oh, indie publishers should just contact these outlets to try and stand out. I'm like, well, what? So it is. R2RPG in the chat says, okay, have you talked anything about Project Siggy, assuming that means Sigil's resurrection? No, I'm not aware of any Project Sigil resurrection. The last news we did is that they announced so they won't do any further development. Yeah, we talked about that a couple of years, a couple of weeks ago. Not a couple of years ago.

It must have made it feel like years. But yeah, that was... If there's breaking news that it's been resurrected, I don't know anything about that. Yeah. Well, we have had Easter since, so... Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, these sites disappearing. Like, tabletop gaming, I guess, isn't a priority for any of these because, like, video games and movies and comic books are much, much bigger, much, much bigger. Yeah, so R2 says, yes, but yesterday there were news on G&G Beyond,

so I don't know. I don't know it, so I don't know what to say. Yeah, so, yeah, I'm like, yeah, tabletop gaming news, it's hard to make money out of that, I guess. The audience is very, very, very niche. And even, you know, when you talk about tabletop. Yeah, I mean, if you talk about tabletop RPGs, are even a tiny, tiny thing compared to, you know, the board gaming industry. Oh, yeah, yeah. The tabletop gaming industry is a harm.

Yeah, it's a niche industry. It's hard to make money on a news site, especially if you're not one to do clickbaity titles. Yes, yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, the money these days is in rage-bait YouTube videos. Yeah. If that's what you want to do, then, you know, go for it. D&D's gone woke. I won't be watching it, but you know, go for it. But that's where the money and the traffic is these days. Yes.

But hey, hey, hey. There we go. Hopefully all the people that lost their jobs can find work elsewhere, I hope. I hope so, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's quite a lot of them, it seems, so. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've reached out to Charlie Hall to, you know, say sorry to hear it, and if there's anything we can do to help, to reach out. and he sent me a nice email saying thank you and he'll certainly reach out at some point.

But again, it is sad when these things happen. Yeah. I just think it's amazing that we've been around for 26 years now putting on TTRPG News. Yeah. Amazing. Writing. Good job. Hmm. Yeah. I was going to say, PJ, do you have some good news for us or some nice news just to balance out the tone? I mean, no pressure or anything like that Yeah, just want us to enjoy Can you fix the world, please, PJ?

Or tell us about an exciting RPG Well, an RPG that I am moderately excited about Largely due to the person creating it Is there is Cosmic Dark Which is released by Graham Wormsley Graham Wormsley wrote a book called, Catalan Safe, which I quite enjoyed. It's like an advice on how to roleplay harder in RPGs.

And Graham also created Cthulhu Dark, which is an extremely large rate, sort of lighter even than Gumshoe-style TTRPG, where D6 dice pool, I believe, and if you're a 6, you're likely to see more of the horrors within. Anyway, it's coming up on Kickstarter, so I imagine there's going to be some weird space horror. Don't know too much about it. It's not officially come out, but it's got a few followers, 879 people. So I imagine that will be moderately, moderately large. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It looks a bit science fiction-y. Could be exciting. Yeah. Exciting. Exciting stuff. Yeah. Nothing like space horror. I do love space horror. Yeah. A bit of aliens, mothership. All very good for that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. What else have we got in the news? Oh, we touched terrorists. Do you want to do terrorists very quickly? Yes. Why not? Yeah. Not a lot, fortunately. There haven't been any sort of brand new big ones announced

or anything. Thank goodness. Oh, great. But do you remember Stone Mayor Games were suing the US president? Yeah. Yes, yes. Yes, President Donald Trump was being sued. Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of people were doing lawsuits, but yes. Yeah, so they were joining a larger lawsuit being run by the Pacific Legal Foundation.

And over on icv2 there's a little bit more information about just sort of the rationale and background of this this lawsuit so it's quite technical so um the rationale for the original rationale for the application of these tariffs was that authority was granted by something called the international emergency economic powers act which says that under a national emergency Declaration, the President may take steps to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat

to national security, foreign policy, or the economy. The statute apparently does not mention tariffs, which is traditionally an authority exclusively granted to Congress by the Constitution, and the statute has never been used for this in the past. So basically, the lawsuit is saying that, U.S. president does not have the power to put these tariffs in place. Yeah, yeah. It's an overreach on part of the executive branch, which is like just basically not supposed to do that sort of thing.

It's supposed to have like the executive, I think it's Congress and the judiciary are all supposed to be checks and balances on each other to make sure that no one part can have more power than any other. The fact that i know this for a country that i do not live in right it's just uh.

Well me too so there we go like that was 196 hours of my life uh happily spent yeah yeah uh yeah so this is also they're seeking refunds for tariffs that that the plaintiffs which includes stonemare games have paid and to reassert the limit on on the presidential authority yeah yeah um as i said there's no there's no actual physical military or political reason other than they felt like it to have these tariffs in place so in fairness i believe the

president's ego might have been hurt and it hurt his feelings okay i think we didn't do that i mean to politics that's true fair enough but anyway that lawsuit was happening, the politics is coming for the tc rpgs like i i have better things to do than talk about that guy right it's like keep your politics out of my role-playing games.

It's like it's the sort of thing that i've had thrown at me for ages so how about you try it you keep yeah we won't talk about your your stupid politics if uh you could just let us i don't know go about selling games and so forth sorry hmm right other things are the news Oh, can I do a segue?

Yes. Because from one set of boneheaded decisions to another, WorldCom, which is the, especially the World Science Fiction Convention, have done an explanation of why they use large language models to vet applicants. Okay. Okay. To say that this has been received badly would be employing British understatement at, like, you know, just peak levels here.

Because it turns out that the people whose work has been taken without their permission, and whilst it is under their copyright and used to train large language models, are not, in fact, big fans of large language models. And then to hear that, oh, it was just so, there's just so many people, like, we haven't been able to at all. It's like you can either do due diligence and research, everyone, or you cannot.

Oh, well, I didn't think you'd include that slide there, Russ, the slide that Russ has put up for those listening at home, because we've not had a lot of art this time around, but it's from a Blue Squadron by Ellie Bangs, and it has a picture of Doctor Manhattan from the Watchmen comics. Sitting on Mars on a rock on Mars.

Sitting on Mars on a rock on Mars. happened the the caption is it's uh it's 2023 a dramatic disaster surrounds world com it's 2024 a dramatic disaster surrounds world com it's 2025 a dramatic disaster surrounds world com. Yeah well so just to clarify this this news because i don't this is my first time hearing it so world com was using large language learning model like an ai type thing to vet applicants Vet applicants for what?

What were their applications for? Just because I'm not too familiar. It's for the various awards that they're handing out and so forth. Oh, wow. And so forth. Yeah, yeah. It's panelist applicants. And panelists as well. So they had about 1,300 panelist applicants for Seattle Walk-On 2025. And, you know, they have to vet these applicants to make sure that, you know, you're not getting someone standing in front of a crowd of 500 people when saying things that are,

Objectionable. A problem. But... All of them have sort of expertise. Yeah. Yeah. So they use a script that uses ChatGTP to vet these applicants. Okay. Apparently nobody in Seattle has heard of Perl, I'm told. Which is, to my understanding, a computer language, which isn't artificially intelligent, but which is quite good at sorting through strings and so forth, like text and text. I don't know.

But one person commenting on it did point out that when chap gpt wrote their bio it actually attributed a second book to them which they were surprised to learn that they had written but actually it turned out it wasn't a confected book that had been confabulated into existence by chap gpt it was a real book that had been written by a person of color a woman of color and it had been attributed to her a white lady so like with 1300 incidents incidents of this and it's like even the people

who are selling it are like oh well you always have to check the work afterwards and i'm like well maybe you should just do the work in the first place because that sounds like a lot less effort and you're less likely to accidentally produce a mistake but for me making mistakes is a bigger issue than, like, I think it's a big issue, it would be a big issue for me sending out false information to all. I don't like it. Yeah.

Fair enough. Yeah. So, as I say, the wrong crowd to do this with, and putting out statements about it, seems to have only added oil to the flames. What was the statement that Worldcon... It's quite lengthy and it's linked. Oh, it's a long letter. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, have you got a link? Yeah. It said. There have since been several rebuttals, but I'm afraid I missed the line of yesterday for putting these in. Anyway, it's not strictly TTRPG, but I thought it was relatively random.

It is strictly TTRPG. Oh boy, that's... Okay, well, virtually strictly TTRPG. Okay. Strictly virtually T. T. A VTT. VTT.

It's very tabletop. Is this a new BBC program, Strictly Come Role Playing, where you have celebrities attempt to role play and then a panel of judges will say snarky things about them? It is not. Okay. What it is, is the public beta for Roll20 and Demiplane's rules compendium integration. Yes, massive. Hmm. Yeah. So Roll20 actually purchased Demiplane in June last year. Mm-hmm. And Demiplane is essentially D&D Beyond, but for games that aren't D&D.

Yes. So it's got things like Pathfinder, Vampire, Marvel Multiverse, Alien, and stuff like that on there. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. A lot of freeing stuff. A lot of pretty big stuff yeah yeah it launched in 2019 it has stuff on it like dnd beyond co-creator adam bradford joined the team in 2021 after dnd beyond was sold to wizard of the coast for 146 million dollars so demi playing currently has 14 games on it only six of them are currently in this Roll20 integration.

So the six that are the Alien RPG. Yes. Candela Obscura. Mm-hmm. Cyberpunk Red. Mm-hmm. Marvel Multiverse role-playing game. Okay. Pathfinder 2E. Okay. And Vampire the Masquerade 5E. Okay. That's a good variety of different systems. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you live in Seattle, sure. Yeah, that's quite, quite, quite. Yeah, okay. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Interesting stuff. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Rogue 20 is the biggest VTT out there, a little tabletop out there, by far. It's one of the oldest.

It launched, like, years ago with a Kickstarter which made something like 40 grand or something.

Which isn't really an awful lot of money when you look at the size they are now, yeah but it was big money back in those days Kickstarter yeah but they in those days it was a lot of money yeah but they grew astronomically very quickly they did really I think one of the things that does create a slight problem that World 20 is an old platform though and I think you know, there's a lot of legacy code yeah, that's a very frequent complaint about it that when i

say legacy code i mean there's like stuff that people have i'm not a confused program i just listen to them a lot and they're complaining that's pretty interesting to me essentially like they do things like they put patches in and so forth that they're like i'll fix this later and then 10 years have gone by they never got back to it and now it's low bearing for so much infrastructure, yeah yeah i mean roll 20 it's linked to dnt beyond as bad isn't it Yes, yes.

Well, I don't think you mean D&D Beyond. Maybe you mean One Bookshelf? No, D&D Beyond. Oh, no. D&D Beyond character can integrate with Roll20, can't it? Roll20, you can get the Beyond 20 extension, which will let you use stuff from D&D Beyond on that, which is very good. Demi playing, I think, through Roll20, who also own One Bookshelf...

What I saw, I don't know if that's including the link, they're talking about having it so that you can have stuff from Dungeons & Masters Guild and Drive-Thru RPG, and then if you've got that, then you'll also have the corresponding gameplay material. I'm not 100% on that, whether that's verified. I'm not really interested because they're not running any games that I want to play or games that I wouldn't play elsewhere. It's interesting, though, looking at their position in the market now,

though. So I've got this slide up there. We've got Roll20 there and the various platforms that it's acquired over the last few years. So obviously it's acquired DriveThruRPG, which includes the Dungeon Masters Guild.

It's just acquired Demi playing there. A few years ago, it acquired Dungeon Scroll, which is a really cool platform which allows you to design, quickly draw dungeons for vcts and stuff just really quickly on the fly and they're all now integrated with roll 20 yeah just creating this big kind of one-stop shop type thing.

Which i was like kind of thinking like that's kind of what wizard the coast is doing with dnd beyond where they've got dnd beyond integrated with their maps tool and they're going they've got a marketplace and this is exactly what roll 20's got and now i think we've basically got these two big entities now.

They're the two main ones, Roll20 and Prisoner of the Coast, each of which have created an ecosystem of their own, big ecosystem of their own, in a walled garden, which is, you know, kind of gate kept. You need to, you know, you can't get on Demi Plain without invitation. You can't get on D&D Beyond without invitation, you know, so they're kind of gate kept.

And I don't know how I feel about this. It's, uh, It's like all that stuff we were just talking about, about the news outlets getting acquired, all getting acquired and consolidating into one big organization. Well, it makes it a single point of weakness, as we saw with Twitter. If a billionaire decides that they want people to think they're good at games, or they want to win a popularity contest, they could just buy it. And there's not a lot you can do. Indeed, it's moving to monopoly.

Well, by definition, it's a duopoly, because we've got Wizards of the Code from World 20, the two separate ecosystems. I thought the tabletop joker on the board game and actually the same. Yeah. I mean, certainly in the UK, you're considered to have monopoly-like power if you have one-eighth of the market. So, you know. Yeah, but then you could have eight different companies with Monopoly in the same market. Yeah.

Which doesn't, like, make a lot of sense to you. But, like, that's the one that you can easily form a cartel. And it's a problem. It's like, yeah, it's sort of the opposite of three. Well, it's not like Roll20 and Wizard of the Coast aren't linked, is it? You know? I mean, they're not the old. The D&D cartel.

And, like, Roll20 sells official D&D stuff. dnd adventures and dnd source books dnd beyond as we just said is linked to roll 20 via that extension so it's not like they're completely siloed apart from each other they definitely and these these a lot of these companies are all based geographically relatively similar places i mean sure you've got free league but like other places it's like well do you live on the west Coast of America? No? Well, tough.

It's a certain thing. I feel that lends itself to quite a lot of group think. And sort of a self-limiting talent pool. Yeah, I don't know where Roll20 is based, actually. I've got no idea. I was thinking of the game's companies, but yeah.

Yeah, I'm just trying to have a look on Wikipedia to see if it says, it's not, like, clear there yeah i don't know i don't know where they're based but um yeah i mean i mean certainly, one of the things i'm noting is like vampire because vampire the master really has you know, not been on most people's radar quite some time like you know it's always got diehard loyalists and absolutely fair play like you know there's a lot of fun to be had in the world of darkness but hasn't felt hugely relevant

so why this is on the thing did you and chaosium was conspicuous by absence no core of cthulhu um not in that list of six i don't know if they're in the list of 14 that are actually on demiplane ah yeah i'm sure it must be on demiplane yeah i i don't know i i have no idea let me have a quick look at what's on demiplane then. Demiplane.com as I furiously type into my computer live on the games. Just a look. View all games. Everyone's tuned in to watch it live for. Okay, here's the full list.

Yeah. I mean, it's big names, basically. Pathfinder, Marvel Modiverse, Cyberpunk Red, Fallout RPG, Vampire the Masquerade, Starfinder Chewie, Daggerheart, Cosmere RPG, Alien RPG, Candela Obscura, Avatar Legends, Hunt of the Reckoning, Mutant Gear Zero, and it's got like D&D 5th edition, but I think like the SRD version of it, not the...

Official version of it yeah so like that's multiple companies uh are carrying these multiple sorry multiple products from the same companies pathfinder and starfinder are from yeah yeah yeah that's two from what's it garrington press so yeah it's like it it's it's 14 games but less companies so yeah like i'm sure there's advantages like it's their business they can run it how they like yeah you know yeah this then you go when you go to dnd beyond i mean they're

kind of doing the same thing but just keeping it within the dnd sphere so they're inviting on like the million dollar kickstarter guys all the people that have done that um.

They got Cobal Press on board putting the Tomb of Beasts on because why would you want to kill that I mean that's a significant peace offering right there because like you know Tales of Valiant is forwarding it headed but we've also seen Cobal Press diversifying into Tales of the Riverbank, ah thank you much for going on yeah World 20 headquarters in Las Vegas there we go, yeah yeah i don't know how i feel about all this i kind of feel like i mean

there's a lot of vtt's out there yeah but not with the kind of empire building scope the world 20 now has i mean, acquiring dry through rpg was a big thing so it's when you get a company that has and this is my thing about dndb on when you get a company that has the marketplace the sort of mandatory tool and the vtt that's monopoly is the wrong word it's just like it's a complete.

Yeah yeah yeah like yeah when you control it's like united healthcare which is a medical insurer in the u.s not wishing to call it particularly but just that is one that springs to mind where they provide the hospitals, the insurance, they've got the pharmacies, they decide which medications are permitted to be sold to the pharmacies and which medications are right. It's like, yeah, they've got control over the whole process in a similar fashion to SpaceX.

Like, you know, they've got control over... Too much centralization in my tastes. Well, defense competition, which for the purposes of profit maximization is a good thing. Yeah, but it needs you so much gatekeeping power.

That's that from the point on the point of view of profit maximization that is a good thing oh yes of course but yeah it's not good for the point of view of in my yeah i mean that and this is why i talk about this is why like you know when we talk about things like one eighth of the market having monopoly power because it distorts the market like you know you're not like a total monopoly but you have monopolistic power and you have undue effects okay but when when Hasbro says,

we're going to raise the price of books, everyone else says, oh, thank goodness, because the artificially low price of, 5th edition books has kept a de facto cap on what everyone else can sell their books for, with exceptions of mavericks like Monty Cook Games, who... We're just going to do what we want, yeah. Yeah, we've got to do what we want, people will pay what they like, and there are at Heldon, many, many detractors, which I'm sure I don't need to tell you about, right?

I'm sure if you were, I'm sure you have many, many examples of Monty Cook game detractors complaining about how pricey Monty Cook games are. Yeah. I've reached, I've got a conversation recently about pricing of PDFs and people wondering why PDFs are priced sort of close to the physical book. And I was looking at that and I was thinking, how are the costs incurred in making, say, a big, full-colour, 300-page role-playing game book.

The actual physical printing of it is one of the smaller ones. Yep. Like, you're going to spend, like, I mean, like, on Level Up, we spent, like, for 100 grand or something on development, art, on making the thing. And, what, 15 grand on printing it? You know, it's like the bit that people place the value on. and they say, why is PDF worth almost as much as a physical book? That's because the physical book doesn't actually have that much added value in terms of what it costs you to make.

But it's a tangible cost they can see. They understand there's a physical thing I know costs it. But also, not all RPG publishers pay artists and writers and editors at all or fairly. Yes, but that's partly because they're forced to, because they can't sell the product at the value that the product is worth. So if you're in this situation where you've made a 300-page book, but people are saying, we'll only pay $15 for it, that is why all these people aren't getting paid enough, isn't it?

Yeah. Because people aren't paying the value of the product. We're actually doing really is setting it for less than it costs you to make it unless you know unless you exploit people i mean price points are pegged very much 20 maybe 30 years in the past but you're you're you're red boxed in the like cost so much and like yeah but probably quite an interesting article to look at like you know prices compared to inflation because inflation has kind of got up. Has it? Yeah, they're right.

There's a kind of just a business 101 element there of not selling something for less than it costs you to make it. And how much pressure the customer base puts on you. If you bow to that pressure and start selling something for less than it costs you to make it, you are not running a business anymore. Nothing. Very short-term. You're just going, company closed.

Or it means there's a very limited elite group of people that can afford to run rpg companies because they just bankroll it themselves and that means there's amazing stories and amazing games that won't be made because there are people that have the ability to make amazing games that can't afford to bankroll yeah it happens in other spheres as well like um like uh say counseling which i haven't heard about you tend to have like a lot of white women there and part of the reason

for that is because it's something it's very flexible profession fits in around and you can have, stereotype horribly, which I'm sure will get me reported to therapy today, you can have a rich husband. And that helps subsidize your costs. Can I have a rich husband? I'm afraid that shouldn't have sailed, Russ. My wife might be upset if I did. I mean, I don't know. That's a conversation for the two of you. She might be more interested.

And maybe not one time publicly on this podcast. I mean, if you buy this giant bag of popcorn next time you come home, then I don't know.

But I mean the summary of this conversation I think is why generally in my RPGs the villain is a large corporation or capitalism as a concept which someone commented to me they're like Jess do you notice that a lot of your games are like this and I was like I didn't but now you said it I absolutely see but it's an obvious problem anyway yeah um again I don't know I think in our industry I think because it's a niche industry I think it kind of lends itself a little more

towards that but maybe a much much bigger industry it's a lot harder to dominate but the movie industry it's a lot harder for one studio to dominate the entire industry yeah instead you've got five or six whereas in something as small as the rpg industry like one company can do it, yeah but even even in movies it's like we we see a lot less diversity than we used to yeah it was like about 20 odd years ago you could still have like little indie films like,

stories but now it's like there's a there's real, nobody goes to see them I think the thing that's happened is the middle's been hollowed out you don't get the mid-budget films anymore you get the blockbusters you get the indie films that nobody goes to see and nobody's heard of, Yeah, people are making them, but you don't get the middle. If you do not emphasize a film or have it in your cinema for very long, it's very hard for people to

see this film at a cinema, I will say. Yeah, well, you know, it's chicken and egg, isn't it? It's like this conversation where people were saying, why does Hollywood not make anything original anymore? And then the Oscar nominations came out, and there were like 10 original films being nominated to Best Picture, and their response was, oh, I've not seen any of those. and then criticise the Oscars for having these 10 pictures they hadn't seen.

It's like, make your mind up that either they're not making original films or, you know, they are making them, clearly. There's 10. There's a list of 10 for you. And now your criticism is that you haven't seen them. So, you know. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it is a problem. There's a problem. We should probably try and finish this off before we delve too deep into the woes of the world. Yes, we've got more news to go, have we? What else have we got?

I see an article on Pathfinder and Starfinder. An article on Pathfinder and Starfinder. Lost Omens. Oh, yes. Okay. Sorry. Let me find a nice picture. If I can find it. Is that it? That's not it. That's not it. That's not it. Sorry to the people watching as I scroll through a tiny, tiny little thumbnail, peering at it, trying to work out which one is the correct picture. It's worse for the podcast listeners. Yeah, because this is why we need a producer to actually do this for us.

Yeah, well, now we misuse that. Oh, okay. That looks interesting. We've got, like, I think that's a Pathfinder troll with, like, the big bifurcated horns going either side of its mouth. Looks like it's been chased by some sort of giant rock dragon. And it looks like some sort of red-capped mushroom with a sort of skeletal face in the corner there. This is the Loft Omen's Draconic Codex. Right. Which is coming out in December. For Christmas.

Yeah, someone found a listing on, it hasn't been announced yet I think, someone found a pre-order listing on Barnes & Noble. Oh, not Amazon leaking it. Not Amazon at least. You know, we haven't seen that from Wizard of the Coast in ages though, like a couple of years since we last, we're like, Oh, look, there's an Amazon leak of an upcoming B&D book. You notice that stopped.

So they've clearly nailed that down somehow. They've improved their operational security, although they decided that looking like clowns has a way to get through publicity. What part of it was, though, they used to only announce the next book after the previous one had come out, and now they're announcing the next year's worth of books ago. Maybe they did that to combat that. Because we know it's coming out for the next year. don't we?

It's less of a leak then, isn't it? It's just, oh yeah, we knew about that. You get to control the information then, at least. Yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, definitely spinning out a lot more books. So anyway, so 20 tanks of dragons, including stat books for arch dragons. Which serve as the equivalent to ancient dragons in the Pathfinder Ball set. I see. December 2025.

Yeah, this sounds good. We've got background and lore for dragons, information on dragons' physiology, nine draconic deities, ancestry and heritage options to play a draconic character of your own. Draconic... Lots of different character options. It's like a fun book. Good night, dragons. It's like a fun, fun, fun book. So you can play a dragon? Yeah. A draconic character, I guess. Oh, okay. That could be a draconic... Dragon-like.

Yeah okay yeah alright here we go we got from expansions to the dragon blood and kobold to the brand new dragonette ancestry hmm dragonette hmm, like a little dragon like a wormling is it maybe I don't know yeah well that's why I didn't sound by dragonette like wormling is I think mostly a D&D thing so yeah dragonette would be the general fantasy term for a little dragon. It sounds to me like a pastry, but that might just be because I haven't had lunch. It sounds delicious.

Yeah. A little dragonette. You know, it's very, like, fancy, and a pastry chef has had to make it somehow. Oh, you see that with afternoon tea. It's like you've got the cool sandwiches, you've got the dragonettes. Exactly. That's a little safety dragon. Maybe I should have lunch. Maybe. Yeah. Peter, you have something on here about a central London venue. In theory, I do, yes. The link appears to have gone missing, but that's okay.

Yes, there's a... I think it's called RPG Tavern. It's over in Borough in London. And it is. Entirely... It appears to be, as far as I can make out, from the Financial Times article and their own website, a new that's there for running D&D. I mean, it's quite near Borough Tube Station, so yeah, they're not kidding around when they say central London.

I don't have too much details about exactly how they're planning on doing it but or how they're planning to make money but I can only assume they're probably charging for games professional DMs beyond that or even hiring the space I guess if you want to hire a room for your weekly game hmm, potentially yeah that is a possibility, is it kind of like board game cafe basically but RPG focused is that I think that's what it sounds like yeah.

Well they're saying you roll dice we do the rest so they're providing so they're running the games yeah well they'll provide the gems the models paraphrase the things that you get going yeah and they got like new new player sessions and so forth so uh i got tickets i'll just grab some let's have a look see if i can get your price yeah Okay. Wow. Wow. Okay. So they're running, they're running.

Okay. So you can get a character creation session, which is just short of two hours, just short of four hours for 15 pounds. And you can get a six and a half hour session. Yeah. Three hours, 45 minutes to do character creation. And trust me, some people do need that. And you could get like an all day, six and a half hour session for 30 pounds. So, yeah, I mean, that is, Yes.

A bit of money but not unfeasible i guess the rent of the space in london is why it needs to be that way i i mean i do i i i wouldn't like to try and have a business model based on this so i think maybe these prices are indicate that there's something that they are not paying hopefully it's they own the property which is always conspiracy which would reduce the amount they have to pay, so then they'd have to just pay rates rather than having to pay rent on the place as well.

If they had to pay rent, then this would not last five minutes. They're opening, and as I said, they got a shout-out in the Financial Times, which is, I suppose, something you should add to your list of RPG news covering outlets for us. There you go, Financial Times. Yeah. I love a physical venue that does gaming stuff, having had a board game cafe. Which is no longer open. We did RPG there, but we only charged like, I think it was like £4 or £5 a session. So maybe that's why we are now closed.

Anyway. I noticed there's some Ian Publishing news. Exciting. We do know. We do know. Look at that. That is the first issue of the all new relaunched Insider magazine. Oh, exciting. Yeah.

So Insider's been around for 10 years. Yes. God, 10 years. Wow. I don't know how that happened. So we've been publishing Insider for 10 years, got over 600 issues over those 10 years, and, But with the new 2024 rules coming in, it's D&D Articles and Adventures, Insider, sorry. Yeah. And the S is a 5, just because you can. N5 Ida. N5 Ida, as I'd like to say. So, yeah. What was I saying? I've lost track of where I was now.

You were telling us that N5 Ida is, I'm surmising, the 2020 Paul version of Modern Magazine.

We got that and also there was a move on patreon that you had to move to monthly because we used to pay people used to be able to pay per article yes per item and then and like patreon about a year ago said that you know you're gonna have to switch over to put monthly pay rather than per article yeah so we've had we had a year's warning we've been setting this up for the last year so basically we've relaunched now so inside a magazine is now a monthly magazine, print as well and pdf and you

can subscribe monthly the first issue is now out it's all about folk heroes oh exciting and in fact i have it right here just to look at that yes we now switched from the graphic showing inside the magazine to for us holding it up to the camera, which is a lot blurrier. It's quite a cool graphic. Oh, getting that little flip through. It's quite hard to hold it upside down backwards. What? I know what I'm doing. There you go. Anyway. It's a magazine full of D&D, sir. Yeah.

Yeah. Monthly magazine. Sorry. Will people be able to pick us up at UK Games Expo?

No. No. because the way you can get it is by being a member the link i've just put in the show notes but basically there's a 10 pound a month where you get the digital uh 20 if you this is dollars even sorry if you want to have the physical copy and have a print on demand coupon so you can go you know sort that out yourself or for 25 dollars i'll do it for you so you just pay 25 each month and it'll just appear on your door so just give

me your address sign up then i did that for the first issue people this week so they have had it sent to them so i will go and send it to your address so you don't need to fiddle around with your coupons and things so if you do miss flipping through a magazine reading about things then you can subscribe to the champion tier yeah yeah. It'll be every single month. Yeah. And I'll even send it out. We're just doing the same thing we were always doing and that we've been doing

for 10 years. It's just that the format has changed. It's been compiled into a visual. And you can get it physically now rather than just in digital format. Can there be where Rush shows off like he did every month? Sure. I'm sure we can get an extra tier. Just let us know what price and we'll put it on there. It shows it off? I just went through this every month. Yeah, just showcased it. And Flip grew it, obviously. Come on, man. I don't know how much that's worth, but let us know.

$100. These are hard times RPG publishers will do it. Yeah. The world publishing director goes live on camera in exchange for money every month to show off the goods. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, that's where we are right now. I've lost an arsehole's picture, arsehole. That's where we are. That's where we are with Tariffs right now. Yeah, yeah. I joke. Yikes. Yeah. Yay! And then we've had a question about the Companions Compendium as well.

You know what I saw yesterday, or was it this week? Earlier this week? I saw the manuscript.

Yeah, me too. It was a thing of beauty. Paul Hughes is heading that one up who did Monsters and Measurement 1 and 2 he's got the website Blog of Holding, he's one of the big monster experts I think in this industry for fighting monster experts, handed in the manuscript this week and I was looking through it going oh this is lovely I like this and I see some of the art coming in as well and some of that's gorgeous and I can't wait for this one although there's been a change in name.

Companion's Companion anymore. Have we released that? Because you were on holiday when that happened. Oh yeah, we haven't had this discussion. I understand. It's now called Sidekicks. It's what it's now called. We should probably change that on all the marketing there. Yeah. We should tell people that we've changed the name of the product. Shout. Because on the Kickstarter link, it's still called that. Yes, I know, I know, I know.

Yeah, I know. I was talking that over with Paul, when we both agreed that Cranians Compendium, just while we like the alliteration, it wasn't a strong enough name. It wasn't clear enough what it is. Yeah. Okay. So what was the name? What's the new name again? Pets and Sidekicks is what we're going with. Which I've actually... We like 12 subscribers, Pets and Sidekicks. It's gone with that one. Nice, nice, nice.

But yeah, that will be coming in the summer. But the link for the pre-launch page is up. So if you want to be notified when it goes live, I know we've previewed that coming soon now because now we've got the manuscript we'll be starting to put blog items on the Level Up website and stuff Alright. What other news do we have? That sound of scraping wood you heard was us hitting the bottom of the barrel Yeah But we are a good 90 minutes in UK Games Expo Yep.

We'll be at UK in like four weeks now, isn't it? Less than four weeks. Three weeks. Yeah. One, two, three, four weeks. Four weeks. Four weeks. We'll be at UK Games Expo. And we will be recording the podcast live on May the 30th at 2 p.m. At UK Games Expo. You can come and join us. In the dice room. It'll be fun. You can bring a sandwich. You can sit there and watch us fumble our way through the show.

Yes and yeah so we do a live recording there so that week there won't be a live recording, on the internet because it will be an in-person one but the podcast will go up afterwards yes yeah yeah i don't think we're technologically competent enough to actually stream the, live recording event yeah in any manner that you'd want to watch no i mean i could do it but it would be awful it would just be a close-up of all of our faces oh yeah i could i could prop my iPhone up and stream it on that,

but I don't think anyone wants to see it. Yeah, I don't think it would be a good viewing experience. No. So instead, just come to the UK Games Expo and do that. Yeah, come to the UK Games Expo. Because that's easy for everybody, right? Yeah. It's local to everyone. Yes. Yeah. I'm looking forward to the UK Games Expo. I can't wait. I really enjoy it.

Work though yes it is it's like the four days of the year that i am at my most tired i find, because there's lots of people around we're not in our homes surrounded by dogs it's because i have to stay like switched on all day that's why being nice to people yes talking to people all day that's with some people that's a really hard thing to do yeah it is for me definitely but you know in the evening i get to go out and eat nice food and have nice

drinks with my friends which I also really, really like. Yes. Anyway. Anyway, anyway, anyway. Let's knock this on the head. Go and enjoy a weekend. Let's go do a weekend. I hope everyone enjoyed the show. Yes. It will be up on the podcast stream imminently within the next hour or so. And we're going to go. It's lovely sunny weather. We're going to go out and enjoy our weekends. Huzzah! All right. Goodbye, everyone. Have a lovely weekend.

See you next week. Same time, same place. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Music.