346 | Horror Sublasses, Daggerheart Ranger, Goodman & Judges Guild

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

I'm Russ, aka Morris, or Morris, aka Russ. And with me this week is... PJ Coffey from the Southampton Guilds Roleplay, also from Homebrew and Hacking PTRPG Design. Hello! Joining us also this week, we have... Some might describe her as a lady who has opinions online about politics and so forth. I certainly wouldn't know anything about that. I just speak to her in person. It's the best way, really. Anyway, it's the one. It's the only.

It's me, Jessica, from EM Publishing. But as we're here to talk about the tabletop RPG news, I'm going to try and keep my political opinions to myself, as we try to do on EM World. Still look with that. Yeah. It gets harder and harder to do by the day.

Yeah i've uh i've been as jess knows slightly poorly this week i've had a little bit of a stomach bug when i say a little bit of a stomach bug i mean i've lost half a stone in weight seven patterns in weight well okay um from last friday through to monday night i couldn't keep anything down at all anything i was up all night four nights in a row just well you know, conversing with my toilet.

Praying to the porcelain gods This is possibly the first day that I felt vaguely normal in a week And I've been lucky because I've had daily Discord updates about it as well, I was blissfully unaware until now when my pristine and happy ignorance was shattered, violated Do not worry, you too can catch up here on Morris' this unofficial table.rpg tour, I know it has not been fun but hey playing my life I seem to be are you feeling

a bit better now for us a little bit better yeah not amazing but better okay, Anyway, anyway, my health woes aside, yes, we do. Well, it's quite a week this week. It's a week and a half. It really is. Let's go. Yeah. Just to remind everyone, we are streaming live on YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook, as we do every Friday at 2 p.m. UK time, 9 a.m. Eastern time. You can join us, join the chat, ask questions, make snarky comments if that's your vibe. And it's always a good fun.

And yeah, if you listen to us on the podcast, you want to join us live, you can do that. Anyway. You can actually gaze upon our faces and discover why they make it possible. Yeah, gaze upon our faces if you think you can bear such a thing.

Okay. So, so, so, so. Let's talk about lots of news. And we've got a lot of news. What should we start with? Because we have a list of things to talk about. Where should we begin this story? Let's start with Eberron, shall we? Eberron likes a bit of Eberron. Eberron. So, we've got some information about the upcoming book, Forge of the Artificer. But first, there is an adventure coming before that.

Yes. So this is going to be at PAX East, which is this weekend, big convention in the US this weekend. And there's going to be a new adventure set in Zendrick in Iran. Oh yeah, that's the Jungle Bist. It is, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's a third level adventure, 2024 adventure, using pre-made characters using the 2024 PHP rules. and also the Eberron Forge of the Artificer new player options. And yeah, we don't know much about it. It's called Race for the Crab Temple, third level adventure.

I am interested in this because I am in long-running Eberron campaign. That's the D&D campaign I'm in at the moment and we are based in Zendrick. We are level nine though. Probably a bit too high level for this adventure. But I'm interested in all the Eberron news we had this week because I've kind of felt relevant to me. So I've had a little nosy about it in some of the bits and pieces. So I can't talk about the Crab Temple, but I still will learn more about it next week after pack. Yeah.

I mean, we know what the basic description is. Well, it's like one sentence. Your group has been dispatched by a more grave university to travel to Zendrick and seek out the Crab Temple. It's a race between your expedition and arrival to discover its stress. Oh, wow.

That was the first adventure I actually, well, I didn't run this one, but I ran my first adventure I ran in Eberron well, it starts off in Zendrix, that was quite cool Yeah, Zendrix is cool Now, Eberron's one of those settings I know very little about, I've never played in Eberron, so, and I've never owned an Eberron book either, Oh, well, perhaps there's always a first time for everything, Russ Yeah, it seems like the sort of thing I would like but, you know, so much, so much to do Yes.

Yeah. So, talking of Eberron. Yes. So, we know that the book is coming out later this year. Yes. Which is exciting, exciting news. So, Eberron Forge of the Artificer is now available for pre-order.

Mm-hmm. Let me find a lovely picture. I'm sure I can. And it's going to be $29.99 US dollars. Yes. Well, that was, yeah. So, everyone forward to the Artificer. We seem to have lost PJ. They will return. Ah, there we go. Hello. Yeah. So, everyone forward to the Artificer. You can pre-order it now on D&D Beyond. It does. As Jess mentioned, it's an interesting price point. It's $29.99. $30. For the book, yeah. Oh, like the actual physical copy? Yeah. What?

It's the cheapest D&D book that has been, what, ever? Like in the 5e era? Like how big is it? Do we know? Well, that's the question, isn't it? That has people speculating. What does that mean then? Does that mean that they're moving to a new format? There is a lot of stuff in there, though, which says to me there's quite a few pages. Hmm. Yes. So we don't know how many pages it are. But content-wise, there's a lot of stuff that would say to me there should be quite a few pages.

But yeah, if you go through the content. So we've got four subclasses. We've got a couple of each. Four revised subclasses and a new one, sorry. Five species, 17 backgrounds, 28 feet. Three campaign templates. I'm not sure exactly what that means. For building fantasy noir, digital thriller, and pulp adventure.

And 20 monsters so, actually if you look at that that's like a couple of chapters really yeah it's not that big you could allow like probably a page each for the subclasses same again for the species call it three quarters of a page so yeah about four pages for backgrounds and i'd say i could probably get about six feet to the six feet to the page yeah so we're looking at so are we talking like a soft cover book maybe a smaller soft cover oh definitely but i mean i'm looking at prices for my

book that i'm sending and i would lose money if i tried to sell anything at 30 well pj that leads me on to something i was going to say i was going to put my tinfoil hat on and make a outlandish speculation so we know that with the global situations we've discussed in here a lot of rpg publishers are struggling and it's going to be challenging to print and prices are going to need to go up we know this is not the case for Wizards of the Coast,

are they using this opportunity to just be like, well, we've got the main brand power if we are the cheapest as well? Will that just make our position? I don't think so, because this book would have been in the works for nearly two years. Yeah.

Tin foil hats, that's fine. Reasonable suspicion, but as Ruff says, it's been in the works for years. And also, it's quite a promise. I just looked at a picture of it. It looks like a hardcover to me. It looks to me. That's the back cover of it. That looks to me. That's got a spine there. That's got a spine there. That's a hardcover spine. But it might be a small hardcover. I mean, you're not getting much spine text on that. I'll tell you that for nothing. No.

They don't have content for it. A hardcover maybe? A small one? Maybe? Or maybe it's just the standard... I don't know. that would be bizarre to forget if it was hard to use a hardcover like image for something that would be wild i mean to be honest jessica i don't think they're organized enough or that they care enough to actually try and do such a thing no honestly it's like they're not giving competent you know sorry like like they're not giving evil mastermind levels of xanathar competence

to be able to do such a thing indeed and generally that's why my that's my general thoughts on any conspiracy theories. It's like if anyone has been in a group project, you just know no one is competent or organized enough to pull that off. I used to entertain some thoughts about conspiracy theory and then I worked for several years where our job was to go in, people were paying us to go in and clean cold water storage tanks and we had it all organized in advance, everything was done.

It was still surprisingly hard to get it done.

This was not a complicated job. Everything more complicated than that it's like goodness like the amount of banning and keep secrets it's like conspiracies are hard yeah yeah, Hmm. So let's have a look at some of the content of this book. So these are some of the interior pages. That's quite small on the screen there on the slide I've just flashed up. So there will be a link in the show notes where you can see them being full size on the end world if you want to see them properly.

But basically, this is a look at the Battlesmith. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's a little blurry. But so you can see one subclass there, the Battlesmith.

It's looking gorgeous as well. I like the layout yeah it's slightly different to Wizard's standard trade dress there isn't it maybe they're making Eber on its own sort of brand style you know what I mean it is a different genre to classic fantasy D&D yeah but to a forgotten realm D&D I used to maybe well subscribe it but I wouldn't say classic fantasy it does blend well, it's not a million miles away but it is its own thing, I think.

Oh, no, absolutely. Everyone is pretty good for that, yeah. I like the looks of it, but yeah, it doesn't... I mean, the only thing that makes me say that's very Wizards-esque is the little table on the left-hand side. Yeah, that's super. What we're looking at for those at home is we've got a, I guess, like a page spread and on the outside, it's got pictures of a man in a long coat with his robot dog. And on the other side, there's a lady of colour, it looks like.

Hard to say, holding some sort of, I don't know, two-handed death ray. Plasma gun. I assume that's the level five feature, the arcane firearm, I guess. That does make sense. That's what it says next to the picture. So that would be... Oh no, the level, the explosive cannon, perhaps the one below it. Oh yeah, that does look bigger. Yeah. The way she told you it, like sort of shitting from the hip, What are the name of those guns in Aliens, Russ, that the Colonial Marines use?

Yeah, they call them smart guns, yeah. Oh, okay, yeah. Now, I thought they had a special number, they just got smart, but yeah. Yeah, they just got smart guns, yeah, yeah. It's held like a smart gun and has a giant blue bulb in the center, yeah, but as I was saying, on the left-hand side, there's like a little table which has alternating color lines, which... But the way it was done, I don't know, it had a wizard style to it.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So we've got a quick look at the first page of the character options section, Chapter 2, which mentions dragon marks. Mm-hmm. And now it's a weird choice of font there as well. Look at that layout. It is so different to standard D&D. It looks like film noir almost. Yeah, yeah. It's like this diagonal thing at the top with character options in black and white.

It's like black and white neon. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like Jack Marlowe should be walking onto the screen. That's a film you're on, isn't it? Jack Marlowe? Is that the right reference? Sure. Yeah, sure. Let's say yes. Yeah, I'm going to say yes. And it's easy to agree with you. Yeah. Jack Marlowe, wouldn't he play right? Oh, maybe I'm wrong. I got that completely confused there.

I don't know. But yeah, it's like they've got the character options at the top and it looks like that would be thrown up on the screen of a black and white movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a black and white movie. Yeah, yeah. It's got that slight sort of diagonal slant to it and it's all in block big white capitals yeah so again this is a very different trade dress yeah we've got a sort of what's new with dragon mark sidebar.

So it says the benefits of each dragon mark now derive from feats rather than species options good dragon mark magic works a bit differently than before you can now use any spell slots you have to cast your dragon marks cast spells your dragon mark grants you. Yeah, nice. In addition to the dragon mark feats, there's 30 new general feats. And a plant of any species can take a dragon mark feat and manifest a dragon mark. Okay, that's interesting, because it said there were 28 beats before.

So if there's 30, then I guess there must be 30. Sweet. Maybe two are updated, opposed to being new. Yeah, maybe. Could be, could be. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so this is coming out August the, I believe, 19th. Lovely. So it's a couple of months away. Everyone ordered the Artificer. $29.99. Is that just the pre-order price point someone's asked, or is that just the price? But Wizards doesn't tend to change that though, does it?

Yeah, it keeps them both the same. So I believe that $30 will be if you pre-order it or if you buy it when it is live. So it's all complaining. Yeah. Yeah, Raii vs. The World there in the chat says, what does it say about holding medical shields? I don't know. I've only literally got those pages that it says there. That's all I can see. I can't see anything about holding magical shields on there at all. August time, we'll get a proper review up on Ian Wells, going into detail.

We'll probably ask Beth to do a deep dive into it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, like I said, I've never played everyone. But I'm guessing, so $29.99, I'm guessing we're talking a smaller format hardcover. Oh. And whether that's going to be a thing going forward, just maybe like setting splat books. Do you remember Splat Books? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Long time ago. It seems like maybe it's going back more. A Splat Book would be a small source book.

Well, like the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide. Sword Coast Adventurers Guide is a Splat Book, I would say. What was, sorry? Sword Coast Adventurers Guide. Oh, yeah, that's quite small, isn't it? Yeah, it's very lightweight. It's got mostly stuff about the Sword Coast.

A splat book is like a little bit of setting maybe you've got some extra rules in there it's usually soft covering or you might get a splat book for a class you might have got the fighters, and it would be like new options for fighters or you'd get the elves handbook and it'd be new options for elves but they'd be smallish and often soft cover yeah. Quite specifically focused really wouldn't it be Yeah, nice little thing, so, yeah.

Yeah, okay, well, anyway, anyway, anyway, that is, as they say, that. We also, just sticking on D&D for the moment, we have got some new horror subclasses in the Arthana this week. And I have some thoughts about some of the classes that I play and know about. Jessica Hancock, tell me your thoughts and feelings about one or more of the subclasses. Okay. So this playtest document is on D&D Beyond.

So if you want to read it for yourself in detail, you can go to D&D Beyond and download it in the Arcana. So what the document is looking at is looking through quite a lot of things. So it presents eight subclasses. Some of these are revised, so they're ones that you've seen before. And that includes the Bard, Cleric, Rogue, Sorcerer, and Warlock subclasses. But they do have two new ones. One is for the Artificer, which is the Reanimator, which feels very cool, feels very Frankenstein.

And then you have the Ranger, which is Hollow Warden. Now, I haven't played an Artificer or a Ranger, so I don't have a lot of strong feelings about them to share.

But I can tell you what they are. but i do like playing a rogue and i have dabbled in bardic pursuits in the past so looking at these these are the things i kind of looked at in a bit more more detail so this screen is cringing at the typos, are there typos in here i didn't notice them and i'm sure everyone else is dyslexic like i am and nobody will notice that X is missing from Hexblade. It's fine.

Anyway, so... He-blade. The He-blade. It's like a He-Man license, because Hasbro owns Wizard of the Coast, and I'm sure they own He-Man. Anyway. I know someone that when they make tea, she says the way you can tell tea is the right strength is it has to be the color of He-Man. And that's the judge. That's how you do it. That's a distinctive beige. Or orange. A beige-y orange color, yeah.

I was going to say something that might get me cancelled So I will choose not to Shall we rattle through The supplies for the people Who are listening at home, Jess the two that you Looked at in particular were So the two I'm going to talk about first Is the Bard College of Spirits And then the Phantom Rogue Or Rouge if you're dyslexic like I am So I'll talk about those two first And then maybe if we go, Rattle through the rest because these ones I have things to say about.

So the Bard College of Spirits. So again, this is an existing subclass that you might be kind of familiar with and they've kind of updated it to make it match 2024 here. Yeah, I think from Van Richland's, didn't it? Van Richland's guide originally. Who raised and laughed indeed. So if you've got that, you'll be familiar with this. Anyway, so the main changes are that guiding whispers and spiritual focus, they're now combined into a single feature and that feature is channeller.

It also gives you, aren't you, proficiency with playing cards? So playing cards, as in all playing cards. Yeah. Anyway, so that works. Also, they have Spirits from Beyond, which that was Tales from Beyond. It's pretty much the same thing, but it's been reworked and renamed. It improves the action economy, and so it makes more media effects in it. And they've revised the feature table. So that's just basic. It's very similar, but it's just been tweaked and made a bit more powerful.

And the thing I liked Is that empowered channeling Is a new feature that they added And it allows the bard Cast and alter the spirit guardian spell And I love The spirit guardian spell, So Yeah, it's IP Yes, I'm a bard I'm very squishy, I'm probably going to die I'm standing in a room with a guitar Please give me something so I don't die.

Let's give the best charisma based support class the best limfrey spell or the best wisdom based support class thank you, yeah I need it I love it anyway so that is so those are the things I found kind of interesting about it the main thing was I like the spirit guardian thing because I love a bit spirit guardians, but yeah so the spirits from beyond just talk a little bit more about that because that is I've not used the tales from beyond before so I didn't have a lot of

strong feelings about this, but pretty much it's whilst you're holding a spellcasting focus you can take a bonus action to use one of your bardic inspirations to call forth the spirits so that makes it a bit quicker and you roll your bardic inspiration dice and then there's a table and depending on what you roll, that's the spirit you channel. Right. It's quite interesting. And so there's a few of them. It gets a bit chunkier as you go up the table as your bardic inspiration dice

increases in size. That sounds fun. Is that right? I believe so. The spirit immediately takes effect, and if his spirit's effect requires a saving throw, the DC equals your bardic spell save DC. So that was quite fun. Yeah. So those are my thoughts on the bard. Okay. And then... Oh, sorry. Oh, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. I don't know if we have anything else to say about bards. Mm-hmm. Well, I'll move on through. I never had much to say about bards. I don't know.

Hang on, the rogue was next. The rogue. And I love playing rogue. And I, for a long time, have been... I'm not playing rogue at the moment. I really want to, again. And I think I'm going to have to. And especially, I was reading through this, I was like, man, that's so cool. Rogues are so cool. So if you're starting a game and have space for a rogue, message me.

But anyway, so this is the Phantom Rogue. And again, this is an update from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, so people have probably seen this before. The Phantom Rogue is very cool already, I think, just for vibes. So the changes in this, Whales from the Grave has now linked its number of uses to the Rogue's Dexterity modifier, which I think is really nice. And Whale from the Grave is awesome if you don't know what it is. So immediately after you deal a sneak attack damage to a creature,

you can then target a second creature that you can see. This doesn't even have to be near you. And you roll half the number of sneak attack dice for your level rounded up and do necrotic damage on them. Which is very cool. And so you get to do that equal to your dexterity modifier bonus per long rest. So I think that's just nice because it gives you another cool attack thing.

And I also like the roleplay element because the roleplay is that you are summoning whales of the dead momentarily sounding surrounding them which is terrifying and wonderful. So I like that dexterity modifier because I feel that... Yeah, I feel that just encourages you to boost more into decks and make that part of it. Yeah. So the Tokens of the Departed gives you soul trinkets whenever you finish a long rest, and it allows more reliable usage of the feature's benefit.

So they basically just made Tokens of the Departed a little bit more beefed up. Voice of Death. Now this I like as well. Voice of Death is a new feature that allows you to cast Speak with Dead. And I have been sleeping on Speak with Dead as a spell a lot of the time. And my Baldur's Gate 3 reference of the week, Until I played Baldur's Gate 3, I hadn't thought about how useful it is from a role-play, investigative information point of view and how it can be used to solve puzzles as much.

I just hadn't used it when I've been playing D&D a lot. But since I use it a lot in Baldur's Gate, I think I'm going to use it more in actual role-playing games. So I like that this gives you the opportunity to do that. So you cast it once without a spell slot. That's what you can read about that scene from the D&D movie, isn't it? Yes.

You don't need any spell components you use dexterity of your spell casting modifier which is great and you regain the ability on a short rest or a long rest which is quite nice so it means you can actually use it so I really like that I think that's fun I think it's flavourful and I think it's giving something a bit more role play to the rogue because the rogue already does a lot of damage, and there's another thing Death's Friend now lets you regain a soul trinket

when you roll initiative and have no soul trinkets. So soul trinkets, we like them. But yeah. Marvellous, marvellous, marvellous. So I quite like that. I think that looks really fun. Yeah. But there's different ways you can use the soul trinkets, which look the same to me. So you can discard your soul trinkets to use Deathsnail. So when you deal sneak attack, you can send a soul trinket and use Wells from the Grave without using Feature, Life's Essence.

Yeah, it's the same. It looks the same to me. But anyway, soldiering kits are cool. And those are my thoughts. So the question is, what's this for? What do you mean? So it's a UA, an Atacana playtest document, which means it's related to an upcoming product. Yes. We've just looked at Eberron, which looks like it's a small, I'm guessing, hardcover splat book for Eberron.

There's a missing product later this year. which we don't know what it is yet in wizard slot is there gonna be a ravenoff splat book, Similar format, $29.99 small Ravenloft flatbook coming out later this year. And this is a guess, complete and utter guess. No inside knowledge whatsoever. Is that what that's for? No, maybe. That feels very plausible.

And it feels less of a conspiracy theory than what I said. Oh. It's interesting. Are they going through lots of campaign settings doing that?

Hmm uh it's possible uh it just depends on how much um extra information like uh i think someone in the chat was speculating that there'd be about 128 pages so perhaps in a short coast adventure style there's just going to be an absolute ton of updated lore which is going to represent a big departure for the coast yeah well the other thing i was thinking maybe from their point of view they're looking at the campaign settings that they've so far released or touched on and they want people to

use those old books still and buy those old books, but they want to update the player options related to them yes in a sense these are sort of like. Appendices, 2024, update appendices to Curse of Strahd or the Eddawn hardcover that came out a few years ago and all these things. Yeah, I was thinking from the last one. So they're kind of patches rather than 128-page hardcover patches in a way.

DLC, if you will. Yeah. Maybe that's why the price point is at 30, so it doesn't feel like too much of a sting that you're buying it all again.

Yeah yeah i will i will say one thing i have noticed is the hexblade patron is in here and i actually went to have a look at that because i would describe hexblade has like the bane of the gm was life per se really maybe like it's not like on its own it's fine it's when you splash it into a charisma cast that like say bars or sorcerers because they had a lot of stuff at level one. With the 2024 rule set, all that is kicks back to level three.

So you're looking at a three-level dip to pick up those snackies. And it doesn't appear to have the medium armor and shields, which were one of the reasons why it was just so tempting to pick up a single-level dip. Well, of course, it's the Warlock slots, which are replenished automatically.

So, yeah, it looks a lot more civilized, like a regular warlock as opposed to a well you have to take a level of hexblade because you know why are you wasting everyone else's time if you're not, yeah I mean you could even slash it with a bit of paladin because then you could get your smite a smite or two smites refreshing on a short rest which is quite good indeed yeah, but that's the hexblade warlock what about the heblade warlock the heblade warlock

I'm afraid I wasn't able to find that's in the dark so yeah, neither was I able to find the grave domain cletech so yeah Yeah, it's a trick or a trick. Yeah. But for those who are listening at home and wondering what we're looking at, there's also the Shadow Sorcerer, the Undead Patron Warlock, which may have been improved over the one in Sword Coast Adventures Guide, the Reanimator Artificer, and the Hollow Warden Ranger. Yeah. Yeah. Indeed.

The Hollow Warden Ranger is a new one. I don't play a lot of rangers, so I didn't have anything jumps out at me, but it does seem pretty cool.

Like, when I reach level three, you always have certain spells prepared like wrathful smite at level three spike growth level five etc wrath of the wilds when you cast hunter's mark you transform and gain the benefits for the duration of the spell so you get ancient armor and an unnerving aura wow it's like dummy at a party but yeah so it does look quite interesting but i did i haven't played rangers enough to like give a lot of

commentary on it but it looks interesting there's also level three something called Rot and Violence, which I just like the title of, to be honest. But yeah, that gives you an eerie aura opposed to an unnerving aura. Do you know what's notably missing in that list, though? What? Why isn't there a necromancer wizard? It's like a list of horror-themed subclasses. Surely that's an obvious one. Do they have one already? Is there not one in the main book?

Is there? I don't know. I'm only going to say before. They haven't thrown me a free copy and I haven't. No, I haven't got it. Would that be like Necromancy of Fae? Are they not planning on doing a book about something like that coming up at some point? I don't know, are they? Well, I mean, the Red Wizards are their own thing, as I understood. Like, I want the coolest parts of the Golden Realms. Yeah, interesting. Maybe they forgot them in that realm. But there is the shadow sorcery,

the sorcerer, which I know it's not wizard, but... Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so they look quite interesting. If you play any of those subclasses, take a look at the Unearthed Arcana. And if you have strong thoughts and feelings, you can give your feedback towards the coastline. My feedback is I like that I have the, what do you call it, spirit guardians on my bard. Thank you for that. All right, next, next, next on the menu.

I'm just going to see the running order that we've actually got on our running order page just because that's the order I've got the slides in. Pathfinder? Pathfinder, correct. Pathfinder. Pathfinder. So Pathfinder Remaster, which is OGL-free version of Pathfinder 2e. Yes. I mean, really, it's Pathfinder 3E at this point, to be honest, isn't it?

They've changed so much. They've changed so much to remove legacy D&D references and IP and moving away from the open gaming license and all this sort of stuff. They've changed so much. I guess the rules aren't different. It's just only the lore and names of things and stuff like that. But this is Pathfinder Treasure Vaults. And this is a 224-page book. It's got about 600 magic items in it. Wow. And it's coming out June the 4th. Got it.

And it just updates a whole bunch of Pathfinder magic items to the remaster edition of 2D. Oh, yes. Which is the open gaming license-free version. Yeah. That's pretty cool. I mean, 600 items, over 50 weapons. They say there's a devastating Earthbreaker hammer. Was it Falcata? Was it Falcata? It's a sword, isn't it? Two-handed, I think slashing, quite heavy chopping boy. If memory serves, I don't know. I might be thinking of a falchion by mistake. A Falcata sword?

Oh, yeah, pre-Roman. Sorry, yeah, you got it. Pre-Roman Iberia. So it looks like a single-handed chopping sword. It's slothy. Distinct curved edge. It looks like a stereotypical pirate-y sword to me like a cool yeah it's got it's got cutlass vibes yeah I mean it sort of curves up yeah I mean a decent chopping weapon so you know triumphs we all run in the wildos, What else have we got? We've got a entire chapter on alchemy with over 100 alchemical items.

They talk about restorative lozenges and searing flamethrowers. Don't get those to be mixed up. Yeah. They do very different things. Yes. Magical tattoos, artifacts like the goddess Sheldon's mighty glaive, the whisperer of souls. I like magic tattoos. That sounds cool. My tattoos, sadly, are not magic. Well, you don't know that. I don't know that, to be fair. But the people who, over the years, have given me tattoos haven't appeared to be magicians.

Maybe the magic is the friendship you find with a tattoo artist along the way. There is that. I mean, you do have to sit there for several hours making small talk with somebody you've just met. You do tend to make a friend and then never see them again. Yes. Weird thing. Also, we've got an entire chapter of crafting rules. Hmm. Which is kind of fun. And then a special categories of items that can give you power that comes at a dangerous price.

You know, like $4.99. That's quite a dangerous price for an item, I think. $4.99. Okay. Yeah. I mean, hard to know what's in it or the significance of these. Probably don't play enough part on the second position.

Maybe I should try and restart it again or something. I mean, I imagine you'll be familiar with many of the magic items because, well, I guess, I don't know, it depends how, when they DOGL-ified them and they're just getting rid of them all and making 600 new ones or they're just renaming hundreds of magic items. If only there was some sort of news podcast we could listen to to check. I'll do that then. I'll listen to a news podcast.

Yeah, and then we'll cascade it down. I mean, things like, you know, a potion of healing, which is in the OGL, it's kind of a very common kind of term, isn't it? Yeah. Good luck copywriting that, you know. Well, it's not that copyright, it's just, it's more of a physiological thing at this point, isn't it? Moving away from the OGL. Yeah. Everyone's got potions of healing. I don't know why. Bandages. Ointments. That's why. Yeah. A tincture.

Hmm. Oh. Oh, there we go. I think if you, GM Pathfinder, this seems like a bit of a no-brainer to buy. I think it looks really interesting and fun. And I think, yeah, if you're running a lot of Pathfinder, I think you'll get good use out of it. Yeah. Hard to argue with, yeah. Yeah. Like, I just, I mean, it's, yeah, it's that type of book that's like, yeah, go on then. Like, I'm going to find a way to use it.

Yeah. But yeah. I don't run Pathfinder, so it's, I'm not that person, but I know there are a lot of people that do. You don't run Pathfinder. Right. Yeah. I have such a list. I have a bookshelf of six things I need to run before I add Pathfinder to the bottom of that list. Six things, Jess. I've got six things ready. Six things. Six things. Oh, excuse me. Amateur. Six things that I actually have intentioned to run. Six. Things that are there left unplayed that need to be played more.

I have 50 things I need to run. Well, then run a game. I'll play it. Can I be a rogue? I do want to run a Void Runner's game. Oh. I don't want to run an online one. I'm struggling with online play. I'll come round your house and play Void Runner's Codex. I could do that. I'd do a short campaign, maybe. Not a long one. Maybe sort of like a six-session campaign or something. Dungeon in space. Sign us up. Let's go. Alright, we'll sort that out then. Okay.

Anyway, how controversial are you feeling? Personally, I mean, it depends on who you ask, really. Like, if you ask some people, oh, okay. We'll just get a jump in the deep end, is that right? Cool, cool, cool. Let's go quite controversial. So, this week, Didman Games I announced a new Kickstarter. Goodwin Games, of course, is kind of famous for reviving older stuff. And a lot of older sort of D&D stuff, but also from other companies as well.

And bringing them into 5th edition and into their own in-house Dungeon Crawl Classics system. Yes. And we've been doing that in years. A lot of people I know love Dungeon Crawl Classics. The people that play it really like it. Really popular. Yeah. Yeah. It is a fun system. It's like, um, very, very OSR. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, this week, you're going games and bounced a new Kickstarter or crowdfunder. I think it's on back here. City State of the Invincible Overlord.

So. Okay. I mean, it's a strong title, but you know what you're about. So City State of the Invincible Overlord originally came out in 19, in 1976.

Wow. a company called judges guild yes i'll be quiet there um it was the first game setting for dnd albeit from a third party and basically the setup there's this big strawven strawven strawven dwarven stronghold strawven dronghold dwarven stronghold um called thunderhold which basically operates as a base of operations for dnd campaigns so there's a lot more to it than that but um that's kind of the set up there. So Judge's Guild was founded...

I've got to give you the backstory to this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a history lesson. By Bob Bledsoe and Bill Owen. Okay. And they sold City State of the Invincible Overlord. Later, they licensed it to Mayfair Games in the 1980s. It went back to Judges Guild in 1999 with a new printing. Necromancer Games did a collector's edition of City State of the Invincible Overlord in the early 2000s. So there's been like six or seven editions of this setting over the years.

There's been this one that you can see on screen now is a small booklet, it's like i've done how many pages it was but it was small but there's been boxed sets there's been 300 page hard covers there's been all different kind of formats yeah and the graphic the graphic for those at home listening is it's brown with red on.

I'm struggling to find I'm struggling to find Words to describe it I think there is a Sort of a Tudor-esque City in the background But it's very brown There's a lot of red And there's like some sort of, Winged Grim Reaper style Person in the middle It looks like a Valkyrie It's like on a horse Yeah It looks retro It looks like a product Of the time it was printed Very much Yeah Yeah, I mean, bear in mind, this is before desktop publishing existed.

Yeah, no, I'm not. Yeah, I'm not. It just made me laugh. Describe it. It's brown. It's like, you're not wrong. It is very brown. Yeah, exactly. I'm not wrong. Yeah. I don't find red. Red on brown is an interesting contrast to us. I mean, I cannot read the words Sons and Dragons on there. And the text above that, I cannot read that text. No. But, yeah, it's a product of the time it was made. And, yeah, fair enough. Okay. I mean, this may have come from a photo and it may have faded or something.

This is true. But anyway, what's the news on? Let's fast forward a few years to 2020. So Bob Bledsoe has passed away at this point. He died in 2008, and the owner is now Bob Bledsoe II, his son. Okay. Bob Bledsoe Jr. His son is not together. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And this lovely chap is busy posting a whole load, not just one, a whole load of different racist and anti-Semitic statements online, mainly on Facebook.

Now, let's look at some of the topics this covered. we have got topics such as the Jewish media we've got topics such as disappointment at the outcome of the American Civil War we have been accused of being Jewish media as cultural Marxism which I actually had to look up so to find out I'm sorry we're just not that talented and good looking we have Holocaust denial we have lengthy posts where he describes himself as pro-life, anti-gay I've got that wrong pro-life,

anti-gay and against self-mutilation Is that meant to be a trans? Yeah, there we go.

He's hit the trifecta He speaks proudly of his family's history in the Crusades which he considers a calling He considers the Crusades a calling, family calling I mean as a British person I'm generally not a big fan of the colonial atrocities of the past like it's not well I mean yeah, yeah anyway we've got references to 9-11 truth we've got reference to his family's history of slavery and he defends his in quotes racial humour okay I feel we

have a picture of the sort of comments that were being made and the picture Okay. All right. So we have a picture of that sort of online presence that he chose to have in post. Yeah. So the sort of person I would pay good money to not have to sit next to on an airplane. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like a, it's a new thing from Varaday, where they're saying, oh, yeah, yeah, unless you pay us like 50 euros, you'll have to sit next to this absolutely horrendous racist bigot.

Listen to him, Paul, let me fly. I'm like, oh, here, take my money. I think he also would pay good money to not sit next to me, because I am not the type of person that he's a fan of, apparently. But anyway, so what relation does this have to the Goodwin Games Kickstarter campaign? Well, first of all, just to clarify, these statements, Bob Bledsoe II, not Bob Bledsoe Sr., who co-founded Judge's Guild and passed away in 2008. Just to... Yeah, they have the same name.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Dunia, as we should refer to, Bob Bledsoe or Seagull, yeah? So, we covered this at the time. I don't know if you remember. This was in 2020, five years ago. And at the time... also kicking off at convention as well, as far as I recall. I don't know how to call that, and you might be confusing that with someone else doing something. Oh, someone else went on Wasted Society. A lot of people have done a lot of things over the years, PJ.

A lot of people. Anyway. So as we reported at the time, various game publishers had various different relationships with Judges Guild, licensees, partners, vendors, things like that, and started cutting ties with the company. So we have that in the Attic cut ties. Rob Conley, a Bat in the Attic, at the time, called Bob Bledsoor II, discussed the issue and notified him that the Bat in the Attic would no longer be doing future Judges Guild projects.

Frog God Games, similarly. They would no longer be doing business with Judges Guild in the future. And notably, Drive Thru RPG. De-platformed Judges Guild. Wow. So you could no longer buy Judges Guild content or drive-thru opportunity. So, you know, this wasn't kind of one of those things where people ummed and ahed at the time. It was very much a... The stuff coming out here is so unpleasant that people distanced themselves immediately. Immediately. The free market in action. Okay.

Yeah. Now, one of those, notably, was Goodman Games. Yes. So Goodman Games did quite a bit of business of Judges Guild under license. And they made a statement in February 2020, quite a long statement, basically saying we are disgusted, disheartened. I'm recounting old history, but it's the context for what's happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We are disgusted, disheartened by the anti-semiters. I can't say what it is.

Anti-Semitism, bigotry, racism, homophobia, and transphobia exhibited by the current owners of Judges Guild. Goodwin Games stopped selling our Judges Guild products through all distribution channels. Judges Guild will no longer receive income from Goodwin Games products now that sales of their titles have ceased. We have one remaining product to release, which is a collector's edition focused on the works of General Iris.

How do you say her last name? Jackay. Jackay. Jackay's. Oh, to now Jackay's. I thought of that. Yes, which they would do. And the Judges Guild would not profit from the sale of that product. And Goodwin Games will match 20% of the proceeds of the title with donations to the Anti-Defamation League and GLAAD. Solid stuff. Yeah. And these are the plans that would have been used for the Judges Guild licensing. We have one remaining product to release.

Yeah. We have one remaining product to release. Remember that. We have one remaining product to release, they said at the time. Oh. After this final volume, we have no plans to release further Judges Guild titles. We are deeply saddened and frankly horrified. Okay. Well, 2020, fine, great. I assume once you would want, great. Happy with that in 2020. Yeah, they're very clear about their stance and they've gone above and beyond to do donating to charities. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah.

What happened this week, Russ? Well, I was also going to mention in 2014, Justice School ran a Kickstarter themselves. And this was before all this kicked off. To bring back City State of the Invincible Overlord, nearly 1,000 backers raised $85,000. Wow. To this date, that Kickstarter has not been fulfilled.

Oh, wow. Okay. was that just for 5e i'm sorry the latest update was in may 2020 let me just call up the kickstarter itself and this was for the pathfinder role-playing game at the time okay and jeg universal such as girl universal which is a system i guess so yeah so to to this date that kickstarter, has not been fulfilled. I mean, there's comments all over the place that people ask for refunds. 11 years is just too long.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 5,000 dollars. Apparently, if people contact them directly, they are giving refunds to people, but they're not doing like a mass proactive refund to everybody. They're just, if you go to them, apparently, they'll give you a refund. If you pursue them individually, then they won't. That's what I've heard. Right, right. So anyway, this is the battle. Wow. So this week, this week, this happened. Yes, which is City State of the Invincible Overlord crowdfunding 5th in DC RPG.

So Goodman Games announced a new version of City State of the Invincible Overlord coming to crowdfinder this summer for 5e and for Dungeon Crawl Classics. Now, let's not be unreasonable. I can only assume that in the intervening five years, Junior Bledsor, Bledsor 2, the sequel, has come out, apologized for his disgraceful, horrendous actions, and has taken steps to make himself, to rehabilitate his reputation by donating. Is that what you assume?

Well, I'm thinking that Google and Games must have a good reason to go from absolutely will not have anything to do with this person who's espoused these horrendous, bigoted views without said bled sore actually having apologized and an action to demonstrate that the apology is more than a form of words. Because people can have dreadful opinions. I've had dreadful opinions in the past, but then I change my mind and wear a wearable event. I apologize. I've moved on. I try to be a better person.

And that's what I take. Can I shatter your dreams, please? Well, I wouldn't say they'd be shattered per se. Bob Bledsoor Jr. has not done this. Is he done anything like it at all? Is this your surprised face? It's not super convincing, is it? This is my disappointed but not surprised face. Okay. Yeah.

So, first of all, people were saying, oh, okay. And then said, well, we don't know all the details yet. Maybe, maybe it's good news. Maybe Goodman Games has acquired the property.

Yeah. and not just guild is not going to profit from this at all and yeah the kickstarter backers from the previous kickstarter were going to be made right and all this sort of stuff maybe something like that's going on behind the scenes that we don't know about maybe yeah i mean there's not um so we've got a couple of uh posts here one is from an iron james bledsell another member of family that says goodman games does have a license to do this

and other wilderlands products it's been in the works for a long while and i'm glad it's finally seen the light of day so this is a licensed product hello monty and also on the actual crowdfunding coming soon page it does say based on the original city state of the municipal overlord by bob blitzel senior as published by judges guild this product is produced under license from judges guild so this is a licensed to find out. It's still owned by Judges Guild.

And is Judges Guild still owned by Bob Bledsoe Jr.? That's correct. Okay, because that was the other thing I thought, if Judges Guild had changed ownership or... But no, that was not the case. No, there's no... There's nothing like that hiding in the wings, I'm sorry. Okay, no, I just... I was going to ask the question. I don't want to get your hopes up, there's nothing like that hiding in the wings. Okay. Um...

Goodman Games has decided it wants so many and isn't that just about who to get it from, I guess? I've met Joseph Goodman a few giants. I don't know the man well. I've met him a few giants. He's a nice guy. He's a good guy. He supports all the right things. He's not any of these things that Bob Bedsall is. Bob Bedsall Jr. is. You know.

It's awkward really because when there are people who say that others don't have a right to exist doing business with them i agree i agree doing business with them is a choice that yeah is a choice it's a choice but like if someone's like i don't believe that avca should exist it's like wow okay but maybe i agree i agree that's why that's why i'm saying that you know joseph goodman it's a nice guy i like him he's uh you know i met him a few times i'm joey's

very personable and you've been along yeah yeah but he's also he's not he's not racist he's not trust it's none of these things himself but he makes this choice but he's happy to do business with people that are yeah yeah so in the kickstarter not kickstarter back of kit i think launch video or announcement video sorry not launch it's not coming to a leg this year.

It's quite a long video so i didn't want to sort of like go through it all but and it only kind of touches on this stuff very briefly part way through and i i put this quote up on screen and it's quite long and this comes straight from the video and i want to point out that those incidents are not referenced in the video and this quote is not in response i've got to give it the right context is not in response to anyone raising those incidents

it's a you know it's an internal goodman games video with three goodman games staff members it's not an interview for my own external person they're promoting the product so you know it's like that stuff was brought up um but at one point about three quarters of the way through the video joseph goodman says says this. So, as I said, it doesn't directly reference those incidents. So I will say that I am possibly being presumptive and saying that that is what he's referring to here.

I cannot say for sure. It's just that it reads like that to me. But it's quite long. Should I read the whole thing? So, it's basically... You could. This is where we want to get our slide game better so I can play clips. I was talking to Jess about that beforehand, and we're going to get to that point. And we can do the audio clip.

I'll read it. It is quite long, though. So, yeah, I keep coming back to the fact that so many of the things that I do with Goodman Games, whether it's content-wise or business practices, was really established in the 70s by Bob Bedslaw Sr. Agilohan. It's kind of amazing, but I think it's important to point out that nothing is changing about Goodman Games.

We've done things in a certain way for 24 years. a large part of our fangate has grown up to appreciate that and those who have seen behind the curtain as to what we're producing whether it's mike and chris on this call or doug and his announcements at dungeon con and his enthusiasm for doing the cover i think you all know doug all you all know me you all know mike and chris and you know what we're about and that's what will bring

to city state of the invincible overlord okay it was all saying you know us we're not those people sort of thing um we intend to publish this the goodman games way The way we've done it for 24 years and the way we'll hopefully do it for many years to come. And my personal opinion is, this is where it goes. The personal opinion is I like to build bridges rather than walls. I think there's been a lot of experiences in the last couple of years in America of people building walls amongst each other.

I'd rather encourage dialogue, encourage conversation, get people talking and have people converge on what I hope is a unified perspective.

For how we can all go forward together in a collaborative way well i mean like i don't know we can't know but that bit from personal opinion onwards it's like well it just seems frankly misguided to be honest painfully naive is how i'd have to describe it i mean he's acting like we're having some disagreement about i don't know how do you pronounce sigil is it sigil was it sigil you know whatever like you know that sort of thing deeply unimportant how do you play your elf games do you play

them with a narrator or do you play in rules as written do you do what I call, deeply unimportant when it comes right down to it it's a matter of opinion and preference this Bledslaw Jr. Chat he's come out he said, Transphobic people are just self-mutilating. How do you build a bridge to someone like that? That's the thing, though, about this building bridges language. Who's always building the bridges? Are the bigots building bridges towards the people?

I mean, the bridges doesn't go in that direction, doesn't it? They're not going to those people and saying, I want to build a bridge towards you. It's always the other way around. It's the tolerance paradox is the thing.

You can't tolerate intolerance and saying building bridges instead of walls is a very privileged take because if you're not the person that is being targeted by that group of people it's safe for you to not be behind a wall and stand next to that person they don't have a problem with you but for a lot of people they need a wall because what will happen to them if there's not a wall like just extending that metaphor um that the popular paradox

of tolerance isn't actually a paradox essentially what we have is we have a social contract and that says as part of your social contract you agree to tolerate other people existing and if you can't abide by that you're breaking social contract and you should be excluded from the groups that the social contract covers yeah there's no there's no paradox it's like we all agree to get along even or we agree that other people can exist.

I don't wish to socialize with people who like have certain views by like, you know, I don't know, like privatize everything, say. Like, I think, yeah, some stuff should be in public ownership. On the other hand, I don't want to be with people who think everything should be in public ownership. I don't think that's right. I'm like, I'm somewhere in the middle of that. Like, literally. I like commerce. Yeah? Hands up. I enjoy it. I like money. I like making it. It's fun for me. But, I don't know.

Like, you know, this is not what we're talking about. And as you say, Jessica, it is a product of an earned structural advantage to be able to say things like, let's build some British. It's like, well, off you go. And you start apologizing, Bloodstorps Jr. It's just words, isn't it? It's not even... No. Yeah. But anyway, let's move on because we're not at the end of this tale yet. Oh, we're not? Oh, my gosh. Okay.

It gets... Oh, dear God. Do you remember earlier that I spoke about how there was basically going to be one product and they weren't going to sell such a skill stuff anymore? And on that one product, proceeds from the sales of the titles will be donated to charitable causes? Yeah. Yep. Okay. So at least until 2003, some people did some digging and went on to the Internet Archive to see when it changed.

So at least until 2003. Yep. There were judges guild products on coming games website okay which is odd because they said they weren't going to be selling them but they were 2023 23 sorry yes right okay yeah that's okay i just want to track yeah um but it did say as you can see there a portion of the proceeds in the sale of this title will be donated to charitable causes right i've given you you see two screenshots there one's in 2023 one is now what's the difference,

Would it be the bit where it says a portion of proceeds will be donated? That's gone. Yes. Judges Guild stuff is being sold there still. Right. No reference to the charitable causes there. Right. And I don't know whether that was a mistake or not. If you look at the various Judges Guild products, it's not just one of them, it's all of them. I don't know whether that's a mistake, whether that's... I don't know what that is, but it's gone. It's pretty grim. I mean, what do Goodman Games say?

Like, you know, we can sit here and... Speculate all we like. Yeah. Yeah.

But, I mean, what does this... Was it Joshua or Jonathan, whatever his name is, Goodman, say? Joseph. So, I reached out to Goodman Games yesterday, or the day before, whenever it was, I wrote the article. Oh, just to say, there's a big article about this on the N-World. I haven't heard back from Goodman Games at all That might be a time thing in fairness, But Goodman Games has posted a public announcement Okay As it were Okay so the public statement that's just part of it I just kind of.

I kind of removed the preamble but basically I'm not going to read it because it's too long A link in the show notes if people want to read the whole thing. Yeah. I'm straining my eyes here. I'll work out what this says. What are the cliff notes, Russ? Right. So, the cliff notes. The project was an outstanding project dating back to before 2020 when Grooming Games cut ties to Justice Guild. Right. That's what they say. Okay. That's not what they said in 2020.

They said there was one project remaining and that was General Jacquet's product. Oh. Right. Right with you. Oh, okay. I was thinking maybe this was the one project they were referring to, but it's not. Okay. Thanks. Okay. Okay. So, Judges Guild has apparently promised Goodwin Games that all proceeds from their share of the project's revenue, the licensing fees, basically, I guess, and whatever percentage they get, will go towards refunding backers from their older, unfulfilled Kickstarter.

And finally, backers of that older Kickstarter will get a discount on the new upcoming one. So that's kind of the three key points to take away. I mean, there's quite a lot more sort of preamble in there. They reiterate how disgusted they are by the comments in 2020. But he will still comment. So the owners, the Bob Bledsoe Jr. will get money from this as the licensee holder. Yeah. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, that is.

Because I didn't know if they were going to say something like about that, but they haven't. Well, the money is going, well, Judges Guild have said that the money will go out to refund backers from the old Unfield Kickstarter, which means basically the money is to pay off their debts. So if I sort of came to you, Peter, and you'd done something awful, and then I gave you money. You can't prove the thing.

Put crumbs in the basket. And I gave you money and you said, it's okay, it will just go to pay off my debts. I'll go off to pay off my mortgage or go off to pay my credit card bill you know i'll go off to pay the money that i owe this loan shark or something um yeah that's still you profiting isn't it i mean yes like yeah i i i'm i i'm just honestly baffled at what goodman is thinking like thinking this is any any sort of answer i i i'm just like.

Maybe they just feel that the climate of america is such that they can afford to do this sort of i'd love to actually talk to joe goodman about this and just find out where his head is out on this because i just don't i don't understand it but i don't know so they say like they said they were faced with one or two paths saying and this is this is a quote from the uh uh city state of the invincible overlord faced one of two paths we could simply choose to

shut down our work and let the project end or proceed knowing that money is going to judges guild would be supporting something that all of us at goodman games found reprehensible so that's the option they chose so that was the choice and they said let's go for the reprehensible one let's go for let the proceed knowing that money is going to judges guild would be supporting something that all of us at goodman games found reprehensible okay that's that's a choice that they can make yeah.

Baffling as i say baffling okay well yeah i i'm just like i don't think that's a choice i would make but that's a choice that they have made and i guess they need to own their choice with that as long as they're honest with their backers about what that is and what that means i guess backers can decide if that's a choice they agree with or not i mean it's just such an unforced error as well it's like i don't know just make something

new or look elsewhere i mean it's not like we're exactly sure of like osr stuff and second edition things yeah.

Baffling baffling yeah it's that's not a choice i would have made yeah like going back to this we have one remaining product to release going back to this statement in 2020 where they said we have one remaining product of these that product was judges guild deluxe good lectures edition volume two focused on the words of general uh goodman games will match 20 of the proceeds of this title with donations etc we have only one remaining product to release but it sounds know what they're saying yeah

it sounds like they had those two paths they talked about in 2020 they said we're taking this path of closing it down and now five years later they've gone actually we're going to go this way or actually didn't announce it just walked over there i mean this is like something that they've had to plan like you don't don't just knock together like a big book conversion out of nothing well that's the thing obviously this has been in the woods for ages they're launching the crowdfunding soon

it's a they make big products don't they um yeah they They make these great big things packed with stuff. This has been in the works for ages. Yeah. Like, I guess, like, just want to get back to what's comfortable for him, which is pushing out stuff for Judges Guild. Like, you know, with his good old mate Bob Bledsoe Jr. at Judges Guild. Like, you know, things have changed, times move on. People should just get over it. Okay. I don't know.

And in order to build bridges with somebody if they've done something wrong the person that's done something wrong that you find reprehensible they need to acknowledge it apologize and make reparations to rebuild that relationship you can't just go right sometimes people say something and regret saying it or they say the wrong thing or but this isn't one of those cases No. This is someone who repeatedly continually, It's not like that. It was like, it's who that person is.

Hot downing. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's like, I think these things, I, I think that the treacherous slave holding states should have won the civil war. I'm really disappointed they didn't. It's like, okay. Wow. Someone in the comments, Bob told me to do it. And Bob told me to say this is, uh, maybe they signed a contract that left them on the hook for this, whether or not they published or not. so have decided to publish after a few years gap, hoping everyone would have forgotten. I don't know.

We can't possibly know. That is a speculation that a commenter made. If I was doing a good thing again, I'd be like, yeah, we're contractually obliged to do it. Yeah, yeah. We're contractually obliged to do it, and therefore we are doing this. Here it is. There's another angle for this as well, though. Right. Take the ethics out of it. Just look at it from a super pragmatic business sense point of view. Okay. It seems like such a marketing misstep, a PR misstep.

It's like... Well, it depends who you're marketing to. He's not... Yeah, but there's not enough of those people playing role-playing games. They don't really have the imagination. I... I don't know if that's true, PJ, actually. I don't necessarily do this, but go and look at the comments underneath their video and things like that. You will see that there are a lot of them that are very supportive of... Oh, yeah. I think there are...

And I know we find it strange because in the community that we... People that listen to our podcast, the people that are in the communities we play in, we don't see that. Everyone is in their box and their echo fans, including us. We don't necessarily get exposed. Yeah. Yeah, exactly what we're saying. But I do think there are a lot of people that play role-playing games that have similar opinions as Junior.

Yeah, sure. But there were like 70 million people voted for certain terrific-causing people. So even if a tiny percentage of those, like, yeah, 70 million is so many people, like 1% of that is 70 million, 7 million, 700,000. 1% of that is 700,000. And again, like... That's a lot of people still. That's a lot of people.

So if 1% of those people played role-playing games, we'd still have 700,000 people being desperately online, clutching their nuts and throwing all sorts of staff onto everything they could to shout as loudly as they could about it because that's what they enjoy doing. Anyway. Anyway, okay, so that's that news. Is there more to this, Taylor, or are we done? We've reached the current end of it. I don't know if any more news will come out.

I really hope I hear back from Goodman Games. And I would love to talk with Joseph Goodman about this. I do as well. Because I would like... Yes, I would be very interested to read an extension on that article with replies from them. I just don't understand it. Yeah. But I don't know if I have anything else to say I just don't understand it just knowing the company and knowing the person and they themselves saying we think this movie is reprehensible,

but we're going to do it anyway it's like what? don't how about that? There's a long tradition I'll say if, gets back to me I will talk to him you know I'm not going to yeah I know absolutely I would love to talk to him and, you know to see that throw his head out on this and I mean if he's got I mean it's entirely possible that he knows something that we don't yeah I mean to be fair that's not generally a hard task but.

Shall we move on yes yeah shall we do something more interesting more pleasant, yes let's talk about something else okay Daggerheart mmm that's Yeah. So we got an exclusive over on E-N-Rod this week. Ooh! From Darrington Press, who provided us with the Dagger Hearts Ranger class. I am a better life in the artwork, by the way. Because we've got an absolutely enormous tiger, who's clearly got the pies, and I approve of that. It's a well-fed tiger. A big pretty cat.

Yeah, look at him. Oh, I just want to refuse to refuse. Oh, I wouldn't. And sunny front is a lady with a bow. Oh, I think that's an artificial limb she's got there. So, yeah. Oh, yeah, it does look good. I didn't even notice that. Yeah, I didn't until you pointed it out, but it is, yeah. No, I didn't notice it, yeah. There you go. So, anyway, we have got a look at the ranger class from Daggerheart. So, Daggerheart is coming out May the 20th, so it's really soon. What is it now?

The ninth. So it's like just over a week. About two weeks, yeah, yeah. So The Ranger is one of Daggerheart's core classes. This is by Darrington Press, which is the publishing branch of Critical Role, and it's their own fantasy, high fantasy rule set. So here we go. So we've got The Ranger and it has two subclasses.

And the two subclasses are the beast bound and the wayfinder so it's quite a simple class compared to say like a dnd class it's quite simple if you look at it yeah but it's all it's all streamlined and so forth yeah yeah so a ranger has a i mean a focus that they take um they choose during combat, And the focus, the person or the creature that you chose to be your focus, takes stress whenever the ranger attacks them.

And that means that the ranger can re-roll attacks against them or something like that. So the two subclasses, one is built around having an animal companion, and one's about basically hunting and killing, being a good hunter-killer. The animal companion in the beast bound sort of grows steadily as you grow up in levels. And the Wayfinder gets additional benefits when you target a focus. Yeah. Tasphun. Yeah. Are they good at exploration as well? Do we know? Is that what, sorry?

Are they good at exploration? Well, we've got two domains. One is bone and one is sage, and it's mentioned. So characters have domains. So bone looks to be kind of physical stuff, body and sinew, and that's come with the Wayfinder.

Finder's finder was it wayfinder wayfinder, and I'm going to sell you some cheap tables and say just more magic I think is what it is and the domains overlap with different classes so different classes can have the same domains or enough like that and these are how you use your hope features.

Yes that's a big mechanic hope and despair yeah so the game uses a duality dice system we've got two d12s one's a hope dice one's the just was it despair despair dice and then the hope feature allows you to spend and it's kind of like hope is a meta currency so you can spend three hope for example to turn a successful attack role on one target into a hit on three targets called it's kind of cool and so that's the rangers that is the basic rangers

focus um and then just looking at the different classes, see when i say the the kind of like subclasses they're more like.

There's more in the subclass than there is in the core class so it's it's more like these are actually just different classes which also are in the, ranger which has a few things in common it's a different design that's all i guess so yeah yeah so you can you can you can hop on over to the inworld and see this properly read it from me, and see the full class properly nice it looks interesting it does look that is a system I am interested in Dagger Heart I do want to dig into it and read

more about it because I enjoyed Candela Obscura yeah, I mean that I think is a lot lighter than this oh yeah they're different games but I mean generally if you like a game from a publisher the other things are going to be of that quality and detail yeah you know. Okay, okay, okay, okay. I believe, Peter, you put this one in the running order. The next bit of news. Oh, yes. Bro, Rook and the card have announced that they're not going to Gen Con this year. I think that's in Seattle.

I can't remember. No, in Indianapolis. Indianapolis. Ah, my bad. Not so great on my American geography. Sorry. Well, they're interesting. There are now flights from Southampton to Indianapolis. Really? Zali. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So should we ever... Oh, I'm just tempting you. Should the world change and we ever decide to go to Gen Con?

That's pretty handy. That's pretty handy. Well, I've very reckon the card have looked at the political situation and risk assessment says no, so they're not going to Gen Con. Crossing the border into the US simply isn't safe for us at the moment and it doesn't appear to be getting safer. Yeah, I've seen a lot of UK publishers mentioning in various places that they don't feel comfortable or safe doing that.

And I've seen a lot of authors as well beyond the like ETRPG also talking about like their palestine plans to travel and they're like that, yeah I mean I guess you know realistically I guess the chances of something bad happening to you are very low but the thing is you're just hearing so much about tourists and visitors just getting.

It depends who you are and if you're the type of person that could be targeted by that but some of them aren't though some of them are people just like like, you know not a minority whatsoever other than the fact that and we're talking with you know British people and Canadian people and yeah.

Random white cis British women like getting banged up for, going to the camera and back yeah you know without due process which means without your legal rights despite the fact they're saying look okay fine you don't want me to come into your country oh I've got plenty of money I will buy a ticket and go home right now, you know and things like that it's a scary thing and yeah of course to any individual person the chances of it happening to you are exceedingly remote but you know

when you're doing a risk assessment it's how likely is it and how bad is it if it happens yeah so if consequences include being packed off to an ecuadorian like being sent outside of the country to like a prison camp in like somewhere in Latin America, then it'd be like, oh, well, maybe we shouldn't do that. Like there's nothing acceptable. Yeah. We, I mean, we didn't have plans to go to Gen Con this year, but I think if we did, we might have been having similar conversations at the

end because I wouldn't feel comfortable going right now. I wouldn't go, no. I've had plans to go on a vacation and no longer going. Yeah. So this year.

I'd be nervous the entire time. Same. and so I just and I was like I'm going to relax and have fun and I don't think I will relax but yeah so I. The piece of news that we have yeah i'm i'm think uh rowan can that kind of said that their products will be there with different um u.s based things and you know i think uh is modifius going to be carrying our stuff yes so you can get level up fifth edition the the box sets for level up a5e and for what's old is new

modifius represents us in the u.s for that but just be clear because last year when that happened they had our stuff someone asked oh so cosmodiphius have bought level up from you what does that mean they haven't they're just our partner in the u.s that take our stuff to conventions and distribute they're just selling they're selling them like a shop yes which is a pretty normal way to i mean to be fair it's pretty normal way to go about it because if you're going to

i think there's actually whole companies that are set up to sell RPG publishers', work, but the RPG publishers themselves can't be there. We actually used one last year. A few years ago. Two years ago. It wasn't that long ago. We used them once. Let's move on. Yeah, and then we did a news article about them for some other things another time. Anyway, let's move on. Move on, move on, move on. Let's get some good news less controversial here we go, what's this?

Oh okay, was this you Peter that put this one up or was it me? I don't recognise it so GameFound which is a crowdfunding platform, has partnered with Dryther RPG also with Magpie Games Chaosium and Happen which is a company which has multiple million dollar Kickstarter, 5e, D&D 5e Kickstarters. And this is a program designed to provide resources, mentorship and marketing systems to help creators develop and fund their projects.

Mm. Nice. Yeah. On GameFound, obviously, not on Kickstarter or Backerkit. So this is kind of a marketing thing as well to try and... Yeah, yeah. But it's an initiative for small to mid-sized creators with projects that have not been previously crowdfunded. Mm-hmm. And they say that they offer a network of industry expertise and a platform for creators to refine and showcase their work, regardless of your experience.

So basically, we're talking workshops, marketing boosts provided by DriveThruRPG, they'll do consultations with Loot Tavern, assistance in gamefounding, making the, you know, crowdfunding pages for your campaign, and marketing support from $1 to $500 in form of basically advertising funds. Yeah, that'll be like web ads and so forth that you can get credits towards. Yeah, I mean, Don't surprise me.

There's a lot of people who would love to get into crowdfunding, but haven't done it before, so don't know. I've talked to a couple of people who reached out to me. I know Hatchling Games is charging about $80 for consultation on this sort of thing. So I imagine that you've got an open call, so they'll be asking for some sort of money. I'll do it for $79, I'll just say.

Okay. I mean I must say that is a lot that's a much better deal no offense to action games but Morris has a lot more Kickstarters I mean we're over 50 now yeah we are over 50 it's like 57 or something and more on the way yeah it's like nearly, that's just round about a dollar per successful Kickstarter that you've launched so yeah I give my Kickstarter advice out for free all the time it's you know have at it have at it, we've got industry episodes yeah we've had some really big names on here as

well and plus your own practical experiences that's all available I point people towards the webpage where we've talked about it because you know it's a good resource it's not that scary yeah, anyway okay that's a cool industry support thing it's nice to see yeah You can go to GameFound to get more info if you have something in mind, I guess. Probably could. Okay, right then. We are drawing towards the end now. We're on to the Kickstarter section of the podcast. Let's look at this one.

Well, as we're on the topic of crowdfunding, let's stay there. Yeah, yeah. Well, there is a game for the computer, which I have never played, called Heroes of Might and Magic. Now, as we speak, Just launched on Kickstarter, which it hadn't marketed up.

Smashed it something gold already 48 000 versus uh 33 000 pound gold so that's right about the what 60 000 well it was a 40 000 euro us i don't know why it's in euros but it's 40 000 euros and yeah it's made 57 000 euros so far yeah so this will clearly be a this is based on heroes of Magic 3, Huron The Restoration of Arefia, and this is interesting this is Modiphius Entertainment presents it's kind of like Modiphius's branding all over it but it's not by Modiphius it's by a creator called Zed.

Oh so Big EF Zitch who I presume is yes so does that mean it's not using it's not using Modiphius's 2D20 system then that is a question that I do know yes it is yes Yes, it's a well-known and widely used 2D20 system, elevated to a more epic level. Yeah. It got Modiphius staff all over it, FYI. Chris Birch, head of publishing partner, Modiphius, head of Rance Mathware, marketing manager, Sharif Darug, and Master Lion, I'm sure Kaminska.

So they're doing it in partnership with Modiphius in some way. Yeah. Maybe they're doing fulfillment side of it and stuff afterwards as well. And obviously some licensing if they're using their 2D to 1T system. Yeah. Licensing or OGL, not OGL, but you know what I mean. Yeah, some Creative Commons license perhaps. Who knows? Yeah. It's coming in English and also in Polish. Oh, nice. That's pretty good. Sorry, this is all a lot of new information because I've

never played the game. I know literally nothing about it. It's not like you, Russ. You love a good video game. Sarcasm. Why are we playing Baldur's Gate? It looks pretty good to be honest. Cool.

If you like Heroes of Might and Magic, which as I said I haven't ever played it but a lot of people have talked about it and expressed a lot of fondness for it is looking pretty sweet, what have we got in the way of pledges that's how well it's doing it's trending towards, 146,000 euros nice someone's first Kickstarter is pretty immense that's amazing to have that as your first Kickstarter is insane I wish my first Kickstarter

had done 146,000 it did not it did not we had the data on that I think it was like $4,000 or something? I can't remember. That's a good number. Yeah, for the first one. I was in 2012 or something. I don't remember when that happened. $4,000 meant something, absolutely. Okay, it's $30 for the core rulebook and all stretch goals in PDF format. Oh, $45 for the core rulebook in hardcover and PDF format, plus all the stretch goals in PDF. That's very good value.

You can get quite a nice... That's 45 euros, not 45 dollars. Yeah, that's your... Still a good value. It does make a bit of a difference. Yeah. It's probably about 60. 45 euros for USD. Oh, it's 50 dollars. Wow. Okay. That feels good value to me for a core rule book, digital, and then extra stretchy stuff. Stretchy stuff. That sounded wrong, but you know what I meant. We're professionals on this podcast. Yes, we are. We're true girlfriends, all.

Anyway, okay, so it's live on Kickstarter right now, just launched. Yes. Go check it out if that's of interest. Yeah. What other crowdfunders do we have? Oh, I found one that looks really cool. I'll back to this one. Oh, what is it? Check this out. Oh, okay. Tell me what I'm seeing. So imagine a Rubik's tube. Mm-hmm. All right. But instead of colored squares, you've basically got little bits of dungeon map.

Mm-hmm. Okay. And then you can mix and match them to make you sort of mix up different dungeons on the Rubik's tube. That's a fun concept. I don't know how useful it would be. It feels more gimmicky than useful to me. But I still want it and have backed it.

Map provided by Dyson Logos and then I guess the idea is that you solve the puzzle cube so presumably, it's got full colour and colour borders, how exciting it's got, so you solve this Rubik's cube and then presumably there's a continuous, way through all the dungeon and then you can then play the RPG and you've got your own map there. Yeah, I mean I'm actually you could probably use it in all different ways. Yeah. I would just use it as a fun thing to put on the shelf.

I wonder if you could use it as a magic item in a dungeon as a real world puzzle. I reckon you could. So you mean like the rooms in the dungeon are actually moving around the players and they have to solve this as a magic item. So the players are in the dungeon and you just give them the Rubik's Cube. They found the Rubik's Cube. Uh-huh. And basically that's the map of the dungeon for them.

If they could solve the Rubik's Cube they've got a map or if they could solve bits of it they can get information from that. Then again, how good are you at your Rubik's Cube? My sister-in-law trained herself to do a Rubik's Cube in under a mini, I think. Apparently there's a way to do it. I don't know. Would not be me. There's a different skill set, I think, from this because this isn't matching colours. This is providing a route through, it looks like. Yeah.

I don't know how much you can mix and match it because it's not like the four sides of every square reach the edge of the... I know, I think there is a correct way... yeah oh 100 yeah well it seems pretty clear on that um yeah that looks fun nice it does look fun it does look fun for 35 dollars i backed that i'm looking forward to my my puzzle cube, yeah i mean i mean really it's like yeah there's a there's a cool piece of like

game crackery for you to purchase and you can have a ttrpg campaign attached to it if you wish, Yeah. Why not? It looks nice. Yeah. Nice little thing, though. Right. Very near the end of the show now. Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah. Something I saw the other day. It's on itch.io. It's called the Kala Mandala Rules. And... The tagline really caught my eye when I was scrolling along in the blue sky. It says, spices, rivers, magic gods, more gods than people, more monsters than gods, and very few shoes.

I mean, quite frankly, I was like, that sounded good. It is a small game that lets you join a meddling guild, has a meddler rather than an adventurer. And quite frankly, I was born a meddler. This is the game for me, and I'm Just sad that it's unlikely that I'll get to play in it, but you must get involved, you must make money, you must prioritise guild orders. Then you just go and you meddle with things. I'm like, Southeast Asian Fantasy, they've got a lot of quite pretty art.

It's name-your-own-price at the moment. It's a game. Yeah. Yeah. It's a game. 4.4 pages. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm not expecting a lot from it, but the price is right. Name your own price, it says. So, yeah. Yeah, you can't argue with that. I cannot. Art, dance, food and culture, actual in-game utilities are the really big things in this region. Lots of, yeah, it just looks like they've got lots of ideas and stuff. And what can I say?

I'm excited by it. I like the art of, like, a little otter leading a cow that's laden down with baskets. And yeah I just thought it was really cute and quite cool so I thought shout it out very cool very very cool okay okay okay okay right.

Coming into the end of the show we're doing a thing it is launching on Kickstarter on a two two two Tuesday yes, Into the Words. What's Into the Words, Jessica? Into the Words! So this is a collection of things I kind of curated from Insider. And the idea is that if you're running your own game and there is a woodland or forest in your game, here's a load of stuff that you can use to populate it and some ideas for that. So it's got some 12 different monsters in it, up to CR 11.

It's got a really interesting villain, Calissa the Spirit Fae. So these are things that you can just have and drop into your campaign and drop into the world. They also have a character species of nymphs. These were originally designed for 2014, but we've updated them so they work with 2024 as well. So if you're working with 2024, that's how it will come out. If you're still in 2014 and you want the old ones, for some reason I can also send them to you, I guess.

But yeah, it has different feats, like elemental refuge and nymphotic seduction. And yeah, it's just like woodland... Themed things and we're doing it via drive through rpg so fulfillment will be quick as always so the pdf will be with you in may no tariff because we're printing via drive through rpg so if you live in the u.s that'll be printed in the u.s and if you're in the uk they'll be printed in the uk.

So yeah so that's kind of what we're doing so that'll be one of our usual quick starters pdfs all finished so we just need to send them out to you and that's going out next week, And I'm excited about it. I like these books that we do that are generally themed around a location or an event. So the idea is that if you're just running your own homebrew, homeworld game, it's just got stuff that you can pick up and drop in. It's really easy. So articles from, that's based on articles from Insider.

Insider. Yes. And Insider this month, of course, had its new format. It's now moving to a monthly magazine. It has moved to a monthly magazine. Yeah, it has this month.

For issue one but these are kind of the previous articles because inside has been going on for like 10 years yeah yeah so there's like 10 years worth of content there that we're kind of making into books and collections that are yeah right right right right so, friday may the 30th we will be at uk games expo doing a live recording of this here show. 2 p.m. in the Dice Room. There's a lovely picture of us from last year, one of the year before, one of those two years.

Me with my eyes shut for some bizarre reason. I don't know why. One half shut, one fully shut. What a beautiful photo. Winking, clearly, winking. Falling asleep from exhaustion, from set up. That's the thing. Friday's the day one of the convention for some people. We're always exhausted from Thursday from driving down and setting up the stand. But anyway. Yeah. So please join us. Join us on Friday the May 30th, 2pm in the Dice Room at UK Games Expo.

It'll be amazing. Bring your lunch, eat your sandwich if you want. Have a sit down for an hour. It's free, and if you don't like it, we'll give you a full refund. Yeah. Hooray. Yeah, that's why I've lost a lot of weight. There. There we go. Yeah. Well done. Good found. Yeah, thank you. Right. I think we're done, aren't we? Yeah. I think we are done for this week. We're done. There was a lot of news. There was a lot of news.

Thank you for everyone that joined us live thank you all we will see you next week as always hopefully we'll have some exciting news for you then so until then I guess I bid you adieu bye bye. Music.