347 | Eberron Alt Cover, Goodman/Judges Guild Updates, Pathfinder Does War!

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

I am Russ, aka Morris, or Morris, aka Russ. And with me on this fine sunny day is... PJ Coffey from the Southampton Gold Roleplayers and also Homer and Hacking, TTRPG Design. Joining us also, we have looking exceptionally glamorous, possibly even a little sun-kissed.

At least with respect to the hair, it's the one. it is the only, it's me Jessica from EM Publishing I do on this camera look a little bit like I have a tan I in reality don't because I do not tan so I think the lighting is just doing me favours today yeah, apparently I recently spent two weeks in the Caribbean did not come back with a tan so it's not my thing I played some Endragon this week which was exciting Oh. See, where did you do that for us? Not at least.

Yeah, I played it down at your game club in town, getting run by Tim. I had great, great, great fun. Nice. Yeah, yeah. I think I didn't manage to kill your character off, so I said just try part of that. The game I've wanted to play for years and years and years, so I'm really happy I'm managing to get to play it now. Nice. Discover what all the fuss is all about. Worth the fuss? Worth the hype? So far, I mean, I'm just kind of getting the hang of it at the moment. Okay, fair.

So, you know, we'll see. I mean, yeah, I'm kind of like, I don't want to go into a review of Pendragon because A, I don't know the game very well at all. I played one session, didn't really know what I was doing, so it would not be a fair review in the slightest.

Yeah. But we did have, like, the character sheet did have sort of ability scores, which look a bit like D&D scores and a bunch of skills, for kind of like singing and chivalry and there's some combat ones as well like swords and horsemanship and stuff and then a whole bunch of traits, which I've heard about before. So the traits are the things that there's about 10-ish. I can't remember how many there are.

So basically 10 traits, and each of them is basically on 1 to 20 sliding scale, and they've got opposites. So I can't remember what they are exactly, but say one might be brave and cowardly. That's not two of them, but they're kind of opposites of each other. So you might be sort of like brave 15, cowardly 5, or, you know, so, you know, the two will add up to 20.

And so I was trying to get the hang of using those, because apparently you're supposed to use them, from what I hear, partly to decide how your character acts. You know, when presented to the situation, would I react in a brave or cowardly manner? Would I act in a virtuous or selfish manner? Would I act in a, you know, all these different things. Nice. Nice little role-playing encouragements. Yeah, it's interesting.

But yeah, yeah, I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying it. I look forward to playing more.

Sounds good. I didn't do much role-playing this week, but I was in a LARP and it was the four it was like a four-part big LARP that I was in so it's the last time I was playing that character and at the beginning of the session it was well known that some characters may die because of what we were doing but nobody did everybody lived because we're so good but I feel sad I'm not playing that character anymore because I got to war I had cool costume for it because I bought a leather like

LARP armor chest piece I got to wear and stuff and I had like these lark daggers like on a holster on my thigh and she was just quite cool like a warrior woman and yeah, I'm going to miss, having an excuse to wear that costume. But yeah. And I played a lot of ball of the kids. You can just wear it out generally I suppose down the shops. Well, in this weather it's quite warm because wearing leather armour, black leather armour is quite the time. Yeah.

Is it soft? Is it the soft viable stuff or is it more rigid?

No, it's real leather so it's quite rigid at the moment because I haven't worn it much but the more you wear it the more it will like you know when you wear get buy new leather boots or something the first time you wear them it's a bit like oh but yeah it, It was a bit rough, but that was my investment piece because I've, as you know, I've been laughing a lot and I'm slowly building up a wardrobe of lots of different pieces as you do over the years.

But yes, and somebody said that they've learned they're too out of shape to play in a LARP. This was not a buffer combat LARP. So you did not need to be any level of fitness. It was more like a parlor sort of talkie style LARP opposed to a running around hitting each other LARP. I've not done a running around hitting each other LARP, but that does sound fun. And I do have LARP safe daggers and armor now, so maybe that'll be in my future.

Maybe, maybe. Well, I'd certainly be happy to lend you some of my large collection of guards and stock jewellery. I'd probably best not lend you any of my swords. Yeah, you're not LARP safe. No, no. I'd lend you a sword larger than it is. That's intense. Yeah. Before we start, just a reminder to everybody that we are streaming live on YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook. You can join us every week, 2pm UK time or 9am Eastern time. Join in the chat, ask us questions, get beat upon our lovely faces.

Lovely in inverted commas faces. With yourself. How long have we been doing this now? I mean, we've been doing the podcast for about seven years, but how long have we been doing the live streams? Since 2020, 2025. Yeah. January 2025. Did we start in January? We did. That long. New year. Wow. Wow. I had no idea. Okay. Anyway, anyway, anyway.

Should we get on with some news? Yes, let's talk about the tabletop RPG news, because that is why the people have come here. This is where we have summoned them. Okay, let us do it. Let's start with Eberron. Eberron, Borg of the Artificer. We did talk about this last week. We did. What we didn't talk about was this alternate cover that has since been released.

So this isn't the cover that we saw last week it is not there's a different one yeah yeah so this is the one that will be exclusive to hobby stores going on sale august 19th still retail price of 29.99 but yeah i mean it's definitely they've gone for a totally different style with the alternate covers now do you remember they used to be from hydro 74 or something like that and they were quite, abstract in some respects they were kind of like angular and graphic and modern

right right sorry I was thinking of the 2024 covers which were the older ones yeah, yeah like a, certain I want to say Art Deco flair to them with lots of, lots of fangles and stuff what we're looking at here for those playing along at home is there's somebody at the back, who's wearing a leather apron, we presume there'd be an artificer.

And in front of them being, I guess, hauled up out of a forge with, lights coming out of their face is a regular android, which, due to the fact that I've been updated on what they're doing with Eberron, I know to be a warforged. Yeah, yeah.

They've really changed the style for the warforged, so they don't look as cool and warforged anymore, and now they're just like, you know, sci-fi androids yeah like yeah if you want if you imagine like 70s sci-fi android that that's what that's what the new warforged looked like which is a shame because the old warforged looks really good very yeah yeah like really that looks very sci-fi rather than steampunk to me yes there's not a gear in sight that's true the art style as you mentioned

the 70s though the art style does look very 70s, 80s sci-fi in the art style to me. Do you know what I mean? It looks like a movie poster and film of that time. Yeah, I can see that. You know what? It's even given me a bit of Metropolis. Yes. Yeah, do you know what I mean? Was it 1920s, I'll say? So proper old school film. So maybe that's the idea. Yeah, maybe. Maybe it's a bit of Rossum's Universal Robots. Yeah.

Right. Also, are we sticking with the covers? because that is something I'm pretty interested in talking about right now. Well, I was kind of going through the play order list because I thought I've got slides in. Oh, okay. Fair enough then. Then we won't talk about it. That's your question. Otherwise, I get very confused and I start to find a flick around in this tiny little thumbnail poster stamp trying to work out which one is which and I put up the wrong slide and I get completely lost.

No worries. No worries. The interface for this isn't amazing.

We won't talk about the Everon cover with the Artificer where they have about 90 different sets of pincers behind them because that's a hell of an artistic decision and has said some of course some unkind people to suggest that perhaps it's ai because it looks like an ai artifact to do that sort of thing but i'm sure wizards of coach would do no such thing because that'd be a terrible idea i don't imagine at the moment that would that seems um, I imagine they're being very, very careful.

Someone drew a lot, a lot, a lot of grips. I'm like, that is a lot of grips. That is more grips than anyone could possibly need. They're all the same size. It's very strange. What were you talking about then? Well, the next thing, we've got some D&D related stuff. We have got Mr.

Potato Head, which we've mentioned before. Mr Potato Head now has this is the D&D Mr Potato Head it was first released at Gamma Expo, earlier this year but this is coming out it's got a release date of October 2025 so, So Mr. Potato Head Beholder. Yes. Potato Head with many... Yes, I think we have covered this before. We mentioned it. We just didn't have any close-up pictures and we didn't have... Well, I thought we did have a picture because, well, not the whole product's

in the box. So we've got some of these. So I've got a few different ones of these. So this is Mr. Potato Head with a bowler hat and casting some kind of eyeball or something.

So keeping the the the eye stalks which are coming outside and making it the proper beholder keeping those brown to match the potato which i think is an excellent style of decision, yeah yeah and oh i see look like oh they're using the pupil of the eye as a place to lock in where you can have like the magic effects shooting out of shooting out of the eyes yeah yeah yeah you've got lightning bolt coming out of one and a fire or something coming out of the other. Some sort of blast, yeah.

And we've got another configuration here. Yeah, very important. That's what the holders needed more gender. So we've got a properly gendered one with like, you know, it's a shame we shouldn't have the little skirt, but you've got the big main... I love the single glasses, the single glass. No, the monocle. It's not a monocle. It's just a pair of glasses that only has one. By definition, a monocle? Well, a monocle doesn't have things that go around

your head, though, does it? It doesn't have arms. It could. Always. It could, but it wouldn't be a monocle, then. It would be what this is. It would be a single glasses. A single spectacle. I have to agree to disagree on that. Oh, rest, you're just making a spectacle of yourself. Ha! Ha! Oh, no. Oh! You've got another one you must start. Oh, the script writer. Oh, yes, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's got, I find the human teeth actually more disturbing than the spiky ones.

Yeah, the square humanist teeth do make it look more sinister than. Okay, yes. Thank you from Zeta Soto for the petition to have Morris by it and have a different configuration of it for every stream. Wow. That sounds like a lot of responsibility. I think what we should do instead is Morris should get dressed up as a different potato head. for every stream. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good idea. One thing, I don't have a lot to say about the Beholder Potato Head, in honesty, but I do find it interesting that Hasbro is combining the D&D brand with other Hasbro-licensed products that they have. So I'm wondering, are there things that people would like to see other than a D&D Potato Head? Are there other Hasbro things? You know, what other mashups do we need? What else does Hasbro do?

Transformers. Yeah? I think they have that license. D&D Transformers. Yeah. My little ponies that are like...

Themed maybe i don't know is this the beginning of something that's what i'm saying, um i don't know let's have a look see what hasbro is hasbro barbie or is that the other one no it's mattel it's very different okay they do have a blades so and cabbage patch kids, which i'm very excited about cabbage patch kids as like different dnd classes in the chat says they made transformers dice yeah there we go a lot of gi joe here that's very exciting,

jungle book jurassic tech jurassic park mask oh my little pony there we go yeah like i said my little pony and different character classes as tattoos on the my little pony thing although obviously we are aware of Tales of Equestria, the. Role-playing game, which is already in existence. Yeah, the minor-playing game, yeah. We're waiting for that 5e conversion to hit, so that'll be excellent. My little centaur. Yeah, my little centaur. Excellent. Megatron as Vecna.

I mean, like, if only people, more people knew who Megatron was. It's like, everyone knows what Vecna was. Well, Vecna was Megatron. The thing is, who would win in a fight between Vecna and Megatron? It depends where Megatron gets the shot off, doesn't it? Does Megatron... Because Megatron doesn't have an organic mind. Can Vecna play with them in the same way? I don't know. Because they're not an organic being. Can Vecna influence them in the same way?

I'm sure a fireball is still a fireball. I mean, a fireball is a fireball at the end of the day. You're correct. Yeah. Anyway, I just thought that was interesting. Maybe we'll see more crossovers in the Hasbro-owned licenses. Yeah. We've had Cameron just got off cruise today in Southampton and was going to make a joke about watching the show live, but they're getting the train. We actually record in Southampton, so you could have watched live live.

There's space on that sofa back there, so there you go. Next time. Or you could have come and looked up at my dogs while I record. Yeah. Next time, let us know in advance. The dog wrangler. If you're in Southampton. As long as you don't mind a bit of light savaging. I'm sure it'll be fun. Anyway. All right. What else have we got in the news if we're done talking about beholders? We have got these things. Xanathar's treasure packs.

So these are sort of dice packs, but they've also got other bits and pieces with them as well. They're $19.99 for each pack. And they're hitting retail this month, so like really, really soon. Okay. So as you can see here, there's like a bunch of, on this one, there's a bunch of blue dice there's a couple of large coins gold coins and a little dice bag so there's a few different ones sorry I've just worked out what. Oh, yes, I was rushed. There's some gold coins. There's also like a set of dice.

There's a D6 and it's got like a strange gold symbol. I was looking at it thinking, why is there a sandworm on the dice? It's an eyestalk, Russ. It's one of Xanathar's eyestalks, yeah. Oh, okay. Yes. It took me a minute as well. Yeah. I'm like, does it not look like a sandworm? It looks like a telescope. Yeah, it does a bit. Yes. You've got some funny-looking tasks for us, some girls like that. Or possibly an empty sleeve, but yeah. But it's all done, gold. Yeah.

So what do you get then? Oh, some more of the stuff. So here's some of the different dice sets you can get. Right. And this is Steam's legendary one. Have you seen the one? That one I do like. So they're clear dice with little Xanathar inside. And I do love that style of dice with the little clear dice with the thing in it. Yeah. I'd find those hard to read, I think, though. I don't like Gizzy dice. Yeah, but they go in your dice collection, and you use clearer ones,

but you have these. You've got to get in the dice goblin mindset. I have an entire bag that... You've never seen them. Huh? You've never seen them. That's not true. You admire your dice. Yes. Oh, okay.

Don't say that in a weird way like it's weird. I have a d20 shaped storage bag where I keep all my dice in and I have them there and it's it's a little like d20 handbag so it goes on my shoulder so I can bring it around everywhere with me, hmm I don't do that huh well fool on you yes so these are dice I would have in my collection I might not use them all the time but they would be there and I would have them and I could show my shiny math rocks to other people and be

like, look, I have these. And everyone would go, ooh, Because that's what dice goblins do. Do you guys not collect dice then? I'm not in a sense of collect. I make sure I have enough for various situations. I don't collect them because I like those dice. I want those ones. Oh, really? You don't? Oh, I do that. I have like a tea box full of ice. And if you know what tea box is, then that's a fairly significant collection. Okay, Russ has got himself like a game box. Quite a bunch of dice.

It's just a functional collection of dice. Yeah, they're all split up into different... Well, they were, and then the dogs knocked it all over the floor, ate half of them, and now they're... All right, we're getting our dice, Wayne. Okay. I'm just going to get our dice as well. Oh, dear. We're having a dice off. Yeah, fine. It's on that one. Oh, you're going as well? Look, you can't just leave me here on my own. Yeah, I can. All you have to do, Russ, is just like...

All right, we start now. Let's go. I've got my dice. So if you're listening on the podcast, sorry, but so this is my D20 dice storage handbag that I have. Oh, that's a very impressive box you have there. It is. And inside it has all the different sections with all the dice in. I also have my dice thrones, which are little chairs that have a slot for each of my D20 so I can line them up. But why? Just fun? But why? Because they're fun. What do you do with them?

Well, I line them up, and then I put the dice I'm using for the session in the throne, so they're all lined up and comfortable. Does that help? No. Hopefully. I don't know. I haven't done the maths, but I think so. I feel good about myself. I feel like an ethical dice owner. And I have these dice, which I haven't used yet, which have wireless charging and do cool stuff, the Icewind dice series, which I haven't opened yet.

So hmm good start I've got some LED dice over there which charge up and roll them they flash and that's what those ones are, yeah it has a very blurry set of dice yeah a very blurry set of dice I don't know as it's coming across so you've got like there's a big old pile at the front and now I've got my various GMing bits and bobs, in there along with like bits of towel and so forth for wiping stuff down and of course the things like the.

Obligatory very small playing cards as well as counters and so forth because I play Savage Worlds as well You two are basically far more organised than I am Well I do rather than games, often Well as said in the chat Jess and Morris are very different kinds of nerds which is true, Yeah. All right, let's move on. Let's move on with the news. Okay, no longer talking about collectible dice. Fair enough. We're going to talk about Pathfinder and War.

Do you not want to talk about Taras first? Because that was next on your list. Oh, we'll do that after this. Okay. Let's slide up now. The list! Pathfinder, Battle Cry. So this is a book which is going to hit PDF, I think, in July, and then presumably print soon after this. And this is all about, this is a Pathfinder second edition book, all about war. War, war, war. So in this book, we have got a couple of new classes.

And those new classes are, hang on a second, the commander and the guardian, as you can see there. So the commander, I'm going to guess, is kind of like a warlord slash marshal type, I guess. I don't know entirely whether that's true or not. And then the guardian just looks like a tank. The guy needs a tank, I think. The commander looks like a tank. Look at those traps. True. True. There's a distinct lack of neck. Why are they both blue?

I'm guessing they're a species. That's the new ancestry. Is it Jotunborn or something like that? Right. Jotunborn. Jotunborn. Yeah. They do look... I'm sorry. We've got a picture of one of them here. This is a piece of art from the book. The Jokin-born is like a blue, giant-born, giant-rated species. That one's meaning some kind of big... What is that? Well, it looks like it might be a mace or a hammer. It's the same on the front cover.

Yeah, why not? I mean, just in case you're mess. It looks like... Sure, well, it's a big old... It's an extremely large rock on the end of a long pole. With small spikes falls off chains coming off the rock. Yeah. So that can make it out. I wouldn't have done that flying near me. No. Well. No, that would ruin your day. You would. Unless you took it like half a step back and step forward smartly and stab them. It has a massively off balance. Yeah. I don't care.

But this ancestry is so hench with their body, it does make their head look teeny tiny. Like proportionally if you go back to the previous image it does look i it's so funny they are the pinhead ancestry you are correct yes yes yes look at that like big hooking body.

Yeah it's like yeah it's like a grape on orange it looks like yeah so this book so we got the the two classes the commander and the guardian we've got a bunch of archetypes and they say they allow you to raise a battalion of undead soldiers or wield a personal siege weapon we've got the jotenborn ancestry which are these guys these big blue guys yeah an armory of magic weapons and rules for running combat alongside troops that you command to fill out your army's ranks,

that's quite cool i like rules for big war scenes because i think sometimes when you've got a party of people, it's hard to do like a Helm's Deep style battle, you know? Yeah, because I think this is mass combat rules. No, but it's like for having an army, like what happens with that? So if you're in a battle... I think it's kind of about your bit of the battle, isn't it? Well, yeah. It's happening around you. Yeah. I'm not 100% sure. It's one of those unanswered questions in D&D.

Also, which is fine, we've got two alternate covers we've got a sketch cover i love a sketch i like those sketch covers the pathline just doing i really like them a lot should we do sketch i think we should i think they're very good and and then we got sort of leather bound embossed sort of standard special edition cover that you see many people make yes i will say i'm a little bit disappointed that But because what they're trying to evoke

with the way that the character on the front is holding it, who's one of these like Jotunheim, Britain-born pinheads. Sorry. I try and be nicer about them. But once you point them out, I'm like, no. No, carry on. I can't unsee it. Yep. And what they're trying to evoke is sort of like things like raising the flag at Iwo Jima, you know, with like a bunch of marines trying to raise up a flag. But he's not raising up a flag. He's raising up an...

Quite frankly, an infeasibly large hammer, because it's just, you're not going to be able to use it, even if you are that size. And it's just like, where are flags in these fantasy battles? Because they are... Very important. Just play the game, says, am I the only one who doesn't like uncovered sketch covers? Yes, you are the only one in the world. Yeah. Everybody else in the entire world loves them. I know I've done a survey of everywhere in the world apart from you specifically.

And now we know. Yeah. And now we know. That's the answer to that question. I really like them. I really like, I do really like the sketch covers. I actually prefer that to the actual cover.

To the Unluxed Edition. then it's it's got a it's got a vibe to it i guess if you are a big fan of say osr and pathfinder, which blows my mind but why the hell not then you've got that whole black and white thing going on i guess so yeah it just feels a little different that's all i like that yeah because you see a lot of i mean including our stuff you see a lot of this sort of um special edition covers which are leather bound with sort of like embossed titles on them and they're

fairly common Markle quality, yeah, like that. But these are just different. I like them. Yeah, I like it too. Yeah. And it seems to be easy to do because the artist, because it's the same art, so it's just the art at a different stage of development. You just ask the artist for their sketch and for the final piece. You've got two covers there. Yeah. I think that's pretty cool. I like that.

Yeah. I think it looks cool as well. And I think, yeah, this looks good if you're playing a bit of Pathfinder and you want those specific type of rules because you're at that point in your story. Does that make sense? Yeah. Right, let's talk about tariffs very, very quickly. Tariff time! So, in the last week, the tariffs from China were reduced from 145% down to a much more manageable 30%. I mean, it's still not great, it's still 30%, but it's not 145%. By comparison.

By comparison, yeah. Everything's relative. You anchor it at 145, and then you take it down to 30, which is still higher than it was before, but now it seems low. Smart business. Yeah, but before it was like maybe 5% or whatever, and then anything above that seemed low. But no, 30% is still a wildly high tariff. It's still a lot, it's true. Yes. Because we're now conditioned to think in terms of 145, it feels low.

Because we're braced for 145, 30% feels like a manageable thing, which is good because we are manufacturing things that are in the final stages and getting ready to ship. So this is for 90 days only.

So who knows what will happen after those 90 days or whether it will last those 90 days and it will change again tomorrow who knows not me in theory it's for 90 days it's a 90 days pause basically they call it a pause but it's this little tariff so the reduction not a pause so you know we we immediately sort of like got together about our stuff and had a quick conversation right does that mean shall we risk it take you know you know throw our stuff over to america now pay the 30 percent in

the assumption that it will still be 30 percent when it reaches there because it'll take three weeks to get there by boat at least within that 90 day window because we don't know that we'll go up again or down again at the end of that so do we do that and i imagine every publisher out there was having the exact same conversation i think you're thinking right quickly quickly shove our stuff on the boat get it over there while it's 30 percent the issue with that is because

everyone's going to quickly shove their stuff on the boat the cost of boat yeah I think it's more expensive because the way global stripping works. And also there's going to be pilot, port, and all sorts of stuff. It's going to be great. Yeah. So, yeah. So if you have backed a crowdfunder or pre-ordered something, please be patient with your publisher because they will be trying their very, very best. Yeah. Yes. But anyway. Yeah.

So, yeah. Anyway, let's talk about something else. Let's talk about some Tarex. Not Tarex. You were talking about Tarex. Let's talk about Goodman Games instead. Yeah, yes. So this is a hollow one from, we talked a lot about this last week. So if people want the full scope, listen to last week's episode. Basically, after we finished recording last week, when we finished our time, we finished recording about four o'clock-ish.

It was sort of eight or nine p.m. our time, Friday night, Goodman Games put out an additional statement. It was, when I say statement, it was a long video, over an hour long video, accompanied by a sort of text summary of what they're going to do. And then a whole bunch of people said, why have you chosen to miss this additional statement offering your podcast? Because I don't have time travel. Oh, yeah, yeah. So that is for all the fissures. This is down the carriage at

the moment. I don't know. Yeah. Because obviously they did it after we released the podcast. You know, that's how time works. I've had people saying to me, why aren't these books that were released three years asked yours, why don't you have the bits from them included in your book? I'm like, well, my luck of a time machine was a problem. I experienced the flow of time in a linear fashion. So, in fact, it might not be the case for those people that were asking,

so maybe they didn't know. But anyway, let's have a look at this. So I'm going to try something flattery here. I'm going to try sharing a short clip of a video for the first time ever on this podcast, so it might not work. So forgive me if this doesn't work quite right, but let's give this a try. It's like, it's not over an hour long video. I'm only going to share like 10, 15 seconds. Okay. I'm not going to make you sit here and watch a long video. So,

let's just see if I can do this, shall we? So. Okay, so, let's get going. So, and I hate the things that were said. I don't get up and talk about my politics. I have many people in my immediate family who are in the groups that were commented on by the bloodsaws. I will get into more of that later. I do this because I like publishing games. That's why I publish games. I don't do this to talk about myself or talk about politics.

Frankly, I think I need to fill in that space and tell people more about myself. So later in this stream, I will talk about my personal life, my personal history. But I was personally very affected by the comments because many of the people I know and love are in the groups that were heavily affected. So I don't agree with the bigotry. I don't agree with the transphobia. I don't agree with the homophobia. I don't agree with the racism. I don't agree with any of it.

And I don't want to be associated with it. And I don't want any money from Goodman Games to ever fund it or be perceived as funding it. So. They seem so upset. Yeah. So it's a big, long video. But this is the sort of summary of it. So what they're going to do is the following.

Any of the. so judges guild i'll do a very quick recap judges guild is the company which goodman games is licensing some property of to make an updated 5e this property is the city-state of the invincible overlord talked about at length last week uh and uh back in 2020 the current owner of goodman games. And made a whole range of very very very unpleasant statements on social media covering a whole variety of subjects. The Judges Guild guy, not Goodman Games guy. Judges Guild, yes.

Yeah, just to be really clear. Yeah, yeah, Goodman Games is not anything like that. No, no, no. No, it's the Judges Guild guy, Bob Bledsaur 2, Junior, whatever it's called. Junior, yeah. Yeah. So what's going to happen is, so 10% of the Kickstarter goes to Judges Guild, that's the licensing arrangement. But what's going to happen is it's not going to go directly to Judges Guild.

It's going to go into an escrow account managed by Goodwin Games, and those funds are going to be used to reimburse or refund the backers of Judges Guild's previous failed, unfulfilled city-state of the Invisible Overlord Kickstarter. So Judges Guild's not going to see that money at all. It's going to go straight from Goodwin Games to those backers.

They are going to make sure that the print run is limited to a number that will ensure that once those backers have been reimbursed, there'll be no further revenue generated. So Judges Guild doesn't make a profit on the project. So it's not like, you know, we've reimbursed them all and now Judges Guild is getting 10% of the rest. They're making sure there isn't any more after that. They're going to stop printing.

Finally, if in some way Kickstarter does exceed this threshold, I'm not quite sure how that would happen, but if it did do that, Goodman Games is obviously legally obligated to pay excess royalties to Judges Guild, because that's what the licensing agreement says. However, they will match that access, whatever it is, with a charity donation, and they will encourage Judges Guild to give that access to charity, although... They can't control that, obviously.

They can't compel them to do so. so that is what they're going to do okay so i mean pick the step in the right direction i like it um i still feel and a lot of people have said this online i still feel to an extent.

Paying judges girls debts is still paying them yeah absolutely i would i would feel that way if we decided to not fulfill a kickstarter and we owed people money from it if someone else said we'll pay that for you, that's a huge benefit to us financially yeah that's just paying off our debts for us that's something we don't have to worry about and what if you raised money for a Kickstarter and then you didn't deliver what would Kickstarter do?

Well nothing that's why they wouldn't let you continue to use Kickstarter, oh yeah oh yeah yeah you can't yeah sorry but I mean because Kickstarter does say This guild currently can't use Kickstarter until it's been made right. I can use other ones. Good luck to them. Yeah, they can use other ones, but Kickstarter's the biggest. Yeah, I think they're kind of at the point where people wouldn't trust them.

I think once you've failed very publicly on a large Kickstarter, no matter where you go with the crowdfunders, people are probably not going, you know, you might get it too, but people probably aren't going to back it. Certainly, while you are banned from Kickstarter, you're going to have a hard time on the other platforms.

Yeah even if games refunds these people yeah even if that cleared the ledger with the clickstarter i don't know if that would or not whether kickstarter would then review that as a cleared product or not the reputational damage is still there the stigma is still there you are still someone who failed everyone will know what happened so i don't think there's a scenario where really they get to go back to kickstarter and go back to how things were before i mean obviously

they don't get to go things back to how things were before but it's a step of rehabilitation, which I would argue is an end. Goodman Games is rehabilitating them. I'm like, why are you doing that? I agree. It's not their responsibility to do it. It's not their Kickstarter. The reason you have to read the watch the entire video because they do go into this but they do basically say look, Judges Guild are not legally obligated

to refund those people because that's how Kickstarter works. It is a risk. And, you know, so Judges Guild doesn't have, it has an ethical and moral debt, but it doesn't have a legal debt to anybody. Otherwise they'll be being sued by now. Absolutely. So as Goodman Games sort of say, Judges Guild are not in a position to refund those people because they don't have the money to do so. It's just not going to happen.

They burnt through the $85,000. Absolutely. So, the backers, though, the thousand or so backers, or however many it was, who are out of pocket, they will now be made right. So, from their point of view, and from the point of view towards them, it's a good thing. Sure. Sure. I mean, it's whether you value them, I guess... You know, being made whole over Judges Guild getting a, and I'd argue like a 2% rehabilitation. It's like minuscule.

I don't think it would actually effectively make any practical difference whatsoever. So I can see the argument for both ways. I really can. I mean, I wouldn't say Goodwin Games is wrong or right in doing this. It's a choice.

Either choice would have had arguments both ways, I think. I'm just, I'm a bit confused by why the decision to do to do this was because this reads to me like we're in a situation we're gonna do the best out of it as that we can and i think that's what this is but was this a situation you chose to be in and why that's the bit i'm missing yeah yeah you know because like i because if it was like look we have a legal obligation under contract that we have to crowdfund this

under license but that hasn't been said so i don't know if that's the case because if that was the case i'd be like fair enough they have to do it they're in this situation they're doing the best they can with it but it feels like it was a choice to do this and i that's the bit i'm like that's the bit of information i'm missing yeah a choice which they have said they find we could either trash the work or do something reprehensible you know

like we'll do something reprehensible and it's like i well one i don't think it's actually that dichotomous right because i've read uh there's a blog by a chap called wobble rocket which i quite enjoyed which is like you know been pretty interesting gone into a bit of this had a look around obviously worked off the in world article and so forth but also they had a look at the actual city state of the minceful overlord and it's got it's got those tables from way back when.

And when I say tables, I mean, what do these random tavern winches look like? What's their bus size? That sort of thing. So, yeah, I know, right? It's like, you're going to have to strip out a lot of this stuff anyway. Why not do something new or inspired by? Yeah, I get that. Or maybe it's an influence, yeah? Yeah, I mean, basically, Goodman Games' kind of business model is resurrecting old stuff for the OSR crowd, I guess.

But yeah, I agree. why not a inspired by city stage yeah a new original product inspired by it but not actually, yeah yeah because that and it could be very much an homage to it because yeah a lot of these as well yeah because i think that's i think that's a great thing to do to be like look we're inspired by this we used to play this ages ago and we want to we want to retell this story our way and that would be great

we'd like we'd love to bring it to our kids but in a fashion that would be less embarrassing should they actually see what's inside the book yeah yeah um yeah no favorite yeah or just or even take a view out of it and just saying in in our way in a new way.

Officialness sticker stuff isn't there like something that comes officially from wizards of the coast is perceived as having greater value than something that comes from a third party, publisher just because it's got you know the logo on the front and it could be a case of that they just think you know we'll make twice as much money if it's official than if it's not i guess i don't know i'm guessing i'm totally guessing now i'm not i do find it quite comedy that

sort of like what's homebrew what's official because like i've got my i got my i got my latest book i like the advertising that's in the homebrew channels and it's like you know because people like say oh Well, it's, you're just saying, bro, I'm like, okay, well, here's my 212 page hardback. Okay. With the production values to match. Yeah, sure. We'll put it next to these people's, what do you call it?

Their actual, I would say, is homebrew, which is fine. I'm making the point which is that, yeah, sure, my stuff is homebrew, but that word is not really got meaning in this place. You know what I mean? It's like, sure, it's homebrew. I think it only matters if you're doing an official, like, I've forgotten what it's called.

What's the D&D you'll have to find it yeah if you're doing it eventually yeah exactly if you're doing that and then obviously there's rules about what content you can use and that's fair enough but if you're not doing that why does it matter it's only if your table agrees to it because different tables agree different things like different tables some people are like we're not using silvery barbs i know it's in the official rules but we're not using you

know because tables can decide to do that but anyway we're going on a different tangent away from the goodman games thing i fear yeah but But it is an interesting one, PJ. And maybe we should pick this up another time. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, that's what Goodman Games is doing. Yeah. And I think the link will be on the end well. Mixed reactions across the web. I'm not 100% sure how I feel about it. I mean, I tend to agree they should have just not done that. They should have done something else.

I'm sorry he's upset. I don't know. People are going to get mad at you when you do bad things. And that's how you know you're doing a bad thing. And maybe you should stop it. Yeah. I think part of my sort of confusion with it all is, and as we said this last week, they did say at the time, back in 2020, when all of these statements that Judges Guild made came to life, they did say, we have only one project still to complete and stuff. And that was the General Jacket compilation.

They would do that. And then there were no more Judges Guild products. They would sell no more Judges Guild products on their storefront and channels and they would do no more business with them. So why now, five years later, are they saying, actually, there was this at the time, we just didn't mention it? I find that bit confusing. And some people in the comments have said maybe the motivation is they want to fix this backer situation from the Judges Guild Kickstarter for the backers.

Maybe they want them to have this thing and make sure they're not out of pocket. But why? And that could be true but there are lots of crowdfunders. Yeah, there's lots of crowdfunders. Are they going to go and do it for all of them now? I don't understand. Yeah. Wow.

I don't get it i mean it's not their responsibility yeah my wife backed a 3d printer several years ago that was a hundred dollars for a 3d printer that's never materialized it's over a decade so if given games wants to do some sort of kickstarter to help refund yeah those people that'd be amazing yeah yeah i mean it's very very donkarty slash robinford sorry jessica i'm talking over you please no no that's okay i just i'm just going to be repeating what i said like the bit the piece

of information i'm still missing from the statement is why was the decision made to do this project and i think that information may give a bit more insight and i understand i think they are doing the best they can now that they're in that situation, like with their statement and what they're planning to do with the funds.

Yeah that's the bit i'm missing and maybe there's a reason they can't share that maybe there's a legal reason they can't say maybe there isn't i don't know so but that's the bit why i'm still a bit confused face about it yeah i i mean you could just say we are and they discuss why for legal reasons yeah i don't know yeah that that would that would yeah that would tell me i don't think it's illegal because if you listen to some of the other things they've been saying like you know this guy is

reprehensible the things he says you know i don't think they're bad and open about talking about the situation and they're not afraid of criticizing or you know saying how they feel about the judges guild and so forth so i don't think there is a legal impediment to them doesn't seem likely, I don't know that is what I'm saying. No. I haven't been indicated that that is the case necessarily, but because that's the thing I, that's the only thing I can think of.

But if that had, because like I was trying to think if we were in a situation like this is an RPG company, we had said we weren't going to work with somebody because of those reasons. And then we were compelled to do something for some reason. I would want to make that so clear in the messaging.

But that's the thing though. I think the answer to the question is unfortunately not there's a legal impediment to it the answer to the question is something they're probably not going to say how loud is yeah but we decided we wanted to make this product.

Yeah yeah why are you being so mean to us but we wanted to and i think that's probably the truth of the matter is they wanted to do yeah anyway that's the question i still have but yeah let's move on because i don't think i'm just going to keep circling around that saying they bought a license when does that force you to pay more money to the license so if you don't use it as a common practice so you don't buy a license you know so the standard practice and every license is different so

the licensing you probably agree to a royalty amount which is standard is about 10% usually it looks like in this case it is 10% from what from what gaming games has said it's usually 10% of revenue so it'll be 10% off the top of the kickstarter before anything else so you will continue to pay royalties on it as long as you sell that product for until the license ends so into the future that's that's how a license works you may

pay an advance against royalties that's also very common usually it's not a fee it's an advance just so that the licensor knows they're going to get a certain amount so yeah just as an example they might sort of say okay is 10% royalties. The license is going to go for five years and the advance against royalties is $5,000. So if you give them $5,000, that's basically $5,000 royalties in advance. So if you don't earn $5,000 with the royalties for them, they've still got that $5,000.

If you go past the $5,000, then you start paying them more. So that's the unusual way. Yeah. License is also sometimes of a break clause that if you, because you have this license, if you don't produce any content for it in X amount of time, we'll take the license back because you're not using it. Or sometimes some have a minimum amount of money. If they're like, if you don't generate X amount of money from using this license, we're going to take it back from you.

That's fantastic. Or it might just be a renewable, you know, three years, then renewable every year sort of thing. Exactly. So there's lots of different things. So it could be the case that they financially invested. I mean, I'm making this up. It's not, it could be possible that they financially invested in a license. And if they don't use it, they won't get any return on that advance. Yeah. Yeah. That's possible.

Yeah. Sony keeps on making Fantastic Four movies because if they don't, they lose the license. Yeah. I mean, one example in our industry was back when Fantasy Flight Games, I think it was, got the Star Wars license. And the, you know, advance on that, I think, as I recall, was like close to 100 grand or something. Golly gosh! Plus the royalties. But partly, as you were just saying, Jess, that you have to bring stuff out in a certain amount of time, they had to bring something out within a year.

And what they ended up doing is releasing at Gen Con just in time a small card based product just to make sure they'd released something yeah and see if I can release a small card yeah, because the actual RPG wasn't ready yet which is fair enough because I think a year is not a huge amount of time to make a good RPG that you're proud of and ready to share it's not so that's the news on Goodman, games and the whole video is linked on em world so if people want to watch the

whole video and have a think about it for themselves that link is provided yeah the link will be in the show notes you can you can go and look it up go and have a listen and have a think for yourself on what your thoughts and feelings are okay well that's all the serious negative stuff let's go on to some. Exciting live streams this is from critical role and they have announced an eight-part dagger heart miniseries.

Dugger Heart being their brand new game, which is coming out in the next week or so now. Yes. Literally hitting store shelves. I've seen pictures of it at store shelves in stores, but not quite. They haven't hit the street date yet, so they can't sell it. So they've got it there saying, you can buy this soon, but you can't have it yet. So Dugger Heart is, is Critical Role's, what's their production company called?

Darrington Press. Darrington Press, that's it. That's the word I was struggling for. Darrington Press is Critical Role's production company and they produced, what was the other thing? They produced Candela Obscura last year.

So they've announced an eight-part miniseries, live-streamed campaign, coming on the main Critical Role channels, featuring Matt Mercer as Game Master, many of the usual crew, This will be going throughout this summer and being a sort of a break before presumably they go back to a sort of full-length D&D campaign later this year. And they haven't actually announced that yet as far as I know, but before that happens. But yeah, so this is a miniseries. It debuts May the 29th.

You've got to watch it on Beacon, Twitch and YouTube and with episodes airing every Thursday. Sounds interesting. If you want to find out what this is, a lethal forbidding land souls of the dead, cursed to return as twisted nightmares a dark ethereal mass as the Umbra roams and holds these fiendish monstrosities further corrupting anything it touches it just says Age of Shadow so, yeah yeah, well the Umbra in this case is a specific shadow the Umbra, not an Umbra or

an umbrella That would be something different. It's not an umbrella. No. Angel Umbrella. That's a different game. That is a different thing entirely, yeah. That is totally different. Yeah. So, that's that. Mm-hmm. Also, we have got, coming up, from Dimension 20, I am going to see if I can play a little trailer for you. Mm-hmm. Raphs, you're really busting out of videos today. Mm-hmm. You know, let's give it a try.

The radio comes on. You hear your grandmother's voice. You can hear this. Well, that's right. It's real. So it's real. A world of machine wonder. What? Oh, my God! A world of high-flying stunts and wild adventuring! I can take my revenge. And I just smash the glass. I bring you now to a brand-new, never-before-seen world. My arms covered in blood. What the fuck is going on? Let's get the hell out of here. No! It's Cloudward Hole!

Say hi, intrepid heroes! Hi, intrepid heroes! Or should I say sky-intrepid heroes? This is a wild one. Wow. Hello, my name is Van Chapman. I come from an old saline family, and you can smell it in my breath. Maxwell, really some type of bass leech. I think you're being a rowdy. How dare you? Don't call me rowdy! Maria Yonkova! I am gaunt with starvation, not of the body, but of the soul. I see an old man drinking a little flask of whiskey. Oh, the way my heart will nymph out of my pants.

Elethra McCloud is extremely into the adventuring legacy of her family. Big brawl, big chef. My shotgun and pack are a coat checker. Let's go. Gah. Easy, girl. I take out my blunderbuss and shoot it. Holy moly. Looks like we're going to have to wing this one. Oh, my God. I got a four. Stand off. Your death will not have been invented. What? No crime in the sky. No bloody crime in the sky. All right. Forever alone, I'm going to kill you. We're 20. Yes. Fun.

Here we go. So, Calderwood Hollow from Dimension 20. This is a brand new live stream coming very soon. I like Dimension 20's games. They're fun. It does feel like a group of friends playing a game together. Yeah. But it's entertaining to watch in the same way, so it's somewhat like a hyped-up version of what that's like. Yeah. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, we've got... Those are my thoughts. Sky Pirates, Twitter Maps, all sorts of stuff.

Yeah, looks fun. I like it. Definitely leaning for that steampunk aesthetic, with a touch of Bioshock, I would say as well. Yeah, that's a good, I like those references. That makes sense. Yeah, it looks fun. I've been meaning to watch some Dimension 20 actual plays for a while. I haven't got into it, but I think I will at some point, especially the Dungeons and Drag Queens series because I keep seeing clips of those and it looks great. Yeah.

So do you like dice? Wait, look, we all just got our dice collections out. Come on, Dice. So does it mean that you're getting pro or anti dice replacements? I'm open to changing my opinion when I have new information. Okay. So Mike Truska wrote an article on E&O this week talking about a few different dice alternatives. Okay. Hit me with them. I thought, let's have a look at them. Let's do it. Let's go. Well, this is the first one. This is called a dice tower spinner.

It's like a spinning tower that's got all your six standard dice in one place. It looks like a puzzle toy, like, you know, when you have to line them all up and it opens into something. That's right, yeah. Yeah. I'm assuming this is made of metal and it's quite heavy. It looks like it is. How does it work? It reminds me a little bit of those combination locks.

Yeah. You've got a number alongside. so you've got like a cylinder with the various different die size and the way it works is you give it a spin and it's got like a little marker and whatever number ends up opposite that marker is the result you have quote rolled unquote oh like spinning the big wheel on wheel of fortune but small and portable yeah and then you've got one two three you've got six different wheels and i guess you just spin

the one you want i guess do you or do you spin them all at the same time i don't know i think you'd have to spin them all at a time so yeah goodness help you've got to make a role advantage because I'm only seeing 1d20 on there. Yes. Or say you're casting a fireball. Oh, yeah. 6 or 86. Yeah. Depends on which rule. Depending on which rule set you're using. Okay. That's an option. We also have, Dice pencils. Oh. Sorry, I was confused by the regular dice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I don't know. They sort of have these, like, they've got a D6 on there. They're all D6s, I think. But they also have these little phrases as well. And the phrases are, I've got a list. Well, you can see. Can you see? Yeah, you can see them. Classic GM. For an official weapon, just keep rolling and stuff. You can certainly try. Have you on this? Don't worry, I have a plan. Hmm. Yeah. Well, I mean, that last one's definitely a player thing.

But if you keep dropping your pencil, will it not shatter the lead inside? And then when you go to sharpen your pencil, it'll cause issues. No. I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer about the whole thing. And it's also only D6s. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a fun little extra. They're clearly making some D&D named pencils and they had the option to make it a D6 and we're like, why not? Yeah. I mean, if there's one which says, do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,

I'd be all over that. No perspiration, Chummer. I'd be reaching for my royalty, even as we speak. But alas, no. Alas, alas. Right. How about these ones? These are Cthulhu-themed dice spinners. So you get a set of two spinners. The smaller one has a D4, D6, and D8 in it. And the larger one has the D10, D12, and D20. Okay. There's very Fudu-esque iconography all over them. I will say that the heart of H.P.

Lovecraft's work was about what happens when we, in our little candlelit world of sanity, encounter things that are just too horrible to look at. Is this one of those things? I feel like they're really catching ethos of this. Okay. Okay, okay, they're not to my aesthetic.

They're black and white, which is not a terrible choice. it looks like one of them has an elder sign on that five-pointed sort of pentagram with some extra bits in the larger of the two has letters, I guess and a so the larger one has, so the larger one has the letters G-N-Y-F-I-I-U-T-A it basically doesn't say anything it sounds like a make out, The smaller one has Confunglu-ee, Muglwan, Nath, Cthulhu, Ragnar, Ragnar, Ragnar. Yeah, yeah, sort of thing. Yeah.

In his house at Rhylaire, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming, apparently, that was it. Yeah, yeah, that's the one, yeah. Okay, that is something, yeah. I mean, you can't, you probably would have difficulty throwing these off the table, so I've got that going for them. Yeah. Difficult, but not impossible.

I'm sure I could throw them off the table if I tried I mean given a sufficiently motivated player or player with dog Russ then that's very possible, but yeah I mean if you've got someone who's like just constantly throwing their dice off the table then maybe these or get them a dice box, a dice tray a tray if you will or just ask them not to throw their dice off the table, I mean I managed to throw dice off the table throwing them off the table all the time. It's really easy.

Some of us aren't good at sports thrusts, you know. Ooh, I can't miss the black belt. Yeah, I can't throw my glass on the table reliably. Ooh, not one of us put all our skills in decks, do you know? These are the last ones. These are basically, they're coasters, so you can also put your drinks on them, but they've got like D20s around the edge, and you can spin the coaster to more of a D20. How do you know which one? You take your drink off of them beforehand.

How do you know where it's landed? I'm confused. If you're going to coast it, it'll land flat, surely, and then it's just flat with the circle. Yeah, I think you decide which way, pointing directly ahead is the one you do, I guess. I mean, if you're going to spin it, then maybe it's like it's got the edge of the will move, but again, it's like wood on wood. No, it doesn't move separately. No, I think you just decide the one that pointed directly at you is the one

that is... Oh, that's open to interpretation. No, no, definitely on the 20. Yeah. It's definitely a crit. Yeah. I think that will cause more arguments than a cock die. So out of those four different things, which one appeals most? Like in terms of biomechanics and usability, the eldritch horrors of the Cthulhu dice spinners are probably the ones that I would go for. Yeah. Like, if I, sorry, if I could get past how they look, then, yeah, sure, that's probably the thing I'd find most useful.

Takes up the least space, probably the easiest to use because I can see, like, the, the, the second, my second choice would be the one we looked at initially, which was the, like, little, yeah, the tower, the tower, the tower, the tower, dice, spinner. It's just, I think, that for me and my giant guns, I would not have a good time with that. I think if I had to buy one, I would pick the pencils, the second one, because I could use them as pencils and it's a fun little quirk.

If you said to me, Jess, you have to pick one of these to replace your dice completely, I would pick the first one. But I don't want to replace my dice. I have a nice bag. Well, if anyone does, I'll put a link in the show notes and there'll be links where you can buy all of these items should you wish to. For me, I'd agree that the Dace Tower is the only one that really appeals and only because it's gimmicky.

I'll throw this in. Depending upon the weight, of this spinning tower, it could act in a similar fashion to like a roll of quarters for if you decide to move away from the table into the streets and no, Russ is shaking his head. Not advocating barns. Increase the power of the punches. Yeah, let's not do that, Lord. Sounds like a great way to get a handful of plastic shrapnel, to be honest. It seems like a bad thing to do. Yeah, don't do that. Anyway.

There's actually a few different alternatives for rolling dice. Anyway. Okay. The Robins had D6s. They liked to roll dice. And someone showed me a dice tower the other day online so that was very exciting for me.

And there's those Roman D20s that show up every few months and everyone goes, it's the first time anyone's ever seen one even though they've shown up every few months like the last 30 years, Yeah, I hear it's supposed to be due for knitting gloves and so forth, but then textile experts chip in and say no, because the technology wasn't advanced left to do knitting. So what they are for exactly is, as far as I know, still unknown. Dun, dun, dun. Right. A couple of kickstarters. Let's go.

A couple of kickstarters. It's the first one. It's fun. So, basically, treasure chests and things.

So when your party encounters a treasure chest or treasure hidden in some way this is a whole bunch of different sort of strong boxes chests things like that challenged from first to 20th level characters all the way up all different ones different tiers and stuff and there's all sorts of different ones in there and they're all basically little puzzles or different ways of you know that you have to get into the treasure so here's an example one of them the sacred strong box.

I don't know if you can read that. It's quite small. No. I can read the strong box. It's quite small. I get the vibe, though. Yeah. So, basically, what we have here, we've got a little section on investigation, so things that you can see in the writing, the weight of it, the sound, if you should tap it, what the tech magic shows, how it feels, what moves and things like that.

And then we've got various ways of opening the thing, so you can solve it by reading the inscription to reveal the cryptic code or whatever you can bypass the lock with these tools or something and it's got a section on traps which traps are in it and how the sound will suppress the trap and different traps for different levels depending on how more nasty you want it to be for those at home what we're looking at has the illustration for

it is not dissimilar to the dice tower in that it is a cylinder and it It has what I would assume are movable bands, which would have different sigils, symbols, which presumably you would line up to unlock the thing. Yeah, it's a combination, not basically that, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, but that does raise questions in my mind about how big it can be. So it's like more of a sacred scroll case, I would have said.

This one is described a gold-plated cylinder, two feet long and 10 inches in diameter. Two feet long, 10 inches. Okay, so bulky and heavy, but yeah, you could move it. Keep your gems and your jewelry in there. I like this concept because it's fun for gameplay. Like, it makes it a bit more interesting. instead of saying the rogue, send him in, do a lockpick check or something.

But also, it makes sense thematically, because if I was trying to keep sticky-fingered adventurers away from my stuff, I would want to put it in something difficult. So I like this. This works mechanically and thematically. It's a better thought. Yeah, I like it. It's a good concept. Yeah. I hope they do well. Well, yeah. Well, the next thing we got is Osric.

Osric 3. 3rd edition so osric was launched in 2006 and it was like the first big retro clone it kind of was like you know it's very very early in the osr yeah i don't know whether it's the first one but if it's not it's right there at the beginning it's a clone of first edition adnd this is the third edition of it and they've rewritten and reorganized it again this is by mythbeard games it's doing very well on kickstarter it's got about 150 000 so far with uh nearly three

weeks yet to go it's doing very well yeah so also it stands for old school reference and index compilation cool and i remember picking up a copy at gen con in 2006 right when i used to go to drink on that looks cool i mean if you're looking for this sort of thing you want that old school vibe. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. How did you get a place? Sorry? How did it play? I haven't played it, but I assume it plays exactly like AD&D Plus Edition.

Yeah, he's only had it 20 years. It'd be a clone. Calm down. How's it going to make you way to the top? It being a clone of AD&D Plus Edition, I assume it plays just like that. I would imagine. No, no. I don't know. Yeah. You get a player guide, you get a GM guide, you get three adventures, you get a GM screen, you get VTT resources. Oh, wow. You get a whole bunch of stuff there. Oh, bunch of stuff. That's pretty cool. Nice, thanks for sharing. Yeah, looks good.

Yeah, I'll have to look at the original, actually. Here's the, that's the original one. Oh, okay, yep. Back in 2000 and 2006. I can see the artwork is sympathetic to that style and does harken back to it. Like, also it's obviously slightly, it is different, but it's, it feels in that same genre. Hmm. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Osric's first edition had a picture of a dragon over a ruin with some people looking at it. It wasn't hugely distinct.

Osric's first edition, you've got a black box with a Dungeons & Dragons style slashed up in the left corner. Is that a red dragon breathing fire? Yeah, a red dragon breathing fire. A couple of people in the background and in the foreground, there's a party of adventurers overlooking the scene, I guess. Yeah, it's just a reminder that first edition you need to have a lot more people. So it's like, I don't know, 10 tunes on that page?

Eight. Eight. Okay. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. I see 10. Nine, 10. Oh, okay. I see 11, actually. There's one climbing the pillar. I keep finding more. What a fun game. What a fun game this is. There you go. Count the tunes. Absolutely. Yeah. But the artwork is very...

Yeah but that's what you want if you're going for an old school nostalgia product i would want i would want the artwork to lean into that because i'm i'm getting this for that reason that's i know what i'm getting i know what i want that's what you want to get an old car and do it all out in plastic so you wouldn't have shiny well-drawn pictures you want that sort of like vaguely amateur style to it yeah right do you remember.

I remembered last year's gen con this is what was it a year ago yeah was it last year's gen con 2023 actually no two years ago oh really okay so a pair of thieves stole about 300 grand's worth of trading card game stuff. Magic the Dathering stuff from Wizards of the Coast at Gen Con. Whilst in branded company t-shirts. Yeah, they just walked out with it while wearing very clearly branded company t-shirts and, you know, there you go. That's them just walking out with them on a trolley.

They did wear sunglasses, though, to disguise themselves, but I think that disguised self was like not a natural 20. You know, if they haven't been wearing the branded T-shirts, maybe they might slug off all over it. I think possibly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they got identified very quickly. Yes. Yes. They've gone to court and stuff. One of the two has been sentenced. The other one hasn't. Wow. Okay. The sentence involves paying a hefty sum to Wizards of the Coast. Yeah. $27,000.

Plus presumably returning the $300,000 with the cards. Yeah, I sort of assumed that they've got those back away. Yeah, yeah. And writing a heartfelt letter of apology to the Gen Con community. I love it when judges make people do stuff like this. It feels like gentle parenting. Like, now you need to say sorry for what you did. I love that. Yeah. There's also a community service, 40 hours of community service. Yeah, I assume there's other legal, relevant things.

I assume the other one will probably get a similar sentence since they basically did the same thing together. One would hope. I would imagine so. Yeah. So that happened. Yeah. It's nice to catch up on these old news stories because it was quite a shocker at the time when people were like reeling off with 300,000. Because those trade halls are, before the conventions, they are very busy places. There's a lot going on. There's people shouting at you for not wearing high beers.

There's like managers trying to de-escalate situations there are if you're a geek like me boxes of treasure literally everywhere so many books, it's very exciting and there's nothing quite like it, I can imagine it would be so easy to do.

Just walking off with it because there are people literally carrying cardboard boxes everywhere yeah and like oh my pallet trucks here there everywhere it's like i suppose it depends on the size of you because if it was us if we were setting up our stand and someone just came along with a pallet truck and try to load a bunch of boxes books of our pilots and walk off we'd be like no stop right now because there's only like a tiny there's only a tiny tiny handful of us so maybe like we

don't yeah we only have one pallet's worth of stuff with us if you're at the coast you probably like have a few couple hundred people very terrible oh absolutely yeah a team of 20 people at your stand someone comes up with their hyphies jacket and just loads of stuff onto a pallet truck and not to teach people how to steal but a lot of warehouse companies do warehousing for lots of brands and they come in the morning and put the games for everybody

on their stands for them to come and collect so there's probably a few hours in the morning where people that have set up their stand aren't there but all the books that have been delivered are, so it's like the convention equivalent of getting a parcel and leaving it outside your front door, And that's how you steal from a convention. Thanks, Jessica. Don't wear a branded company t-shirt when you do it, though. Now Jessica's going to be co-named as a conspirator.

Yeah. Jessica told me how to do it. Anyway, what else have we got in the news? What else have we got in the news?

Okay, so we've got a couple of our bits to cover, a couple of bits to finish off with.

But um peter before then you have put on the running order something about foundry creator talking about ai oh yeah there's article from pcgamer.com the uh person who created boundary the virtual tabletop has come out very firmly against using ai to make rpgs uh whereas chris Cox has said that the 30 people he plays D&D with are all completely four using AI, which is a statement that has long baffled Chris Cox being the CEO of Hasbro.

Yeah, and former formerly president of Wizards of the Ghost.

Indeed. While he's come out saying that and so forth, instead, just trying to find the names, chap's name here uh do do do do do, uh Clayton what hmm Andrew Clayton sorry he's doing that yes a guy called Clayton yeah founder of Foundry yeah yeah so founder of Foundry which is this virtual tabletop Foundry does allow AI created stuff on it but, Clayton is extremely hardline and is like no we're just not going to we are not going to use or implement AI in foundry but they're not stopping people

from using ai in foundry if that makes sense.

Does he say why uh why they're not stopping very much no the other thing why they're not stopping people uh maybe it's the how do you police that situation the resources to do that would be well according to clayton he says that the key difference is like whilst you know and, it's it's obviously a bit rude or possibly compliment it depends it's it's not but it's not really been very significant is uh players will go online will get an image from anywhere i

mean to be fair too much i might have done this myself i've got an image from anywhere and use it and use that as a picture for their avatar in a home game it's not seen by anyone else and it's just like you know it's basically using somebody else's work but like in a very small setting so you know it's like it's not, not great but it's not like the worst thing in the world whereas for him, people using AI are supporting tools that are actively making money off scraping

the internet using actual real human work without consent and often charging for it as well, but yeah and to him that's a bridge too far apparently fair enough. Right right right we've got a couple of kickstarters from Ian Publishing to mention. I know. Seems very exciting. Yes.

So this one launched on Tuesday. It is Into the Woods, a new species, eerie monsters, and haunted villains. You saw a cover book, compatible with D&D 14 and 24. I like the little cute, dryad-y slash elf plant person that you have on the front. You wait till you see us at UK Games Expo then, because we've got a standee that you can put your face through and have pictures taken. Oh, that's going to be amazing. So YouTube would be super cute. It's slightly green. Oh, that's amazing, yeah.

Yes. And obviously using DriveThru RPG, I think, to distribute. Is that right? Yes, yeah. There'll be no tariffs, because if you're in the US, it gets printed in the US. If you're outside the US, it gets printed outside the US. So... You don't have to worry about Taris at all. This includes the new nymph character species with the earth, nymph, forest, nymph, and water nymph varieties. It's got new feats. It's got a whole bunch of new monsters and a new villain called Klyssa the Spirit Fae. Yep.

So this is on Kickstarter now. We'll put a link in the show notes. You can go and pick it up right now. Please do. It's our last Kickstarter until... What's the next slightly bigger thing we're doing? Yes. Yeah. Because also coming up, we have got Pets and Sidekicks, previously called the Companions Compendium, now called Pets and Sidekicks. And this is a guide to, well, what it says on the tin, really, pets and companions in your D&D games, your level up A5B games.

Indeed. Yeah. So it's got dozens, well, dozens, many, many, many, many sample pets and sidekicks you can have they can level up with you so you don't just get your your pet first level and then by the time the fifth level is useless it levels up with you and there are rules for customizing them and giving them different tricks and abilities and features, there's a whole bunch of player options archetypes for all the different classes feats all sorts of things special magical items all related

to having pets sidekicks and these also for enemies as well or foes so you could have a recurring foe that levels up with you as well yeah so say you raid a vote a kobold camp in first level and then at third level one of them comes back for revenge and then at sixth level does so again and is leveling up with you which is kind of fun. This is an image of a character with a Pegasus sidekick companion.

This is some of the fun little cards that Francita's been making, which we'll be putting out on social media. Little Adopt Me cards for different types of pets and sidekicks that you can get. So we've got Sam there, who's a skeleton, an easygoing skeleton that loves playing fetch and bashing skulls with his mace. Adorable. Reginald, a little dog who likes belly rubs and keeping watch at night to protect the party.

Aw, little bloodhound there. Very cute. And then we've got Dorothy, a happy-go-lucky baby unicorn that loves to get her hair brushed and gets sugar cubes as treats. Absolutely. A variety of companions and pets. They're not all cute, by the way. We have got some fierce and horrible ones as well. Don't worry. Well, one was a skeleton there that likes to bash people with their mace. True. I mean, cute is an eye of the holder, I will say.

He's smiling. Yeah. Michael Shannon says, will this all be usable with Void Run as well? It's the same game system, so yes, thematically. It's all kind of fantasy-esque, but there's no reason you can't have a skeleton or a dog in Void Runners. In fact, why wouldn't you have a dog in Void Runners? You should have a dog in every game you play. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, yes, the rules will work with Void Runners.

There is a dog in Baldur's Gate 3, Russ, and we didn't get quite enough time to play to get to that, but we were close to it. Oh, well. So close. Oh, well. That's his life. Just saying. Anyway, I think we're pretty much at the end end of the show yes.

So don't forget that on Friday the May 30th we will be at UK Games Expo recording the show live in the Dice Room at 2pm please come and join us if you're there yes, bring a sandwich if you like you can sit there and have your lunch you don't even have to face us you don't even have to acknowledge us just be in the same room so we can count you as an audience man that'll be fine yes okay but don't don't throw things at Russ he finds that very threatening yeah depends what you throw,

pencils. Don't throw pencils at me. Die. You can throw £10 notes at me. You might have to turn them into paper aeroplanes first. Yeah, maybe. You're welcome to do that. Also, you can... Not £5 notes, though. It's just not worth it for £5 notes, but £10 notes, yeah. Also, at the UK Games Expo, I am running a game of Level Up, and I still have two seats available, and that's on the Saturday evening. So the link to book onto that if you'd like to come and play Level Up with me.

It always looks like it says UK game sexpo to me. Well, that's something to speak to your therapist about. That's something for you to chat about in therapy, Russ. Unfortunate URLs. Certainly, if you look for DeviantArt or any Museum of Art website, then you will find a way to definitely read those in a different fashion from what they intended. So that's the problem with lack of capitalisation.

All right i think we're done should we leave on that night yeah it's a lovely lovely sunny day we've got a weekend i'm apparently going to be at a eurovision party tomorrow night sorry oh okay well fair enough well when i say at it it's going to be at me, Sharon's hosting one and i unfortunately leave it i see. Oh, well. Indeed. And they're going to be dressing up in frocks and waving little flags around. Frock. Oh, what a retro term. I haven't known the word frock for a while.

And drinking cocktails. And they've got cupcakes with all the different country flags on them and things. Frock. What fun. All right. We'll leave you to frolic with your frock this weekend. Frolic. I will not be wearing a frock. just to clarify sorry to disappoint I will not be wearing a frog that's your choice it is my choice that is my choice okay goodbye let's go, goodbye everyone see you next week bye bye. Music.