351 | It's Raining D&D Video Games, Superpowered Kids (On Bikes), New Starfinder Stuff, Musketeers vs. Cthulhu

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

I am Russ, a.k.a. Morris, or Morris, a.k.a. Russ, and with me this week is... PJ Coppy from the South Hunter Guild of Rocklers, also from Homebrew and Hacking, TTRPG Design.

Joining us also we have fresh from the coalfields the salt face the mines of working deep deep deep within the bowels of em publishing it's the one it's young it is it's me jessica from em publishing and i thought that coal mining reference was a welsh heritage reference but but no no it's just the coal face of em publishing it has many layers it has yeah much like a mine as do the bowels of Ian Publishing. I don't want to think about Ian Publishing's bowels, correct, thank you.

That's why you pay me to do that, Russ. So you don't have to. I mean, you're high to an advantage in this case. I mean, you're going to get it on the ceiling. There's a lot of sheets of paper in the bowels of Ian Publishing. You can also get lots of salt from mines as well. There you go. That is true, yeah. It can be salty at times as well. But yeah. Right, right, right. Let's talk about Russ's salty bowels. Let's move on.

Let's talk about some news. Okay. I want to talk about video games, because we all know that I am the world's greatest video game fan, and I play many, many, many, many, many video games, and I know all of the video games. I know everything about video games. I'm an expert at all of them. Yeah, absolutely. I'm guessing there's video games that have a tie-in to Dungeons and or Dragons, much like Baldur's Gate 3, the game that I don't talk very much about.

You've never mentioned it, Jess. You are famously Ritussian on the subject. Yeah. Correct. I always assumed you just didn't like the game. I mean, I try so often. I can't even extend the joke to agree with you on that, because it's just because of your own. Yeah. Yeah. Anyone listening to this show for the first time has no idea what we're talking about. We're very sorry. In-jokes are a bad thing. Oh, welcome. I'm Jess, and I really like Baldur's Gate 3. But anyway, what's the news with

video games? Okay. So we mentioned two video games last week, if you recall. There was one as yet unnamed one coming from, what were they called? Skull. Giant Skull. Giant Skull. And yes. And then there was the Demio one as well, which was the sort of down moving miniatures about video games. More XCOM style. Yeah. So Wizard of the Coast has been talking a little bit about video games.

And they have talked about they did an interview with Corrigan, And they said that they want to make CRPGs, and I quote, that are going to be as serious as BG3. I don't know what serious necessarily means in that sense. Does that mean sort of profitable? Yes. Yeah. I think it was like high level, like quality main, like it's a serious BG game.

Because they also go on to talk about raising the bar, game project so i think it seriously means like it's a quality i am it you know yeah i think it's sort of like a video game that takes itself seriously as opposed to sort of like i mean a bit of a nod and a wink maybe i mean maybe i mean boulder's gate very much has a nod and a wink at one point you can come into a wheel of cheese for being too sassy like this game has silly moments in it but then it has really serious

themes in it as well like there's one character who has like plot themes that have like about abusive kind of relationships and has a lot of narratives about that and there's it's you know somebody that knows they're gonna die before the end of it so they're dealing with so that has really strong themes in so as well so i guess in that aspect it can be very serious as well when i paid boldest kick to read that i die before

the end of it we did right and we have still to return yeah anyway but less about that let's talk about So what was the co saying about future projects like this? Yeah, well, so they haven't named any other than those two that we know about. So the one from Giant Skull, which is as yet unnamed, but is some kind of action-adventure game, single-player action-adventure game, apparently. And the other one, which is a multiplayer tactical skirmishy kind of dungeon call-y thing.

Yeah. Is that the right terminology? Yeah, I know what you're saying. You got the vibe. Yeah. Yeah. This one from Giant Skull isn't going to be like turn-based. It's going to be different mechanics. It's going to be more like first-person sort of style. Yeah. Like God of War and things like that. Yeah, yeah. Well, the Wizard of the Coast did say they want to make sure any future D&D game has to be an accurate representation of the franchise. Mm-hmm.

So, I mean, obviously they don't necessarily mean in terms of rules because that Demio one does not use... Is it Demio or Demio? Demio. Yeah. Demio.

They're using cards and stuff which is not yeah yeah so i guess they mean like the intellectual property so the law questions then spring to mind because there's a lot of ip associated with these things a lot of law when you say yes there is there is i mean i guess that might slow down game production because they're going to have to get everything checked because if wizards are like we really need to make sure things are correct every

time they do something they're going to have to send it to review for the license and someone's going to have to go through it with a fine code. That's standard licensing procedure, though, isn't it? I mean... I guess. With Baldur's Gate 3, they had a team dedicated to it, didn't they? Yeah. That was working with Larian on that game to make sure it all was.

When they say for this one, or these upcoming ones, whatever they are, it's really important that any manifestation of D&D creatures in a game be as good as what's in our own minds. That's a hard sell, though. That's like saying, I want the movie to be as good as the book. Yeah. Which is a really unfair... Yeah. Well, I'm a blasphemer because I think Lord of the Rings movies are better than the book. Yeah.

Well i mean i'm sure it can be but like the issue with and i think tabletop games are the same thing when i sit down with my friends to play tabletop game we entirely customize it to what we want it to be and it's you know it's a lot of parts in our minds so it's everything we want so putting that expectation on a game is unfair because the game is going to be played by hopefully millions of people and millions of people aren't going to have the same idea of what good is

or what you know the same vision of a concept so but yeah yeah well that's not the only video game news we've got some news about slaster 2 i still haven't played the demo of that even though it is available i haven't either that's really good i enjoyed it no it's still massive news they've just confirmed that they are definitely switching to the 2024 dnd rule set which i guess is something that everyone expected anyway, but they've just officially said that is what's happening.

Yeah, I mean, it's not like a big, huge amount of changes. It's fundamentally a very similar game, even if it is quite a new edition in my respects. Yes, if only there was some kind of conversion document.

But wait, there is. But we'll get on to that in a second. One thing I found interesting about the Solastro update, when they made the announcement, they have a section on it saying, 2014 2024 what are you talking about so acknowledge that people like us and you dear listener listening to this podcast perhaps aren't as nerdy and realize that the rules have changed and what that means so there's an interesting paragraph where they were explaining

what the difference is between the two and what that is which is interesting because it's not clear because they haven't called it a different edition people who only play the video game someone who just picked up silashto because it looked like a cool game and played it. Yeah. They do it first. Yeah? Yeah. For sure. There are people who are like, oh, oh, I do not understand this game at all. Well, there are certainly people that played Baldur's Gate that have never played the tabletop game.

So it would not surprise me if the same, on a smaller scale, wasn't true for Celeste. Comparing like with like, the difference in budgets is not insignificant. Like, a couple of orders of magnitude.

Yeah. I don't want that criticism, just an observation. but Wizards of the Coast were very adamant it wasn't a new version but the team behind Zelastor have said Wizards of the Coast released a new version of D&D so they have said it is uh which I found funny no they didn't use the word edition though see that's that that's the word you're not allowed to say oh okay version is the thing version yeah not edition all right fair enough depends what language you're

used to speak you're speaking computer games then they are saying it's a new version, which is, as well as being in standard edition. Yeah, V1.2, yeah, very normal. Someone said there was a new version of my car. I would assume that it's not the same car, is it? It's a, oh, whatever. We've had this conversation so many times. Yeah, sorry. Is it an additional conversation? Although we'd expect it to be fundamentally the same car, if it's the same model.

Yes, model. Just maybe it has different colours, or this one comes with cup holders. A different colour. Oh. Yeah. Not like BMW 1 Series where you have to pay extra for them.

Exactly. I don't know. okay and i'll admit my my commentary on this is going to be limited because i don't know anything about cars so i was like they come in different colors they have cup holders and then i'm out you know i almost regret mentioning cars now let's move on um there's one more bit of video okay sorry yeah okay so we're moving on from celesta what else this is about never winter nights 2 again something i haven't played but so many people i know have played it and really enjoyed

it so i think i think it's something i need to take a look at well i mean it's quite good it's just neverwinter nights one is better oh i'm much better neverwinter nights one really.

Um yes i actually got quite addicted to neverwinter nights one properly like you and borders gate three was me and neverwinter nights one i can't believe i didn't play through a single player story though that bored the hell out of me, I did all the world building and stuff with the tool set and then shared it online and people came in and played my adventures well I DM'd it because you could DM them live and drop features in a control so you used it like a VTT, really in a way kind of yeah,

VTT sort of thing kind of but there's a very much you have to stick more closely to the previous scenario the Yeah, the first tool set, the first one tool set was really good. And the second one was just so fiddly that I never got into it. Oh, okay. Well, but anyway, the news. But what is the news? I mean, the way it notes to whose existence isn't news, it's a very old game. No, yeah, as I say. So, it's coming to an enhanced edition.

It's coming out on July the 15th. Oh, okay. On both PC and consoles. Hmm. Yeah. Lots of DLC packs as well as console controls.

Steam workshop whatever that is visual enhancements full cross play for up to four players, all sorts of stuff so july the 15th that is oh okay fair enough so i'm quite interested in that, i don't know whether all this sort of because we used to like run have persistent worlds you could rent a server for something like a five or a month you could create your environment your world and you could upload it to that server and it would just run 24-7.

So people could drop in and out of the server and it would be persistent and anything that happened in it, obviously it remembered. Yeah. A bit like a MMORPG. I just managed to mess up a MMORPG. MMORPG. But before they were more popular, so there you go. Yeah. I suppose it is. Yeah, it was a MMORPG, wasn't it? A self-hosted MMORPG.

I guess there's more online rather massively so I guess that's the story of Warcraft and all that, well the number of people you could have playing in your world at any one time depended on the power of your server basically so you tended to have up to 16, but if you forked out enough money and you got something really beefy you could have up to 64 or whatever, wow I don't have that many friends though, Apparently, someone did a study, and wasn't it like people can only have up

to 150 friends or something? Their brain can only cope with that. I was like, who knows 150 friends? I think it's not friends. It's people that you have in your community that you can keep up to date with what they're doing and things like that. I think in terms of close friends, it was only like 12 or something like that. Oh, God.

The monkey sphere is the term sometimes used which is the number of other monkeys or apes I suppose to be technically correct that we can keep track of well the number of people that I can keep track of in my head is less than one and I'm including myself.

There's 150 it's just a kind of pie in the sky thing for me yeah anyway, okay so that's the video game news it's interesting that wizards is investing in video games a lot and the digital side of things i think they had a lot of people that came from digital backgrounds that are at hasbro so i'm wondering if that's just part of the original plan just getting that in the cycle so we're going to see the fruits of that labor from a few years ago because i did talk

about that when those people joined. Yeah. I mean, part of it's licensing, isn't it? And part of it's done in-house. Yeah. I couldn't tell you which was which. I mean, that Demio one's obviously licensed and the Giants Gold one is obviously licensed. Neverwinter Nights 2 is licensed. Celasta 2 is licensed via the open gaming license. Yeah. I think they have a slightly different way of doing it, but I think the open gaming license was pretty key.

That's what they used for the first one. Are they using it for the second one? Oh, that's what I don't know. I haven't seen. I know it was quite exciting. I think it's quite tricky because computer games and books are regarded as a bit tricky in Sephiroth. I don't know whether they've got the same short deal or what's going on, to be honest. I imagine it's okay with Hasbro. They've got some sort of something in writing, otherwise they wouldn't be risking

the money on it. from Tactical Adventures. But I very much enjoyed the first Slaster. This second one is very pretty, so looking forward to it. I might try and give this one. And the modding community is extremely prolific. There's a lot of different mods and there's a lot of different adventures that are available. If I didn't play Baldur's Gate 3, I'm probably not going to play Slaster, am I? Let's be real. You played Baldur's Gate 3 and we're going to play it again because you said

you were on this very podcast. We just need to find, we just need to organize the time. It's something that you can be binding now. Yes. Sorry. All right. Is it a new edition? Is D&D 5.5? Is 2024 a new edition? I thought we weren't opening up that kind of worm discussion. But Wizard of the Coast had put this document out. A conversion document? A conversion document. Visual from Wizard of the Coast, converting to system reference document 5.2.1.

It's mainly for developers and for publishers and people who play things on DMs Guild and stuff like that on how to basically update your stuff. If you wanted to go back to your old stuff and update it to the 2024 rules, there's this conversion document, and it's like 15 pages long. It's not a short document. And what am I telling you? It's just a big old list of changes.

It is useful, though, because it does really nicely summarise a lot of the changes, and you can just command F if you're like, I want to make sure all my feats are correct, there's a section on that so as a developer tool, They just tell you about the changes, so it's 15 pages but only in the sense that it will say the following class features are revised and then it will list those class features and the following options and it will list the following spells are revised.

So it's not a document It contains the new content in any way.

No, you'd use that with the new SRD. So this is just a summary of the list of the things, so you'd know you need to check those things and go cross-reference. Yeah, yeah. So it's pretty interesting. I've already learned something pretty key about it. Oh, that's not. Well, the rest has kind of thrown up the converting system reference document 5.21, and then the planer game has got D20 tests and heroic inspiration.

So as people familiar with dnd will know there are only three tests you make three d20 roles you make in dnd and a5b which are ability checks attack roles and saving throws and they're working exactly the same way here you would use the term d20 test if whatever feature or trait you were using applied to all three of them rather than just a single one which i quite like We talked about that all throughout the playtest documents, though, because all the playtest documents said that.

Yeah, but it's nice to see it's spelt out because it's a D20 test, and that's when you precisely use it. Also, Heroic Inspiration being a re-roll rather than granting you advantage, that is something that I haven't seen before. I think that's a common household, that one. Well, Baldur's Gate 3 has made it de facto actual. Yeah. Because people just got to play it that way, and people were playing it that way. I'm like, fine.

If Wizards of the Coast can't be bothered defending it, I mean, opening a can of worms in the chat, Sean Jay has said, anything that needs a conversion guide is a new edition. So, there you go. We didn't say it. I have said all along that it's a new edition. Somebody else said, did they produce a conversion document between 3.5e and 5e? Did they do that? No, that'd be too much of a conversion. It's so different. and why didn't they? Yeah.

Maybe they did. I can't remember. Maybe they did. I shouldn't try and answer that question without knowing the answer. I don't know. The answer to your question, Ry vs. Weld, is we don't know. Stay informed of the latest TTRP news. It's not the latest TTRP news, is it? Yeah, I mean, 4th edition were, what, 2000 years ago? So, yeah. We're 11 now for 5th edition. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But they're good. That's a useful tool. I like a list, a to-do list, and that's what that is. You like a list?

I do. You enjoy a list? I do. See, I use it for work as well. This is my to-do list of all the things I do this week. Yes. Right. It's a quest board, and I write down what I'm going to do each day, and I cross it off as I do it for fun. Do you get Godfrey to wear a long cloak and sit in a shadowy corner of your house with an exclamation mark of his head? I don't, no. But, you know, that's the thing I could do. And I could get Django to do that as well.

That's a costume you could do, though, isn't it? You could go around with an exclamation mark above your head. Probably people do, don't they? I think people have at events. That actually could be... I'm looking for a day three costume. I'm going to the Fantasy Forest. It's like a Renaissance fair in the UK. And I've got two days of costumes, but I'm not sure my costume's going to be for day three. So that could, I could just be a quest giver.

An NPC quest giver? Yeah. Just in generic medieval clothes. And I could have bits of paper I can hand out to people to get them to do things. I might do that. You've got to have just like eight lines that people, that you can say, which people can access. And sometimes you just repeat the same lines. That could be good for the last day when I'm very tired and have very little social bandwidth left. All right. A scavenger hunt for people. There you go.

That's what I'm going to do. All right, done. All right. Anyway, back to the news. All right. More stuff on D&D Beyond. We've got the Gunslinger class from an Agehand Press. Oh, I like this. We had a Gunslinger class, Keep Your Powder Dry, 5e, which we have. So that's a similar vibe, I guess.

Yes, yeah. I think there's been a few, actually. but this one comes from Valdar's Spire of Secrets but it's just the gunslinger class out of this so Maytown Press produced the book Valdar's Spire of Secrets which is quite light-hearted it's quite a light-hearted take, Um, it's got, it's got things like the, the Paladin's Oath of Revelry and its tenets including here, adhering to the code, Codicus Brodicus. So that kind of tells you the sort of tone that that book has.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. So the Gunslinger class is one of several classes in that book. So the whole book isn't on D&D Beyond, just the, just the Gunslinger class. What is interesting though, is that you, so you get the Gunslinger class and it's six subclasses basically. And, um, I think you get like, um, a handful of spells and feats as well, but it's, it's quite, it's quite a small package, but it costs like $15 on D and D beyond. On D and D and D beyond.

Okay. Whereas the full PDF for major hand press costs under $30 and it's got 10 classes in it. So it's 10 times the size. Right. For like maybe $5 extra. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, so there is some people online complaining a bit about the price. So, you know, if, like, 10 classes cost $30, why am I paying $15 for one class?

I kind of get it, but you're also, you're not just paying for the content, you're also paying for the service of somebody having to turn that into a D&D Beyond thing, which isn't free. Yeah, it's a service. They can, like, charge as much as they want. So, yeah. Lens of choices. Yeah. Do we know anything about it? I assume it's using, like, I don't know, 2G8 revolvers and so forth. It's about critical hits. You have something called a risk dice, which powers some maneuvers.

That's pretty much all I really know about it, to be honest. Because you haven't bought it on D&D Beyond. I haven't bought it, no. I haven't bought it. I have not watched it. But, yeah, it seems to be sort of a crit-heavy kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Excellent. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, I mean, even with the complete anachronism and the anachronistic nature of D&D, like with Renaissance sort of rapiers and so forth, revolvers like, what, 1851, 1871?

It's not going to be a world, though. It's D&D. I know. It's just... It's not a historical documentary. Why would you say that, Russ? It has dragons and wizards in it. So does whales. Fair. Yes, sure. It's about the country, not the animal, Russ. Yeah, I know. That was my disconnect just for a second there. I was thinking whales. That would be so do whales. I don't know. And I was trying to connect. A whale for the queen.

A whale dragon Is a monster that I'm pretty sure Hasn't been tapped Dragon turtles We've not had a whale dragon or a dragon whale Well there we go next In Monstrous Managers 3 Coming in 2027, I'm just identifying Gaps in the market as they are It's up to professional publishers Well there are a lot of third party creators For A5E that could easily make That thing as well You too could make a whale dragon Anyway, we've got something new to talk about.

Should we talk about something actually happening? Yeah, let's talk about Starfinder. Are they a core? Yes. Oh. I love this artwork that you're showing on the streams. Yeah, well. It's like a six, six, it's a gremlin with six arms. That's bright yellow. I would have said that with a tad. Is that a gremlin? I don't know what that is. Yeah, Russ's cat identification skills listeners are not what I would call good. I mean, I can see the resemblance.

There is pointy ears and furry, but the rows of pointy teeth are, they're definitely more in the gremlin style of things. A touch of stick. Well, you know, six arms and white people. I mean, classic cat behaviour, absolutely. Right, you know, fur, and then the hair, which is long and going through rainbow-colored locks. I'm getting a strong sense of fever here. Possibly due to the... Rainbow Brite.

Yes, yeah, Rainbow Brite. We've got like a satin coat, a blue, rara skirt with a touch of like hexagons on, because nothing screams cyberpunk, together with a rather charming ribbon sash, a rainbow-coloured necklace, and like a little star. I'm going to say crop top. I have no evidence to believe it's crop top, but, That's what my spidey senses tell me. Yes. Bron Mokwai. Bron Mokwai. That's why he versus the world in the chat that says, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, the reason that I threw this picture up is because Starfinder Player Core is basically the player's handbook of Starfinder, the new player's handbook of Starfinder. So it brings it all up to second edition rules for Starfinder. So in this book we've got 10 new species and we've got 6 new classes plus a whole load of skills, feats, equipment, spells all that stuff.

So this is the core stuff it's not like an add-on this is what the player starts with what are we looking at in this idol of a creation.

So I don't know what one that is but this is really one of the ancestries so the ancestries we've got an android which is obvious what that is a Barathu which is a floating blink-like entity that can merge with other creatures probably not that a human, human human, I don't know what that is I guess that sounds more like a character name or something yeah maybe Kasatha.

They have four arms always cover their nose and mouth in public and sometimes carry puzzle blades a weapon that is ritualistically assembled every day which is interesting we've got Lashanta psychic humanoids we've got Catra which are cat people, skittermanders oh here we go skittermanders that is what that image was is a skittermander energetic six armed people with colourful, okay yeah that is a skittermander yes I would expect something a bit more reptilian

but alright fair enough no that's a skittermander we also have the vesk which are basically big kind of lizard people we have the yosoki y-s-o-k-l-i isoki, yoki, isoki, isoki, rat people. We have the borai, which are undead souls attached to living bodies. And then we have the prismeni, which are called drift angels, native to hyperspace.

Okay. Cool. So that's all then. One thing I like about this, book, and I'm going to have to share a window on the computer to do this it is oh that's the next news action huh?

There we go so it is one of the skittermanders and it's on the screen it's a blue one of those and it has a little captain hat and a jacket and he is called Captain Concierge and he is the friendly virtual intelligence guide to the player call that talks you through how it works and I'm not I said this before we started streaming, but not to be dramatic, but I would die for Captain Concierge. Look how adorable he is. He's just so happy to help. He is cheerful. He, I, yeah.

I love him a lot. And I just wanted to share that on the stream with everybody. I accept that you love him a lot. Just look at him! I do not love him. He's quite like Stingy Chums and a hat. It's his expression. The artist did a wonderful job of bringing that character to life.

It's basically if a baby had more arms and was furrier, then it's got that same truncated body, huge head, big gurgly happy mouth there you go and I as Grant has said they love a recurring character and a player guy I too love that we did that in the Plainstriders journal we had a captain, Captain Cobalt was like talking you through the book and which we'll talk about later in Pets and Sidekicks we also have a similar sort of thing going on,

okay we should have to hear about the classes in Starfinder player core if you say them in the voice of Captain Concierge. Oh, Captain Concierge. I don't know what Captain Concierge sounds like. How can I do that? Coincidentally, apparently, he sounds exactly like me. Oh, I love him less. Okay. I've got my off-ins. Okay, so the classes we have got are... Would you be really disappointed if you met Captain Concierge and he sounded like me? Yeah. I don't know. Pretty gutted, to be honest.

Yeah. Harsh. Well, I mean, I think I'd expect him to talk a lot more like a sailor. Like, yeah, mateys. That is exactly how sailors talk. In my mind, he sounds a bit like Stitch, and I don't know if it's just the blue fluffy thing. That's how I want him to sound. Anyway, glasses, glasses, glasses, glasses. The Classes. The Classes. We've got the Envoy. Let's focus. Oh, we're professionals here. We've got the Envoy, which is the face man. Yes.

We've got the Mystic, which is the healer and spellcaster. Okay. We've got the Operative, which is the Svelte and Infiltrator. Look at Sniper. We've got the Solarian, which uses powers of gravity and light and solar weapons. Close quarters fighter, and it's very dex mobility-based. A bit Jedi-y, maybe. Yeah. I think. We've got the soldier who shoots things. Yeah, I know what that one is. Yeah. The witch warper. Ooh.

Which is Dr. Strange. Which is? Dr. Strange manifests the infinite possibilities of the multiverse in your current reality. Well, there you go. So that's the classes. And we did mention recently there were two classes in playtest, the tech playtest. You mentioned that like two weeks ago or three weeks ago or something with the Mechanics and the Technomancer classes. Yes. I think those are still up, so people can still... Oh, no, it's just finished. It finished on May the 30th. Yeah,

you missed it. Giving feedback about it. All right. Yeah. Anyway, that is the Starfinder PlayerCore for those interested in some things. Cool. I mean, I am interested in that. I like that it is compatible with Pathfinder, so you can completely genre mash, and it means that if you're used to playing Pathfinder, trying a new genre moving to Starfinder isn't, you know, a big leap. So, yeah. Yeah. It's certainly quite a fantasy style of sci-fi.

Yeah, yeah, Starfinder's always been kind of like Magitech and the two things gliding there, haven't they? Yeah. Yeah, magic definitely exists in the Starfinder world. Yeah, makes me slightly as excited for it. Well, I think it's good, because that left us room to have our Void Runner, which is sci-fi in the more traditional sci-fi. I mean, not sci-fi, obviously, space opera, but, you know. So I'm quite looking forward to getting my Void Runner's codex.

Soon. Very, very soon. Very soon. Yeah, we've finished. Manufacturing is going to finish in the next few weeks, so we're booking boats for July so they will start their perilous journeys across the sea so you'll likely have them in your greasy pause August or September time. Each Boyd Runner's Codesk has its own little boat that will sail. They're so heavy. Then we push it out and it sails across the Atlantic to America.

I'm having serious discussions about how we protect the box in transit because they are so heavy. It's the kind of thing that easily gets damaged. Lots of bubble wrap I guess. Well, I was going to talk to you about that after the stream, Russ, about our options. Yeah. I mean, if you're going to send something from China to America, you should probably use the Pacific rather than the Atlantic. Don't let me tell you how to do business. No, yeah. I forgot that it was coming

from China. I was just assuming we were sending it from here. Oh, yeah. Which we're not doing. We are, in fact, sending it from China. You're correct. Okay. Anyway. Anyway. Anyway, anyway, anyway.

Anyway. Let us now talk a little bit about Call of Cthulhu and 1980s Japan. Tommy. Yeah. Yeah, so 1980s Japan was basically, the Uzo were big and everything was neon. And 1980s Japan was really big. Possibly, that's a cartoon, I believe. I think Call of Cthulhu is the biggest TTRPG in Japan as well. That's not Dungeons & Dragons there. People would say Dungeons & Dragons is like a fantasy version of Call of Cthulhu. That's how they would refer to it. Yeah, Call of Cthulhu is the biggest.

So in Japan, the sort of legend of the King in Yellow, which is one of Lovecraft's inspirations for his mythos, in Japan, the King in Yellow is called the Prince of Pale Leaves. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I'm sorry to say it in Japanese, obviously. But the Prince of Pale Leaves, yes. So the King in Yellow was originally a bunch of short stories by Robert W. Chambers, who inspired a lot of Lovecraft's stuff. Yeah.

Part of a contributor to the MIPOS, because Lovecraft was doing one of the first multi- player, multi-writer, shared universes, which has had lots of inspiration. And just for those listening at Hangar Us, there's put up quite a striking cover, which I'm really enjoying looking at.

It says the sutra of pale leaves twinsons rising we have what looks like a double eclipse in the top left hand corner there's a road figure with no face but walking around through, yeah it looks like a mask to me well it is Cthulhu so it could be it could be a mask it could be a person without a face I don't know yeah it might be a mask yeah if it was a mask it would be in the Beijing opera style because it's got

like the eye holes and nothing else but there's no Yeah, and it's just like otherwise a. Plain, like an Android perhaps, a plain surface. And it looks like maybe there's something going on in the background, can't quite see but there's definitely the, the downtown aspect of, say, Tokyo, with multi-story buildings, with large neon-lit billboards rising at the back. Yeah. It's a striking cover. And what is that sort of like the yellow square with the multiple blobs in?

I think maybe that's a calling card for the king in yellow because he's called the king, was he called the king of... Yeah, so maybe that is the symbol for the Prince of Pale Leaves because it's kind of always swirly leaves on a yellow background. So maybe that's there. Well, so this supplement takes you to Japan in the 1980s. It's for Call of Cthulhu. Yahushu gangs are thriving. The traditional world is at war with the modern world.

So ancient creeds, gods and spirits are all trying to keep their toehold in the world and they're kind of fighting against capitalism and technology and stuff like that. Aren't we all? Yeah. And the king in yellow, or the prince of pale leaves, is here to help. Oh, okay. Um. What? No, carry on. I've just made a noise. Carry on. Those who cry out to him lose their minds and souls, but it will be far worse for the rest of us. Apparently.

And that's helpful. A comprehensive guide to the Sutra of Pale Leaves itself, cults associated with the Yellow King, and a bunch of new mitos monsters for use in any Call of Cthulhu game. Plus three adventures, linked adventures, which you can play through, which take you across a variety of places across 1980s Japan. I think that actually does that. I actually want to play that. That looks quite cool.

Yeah, I think you'd do a good job running that as well. That's just cool. I like the look of that.

I would. Yeah. that i'm pretty interested i mean although 80s japan is about 40 years ago hey well yeah it's you know but renaissance europe was a lot longer than 40 years ago we played dnds i do i do like um playing horror and freaky things like that in the 80s before mobile phones because it makes horrors it makes it so much easier to cut people off instantly yes you know to come up with a random reason why your mobile phone

doesn't work yeah exactly so yeah it's easier to cut people off and so that they have to physically go to a location to get information. So it makes investigation games like Cthulhu a bit more interesting. It's like the preponderance of sightings of Bigfoots and UFOs just really dropped off as soon as everyone was carrying a camera in their pocket. Yes. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And it's amazing why after all these photos of Bigfoots and UFOs, there still isn't one that isn't blurry, a single one.

I think that's just how Bigfoot looks. He's just a blurry figure. It's not the camera. It's just he himself is blurry. Well, I will say, by the way, that if you've ever seen a hungry bear, the one that's just fresh from hibernation, it looks very much like a guy in a furry suit. Not the chonky bear that looks so cuddly and yet would be so deadly, but when they're pretty skinny and hungry, if you see them from behind,

you're like, wow, what's that guiding over there? I saw somebody put some pictures up. I was like, oh, yes, I can totally see how you would think that was a person there. Like a big hairy person, but a person on the left. But it's not a bear. Yeah. You don't want to argue with the bear. No. Not recommended. The bear will win. Yes. You know what else would win in a fight? Our next news item. First what? Yeah. For the image for us. There we go. You talked about it before.

Well, we have talked about Mr. Potato Head Beholder before. But this is the difference, Mr. Potato Head Beholder. I want to make it clear. This is not the same Mr. Potato Head Beholder. Dear listener, if you are tired of hearing Mr. Potato Head Beholder, I did have this discussion with Russ before we went live saying, we've talked about this. And he was like, no, no, this is new news. We need to report it. This is a different Mr. Potato Head Beholder.

Tell us about it. The hat does not make it new, all right? It's a new hat. Well, this is the Origins Game Fair exclusive one. Right. so you can only get it at Origins Game Fair this year you can get the regular one as well but you can get this one as well yeah, It's got a different hat, and it's got a smiling face rather than a face, mouth. Oh, is that what he's meant to be doing, smiling? Their teeth. He's supposed to be smiling, yes.

Right. He's got veneers, so it looks a bit unnatural, but you know. Yeah. Got that turkey teeth glow. Well, listen, at home, it's supposed to be a wizard's hat, I guess, but it looks more like if your dog got into the beetroot or something and had a very large purple something, but in plastic. Wow.

What? I don't think a wizard hat that's a nice that is all Russ wanted when we played Baldur's Gate 3 as a hat like that a pointy hat I mean a pointy hat for me would have a point, maybe it's dropped at the back yeah maybe.

Like Gandalf's hat yeah that would be more acceptable I don't know why I've gone hard on defending it is i found a different picture that's the stance i'm apparently taking it's folded back and it points backwards oh okay there you go it's just in redrawn it is it is a pointy hat it's just got a pointy at the end yeah gosh okay yeah there you go anyone use on that or should we move on oh that's the news that's it there's a there's a second there's a second,

i'll contain my fomo at the force of not getting it all right well if you're going to origins you too can pick up that pointy hat Mr. Potato Head beholder. And if you're not, don't fear there is a different variety that you can get. Yeah.

I don't want a Mr. Potato Head beholder. I don't believe you because you talked about, anyway. I don't want one. Well that's your birthday present ruined now. Don't want one. Anyway, we should move on with the next bit of news. Yes. Do you remember Kids on Bikes? I do. A very popular system. There's loads of really good actual plays using it. It's a genre these days, but it was the name of a Rob Lengen. Yeah. There's a variant of it called Kids on, in, even, Kite.

I see. And it's a superhero version. Oh. Oh, that's a nice collector's edition artwork. Looks very kind of like 1960s adventure books, Famous Five style artwork. Yeah. It's like early comic book stuff from 70s, 80s. 80s, I'd say. 80s comic book cover. Yeah, maybe, yeah. You're pretty much right. It puts me in mind of 1960s advertisements for America where they've got, like, it's sort of a pencil drawn and generally you've got, like, a guy in a hat and a suit, that sort of thing.

Or like a housewife is, like, you know, in a little apron is pushing a hoover around, that sort of drawing. So it's like that, but instead we've got a young lady, I suspect, wearing shorts and hair, and she's got a... She's got a cape and she's sitting on a roof. So I'm guessing this is a superhero-themed one where you play young people with superpowers. Well, aspirations have superpowers, yes. Or at least... Well, you do have superpowers. Oh, exactly. This is a superpower game.

It's still teens, it's still kids, young teens. But if you have special powers that you select during the course of play, and basically it's kids on bikes with superheroes. Same system, is it? Oh, that's nice. Coming out in November. Yeah, I do like when you have a system and it does different genres because then it makes it so much easier to get players to the table because they're like, oh, yeah, I get how this works, and it just makes it.

So, oh, I mean, that sounds really cool. Kids on Bikes is really good. I know loads of people enjoy it. There's great actual plays online about it. I'm sure we'll see the same with Kids in Capes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, Kids on Bikes is such a big genre. I think Stranger Things is coming back for another season. I think they're all about 45 now. Yeah, they're all in their mid-20s, but I'm not going to fault someone for aging because you can't really... Currently... How dare they become adults?

Actually, I imagine if you went back to Stranger Things Season 1, I reckon it would be quite shocking to see how young they are. Yeah, I didn't... They were very young. How old were they? 11 or something? Something like that, yeah. They were very, yeah, yeah. I can't remember. It was ages ago. And they've gone like three years between each season anyway, so. Yeah. Yeah. It was 2016 that it came out, strange things. Nine years ago. Yeah.

And they filmed it a year at least before that, so 10 years ago. Yeah. I mean, I remember that was actually I went to Dragon Con, the one in America. And I saw that they had like a rewatch party for something called Strange Things. I was like, oh, that seems interesting. I wonder what that is. And then it popped on my Netflix. I was like, oh, this is quite good. Well, you can watch more Stranger Things later this year. We are a Stranger Things news show. No.

What season is it on? Is it four or five? It must be all now. Pass. I pass also. Yeah. Right. Moving swiftly on. Yes. Let's have a look at this. Musketeers versus Cthulhu. Oh, okay. Doesn't seem very funny, but let's go. All the Cardinals Men by Claudia Christian is a series, I believe a series of novels. And this is based on a series of novels.

And you can yeah so you can play either a musketeer, Or you can play one of the cardinals' network of spies and you get thrust into eldritch plots, courtly intrigues, and epic battles. So basically, we're talking musketeers versus cthulhu. Is this the cubby you've thrown a ball? Uh, yes. Oh, so you cover art. It's the cover art, yes. Yeah. Okay, so what we've got is probably, in the background, but which very much

draws the eye, is a king in an iron mask. which is the sort of thing that gets one attention. Then off to the left is... If you've seen The Three Musketeers or one of the Musketeers films, then you're familiar with that sort of wide-brimmed hat and tabard and holding a flintlock crystal, it looks like. Yes, no actual musket inside, but yeah. There is no musket. There are Musketeers' hands, musket, and indeed sand sword, which is...

They've got one shot, and then it's like down to I don't know it's like being passing the whipping pistol in harsh language I don't know yeah so you've got a king on the throne yeah with a cardinal cardinal, standing next to him yeah behind the throne being the power behind basically, and that looks very much like pictures of cardinal richelieu older white guy with the long hair and that sort of classic curliness at the bottom, of it and we have someone that I'll take a punt at

probably is m'lady uh in that she has a she looks like a bell damn a beautiful lady she's got like a fat white woman long flowing dress which goes down to the floor which is blue with lots a lot of ruffles are going on here you love the also also also with a with a surprisingly large flintlock crystal um so yeah yes that's the cover artwork but somebody we mentioned claudia christian as one of the writers. And somebody asked of Babylon 5 fame.

Yes, one and the same is the American actress, singer and author, who was Commander Susan. I've never. Yes, I was like, you know, Susan from Babylon 5. She's also involved in lots of RPG stuff. Yeah, so she's also featuring writing of this. Ah, doing the voice of Hera on the Netflix series Blood of Zeus as well. Oh, and yeah, she's done many things. That's good. Yeah.

Definitely the best thing in Babylon 5 I can say what have they but yes one and the same well noted good job it's live now on Kickstarter £12 for the PDF £25 for the book. That's from British Pounds, so I don't know. It's the second in the series. So in the first one was focused more on the Musketeers. This is the second one, and it focuses more on sort of the Cardinals network of spies. Ah, yes. And the 18th squad. You can get the original book as well. There's a bundle

they have for that as well. Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so this is, yeah, all the Cardinals men. What was the first one called? Do we know? Musketeers. Versus Cthulhu. Literally just Mosquitos versus Cthulhu. I mean, that's a really good name. If we're still playing our favorite game in all the world, then I would... That's what it says on the tin, yeah. I know what that is. I'm excited for it. I'm like, okay, yeah, I know what it is.

I would like to buy this book, please. Click, click, click. Let's go. It's live on Kickstarter right now. It's got 20 days to go. It's funded several times over already. And yeah.

It's boss yeah right then so we're pretty much at the end now we've got one item left which is one of our own items yes, yes are you ready to talk about. Pets and psychics yes pets and psychics I think we've previously talked about this a little bit and at one point it was called the companions compendium so yes They're the same thing. It's just been renamed. But yeah, I'm very excited for this because I originally suggested it. That's my favorite cover of all of our books so far.

Little baby dragon. Yes. And he's got a little neckerchief on because he belongs to somebody. He's been adopted by a party. You can tell the baby because they have huge eyes. Yes, indeed. And his story is kind of, there's a little story of adventurers and things pitted throughout the book that follows on for all the chapters that goes through the thing they do. So there's a little bit of a, like I mentioned, the captain whose name I've forgotten, but would still die for.

Oh, Captain Concierge. No, no, not in Plain Street, Concierge. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. So there's that vibe too. Yeah. I'm excited about this. We're taking it to crowdfunding soon. Yes, the pre-launch page is up. We've got about 500 people, I think, now following it along. We'd like a few more, please. Thank you very much. If you could go and have a look at that. So, basically, Jess, do you want to just say what this is for those that haven't

seen it? Yes, so pretty much it's allowing you to have pets and also NPCs in your party. And they're kind of heroic companions that level up with you. So if you have the Monsters of Maggiore 2, that touched on heroic companions a bit. So this greatly expands, you know, that kind of rule set.

You don't need the Monsters of Maggiore 2 to have this. It is standalone, but just, you know. But yeah, so like Chapter 1 gives you different companions, how you use them, how you can recruit them.

Talking about the rules for how they gain levels with you so it means that if you adopt an animal you're not gonna as you level up not be able to take it with you for fear it's going to implode you get there's loads of character options as well you get different backgrounds so if you want your player to not be a class that's that uses animals like a ranger but you want them to have like a personal relationship with animals for some reason there's like beast friend

or you can have feats like bonded companion or expert rider so if you want as part of your background and history to have you know animals be part of that with you there's loads of options on that there's obviously there's a pet options and there's things you can teach them tricks and it's usually things a lot outside of combat so it's things like they can track or guard or you know things like that. There's those equipment, magic items. Yeah, and then there's those companions.

So there can be like an NPC that you meet at a certain level and it levels up with you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the way a companion is presented in this, whether it's a monster, an animal, or an NPC, because, you know, it could be a flump, it could be a knight, it could be a large beetle, you know, it could be whatever.

So you get your stat block. So we've got lots of stat blocks for each different companion type, just like in a monster book, but the stat block has a section where at each level the companion gets a little upgrade at each level so it will sort of have the stat block of the companion normal then it'll go at level 1 and at level 3 and at level 5 and things like that and they gain levels automatically as you do but I think, at half the rate you do so it will be half your level I think,

I can't remember, something like that It's written by Paul Hughes, so it's very well-balanced, who did our Monstrous Menagerie book, so it's very cohesive with that. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't very, very, very, very cool. I can't wait. Do you have any favourites from the various creatures that have come out so far? Is there a dog that's placed by a mask? Of course there's a dog. Do you have any favourites apart from the dog? How about that?

I've also noticed, because a lot of these companions, they also have sample names. For each of the different companions. Very quickly, if you've got one, there's a list of six or seven sample names. You can just grab one. And it suddenly occurred to me, wait a minute, the sample names for the dogs, they're wrong. Why were they not even publishing names? They should be our dogs. They should be Hudson and Marvin and Django. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think we're going to put those in. They have to be. They have to be. Absolutely. Yeah, so you've got basically three different groups. To your animal companions. It does. So you've got bears, dogs, beetles, lizards, and raptors, sharks, spiders, that sort of thing. If you want a companion or spider, I suppose someone might. Or companion shark, I'm not sure how useful that would be, but, you know. Yeah. Then we've got monstrous... Priscilla, she was great. Okay.

Monstrous companions. So that's the thing. Plumps, pseudo-dragons, spirits, owlbears, skeletons, all sorts of dragon, wormlings, So if you loved having a baby owlbear in Baldur's Gate 3, you too can have this in your games. Hmm. Yeah. And then we've got allies, which might be adepts or wizards or goblin rogues or kobold sorcerers and stuff like that.

And, of course, all of these can be allies or foes. So not only are these, like, allies that level up with you, you can have, like, a nemesis that levels up with you as well. So say at first level, you, like, attack a goblin camp and one of them gets away. Then you meet that goblin again when you're fourth level. And the goblin's leveled up. And then you meet the goblin again ninth level and the goblin's leveled up again. So you can have a recurring foe as a nemesis.

Yeah. I mean, in terms of favorites, one piece of artwork I really like is, I'm going to get up on screen now, it is the puffball. I'm just going to load it up because it's just incredibly cute. Oh, it's got an issue with, let me see if I can share my screen and show you. Here it is. Look at that. Look at the little puffball. And the puffball is a perfect description of what that is.

It's like a regular Close cut mushroom But it's like just really Really fluffy looking Yes And there's an adventurer there who is enamoured with it As much as I am as well The power of sports to the brain, Indeed Love me, Unfortunately the book does not feature whale dragons Currently but No because whale dragons do not exist And puffballs do, yes bubbles do exist because they're in the book okay okay yeah there's some really great artwork in this i

think it looks really beautiful francita's done a really good job working with all the artists really cohesive visuals art style for this so yeah i'm really excited for it yeah but the uh coming soon page is up so please head on over and follow that now we'll put there'll be a link in the show notes so you can go do that really easily yeah absolutely i think they don't I think that's all for this week we shall return next week yeah,

yeah are we getting thunderstorms later apparently how exciting yes. Nothing like a good thunderstorm as long as you're warm and cozy inside I quite like a thunderstorm outside being outside would suck yes, but I plan to stay indoors myself me too me also alright there's a sugar okay, shall we get out of here alright yeah you're done all right then have a great weekend and we'll be back next week all right now bye. Music.