Russ “Morrus” Morrissey
Appearances
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Good work, good work. That's impressive. Dedication. The fun thing is when you still blame traffic.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I can write a bit and I can do layout a bit. Yeah. But not well. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, tools like that are really, really, really helpful. And I don't want to use Home Brewery because I don't want all my books to look like the indie books.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Well, I'm a big fan of having a layout artist. No problem goes away.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Anyway, news, news, news. Let's have a look at some warnings. Did we all see Deadpool and Wolverine?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Such a fun film. It is. I'm not going to spoil the film.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
But if I were to do so, I would be tempted to play the Deadpool adventure. Oh. Which is apparently a very silly, laugh-out-loud, funny adventure for Marvel Multiverse broadband. It's called Deadpool Roleplays the Marvel Universe. Mm-hmm. and it looks awesome.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I mean, I wasn't 100% sure I wanted to play a superhero RPG, because I've played them before in the past, and they've never really been my bag. I love watching the movies, but for gaming, they're never... But I feel like I want to play this. I feel like I want to play a very silly Deadpool Marvel multiplayer game.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah. Well, I'm looking at this review by Rob Weiland, and he says that not only is this laugh out loud funny, he also says that this is the strongest Marvel multiverse role-playing game adventure that they've brought out. Wow. Full stop.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Wow, okay.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Well, that would have been reading the entire review out. Okay, okay. He just says it's a very good adventure as well as being incredibly funny.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah, there's a full review on it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
It feels like a real labour of luck.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I'm kind of curious, how does that work then? So they download it from... I downloaded the program. No, I mean from the customer point of view.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Good. More news, more news. Anyone else got some news? I've got a couple of bits of D&D news. Yeah, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Should we talk about some D&D then?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
There's only bad news. Is it good and bad? Okay. One of them isn't great. The other one is just neutral, I think. neutral and bad let's start with neutral okay let's go on the sliding scale so neutral so next week on August the 27th that is next week isn't it that is next week on a Tuesday what is it today I don't even know what it is today Thursday It is next week. Okay. It's Tuesday then. Okay.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
On Tuesday. Okay. There's going to be an event called D&D Direct. They did this last year, I think. It's an official live streamed event.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Taking place at 9am PDT, which is 5pm for us. Mm-hmm. And they're going to talk about two things. Well, they're going to look at the Player's Handbook, which is kind of out now, so I think people know what's in there. But for those that haven't seen the Player's Handbook, they're going to look at that. But they're going to talk about the future of Dungeons & Dragons.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
And they're going to talk about the Project Sigil and or Sigil 3D virtual tabletop. Ooh. Which is going to be unveiled very, very soon, I think.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah, yeah. We saw them using it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
But the beta itself is coming soon. So what they say, so for the future of D&D, they say they'll be unveiling an outline for the future of D&D, the 2024 core rulebooks, and what awaits your heroes in addition to those core rulebooks. So I guess we're going to hear about some more releases later.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I like Owlbear Rodeo.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
It's just really simple.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I've seen bits of it. I didn't sit and watch the entire thing because it was long.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
It's basically a stage actual play in a theater. Oh. It was at Gen Con. They're playing the 2024 core rules. Okay. And then for the first half, they do it the traditional way, just, you know, they're sitting around and rolling dice and using books and pens and paper. Then the second half, they bring out laptops.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I assume that must be your adventure then, I guess.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah, they say it's coming soon. There isn't a date yet, but they say it's coming soon.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I haven't. I just wouldn't have the time, to be honest.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Wales is also famous for dragons as well. Caves and dragons.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Okay, well, the less well-received news, shall I say, shall I put it like that? Yes. That's what most put it. The more discussed news is how D&D Beyond is going to be implementing the 2024 rules and how it will handle access to the 2014 rules. Wow. So they basically posted a roadmap. Is that the right word term? Yeah. Something like that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah. About what they're going to be doing. Yes. So the short version is you will still be able to access the 2014 basic rules and core rule books if you have them. So they won't disappear from your library if you have them. Yeah. And you will still be able to make characters using the 2014 player's handbook.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
And existing homebrew content won't be impacted. So that's kind of the three good things. So the 2014 rules will be marked with a legacy badge. But the only things that are going to be staying there with this legacy badge are classes, subclasses, species, background, feats, and monsters. So, no spells. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Well, unless they accidentally missed that out, but it seems unlikely that they did. So there's a few bits and pieces that aren't included, which basically means if you're playing a 2014 game using a 2014 character, using a legacy class and subclass and species, but things like your spells and certain other elements of the game that aren't in that list. Yes. are still going to be updated.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Whether you want to or not. On your character sheet. Your spell's going to change.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Do the D&D Beyond character sheets show the details of the spells, or are they just a spell name?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I think we should do some news.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
That's not on the list, so I guess so. Eek. Wow.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Although we do know that the D&D cartoon magic items are going to be in there. Interesting.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Like the energy bow and things like that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
But stuff did happen. There was stuff. I want to do a quick Brandon Sanderson update, though. Oh, yeah, it's ending next week. Yeah, ending next week. It is just about, it's just over $9 million. Wow.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
The other thing that's going to happen is tooltips across the board are going to reflect the 2024 rules, not the 2014 rules, even if you're playing a 2014 game.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
That's a choice.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
It's interesting you have to have two modes. You can't have a toggle just and switch between 2014 and 2024.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah. Yeah. The other thing is all the monster stat blocks will be updated for 2024 format.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Might not be the worst thing.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah. I haven't... Yeah, I mean, they're not updating all the stat blocks to 2024 monsters because they're keeping the legacy 2014 monsters. Yeah. So it looks like they'll have two of each monster.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
They can use both versions. As far as I can make out, as I understand it, unless I've misunderstood this.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
yeah so why not do this with spells as well but but but as as i read it the monsters well yeah why not do this as well yeah the monsters will all be had the 2024 layout presumably just because they just have one monster template or something like that but um i see you'll be able to use a 2040 monster it has a new layout okay um
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I think it is an improvement. I think it's more functional. I just don't think it's as pretty. I don't think it looks very nice. I don't like that blocky bit, but hey.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Why don't we play a little game?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Avatar was $9.5 million, and it has a week left to go. So I think it's going to overtake Avatar today to become the biggest TTRPG Kickstarter ever. And then it's just a question of how far does it go then?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Especially on that Twitter thing. It's very, very, you know, level-headed.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yes.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
That's a long time ago, but yeah. Hello, Monty. Right, have we got any more news?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I've just spotted Prime Video. Amazon Prime Video have a new animated show called Secret Level. And it features 15 episodes and their stories set in the various worlds, including Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer 40K...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. What's it called? Secret something? And other things that I don't know and video games that I don't know.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah, well, the list is Armored Core, Concord, Crossfire, Dungeons and Dragons, Exodus, Honor of Kings, Mega Man, New World Atomum, Pac-Man. You're supposed to say Pac-Man.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Just running around a maze being chased by ghosts.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
While eating pills.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah. We've got Mega Man, New World, ATM, Pac-Man, Sifu, Spelunky, The Outer Worlds, Unreal Tournament, and Warhammer 40,000. Wow. Wow. Okay. Two of those are tabletop role-playing games.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
It's not out yet. Sorry.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
December the 10th. Sorry, I missed that key bit of information. It was... Yeah, December the 10th. You've got a couple of months, three months, four months, some months, a number of months that is plural. I will put the pitchfork and torch down.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I have heard a rumour, and I don't know how true it is, that the D&D one features Tiamat. Nice. I don't know how true that is.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
you're not getting a lot stronger the strongest female character yeah yeah right I think that might be the news mm-hmm
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Tell us, if you will, what is a shadow dark?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
because darkness and light is very much a theme of the game so um just for those i think most people listening would have tuned in already knowing who you are and what what this game is but would it be fair to say that your game is kind of an osr style game with some more modern trappings to it is that a fair description oh absolutely that's what i would call it too Okay, excellent. Lucky guess.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
So you kickstarted this, what, last year, was it? Yeah. And did over a million dollars. That's incredible.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
And we mentioned earlier in the show, it's one of the only two Kickstarters to have done that without including a ton of miniatures and plushies and T-shirts and pins and badges and stuff. So it's just for the game. So that's a singular club of only two. Only two people have managed to do that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Well, I think it definitely speaks to how some of these Kickstarters, people are fans of maybe Avatar, or they're fans of maybe Brandon Sanderson, and they're collectors of all this stuff. This speaks to how people, I think, really wanted that game, that specific experience that you're offering. So I was kind of thinking, how would you describe that?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Say to a 5e player who maybe hasn't played many other games, how would you describe how that experience differs to your standard kind of 5e style game?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
32,473.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
It just went up as I watched it. Wow. Wow. So, um,
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Mm-hmm. yeah um because i i kind of noticed that obviously it reminds me very much of earlier editions of dnd and that's obviously you know deliberate um what one thing that really striked me is the the visual style of the game and the layout choices that you've made sort of topics having their own page each each topic is like one or two pages with a big kind of bold header and um
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Just flicking through the book, just from an ease of use in a player navigation point of view, I think that's a really, really strong choice. And it's thematically strong as well as being incredibly useful. So I was kind of thinking, how did you come to that style of layout and how it looks and the kind of iconography that you've kind of gone with?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, same with me. Yeah. So can you speak a bit about the element of light I noticed in the game? So one of the concepts of the game is like a minute in the game is a minute in real time and vice versa. So the game runs in real time unless you specifically say, okay, an hour is passing while you rest or a day is passing or a week is passing or whatever.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
But otherwise, a torch will last an hour and that will be an hour of real time at the table.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
So...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
So you've got a minute to take your turn sort of thing.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah, so it's not like it's six seconds. If it takes you five minutes to go around the table, then the round is five minutes.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I mean, I've used turn timers in the past just to say, come on, you get a minute to decide what you're doing, otherwise we're going to move on. But I've never tried it with things like torches and stuff, and now I really want to. I really do. I mean, I think that's a really clever idea. And I think that's just something I'm just going to bring into my games going forward anyway now, to be honest.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I can see how it would create the tension at the table. Yeah. I can see how that would work. I mean, yeah, I'm just going to start doing that. Not just for that, for other things as well.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
You light an actual torch.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
And when the torch goes out, the torch goes out.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Great, yeah, let's go. It's my name on the podcast.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah. You don't need an Excel spreadsheet.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
That's exactly it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
You'll be like, I don't even know this guy.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Look, I won't play a game unless it has advanced trigonometry and calculus and calculus and rocket science in it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
While we're being timed.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah, yeah. So, a million dollars on Kickstarter for Emmys. This thing took off. It did. you said earlier in the show that you only expected it to do like 10 grand on Kickstarter oh yeah so this presumably was a big big surprise for you when it really took off and did a million dollars I mean how did that feel
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah. Anyway, a week to go. I'm guessing 12 million is my... I think...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. A million dollars. It's incredible. But, I mean, how do you adjust to that then? So one minute you're a creator making a small game which might, like, make 10,000 dollars on Kickstarter and, you know, and suddenly a month later you've got a million dollar Kickstarter, a big, big fan base. What sort of changes does that bring about? Or do you just carry on as normal?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
What's... What's the difference?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah, yeah. Especially when you've already costed it in a certain way.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah, we've been there. There's always going to be. We made a mistake.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Well, it's going to be a lot. Would you like to make a guess, Kelsey?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Although, although, somebody will complain and somebody did.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
13. Okay, we've got two on 13. 13 million, not 13,000.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah, the social contract kind of.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Right, right, there's...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Which I find kind of weird because it's really easy to be a killer DM.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
So all this success came as a surprise, you know, the million-dollar Kickstarter for Enies. But what do you think that says? What is it about your game that you think has, like, caught people's imagination? And what's caused that success? What's drawing people in?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
It is incredible. It is what? I just, I check it every day. Do you? I haven't backed it because, you know, the Cosmere stuff. Well, I just haven't read any of the books. It's not, you know, it's not my, but I'm just fascinated by the Kickstarter and I just really wanted to do well and I don't know why because it doesn't affect me at all. But, you know, I'm just like egging it on. Come on, come on.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
And this is why people hate it when adventurers come to town.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Well, yeah, I mean, who really wants to go crawling through caves and, you know, it's not a fun way to spend your time, is it?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I am not one of those people. I mean, neither am I, if I'm honest.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get eaten by a dinosaur or something.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Well, there's two ways you can look at it. You get some people who just get jealous. Yes. And then you get the other people who are just happy that this thing is happening. And I'm in the latter group.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I noticed that looking at the spells, you compare their equivalents.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
from shadow dark to say well any sort of later version of dnd they are much more concise much much much more concise so i was i was going to ask about like your approach to that so when you look at a spell that um is traditionally sort of like a page and a half text and you've managed to distill it down into two short paragraphs how
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I'm pleased to say.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Or not making things more complicated than they need to be at the table.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I think that also adds to the fact that maybe magic can be slightly unpredictable that way as well, depending on what the GM decides at the time.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
What's interesting is if you look at the top, the list of top TTRPG Kickstarters, the top four are all not D&D. Wow. If you count this one, the top four are not D&D. So the top four are, so this one, Avatar Legends is not D&D. Gloomhaven Grand Festival was not D&D. Which we...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
saying i know how to do these things this is my history these are the skills that i've already accumulated so it's a definite difference in approach there during the break we were um talking about the ennies because you've won four ennies for this game and you mentioned that you were there at the uh at the ceremony how was that winning four ennies i mean i assume you
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
It came as a bit of a surprise. How much of a surprise? Did you have a prepared speech, for example, or not?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah. I mean, how does it feel walking up the first time up on that stage to collect an Emmy?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Well, hopefully you'll experience it again because I'm sure you have things planned. Can you talk a bit about that at all? Oh, yeah. What's in the future?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah, yeah. I was looking through one of them this morning. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Well, that's not entirely true. But the third one was the MCDM. But I will say that Shadow Dark is one of only two Kickstarters, the other being Coyote and Crow, to do it without all of that extra stuff. Oh.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Are we hoping for another million dollars? That's the question.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah. When did you start working on the game? Because obviously the Kickstarter was last year, but presumably its genesis was prior to that. So how long has it been gestating?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
There's only two that have done it without all the dice and the shirts and the plushies and the... Board games. Yeah, yeah. Stuff. So, yeah, Shadow Dark 2023 and Coyote and Crow in 2021. The only two that have ever done that. Wow. That's why... An exclusive club.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah. Can we talk about the aesthetic just briefly? I mean, we need to wind up in a minute because it's nearly four o'clock. But the aesthetic you've got, I mean, I mentioned it earlier, the kind of quite a striking aesthetic, but you've gone with this sort of black and white, quite solid, bold aesthetic. Can you talk a bit about why you chose, you know, I mean, you could have gone like...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
full-colour page spread art and all this sort of stuff. But you went for this very striking, bold aesthetic, which I think really, really works for the game. But can you talk a little bit about why you chose to make it look like that as opposed to what's more common these days?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah. Yeah. And you definitely succeeded in that. Absolutely. Thank you.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been a real, real pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, that's it for this week. Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us. Next week, we have Rich Leskufla coming on to talk about his new game, Fantasy Star. Looking forward to that. Yes. But until then, thank you so much, everyone. Goodbye and see you next week. Bye.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Bye. Bye.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
That was just the character wonderfully. But it probably means something in Tarrasque.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah, it's probably the Tarrasque equivalent of Shakespeare.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I didn't get into this industry to make plushies.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Pencil cases, that's a different thing. I really put into it to make pencil cases. That's what I want to make.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Anyway, that is... That's the Brandon Sanderson news for the week. Next week, we'll get a report on what it actually did and find out that I won and I guessed correctly.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
We'll see. That's definitely what will happen. Time will tell.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
I'm just looking at the same announcement that you are. I don't know, Kelsey, have you... Do you follow Paizo much? Have you followed this one?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah, so they had a community use policy for years, and they replaced it with a fan content policy.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
It was so that you could make merchandise using Paizo IP.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
rules mechanics and character generator tools and online databases of stuff and that sort of thing okay which a lot of people make as fans don't monetize but make it as fans as part of the community yeah and just the path builder I think it affected that sort of thing is why people didn't like it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
This week, Morse, PJ, and Jessica are joined by Kelsey Dion to talk about Shadow Dark. In the news, D&D and Beyond addresses the 2024 update, Secret Level is a new animated series from Amazon featuring D&D and Warhammer 40k, Paizo brings back the community use policy, and more! This week on Morse's unofficial tabletop RPG talk!
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Morris' unofficial tabletop RPG talk. I am Russ, a.k.a. Morris, or Morris, a.k.a. Russ.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah, this wasn't an OGL type situation. No, not at all.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Paizo is always like... I feel, been a bit more plugged into the community than Wizards has been for a long, long time. It's probably just a scale thing, partly because Wizards is so much bigger and stuff. But I think just on a company culture level, I think they are more kind of plugged into the community as well.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
At one time it was larger. Yeah. But we're going back sort of 10, 15 years when Wizards was a lot slimmer than it is now. Not these days at all. I think Wizards is enormous in comparison now.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
But, yeah, I mean, Paizo's not small, though. It's the second largest, you know, TTRPG company on the planet.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Small-port TTRPG companies.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Although, although interesting, they no longer have offices.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
It was a couple of years ago. They closed their offices in Seattle and everyone is remote working now.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah. Like various, like senior Paizo management and designers moved across country to different locations, you know, because apparently Seattle's really, really expensive to live in. And very wet. And very wet.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Yeah. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
It just strikes me as strange, though, imagining Paizo as not having offices, because in my mind, they've always been a big office-based, big four TTRPGs, office-based company. And now they're not. They're...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
316 | Split the Hoard with Marc Kenobi | Revised PHB Released | Ravenloft Novel | ElfQuest RPG
This week, Morse and Jessica are joined by Mark Kenobi to talk about Ian Publishing's new board game, Split the Horde. In the news, the 2024 Player's Handbook is now available for purchase, the ElfQuest RPG is returning, a new Ravenloft novel is coming in 2025, and more! This week on Morse's Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk!
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah, well, it's all the sun type that you brought with you. Well, I'm looking out the window and I'm not seeing an awful lot of sunlight, to be honest. It looks a bit greyish.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
This is the British Steve Jackson. I have met and interviewed Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson at Dragon Meat a few years ago.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
No, British Steve Jackson, sure. So the British Steve Jackson wrote the books, or co-wrote the books. The US Steve Jackson is now, who runs Steve Jackson Games, GURPS, all that stuff, is now going to publish them.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah, well, in that case, cheers, Kev. Cheers, Esther.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
There's also been, well, no, it's been available here in other markets, but it's just not in the US. But there's also been lots of revivals in different formats because there's like mobile apps of the books you can get these days. And yeah, I remember them coming out about four or five years ago, which were kind of cool. I think there was a reissue of the book. No, there was a D&D event.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Hey, should we do a podcast? Yep, we've got a big load of Dungeon Master's Guide information. Yes. But we'll save that to the end. Let's start off with some non-D&D stuff. Actually, let's start off with some stuff in that there city known as Ankh-Morpork.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Oh, this was like 15, 20 years. There's a company producing D&D. This is the D20 boom era. So D20 adventures based on the books as well. This would have been like mid-2000s, I think. Interesting.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
And then, of course, we had the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
D20. The meteorite destroyed the D20. There was a D20 bust, wasn't there? It boomed and boomed and boomed and then the market imploded. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Are there some Discord features? Does it make use of Discord bots and stuff like that?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
I'm aware they're there, but I've never actually used them.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Anyway, let's throw you back to D&D. We could go back to role-playing games. Chris Perkins. Oh, yeah. He has been product lead for official D&D books for coming up to two decades now, at least. Yeah. Yes. Well, he is no longer going to be the product lead for official D&D books. In fact, the Dungeon Master's Guide is the last book that he'll be working on as product lead. Ah, interesting.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
On that there disc world.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
He's not leaving the company, apparently. It looks like, and we don't know 100% for sure, but it basically looks like he's moving into a more sort of overall sort of creative role rather than being a product lead on specific books.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah, it looks like it's kind of a broader job that he's moving into. But yeah, I mean, this is going to be the last one where you'll see him credited as the product lead.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
No, no, no.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Mmm. It is doing all right. What's the news? I haven't heard. Well, it hit a million dollars on its second day. Woof. Yeah, it is currently well over a million dollars now. It's over a million pounds, so it's probably about 1.3 million dollars now. And it's got 20 days to go, so it has done incredibly well. Wow, that is like rocket ship level.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
I have no idea. I have no idea. I imagine someone must be doing it in the interim because they are still putting out social media stuff.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah. Anyway, yeah. I'm not supposed to be it. You know, he's moving up, I guess. I guess he's moving up to a broader sort of more overseeing role over D&D. I'm guessing. I don't know for sure. I'm guessing. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Weird Science. W-Y-R-D, yeah. Yes. Not like the 80s movie. Oh, with Kelly Brock.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
That would be very, very different.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Moving swiftly on. Have we finished? Okay. I think that's it. No. Have you got some more? No, I've got more.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
There's more. More. Give us more.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Interesting. 11 pages, basically.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah, it's basically, you know, some introductory chapter in the other one tells you how to read a monster stat block and all that sort of stuff. But it also tells you about some of the new stuff. So like you just said, the horde monsters, heroic monsters, and the ones which we can level up with you, whether they be foe or ally.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
So that could either be a companion or a familiar, or it could be sort of like the kobold that you defeated keeps coming back.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
And also some of the little tiny, tiny tweaks we've been making as well. I mean, and I'm not going to lie. Some of these were inspired by the new D&D stat block, which was not a bad pick. So one of them was the new D&D stat block has initiative pre-calculated for you.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
now obviously in level up you can't really do that because anything can be an initiative role but what we've done is we've taken what we think is the three most common things that will be initiative roles which is a dexterity check a wisdom perception check or wisdom insight check and the most three common ones and we've just put an initiative line just with those three on there and the average score so you don't even have to roll them you can just use them straight out yeah and i've actually been using that because it just
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
So it launched on Tuesday, like all Kickstarters do. And, yeah, it's only, like, just over three weeks. But, yeah, doing really, really well. It's quite a mouthful, though. Terry Pratchett's Discworld RPG, colon, Adventures in Ankh-Morpork. Doesn't trip off the tongue.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
and there's nice distribution with players going ahead of some monsters and behind others yeah it's kind of fun um yeah so what else we do in the saving throw line instead of just the ones that you're proficient in the monsters proficient in them including all of them just so it's there at a glance rather than you having to look at it realize that it's not there then look at the ability score which is admittedly a microsecond but every tiny little thing you can do just to reduce doesn't it
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
We posted a review of the Player's Handbook today. You might think, wait, wait, didn't you do that a month ago? And the answer is yes. We also posted a review of the Player's Handbook a month ago. So originally we had a sort of first impressions review up a month ago. We now have from Beth Rimmel. So now the book's been out a month and it's been plenty of time to properly...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
I guess, but I bet it will just be referred to as the Discworld RPG. Fun, for sure.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
got her teeth into it and things like that. A proper deep dive review, which went up today. So if you're looking for like a really, really crunchy review that really goes into the book, this is the one. This isn't like, you know, someone got the book, flipped through it and then whacked a quick first impressions review up. This is a really in-depth one.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Exactly.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah. Right. I think we're probably out of news up until the DMGs.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah, yeah. So it's going to cost you £50 to pick up the core rulebook and the dice. I don't think you can get the core rulebook without the dice, which is interesting. £100 for this whole Game Masters set, which includes an adventure and a screen and all that sort of stuff. And there's some other bits in between, and there's PDF equivalents and stuff as well.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
The Dungeon Master's Guide. On the horizon. It is coming very, very soon. It is coming on November the 12th. If in mainstream retail and two weeks earlier than that, which would be October.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah. So two weeks away, less than two weeks away. Yeah. In US local game stores.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
So it's very, very close. And as last week and the week before, Wizards have been putting out videos and information and lots. Basically, the whole publicity machine is in full drive. Yes. So basically, we've got this week's DMG update, I guess this is. And this is going to happen every week until it comes out, pretty much. Okay. Where even to start this so much? So there was a press event. Yes.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
It was over a week ago, but it was... a week and a half ago. It was embargoed until I think it was Tuesday or Monday or something like that. But there was a press event. Christian and Beth from Ian were both in attendance at this press event. And they kind of went into a fairly sort of like large overview of the Dungeon Master's Guide. Yes.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
So we've got a number of sort of videos to dive into about specific aspects. Mm-hmm. But what we also have is kind of quite a big sort of broad overview, which Wizards of the Coast presented, Chris Perkins and James Wyatt presented at this press event. Mm-hmm.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
so where to start with this so they started by talking about the sort of overall design goal of the book okay one of the key things that they wanted to say was that creating an adventure for home use doesn't have to be a whole load of work and in order to help with that they've tightened up encounter creation
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Well, we don't know specifically. They didn't delve into the actual numbers or anything like that. So I couldn't tell you that. All they've said is they've tightened up combat encounter creation to assist with the goal of making an adventure for home use easy. They're not allowed to work. So what that actually means in terms of the actual numbers, we don't necessarily know.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Their design goal, yeah. I mean, they've also got, like, the DMG has five sample adventures, and they're not big, they're like half a page to one page. They're little adventures. Little adventures. Just to show, they're kind of just to sort of show DMs how... you know, how easy it can be given the right tools to come up with a, you know, adventure for the evening. Yeah. So it has that. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
But it's also, you know, it's not just sort of like telling you what to do, but it's also like showing you what an adventure sort of looks like, how easy it can be to put it together. So, you know, you could spend a load of time prepping an adventure. You don't have to. And you can put together a one shot, they say, in like an hour or two quite easily. Yeah.
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That's certainly longer than I generally spend putting together a one-shot.
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An hour or two.
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But yeah, powered by the Narrativian system, their brand new Wolves Light narrative game system, which we went into... Did we go into it last week or the week before? Quite recently, anyway.
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Oh, yeah, you just nick plots and characters.
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So that's a hindrance of plots. But with NPCs, that's actually a secret bonus. Because basically, if you're nicking an NPC from a TV show that the players are vaguely familiar with, at least, they will subconsciously fill in the gaps and it will feel like a much more rounded character than it actually is.
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Yeah. And it works really, really well. It's like a really stupid example. You just whack Clint Eastwood and you just have this sort of stranger talking in a slightly Clint Eastwood-y voice and acting a bit Clint Eastwood-y. They'll put in the gaps because they know who Clint Eastwood is. It probably depends how old they are, I guess. But, you know, people my age would know who Clint Eastwood is.
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They'll make the orc with no name.
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Yeah. Interesting, interesting. Yeah, it's archetypes in a way, I suppose. Using archetypes they're familiar with, but the archetypes are ones that you've stolen from TV.
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Yes, we're not talking soggy books.
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And I think last week, and we weren't able to answer last week, but now we are, like, what sort of advice does the DMG have? And last week we were like, I'm sure it has some, but we don't know. Yes.
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This week, we can tell you what advice it has. Tell them all. Okay. So, it's front-loaded with all the advice. So, that's all in the beginning. So, the first and second chapters. So, the first chapter is kind of like an overview. So, it's got the following sections. Like, what does a DM do?
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Things you need. Preparing a session. How to run a session. Every DM is unique. Ensuring fun for all. So that's the sections in the first chapter.
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Probably.
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It wouldn't surprise me. It might be session two.
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And then we've got chapter two, which goes into some of the more sort of nitty gritty stuff. So it's got stuff like meeting player tastes and group sizes, having multiple DMs, resolving actions, character advancement, talking about the three pillars of D&D, that sort of thing. Okay. So there's something interesting they did with this advice. They ran it all past a bunch of celebrity DMs.
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Yes. That's it. Yeah. Yeah, because... It'll work. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I imagine that the... No, thinking about it, no. Because I was going to say, imagine in the core rulebook it will have a list of basic difficulties for different things. And it'll say, right, this one is a D8, this one's a D4. But it's not because you... No.
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Matt Mercer, Deborah Ann, well, people like that. Okay. Yeah, fair enough. Target audience. Yeah. Well, that's also, you know, a sensible thing to do because that means those people will talk about it.
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Yeah.
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Yeah. So I'm looking at a table right now. So I'm looking at part of the first chapter, and it's got stuff about the tiers of play, local heroes, heroes of the realm, that stuff. Yes. And it's also got a table called Adventure Situations, one for each tier. So it's 1D20 for each tier. So there's a level 1 to 4 table and a level 5 to 10 table. And then each of them is just kind of a plot hook.
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So 20 random plot hooks, one for each tier.
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I don't know if I understand. I like this about organisation, though. And this is what I'm getting the sense of, is that this book is organised better for a new DM. The stuff is where you need it to be. Nice. Not scattered about. That's the kind of way I feel it's looking.
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last week's episode yeah last week's episode because we went into quite a lot of detail about but that's the dm toolbox which has all the different sort of like bits of rules that you might need doors firearms explosives traps fear mental stress poisons yeah all that stuff the a to t of dungeon design yeah Yeah. Yeah. And this is like alphabetical. So they do this twice in this book.
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They've got an alphabetical toolbox of rules. They've also got a alphabetical law glossary later in the book, which is like D&D law.
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Yeah, which I don't think that was really in the prequels. I mean, there was bits of lore scattered around.
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Yeah, because you choose the dice you use based on how well you link your trait to the action.
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Well, we're going to get into this in a bit, but there's a big emphasis on Greyhawk in this. I think the lore section is pretty much everything. So I think if you look at it, it will tell you what Dragonlance is, it will tell you what Greyhawk is, you know, that sort of thing.
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The players can discover it in-game, but the DM... Well, that's how I felt as a DM.
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I'd never run up and got an Elms Adventure because I don't know it well enough and other people will know it better than I do.
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I think we talked about established settings many times.
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Yeah, anyway. There's also a whole lot of stock maps in there. They're black and white maps. And they said they chose that style deliberately, sort of like pencil style black and white maps.
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Because they're examples and they want GMs to look at it and think, oh, I can draw maps as well. Yeah. Rather than really high quality. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's a good idea, actually. I think that, you know, it looks pencil and paper like on graph paper almost. It's on a gridded paper. And I think that's a good idea. So, yeah, and there's a bunch of those.
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Yeah. And it's like just a law book as well. Just describing them.
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There's like an appendix full of those, a bunch of generic maps. You can use them or they're just inspiration saying, look how easy it is to make a map sort of thing. And, of course, we've got the wire referred to as a monster manual, a little monster manual with traps. The trap section has a whole bunch of – I mean, I think the original DMG had a dozen or so, I think.
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I can't tell you anything about the design of the traps, unfortunately.
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Yes, how to use them. How to use traps, yeah.
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100%.
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Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, and so what else have we got? We've got tracking sheets. These will also be available for free on D&D Beyond, but they're in the book.
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Yeah, the ones with the cutesy artwork for NPCs, bastions, magic items, things like that. So there's a bunch of those sheets in there. What else have we got? Greyhawk, the chapter on Greyhawk, which we'll go into a little later because they put out a whole video about that. And the short adventures are all set in Greyhawk as well.
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That chapter with the short adventures. It's all set in Greyhawk as well. So that's that. Magic and treasure. We kind of went into that last week as well. It was a big old chapter, about 100 pages long of magic items and treasure.
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they say they've tightened up every magic item. I don't know what that means exactly, but I guess just every magic item. Yeah. Basically make more fun and eliminate confusion was basically the goal there. Fair enough. Reasonable, I guess. And rules for creating your own magic items as well, which we already kind of knew about and talked about last week.
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No, there's the crafting rules, wasn't there?
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Yeah, all right. Chapter 8, Bastions, which, again, we talked about last week or the week before, went into quite a bit of detail about, so we don't really need to do that again. Basically, you get a Bastion at level 5, and you can just put facilities in it, which, you know, might be like a lab or a pub or a whatever. Yeah, very XCOM. It upgrades players. Yeah, it's XCOM. Yeah, it's XCOM.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you played XCOM, Bastions are XCOM.
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Why didn't I think of that? That's an excellent metaphor. Bastions of Hexagon.
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I saw.
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Then we've got the Law of Index and the Appendix, which we made... You know, I talked about earlier, I don't know what exactly is in it, but apparently Wyatt's daughters were some of the test cases to help them detect what should be in there and what shouldn't. You know, what players might take for granted or what a sort of veteran might take for granted, which a player might not necessarily know.
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That sort of thing is in there. Mm-hmm. They also mention, like, if something's not in the lore index, it's covered somewhere else. Because the example they used was Asmodeus. Isn't in the lore glossary, but he is in the cosmology section.
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I would have put a reference to him in the lore glossary as well. I don't know.
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That's kind of it. There's a mini-adventure that is going to be coming called Scions of Elemental Evil, Greyhawk-themed. It features the cartoon kids, the D&D cartoon kids, levelled up to fourth level, and that'll also be on D&D Beyond at some point. Ooh. But yeah, that's the overview. That's kind of the broad overview of it.
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And we can go into details on various things now, but that's kind of the broad overview. Especially a book designed as a toolbox for newer DMs.
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Yeah, so shall we look at a few things in a little more detail then? I mean, Greyhawk is the big topic this week. but let's start with something smaller the adventuring day yes I heard it had ceased to exist kind of so originally the recommendation was six to eight encounters a day yeah six to eight medium encounters per day that feels too much for me
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Medium encounters, easy encounters, hard encounters, different points, and you had a number of points worth of encounters per adventuring day, if I remember the 2014 one correctly.
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Well, this is how these work. They're kind of quite basic. So the DM determines an XP budget, experience point budget, based on low, moderate, or high.
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based on how difficult they're aiming for, and the level of the characters in the party. Yeah. They spend that budget on creatures to craft an encounter. Right. There is no multiplier based on the number of creatures or the number of party members. That was always... Just a bit of advice saying that... Dreadfully unclear. Yeah.
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Adding extra creatures or party members can make for more complications, but I think it basically assumes a standard party size and a sort of equalish number of creatures, I guess. Oh! I don't know that bit for sure. They're not doing well here, but okay, crack on.
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Then, but they don't have any mention of the term adventuring day, and nor do they say how many encounters you should have in between long rests.
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There's no reference to that at all. It's sort of like 2014 has the six to eight medium encounters thing. Yeah. This one goes to an approach where it talks about encounter place and talks about frequent short rests. Because there has been a shift in recent D&D books towards short rests, hasn't there? Yeah.
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The other thing about short rest as opposed to long rest is that short rest use resources, hit price and things like that. As long rest don't. Long rest, like, reset. You know. And they're like, respawn, we're good. Yeah, sort of thing. Whereas short rest are using resources. Yeah, yeah. They have a different place in the adventuring day. Very much so, yeah. Yeah.
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So, yeah, so the adventuring day's gone, basically, is the sort of, like, top-level takeaway from that. It just talks about encounter pace instead. Yeah. Sort of more simple rules for designing encounters.
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Well, that's the 15-minute adventuring day that people talk about, isn't it? It's the adventure for 15 minutes, then you take a long rest.
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They specifically said it's designed for one shots as well. Yes. Very specifically. All right.
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old school D&D the idea was you'd have your base camp sort of like a village and a dungeon outside and you'd have to go back to the village in between excursions to the dungeon and that was your equivalent of long rest yeah yeah that makes sense because you go to a safe place to rest because if I'm in the middle of an unsafe area I'm not going to have a nap
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I've backed it, yeah, yeah.
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I mean, what we did in Level Up was we introduced the concept of havens. Yeah. So while you can have a long rest, if it's not a haven, it's not as useful. And a haven specifically defined as somewhere safe where you can have a nice rest without any fear of the elements or any fear of being attacked. You know, somewhere probably haven-ish, I guess.
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Yeah, my rule of thumb is if you have to put a watch on, not a watch, a watch, a stand guard. If someone has a stand guard, it's not a haven. I don't think that's a rule of thumb. I think that's just the rules.
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Glad to be here to remind you. It was three years ago. I can't remember what I wrote.
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I think it's basically going to be like a coffee table Discworld book as well, which I think would just be fun to read and browse through. Yeah. That's the main reason I backed it. I mean, you know, since we've basically seen the rules, we know the rules.
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It's not going to change that much. It is the same game. It's just different advice. I mean, it is D&D 5e, you know. It's not an entirely new game.
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Yeah. Well, we know the marketing reasons why it's referred to as it is. But anyway, that's a side. We've been into that a million times.
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Before we do that, because Greyhawk's a slightly bigger topic. Custom backgrounds.
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So the DMD contains the rules for creating custom backgrounds.
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Okay. I mean, basically, just make it up.
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Yeah, so what you do is you choose three abilities.
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Strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, charisma. You choose a feat. You choose from the origin category. The feat has to be an origin feat, not any feat.
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And to be honest, I know the Discworld setting reasonably well, so I'll probably just run it now, to be honest.
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All right. That's it. That's your custom background. But at that point, I kind of feel like, what's the point of making the background? Why not just include in the rules? Everybody just does those things. Yeah. And describe your background how you want.
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I don't know. I feel like these background rules are so freeform as to just...
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I think it would be a nice product. Yeah.
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So the DM can present background specific to their world. Yes. But just handing that to the players, it's like, okay, well, in that case, everybody just... Choose three abilities, a feat, two skills, a tool, and some equipment then. Okay. You know, the background serves no purpose.
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How was that going? So ability score boosts have moved from species to background. Good.
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Yeah. So, yeah, so you choose three and you can either increase, I think, as of course, this is right in front of me, you can either increase three by one or one by two and one by one, I think. Okay. It's the only combination you could do, actually, isn't it, with three?
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Yeah.
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Oh, yeah. Okay, fair enough. No, you can't do plus three to one, yeah? Yeah, yeah. That would be a lot. Yeah. Yeah. So that's custom backgrounds, anyway. Okay. So now we can talk about Greyhawk.
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Jess has been waiting for this moment. Clearly excited about Greyhawk.
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Okay, so Greyhawk is, I guess, they say it was the first campaign setting. I think Blackwall was technically the first, but it was certainly the first published as a product. So it was like Gary Gygax's home campaign in the early 1970s. Oh, cool.
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But I don't think it was like till 1980 or so that it was physically published as a product. And that product wasn't a big one. It was like, I want to say pamphlet. It was more than a pamphlet, but it was kind of a booklet and a map, kind of. It wasn't big. And kind of it was very much left for the DM to fill in the gaps.
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So you'd have a map and you'd have sort of like some details about areas in the map, but the details about them might be a sentence or two. It would say who ruled it and who lived there sort of thing. But it's kind of like this land is ruled by a necromancer. Yeah.
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Yeah. And then it kind of, you know, kind of leaves the DM to fill that in.
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Now, obviously, later adventures kind of like visited bits and pieces and filled them in anyway. But it is quite straight down the line D&D.
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Yeah. But, you know, it's a setting that's got no sort of like hooks. Hooks is the wrong word. Gimmicks. That's the wrong word as well. I know what you mean.
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It's like standard.
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Everyone has, like, Magitek and Dragonlance has lots of dragons and lances and Ravenloft is horror.
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What they also talked a little bit about is it kind of made a lot of the tropes of D&D.
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And then when you look back at it, it's very tropey, standard D&D. But it's kind of awesome that's where it kind of came from.
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Yeah. Yeah. So it has a bit of that going with it as well.
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You're very welcome. At present, they're kind of like, they don't have any current intention to return to Greyhawk. Okay. Outside of this. So, as you said a minute ago, Jess, they've opened it up on DMs Guild for third parties to make stuff for Greyhawk. Yeah. And fill in the gaps. And that kind of leans into the whole concept of Greyhawk, where the DMs would do that anyway. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Which kind of, I suppose, could be a bit odd, because you'll then get different interpretations of different areas and things in DMs Guild. I suppose that's fine.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
But bear in mind, a million dollars is a lot of money to us. It's not a lot of money to Wizards of the Coast.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah. So looking at what's in that 30-page chapter, so it's a sort of gazette, but it focuses on the city of Greyhawk.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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and the surrounding areas. And it kind of says that as you get further away from the city, because Greyhawk's a big setting as well. If you look at the map, it's enormous. There's loads and loads of locations. But the city of Greyhawk's kind of like the central hub, I guess. And as you get further away from that city, they're more vague about what's there.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
So they're quite a bit of detail about the city, a little less about the surrounding area, a little less about the bit beyond that, and then, you know. So they said they kind of did that because they also said that's kind of how, you know, that's an approach to designing a world is you start off just designing the bit you need, like the village and the dungeon or whatever.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
And then as the players, the characters grow up and everyone needs to venture further, then you start filling out the world. You don't necessarily have to write Lord of the Rings before starting your campaign, right? to develop Middle-earth before starting your campaign. You just sort of need what you need and expand from there as you need to. And that's something I've done a lot.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
It's a hell of a lot easier. A hell of a lot easier. And also, you might end up detailing a far-off town which the players might never visit. So that's kind of why they did that. So the city itself, it's basically like a campaign hub. And those sample adventures in Chapter 4, they're all set in Greyhawk or the surrounding area. City of Greyhawk or the surrounding area. Yeah, yeah. Hmm.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
I mean, yeah, we're talking 30 pages here. So there's a map of the city. Not so much, yeah. Yeah. We've got descriptions of a few places the characters might visit. So there's the magic item shops and libraries and three taverns and temples and things like that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah, and the sort of, like, world map has, like, they've added, like, locations that D&D over the years has visited that weren't originally there back in the 1970s.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah, Wampum Mountain, the Ghost Tower of Inverness, the Lost Caverns of that place. Yeah. Sojan, Sojan, whatever it is.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah, that sort of thing. So they've sort of been added onto the map. It does say that it takes quite a few liberties with the setting, but remaining faithful to the spirit of the setting. Interesting. And the impression I get of that is basically modernised a bit. Helpful. There's a balance of NPCs who showcase the diversity of D&D worlds is the phrase they used.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Well, the rule of thumb generally is what you do in your first day is like a third of what you'll do. Yeah. I think that's changed a little bit with the way people have gotten much better at pre-loading Kickstarters these days.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
So they're saying it's not all men. All white men, yeah. I think that's what they're saying.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
indeed what will you come up with next like having more than one demographic in a fantasy world yeah yeah yeah and I guess basically sort of like the style of it as well has like probably been modernised a little bit because people play a little differently now to how they used to as well yeah people play wildly differently now yeah people are worldly differently to each other yeah from back then yeah
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Good for you. Tell you what was interesting, though. Back before the internet, when basically you played these games in isolation and didn't really know how other people were playing them, because the internet wasn't there, and you didn't necessarily know other people that played. Yeah. These days, it's like you just go online and you can –
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
I see people talking about it and stuff like that. You've got a good idea of the broad range of ways in which you could play D&D. But when people played and all they had was the rule books to go by and developed their own gaming styles based on just that, with no advice, no examples...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
You'd find that one group of players and another group would play very, very differently and have no idea and would possibly, if one crossed over to another one's game, they'd be like, I don't understand what's going on here. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
That's kind of also what Adventurous League and stuff is for, isn't it?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah, so you go from one game to another without any confusion.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
They really know how to do a big launch. So it skews it a little bit more towards the beginning, and you don't quite get that full U-shape anymore. You get a reverse J instead. Yeah. Because of that front skewing. But, yeah, so I reckon it might do two.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
I know people like that, but they also take it one step further. They won't even play collaborative board games. The ones where you're all on the same side. Those ones. If they're not adversarial, they won't play them.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah. I find that very, very irritating.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
The mechanical advice is different. That's different to just telling people how they should act or what their character should do. If it's like a... It depends on the context.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
A few million.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
I mean, so, yeah, we've got the map of the city there. We've got the diversity of the city. The backgrounds in the player's handbook apparently all map to locations in the city.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
So that if you take a background in the player's handbook, there is a place in that city that you could conceivably say, yes. Like, you know, I don't know, town guard, whatever. It's an obvious one. And the example they use in the video. But any background in the player's handbook fits in that city. You won't take a background and then find, oh, there's no place for it. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
There's three sort of, what they call, three iconic D&D Greyhawk conflicts, they call them. And these are Elemental Evil, which is a sort of classic faceless adversary. We've got Ayaz, or Eaz, the evil Cambrian demigod, who has a whole kingdom in Greyhawk named after him, and he rules that. All right. And dragons, apparently, is the third one. Evil dragons. Which, yeah, fine.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
No, because it curves and goes up again, and the L just is straight.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah. Well, that's it. That's basically all we know about Greyhawk for the moment.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
We'll get more.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
We'll definitely get more.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
I mean, these videos are coming out. How do you now feel about Greyhawk now, then, Jess? Now you've heard a little more about it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
because that's what I don't want to deal with so yeah good not really a strong opinion but it's the one I have because that's what I can give you yeah I wonder how popular the sort of DMs Guild stuff is going to be and how much people will put in there because I think with Greyhawk you can pretty much take anything you've written and just slap the word Greyhawk on it and it will fit in there somehow yeah
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah. Easily enough.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah. That is all for this week, yes. That is all for this week.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Comic Sans. You know what? That's fine. No problem. Look, I didn't say it wasn't good. Jess woke up this morning and chose violence.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Goodbye for now. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. See you all next week. Same bat time, same bat place.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yes. So on Wednesday nights, I am currently in a game of, is it Vasen? V-A-E-S-E-N.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Okay. Well, that is the game I'm currently in a game of.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
By three leagues. Yes. So the original Vasen slash Vasen was set in Sweden. Yes. Sort of like late 18th century Sweden with lots of folklore and stuff. Then they pulled out one set in the British Isles, which I don't have, but I definitely want.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
I has yeah you can borrow it wait thank you you're welcome I'm not using it right now you can borrow it so they did one set in the British Isles and now they are bringing out versions set in Prague well Central and Eastern Europe including Prague it says nice nice
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
So this brings in mythic monsters such as Baba Yaga, vampires, because we're talking like Prague, Ukraine, Transylvania and stuff like that, written by Polish and Ukrainian writers.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
I'm quite enjoying this game of facing that I'm playing, Vassen, whatever it's called. Let's go with Vassen. Whether it's right or wrong, let's go with Vassen. The game of Vassen I'm playing, I do want to play one set in the British Isles, but that's not all they're bringing out.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
They also are bringing out another one set in, well, this one's set in Stockholm, so it goes back more to its roots, but this is called City of My Nightmares. It's a full-length campaign, which also includes a starter set.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
You know, with character sheets, dice, a short version of the rules sort of thing. And an intro adventure called... Called... The Haunting of Castle.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Gil and Crutes. Gil and Crutes. Jake Gyllenhaal. I don't know.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
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 Coffey from the Southampton Guild of Rockland.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
I don't know. I really don't know.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Stockholm. Oh, yeah, I don't know how that pronunciation... G-Y-L-L-E-N-C-R-E-U-T-Z. Gynonkreutz. I'm saying Gynonkreutz. It's probably wrong. Yeah, why not?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Hmm. I don't know.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
It is a bit, isn't it?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Okay. Commentary. Social commentary. You should be writing a Terry Pratchett book.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Oh, yeah, yeah, it's totally that, yeah. Like, the adventure that we just finished... I don't think we had a single fight in it. We investigated, solved how to deal with the problem and did so. But I think someone pushed someone over once or something to get through a door or something like that. But other than that, there was no combat in that adventure.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Yeah. So it's very investigative. Very much so, yeah. It's basically there's a monster doing something somewhere. Go and investigate what the monster is. Figure out how to solve the situation and then do so.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Okay. Anyone else want some news? I feel like I've been talking a bit. Hey, do we like Call of Cthulhu?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
That's a little different.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
That's tomorrow. Can I be there by tomorrow?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Oh, November.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
It does look cool. So each game is played inside a prison cell. Interesting. Okay, three hour, one shot Call of Cthulhu adventure. Professional dungeon master, it says, which I think is... That's not what they call them in Call of Cthulhu. Professional keeper, yes.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Well, they might as well just call it a Dungeons & Dragons adventure then, in that case, if that's what they're going for.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
315 | Romance in RPGs with Sam Parks | Hasbro CEO talks AI and D&D, PHB pre-orders cancelled by PayPal
Mm-hmm.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
315 | Romance in RPGs with Sam Parks | Hasbro CEO talks AI and D&D, PHB pre-orders cancelled by PayPal
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...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
315 | Romance in RPGs with Sam Parks | Hasbro CEO talks AI and D&D, PHB pre-orders cancelled by PayPal
This week, Morse and Jessica are joined by Sam Park to talk about romance, and you've got Shane Mail. In the news, Hasbro CEO Chris Cox talks about AI in Dungeons & Dragons, a PayPal error cancels some players' handbook pre-orders, Discworld RPG is headed to Kickstarter, and more! This week on Morse's unofficial tabletop RPG talk!
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
319 | DMG 2024 Preview, New Dragonbane Campaign, D&D Movie Finds New Life on Streaming, and more!
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to Morris's unofficial tabletop RPG talk. I am Russ aka Morris or Morris aka Russ.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
It's £35 for the board game. £15 in shipping. And then you can get two of them for £65. Actually, that's £75.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Anyway, yeah, that looks pretty cool. Yeah, I thought so.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
I'm tempted as well. Whether I get a chance to play it, that's the problem.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Live on the show?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
I used to have all the fighting fantasy books, and I've still got Warlock of Firetop Mountain, but I think that's the only one I've got now. Do you know what happened to them?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Ooh, right. Next bit of news. We all are, I take it, familiar with the organisation PETA. Not Peter, PETA.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
So they're a somewhat controversial organisation, anti-animal cruelty, but I'm not as familiar with this as probably you might be, but make some ethical choices which a lot of people really, really, really disagree with.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Yeah. Well, they have popped up in the RPG news sphere because they have released a 5e supplement. Certainly a little one. It contains three subclasses. Okay. So it's a little more of a leaflet than a supplement, I suppose. Okay. I mean, it still counts. I mean...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Well, it's free PDF. Always good price, yeah. The three subclasses are a Oath of Animal Liberation Paladin, a Warden of the Wild Ranger, Warden of the Wild Ranger, not Warden of the Wild Ranger.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Oh, yeah. Yeah, and the Circle of Empathy Druid. Fair enough. Yeah. There's also a couple of new spells, one of which opens any cages or restraints on animals. And the other one gives a crimson mark to those who hunt or otherwise harm animals. Yeah, so anyway. Anyway, anyway, anyway. That is a thing that's happened. And I know that PETA itself is definitely a controversial organisation.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Yeah, organisation. But, you know, it's news, so we have to report on it. And we have now done our duty and done so.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Yeah, that's true.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
No, not at all.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
There's two reasons to.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
They're playing their own characters, I take it, the ones that they voice.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
That seems like the sort of thing you would do that at, because the VTT looks a bit like Baldur's Gate. It seems like a good place to showcase it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Oh, we're on to actual news now?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Are you going to get them as a collector's thing because you play the game?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Do we need one?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Okay. 80s cartoons. Voltron. Who remembers Voltron?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Well, I don't remember Voltron. So it was a cartoon like in the 80s and apparently there's been spin-offs and different ones ever since. And there is going to be a tabletop role-playing game of it by Catalyst Game Labs.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
I mean, this is launching next week, so really, really soon, and it uses a new system, which they call the Dice Core system, but I don't know anything about the Dice Core system, and they haven't revealed anything to my knowledge.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
also with i but also it's right yeah i'm torn rest torn no no i get it i get it it's whether or not you get use out of it and would you get 99 pounds of use or 74 in this case pounds of use out of it well uh maybe
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Warhammer 40k always feels to me like the sort of thing I would like, yet I've never...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
gotten into it not through i've tried to and it didn't grab me just it's just never yeah really happened i think the only warhammer 40k i've ever played is one single and this is the tabletop battle skirmish war game thing not the role-playing game one single game of that and that's it that's all i've done yeah i suppose depends on who you're mates with
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
And that's on sale?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
It's like $200 or something.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Yeah, well, they have a lot of big bills to clear. So it's definitely, you know, just because he's now clear of cancer, which is amazing news, doesn't mean it's time to stop supporting him.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
But of course. January the 15th. We'll probably have another Kickstarter. So. Let's hope the same thing doesn't happen in January.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Yeah. Right then. Mongoose Publishing, you know, they acquired Traveller recently.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
So they acquired Traveller. It was a couple of weeks ago we talked about that, wasn't it?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
I remember this. But now they've also acquired Twilight 2000 and the 2300 AD role-playing games. so Twilight 2000 yeah originally in the 80s it's a post-apocalyptic game set after World War 3 and 2300 AD is set three centuries later and like humanity has like recovered from the war and is now out in space doing space stuff
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
So Mongoose has been publishing 2318 material since 2007 under license, but they now own the property. Nice. Free League currently produces Twilight 2000. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And Mongoose has indicated that even though they now own the property, that arrangement, they expect that to continue.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
A little bit. We don't know. We don't know. One fewer line on a spreadsheet somewhere.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Yes, also made the Level Up Advance 5th Edition logo for us.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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I do not love it. There's a whole load of, well, not a whole load, a small handful of licensed D&D bits and pieces coming up.
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So one of them from Penguin Random House is a book, a pocket-sized book called Dungeons & Dragons Pocket Expert. And it's just like this pocket-sized book just full of like lore and facts about D&D.
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Yeah, it tells you what a Mind Flayer is. It tells you what the Forgotten Realms are, what the difference between a rogue and a ranger is, that sort of thing. So it's very much a sort of top-level, basic introduction to what D&D is, I guess.
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$7.99 is coming out. next week written by stacy king you know yeah it sounds exactly like that stocking for the type christmas thing yeah yeah okay yeah one thing on this list i am excited about though
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The other thing is a bunch of book tabs. Oh, like bookmarks. So these are like tabs you could just put in your book. Yeah, like bookmarks you can put in there. There's a P8. Well, there's one for each of the Player's Handbook and DMG, the new 2024 ones. The Player's Handbook one has 12 tabs. The Dungeon Master's Guide one has 24.
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Yeah. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary has added the term dungeon crawler. Oh. Which is now officially a word, I guess. Hmm. A dungeon crawler is a real thing. Nice, nice. It defines it in video game terminology.
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Certainly one of those I really, really... One would be annoying to run out of. One of them I really, really, really don't want to run out of.
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But I think it predates video games, definitely. Yeah, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yes. But only the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Yes.
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Hmm. we have not discussed well yeah there's the big news about the Dungeon Masters guide Dungeon Masters guide that we're leaving for last I don't have any other news beyond that so the only other thing I've got is one Kickstarter that I noticed oh yeah so this is called the zombie road We're playing a game by Dragon Mount Plus. And the fun thing about this one, it's on GameFound.
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It's not on Kickstarter. It's on GameFound. And the fun thing about this one is that you play yourself.
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Well, I don't know how that works exactly. I don't know how they get the statistics of yourself. Oh, gosh, yeah. I've got no idea. It uses a D6 system.
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And it's mainly thrilling one-shot missions carried out in a single session, it says, rather than long campaigns. But basically, you play yourself in a Walking Dead-style post-apocalyptic zombie world. You're a small group of survivors.
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Yeah. I really want to know how the stats of you yourself are determined in this game. I'm looking through the page and I can't... See it there. But that is... Yeah.
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Dragon magazine posted an article years and years ago, probably in the 80s or so, on how to work out your own stats. And it was quite sort of very old-fashioned and deterministic. But it was things like, take your IQ and divide it by 10. And that's your intelligence score. I don't know what my IQ is, though. It was, what can you bench press? Divide that by 10 and that's a strength or something.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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I can't remember.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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but um um yeah for each stat they basically had a basically a a test i guess um where you derive your actual score i don't know how they handled like charisma and things like that i can't remember now but um how many friends do you have you don't have two fingers friends loser get out
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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The shelves were empty, weren't they?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Malek the Maleficent here. If, like me, you're enjoying this podcast, please consider subscribing on Patreon for exclusive bonus content every week and the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing you are helping to keep the show going. Subscribe at patreon.com slash maleficent.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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I mean, that's fair. I mean, you can't live without it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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like that now the things i do all right all right don't forget patreon.com slash morris can i go now i found that dragon magazine article so oh yeah
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yes, so that Dragon Magazine article, it was the eighth issue of Dragon Magazine. It was called So You Want Realism in D&D.
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This week, the podcast is sponsored by the Imperial Bank of Botherton. If you have a mountain of gold coins looted from an unfortunately deceased goblin tribe, or a cache of valuable gems liberated from a sadly-demised commune of bugbears, you'll find no better place to store it.
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Absolutely not. LAUGHTER But this is how they did it, okay? Strength. Military press as much weight as you possibly can. Divide the number of pounds you lifted by 10. The result is your strength score.
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I am not entirely sure. Uh... Overhead press. Oh, really? Yes. Oh, right, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Shoulder press. It's a shoulder press.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Apparently. Yeah, shoulder press with a bar. There you go.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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It doesn't say deadlifting, sorry. It doesn't say deadlifting. Dexterity. Run 440 yards. What? subtract your time in seconds from 80 and the result is your dexterity rating.
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Yeah, or like... Have someone throw things at you.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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I'm just a messenger. I'm just a messenger.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Constitution. Figure out the number of consecutive number of months you have gone without missing a day of school or work due to illness. The number of months is equal to your constitution rating.
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But that means if you miss one day, suddenly your constitution score goes down to one. No, it goes down to zero. And then you have to rebuild it up again a month at a time without taking a day off.
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So, July, August, September, October. So your constitution score is four.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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No. Intelligence. The most recent IQ test you've taken divided the result by 10. That is your intelligence rating.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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I did a couple at school.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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We need to check something, can you please?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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yeah um the thing about iq tests is it just measures how good you are at iq tests and if you do a few of them you they're the same sort of puzzles and you start to get good at those sort of puzzles the questions are very like neurotypical and culturally based as well so if you don't have the cultural context then yeah you can get different ones these days i think
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Are you a robot things? And you have to identify fire hydrants. But it's like... I think I'm a robot. Yeah, it's like, but we don't have those. So basically you're testing my knowledge of American films now as to whether or not I'm a robot, basically, because... You know, we have those.
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Yeah. Wisdom, though. Calculate the average number of hours you spend playing D&D or working on your D&D campaign in an average week.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Christmas, that's the final one.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Count up the number of times you have appeared on TV or have had your picture printed in the newspaper. Multiply this number by two.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Still charismatic. You're not going to appear on Cops like 18 times.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Oh, yeah, yeah. This conversation is very, very silly. Okay, shall we get on to this Dungeon Master's Guide stats?
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So the first one was kind of an overview. It's called Everything You Need to Know about the Dungeon Master's Guide 2024. To be honest, a lot of it was stuff we already knew. Okay. We have, like, covered a lot of...
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tidbits and bits of information about this like over the year so it's pretty much i mean we we already know what the chapters are and what's in each chat we know so much stuff about it at this stage so i think this one was more for people that haven't been like following every breadcrumb of information up until now yeah it's kind of an overview but it didn't show a lot of new art and some of the art was really nice
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I did like the art. Yeah, I mean, let me show you the art. Yes. Here we go. Yeah, I've got the link. Have a look at that. So we've got a new map of the planes. We've got Bobby the Barbarian and Hank the Ranger avoiding a trap and arrows as arrows come out of the wall at them. Yeah. We've got a nice picture of a walled city with a port of some kind outside it.
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Hmm. Yes, it is, isn't it?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Like some kind of fey dragon maybe or something. Hmm. If it is a dragon.
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Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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As someone that spent a lot of money on one encounter.
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Yeah. But here's an overview of the DMG. It mentions that the Bastion system is going to be in it from Erna Tharkana, and there's a whole separate video about that we can get into in a second. There's going to be a DM's toolkit arranged in alphabetical order, going from, apparently, alignment to traps. Mm-hmm. The whole gamut from A to T, right? Yep. So basically it's a glossary.
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I mean, like, there's going to be a rules glossary in the Player's Handbook. There is. There's going to be. It's out now. A rules glossary in the Player's Handbook. So I guess it's similar to that, I guess. 400 new and improved magic items.
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Stuff like Greyhawk, which we know about. The crafting rules are in it. A lore glossary. A full chapter about the D&D cosmology.
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Yeah, it's got a lot of sort of generic GMing advice in there.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Not hitting it. It's quite interesting when you compare it to the AD&D 1e DMG, which is basically a big tome of rules that the players aren't supposed to see. And it even says in front of it that players shouldn't be allowed to look at these rules in this book. And it's just like all the rules. It's not advice-y. No. It's written in Gygaxian prose, so it can be quite dense to pass at times.
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I remember when I was a kid, I'd sit in my bedroom and there was a section on invisibility. And I'd read it and reread it and reread it and reread it, trying to work out exactly how invisibility works. And it was like half a page of text. Yeah. trying to pass that half-painting test, trying to work out exactly. And I don't think I ever did figure it out.
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Still to this day, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Okay.
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I think these days probably people will go straight to Google, type in, how do I play D&D, and will be presented with 10 quadrillion videos, though. So it's definitely easier now, I expect, to find the stuff you need.
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Everyone, including the GM, should be having a good time.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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If GMs never say no to anything, that brings us nicely onto the Bastion system.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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There's a line in the thing about the Bastion system that's got a few people up in arms.
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Hmm. well i'll rewind slightly and then we'll get to it let's give it some context we've got to lay down the bed before we plant the flower okay okay so the dungeon master's guide is introducing a new bastion system
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correct tell me more yes so this is basically the equivalent to our stronghold system yeah in level up yeah yeah so basically characters can build a base of operations that's how it works so you can acquire a bastion at fifth level okay And then each week of game time, the Bastion has a Bastion turn, and you can give the Bastion an order.
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So I haven't got the exact details of this, or whether it's got things like you have to be at the Bastion, or you can send a pigeon, or whatever. I don't know how that... But each week, I assume you just control it, and you've got someone running the Bastion back at home when you're not there. Some sort of steward. Yeah. Alfred the butler.
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And so the Bastion will take a turn and can, like, take an action. And it might be crafting or recruiting or research or trading or something like that each week. Right. Also, Bastions contain special facilities. Yeah. So you've got your Bastion. And then at fifth level, when you get your Bastion, it has two special facilities.
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And then every few levels it gets some more up to six at 17th level. Right. Special facilities. And these are kind of like things like armories and workshops and laboratories and stables and menageries and stuff.
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Within your bastion. There's about 30 of them, and you can choose from them.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Don't know. Okay. That's the answer to that question.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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I have no idea. No, absolutely no idea. We don't know. All right. We don't know. But there is a line in there that says that the Bastion stuff is basically for the players to do. Yes. Nice. And it's completely off limits to the DM. Okay. Well, yeah, fair enough.
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Some people have gotten quite upset about that. They're saying, what, so I can't put a plague or have someone attack the Bastion or I can't do anything like that. It's designed as a player side thing that the DM apparently can't get involved in. Why would you put that in there?
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I think there was some comment about the phrase used as a knife against the players or something. It's not supposed to be used against the players. Got it.
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Surely sometimes you want sort of like the neighbouring lord has taken offence to you and has sent troops to start raiding your bastion or something like that sort of storyline. Does it prevent that? Or I don't know.
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And it might just be advice as well. It might not be a rule.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Um, Pinkertons.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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We don't have all the context. We don't have the text. All we've got is a comment by one of the designers in a video. And that's literally all we've got.
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It might not even be in the book. You might just be talking about the intent.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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You know, I don't know. Okay.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Well, fair enough.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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That's pretty much it. That's it pretty much so far. I mean, it's going to be something every week pretty much from now until it comes out in November, which isn't far off, to be honest, isn't it? What, six weeks away when it comes out?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Or even earlier if you're in America and have a local game store.
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Yeah, when is it? So it comes out November the 12th on general release. Right. And it will be two weeks earlier in US local game stores. So that'll be October the 29th. So that's really soon. Yeah, that is recent. Three weeks. Just over three weeks. All right. Well, with that, I think we're probably done then, aren't we?
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We are so done.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Hmm. So they might end up having to change their URL, basically.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Your charisma is the square root of two.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yeah. All right, let's get out of here. Bye-bye. See you all next week. Bye-bye.
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Apparently I now have to read this to you. This is the official podcast of Morris' unofficial tabletop RPT news, which you can find at enworld.org. You can find show notes at morris.podbean.com or wherever you found the podcast. If you feel like they deserve it, you can support the show on Patreon. In return, you will receive exclusive bonus content. Just go to patreon.com slash Morris.
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If you're interested in his babbling nonsense, you can follow at Morris on the Twitter. Send your emails to morrispodcast at gmail.com. Not all of your emails, just the ones you want us to see. That's it. I'm bored now. You can go away. Shoo! Off you go. Goodbye. Get out of here.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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If I'm time-travelling and I want to find out information about the future, I don't think information about the D&D Dungeon Master's Guide is probably going to be my first point of call.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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And lottery ticketing is definitely on that list.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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I think we should list what last week's lottery tickets were, just in case that happens now, and one of us finds ourselves back in time. Then that person can then dig up this podcast.
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and that sort of thing they quite like the .io domain but just to let you know it is potentially in the trap so I thought that was interesting and yeah there you go oh yeah alright Discworld Discworld Discworld we talked about it last week we did and then the quick start has come out during the week and a trailer in fact and I have looked at the quick start so now I know how the Discworld RPG works please tell me because I haven't had the chance I haven't made the time to look at it I am a world leading expert
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The Imperial Bank of Botherton's vault is guarded by nuclear bear owls, and its adamantine doors are enchanted by the greatest mage in all the... Oh, wait, I think there must be an error. I'm the greatest mage in all the world. Who is this pretender? Who? Who? I demand to know!
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along with everybody else who's looked at the PDF, in how this world RPG works.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yeah. So, interestingly, there isn't a lot more to it than what we said last week.
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I mean, it's sort of like a 60-odd page, or was it 40-page PDF. So there's quite a lot of stuff in there, but half of it's an adventure, which looks pretty cool. It's members of the Watch, and you're investigating a crime. I think it's a break-in. You're investigating a break-in. So half of it's an adventure.
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There's a bunch of pre-generated characters at the back, and then the rules, obviously, are the first. And then there's a whole what is Discworld and what is an RPG bit at the beginning. And then the rules bit is pretty short. So, yeah, so these traits are things like the watch is a trait in there. So you're a member of the watch.
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You can put on that trait and, you know, it means you probably have a sword and you can probably get the ear of the watch commander or, you know, things like that. Other ones are sort of like troll born to loving parents or, you know, it's a whole load of stuff that can be traits. It's like they're usually sentences rather than just words.
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There's loads and loads and loads of stuff that could be a trait.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yeah, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's very... The PDF has lots of footnotes in it. Very, very tragedy as you read through it. It very much, very much encourages on...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
the silly and the absurd and it just says the more silly you are the more absurd you are the better especially when it comes to explaining why your trait is relevant the more ridiculous you can be the better it also very specifically says this game is designed for one shots it's not really set up for long term play that makes sense
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Yeah, so it's like play it in between two campaigns in something else. But it's really, really not a game designed for proper campaign-length stuff.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
yeah yeah i mean it all does i mean the system itself is very very very light it's like about as light as you can get with a with a game system yeah unless yeah unless you're going as light as dread or something which is the jenga tower thing it feels like there's a lot of chaos maximization yeah it is very much is the gm impressed yeah basically and yeah
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, the other interesting thing was there's no combat rules in it, which they pointed out last week, but there's no combat rules in it. No, no way of resolving a fight. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
I guess so, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
There's no robots in this world. There could be. It could be golems. But there's other games where combat is just one roll. Not all games have you moving 30 feet at a time. They literally say that. You're not going to move 30 feet at a time and roll to hit and do some damage and reduce hit points. You're not going to do any of that stuff at all.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
I guess to me, I really like it. It's a gorgeous PDF as well. It's very pretty. It's evocative. It works really well. It conjures up the spirit of Pratchett, in my opinion, well, in the writing style, with the footnotes, the art, everything. All does that. The adventure seems to... I'm not going to spoil the adventure. I'll just say it's an investigation into a break-in.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
It covers a bunch of different locations, silly situations and feels Pratchetty to me. Hmm. So, yeah, I like it from that point of view. I mean, the system itself, take it or leave it, it's not much to say about it, really. But, yeah, I like it. I mean, I think I'll back it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Just because I like the look of it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Please hear it. I wonder if it'll be another million dollar one.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Monty Python 1 did, this might.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Tell you what, if you tuck in a load of Discworld slash Pratchett collectibles in there, that'll explode.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Morris' unofficial tabletop RPG talk. I am Russ, a.k.a. Morris, or Morris, a.k.a.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
Oh, yeah. And the trailer, of course, as well. It's quite fun.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
The trailer just has the turtle, elephant and discord combination swimming slowly across the screen while the narrator attempts to narrate something, but the music keeps swelling up and you can't hear the narrator and he starts getting upset and says, turn the music down. It's funny. Yeah. It's a little thing, but it's funny.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
I'm not sure what date exactly really soon though really soon
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
318 | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Preview, Discworld RPG, D&D Accessories, and more!
think it's like in the next couple of weeks oh nice okay i'm not 100 sure the problem is this is a piece of information i did know and i've forgotten it i feel like it was october i think october was the month i had in my mind is is kind of yeah i feel like mid-october but i must emphasize that's just a feeling that's what we believe in our hearts all right okay we'll look out for that and we'll let you know on here the week it comes out so you'll be aware so you will not miss it yeah
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
That's true. Well, maybe your bones will need lotion now that they're exposed to the elements.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
That does actually look fun. I mean, I think I'd probably enjoy playing a one-shot of that, just playing as an undead. Yeah, that does sound fun.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
All right. There we go.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
All right, shall we get on to this D&D news?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Well... You're not exciting. You're not exciting. What's the problem? I am excited. It's just that it's a lot of it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Pretty much all did, yeah. All right.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. So on Tuesday, D&D Direct was a sort of live streamed, pre-recorded video event that went out on Tuesday evening, our time. I think it was like 10 a.m. in America. And basically it was about half an hour long and it covered three broad topics. It took a look at the upcoming 2024 core rule books. It talked about Project Sigil, the 3D virtual tabletop.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And it talked about the future of D&D in general in terms of what books are coming out in 2025 after the core rule books. So those are three things it talked about. I don't think we need to go into the core rule books yet again. I think, you know.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
We all know what's in them. Yeah. Yeah. We don't need that. We can just sort of go on to... What should we do first? Should we do Project Sigil or shall we do the future, the 2025 books?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Do a Sigil first.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
A Sigil.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
So you talked about Project Sigil for about 10 minutes. They showed a lot of very, very nice clips from it, like swooping cameras over graveyards and towns and miniature builders where you put together your digital minis and the level designer where you're adding rooms and floors and walls and traps and things like that. It all looked super, super, super slick. Way more slick than it looked.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
in that demo that they did, like, was it a month ago? Whenever it was. It was at Gen Con, wasn't it? About a month ago. So it looked way more slick. I don't know whether that's because it's come along a bit further or whether that's just some selected, like, pre-rendered, you know, not actual gameplay type stuff or not. I'm not entirely sure. But it did look super slick. I will give it that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
This week, Morse, PJ, and Jessica are joined by Rich Lescoflair to talk about Phantasy Star. In the news, lots of big Dungeons & Dragons announcements, including the D&D Direct Recap, new Forgotten Realms sourcebooks, a Prodigal Sigil update, and more! This week on Morse's Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk!
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
So it's going to come with an adventure called Danger in Dunbarrow, a free adventure which you can play. And that kind of introduces the 3D tabletop to you. You can bring in, I mean, this is what you would expect anyway, but you can bring in any character from D&D Beyond.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
But there's this mini maker. It lets you design your digital miniatures. And they showed a few quick clips of that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Basically, you add your clothes and your hair. It's like when you make a character appearance in a video game.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
It was like that. But it's literally a 3D miniature that you're making.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
No, I mean, it was literally just like a second. Yeah. And one shot of one mini.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
There's people... Well, this is... I don't know if it's the answer to that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
I couldn't say what my idea was. Fair enough.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. I mean, they talk about, like, stylistically, these assets, as they call them, they say they're designed to make it feel like you're buying, like, a high-end miniature. Ooh, okay.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Ooh. A real one?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, well, no, they haven't said anything like that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
My guess is there's going to be obviously a whole load of stock miniatures. Monsters and things like that. There'll be lots and lots of those and you can buy and collect those. Almost certainly. I don't know whether you'll get any for free. You must get some for free.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, I don't know. Or maybe each adventure you buy will come with whatever miniatures it needs. I don't know. That's probably how it works. But I'm guessing that when you design a mini using this miniature generator, you can design it, but then you have to buy it once you've designed it. I would guess.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Well, I think they said there's going to be like a tryout sort of mode that you can try it out for free. So I assume that's going to be like a limited functionality or limited time.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Well, I mean, Jess, you were saying last week, I think it was, about how for you the sort of link between this and Baldur's Gate in experience is of interest to you.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
They mentioned that as well. Ooh, what did they say? So they basically said, you know, it's like someone who's played Baldur's Gate will come along and see this and it won't be totally unfamiliar to them. And that's kind of the idea behind it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
I guess it's bringing... So people who are used to video games will kind of... Yeah. Yeah. There's touchstones that they'll recognise.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. So there's other stuff. So there's going to be a lot of plug-in locations which you can just grab and use or mod as you wish. There are things like a graveyard, a mine, a town, that sort of thing. Yeah. So you can just grab those and then you can just change them or put stuff in them or take things out or whatever. But each comes also with like a pre-made story.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
which you can ignore it completely you don't have to use it but if you just wanted to grab a graveyard put it in there and just run the pre-made story you've just got a little sort of you know mini adventure there ready to go and you could presumably build an entire campaign just out of all of these different locations and their pre-made stories
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
yeah and i imagine as they go by you combine your adventures which will have all this stuff in and yeah yeah and the idea is you also you could you're supposed to share content with others okay so if you create stuff you should be able to sort of share it whether that's on a marketplace or whether that's just literally hey i i made this and you just send it to them and they use it i don't know
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know. It's hard to tell, really. I mean, there's a whole level builder. And they've described it as the best miniature set that you could have. And you just snap together different kit pieces. And it kind of looked to me like, basically, what you have there is a digital version of Dwarven Forge.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
is what it kind of looked like to me. And you're snapping all these things together digitally to make all these different dungeons or whatever. But also it's not just dungeons like Dwarven Forges, it's like graveyards and towns and all sorts of things.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
So that looks kind of cool. Like quite Neverwinter Nights-y. You know how that was tiles?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
You put different tiles together.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
So, on your Mac...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Oh, okay. I was going to say, it's not going to be on Mac at first.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yes. Yeah, it's going to be starting on PC. They're going to have other platforms later, including mobile and console. So they basically want it on every platform they possibly can, but it's starting on PC, apparently.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, they showed some clips of some secret doors and traps going off and a lift that literally went up and down between levels and a camera which kind of swooped in around them. I don't know how much... A lot of this was quite fancy camera work. And I don't know how that will actually...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
but we'll talk to Rich in the second half of the show the first half of the show as usual we are going to talk about some news and there's a lot let's go it's a big big news week where shall we start what's that thing Oh, well, most of it is D&D, so let's do the non-D&D stuff first, and then we can dive into the D&D stuff. How about that?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
They also showed a little quick thing of Drizzt fighting Optimus Prime.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
That's Drizzt O'Urden, the Dark Elf, from the Forgotten Realms, fighting Optimus Prime, the Transformer, from not the Forgotten Realms, from Cybertron. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, the shot was some over-Optimus Prime's shoulder, so you could sort of see the back of Optimus Prime's head and shoulder, and drizzled down on the ground, looking quite small. Yeah, yeah, it's like a bit of a discrepancy.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Other little bits and pieces. If you have artwork of your own, you can just put 2D tokens on there. Flat 2D tokens from any artwork. And also you can use 2D maps. If you've got a 2D map from an older adventure or something, you can just write that one there. So basically you'll see that 2D map in a sort of isometric point of view, but it will still be flat.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And your tokens will be flat on that map. So it will look like a map with tokens on it on a table sort of thing. So you can do that rather than having to build the old 3D models and all that stuff. But I think the goal is to have you collecting virtual minis and things like that is how it's going to go.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Because one of the things, they're going to give you a free digital gold dragon mini to kickstart your Project Sigil collection if you pre-order the 2024 physical and digital core rulebook bundle.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
So that, I think, kind of shows where that's going. So it's going to be very collectible, I'm guessing. That's the sense I'm getting.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
I mean, with D&D Beyond, you get like, if you pre-order this, you get free dice. Oh, it's not the concept of getting something free.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, I don't know.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
We don't know what sort of money we're talking at the moment. What does a miniature going to cost you? Is it going to cost you 50 cents? Is it going to cost you $10? Who knows?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
It's really interesting to see if a small miniature and a large miniature cost the same, given that because they're digital... It doesn't actually matter. It doesn't actually make any difference. It's just what size you set them to. So whether they're going to charge you more for a dragon than a goblin, when in fact they're both basically digital assets.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
All right, if you're doing it on that, what if you've got a goblin that's like an alchemist and totally loaded down with tons and tons of stuff and a dragon that's got nothing?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Get an alchemy dragon, obviously. But what I mean is, in that case, the goblin has required more work, so should the goblin cost more than the dragon?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
It's how we are in Hampshire.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. Anyway. That's Project Sigil.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. Well, they did say you could have played other games on it as well.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
The impression I got was they meant that in the sense that you can put a miniature on a map and move it around and roll some dice and have it not handle the rules for you. And then basically you can play any role-playing game on it because it's not doing the rules.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Someone pointed out to me, I On Wednesday night at your club, in fact, another 3D virtual day. There are a couple of them out there, but one that's coming on Steam. And I had a quick look at the trailer for it on Steam. And it looks pretty much like it's a third party one by, I think, a French company. I can't remember his name. I can't remember his name. But a French company.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And it's going to be free to use. So I'm not sure how it gets monetized, but it looked as good as this.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
It was the amazing thing. So, you know, there is going to be competition out there. Yeah. And if there's free competition out there.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And again, it's just... Game finders into it as well and things like that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And linking it with D&D Beyond. It's basically going to become the default way of playing D&D When you're not in person, I think.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Well, like you say, that's the whole free market thing there, isn't it? It's about getting the price right. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Talking about hype trains and success. Oh, yes. Okay. Quick segue here into the biggest tabletop RPG Kickstarter ever.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
People on this podcast are currently. I'll talk about D&D Beyond, by the way. Do you remember we were talking about how bells were getting changed last week?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
They've gone back on that. So last week, for those who might have missed it, so last week we were talking about how D&D Beyond was going to be handling the 2014 rules going forward. And for most things, they were going to be like a 2014 and a 2024 version. Mm-hmm. which you could choose from. And the 2014 one would be my legacy. But spells were notably missing from that list.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And it basically meant that everybody was going to have to be using the 2024 spells, not the 2014 spells. Yeah. They've backtracked on that now and basically said, sorry, we've heard what you said and we misjudged that. Now, yes, you're going to be able to choose between the 2014 and 2024 spells.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
So the Cosmere, Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere RPG has finished now. Yep.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
The thing that I just found really odd about that was, why just spells and not everything else? Why wouldn't it all be all or nothing? Why nearly everything except spells? That's what made it weird.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
That's what they're doing now, isn't it? You can choose.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Like, cool.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. Right, anyway. There's some other D&D news. There's some other stuff that's coming out next year.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Oh, let's do that first, then. Okay, let's do that one first, and then we'll do the books. You were intrigued by this.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Intrigued.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Intrigued.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
It overtook Avatar towards the beginning of this week.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
That's the interesting thing. Like Wizards of the Coast is going to be selling 5e Lord of the Rings to you.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
He's fascinating. Go back 50 years or 40 odd years, DSR was being sued by the Tolkien estate for having hobbits, Ents and Balrogs and had to change them to halflings, treants and badels.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. But yeah, that is interesting. Those terms were well and truly tabled, were they not?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, like Lorraine Williams passed on the rights to Middle Earth back in the early 90s saying it wasn't worth it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
I know what you mean, and I've seen other people say that. I get exactly what you're saying there. It does seem a little odd, but it's not like they stopped selling 5e stuff, is it? No. They continue to...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
No.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
But Jess, if Wizards came to us and said, do you want to put your five e-books on D&D Beyond? We're not going to say no, are we?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Cobalt Press is there in Seattle. They all know each other. There's a bit of that involved.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Do you remember the university-decried OGL 2.0 that they tried to introduce a year or so ago?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Oh. When they were cancelling the OGL, they were doing great. The OGL 2.0. Oh, yeah. Paying Wizard of the Coast fees and all sorts of stuff. Yeah, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
we'll cry yeah i remember that okay well that's this you know they didn't need to cancel the otl they just need to make a platform that people wanted to use instead yeah which they've done they've come up with a platform that people want to use and instead of forcing people to do that people are coming to them and saying please let us do that yeah so you know people will be begging to pay
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
PJ, you know the question.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, I mean, I don't know what percentage it will be. It's fine. I mean, DMs Guild is 50%. Yes, DMs Guild is 50%.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, most probably. But also this involves them actively writing code for each of these things.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
So on GM's Guild, Wizard of the Coast doesn't have to do anything. You upload your PDF and start selling it. Wizard of the Coast has to do nothing. On this, you have to send Wizard of the Coast your files. They have to painstakingly code each thing.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, but that's because the items in the App Store are siloed, though. They want the items here to literally work with D&D Beyond. So if you've got, like, a new class, for it to work with D&D Beyond, it has to actually be coded, doesn't it?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, okay, yeah. But that also then means telling people, giving people access to the D&D Beyond code.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
It depends also how D&D Beyond is being designed. Is it being designed with all these hooks that makes it easy for you to code stuff that hooks into it? Hmm. Because we've spoken to people that were on the D&D Beyond Design team years ago, some of whom went on to Evil Genius Games and then left Evil Genius Games.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And the impression I got was that it's a little bit, not as bad as Roll20, but it is kind of sort of like a little cobbled together and aging now.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Well, certainly the situation at the moment is that Wizards codes each thing to send to them.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
So whether that will ever change, I don't know, but that's certainly the current situation.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Well, the reason, because, like, we, you know, as you know, are working on Level Up Gateway, which is similar to DMD Beyond in concept. And when you say we... You're paying some smart people to do this work. I am not personally coding it. Alexander is, yeah, very, very competently coding it. Yes.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
But people do ask, you know, will third-party products be usable on it? Hmm. And we've just kind of like, we're like, we would like that. But from a technical point of view, that means that third parties will have to learn how to code the plugin module for your thing. It's not just a bit of text. A class isn't a bit of text. It's a whole thing that does stuff. It's a computer program.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
It's not like you can upload a PDF and it will just start working.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
It's an average of $276 per backer, by the way.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
yeah sensible yeah anyway anyway that's the third party stuff so yeah so yeah I'm definitely interested in the concept of wizards selling Lord of the Rings now which is kind of fun that's cool yeah well I gave a games workshop before they became Warhammer and worked on that as well So, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
I wonder if that will tie into the 3D virtual tabletop, Project Cigali, and then you'll be able to get, like, 3D models of Gandalf and one around Middle Earth. Someone will build Middle Earth on that. I don't know. Would that happen?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
The Shire. The Shire would be a nice one.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
My eyes glaze over. But you know what the best one would be, of course? The Mines of Moria. And there is a big... It has now been mapped by Free League. So in theory, presumably, they could take that adventure and...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
You could fight the Balrog on the bridge at Khazad-Dum. That'd be amazing.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
All right. Well, that's Project Sigali. Yes. So we've got some books. We've got some books coming next year. Many books. Discuss. Yeah. So the first of these books is called the D&D Dragon Anthology.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
It's a working title, apparently, but it's a book with 10 adventures which feature dragons in dungeons. Interesting.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Old choice. Yes.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, I don't know whether it's going to be old stuff reprinted or some of the anthologies they've done or whether it's going to be brand new. I've no idea.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
You've got a whole chapter in the Dungeon Master's Guide, yeah. So maybe there'll be new stuff.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, that gold dragon.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, it looks amazing.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Well, that's also the fact that it's close to you and they're far away. Some dragons are big and some dragons are far away. Some dragons are far away, yeah. There's that Tiamat. There's a big old Tiamat there. It's like totally wrecking a town, which is quite awesome. They've got a gorgeous red dragon. They do be like that, wrecking town. Yeah, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
But we don't know much else about that other than that there's going to be a... It's coming sometime in 2025. It's a dragon anthology of adventures featuring dragons in dungeons.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. Yeah. Right, next coming out next year is a brand new starter set, which is currently named Heroes of the Borderlands.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. So it's like nearly one and a half times what Avatar did in terms of dollars. but it's only about 60% of what Avatar did in terms of backers right yeah there's a lot less backers it's a much higher it's a more than twice as much average pledge is what's done there and a lot less merchandise as well there's a lot of stuff there's a lot of books there's a lot of books say that yeah
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
No? Oh. The 2024 browser. What they used in the video, an awful lot, was a reimagining. This is a reimagining of the Player's Handbook. And we have reimagined the Monster Manual. It's like lots and lots of kind of like... approximate synonyms for edition without actually using the word edition.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. Anyway, so this new Starter Set, it's set in an area called the Borderlands.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Is it the sea?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
No. No. I think it's two lands that border each other because there's a keep on those borderlands. Famously so. There's a keep on the borderlands.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Next to the caves of chaos.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Some people are energised by chaos. Some people like it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, I'm not.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. Yeah, so Heroes of the Borderlands is a working title. It's got character creation in it, which starter sets haven't had before, I believe. They've just had pre-gens in. Is that correct, as I recall?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
It's got intuitive, component-centric character creation. I don't know what that means. It's a long word. Component-centric, would you say? Intuitive component-centric.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
these components and you put them onto the character sheet and it just works yeah yeah like little cards in the right shapes i would love to be able to do that with just like you just grab your heritage and you grab your culture and you grab your background you just put them down and there's your character it's a little it's a hand of cards
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
But it wouldn't quite work because then you'd just be looking on different cards for different things which should be together. So it wouldn't quite work. But I like the idea of it. Yeah. But then you'd have combat bits on each card and you'd have exploration bits and spells on different... It wouldn't quite work, but... I mean, it's not impossible.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, we've seen them. They're fairly similar to the old ones with a few tweaks. Yeah. So anyway, this set reimagines B2, the Keep on the Borderlands, a classic D&D adventure, by splitting this adventure into three self-contained booklets. And they are the Caves of Chaos, the Keep on the Borderlands, and the Wilderness. And there will be a how-to-play video accompanying the release.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And it's all about apparently teaching people how to play D&D this set. That's its goal. It's an onboarding set.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Well, maybe electronically via the medium of an onboarding video.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, I mean, basically they should just send that one that she did with The Punisher and just tell everyone to watch that. It's really good. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, so that's coming next year. I don't know when exactly. I think it's like summer-ish next year. They didn't say specifically when.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
But they're saying that we're really leaning into using components to teach people how to play.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
It's a thing they're doing. They're getting all component-y.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, yeah. Well, this is now not only the biggest tabletop RPG Kickstarter ever, it's the biggest gaming Kickstarter ever of any kind.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
mats cards online arts yeah great ideas then again i remember fantasy flight games and like warhammer and it was so many components and the game was so over-engineered and like i had so much space in front of me and it was so confusing it just didn't work for me at all it was too componenty yeah it was massively over over-engineered for a role-playing game
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
it had as many components as a board a complex board game would have and it's like this is i've got cars and tokens and all sorts of things in front of me i mean it's too much too much stuff well one a lot of people do like stuff Yeah, I know.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yes, you are not wrong. PJ is correct.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
No, you are not not wrong.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
We should move on swiftly. The really, really big news I'm going to get to last. I'm going to do some littler bits first.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Wow. Bigger than any board game or video game. Okay. But also, it's the third biggest Kickstarter ever. I believe number one. I believe by a watch. A watch? Okay. And Brandon Sanderson's own other Kickstarter, which is the number one.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Lego collectible minifigs coming in September.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
They have done them before. These are new ones. But they've done them before. We haven't seen these particular ones before, I don't think.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, no, that's ringing a bell with me too, to be honest. We've got the Lady of Pain there, we've got a Mind Flayer with an Intellect of Arrow, we've got, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Tasha is there. It's basically a whole lot of iconic D&D stuff.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, I mean, they're coming out September 1st, so that's like this coming week, isn't it? When's September 1st?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Sunday. Is it? Oh, okay. Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Possibly, possibly. What else is there? Yeah, there's an exhibit at the Strong National Museum of Play.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Which is going to be Dungeons & Dragons 50 years... Well, it's basically a 50th anniversary thing, basically. Mm-hmm. This is opening in September, located on the first floor of the museum, and it features a timeline of the game's development, early artifacts from D&D's design, and a look at the influence that D&D has had on video games and culture.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
This museum was founded in the 60s by Margaret Woodbury. I don't actually know where it is. I am going to quickly look up where it is, because that article fails to mention this crucial piece of information.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
I'm guessing America, but it's in Rochester, New York, United States.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Fair enough. So that's a thing that's happening. And then finally, we've got a Magic the Gathering secret lair drop. So this is apparently, and I don't really know Magic the Gathering, a crossover between Magic and D&D. And there's a whole load of cards being shown with things like Beholder's Innovation Ray and Beholder's Disintegration Ray and Monster Manual and Akerarak the Lich.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
The Archlich, or Aserarak, however it's pronounced. The Archlich.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
It says, when Acererak the Archlich enters, if you haven't completed Tomb of Annihilation, return Acererak the Archlich to its owner's hand and venture into the dungeon.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
I guess so. I guess so.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. So that's that. And then finally, Forgotten Realms. I forgot about those. So there are going to be two Forgotten Realms hardcovers in 2025. Exciting. There's going to be the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide and the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide. One for players, one for, obviously, Dungeon Masters.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. Yeah. So Brandon Sanderson has the first and third biggest crowdfunding projects ever.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Well, Greyhawk's going to be in the DMG, I suppose. At least one chapter of.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
I guess. Yeah. So the two books, the players one will have, well, player options, basically new subclasses, feats, backgrounds, spells, new kinds of spells, they said. I don't know what that means. New types of spells. And various factions, like the Harpers or the Red Wizards of Tay. That's going to be the players book. And the DM's book is going to dig into various different parts of the realms.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
It's incredible. Yeah. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And this is interesting. So what they're doing is different areas of the realms are going to be designed for a different play style. So you've got Baldur's Gate for urban fantasy, Icewind Dale for survival horror. There's the Moonshade Isles, which will be for fairy stories and conflicts which can be resolved without violence.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And there's also going to be a giant elven mega dungeon and the land of Kalimshan. And each one is basically a totally different kind of play style. So yes, that's those two books. And we don't know much more about that other than they're coming out late next year. So we're probably talking like November-ish or something.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
The artwork is always gorgeous. So it's going to have five, basically five in-depth setting guides. Baldur's Gate, Kalimshan, the Dale Lands, Moonshade Isles and Icewind Dale. Each for a different play style.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
That's the Dungeon Master's book. So yeah, if you want to know more about the Forgotten Isles, that's the way to do it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. Right. And that is pretty much the D&D news.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
That was quite a lot of news, wasn't it? It was more than your average amount of D&D news. How do we feel about it all? Anything we're excited about?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Sorry. That's my happy, happy JoyJoy take.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
There was one last bit of news I wanted to mention very quickly. Yeah, okay. Very quickly. So you remember last year, io9 shuttered its tabletop gaming news.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And people like Lynn Kredega and others lost their jobs at io9.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Linkin Deku, of course, being famous for having very, very well covered the OGL crisis a couple of years back.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Then earlier this year, Dicebreaker closed down.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Now there's a third one.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
So Comic Book News used to quite robustly cover D&D and a bit of other RPG stuff. They have been laying off a lot of their journalists, a lot of whom are posting on Twitter saying, hey, I am unemployed and looking for work.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And it looks like the Comic Book News is no longer going to be covering tabletop gaming news either. So that's the third one in under a year. Major outlet where tabletop gaming news could be found. They're going down like dominoes. And I'm not 100% sure why. Well, has Ian World...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
But we're a very different model. They make their money off of that. We don't make our money off that. But my suspicion is because two of those were due to buyouts. So Dicebreaker was part of a much larger buyout. And the people who, the entity that bought the company that owns Dicebreaker, Dicebreaker wasn't the part of it they were interested in. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And comic book movies has just been bought by another company. And following that, the tabletop news stuff gets shuttered. So there's kind of a pattern here. Yeah. But I think what it is, is if you're running one of those sites, and this I don't have an insight into because I only cover tabletop RPG news.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
If you cover movie news and comic book news and tabletop RPG news on the same site, I imagine you are going to see a massive, massive difference in viewer figures for those three topics.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Massive difference, like an order of magnitude difference. Yeah, at least. And a new owner would look at that and go, why are we spending these resources writing these articles which get one-tenth of the views that these other articles do? Can we please just write those other ones from now on? Thanks. I think that is probably what is going on, at my guess.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
On a comic book news, the main D&D correspondent was Christian Hoffer.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
who coincidentally, I'm not saying it's connected in any way whatsoever, but coincidentally has written two articles for Ian Rod this week, as it happens.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
What are the chances? What are the chances? Sorry. Anyway, and that is it. That's the news. I think we're done. Yes.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yes, let's go and talk to Rich Luscaflair back in time about Phantasy Star.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
So we have a special guest with us here this week, Rich Lescouver from Skydawn Games, who's here to tell us all about the upcoming Phantasy Star. That's Phantasy with a PH, Star, tabletop RPG, based on, I believe, a video game. Am I correct?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
You know me and my relationship with video games is not a strong one.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Interestingly, apparently Firefly was based on a Traveller campaign.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
What's the actual game about? It is very sci-fantasy. The original game was very like, you know,
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. So how did you end up getting the license to produce the official tabletop RPG? I assume you contacted Sega? Who owns it?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Always wanted to go there. Yeah. Yeah. So it's going to be powered by your Esper Genesis game.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Which in turn is 5e powered itself. Is that correct?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I remember you came on like two years ago. Three years? It was a while ago. Maybe three or four years ago. Before we were doing Level Up Press, it was quite some time. Sorry. Yeah, but you came on to talk about Espigenesis then, and we can probably put a link in the show notes if anyone wants to go and listen to that episode again and sort of get a recap on Espigenesis itself.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
But do you want to just give us a really, really quick
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
I think it's probably one of the first 5e sci-fi games, I think. It's been around a while now.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
That's fair. So Esper Genesis is a standalone game, isn't it?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
You don't need the core D&D. Do you need the Esper Genesis books to play Phantasy Star, or is that also standalone?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, there's some things that I think, like, you know, people say they're using 5e, and I think that's not the best fit. But I think for, like, for really sort of heroic science fantasy, I think 5e is a really, it's a solid choice, solid choice of a system to use for that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, yeah. I think from what I understand, Mark Miller was concerned about legacy and succession is the word he used. Sure. And obviously they've worked together for a long time and there's trust between them and obviously they trust Mongoose to take good care of his baby, as it were. So, yeah. And they didn't actually want to announce this either.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, some IP holders don't like using that. I think Disney won't let anyone use Kickstarter with any of their Star Wars stuff or Marvel stuff or anything like that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
I think it's possibly an element that some of these large companies don't necessarily understand Kickstarter as well.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
For people I've spoken to, it's kind of like there's too much of an overlap between crowdfunding and investing in the mind of somebody that hasn't encountered Kickstarter before.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
yeah yeah so so you know i think there's like a slight concern they don't really understand what what the what the actual relationship is between a kickstarter packer and a you know because because there's some talk on kickstarter that you're investing in a product as opposed to you know and i think i think some of that terminology can possibly put you know maybe some larger companies i don't know i can't speak for them
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
So traditional release next year. When next year? Is there a date planned?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
The reason they had to is because the news, the original suggestion was that Mark wanted it not to be announced until he had died. Oh, wow. Not that there's any suggestion that he's ill or anything. I don't know if he is or not.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
What product should we be expecting? Like a hardcover book? Is there adventures coming?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
So it's going to be part of a coffee table reference book as well. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
So we've got a hardcover core rule book. What else have we got in the plans? What's in the oven?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, yeah. Touched words, yeah. Which they were quite happy about, because they'd been talking about this for years. They signed the contracts in January of this year.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Right, because you're him.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And then the suggestion was, you know, the chances of keeping this secret for, you know, decades, or however long it is before Mark Miller passes, were slim. So they decided, okay, in that case, we'll announce it in 2027 on Traveller's 50th anniversary. But part of the process is there's a lot of third-party publishers and they had to be informed.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, like low-res pixelated stuff. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Oh, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
The listeners will just have to listen to us going, ooh, an artist.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
That's probably a setting here. I can see there's some art on the website already.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
So we talk about who you play in a fantasy dialogue in terms of classes and things like that. What are the player options we're talking about here?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And because this was happening, because people were being told, people who were licensing Traveller in various ways, not just the game, but anyone who was licensing Traveller for Mark, for Mark Miller, whether they were doing art or this or whatever they were doing, had to be informed that Mongoose was taking over and they would no longer be licensing it from him, they'd be licensing it from Mongoose.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Well, this sounds really exciting. I mean, just like more sci-fi options for 5e is exciting in itself, just because I feel like my first love has always been sci-fi before fantasy. I've always loved it. It's always been calling to me that fantasy is so much more popular in tabletop RPGs than fantasy is. Yeah. So, you know, every time there's a new sci-fi game, I'm just like, I'm there.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
I'm looking at it. I'm checking it out. So I can't wait. I'm going to be checking this out for certain next year. So what would you admit next year? Summer-ish? Probably late summer. Late summer. Okay.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And that turns out to be quite a few people. It became really clear that the news was going to become public. There'd be just too many people knowing about it at that point. And so they decided to announce it now.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Very cool. Yeah. I mean, your love for the setting and the games is really apparent. It's really coming through. And I know the sort of level of detail and care that you put into Respa Genesis, and that's a beautiful, amazing game. So I have absolutely no doubt that this is going to be fantastic. Yes. I can't wait to see it. Me neither. So on that note, I think we probably need to wrap up now.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
So thank you so much for joining us.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, and do let us know when that adventure comes out because I'll be digging that up for sure. Absolutely. And, yeah, yeah. Okay, that's it for this week. We will see you again next week, same time, same place. But until then, let's all go and have a weekend.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Au revoir. Bye-bye. Au revoir.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Lots and lots of different travellers over there. There's this mega traveller and there's loads of them. I've got like two or three of them. Nice, nice. I don't know if you can see them on the shelves behind me, but yeah, up there. I've got two or three of them up there.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, I mean, I don't know the system well enough to run it. I'd have to bone up on it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Is to run it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. The thing is, for me personally, my version of Traveller is what's always new.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
I would rather run that just because that's my game and I made it the way I like it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah. Traveller, massive influence on why what's all this new system. Traveller came up with, invented the life path system, character creation system, which I like immensely. Yes. And it was also famous for you're able to die during character creation.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Right, well, we've got some Dungeon World news.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
That's also changing ownership. vaguely know about this but not enough to actually say so it has been purchased by luke crane so luke crane you would know from burning wheel and mouse guard and was also head of community at kickstarter for some years so the game has been purchased from the original creators adam I never know how to say this last name. Kerbal, is it? Kerbal, Kerbal. K-O-E-B-E-L.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And Sage Latara. Okay, yeah. And there was some accusations of sort of like poor behaviour on the parts of Adam Kerbal.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
I believe so, yeah. I believe that's what it was.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, well, there was a little bit more controversy later, so then... Crane was currently head of community at Kickstarter, was at the time head of community at Kickstarter, and attempted a Kickstarter campaign for something called The Perfect RPG. And this is a couple of years ago, like 2020, 2021, something like that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And one of the creators on there was Adam Kerbel, which there was a big old backlash about that. And that resulted in Crane having to resign from his job at Kickstarter.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Right. So this is like three years later and now Crane is now purchasing the very popular Dungeon World from Kerbal and Laftora along with another business partner. I don't know who that is. And they're making a new edition of the game.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
I'm assuming that the original creators are not going to be involved. I've got no information either way. I'm assuming not.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Synchronised shrugging, yeah. That sounds like an amazing sport. I can't wait to watch that. Could be worse, could be broken. Yeah, so that's the news, basically. Cool. That is the news.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
It's Powered by the Apocalypse, isn't it? Dungeon World. Yeah. I haven't played Dungeon World, but I've played Powered by the Apocalypse, various Powered by the Apocalypse games.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
It's a story game. Yeah. It relies on tropes.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
I mean, I don't know what they're going to do. Are they going to move away from that system? Are they going to change the system? Are they going to keep the system? I don't know what they're doing. I don't know.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, I'm sure so. Yeah, so that's that news. Okay, what else we got? Legend of Vox Machina Season 3. Critical Role's Amazon Prime cartoon show. They've got a season 3 out now?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
There's a trailer for season 3. It has just been released.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Didn't we watch the first episode for this podcast? Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm misremembering that. We did, didn't we?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, so season three is going to be on Prime Video on October the 3rd. There we go.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yeah, yeah. So the show kind of adapts the D&D campaign played by Critical Role. Yes. Although it makes some changes and stuff, and it takes out the sort of D&D IP stuff and replaces it with other stuff. Yeah. But yeah, yeah. Those who are fans of Critical Role should tune in.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
And didn't they have, they had a kick, yeah, I just remember, yeah, they had a kick, a $10 million Kickstarter for the first season, didn't they? And then Twain picked it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that now.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
No, no.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
But probably not a million miles away from it. Yeah, yeah. $10 million isn't that much. Well, it's $14 million, I suppose. Yeah, I don't know.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
More than $4 million away from you.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Yes, that is happening. Okay. So I think that's most of the non-D&D news that I've got.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
There's a lot of D&D news.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Morris' own official tabletop RPG talk. I am Russ, a.k.a. Morris, or Morris, a.k.a.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
313 | Phantasy Star with Rich Lescouflair | D&D Direct Recap
I know which one of those I'd want to be. Ooh, is this based on skin tone or based on coolness? Well, if you're a skeleton, you've got no flesh. That's true. If you're a ghost, you can't touch anything. If you're a zombie, you're just walking around and rotting. And if you're a vampire, you just look cool and dramatic. So vampire wins every time, surely? I would argue that you suck, but...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
317 | Free D&D adventure based on 1980s cartoon | PHB fastest selling D&D book ever, Mork Borg video game, and more!
Hello, your editor Dale here with a quick correction. The TTRPGs for Accessibility Gaming Charity Bundle on itch.io is available for 23 days, not 23 hours.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
317 | Free D&D adventure based on 1980s cartoon | PHB fastest selling D&D book ever, Mork Borg video game, and more!
It appears PJ just misread the label on the timer from when they saw it because most of these bundles run for only a few weeks while this one has been ongoing for a month already and has been featured in my freebie sales and charity bundles column on IanWorld. So you still have plenty of time to jump in on this bundle as it runs until October 20th.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
317 | Free D&D adventure based on 1980s cartoon | PHB fastest selling D&D book ever, Mork Borg video game, and more!
This week, Morse, PJ, and Jessica talk about all the week's tabletop RPG news, including a free Dungeons & Dragons adventure based on the 1980s cartoon, the D&D Players Handbook for 2024 is the fastest-selling D&D book ever, Mork Borg is getting a video game, and more! This week on Morse's Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk!
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah, we're trying to put this on a Kickstarter. We need to say... Something is compatible with both versions. And we're trying to come up with an eloquent and quick way of saying that. And at the moment, the best we've got is like a statement, a sentence going, compatible with both the 2014 editions of D&D 5th edition and the 2024 edition. And it's like, it's too clumsy and awkward.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
If you just go compatible with all editions of D&D or something, it just sounds like you've got a rules neutral product, doesn't it?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
A quote system neutral product, which is basically a D20 thing with no mechanics really.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
I'm sorry, I do apologise. I realise I sound very sniffy. I apologise. I'm not being sniffy about such things, but they're not
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
what i would expect from a book advertising itself as compatible i'm not expecting law i am expecting mechanics i'm expecting crunch and that wouldn't be able to deliver yeah yeah um so yeah so i think for i think really good customers for players dms um what do we call our what do we call the audience we can't call them clients that's me with my favorite the people that listen to the podcast
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Well, like the people who are buying D&D books. Gamers, I don't know. Players. Nerds. Yeah. For fans of the gaming systems, then, yeah, this is confusing and it's not very helpful. And I can imagine it's going to lead to problems onboarding people into the hobby.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Because if someone turns up at a gaming club clutching their brand new 2024 Players Handbook and people are like, well, I ain't running that. I'm running 2014.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
or someone turns up they've gone into a hobby shop they've seen two players handbooks neither of them says this is the new edition or the old edition on it you don't know they just say Dungeons and Dragons so you pick which cover you prefer yeah yeah so they're like oh well I like the picture on that one I'll pick that one up and they've got the 2014 one they go along to a gaming group with their brand new character they've made up and everyone's like playing the 2024 rules and it's like I don't know yeah
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
I imagine, call me old-fashioned, but maybe this 2014 stock is going to get discounted. So, you know, people will go and buy stuff and think they're getting something relevant, and they're just not.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
I really do believe the clarity of just using an edition number would have been so much better.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Well, it would have been so much better for fans, for consumers.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
It would be better for us. It wouldn't necessarily be better for Wizard of the Coast, I get that, because it would have meant that for the last two years they'd have sold less stuff. I get that. I understand why. I still... Which it wasn't that way.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah, I mean, it's had a chilling effect on sales, and now it's just like, okay, great.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah. But anyway, look at this list of changes. I mean, it's quite useful that they put that list of changes there. They haven't said what the changes are. They've just said what's been changed. So it's not like they've sort of said, you know, barbarian has... Oh, that's annoying. It doesn't say that. The barbarian's third level feature has changed from this to this. It's just said, you know...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Well, you know, we had to. I was touched. It was a thing of beauty. Right. Anyway, shall we get cracking? Yes. Hey, I played Vason on Wednesday. Oh, how did you find it? A game that I have wanted to play for ages. And it's my first time. Is it my first time playing Mutant Year Zero Engine, isn't it? Yeah, that's what it's called.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah, but it just says it's been revised.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah. The subclass is Path of the Berserker, three revised features, but it doesn't really tell you what they are.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah. I don't want to read a book. It's just pointing you to what's been changed. I think that's fine.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah. It's stuff like removing the automatic exhaustion if you use the berserker's class feature, which was previously a problem. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, that article is on D&D Beyond. You can go and have a, you know, if you are, basically that article is there if you are migrating from 2014 to 2024. It's a helpful tool to help you do that. I think.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah, and also you can grab the three rules, the three basic rules now, and character sheets. You can grab the character sheets now if you wish to do so.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Shall we have a look at the character sheets?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah? For me, it's something... Let me give you a... Here you go. Hang on a second.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Well, maybe, but I think accessibility does include things like whether people can read it and get access to it. Gating people out without consulting an accessibility consultant is a choice that a multi-billion company can make.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
But you know what, for me, I like that because the different shapes and colours call things out to me. So different people definitely visually work in different ways.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah, I mean, absolutely different strokes for different folks. Although, again, like...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
make more than one yeah and label them as such I mean that would be yeah there's already like fan created ones out there already and there will be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of those so yeah the D&D ecosystem does mean that everyone will be able to choose a character sheet it'd be nice if more than one came from Wizards themselves I guess yeah with again a budget for things like accessibility thinking about good design principles and yeah they could do different ones but
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
and leave aesthetic. And that would be like, that would have been a really amazing nod to accessibility, which would give people something to use straight from the Wizards site. And it would also, I imagine, lead to a big boom in creativity on people creating things. They'd be able to use these as templates and do whatever they wanted to prettify them up. Yeah, as it is.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
We have one that looks very similar.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Well, it's down to two pages rather than three. So it's been condensed.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
It's been rearranged a little bit. My sense of aesthetics is mildly perturbed by the way the ability scores are arranged.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Over there on the left. They should be in two even rows or columns.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
So I quite liked it. It was the Swedish folk horror set in like the late 1800s. Yeah. And basically all the myths and legends are real.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
So what's interesting is... So I'm assuming from that, they're definitely not going with you can use any skill with any ability score. No.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Locking in.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Because they've literally listed each skill underneath the appropriate...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
And they've taken out some of the passive skills, which actually I agree with. You don't have passive insight on that sheet. You don't have passive investigation. Because those were very strange things conceptually. Yeah, I always did. They've got passive perception. You have to have passive perception. That is like a linchpin rule almost.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
If you kick out passive perception, then suddenly a lot of adventures don't work.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
It's not as essential as it used to be in 2014, because in this one, you're rolling your stealth check versus a static 15. But in the 2014 edition, you'd be rolling versus passive perception.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah. I mean, the thing with passive perception is about saving dice rolls. So basically, if you remove passive perception, the DM will just be asking for perception checks constantly.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yeah.
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Whereas with passive perception, they just know how perceptive people are. Yeah. And most DMs will basically just memorize the highest one in the group because that's the one that will really matter. Yeah. And, yeah.
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Yeah, like if monsters try to ambush someone, then someone said, yeah, my passive perception, I've got wisdom five, I've got passive perception, I've got the alert feed, my passive perception is like 20. I know what's going on. This person does not enjoy ambushes. I will let them spot ambushes before they occur, and then they can be happy. I think that's fair enough, yeah?
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So werewolves are real and various Swedish monsters and folklore and stuff. It's all real. So we've only had one session so far, but so far it's been really good fun.
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Yeah. I mean, you still do that without passive perception. It's just that you're making perception rolls, which is just more clunky. Again, it's like slowing down.
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But anyway, they have got passive perception, so anyway, it's a moot point.
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Yeah, well, it's actually a really valid question. So thank you for asking. One thing I noticed, I mean, I can't see the whole shoot, but it does look like it's probably not on there, is how one gains inspiration.
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Well, yeah, I think they've removed the boons and flaws and things. Yes.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Well, yeah. They've renamed it heroic inspiration. I honestly can't remember how they're handling inspiration now. I know we've discussed it before. We do know because we've talked about it before, but it's gone from my mind.
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I don't know.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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I think you might be thinking about destinies and level up A5E.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Okay, heroic inspiration. Okay, let's have a look. What's changed? So, inspiration is a rule that the DM uses to reward you. Blah, blah, blah. Yep, we know that. If you have expiration, you can expend it to... Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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how do you get here we go in the 2024 rules heroic inspiration functions similarly to the 2014 rules the primary difference being that a player can use it to re-roll any role in the game doesn't say how you gain it oh it's handed up the DM there are also new mechanics that allow players to earn inspiration in other ways for example the new champion subclass has an ability called heroic warrior that grants the character heroic inspiration at the start of a turn if they don't already have it
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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So you were right. Yeah. Well, that's true for the fighter champion subclass.
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It basically sort of codifies how it's been run.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Because like, you know, not that I'm bitter, but like, you know, playing to your bonds and flaws and doing stuff that puts you at a disadvantage. because that's playing to your heroic traits, flaws, bonds, it's supposed to gain you inspiration. And people just didn't seem to like that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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It never caught on, really.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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No, no.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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For some reason, it just never caught on.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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For me, it's strictly cash. You pay for your inspiration.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Russ has got a different sort of vibe going on but Jessica that was how it was in 2014 as well it was either you got it based on doing something awesome at GM discretion I was like oh like Savage World Benny's Bish Bosh I know how this works that's great or it was doing the role playing aspect and they seemed to have removed the doing the role playing aspect no no it's still there I think that is that as well I think it's just a bit vaguer it's not like you have to do it specifically according to these bonds and flaws it's just up to the DM
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Yeah, but it was always up to the DM. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's like this, an NQ inspiration, or it's up to DM, which would necessarily include if you did something cool.
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Yeah. I think it's just fairer to people to let them know what's expected of them. But that's probably due to an article I was seeing about What was it? It was how autistic people quite enjoy D&D and they've got role-playing games.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Having clear guidelines about what it is you're supposed to be trying to do in a social situation
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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And if you don't know what to do, hitting with your axe is always a valid option.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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It was only five before, which is a lot.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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You just write the name of the spell.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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But also, I think that ties into how they expect people to be playing online an awful lot. Yes. And on the D&D Beyond character sheet, you're just going to literally just click on it and it will pop up.
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That's... Kind of how they expect that to work, I think.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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They've got quite a big space for species traits as well. Actually, it's called species traits. I think you're only going to fit names of things in there, really, though, again.
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custom character sheets because that's always... Someone's already released on EN World a form-fillable one.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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They just took that one and form-fillabilified it, which is helpful.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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There's also campaign tracker sheets that are going to be coming at some point as well because they're in the DMG, I believe, so they won't see them for a bit, I guess. Do you remember we saw those and they had the cutesy artwork around the edges?
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I think the aesthetic is kind of... Cuter. Yeah, generally cuter in these books than in previous ones.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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They were, like... They were heavy, heavy cute.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
No. No. It's already getting erratic, by the way, to play a Sandbrook.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah, there's not a massive amount yet. So the giant insect spell contains a hit point clarification. They had the wrong amount in there. Shields now require the utilize action to don or doff. The Gliath's powerful build, they say, the advantage is on ability checks to end the grapple condition, not saving throws.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
The true polymorph spell no longer runs out if the target's temporary hit points run out. And the telekinetic feat now grants an increased range to the use of Mage Ant. Oh, nice. So, yeah. I mean, say it's a rafter. So basically what this is is the player's handbook on D&D Beyond. It's where it differs from the physical book.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Mm-hmm. So they haven't released an Arata document, but there are just some things on the D&D Beyond where it's slightly different, and people have noticed these, and I assume that's going to be collated as Arata for the book at some point.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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That's my guess.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah. Anyway, what other news have we got? I have something that isn't D&D.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
I'm wondering if you're now talking about the exactly same adventure, because this one involves a number-chopping business as well.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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I mean, yeah, it's a little bit of a proto- kickstarter at the moment but you will recall a couple of years ago there was a game that was teaching you how to learn sign language oh yes inspirals and they got overrides as well yeah that's right yeah well they have just come out of left field and said hey how would you like to recreate ulysses 31 and other such games On the Broadway game table.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yeah, yeah, Ulysses 31.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Ulysses, Ulysses. I can't remember the words.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Definitely. But thank you for the musical saying all the same.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yeah, I'm not familiar with the system, but what caught my eye was the absolutely stunning artwork. There's a chap who, Alex Connolly, does Acid Concepts. He was the chap who did a lot of the art for Salvage Union, which was Penny Lines. Beautiful, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that was, like, really, really solid aesthetics. And, yeah, he's done, like, what looks like a really bang-up drop here, so...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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I know Fernando Salvatore also has done some artwork on this as well. So I don't know the details, but by goodness, it's going to be a pretty book. No two ways about it. Yeah.
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Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that's currently at Notify Me on launch. So it's not even a proper Kickstarter. Well, it's on Kickstarter, but it's not... The pre-launch page. I thought I'd shout it out just because it's...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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It would annoy creatures in the forest.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yeah, they're going to be back at it, basically.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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I agree entirely.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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There's only so much information you can put in one graphic and one subtitle, you know?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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I was going to ask, it sounds like you know a little bit more about Paragon because I can tell it's done by John Harper and Sean Nitler. I've never actually played Paragon, or even really heard anyone talk about it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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There's a British Isles version as well, isn't there? Yeah, I've got that one. Free League as well, same system, but there's one set in the British Isles with all the...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Argo, tabletop RPG inspired by Greek mythology. A thing I like. 80s cartoons. A thing I like. Classic anime. Eh, not so much.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Right. Anyway, news, news, news.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yes.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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I am now apparently a cartoon fan.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Look at me. Hey, you know, you can now get an official D&D drink where you have been able to before.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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You can get a stout or a bourbon from the New Holland Brewing Company.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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It's called Dragon's Milk, yes. Okay. It's called D20 Brew Bourbon Barrel Aged Stout and also an Origin Meadcast Bourbon Whiskey.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Now you know. Now you know.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yes.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Sure.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Remind me never to eat custard that you've made.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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It's not the first time. There was a Quest's End whiskey line for Matthew Lillard.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
It was not referred to as milk. You're correct. It was not referred to as milk. Yeah. Yeah, fine. Anyway, you can get that. Okay. We've said enough about it, I think.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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So Tabletopia, do you download it or is it in browser?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yeah. What else have we got? I've got a Pathfinder NPC core rulebook. Okay. What are this? Which I think is hyper useful. So this is coming out in March. It's for Pathfinder, obviously. Nice. And it basically contains hundreds of stat blocks for NPCs.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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And that's basically the book. It's a monster manual for NPCs.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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And I think it's just super, super useful. I think that's the sort of... If I play Pathfinder, that's the sort of thing that I would consider top-tier useful in terms of books.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yeah, there isn't one for D&D like that, is there?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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There is for us.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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I don't know if it's called or where to find it. Yeah, it's not official, but it's out there.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yeah, that's fair.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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$70 of your American dollars. Well, there we go.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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I think it says more about British people not liking children that much.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah, yeah. I don't know anybody that likes Battlescape 3, do I? Do I know anybody that likes Battlescape 3? I don't think I do. I don't think so. Not that I'm aware of. No. We should probably move on. Yeah, yeah. No one's interested.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
I'm talking about so I'm not I don't know what that is you can tell me about that in a second if you like but I'm talking about the way Baldur's Gate 3's D&D rules differ to the actual Fibre Drop rules in some ways is that the 2014 or the 2024 rules Well, I assume the 2014 rules because they didn't have a time machine. But Larian talked about how that came about.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Which is interesting. And what apparently they did, and this was Nick Petchanin, the design director, when they were making the game. They said basically they were homebrew rules. They said they literally combed through forums online looking for common homebrew rules and just used them. Yeah. Yeah, and that's just how that happened. Wow, okay. Which I thought that was kind of cool.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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So things like the fourth relationship, that's based on pilfering from homebrew.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yeah, well, they've got things like, let's have a look. So, well, you know the game better than I do, but the speed at which you can drink potions was altered basically based on common homebrew rules that people use.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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People being doused in water, taking more damage from lightning and cold damage. Just various things like that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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The Kraken? That's going a bit overboard, isn't it? Yeah, I mean... You could have started with a little pixie or something, but no, you went straight to Kraken.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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That's native to the Divinity Original Sin 2 engine though, so fair play to them.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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That is quite cool.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Spam healing potions.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Throw healing potions.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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The next step is going to be a repeating potion launcher where you just load it up with healing potions and just fire it at your party just to heal them up really quickly.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Maybe you should just turn it into a hose.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
do you know what I've been doing this week I have been approving the Monstrous Menagerie 2 manuscript I know and I'm so pleased very excited I've been really strict with myself and just like I'm not going to start looking at this book until Voidrunners is done much to my joy Yeah. Otherwise, yeah, no.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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So finally, finally handed off the final sort of last bit of Voidrunnery stuff that I have to do. So I started looking at Monster Manager 2 and it's looking awesome.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yes.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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It's looking so awesome. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Yeah. I could believe it. I mean, I've only written a couple little bits for it. But the pictures I put in, I did not think would get accepted for some of it. The ones I thought, oh yeah, I'll do this. I'll put some other ones in as a laugh. And Paul was like, no, no, I don't want your boring, sensible pictures. I want the really messed up stuff. I'm like, okay.
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Yeah. And there's also a couple of little tweaks as well. So, you know, the tools that you get with every monster in Monsters from the Natural, you know, you get like the tables for Legends and Lore and Names and Signs.
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It's just kind of like, that escalated quickly. Zero to Kraken in under 10 seconds.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Those little tools. So you've got all that on there. So you did the Legends and Lore bit where you roll to see what information you get. Yeah, yeah. Paul, who obviously is the lead designer on Monstrous Menagerie 1, Paul Hughes, and 2, has added false information for bad rolls.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Which I think is a cunning idea.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
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Although presumably you still know when you've made a bad roll.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah, player and character. Unless you copy Pathfinder. Well, I mean, that's a good way to do it, build tension by asking people to do that. But if you're untrusting, you could still copy Pathfinder in the second edition and have a closed roll. Yeah, you could do that. Give me a good modifier. What's your token modifier? Yeah, yeah. You can absolutely do that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
And then roll it and say, you think this, you think this, you think this. Good times. Enjoy separating them.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah. The other thing we got in there is, one, there's a much higher emphasis on higher level monsters. Yes. Good. Which is nice. It's a lot more skewed towards higher level monsters. Because we've got a lot of CR1 to like four monsters.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
So we've got a lot of much higher level monsters. And also because people have been playing for a while now, we expect they're more likely to be,
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
so there's that there's a lot of epic like and some unique named ones which is cool but we also got these rules for what are called um horde monsters oh h-o-r-d-e not h-o-a-r-d yeah and these you could use a horde to protect a horde always valid exactly yes yes Yeah. And these are basically for large groups of monsters.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Okay, anyway, let's do some news, shall we?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
So we've got the squad template in Monsters Monotree 1 for sort of like a group of like four or five sort of thing. Yeah, it's quite effective. But this is for much larger groups of monsters. Oh. And the idea is that horde monsters, the kind of designs for like... They're kind of like minions, I guess.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
They're designed to be quite easy to cut through and let you show off a bit, but still be challenging en masse.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So it's like when you meet the Archlist and its horde of...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Stuff. Cool. Stuff happened this week.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and things like that. Or you could have multiple hordes. You want to throw a hundred zombies on the table, go for it. We've got you covered.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Very much. And this is going into layout now as well, which is cool. Yeah. So I'm starting to get quite excited about this one.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Although I do want to do an NPC book like Pathfinder's done. I just think that's really useful.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
I like to keep it succinct. But, you know, Greg Taito?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah. Anyway, there's that. And the other thing I just wanted to quickly mention is we did a September dev update for Level Up Gateway.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Because we're putting that update out each month now just to say how we're doing. And the current goal is to get all the classes up to level five on there before we let people tinker with it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
And we're about halfway through. I keep saying we.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah, the royal we. Alexander is about halfway through the classes now. Been working on spellcasting classes in the last few weeks. So Wizard is now up to level five as a sorcerer and cleric are both up there as well. All the spells are in. It is just so cool. I can't wait till people get to start tinkering with it. Cannot wait.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Oh, there will be. Yeah, there will be.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Communications Director over at Wizards of the Coast, or should I say, former D&D Communications Director. Because Greg has left Wizards of the Coast. Wow. Okay. For a job as Deputy Director of External Affairs for the Washington Secretary of State's Office. So he's gone from gaming to politics, basically.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yes.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah. Anyway, there's an update on that over on the Level Up website. The latest update.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Lots of nice screenshots and pretty pictures. Sounds amazing. Anyway, and that's that really.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
I think we're done.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
I think we might be.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Sweet.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Let's do that, yeah. Let's have a nice, wet, rainy weekend.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Bye for now. Bye. Yes, and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Because I was just wondering, can you get milk out of a dragon without nipples?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Well, I guess maybe then this dragon milk might not be.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
You just missed them. It might be like cats all hidden away, but on the scales.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Maybe they have to have them built into the scales, like the bat nipples in the George Clooney Batman film.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Oh, okay, so they sort of like slip up and pop out.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Washington Secretary of State's Office. Yeah. Right. I mean, that's cool. I don't really know enough to say...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Well, no, I mean, he was like nine years at Wizards as communications manager, co-hosted the Dragon Talk podcast while it was on, the official Dungeons & Dragons podcast, which was around for a couple of years.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Pioneered a lot of ideas, like the teaser for the trailer for the preview for the spoiler for the announcement yeah um yes the previews of the spoilers of the teasers of the yeah yeah yeah it's like had that going on um yeah i had i had i i can see that he might be quite tired especially this past year.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Well, he certainly had a comment to make, which I'll get to in a second.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Oh, okay. Am I anticipating things? I know I'm anticipating something. But I want to say his boss, his new boss, Steve Hobbs, appeared on an episode of Dragon Talk a few years ago and is a D&D fan, interestingly. So I guess there'll still be lunchtime D&D games going on, even if they're at the Washington State Secretary's office.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Same as the chip. I hope I'm not getting mauled by a dog. No, Marvin. Marvin, no. We're busy. We're busy.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yes. Yes. No, come on. Off you go. Off you go. But you did have something to say.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Oh, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah. It feels good to do something that doesn't just line the pockets of assholes. Which is... Direct, shall we say.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
He did clarify... He meant shareholders, not his co-workers.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
aren't your decisions.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
You know, but you are kind of getting a lot of the flack for it because you're the one doing the talking.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
So I imagine that can be quite wearing.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Didn't they wheel out some guy? to talk to people after the OGL fiasco. The apology tour, as it was called. Was that someone else?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
That was someone else, yeah. So they went around, I think it was like a half dozen or so YouTubers doing interviews, basically apologizing for the OGL crisis. It was an odd choice because it just felt like an apology tour. It just felt a lot. It was an interesting way to approach it. Interesting. Anyway, yeah. So there's no word on whether there's going to be a new communications manager.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
I assume someone else is going to step into that role at some point.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
But as yet, I don't know who that is. I wonder whether, you know, things will change a little bit. Whether a different style of how Wizards communicates with its fans will come along. I don't know. I mean, everyone... I don't know Greg Titor myself. Never met him. But everyone that I've spoken to says he's a great guy. Yeah. So... But we shall see, I guess. Time will tell. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah. So your Players Handbook's now officially live on D&D Beyond. Yeah. The new one. 2024 Players Handbook. Yeah. Along with character sheets and the free rules.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah. Basic rules. There's certainly been a lot of comment produced. I think TRPGBot was able to get a summary of the various changes that's been out already.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Well, that's on D&D Beyond. So D&D Beyond posted a full list of the changes in the player's handbook.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah, yeah, yeah. RPGBot does something similar but different in that they list the changes and they look at the implications of these changes.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
I always have a lot of time for their analysis and stuff because even if I don't necessarily agree with all of it, I do find it to be quite intriguing and it's definitely a consistent point of view, which I can totally respect. That's a big list. That's a lot of changes. Yeah, yeah, there's a big list and a lot of changes, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Classes, backgrounds, species, spells, stat blocks, feats, equipment, rules, new terminology, everything.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah, yeah. I guess probably the thing that's struck my, caught my attention, caught my eye the most As you know, I'm quite interested in making gaming accessible to as many people as possible, working to do that sort of thing. And one of the people that I'm talking to is Wormworks Publishing, my chap Dale over there. And he had quite some things to say about the new Player's Handbook.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
For instance, he liked some of the work they've done in the artwork, especially the artwork is top class. There's a lot of recognition of face differences, body proportion differences, or even things like a pigmentation variant, like vitiligo, which is where you might have, say, a black person, but they've got patches of white skin. So that's a really common form.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
So yeah, in terms of artwork, they're doing well and they've even got some disabled characters in the artwork. Mm-hmm. which made the rest of it somewhat more problematic because there didn't appear to be anything like mobility aids, which was a concern. There's no recognition within the book. Like, you know, like what if you have crutches? What if you have a wheelchair? No combat wheelchair.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah. I mean, not even a combat wheelchair, just like a regular one. I mean, it's not like, you know, as you say, the combat wheelchair, Mustang's art has had that out for ages. So it seems like a bit weird that there's,
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Morris' unofficial tabletop RPG talk. I am Russ, aka Morris, or Morris, aka Russ, and with me this week is... PJ Coffey from the Southampton Guild of Roleplayers.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
nothing in there yeah because pathfinder adopted that didn't they yeah okay yeah i mean that might be the that might be the thing but yeah and obviously in advanced fifth edition there is also a wheelchair available in the equipment list as well yeah there's like not really not really much in the way for neurodivergence either which seems like a bit strange strange choice for
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
players recognizing themselves but probably the thing he felt most strongly about and i have to say i do i do quite agree with him is uh the complete removal of any mixed mixed heritages oh have they because we were wondering what they were going to do about that yeah is it completely gone then there's no rule for it or anything well like things like half or health and half or walk
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
have had sort of like problematic racist connotations yeah and they're gone yeah and they are gone like with Tasha's Cauldron for Everything they had a paragraph or two about adopting like you know ways to do it and obviously as you know I I've written a whole damn book about it. I'm likely to write more because it's something I feel very strongly about.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
But he's kind of mad about the 2024 core rules because they only allow pure-blood people groups effectively gamifying miscegenation laws. They say what, sorry? The 2024 core rules allow only pure-blood people groups effectively gamifying miscegenation laws. Miscegenation is a term which means that you can't
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
In the real world, to talk about if a black person married a white person, some people would call that miscegenation, which is a very racist term and is not okay. It's like saying mixed races are not allowed. Obviously, we're talking about a fantasy game and mixed species or mixed heritages are our ancestries, I think is the term they use. Ancestry, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah, but there's no acknowledgement of that and there's no distinction between biology and culture.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
We knew that split wasn't in there earlier, didn't we?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Yeah, but they seem to have really doubled down on it and there's no suggestion.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
I'm afraid I don't have the player's handbook because I am but a British person. I'm a person in Britain, so it would not be accessible to me.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
No, apparently not. Apparently not. I'm definitely getting the vibe more and more from this sort of thing that... It really isn't for me. I don't think this new edition is for me. They're not really catering to my interests, which are like, actually, we should make it more accessible for people, and if people have a mixed heritage, they are welcome in the gaming space.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
Delighted to be here on this sadly wet, cold, and chilly September afternoon. And joining us also today, the weather not dampening hers for it, she's quite happy to sing, dance and possibly give a little twirl around the floor. It's the only.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
I mean, they do on the article point out, I mean, this is, obviously, it's not in the book, so it's not in the game, but they do say half elf and half orc from the 2014 book are still usable.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
And they kind of specifically point that out. They've got a list of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven subclasses, two species and three feats from 2014. Yeah. And they basically, these, that's interesting. These are still usable from 2014. That's only like 10 items. Yeah. 12 items out of the entire player's handbook that are still apparently usable in 2014.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
I think at this point the changes to spells, which are effectively class features, that ultimately spellcasting that as a class feature... and the spells that are available, they have undergone such major changes, especially with things like healing, that it really doesn't feel like saying it's the same edition has any validity. Sorry, I'm not trying to...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
I feel it's a mistake to claim it's the same edition because I would have expectations based on that. It's a completely new book.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
314 | 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond, Greg Tito leaves Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder NPC Core Book, and more!
From cover to cover, it is a completely new book. It's not an updated, revised book. It is a completely new book. And I think it's kind of really hard to say it's not.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
A Few Technical Issues!
Hello folks, it's Morris here. So we've had a few technical problems with this week's podcast, as you may have realised. We recorded it as usual on Friday, and normally the podcast goes out on a Saturday or Sunday. But we've had a few issues, a few technical issues. We do have the recording, so we hope to get it out at some point soon, and we'll keep you posted.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
A Few Technical Issues!
But there's a few behind-the-scenes technical issues going on right now. Yeah, catch you soon. Bye.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Amazing. Right, so this is a really, really, really, really quiet week for news this week. So we'll cover the news in about seven seconds.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, that's our problem. Inside a magazine.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, so per article, basically. So we put out four to five articles per month.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Fair enough. How was Apple doing it before?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
There's like insights or something like that. There's a tab on there, insights or something like that. And you can see the different platforms people are using.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Tabletop RPG, yes, obviously, in the world.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
To be fair, something like DriveThruRPG has the exact same rule. You can't.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. And you get to the point where the hardware doesn't change enough from year to year.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Well, yeah, I'm like a once every two years. I used to be an every year person. I'd upgrade my phone. Now it's once every two years because there's just not enough different. Yeah. Like a slightly better camera and a slightly faster processor.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
yeah so yeah so the majority of this show we're going to be talking about dnd 2024 and in particular the dungeon master's guide the 2024 dungeon master's guide so we'll be talking about that a lot but before we do that let's quickly get the seven seconds of news out of the way shall we i might be able to do a little bit more than seven seconds i picked up some bits and pieces you know maybe you just talk really slowly that will spin it out a little bit
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, I'm just looking at that now. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. Hey, this world gets other-ended.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
What was the score on the door? In pounds, basically 2.3 million pounds. I don't know what that is in US dollars. Let me quickly stick this into Google and find out what that is in US dollars.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Oh, just short.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. So that puts it at like number seven or eight in the million-dollar Kickstarter club. Mm-hmm. Quite high. Anyway, actually, let me check exactly where it comes. $182 average per backer. Was it $2.9 million? Yeah. 2.9 million puts it at number seven.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yes, in the top 10. In the top 10. I mean, there's been 2 million. There's been 16 that have done 2 million. And obviously there's been 41 now, including this one, that have done a million or more.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And especially given how rules-light it is, a non-gamer will probably get a lot of value out of that. There'll be a lot of basically setting lore content, I guess, and art.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I would imagine.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I don't know. Maybe it is an entire book. I don't know.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
That collector cover is killer. Yeah. Was that a segue?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I just bought the basic one. I kind of wish I might upgrade that. You could probably upgrade. That is a pretty cover, isn't it?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
The thing is, I don't think I'll probably play it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yes, what was that, your David Attenborough impression?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Hmm. So shiny. Well, if that is all of the non D and D news, unless anyone can think of anything that we've missed.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
That's true.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
He's my hero. Yeah. Well, he's got a cape and everything.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yes, Tuesday. Five days from now. Five days? Four days. Five days. Four days. It depends when they're listening to it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
That is also true.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Well, everything is relative, I suppose.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I mean, there's one thing to point out here. Only one of the four of us have the Dungeon Master's Guide. Because it's not here yet. It's not in this country yet. Not until the 12th. Really?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I'm sure that'll work. Yeah, that'd be fine.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
No, no, no. If you hold it up to the camera, Wizards of the Coast will take the video down.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
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 Coffey from the Southampton Guild Roleplayers.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
That means we can't play at conventions with people we don't know.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Strangers are just friends you haven't met yet. Maybe. Apparently.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, you haven't actually told me what a D&D game section is.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Was that just very good?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Do you know we never actually intended that to be a Game Master's Guide, though?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
What I kind of found in 2014 D&D was certain types of characters would have advantage on almost every attack.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
The main thing you can tell is how many pages have been devoted to each target. One of the things that struck us was we looked at what was, as far as we could tell, from the... Oops, I'm sorry. That is... Don't worry. As far as we could tell, the social were like one page.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And that was it in the entire book. And given that D&D is supposed to be three pillars. Yep. Yeah, combat, social, and exploration.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
talking about the topic advice you know I don't know it's like social interaction in a game if it's a third of the game in my mind probably deserves
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I think that's excellent. I think looking at that table of contents and saying how to prep a session, how to run a game right at the start of the book.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Does it talk about homebrew campaigns at all in the intro?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And one of them is having a chapter of game masters advice in it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I guess they come from the point of view that their business is selling those published adventures, though. So maybe they kind of assume that that's, I don't know.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I guess part of that, though, is because the way people learn how to play a game now isn't so much by reading games.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I want to say 11. When I was 11, we and four of my friends started playing D&D. We didn't know anyone else who played D&D. There was no such thing as the internet. We couldn't go and look up how to play D&D. There was no advice anywhere. At all. So basically you had to pretty much come up on your own with what a D and D game. You don't even know what a D and D game looks like. Right.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I mean, you know, if that's from a really broad perspective, unless someone shows you.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Nobody really knew what to do with these things. Yeah. I mean, my first role-playing experience was, because I didn't get D&D first of all, I got a Warhammer Fantasy Battles boxed set bought for me by my dad, I think, for my birthday or Christmas when I was 11. And I took it to school to show my friends. And I was like, look at this thing, this game my dad's bought me.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And they're going, what is it? And I go, I'm not really sure. But that's a little... So we opened it and there were these three black and white books in there and some dice and things like that. But it was a tabletop battles game. Now, Why are we saying that you don't necessarily know what a role-playing game looks like if no one's shown you?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
You also don't know what a tabletop battle game looks like if no one's shown you. And we took those tabletop battle rules and somehow we played a role-playing game with it without even realizing that's not what we had. Because we'd never seen either. And somehow we interpreted that as a role-playing game, which was really weird. I don't know how we came up with that. But that...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It didn't have a section on, this is what a tabletop battle is. This is how a tabletop battle game tends to run and what it looks like and what you're doing in the game. It just launched into the rules. And I think the same thing, like I've heard people say to me, what is D&D really, though? What do you do? I mean, do you dress in costumes and talk in silly voices? What exactly is it?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. I think a Dungeon Master's Guide, its primary function, tell you how to run a game.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
From scratch, like assume you know nothing and tell you from, you know, you are the Dungeon Master. This is what that is. This is the things that you'll be doing. This is what you're responsible for. And then go into the whole prepping a session, doing all that. And then also making your game better. Advice. Basically, tools, advice and tools are the other thing.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It's like it's not a competition. Yeah. Why would you not necessarily assume if you weren't told otherwise? Right. It's not the players versus the DM.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I think there's an element of some gems kind of also want to write a novel. That's right.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Well, let's do a best and worst bit then.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So let's start positive.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Let's start positive. What would you say the best? Say two or three things. It might take a while, but best things about it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
What are the monster building guidelines like in?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
But we're also saying, because like in the introduction, it tends to assume we're using published adventures. Maybe they're kind of assuming you're just using published monsters and tweaking them. The DMG isn't, they're not viewing it as a homebrewing book, I guess.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Well, I guess this is not the Forgotten Realms pantheon they put in there, I guess. What's that? This is not the Forgotten Realms pantheon they put in there.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I think a lot of people are like that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Is there anything about this book that kind of says you do need to buy it? Or could you just get by with the old one?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Well, that's why you have tools, though, isn't it?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, I use milestones. I think most people do.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So we're talking about those adventures. Yeah. Given that probably the purpose of putting adventures in a DMG is to show you how to do specific things. It is. Do they do a good job of that? No. Okay. My opinion. So, you know, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I was hoping there'd be, like, an adventure that showcases combat, an adventure that showcases exploration.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, yes, it's ongoing.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Jess, were you going to talk about Blades in the Dark?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And it's like, I don't know why they cast it more often than the wizard can cast.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, and also by doing that you're putting a gate on it for the... GM to use if they need to.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. But overall, it sounds like it's definitely one of the best GMGs for a while. Like the, the fourth edition DMG was actually pretty good.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It had a lot of advice in it. It was very advice. Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty good.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. The first edition DMG. Who remembers that?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Well, this was definitely better than the 2014 one.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. And when it comes to advice, not even just D&D books. Yeah. There's so many good sort of good advice and ideas in different games. I think it was, was it you last week, Peter, who said that the concept of a session zero, which is very familiar to all of us, and pretty much everyone does it in their games, but it's never mentioned in D&D because it's not something.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So that stuff is in there.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. Just having just general proficiency in the manipulation of the core rules in different configurations is probably more valuable. Yes. But also some examples would definitely help with that, wouldn't they? Just an example saying an ability check doesn't have to be just one. It could be three. You could ask for some different ones from different characters. You could ask for the, you know...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
One thing we were wondering about, the chase rules. I've heard they're not good.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
you like blaze in the dark as well russ like you like the the clock system and stuff like that when you've played um i played blaze and yeah it's fun i feel like in the last couple of years i've played an awful lot of sort of d6 like i said i'm sort of going off d6 is about i've played so many d6 games i feel like in the last couple of years they're all starting to feel a bit the same
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. I mean, I was trying to think what we were saying about it, but we sort of saw, was it a preview, a video preview or something? Of Chasing? I can't remember now.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Oh, we looked at 2014 Chasing. Yes, that was it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It wasn't there. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
You know.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And I'm starting to go a bit off them now. I'm looking for a bit more variety. I kind of feel like I'm playing the same game all the time. I mean, rules like D6 games, there's a lot of them out there. And they're starting to kind of blend in my head a little bit now.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Probably more so in narrative games, I think, probably rather than more mechanical ones like D&D.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Is it generally this is good or generally this is bad?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
There was also some talk about bastions being off limit to the DM as well. And I don't know how strongly that's emphasized in the book or not.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And the idea that I love, love, love his maps.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
We've seen loads of times.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, so is my awkwardly cheerful engine. Except for that one, that one's awesome. Well, that's the thing, a year ago, I loved D6 dice ball games. I think I've just played too many of them now. I think I've just, I need to calm down and play something different.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It's like a hand-drawn style, isn't it?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, yeah. And also, there's so many more of his maps, like you just said, online.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Right. Hey, it is now four o'clock. We need to wind up. I need to eat something.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It is always a pleasure, Mike. You know you're always welcome on. Oh, thank you. So next week we will have Paul Hughes on and Paul is going to talk about Monstrous Menagerie 2, which launches on Kickstarter on Tuesday. Please go and back it because we want this one to do well.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I think it is going to do well, but we want this to do. And, you know, we realize it's very late in the year and it's coming up the whole and all this sort of stuff, the timing and stuff like that. So please go back. It would be wonderful if you did.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Well, I'd like to tell you that it's beginning to look a lot like Critmas.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It's so good. And if you didn't get the first Monstrous Menagerie, you can pick that one up at the same time.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Well, I think what we're quite pleased about is from what we've seen of the new Monster Manual, it does look like Monstrous Menagerie 1 still has value.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So Critical Role has got a Christmas album coming.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
You want a goblin, you've now got...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Although we did choose, we did like adopt one idea. You know, they pre-calculated initiative in the new ones.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I thought that was a nifty little tool.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Uh, no, I don't think so.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It's called Winter's Crest. This is a thing. I had not heard it. It exists. It's not going to be like the Star Wars special, is it? Well, it's four musical tracks. Winter's Crest Festival Time, Silent Mind, Twelve Days of Grogmas, and It's Critmas are the four tracks. I can't tell you any more than that. To be honest, I haven't heard it. All I know is that this is a thing that's happening.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Do you know what? I don't want to say for certain right now, cause I'd have to look and I'm going to in front of me, but I don't think so.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I don't think so.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Like, yeah, no, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I think it's awesome. You've got a squad of five goblins and each of those five goblins is completely, oh, it's a little harder to run.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
But just conceptually, it's kind of cool because they're just like different type goblins of the same, you know? Hashtag not all goblins.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I think we should call full time on this podcast. In fact, we should go and enjoy our weekends.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I can't wait to hear it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Thank you, everyone. And we'll see everyone next week. Same time, same place.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
You can stream it right now. It's on Spotify. You can go and listen to it right now if you want to.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Covering slaves. Merry Christmas.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. Probably even fast.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Even though it's only just November. Buster. They're talking about Christmas.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I saw Christmas things in the shops in September.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It made me unreasonably angry.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, well, I think there should be a rule, no Christmas before Halloween.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Well, there's that as well. But I wouldn't be surprised if I went into a shop tomorrow and saw some Easter eggs there. I mean, what's that? It's only four months away. Right, so we're us. Right, so. Anyway.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
You're not going to cost me more money. Is there a barrel log at the bottom of the mountain? That's the question.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Mike's going to buy.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
No, I had already bought this one.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Which one's your monster?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. Layout hasn't quite got that far yet because W is right at the end of the alphabet. Oh, yeah. I'm working from the front. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Fair enough.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
As is the way.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Okay, so we have mentioned it before, but as a brief summary, essentially Apple is... for people that use the Apple App Store Patreon app is going to insist that Patreon pays them 30%. Yeah, if they subscribe through the app. If they subscribe through the app, which is basically Apple's standard. Tyler Fisher, like, you know, everyone.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Well, so basically what that means is if you support a Patreon and you did so via the Patreon app on the Apple app store and subscribed to the Patreon via that, um, you'll probably, assuming the creator doesn't decide to suck up the 30%, which they probably can't afford to do, going to be paying more on Patreon for that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Well, luckily you're on a podcast which is explicitly designed for exactly that one thing.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
unsubscribe on the app, go re-subscribe via one.