Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
328 | Amazon's Secret Level, Elf Books for LotR, WH40K TV, Voltron, Evil Dead & More
Fri, 13 Dec 2024
Welcome to Morrus's Unofficial Tabletop RPG talk, where Russ and Peter Coffey from the Southampton Guild of Roleplayers embark on a thrilling discussion about all things role-playing. Well, maybe not all things. Some things. Amazon's Secret Level (D&D, WH40K, Pac-Man) Free League's 'Lord of the Rings' Games Explore The Elves Here’s What You’re Building On Level Up Gateway Henry Cavill's Warhammer 40K Show Is Happening Itch.io Down Thanks to Funko Pop's "AI" Daggerheart Core Set Covers Revealed Voltron: The Roleplaying Game Evil Dead 2: 5e RPG Campaign and Setting Book Audiobook of Third Imperium, a supplement for Traveller Cardyhedron – Portable Metal Spin-Dial Polyhedral Dice DOTS RPG Project
All the Tabletop are outplaying us We aim to amuse and we aim to enthuse And Morris is unofficial Tabletop RPG
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Morris's unofficial tabletop RPG talk. I, Russ, a.k.a. Morris, or Morris, a.k.a. Russ, and with me this week is... Peter Coffey from the Southampton Guild of Roleplayers.
Russ, I'm a server. I did something here.
But you know who's not here? Actually, the list of who's not here is pretty long.
That is true.
It's about 9 million people long.
That is true. Yeah. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Is there someone that should be on the list of people who are coming that is not here? Is that what you're trying to tell me?
That, I suppose, would be more accurate.
Right, right. Well, I suppose we are at only 67% strength because we are sadly missing Jessica Hancock. She's right.
Yes. Yeah. Jess is away and it's just us this week, but I'm sure we'll move along. It'll be fine. Nothing could possibly go wrong. I mean, it's a, it's a scientific fact that nothing has ever gone wrong in the history of the world ever. So we're probably fine.
You're laughing. I don't know why.
Right. Should we make a podcast? Anyway, let's make a podcast. Because we have news.
Yeah.
We have news. So I watched, have you checked it out yet? Secret Level on Amazon?
Yes.
So I've watched three episodes of it.
20 minutes ago.
Oh, right. Which ones have you watched?
Oh, there's multiple. I just watched Dungeons and Dragons one.
Oh, no, there's like 10 episodes.
Okay, well, fair enough then.
Yeah, the D&D one's the first one, but there's about, there's 10 on there on Amazon. So I watched three of them. I didn't watch them in order. I just watched the ones with the names I recognised, basically. So I watched the D&D one. I watched the Warhammer 40K one.
Oh, bless you.
And I watched the Pac-Man one. That is, that Pac-Man one is... That's something else. That is weird.
You have you up on Pac-Man. Okay. Okay. Spoil it for people who haven't had a chance to watch it because it's not been out that long.
No, no, I won't spoil it. I'm just saying it is weird. It is something else. It is. Wow. Yeah. All right. But the D&D one was pretty good. I mean, they're like 15 minutes each. They're short.
animated obviously, but the animation style is it's like, doesn't at least the ones I saw don't do that sort of uncanny valley movement thing that I hate so much, which makes it really hard for me to watch animation. The movement seems reasonably okay.
Okay, okay.
Yeah. So it's like their bodies are moving in a way which shouldn't make you go... Yeah.
Yeah, there's this weird kind of weird way people run and walk and stuff. in a lot of animated stuff. And it doesn't matter when it's like really low fidelity eighties cartoons, because everything just looks cartoony. But when they're starting to approach attempts at sort of vague realism and movement and it's off, then the uncanny valley sets in. And then I'm like, that's not how people run.
They don't bounce like that. They don't, you know, they don't. Yeah.
With you, with you. Yeah.
And it throws me right out.
Yeah, I guess that's why I sort of quite like stuff like Dandelion because the movements are so fluid and natural looking. It's just the plot is absolutely demented.
Yeah.
So that's good to know.
I don't mind it if like the style of it is so out there that it doesn't, the uncanny valley doesn't kick in.
Yeah. They're not humans. I guess that's okay.
Yeah. I think it's, I don't know, like the Star Wars ones. I find hard from the way people run about and stuff because they, they see this quite sort of 3d modeling. I wouldn't say realistic. They're very angular, but, but they do this kind of 3d modeling sort of body hinged at every point thing. And it just doesn't work for me.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, anyway, so I saw them. So I saw, I saw the D and D one, which was pretty good. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Tia Matt is in it. Cause that's the trailer. Yeah. That's pretty good. I quite enjoyed it.
I think they got a nice bit of story in.
Yeah. These things are like snippets, aren't they? Because they're like 15 minutes. They're not entire stories. They're like a part of an adventure.
I'm told that the secret level Warhammer 40 episode is good for really big dudes walking down environments, occasionally doing a jerky little motion that makes a guy explode into bloody splatter.
Yeah, well, that one and the Pac-1 are both very gory.
The Pac-1 is very gory.
I'm telling you, the Pac-Man is out there.
I was expecting exactly 50% of this, and I'll be honest, it wasn't Pac-Man being gory.
I'm not going to spoil it for you. You'll probably see it at some point, and you can tell me what you think, but the Pac-Man one is out there.
Wow, wow. Okay, okay.
So I watched those three. Anyway.
I thought that was an excellent review of 40K. It's like, to be honest, why a lot of people got into it in the first place.
For Space Marine power fantasy type things, fighting off like hordes as they do a mission, basically.
similar thing yeah let's hope something important is why death watch is probably the best or the best like games versions of the ip there is this one bit where a large vehicle crashes into one of the space marines and just bounces off that's like okay i'm not that familiar with warhammer 40k i didn't realize they were quite that powerful but still okay oh yeah
and it's gory as hell but yeah no this is yeah this whole series is definitely not aimed at kids okay animation or let's be honest kids properties right it's like obviously we do they do cater to an adult audience but you know audiences often quite a lot of children
Yeah, well, I suppose Pac-Man isn't really, like, it's not a current thing, is it? Nobody plays Pac-Man now. So I guess the Pac-Man's really aimed at adults who remember it from when they were kids.
Nostalgia.
Yeah. No kids today play Pac-Man, do they? I mean, maybe they do. I don't know why. I don't know why I'm saying that. I don't know what kids play. I don't know.
I think it's fair to say that on this podcast, we have very little insight into the mind of children.
Yes, or Pac-Man, for that matter.
Or Pac-Man or animators who say, hey, you know what would be awesome? Pac-Man, but more blood. I'm like, wow, that is, yeah, that, I am actually a snippet.
I mean, Pac-Man with any blood, but you know.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's true, yeah.
Just to say, it's not, it's not cutesy.
Okay. Just what, just what we needed for us, a Grim reboot, Grim Doc reboot.
Not Pac-Man.
I mean,
I would be surprised if this actually turned into a new version of Pac-Man and they made a game.
I actually think about it. Don't you, Constance, have any blood in? Did you not? Oh, no, I think there was like a little tiny bit.
No.
But, like, not. Nothing I could describe as cool.
Oh, fair enough. I can't remember it well enough. I remember the dwarf going... It was like Flash super speed stuff.
That's pretty cool, yeah. Yeah. I think there's definitely droids changing shapes. And the paladin did get stabbed. There was a little bit of blood there. Dragons. Dragons, yeah. Not so much dungeons.
There's one dungeon, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah, no, it was interesting. There's 10 episodes. It's on Amazon Prime.
It's no honour amongst thieves, but, you know, 15 minutes, what can you do? So, yeah, I quite liked it.
Yeah, I'm probably only going to watch those three, because I don't really know what the other seven are, to be honest. I don't recognise the game names. I thought I'd have to check it out, but I just went to play it out. Yeah. Well, they're all, they're mainly video games. There's only Warhammer and D&D that are tabletop.
Well, I've tested it out with SM. I'm not sure.
Yeah, you might. I mean, you're more familiar with video games. You might at least know what they are. You can play them.
Yeah, sure. I might have heard. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Right. Okay. Back onto the sort of TTTB, TTTB, TTRPG stuff.
That's what I was trying to say. So, elves. Elves, elves, and elves.
Again, you have said things. I am taken for a curveball. Well, thank you. This is actually news to me. So, I'm impressed.
Okay. So, Free League.
Yes.
They're Lord of the Rings game. They've got two of them. They've got the one ring and they've got Lord of the Rings role-playing. The One Ring is a bespoke system. Lord of the Rings role-playing is 5e. But they're basically two concurrent game lines running alongside each other.
Have released two books, which are essentially the same book, but with two different titles, one for each game line, so you don't get them confused. One is for the One Ring, the other is for 5e. And they're all about the elves of Middle-earth.
I'm sure this is making some people very excited, waving their money in the air, screaming, take my money freely.
Well, their middle of stuff is gorgeous. It really is. So we've got realms of the three kings, three kings, three rings. That does look like a cater. Realms of the three rings is for the one ring and keepers of the Elven rings is for Lord of the Rings role-playing. They're essentially the same book, just the stat, the mechanical bits are different.
Makes sense of why they've got different. You can keep the lore the same, like the setting, the skin, if you will.
Exactly, exactly.
The exact compatibility does that.
Yeah, I mean, they've been doing that since they took over the Tolkien stuff from Cubicle 7, haven't they? They've split it into the two and just kind of every book they release two versions of it.
which makes a lot of sense to me. And keeping the names separate as well is good. Are the covers suitably different?
Yeah, yeah. They've got different covers, different cover art. And yeah, so basically, both books have got the same chapters. So the first chapter is called Where the West Elves Still Linger. And this talks about Lorien, Rivendell, Linden, the elf lords, that sort of thing. So it's the setting lore stuff related to, yeah. And then we've got an adventure, it looks like. A dark adventure awaits.
And we've got the details of Sauron's schemes against the immortal folk, including new events, enemies, and characters for the players to encounter, which sounds fun. And then we've got landmarks, which is basically 12 locations, sites of interest.
And then we've got the rules of lordship, which is guidelines for creating and playing elf lords, which apparently have some sort of like 10-level prestige class that you can take at level 10 to become an elf lord. In the 5e version, obviously.
Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I suppose.
Yeah. But, you know, gorgeous as ever. You picked up the Moria book, didn't you? Last year. Was it this year? Whatever it was.
Yes, earlier this year.
Was it as gorgeous as I hoped?
I'd have to look inside it to be able to tell.
You haven't opened it, have you?
Look, I've got a very small brain. I can run one campaign at a time.
Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah. I'm probably still going to pick that up at some point, just because... Warrior's like the OG dungeon, really, I think.
That was largely part of my thinking. So, yeah. And it's got a barrog in it. yeah i wouldn't like to argue a barrel like that they definitely seem like they're not amenable to they're excellent debaters really yeah yeah okay uh yeah um i like the little cloth map i got with it um which was probably about 45 of the reason why i got the
Well, yeah, that's the problem. I don't think I can get that separately, which is slightly annoying because I would really like that. But, hey, what are you going to do? Nice map of Moria. Oh, well. But, yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, Lord of the Rings is now on D&D Beyond, so I imagine quite a lot more people are now being introduced to the 5D version of the One Ring at the moment.
Seems like an easy sell.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, because we're talking about the obviously the licensing issues that they're having like a week or so. Or potential licensing issues of which we've heard.
So on my forum, one of the three leagues people posted in that thread about about the D&D beyond implementation because people like several people ask what happens if really loses the license. to the content on D&D Beyond.
And they said it was their understanding that while Wizards of the Coast would no longer be able to sell the content on D&D Beyond, if you'd bought the content, you'd still have access to it.
Okay. So, far from an official statement, but I guess that's what we've got to do.
It's about as close as we're going to get to it, I guess.
I mean, I'm... I'm like... reading through like the internet forums and every so often a post pops up where someone says, damn, I wish I had bought X film or what have you on or X book on a physical copy because I bought it in digital copy expecting that I'd be able to keep hold of it because it said bye and now it's gone. It's not available in my country.
Yeah. The problem with physical things is I don't have any way to play them anymore. I don't have a DVD player. I don't have a Blu-ray player. My computer doesn't have any slots in it to put anything in it.
They stopped making Blu-ray players, apparently.
Have they?
Yeah, yeah. Like, they're like, oh, well, clearly nobody's going to be using Blu-ray players, and now they're getting rid. So, I don't know, I guess I'll just get a PlayStation or something. Is that the only way you can play a Blu-ray now? Prior a console? Well, don't ask me. I'm not, like, the person to ask about that sort of thing. No, sorry.
I thought DVDs were good enough for me, because that's sort of the list I have.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I couldn't play it. If you handed me a DVD, I couldn't play it.
I found out that region three DVD players are really cheap, like 40 quid or something.
Yeah.
Since when, back in the 2000s, they were like 200 pound plus.
Yeah.
If you've been lucky, I didn't have that sort of money. It's like, oh, he's just been an aspirational.
Actually, I did see, you know, you get those like lists of gadgets for Christmas sort of thing. I did see like a little DVD player, which was basically the size of a DVD. Tiny little thing. And it was only like 20 quid. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Like I got like a DVD playing drive.
Yeah.
Again, I quite fancy playing some DVDs on my computer. But yeah. Yeah. It is for a TV. Yeah.
Yeah. And you just plug it in via HDMI or something, I guess. Or maybe you can connect it to your Wi-Fi network. Don't you even have to do that? I don't know.
I don't know about that. Again, my needs are met in the area. But yeah, it's a serious concern. People losing access to digital media when they paid for it.
Yeah. I mean, it's a thing. It is a thing. I think it's a thing. I think it's just going to be the way of the world going forward now.
Maybe. I mean, it depends. People get together and make a bus. These things can change.
Yeah, I wonder if they offered you a downloadable option so you could download the file and store it somewhere. But I guess they're worried about people distributing it then, I guess.
Well, it's like piracy is a naughty issue in some respects. I'm pretty much against it. I can see the argument that piracy does preserve digital archives when you've got careless people like at once.
I just want to come up with a legal way to do it. And then, you know, I don't know.
I'm told there's a thing called a Plex server, which is some sort of online thing that lets you do it.
Yeah, it's just a file server which is geared towards media videos, yeah.
Yeah, I don't... You have hit the edges on my knowledge.
Yeah.
I should look at it.
It's like a pretty Dropbox or Google Drive, but geared around medias for the in-built players and just looks prettier. That's basically what it is.
I mean, physical storage media is like so cheap. You can get like terabytes on a thumb drive. Yeah. Like, what black magic is this? This is amazing.
Yeah. I don't really need it these days. Partly because most of my stuff is stored in the cloud. which, as you say, is a risky thing to do. Anyway, we're kind of, like, drifting a bit off RPGs, really, aren't we?
They are sounding dangerous, aren't they?
Yeah. But anyway, so that was Secret Level on Amazon Prime. But the other TV CT RPG-related thing, although I suppose it's more sort of wargaming-related, Henry Cavill's Warhammer 40K show, which has been talked about for a couple of years now. And the last I'd heard, I was under the impression it had kind of gone away. It wasn't happening. But it's now happening.
It's now officially a go at Amazon. So they acquired the rights two years ago to produce this show. And in the last two years, Henry Cavill's kind of mentioned it occasionally, but that's about all we really, really heard. But they've actually announced that Although there's no show running yet, the show is going to be co-produced by Vertigo Entertainment. And it is a go.
Henry Cavill's Warhammer 40K show is a go. It is going to happen at Amazon. Exciting stuff.
Amazing.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, like Warhammer 40K, we mentioned it earlier because of the secret level thing. And I'm not like super familiar with it, but it's got like multiple tabletop role-playing games associated with it. Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, that sort of stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah. And that's all done by currently by Cubicle 7.
Yeah.
And of course there's the tabletop war game, which is massive.
Yes, it's Games Workshop.
Yeah.
Just recently on the FTSE 100.
Oh, okay.
They're making what we describe as an absolute ton of money. Yeah. We don't know much about how this compares to the rest of the tech industry in the UK. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm interested. I'll probably give it a try. I'll probably watch it.
He is a massive fan. That's come across very clearly when he's just like supposed to be interviewing for something else and he's arranging his next. Yeah. His next battles on interviews. Yeah. Well, he's got his priorities straight.
Oh, yeah. Now he collects the miniatures. He paints them. He does the whole lot, doesn't he?
Yeah.
Yeah, totally into it.
And he was very good in Witcher, so I'm like, okay, I can see how he could grimdark his way into the grimdarkness of the grimdark of the 41st Grimdark.
So who or what would he play in it?
Oh, the obvious choice is Spaceman, but I think that would be like a writing mistake.
Because then he'd just be covered in armour with a big helmet and you'd never see him.
Yeah, and it's just like, and also it's like, I mean, he has also been Superman, to be fair.
Mm-hmm. He has been a Superman.
But I think maybe an influencer or something. Leaning into that whole dark heresy part of it. for the investigation and the, oh, I'll work out what's going on. Yeah. Sort of thing. I think that would be, that would have like a lot of, a lot of things. But yeah, if, you know what, if they were like to say, take, I don't know, Ravnod by Dan Abnett and just film that, I'd be like, yeah.
Yeah. Well, my understanding of Warhammer 40k is, it's like, you know, it's basically, like law wise, as big as something like D and D there's so many different stories or things, approaches you could take to it, which would make entirely different shows. Hmm.
interesting not sure how to compare the two i can say for a fact that the black library has a lot more books over 260 last time i had it oh you know what i might be 260 odd in the in the forest heresy which i'm like well i know what you mean yeah yeah yeah yeah oh yeah yeah like in terms of
But then again, TSR produced hundreds and hundreds of novels back in the 80s, so there's a lot of those too. So maybe they're probably about comparable, maybe. I don't know.
I do like Black Library. Probably, I would say, probably D&D may have an edge. It'd be interesting to find out, actually.
Well, I'll watch it anyway. I'll give it a try. What's the worst that can happen? Well, I watched that Secret Level episode and I didn't hate it. Admittedly, it was just like 15 minutes of two space bogeys killing a lot of things.
I mean, that is a lot of the value proposition.
Yeah, I suppose.
I mean, did you like Sharp's Rifles?
I don't think I've watched it.
Fair enough.
I know of it, but I don't think I've ever seen an episode of Sharp.
Did you ever read any Flashman books?
I've read a couple of Flashman books, yep.
Did you think they were okay?
Yeah, they were fine. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I didn't carry on reading all of them because there's quite a few of them, aren't there?
Yeah.
I read a couple.
It's super about, like, history of depreciation. No, no, they were fine. Yeah.
Yeah, I enjoyed them.
They might enjoy a Caius Cain, who is a commissar, which is basically a political officer that's supposed to keep the Imperial Guard in line.
Right, right.
You might find that, like, a nice book to get into because there is more than a touch of George MacDonald Fraser in that writing. Okay.
Yeah, maybe that should be my gateway into Warhammer 40k, should be the novels rather than the games.
It's quite funny, that tell.
The thing is, I always feel like I would enjoy playing Warhammer 40k in a tabletop war game if I didn't have to do the whole miniatures collecting and painting side of it. Just not interested. I don't mind collecting the things.
You buy them and you play with them. It's the assembling, painting.
Yeah, just not interested.
What about making the army list? Does that appeal?
I'd have to try it. I don't know. The only couple of times I played it, Literally, I was given an army to play and it was a very small army that fitted on a table, a smallish table, and the game lasted like an hour or so.
Wow, that's great. Okay.
It was pretty small. And I quite enjoyed those, you know, that.
I thought it may be a bit easier to get the hang of what's going on so far because you actually know what's up.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I'm very pleased, but it's like a, there's a lot of material out there.
I mean, I had no idea what in the law was, what any of these like characters and creatures and figures and units were just weird names. And I was like, just, just give me a brief, brief idea. And he was like, these are the tanky ones. These can be fast. And that's okay. Fine. Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, anyway, anyway, anyway, anyway, what other news do we have?
doing some stuff for charity. It's for an Irish charity, Limerick Animal Welfare. Limerick Animal Welfare, yeah. A place in Ireland, and it's called the Xmas Witches Dead. It's a charity stream by D8 Dungeon. It's on Monday 16th December at 8pm GMT. So probably about 3pm if you're on the east coast of America, and 9am if you're
That's this coming Monday, isn't it?
That is this coming Monday.
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm doing it with a fantastic bunch of people. I've had a nice chance to chat with. I'm going to be playing with, we're using Grant Howitt's The Witch is Dead.
Yeah.
So there is a talk vibe all being removed, but we are also all going to be cute and fluffy animals.
Is this one of the one page RPGs? Yeah. Yeah. I believe so, yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, so I'm quite looking forward to it. I've got my various silly voices that I wish to try out. It's a good time.
Cool. And that's on Monday night. So how does that raise money for charity? How does that work?
Well, people will be watching it as the stream goes. There's five nights of these people playing. They're on twitch.tv slash d8.
Five nights? And you're on all five or just one of them?
Oh, just one. All right, right. They have people for different stuff and they need to Not everyone's prepared to make a complete tit of themselves on a camera like I am, so what are you going to do? Yeah, so the idea is it's like that usual charity speaking thing where as people are playing the game, you can donate money to mess with them or to give them advantages.
And that way you, the observer, may interfere with the story.
Oh, maybe I'll come along just to make your life miserable.
I mean, if you're going to throw money at it, I'm happy to take a few bits to be messed around with if it's going to help our animals. Okay. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
Oh, there's that thing about itch.io. This week. Funko Pop.
Funko Pop, yeah. So I was going to call it that.
Yeah. So ish.io is like a fairly major platform which distributes a lot of tabletop RPGs, like thousands of tabletop RPGs.
And computer RPGs.
Yeah.
It is virtually a mecca of indie gaming.
Yes.
If you're into indie gaming, you should go and at least once a year like that.
yeah yeah and um it got taken down earlier this week yeah because funko pops automated copyright systems detected some kind of copyright violation spoke to itch.io's hosting providers own automated systems which took down the entire itch.io platform. Basically, two robots talked to each other and took down a major gaming platform without any human intervention.
Apparently, the humans tried to intervene and said, no, no, please listen to us. This is not what you think it is. And we're, of course, ignored. Yeah. Yeah. According to itch.io, of course.
Yeah, well, apparently there's three different stories going on and they all contradict each other. Like, Franco's saying one thing, itch.io's saying another thing, and the hosting provider, whose name I've forgotten, is saying something different. And they're all claiming that they tried to talk to the others but got no reply. All of them are saying that.
Yeah, so I guess the truth is somewhere in the middle. Who knows? I don't know what actually happened. But... But itch.io was down. It was only for like a few hours. It wasn't.
Five, six hours.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Quite disturbing.
Yeah.
They might still be down if they weren't big enough to make a noise on social media.
So apparently there was like, there was a, there was like a single kind of like fan page on itch.io that got sort of like, I don't know, which, which triggered it.
Which triggered the sensors.
Yeah. Or, or something like that.
Protection.
Yeah. I don't know. It's very, very silly. But the fact that no humans were involved in this, this all happened without the involvement of humans, was quite annoying.
And this can happen to pretty much anyone who talks about anything. Yeah.
And there's a lot of people saying it was AI. There was no AI involved. That's just like the press being a bit hyperbolic. It was systems. Not all systems are AI. But Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess, you know, humans make mistakes as well as systems do. So, you know, the fact that no human got involved isn't necessarily a guarantee it wouldn't have happened.
But it would be nice to think that, you know, like YouTube has these copyright strike things that happen without human intervention as well, doesn't it?
Yeah, so large companies do automatic brawls through things and report whatever they think is appropriate. It all goes into a big watch to YouTube, which then takes it and demoralizes or re-diverts the profits to these companies.
Which, folding indie creators who have their own songs, which they have recorded on their own, which is not the intellectual property of these companies, this is a significant financial blow.
Yeah, part of me just thinks it should be illegal to do that without any human oversight at all. It shouldn't be possible for that to happen.
Yeah, I agree.
If you're going to do something that directly affects a person, at some point a human has to be involved in that process. Yeah. And there might be a lot of, like, looking for and clicking, but you know what? Well, it's about cost, isn't it? People just don't want to pay people to do that. When an AI, well, not an AI even, a system can do like 100 a minute.
you know or more yeah i mean the thing is is like yes it costs money to do that and it costs me to send lawsuits and they've done the math and they've said you know what these people aren't going to be able to sue us for anything like the amount of money yeah it's going to cost less money to defend yeah yeah so it's like it's a big big firm on the scale to large companies which again kind of is the sort of thing where regulation is required yeah i think so
It's the nature of the digital marketplace and the ageing nature of government. They're representatives, but people who are older than us and have, I'm going to say, probably less playback technology, which we have demonstrated earlier in this podcast, is not great.
Well, the thing is, UK companies come back and they say, it's not financially viable for us to do the right thing. But in that case, your business isn't financially viable. If your business can only exist... by doing the wrong thing, your business is not financially viable.
Yeah. Or your business shouldn't exist.
Yeah.
I'm down with whichever.
Yeah.
To be fair, I think, They could try and do the right thing with that. Yeah. That seems the way to go. And if it's like, well, we have an obligation to our stockholders to do this finest and reprehensible act, then I guess having a law in place with sufficient fines to make... Yeah. Yeah. You can't afford to do this.
Yeah. Because if the stockholders demanded you do something actually illegal, then... Yeah, no, obviously, you know, your responsibilities are different. Yeah, to not break regulations. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or to not break regulations, or to not incur absolute and massive fines.
I don't think that's that much of a big ask, just to say that a human gets involved at some point before action is taken against somebody. And, all right, so you have to hire 1,000 people to do it, but you're a multi-billion dollar worldwide corporation. So, yes, do that then.
And user satisfaction levels would go up. Like, you know, it depends who your audience is. Who are you moderating for? If you've got ads on your platform, you're moderating the ad sizes often. If you've got ads on your platform, you're moderating for your users.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, it happened and you know, I suspect more and more of this stuff is going to happen. And, you know, maybe, maybe at some point the law will catch up or maybe it won't. Is it in the right people's interests or that, you know.
You know what? I don't think we really should be commenting on current events. Like there are stuff that's happening, which makes me wonder exactly whether this sort of thing is going to be continuing on. Yeah. I don't really want to open that cat worms. That's what it was. But, you know, like people are getting pretty angry about the behavior of corporations expressing it in very final terms.
So, you know, it is a thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, should we talk about what characters people are building on Level Up Gateway?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because we've got hundreds of characters have been made on there now. Over 700 characters have been made on there since it launched last week.
Well, it's not me doing it. Yeah.
I mean, it's only, you know, it's only open to the alpha testers from the original Kickstarter. So it's open to a very small segment of... That's not strictly true.
It's open to alpha testers and the people with invite codes.
And their groups. Yeah. Yeah. So we pulled out the data of what people are building, which is fascinating. So have you seen this or... Okay. Well, I can tell you in advance that the most popular character type is a human wizard from the cosmopolitan culture with a destiny of excellence. Okay. Okay.
Wizards, always quite popular. Cosmopolitan. That's like, lets you hide things, I think.
Yeah. And then it gives you a few skills, a few culture and history skills, I think. Yeah.
excellence in his boss of destiny system as well i go with a lot because it's very easy easy to moderate to get your inspiration on yeah you just have to draw a natural one and you're getting inspiration which means that comes up quite a bit yeah who what was it vengeance where you have to outwit somebody without using a skill rule which is somewhat more tricky to arrange yeah so right heritages
So bearing in mind, there's only the adventures, great heritages in there so far. No, that's not in there yet. So human obviously at the top, but there's no surprise there. When D&D Beyond does these things, humans at the top as well. Guess what's at the bottom?
Gnome.
Gnome. People don't like the gnomes. In fact, people don't like short heritages at all. Because the bottom three... A gnome, dwarf, and halfling. So people don't like short carriages for some reason.
I think there's a lot of stereotypes associated, which makes it feel hard for you to do things that are outside the norm.
Maybe. Yeah. Well, in order, so humans are most popular.
Then elves.
Then elves, correct. Yep. Third is plain touched. Yeah. Dragonborn. Correct. Dragonborn. There's only one left now. Oh, orcs then. Yeah. And orcs, yeah. And then the halfling dwarf and gnome. It's quite interesting. So if you look at the top one, humans, 32% of characters are human. That's a lot. That's nearly a third of characters are human. Gnomes, 4%. It's over seven times as many.
People really don't like those gnomes. Oh well. Poor gnomes. And then we go on to the cultures.
Yeah, okay.
Now this is a little more different because there's a lot of cultures.
Yeah, there's like 30 of them.
Yeah. So if we just look at the top few. Cosmopolitan is the top one. Then we've got Dragonbound, Circus Folk, Imperial, Lone Wanderer, Collegiate, High Elf, Godbound, Wood Elf, Forsaken, Mountain Dwarf, Caravaner, Settler. I might need to turn it the other way through.
But is there anything that sticks out in terms of percentage-wise?
No, it's quite a gradual line, that one. There's no great big sort of, like, humans definitely bump up on the heritages. But this is quite a gradual line, this one. So, I mean, it goes from 0.4% at the bottom to 7.5% at the top, though. So it's a steep, I guess that's quite a steep line, isn't it? That's 14 times as many.
So who's getting, like, 5%?
So 5% and over, right. It's just there's a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. There's only 6 getting 5%. So we've got Cosmopolitan, Dragonbound, Circus Folk, Imperial, Lone Wanderer, and Collegiate. Interesting, none of the kind of O5-y ported ones, you know, like the High Elf and the Wood Elf and the Mountain Dwarf and those ones, which were the ones that got ported over, none of those are in the top five there.
The circus folk doesn't surprise me too much.
It's a fun one, though. I like that one.
Yes. The disengage has a bonus action is very mechanically useful. To put it mildly. Yeah. It's like, all my flight of little sapsic fighters, what are you going to do about it? Yeah. And the Lone Wanderer is, well, you know, you need a generic option for if, like, people are like, I don't like any of these. That's what they do.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So that's cultures. Then classes. Classes. Classes. Ooh.
Well, we already said the top one was Wizard.
Yeah.
Want to guess at the bottom, the worst one, the one people don't like?
Fighter?
No, no, that's second.
Oh, excellent. That's exciting for me to hear. I'm a big pro fighter fan over here. Oh, okay, okay. What about the Marshall?
No, that is one, two, three, four, five. It's fifth from bottom, so one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, ninth from top.
all right one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve one two i can't i can't count one two three four five six seven eight nine yeah you've got 14 classes you've got artificer artificer's not on that so we've got 13 classes okay the gpg stuff gpg zero doesn't make it in there not yet no we've literally only the adventurous guide classes and only up to level five yeah so where are we
The witch, wizard, fighter. Oh, I'm really struggling. Should I just tell you?
Should I put you out of your misery? Bard is at the bottom.
Really?
Yeah.
Oh, okay. Yeah, all right.
Bard closely followed by druid.
Right, right. Okay. That is pretty unusual, to be honest. But yeah, I mean, yeah.
I'm surprised.
What's the difference in percentage? Because it's split, what, 13 ways?
So the wizard's at 15.7%, quarter's 16%, and your bard is down there at 4.5%. So it's not as steep as some of the others, but it's still a good sort of just over three times as many. Five times as many. No, three times as many. Yeah, three times.
Because if we split it into percentage, then we'd expect about 7.7. Everyone liked all the classes equally.
Yeah.
Just pretty random. We'd expect something like that.
It's interesting, the top five has four of the four sort of like traditional cores. So Wizard, Fighter, Rogue, Cleric are kind of like the traditional four core. And the top five is those four, those four plus the Adept. It is interesting.
Yeah, okay. I was a bit surprised because in the games that I'd done pregens for or offered like people make their own characters, Adept have been super popular. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, well, it's the only one to break into those top four. Yeah, well, top five, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah. And it's over 7.6%.
Yeah, so the cleric's at 7.4%, and then the adept's at 8.1%. So the adept is above average, the cleric's slightly below average.
Right, right. So the adept sort of shunted out the cleric down a bit.
Okay.
Yeah, so that list in total goes wizard, fighter, rogue, adept, cleric, herald, warlock, ranger, marshal, berserker, which surprises me. I would have thought that would be way higher. Sorcerer, druid, bard.
Yeah. I think it's probably because, like, in terms of... I think Combat Maneuvers is doing a lot of this. Fighters are just better at Combat Maneuvers.
Yeah.
Better. It's pretty sweet. And Berserkers are still fun. They're effective. Not that very effective. Yeah, yeah. Like, they'll still get the job done, but it's not like in Basic 5e where... You've got a fighter because you're on that feat at level six. Otherwise, it's a bit lackluster sometimes.
But it's all pretty exciting, so yeah. Well, when you compare it to D&D Beyond, when they do this, fighter's always at the top. Human fighter is always the top one.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
As we've got human wizard.
Yeah. So, what do you feel this tells us about the sorts of people going online that back level up?
Well, I think it also tells us that people are just kind of trying out and trying different builds and they want to check out the spells.
Yeah.
How the spell system works. I think there's an element of that in there.
Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. And like the wizard, it's pretty good, but like didn't really have a lot of changes. Like it was probably the least changes.
Yeah.
The whole signature is doing spells.
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah. All right, and the final thing is destinies.
Yeah, yeah.
So that started with excellence at nearly 20%. At the bottom end is dominion at 4%.
I don't even know what dominion is. I'm not that surprised, to be honest.
Excellence, devotion, knowledge, revenge, underdog, metamorphosis, chaos, wealth, dominion.
yeah that in no way surprises me i'll be honest i'm like yeah i know i know i know what most of those says i know why i would go with excellence if it just just as a default if i couldn't think of anything else to do because it's just very simple to pass and understand
yeah yeah sure i'm finding though on gateway it takes me like two minutes to make a character so quick and so easy even in a system that's ostensibly more you know more in depth and more complex yeah it's it's i'm not doing it in two minutes yeah no i mean it's really nice i'm talking level five characters here not like a level one one in two minutes i've done that you know
Yeah, you meet your level one character, then you level it up. Because we were playing in our Thursday night game last night, got to the end of the session, and the GM's like, all right, should we just leave like half an hour to level up? I think we need half an hour. And then like 45 seconds later, everyone's like, yeah, I've done it. It's so quick and easy on Gateway.
It's good.
And this is going up to level three as well. It involves choosing an archetype as well in that 45 seconds. So it's such a difference having this platform.
Yeah. No, I mean, I'm glad you're pleased with it.
I am pleased with it.
I'm looking forward to it getting bigger and more complex.
Oh, yeah. I've got a lot of work to do. A lot of work to do.
Yeah. Get this online to the general public. And, you know, there'll be someone banging a little tin drum about it. Spoilers, that doesn't mean. It's so slick, though. It's just that it is as good as D&D Beyond. It's amazing. Yeah. I mean, making D&D Beyond the first time was probably, like, really hard.
And making something that's like D&D Beyond with some of the people, I think, that were involved with D&D Beyond? No.
What, with, like, Gateway? No. No one's been involved with D&D Beyond.
Oh, OK. I think there was someone that was talking to you at one point. No, my bad. My bad. Except looking good.
Yeah. Yeah.
Anyway, are we ready for crushing, depressing?
Oh, gosh, go on then.
So there is the European legislation, the general product safety regulation that's coming into effect on the 13th of December.
Oh, right. Yes. Yep.
Yeah. I mean, I've only got like some of these interpretation of it online. They would like to say that they are not a lawyer, but the stuff I've seen is just like, oh goodness, this is pretty bad for NDTs, BRBGs. Not great for Amazon either. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to explain what it is just for people who don't know?
To the best of my knowledge, and bearing in mind I am not like a lawyer, a legal professional, or indeed, I suppose I have technical assistance, that's critical. But yeah, it's a new set of regulations that comes into effect for consumer products sold in the EU to see if they're safe, whether they're physical or digital.
Some of it has been criticised for maybe not being the most clear or well thought out. So if you're selling things into the EU, you've got to consider this GPSR, as it's called. So that includes printed books, PDFs, game materials, dice, merchandise, apps, or any product that reaches EU consumers. So things you've got to consider. You've got to make sure your products are safe to use.
There's no sharp edges. There's no toxic material, misleading instructions. Any game tools like dice, tokens, must compose safety standards, especially if the market is for children. So, like, I don't know if people have come across those metal dice or, like, ones with extra fine edges. But, yeah, like, don't give those to kids if you can't really consider those things. Like, that is not good.
And you can't now. It's legal in the European legislation as of today, in fact. Printed books, let's talk about NTTRPGs, printed books have to meet basic quality standards, like no faulty bindings or errors that could cause physical harm, like pretty much definition of low risk.
Digital products, you must ensure they're free of harmful code, functional, accessible in all European Union languages where they are sold. And that is probably gonna stop me from being able to sell PDFs into the EU. Like I can sell you books, but I can't sell you PDFs. It's a big problem, and I don't know what they're thinking. I'd quite like to read an e-book or two.
I know Amazon's quite a big seller of e-books. So now Amazon is going to, what, take on, it's going to stop selling into the EU? Is that what they're planning? I don't know.
I mean, yeah, I don't know how all of this is going to shake up. There is regulations about how you have to have a representative in the EU. not in your own country, they've got to be in the EU, who's basically a representative of your company regarding these things and how that's going to work.
I suspect that bit won't be that much of a problem because I think it will be an extra cost, but I think it will be a small one because what you'll get is just people who are just a representative for 5,000 companies.
pay them a token amount because because it's rubber stamping ready it's it's never going to come up you know you know it's like like if you're doing if you're doing like pgs they're never gonna have to do anything yeah yeah like their job is just collect money off you every so often you'll just yeah you'll just get you'll just say companies in the eu that will just like take a sort of like minimal fee annual fee and
I mean, you say that, it's like the one that Roe and Rook and Deckard are recommending online. They are charging 20 euros for registration and then 10 euros per month thereafter.
Yeah, but you'll get competition with that. That'll go down.
Like, I would hope so. Yeah.
Yeah.
Because that's a lot of money. 120 euros, the river stamp thing. Yeah. Like, not that, that, that. It's like each way of profits for any English. So this is, this is a terrible, terrible news for us.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, interesting stuff, huh? Yeah, I think it's the lack of being able to sell PDFs into the EU. I mean, I think having a complimentary PDF with your book purchase is probably something that would work. But yeah, if they're not buying a physical book, then it's a problem.
Yeah, I can see how that would be an issue. I wasn't actually familiar with that aspect of it. You brought that to my attention, to be honest. Yeah, yes, it is squirreled away.
in a little link, which I will grab and put into the show notes that we are putting together for our listeners, which we'll put in our little chat thing that you can see.
Yeah.
I'll just post that now, actually. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, difficult post there. Oh, no, that's going. Anyway, so yeah, it is a problem. Are they really? I can deal with the physical books and PDFs, but going forward, I'll try through RPG. They're just going to tell you, oh, no, sorry, you can't sell to someone.
Yeah, I mean, I'd have to look into it. I'm sure there's probably a way around it, but I'd have to look into it and see. As I said, I've literally just heard about it this second.
I mean, I suspect the intent is so that if you're selling something with instructions, which is what they're thankful about, then those instructions are available in the languages in the country that's received as part of safety for those countries. Well, good. That is solid thinking. Well done. Love to see it. Right.
My problem then comes where it's like, well, yeah, but I've got a PDF which is about role-playing games. And they're like, what's role-playing games? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Nightmarish.
Well, we'll have to wait and see, I guess.
Yeah. Because translation services are not cheap.
No.
I'm sure there'll be like AI gibberish put out, but I will point out to people that are thinking, well, I guess that's what we'll do, that AI is not good at this sort of thing. It's not good at languages that aren't English.
Well, you don't need AI for a translation service. Google Translate's been around for donkey's years. That's not AI. It's just a...
If you can't rely on Google Translate to translate your role-playing game book, I guess you can.
Oh, yeah. I'm not saying it's going to be good. I imagine it will comply with the regulation, but I'm sure it's not going to be good.
Yep, yep. There you go. Provided without warranty. I don't know. I'll have to have a think about it because obviously I've got my stuff going out next year.
Well, I assume what you could probably do, I mean, again, I'm guessing because I literally have not seen this regulation, but what you could probably do is you could put it out in English. You could basically say to people, look, this is an English language book. You buy it in the English language. The regulation says, I have to provide a translation for you. So here it is. It's crap.
But still, it meets the thing. But don't look at it. Don't read it. Read the English language book. If you can't read English, don't buy it. I guess it's what you have to say to people.
Yeah.
You know, the only reason that translation is there is to meet the regulation. It's not expected to be used.
It's not great.
It's not great. It's not great at all. But I think that's... I haven't seen the regulation, so that's my instinctive response to how you would address that.
It's certainly something that industry is just crying out for guidance on, especially because it's coming up to Christmas as well.
Yeah. Well, I'll dig into that and maybe like in the next show we could talk about it in a bit more detail once we both have actually, because I'm kind of so much guessing at the moment.
So much guesswork. No guidance. So, yeah. It is a problem. Yeah.
Tell you what is more exciting. Lego is exciting.
I am excited about Lego.
Lord of the Rings is exciting.
True.
Helm's Deep is exciting. These are all things that are exciting, yes. There is a 150,000-piece Lego Helms Deep with an entire Rotorim army. Which sounds really awesome, and I really do kind of want it. I mean, it's got over 1,700 figures to depict the battle. And then 150,000 piece of like the Helm's Deep kind of diorama.
And it's got ladders and walls and towers and siege engines and the cliffs that go, it's gorgeous. I mean, oh man, I, you know, it's got the Uruk High, it's got the elves on the walls. It's got the whole lot. It's got the whole lot. It's enormous. It's so big. I don't even know where I put it, but I want it. Thanks. Yeah.
There's also a Barad-Durr one as well, which is, there's only 5,000 pieces there, but that exists as well. Yeah. Yeah.
Does it, does it, does it let you have an enormous force of broken retina or something like that?
I am sure. Yeah. Anyway, slightly, slightly more cheerful.
I'm sure this Lego is for children. No, I know, I know it's controversial, but I feel that really they're not the target market.
Not, not for something like this, I don't think, no. This would take so long to make and you would need a room to make it in.
Absolutely.
I do want it though. I don't even know how much it costs. I don't even dare to look. There's a minus tariff as well, I think, but I can't see the price. I don't know. I don't know how much it costs. It's just probably a good thing. Probably a good thing that I don't know how much, because I'd probably get very sad if I found out how much it costs. It's probably hundreds, isn't it?
You're seeing change out 300 quid. I would be surprised.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It looks amazing though. Anyway, I thought it was slightly better news than European regulations stopping people selling PDFs.
Well, I thought I'd shout it out because it did feel like quite relevant news.
Yeah. Right, what else have we got? Darker Heart. They've revealed the covers of the core set. which is pretty cool. There's like a box which has the cards in it. There's dice. There's a GM screen and the covers sort of like a golden purple kind of swash across the front of the hardcover. It looks very pretty, although it looks like a chocolate, a box of chocolates in my mind.
I look at it and I think Quality Street.
Locked up.
Yeah. Take a look. I am thinking this looks a lot more like a box of chocolates than a role-playing game, but here you go. Have a quick look yourself. Yeah.
Back to part four. Set covers revealed.
Does that not look like a box of chocolates?
Oh. Well, look, all I'm saying is that the lady loves milk tray.
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Milk tray is what it looks like, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Definitely milk tray vibes.
Yeah.
Okay. So, look, it's a rich purple colour. That's good. And the outside is more... It's got more yellows on and so forth. I think they're going for some sort of dual picture yellow and purple options. It's not bad. It does look like a very high-quality project.
Yeah.
I do like a quality street. it's um got uh it's vaguely like some sort of frist lid out of x-com being ridden by maybe a mad frog and there's like giant elf heads in there it's all facing down some guy who bears a certain amount of resemblance to a skyrim chap if you ask me and they've got like a mage who appears to be doing some semaphores bring them into land um
Yeah, it's a cover.
It's got a lot of colours. And again, they've got a split between sort of bright colours and a dark colour. So that's inverted from the Xbox itself.
It'll be really interesting to see how well this does.
Yeah, I'm sure it will sell like Angus.
Oh, I'm sure it will.
A lot of people love this.
A lot of people keep saying it's a D&D killer. It's not going to do that. It's not. But it is, I think... Well, you know what I mean. It's not going to be a rival to D&D. But it is going to be probably one of the top leading non-D&D RPGs, I would imagine.
But yeah, I mean, it certainly got the space for like all the cards and tokens that you need. And from what I understand, that's quite a lot of both that you do require. I think they did focus quite a lot on good character sheet design, which is important. So yeah. I'm like, I'm interested. Like I say, it's got nice art. I like the style of it as well.
It's quite a modern, quite the new modern pseudo-cartoon style.
But yeah, good stuff.
I don't see how it's going to displace D&D, because it's just not that different. I can see it displacing a lot of D&D, maybe, but in terms of sheer raw wattage of tons of books and so forth. Yeah. No, it's not going to do that. It's not in the same weight class, do you know what I mean?
Yeah, it's going to be, I would guess, it's going to be sort of probably not quite, probably not quite Call of Cthulhu. I think if you go, it probably goes, I guess, D&D Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, probably. I guess. So I reckon it's going to be around Savage Worlds-y kind of level.
I mean, it sounds like we're talking smack about it. We are absolutely not. I think it looks like quite an exciting book. I think there's a lot of people excited about it. It's going to do, by the standards of TTRPGs, really, really well. It's just like
The sense of scale that you would have to have to be able to effectively take on D and D is like, nah, that's like, sorry, it's just like, maybe, maybe if it was like this big back in the two thousands or back in like the nineties or eighties or whatever. Yes. Sure. But not now. That's not a thing. Sorry.
But it's going to make its mark on the RPG landscape, though. It's going to be a thing, for sure.
It feels like it could well be influential, I think. It does have some really good design, and we're looking to see some excellent ideas.
Yeah.
Learn from it.
It's got its hope and its fear dice, hasn't it? Yeah, I'm kind of interested. I'd be willing to give it a try and play a game of it and find out.
Would play. Would like to find out more.
Yeah. Do you know there's an Evil Dead 2? kickstarter for 5e yeah not evil dead but evil dead 2 specifically uh like that would actually make more sense to me than you might expect yeah okay and so yeah it's on kickstarter it's got like nine days to go it's something about it's coming up to 40 000 pounds or about 45 000 dollars
nine days to go it is from it is from lynn vander studios who i'm i'm not familiar with but they've done board game stuff like puffy and divinity and cowboy people dragon ball z you know stuff like that so i've done a whole lot of stuff like that so they got like a good track record yeah in the board game market i think they're probably you know quite well known i'm just not personally
know anything about board games so but yeah there's a lot of sort of big board game licenses but this is this is their rpg wing yes yeah so it's gonna be interesting so they've done like three kickstarters in total so they did one which is legacy of mana 5e one which is called imaria animaria 5e but i got cancelled because it didn't get funded And then this one, Evil Dead 2 for 5e.
So, you know, zombies, another zombie game. I mean, it's been a few zombie games recently, I feel like. I mean, if I'm looking at the, like, page previews, it's gorgeous looking. Very, very pretty, proper, like, blood splattered pages for color art. It looks very nice.
The art style doesn't grab me quite as much, must I say.
Yeah, it's cartoony, cartoony art.
yes yes I think that's fair to say comic booky maybe is that the word I mean Maybe. If that's a bit flat, I mean, I'm personally not. It's not bad art. It's definitely not artificial intelligence art. It's like done by an artist. It's got a consistent, strong style. If you like it, you'll probably really like it. You're wrong because it's a matter of taste. Yeah. That's my take.
But yeah, looks like good art. I guess I'm a little put off by the subclasses that they've got going in here. It feels like that is less of a 5e hat than say the Lord of the Rings stuff. So you've got a real like you are basically playing 5e but with That's an evil bed skin.
Yeah.
It feels like it's going to be super close to that with a lot more spells and stuff kicking around.
Yeah.
I'd be interested to see how they manage firearms because that seems to be part of the deal. Yeah. And they've got like, I guess the Ash character is a hair trigger barbarian. First ask never. So, you know, they got some good looking art. Some of the black and white art I do like. That is quite, that appeals to me. So, yeah.
Not sure if they're going to manage shipping to the EU for these PDFs that they've got on offer, but maybe they'll just risk it for risk it. Start off at, what, $25 for a PDF? $60 for a hardback book? Absolutely CF as well, yeah. They've got a core set with metal chainsaw dice, a dice tray, a bag, a GM screen, a tactical map of the Nobby cabin.
Mm-hmm.
But that will set you back about $162. That's a bit of a leaking price. They're doing... Oh, wow. The Dispel Dice Without the Books. $257 for free sharp-edged edging right... I'll say that again, using my words this time. $257 for free sharp-edged resonant dice sets. Mm-hmm. That's going to be falling short of... That's going to be falling short of the GSPR. Yeah. I shouldn't laugh.
Yeah. I am a little surprised. I would have expected this to have taken off a little bit bigger than it has. I mean, it's doing okay. Don't get me wrong. It's not like Evil Dead's quite popular, is it?
Yeah, I mean, like, big cult following. You can enjoy the TV series that they've done. It's quite good. Oh, UK, you will need to pay 20% of your total plus shipping VAT. Say that again? They've got a section on VAT and taxes. Right. So for the UK, which obviously I was looking at first, 20% of your total pledge plus shipping with the only team, your pledge will be shipped from the UK. All right.
You'll not pay duty at time of delivery. EU, you'll pay... But it's a book. I am just reading what they're saying. Okay. I mean, books are famously VAT-free. Books are famously VAT-free. Maybe it's like, you know what, Russ? I have no idea what they're thinking. Maybe they've had bad advice. Maybe they know something they don't.
Well, a lot of the stuff isn't books, though, I suppose, I guess, but still.
Yeah. And it looks like they're proposing to ship from Australia.
Yeah, I've got to say that adding VAT afterwards is not the customary way you do it.
This is, yeah.
You include, yeah, you include sales tax in product prices.
I mean, $60, I was assuming that was going to come and complete the taxes, but listen, US level went to the store rubbish going on here. No, no, I'm not, I'm not, I was thinking of it. I'm just going to say no right now. Yeah.
Anyway, I just thought it was interesting. The other Kickstarter I thought was interesting. Mongoose had got a, this was on a packet kit actually, not Kickstarter, have a traveler one, but this is an audio book of a traveler supplement. Which is interesting. I mean, it's not done massively. It's only made like $3,000. Yeah.
But it's the audiobook of the Third Imperium, one of the Traveller's Supplements, professionally narrated.
Yeah, yeah.
And I just think it's really interesting that they're doing this. Because it's not, audiobooks of role-playing game books isn't a common thing.
Yeah.
But maybe it should be. Yeah. Would it make a big difference? Well, you can't use an audiobook as a reference in game.
Yeah, no, that's fair enough, actually.
But you can read it initially.
You can listen to the gist of what's going on.
Okay.
But it comes with soundscapes and music and all that sort of stuff as well. Yeah, yeah. Which sounds useful.
I do like the idea. That's not a bad one.
Hmm. Yeah, well, there's a company called Audio RPG, apparently. I've not heard of these guys, but they produce high-quality audio books of your favorite role-playing rules, source books, and adventures.
Okay.
So... Pretty interesting. Yeah, I was trying to think how I would use that. I think... I don't know. Can you listen... Can I listen to rules being read out? I don't know that I could.
What if you had difficulty getting to say them?
Well, then I wouldn't hear it because I'd be sleeping. I mean, it's an accessibility thing, of course. That's good.
Yeah, yeah. And for some people, like, I know, it just depends on, like, for me, it would be super hard for me to be able to do that. But for other people who are used to listening, retaining information out there, I can see it being a really amazing way to get into a book that, like, maybe... Yeah.
you just couldn't you couldn't use it as a reference in any way though that's the thing yeah it's like sometimes it's about getting the whole of the rule set yeah
Which, like, yeah, because some people can sit and read a game book cover to cover. I am actually not one of these people. I can't do that. I need to pop in, get the bits I need. And as I do that, I sort of build up a picture of the book until, you know, after some time doing this, I actually know how it all fits together.
But to start at the beginning and work through to the end, it's just not in me. Well, they're not designed to do that.
They are reference books. They're not novels, you know.
Well, some people apparently do that, and I've always felt like a bit inferior, to be honest.
I don't think that's actually why. People access information in different ways, don't they? I don't think these days I could do that. I think as a kid, I did. I used to, but these days I don't think I could do that. I'd look up the bits I need. Definitely.
I mean, that's very much how I roll. It's like, if it's not, if it's not in like little bits at the side that I need, then I'm struggling. I'm struggling.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the only, the only, the only form of doing it that way is that, that I think it's harder to pick up a new system by doing because you don't know that you haven't read bits.
If you, if you don't, if you don't know they're there, if you know what I mean, if it's like, if you're using a, a source book for sort of like 5e or something, you know, that the archetype chapter, what that's going to contain, you know, what the spell, you know, that sort of thing. You know how that works. You don't, you don't need to be told what the structure means.
But yeah, audio books, audio books for RPG source books. Yeah, fine.
I mean, um, could I interest you in an accessibility? Sure. whack it into the show notes for you but what you're going to be looking at is you're going to be looking at dots rpg not all in fact that's the name braille dice okay so it's your standard d20 sets by which i mean d20 to d4 yes numbers in between including d10 and other platonic solids and they've got numbers in braille good idea
Very good idea. They have the numbers, I think, raised, and they also have visible so that other people can look at them as well. There you go.
It's an excellent idea.
They've got this going out. So for Braille polyhedral and fake dye as well. Like let other people get in on it. That sounds good.
.rpg .org Excellent. That's pretty sweet. I backed a Kickstarter for a dice-like product. I have been trying to cut down on, on Kickstarters.
Yes.
Although I did back that DC heroes, new DC heroes box set. And I backed Discworld and I backed Sly Flourish's City of Arches. I backed quite a few recently. Damn it. I failed. Anyway, so this one.
I also backed Sly Flourish's City of Arches. Some sort of Moria City of Arches mashup.
Yeah. So, so this one is called Cardi Hedron. And basically, it's like a credit card-sized thing with little wheels on it, and each one of those is a different dice, D4 up to D20.
It's like spinners, isn't it?
Yeah, little spinners, just on a credit card-sized piece of metal. I thought it was quite a cool little idea, so I pledged for one of them, and I thought I'd just stick that in my wallet, and then I've always got dice on me.
Yeah. I need them. That's the selling point, and yeah, nice.
I mean, they're not ideal. If I need to roll, like, 12d6, it's not great for that, because it's like one spinner for each die.
But if I need to roll a die or a couple of dies... Yeah, just in case you find yourself trapped in the lift and need to get that game going, you've got something to do.
Exactly.
Why not? Why not?
Yeah.
I have some vaguely comedy news, and I have some vaguely sad news.
Oh, okay. Well, let's start with the good news.
Well, I didn't say it was good news.
All right, comedy news. All right, let's start with the comedy news.
So as was alluded to earlier in this podcast, Games Workshop had hit the FTSE 100. So the Financial Times decided to do like a little bit of an article on them. And the pitch they chose, well, it was definitely a choice that they made. Okay. It feels like you haven't seen this, Russ.
No.
I'm going to send you through this link. Okay, let's have a look.
Financial Times, try unlimited access. I can't.
You can see the picture behind it.
Oh, some beholders. Gotcha. Yes, okay.
And tell me, who do beholders belong to?
Well, not Games Workshop, that's for sure.
Not Games Workshop.
Yeah.
For the premier tabletop gaming company in the UK. Mm-hmm. which has just recently made the FTSE 100. Thanks for telling us this idea. What better way?
To illustrate this article is to include a picture of D&D.
Yeah. Somebody else's game.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Great job, FT. Great job.
Well done.
Yeah.
Well done.
Like I say, vaguely comedy, although not that funny, I imagine, if your game's about a job.
I don't care. They probably don't care that much.
I imagine they might care a bit.
It's not like it's taking away business from them, is it?
It's just like, just rude.
Yeah, I suppose.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. If your face was to appear on like, I don't know, in the financial pages now to use like, I don't know, a different Morrissey as your picture.
You're talking about Neil Morrissey, obviously. The actor. Who else could you be talking about? I can't think of any other Morrisseys. There are no other Morrisseys.
Exactly. Yeah.
I don't know other Russells either.
Indeed.
No.
Well, that would be the AI version. Yeah.
Russell Brand and Neil. No, no, no. Oh, wow.
So much worse.
Yeah. Well, the thing is, if you Google my name, I do tend to come up.
first because of that combination of russell and morrissey or russ morrissey but you also get a lot of russell brand and you also get a lot of the smiths morrissey morrissey coming up which are two people that i don't want to be mistaken for yeah don't grow your hair long don't grow my hair long and don't take up a music career and become super brexity
I think you're pretty safe.
Especially on the music career bit, because I can't. Not really, but you're into the Brexit.
Russ Morris cancelled live. Russ Morris cancelled live in his own show.
Anyway, yeah, so what was the sad news then?
The sad news was, Wizards of the Coast related, which is a very good brand. they have decided that Magic the Gathering isn't going to want a safe play space at future Magic Cons.
Okay. So what is a safe play space?
A safe play space is like a place where they've got arrangements for neurotypical people who are a bit shy and timid about playing Magic because maybe they've never played it before and they just want to play with people in person for the first time. And yeah, I came across it randomly. I was like a bit sad about it because it seems a bit hard, really.
And that's something they've traditionally provided, is it?
Yes. Now they've done it and now they're taking it away. They said why? Hasbro has not provided an announcement. The BML, which is the name of the competition organizers. They are a, according to their Blue Sky page, they're a fun-friendly and competitive tournament organization of people of marginalized genders within the Magic Gathering community.
TV slash BML, MTG have said they're not getting it, that they cannot do it further. But they haven't said why. They've been told there will not be space for us to have our safe space at future Magic Cons. So there's no space for them to do their thing. Yeah. Okay, I'm sure that's a venue issue. It does sound like it, but there we go.
Huh. Oh, okay. That's sad. That is sad news. You're correct. It is sad news.
I mean, not hugely relevant to table prop gaming, but we're shouting out.
Yeah. All right.
Hopefully, I suspect, due to sponsorship being withdrawn, maybe.
Who knows? I don't know.
Not me. Sorry.
Yeah, I think we're kind of coming to the end of the news unless you've got any more. That Voltron RPG isn't taking off the way I thought it would either as well. Voltron and Evil Dead, two licenses which I thought would be quite... I mean, it's doing okay. Again, don't get me wrong. It's $86,000 with 10 days to go.
If I was doing $86,000, I'd be doing little flips, mate.
Yeah, but this is Catalyst Game Labs and they're quite a big company probably used to bigger projects.
That's less than £68,000. Yeah. I mean, it's still got 10 days to go, so they might pull something back up. But yeah, I hadn't really seen anything about it. It's not something that I'm super aware of because it's quite an old cartoon, isn't it? Yeah, 80s, isn't it, I think. Maybe they're just not getting the nostalgia pounds in the same way that Monty Python or Fractured.
Yeah, or maybe it's the time of the year. It's just before Christmas. Maybe that's what it is. I mean, our Kickstarter just finished and ours didn't seem to be affected by the time of the year. We came in at like just over £100,000 or like $130,000, I think. I'm not sure what it is in dollars. It got fulfilled last night within one minute of funding of the Kickstarter ending. As is our way.
As is our way.
That's neatly skipping around the need to have a whole bunch of dotty Google Translates. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Have you got that one yet?
I was a contributor.
Yes, you're waiting for your contributor's copy. Yes. Yeah.
I'm definitely looking forward to getting it. I actually bought my two-year campaign to a close. on Wednesday night. Oh, the, uh, to save the kingdom one. Yes. Yes. Yeah. True to personal circumstances. I wouldn't be able to offer such reliable games. So we decided to finish at the end of book one.
There's definitely scope to go and do some more stuff, but that would require maybe a bit of a break. Yeah. So they fought. So Rafi, who, because of the unique composition of my group, the Crimson Wardens, AKA team punch.
turned into a half demon half dragon midway with midway through to go because they i made i made strofian elite i mean russ i'll be honest mate it's like cr21 elite right it make a blind bit of difference now like just got chomped it was like wow that's a lot of damage yeah yeah like that i mean but to be fair they put in spade work they've got the true name they've got like the
The Quiver, they've got the Hammer of Vengeance, the Coward's Map, which wasn't relevant.
My group totally stomped Xeroth.
Yeah. Was it three rounds, or was it less?
About that, yeah.
I mean, as I say, I went with 600 hit points, and the final blow meant that they did about 730 points of damage. You know what? Brits with an arrow are kind of a big deal.
Yeah.
Crits on 66 Poison. Yeah, that's going to get the job done. Yeah.
Yeah. So what are your plans? What's your next gaming plans?
Well, my big focus at the moment is getting my books Crafting, heritages, cultures and backgrounds and more world building, getting that out to people. I've got an artist commissioned and ready for the cover, so that's good. And I've got a structure and I'm very excited by it. In terms of gaming, I'm looking forward to contingency next year, which is in January. It runs from Wednesday to Sunday.
Yeah, it's a long one, that, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm hoping to get in the region of 40 plus hours of gaming.
Wow, that's a lot of gaming.
It's a lot of gaming, but it's like part of my, part of the Joy of Games contingency. You can just like, just fill your boots with... I dare say for me, that's too much, don't you? I'll have more of your weakness. Yeah. So nothing exceeds like excess. I guess, I guess. This will be very exciting for me because I really like playing games. It's like, it's just a really strong way for me to like,
fill up my gaming batteries and get on with doing excellent stuff. So yeah, those are the main things. With respect to the role-playing game club, I'll be recruiting for some officers to help me run it and do some of the things I've been doing and take some of that off my hands to look at recruiting and some to look at keeping everyone happy. Yeah. It's all doable. It's all doable.
It's just a lot.
Fair enough. Right, I think we've probably come to the end of the show. We're out of news and it's coming up to Christmas. The poll for favorite, most anticipated, sorry, RPGs of 2025 will be up. probably over this weekend, early next week. It's just a question of me, like, going through the thread and putting them all into the poll. So that will be up soon.
So you'll be able to sort of vote over the Christmas period, and then early January, we'll be able to announce the winners right here on this show. How exciting.
Next week, we've got, like, the final episode of 2024.
Wow. And then it'll be 2025. How did that happen? Amazing.
It's a long, long way to get there.
Yeah. All right. Should we get out of here? Should we go and have a weekend?
Sounds like the name.
Okay. We should have Jess back next week. Yeah. And we've also got possibly some exciting format news early next year as well. We're going to try it ourselves first and see if we like it first. If that's okay, then we'll announce some possible exciting format news.
What could possibly go wrong?
Yeah. All right, let's get out of here. All right, then. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.