Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
330 | 2025's Most Anticipated TTRPGs, D&D Monster Manual News, Mainstream News Discovers 'Species'
Fri, 10 Jan 2025
We're back after a festive holiday break and raring to go through the 10 most anticipated TTRPGs for 2025... along with all the news for the last 3 weeks during the 'Crimbo Limbo'. Check Out The New Monster Manual’s Ancient Gold Dragon D&D: The New ‘Monster Manual’ Upgrades Dragons – Just What Adventurers Wanted Tons of New Art from D&D's New Monster Manual 2025 Monster Manual to Introduce Male Versions of Hags, Medusas, and Dryads 2025 Monster Manual Will Contain Over 85 New Monsters Universal Fan Fest Nights to Bring Xanathar to Life With Giant Puppet Dungeons & Dragons Pinball Machine Announced Mainstream News Discovers D&D's Species Terminology Change D&D Dark Alliance Servers Shutting Down Games Global D&D Gambling License Pathfinder Announces New Lost Omens Book, Plus Remastered Version of Treasure Vault Starfinder 2E Cover Art Revealed 30+ Hand-Drawn Dungeon Maps for any TTRPG - Three Themes We Dig Giant Robots: A Rockin Mecha One-Shot RPG Level Up Gate Pass Gazette Annual 2024 Buy TTRPGs from a Vending Machine The First Game released of 2025 A5e gains 1000 users Gama Announces Opening Of 2025 Origins Award Nominations Here Are 2025's Most Anticipated TTRPGs... As Voted By You!
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. We are back after a two-week Christmas and New Year break. I hope we're all feeling appropriately festive out and ready for a super exciting new year of TTRPG news. 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 Roleplayers. It's a delight to be here and especially delightful today because I got to rock out to the amazing, mellifluent chords that are the podcast's whole exciting intro theme. I don't normally get to hear it, but I'm glad I got to listen to the full two minutes of it today. It was excellent stuff.
The dancing was especially good.
Dance break was amazing. I did enjoy it. And yeah, a few twirls. Yeah, has one does. Joining us also, we have, well, I'm a little confused with her talk of like camera angles and so forth and all sorts of technical mumbo jumbo, but it is the one. It's the only.
it's me jessica from em publishing hello we are back after two weeks off for yes i hope listeners enjoyed celebrating the new year and christmas or hanukkah or whatever whatever you celebrated uh i hope you you didn't have a nice time did we all have a great christmas and new year i did i did i had a wonderful christmas interview did anybody get any nerdy artifacts
didn't get anything i got a telescope that's not that's quite nerdy but not not ttrpg nerdy fair enough fair enough i still think it counts yeah yeah very happy with that yes that's a good quality nerd
um i got a copy of the savage world superpowers book yes i did specifically request it but that's the way to make sure i get what i read yes yes it is be direct say state your wants and needs the perfect way to do that i got a few nerdy things which i'll share i got um a little cute stocking which has dice on which is very cute i got uh the slow knife tabletop rpg which is um
It's a story game for two to four people, and it's about revenge. They think the Count of Monte Cristo, which is really nice. I enjoy playing that. I got a little board game by Oink Games called Five Rafter, which is a dexterity balancing game.
You've got loads of nerdy stuff. I know. That's a bit cruel to give you. Why?
That's a bit cruel.
Well, I mean, famously, dexterity is not your strong suit, I thought.
Hey. You don't have to be good at games to enjoy playing them.
That's true.
And I do like a bit of nerdy cosplay, so I did also get this, which is a crown headband with antlers and deer fawn ears.
Of course you did.
Which, yes, I'm going to wear at Fantasy Forest in the summer, where I'm going to be a fawn of some sort.
It's just like adding to your collection of tiaras.
It is, in a way, adding to my collection of tiaras, but this one has big, giant antlers on, so it also adds about a foot to my height, so maybe people will see me in a crowd.
People will stop just walking into you.
Yeah, exactly. So that's my hope when I go to Fantasy Forest later this year.
A complete bouquet of flowers on your head as well. And, of course, big walnuts, which were something quite special indeed.
Indeed, indeed. So, yes, I hope everyone else got some fun stuff or had some time off or just enjoyed.
I also got socks as well, but I can't show them to you because I'm currently wearing them.
Oh, what do they look like?
And I don't really feel like doing acrobatics right now.
Yeah, that's fair enough.
Amusing, though, that would be for everyone involved.
Well, I feel we're a little bit updated on our lives and games. Shall we tell people about the tabletop RPG news?
I think we should because we have three weeks of news to catch up on.
Where should we start, Russ?
Let's start with the Monster Manual. because the monster manual is coming out very very very soon yeah i know that um some people have advanced copies of it already with an embargo and there's a big press event on monday which means there's going to be a whole load of news articles coming out about the Monster Manual sort of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, next week.
Beth and Christian from Ian Royal are both going to that, along with probably people from lots of other outlets and stuff. So that's exciting. So was it... kind of, you know, preview promotion juggernaut has started to gear up. Videos have started coming out. The articles have started coming out, all in preparation for the release.
So, and they kind of were going out over the last week or two, but obviously we weren't here. So back in December, right at the end of December, in between Christmas and New Year, in fact, I like to call the Crimbo Limbo.
Sure.
For reasons that should be obvious. An announcement from Wizards of the Coast came out saying that the monster manual will have 85 new monsters in it. Very nice. Over 85 new monsters. So I could even 86 new monsters or even 87 new monsters or 7,249 new monsters. You can't tell, but it's over 85. We know that.
Yeah.
That's not just new monsters. Obviously, it's got all the old monsters as well.
Yeah.
The old monsters plus 85 new ones. About 500 in total. Wow. That's a lot of monsters.
A lot of monsters.
Yeah. Basically about 20% of the book is new monsters.
Right.
And new art.
Yes. The art upgrade I'm looking at does look pretty good. We've got all sorts of things going on here, like a very angry orangutan, like a chap in a dungeon. Battle of Bad Tyrant Mimic, what's that, Githyanki? Yeah. We got some sort of Chimera, a, oh, I know, I used to know what the Undead Beholders were called, and of course Death Knight, or Darth Vader as they're best known.
Yeah. I mean, these are all images from, because they put an hour-long video up earlier this week, and these are all screenshots from that, so there's loads and loads and loads of them, because they, you know, in an hour they showed a lot of art off. But there's like over 300 new art pieces in this book. It's not just the old monster manual with slightly adjusted stat blocks and 85 new monsters.
It's completely redone.
Yeah, well, I mean, get that art out, bring it up to speed with the Monstrous Menagerie. Don't want to be outshone by the competition.
Yeah, yeah. One interesting thing about it is the dragons. So they showed off the ancient gold dragon. We've seen the ancient green before, I believe, and we've talked about it here on the show. I think we saw another one. I can't remember. But just this week Wizards was sharing on Facebook the ancient gold dragon. Not the whole stat block, just kind of like the first, I guess, half of it. But
I mean, can you read that? It's quite small, but... Yeah, yeah.
Well, it's like the ancient gold dragon. For listeners at home, what we're looking at is essentially sort of a Chinese-style dragon, which is... curled itself up and around to give us a glare out from the page. And there's lots of white highlighting as well. Yeah. AC 22, 546 hit points. This is apparently a CR 24 Beast. Yes. Not a dragon, not a beast, obviously.
I've got to admit, offhand, I can't remember what the older one was like. So I can't compare it in my head. Do you offhand... I do not. We have failed as a podcast host. Yeah, we should quit now. Okay, end of the show. Well, it was a good run. Yeah, but I mean, you can see the first half of the stat block, basically, as far as the actions.
There's obviously another whole load of it on there, which we haven't seen yet. Yeah, I mean, you can see the new stat block layout, which we've seen before with initiative at the top.
which is nice as we we've mentioned before.
Yes. An idea which we stole for monsters from treasury too. That does make sense. Absolutely. And, and the new way they show the the ability scores and saving throws, which I still maintain is more useful, but isn't as attractive, but utility over, over, you know, visuals, I guess.
you not think you know i find it a bit harder to read to be honest um but yeah okay yeah i mean it's just what you're used to really yeah yeah yeah a lot of that is yeah but yeah there's other little bits and pieces about the monster manual there i mean next week is going to just it's going to explode there's going to be
Yeah, we'll do a deeper dive next week.
There's going to be tons and tons of it. We had some information about, so, hags, medusas, or was it medusae? What's a plural of medusa? I like medusae. Medusae and dryads. Now, some of these monsters that have typically been portrayed in media as female, Not always in D&D, actually.
There have been examples of these as male and female in various adventures and I think a couple of older Monster Manuals and things like that. But I think probably for the first time for 5e, maybe. But hags and Medusas are going to be featured in both genders. Okay. Not just female. And there's also going to be artwork featuring male and female versions of hags, triads, satyrs, Medusas again.
I mean, there was like Prince of the Apocalypse had a male Medusa in it. So it's not like the first time it's ever happened. But I think in the Monster Manual, the 2014 Monster Manual certainly didn't have these.
Well, there we go. I think that's interesting because with hag lore, don't hags reproduce by eating a human child and then just like popping them back out into a hag?
So... Is that how D&D hags work? I don't know. I don't think it's... Is it not? I don't know. I don't know.
That was my understanding. I could be wrong.
You might be right. You might be right. I don't know.
I don't know why I even commented on that because I don't... So I didn't think they were like mammals, but maybe I'm wrong.
They are technically fae. So, I don't know. Yeah.
Because that's why they steal children and stuff.
You know what else is now fae? Goblins are now fae. Okay. Makes sense. Which is interesting. And gnolls are now classed as fiends. Which I don't think is a new thing. I think that's been done before. But again, not in the 2014 Monster Manual.
Yeah, your Forgotten Realms lore for gnolls is that they are... Was it come out of the bodies of hyenas which have eaten corpses slain by, you know, as Baldur's Gate 3 fans, of course, will know that could apply to other things as well. Random hyenas you come across. You're like, oh man, that's a lot of novels.
Baldur's Gate 3, that game that I have yet to play.
Which we're going to do a live stream of at some point. We will do live stream.
In fact, we'll do it soon. Let's do it in the next month or so, okay?
Ooh, yay!
Because otherwise we'll just keep having this conversation every week.
Yes, correct.
Yeah, we'll do it in the next month or so. Okay. You are going to get to watch Jessica and I playing Baldur's Gate 3. You'll get my genuine reactions.
Yep.
about how much I'm enjoying it.
Good.
How great it is.
Yeah, and mine.
How interesting these druids are, and I wish they would talk some more.
You don't have to speak to the druids. We can go other places. There's a whole sword coast to explore.
Would you like a friend to come along, Jessica, to help alleviate the unrepentant grump?
Yes, PJ, you can come along as well.
Okay. Anyway, I think that's probably it for the Monster Manual for the moment. Next week, obviously, is going to be a big old Monster Manual week.
Indeed, yes.
Yeah, and we're going to have a lot of information to share about it then.
Absolutely.
Speaking of 5e and things happening in the next month, I do have a last-minute addition to our running order. Ooh. It's called Free 5E. Free 5E? Free 5E, yes. I'm not entirely sure what I was going to call that because it won't be entirely free, but starting on March 4th this year,
uh when works publishing is going to be pushing out dyslexia friendly pdfs digital braille and more making them a very accessible set of ttrpg core rule books which will include notes for compatibility with dnd 24 and of course advanced fifth edition because they recognize greatness when they see it what can i say so this is a version of 5e
The idea is this is a really sort of like an essential, it's going to start off as a sort of a starter set almost, but has crowdfunding, I was going to say Kickstarter, now it is on Kickstarter, has Kickstarter goals are met. They will increase the size of the books.
Word Once Publishing is famous for its limitless heroics, which include arguably the best representation of disability in fifth edition. So pushing to make that more of a thing. And yeah, Editing Down, they've had a lot of input from Sly Flourish as well. So it's sounding very good. I have some small and peripheral involvement, which is how I get to hear about these things.
I apologise, I'm being slightly molested right now.
By a dog. Versus be dogs. You know, in the traditional... No, I cannot say that sentence. That would be bad. Anyway, moving on.
any other news items we'd like to discuss um many many many many news items there's a whole let's actually stick on d and d for now okay um because there's a whole bunch of sort of peripheral sort of D&D use. So this is sort of the game itself. This is things like we've got like the Universal Fan Fest Night, pinball machines. We've got gambling licenses. We've got D&D Dark Alliance servers.
So we've got a whole bunch of stuff kind of to talk about, which is all kind of around the
We also have stuff that isn't D&D to talk about. We have.
To be fair. And we will. But let's start with Universal Fan Nights. Fan Fest Nights. It's an event that Universal Studios in Hollywood are holding. And these are connected to various franchises. So there's been a Star Trek one and a One Piece one and things like that. But they're doing a...
and dragons one and we've mentioned this before um on the show but um it's like a event and you go it's immersive so you you go and you uh in this one um uh xanathar the beholders up to up to you know no good what as he tends to be yeah um going looking at things with all these little eyes and his big eye and um you know that's always important
And you have to basically assist the Harpers in dealing with Xanathar.
Goodness. I'm not qualified, but I'll give it a go. Give it a go.
I mean, you have to go to Canada or something, I think.
That's quite far away for me. If you're in Canada, it might not be.
Yeah. So, yeah. So it's going to be a big puppet, is the beholder. This is the news bit. It's going to be a giant puppet. Nice. That's a big one, yeah. So at the moment, Universal Studios is looking for a performer to play the Beholder.
I'll do it.
You'll do it. Well, I want to listen to the description first.
You do have to. Right. So these are the requirements. The performer must be able to operate a push pull articulated creature with both hands from a standing position and push and pull up to £30 of suspended weight at a time for about 45 minutes.
What's 30 pounds? Seven times per night. What's 30 pounds?
15K-ish. I mean, it's not.
unbelievable but it's a workout especially for that amount of time i think would be quite a lot seven times per night as well yeah maybe maybe i don't want to do that my best lift is uh over 100 kilograms but that's not sustained for a long period of time so that's not just your arms is it that's um legs and body and everything well i use my hands and arms to pick it up
Yes, they're involved.
They are involved. I don't use my teeth or something like a dog.
Just like a chew toy. You don't balance it on your head, no.
Yeah, I do. On the tip of my nose right here.
Like a seal.
No, but okay. I don't think I'll apply for that job. Also, I'm kind of busy here. We've got stuff going on this year, the end of publishing, so I should probably stay here.
Yeah. I have a dog intrusion yet again.
well as we expect with this show yes yeah one of the rules one of the rules of all of our things is that pets are welcome on screen absolutely yeah um right so anyway so so that's that's that's that one there's also one that's um a star trek which is the enterprise d bridge which i would quite like to go to yeah but again it's in a different country so it's not going to happen fair enough yeah which is you know
But still, still. Anyway, we've got a pinball machine for those people who like playing pinballs.
Yeah, discuss.
I've never really seen the attraction of pinball myself. I've tried a pinball like once or twice and just kind of... It's not for me, I don't think.
But I know that pinball is very popular.
There's pinball wizards out there. People like them. So there's a pinball machine called Dungeons & Dragons The Tyrant's Eye. It costs $7,000. Wow. Yeah. I mean, we don't know much else about it. They put a little sort of like teaser video up.
There's no image of it.
But there's no image of the actual thing, yeah. But the CES electronic show in LA is going on, I think, about, is it now it's going on? This week, I think. I'm not sure when.
Not an event in my diary, so I couldn't tell you.
No, fair. But it's likely that it will be shown off there, I expect, or at least announced or something.
For those who are fans of Wizards and Pinball, and are truly Pinball Wizards. Excellent.
Yeah, I guess it'll be dragon-y themed, so that'll be quite fun.
Yeah.
I expect so. Yeah. What else have we got? D&D Dark Alliance. We'll just flip through these quite quickly, because they are kind of periphery stuff. But D&D, the video game.
Oh, yeah.
We covered this last week, didn't we?
Oh, no, not last week. We weren't here last week. No. Well, last time we spoke.
Last year, you mean?
Yes. Last year, did we? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, let's cover it again very, very quickly. Well, yeah, because it's just shutting down in February, isn't it? Yeah. I'm going to stop telling it because it was underperforming. People didn't like it very much. I never played it. I don't know.
I haven't played it either, in fairness.
I've waited for the reviews to improve. Turns out that's not going to happen.
yeah well well that's happening um oh we got the gambling license which exploded a little bit wow wow that's that's made a lot of people very unhappy and rightly so in a game that is as well so it's been a long time since i've been a child this is still a game that is marketed pretty heavily to children yeah um so what what's happened here i've missed this story basically um
slot machines. So, you know, you can go and play like Star Wars slot machines and all these different sort of like IP slot machines.
Sure.
There's no D&D ones as well, basically. That's not what it is.
And people are unhappy with this because they feel that it's encouraging children to gamble.
I guess so, yeah. I mean, these slot machines aren't usually in places where children could just wander around.
That was my only thought. Like, surely they'll be in casinos and in places which are for adults. Yeah.
I mean, gambling and these sort of pokies, they get around a lot. It's like in pubs as well.
Here, we're very used to seeing them in pubs. Most pubs will have a slot machine or two in them. It's a very common thing over here. I don't know. I assume not so in America because they've got much stricter gambling laws, I think.
they've been relaxing those as well and sports betting esports betting it's getting to very serious levels there's a lot of gambling going on and when you have such a thing on such a scale it can become a problem so
I mean, these IP-themed slot machine things aren't a new thing.
No, no, no. I think, was it White Wolf back in 95 or something? Probably, I don't know. It's been a long time.
I don't really have many strong opinions about this, to be honest. But I think that's maybe because I don't really gamble. I'm not really involved in that world. I'm a bit ignorant to the whole big thing.
I've never used a slot machine. And it's not that I particularly object to their existence. It's just that I look at them, and I think, I have literally no idea how that thing works. It is very confusing to me.
Yeah, I think it's meant to be. I think you just push some buttons and noise happens.
And then some things spin and then something goes or something or I don't know.
I've only been in a casino once. It was for a friend's stag do or bachelor parties, you say in the U S and we did play some, but it was playing card games. So I knew what they were and I didn't expect to win any money. So I went in with some money to spend like for the evening at this person's event to play some games. I saw it as that. And I was correct. I did not win any money.
So that's the extent of my gambling experience. So we just played some poker and some blackjack and that was it. But yeah. Well,
I will say that what they are saying they're doing at Games Global is they're going to create an immersive high engagement slot experience and to me that says things like maybe we'll be doing a little story as you go along and at certain points you'll have to be pressing buttons to see if you can successfully move on to the next bit which is very much like a
paid game of D&D, except in a paid game of D&D, it's probably going to cost you less money because you won't have to pay per dice roll. That's a business model. Wow. Microtransactions. I don't know. Obviously, I've only got the same information you do, but that is what it implies and I infer from it. Yeah, fair enough.
£8? £8?
yeah i think that's probably most of the dnd news yeah yeah the only thing is dnd stuff well the only other dnd news was i don't know if i want to talk about it but the mainstream news learnt that oh yes yeah yeah so yeah so do you want to cover that well it's just not even news really it's news about news it's kind of yeah
sloan okay so we we've known for what a year or more that dnd was changing um race to species in terminology maybe two years we run up for ages so it's not news to us it's old news yeah but suddenly in the last couple of weeks mainstream news suddenly caught wind of it
Something like half a dozen, like eight or nine different mainstream news outlets, The Guardian, The Times, I think like the New York Times did as well. And a whole load of them, loads of them, Daily Mail even got in on it and all just suddenly started posting about this one topic. Well, there's no topic that's not news because it's over a year old.
Yeah, I think there is some nuance there. Like, as I say, the Financial Times one in particular caught my eye because I was reading it expecting to not agree with it, expecting it to be a terrible take. But I'm like, actually, you know what? This guy, Khalid, does actually know
role-playing games there's actually dungeons and dragons and you know what this is actually a really good valid point because the story he was making is essentially things like uh races are man-made constructions and they are like we're all we're all one species we're all humans um so
um having this concept in dnd when we're technically referring to species it it doesn't really fly it's not it's not a great idea because it's like confusing different concepts um and if wizards had said if hasbro had said actually we're going to use species because racialization is a man-made thing and we're not having that these are actually different species
So that's a phrase we're going to use to be clear about it. If they'd said that and communicated that change in that fashion, people might be like, oh, okay, well, I guess that doesn't make sense. But instead they just changed it. It's unclear to people. People are complaining about it, ranging from the
far-right chuds who live on x.com, all the way over to more regular people who just don't understand really the difference, which, to be fair, I don't see why they should have to understand the difference because it's not something that comes up for them very often. So they could have avoided a lot of problems if they'd actually explained what they're doing and why. I think, yeah. Fair play.
Little clap for the FT. Good show.
I suppose it's kind of one of those things that in our little bubble, which is the online... getting in community we've known it for so long and we you know obviously understand why and it didn't need explaining to us it was obvious you know things like that it's hard to sort of like get outside that bubble and see what people from the outside looking in yeah see these things as
I imagine a lot of articles were linking it to like a culture war. Oh, look at this woke nonsense angle. Cause I bet there's some articles that did that as well, which is just, it feels a bit click baity for that. Cause anytime you put something in woke and outrage about something, you get lots of people clicking through.
So it's just interesting that it exploded just now just cause nothing happened to like cause that there was nothing. There's no announcement. There was nothing new coming out in the last few weeks that would have If they were going to do it, it would have been back when the Player's Handbook came out, shortly.
Well, maybe it's because the Monsters manual's coming out. So all three books will be out officially. So maybe they're doing more press releases to mainstream press because the whole collection's out. Or it might just be because a lot of news articles are enjoying the engagement they get from culture wars talking about woke and things like that. And this is just another topic you can link to that.
Well, my theory is one outlet, major outlet, it might have been the New York Times, but I can't remember which, started it because, you know, festive period, slow news. They had that one on the back burner. It had been waiting for ages or something. Posted that, and then all the others went, oh, look, click-based e-type article. We can use that too.
I don't know whether that's what happened or not.
I don't know why they're having a slow news week, because there is a lot happening in the world in terms of news. That is true. I know TGVG news gets slow this time of year, but there's natural disasters, there's wars, there's political things happening. There's stuff to comment about.
You have sections of your newspapers, though, don't you? You want the entertainment page to be full, as well as the current affairs page, I guess.
When Nosferatu came out, we could talk about that.
I haven't seen it. I want to see it.
Same. Anyway, maybe that's enough of us talking about that because like we said, we talked about this a year ago on this and people, podcast listeners, know all about this.
I think it's time for someone else to talk about some news. My voice has been on here quite a bit, so someone else have a go.
All right, PJ, what have you got?
So I was just happily browsing the internet, as is my want, when I came across this absolutely sterling idea, which I thought I should bring to your attention and the attention of our listeners.
Okay. What is it?
Imagine the scene. You're in a pub. You're in an airport. There's some place and you're like, oh, you've got to wait here. And you're just waiting for other people. What happens? could be better than the opportunity to grab a tabletop role-playing game from a vending machine.
Okay.
Okay. I mean, that's the concept. TTRP is from a vending machine. There is a company called Vending Machine Games, which are offering them as an alternative to soda and snacks. It's like, yeah, someplace.
I think like a big full tabletop RPG or like a one-page game
I believe it's focusing on small card games, indie RPG zines and that sort of like, you know, micro tabletop experience, which, to be fair, is a really good idea because there are a lot of those to go around.
Yeah. I was thinking that you're not going to get like three big hardcover books and learn how to play D&D while sitting waiting for your plane.
Yes, I'm terrible news for publishing. We're probably unlikely to see Level Up being available. It seems unlikely.
Awfully cheerful engine.
or 3ds engine could be in the shop but they may even go smaller than that we're looking at like um maybe stuff like um they've got a roll and write two hand path which is again quite a micro game it's like in size and play time they have deck 52 space wrecked which is an entire game in your pocket so that does set sizes so yeah there you go portability in gaming could be a
Currently, currently it is, this is unfortunately for them in Los Angeles and the great Los Angeles area and our heart goes out to our American listeners, especially if you have friends or family over there because wow, that's super bad. Yeah. But
And they say their vending machines are a perfect fit for colleges, airports, breweries, and provide entertainment and inspiration wherever people gather. I'm like, yeah, actually, that's actually quite a good idea.
It's not a bad idea.
Yeah. I could definitely see it catching up there. Fair play to them. And what's a good idea? Schools. Schools would be a good place to put those. Yeah. Wow. I mean... If the kids can afford it, why not?
Yeah, why not? Well, I have some other news as well, something we've been working on to start the new year in publishing. We are, which I'll briefly mention so it's not too much of an ad, so we are launching the Gatepass Gazette annual 2024 next week. That is amazing! But interestingly, we're trying out Backerkit as a crowdfunding platform for this.
We usually have used Kickstarter historically in the past, but there's loads of different crowdfunding platforms available now that offer different things. And we are trying out Backerkit for this. So because we already use Backerkit a lot for our pledge managers. So we're trying out their crowdfunding options for this as well. So that's launching next week.
Yep, it's done. It's ready. So basically it'll be our customary, very quick fulfilment. PDF straight away as soon as the campaign ends. Print order ordered as soon as funds clear.
Yep. And the print order will be subject to how many copies we get. So if we get 300 hardcovers ordered throughout the campaign, there'll be an offset print run. And if it's less than that, it'll be a print on demand kind of option. So we're going to have, it's like a stretch goal. If we get to 300, everyone will be upgraded to an offset print run. So we'll have a little tracker for that as well.
Yeah. That's exciting. I believe there's another person here on this very show. Right now, we've got the Kickstarter coming up. Who could that be? Is it Marvin, my dog?
I don't know. Maybe. It's free country. Who else could it be? If Marvin made a Level Up Kickstarter, I would be 100% keen to back it, if only to say that I did.
Well, in a way, Marvin is working on one because we are having a pets kind of book coming up for Level Up.
We have to do in that pets book, we have to put our pets in it. Absolutely. Art versions of our pets. Yeah. Our specific pets. Sweet. Definitely have to do that.
You're going to be famous. I mean, certainly if you managed to miss news last year, maybe I haven't been loud enough. I've certainly been banned from Facebook due to someone else's Instagram account being connected to mine and then them behaving badly. And if you're like, that makes no sense, then yes, I'm 100% on board with that. But I'm unable to get on Facebook to let people know about this.
I've put a couple of things up on Discord. But yeah, it's been three years since my first Kickstarter, which was successful well beyond any possible conception I might have, where I said, oh, might I have $600, please? I would quite like to hire someone to lay this out. And £6,000 later, I'm like, oh, okay, that is a lot of money. I don't know what to do with this.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Oh, dear me, dear me. But yes, Since that time, there have been a whole new edition of D&D. There's Tales of the Valiant come out. There's a lot of new stuff out there. So I figured I would bring together crafting heritages, cultures, and more, world building, which is essentially the second edition, but wildly, massively expanded to the world. And I'm currently delighted with it.
I don't see that changing. Like the art has a lot more consistency, the layout artist. I love Sarah's work, but this one is much more in line with my current aesthetics. So moving away, finding my own voice away from the more traditional D and D, embracing that sort of wide open spaces of level up. And yeah, it's going to be a big one. This is my biggest book.
Yeah, it's definitely going to be a hardcover. So I've got the material in there. Nice.
like nine chapters sorry when is this happening uh this is launching on the 29th of january which is chinese new year because i'm a sucker for tradition and we'll be finishing on the 3rd of march okay um beautiful on kickstarter sorry oh this is going to be on backer kit oh so you're awesome i heard some awesome people were doing back here and i was like you know what you might have wanted to wait to see if it went well or not yeah
I'll get people excited about your one, and then hopefully there'll be a synergy of audiences. But yeah, like I say, a back of it has been amazing. They've sent out lots of emails for me, and I'm like, you know what? Why not just consolidate? Give it a try. Yeah. Why not? Why not? I'm very excited about it.
I'm also looking forward to getting the stretch goals for the Elysians out before the 20th of January. And that should be coming out soon as well. So that will be that finally put to bed, which I'll be very glad of. I'm sure my backers will be glad to have their final little bits of free gen characters as well, which I'll be releasing for free on DriveThruRPG so that people can enjoy.
There's a lot of my work for free on DriveThruRPG. You should enjoy it. And if you say, oh, that's not bad. Remember, the layout is mine and is therefore not that great. The layout for the new stuff is really good. And I'm just so delighted with it. And some of the art I've been able to get on, Jessica, I have little mice doing adventurous things.
yes indeed indeed yes and we'll be bringing a brand new heritage and culture the maranitos are who are of the squeakle folk culture will be the squeakle folk well squeakle folk i've got i've got like a lot of pictures of cute mice doing adventuring things people like oh it's like mouse around like yeah sure why not mice with little backpacks and stuff and Little Mice doing Indiana Jones stuff.
Little Mice, there's like a homage to one of the D&D covers. You know where there's like that big sort of idol and there's some thieves on it like crying out the jaws of its eyes? Yeah, like that but with mice. It's from Fernando Salvatierra who is an amazing map maker but also produces some great stock art and
uh their kid louis does coloring and i'm like have some money to do more coloring because i'm really liking it because the black and white to color love it yeah so i'm very excited about that yeah
There's some other crowdfunding campaigns we spotted which were quite interesting as well.
There were other crowdfunding campaigns?
Who was it that noticed this lovely map one?
That's one that I saw, yes. I liked the look of that one.
Tell us more.
I like the style of it, basically. I like the look of it. I haven't heard of this artist before. But there's 30 of these things, apparently, or more than 30, 30 plus. In fact, it says 30 plus, then it says a collection of 40. So it's 40 hand-drawn maps. Three different themes, suitable basically for any tabletop RPG. And it's basically a collection of sort of hand-drawn, old-style battle maps.
You can get them in black and white or that sort of parchment colour. They each come in two different versions. You can have them with or without objects on them. Oh. And you get the collection on them. It's from someone called TPK Compass. New to me, but the full collection you get just for five euros, that is. You can get the full collection in black and white.
Seven euros, the full collection in papyrus. Is it papyrus or papyrus? Papyrus. Papyrus.
Papyrus. Papyrus, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like the font. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, these are digital. They're... They're for use on VTTs and things like that. Yeah. And they've got, like, caves. They've got three basic categories. They've got caves, temples and castles, and a category called a blend of both.
Nice.
84.
Yeah. Wow.
So there's lots of add-ons. This is their third Kickstarter. Nice. Nice. Yeah, I like the look of those.
And these are like, you know. Oh, wow. 25 euros for the lot. That's about 21 quid. That's, wow.
Really good for a loaded collection of really nicely made maps here.
Yeah. Good spot. And that style always appeals to me. I've got the nostalgia, I suppose, for it. But it doesn't appeal to me.
Well, I mean, Dyson Logos does, like, a lot of these. Lots and lots, yeah. No, pretty cool. So, yeah. Yeah. Worth looking at. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
On the subject of crowdfunding as well, we also have We Dig Giant Robots. Who saw this one?
That was me.
All right.
Tell us, Russ, why do you dig giant robots? You know, it's for one shots. It's We Dig Giant Robots. Sorry, I'm being molested again by this dog. Marvin, Marvin, I do appreciate your desire to be included on this podcast. And we do always welcome pets. But I am talking right now. We're trying to talk right now. Would you be so kind as to bugger off?
He says, no, I will not. I will remain trying to climb on you and get your attention.
Anyway, so We Dig Giant Logos is a rocking mecha one-shot RPG. It's designed for one-shots, quick little games. This is the first Kickstarter from Kay Arroyo.
Yes, Kamala Arroyo, as it says on the front of the page.
In tiny, tiny writing. More light. I'm sorry. I am very much being Bissette, big dog. We're so professional here. That's enough, Marvin. Go and find Hudson and play with Hudson. Action, comedy, rock and roll, big cars, giant mecha, that sort of thing.
Yeah.
And it does look fun, basically.
It does look fun.
Interesting. It says it's using Mike Pondsmith's Teenagers from Outer Space and Ryo Kama's Maid RPG. That's... That's not a combo I thought I'd see, but there we go.
Yeah. This looks fun. And like we do, this was apparently already written, play tested and laid out. So the digital release will go out super quick.
Wow. Yeah. It's always impressive when people do that. Yes. Nice. Love it. Yeah. Well, I have a little bit of Pathfinder news.
Pathfinder!
So if you're seeking the path, I can show you the way. So it is a cover reveal. Well, it's not Pathfinder, technically. It is Starfinder.
Starfinder.
So the Starfinder cover's out, and it's pretty. So the cover art's been revealed. So it's like this gold ancient horse, a big door, and this mechanoid, almost looks like a dragon, kind of appears with, like, laser shooting through, and there's, like...
Akashic dragon.
What's it called?
Akashic. A-K-A-S-H-I-C. I don't know what that means. I'm not familiar with it, but I do know that it's called an Akashic dragon.
Well, basically, for us, it's a big purple dragon with a laser for a head. Yes.
What could go wrong? Which scientist made that? Nothing could go wrong here. This is like Jurassic Park all over again, but with science. Well, that was science. Anyway, the point is, I think the cover looks nice. It does look nice. I think it is gorgeous. Yeah, I think it is gorgeous. But yeah, so Starfinder 2nd Edition is coming out. And what's nice is the idea is that it can be similar.
They're bringing it in line with Pathfinder 2nd Edition, so you could have the mash, which I think is a really nice take as well.
It's going to be interesting to see how it comes out, because there's been a lot of big playtests recently, public playtests of Starfinder 2nd Edition.
And presumably all of that's being fed into Paizo's, you know, machine, giant machine, which is crunching away with all its gears and cogs, and it's going to spit out the final version of Starfinder 2nd Edition, because that is how tabletop RPGs are made. And, yeah, I'll pick this up. I hope I get a chance to play it at some point, but I'll pick this up.
Nice. Well, there's another book you could pick up as well whilst you're on the Starfinder Pathfinder discussion. So there is a new Pathfinder book coming out, which is a new Lost Omens book and a remastered version of The Treasure Vault as well. So I don't know the covers for those, but I have some cool artwork.
The Treasure Vault, is that a book of magic items and stuff, is it? Sounds like it from the name. Yeah.
You know, I'm not. Yes, it's the new version. The one was originally published in 2023. But yeah, and basically this is just tweaking it to bring it in line with 2E. But it's got rules for 600 items, 50 weapons, 100 alchemical items. So it's basically bringing those items in line with the new edition. But yeah, and they'll be coming out in June in the summer. So June 2025.
And that's like, they're about 60 quid. So $60 for Shining Kingdoms and Treasure Vault is $64.99 or $65. So that's coming out as well.
Do you think I should just like give up and just let Marvin take my place on the podcast?
Yes.
That seems to be what's happening here.
Does he have any news to share with us?
Do you have any news to share? Apparently treats are good and he deserves more. And your face is delicious.
Well, I would... Sorry, PJ.
Oh, I was just wondering if anyone would like to know what the very first game released in 2025 was.
I think the people would like to know. I know what it is because you have shared with me in advance. I don't know what it is. I will not speculate.
This is going to be news to me. Come on then. What is it?
A release by Ben in our Periapt Games in New Zealand, which is why he's the head of the game. We haven't heard from the Kiribati Islands, but we think he might have pipped them at the post. The game is about a psychic detective mystery game. There's been a petite burglar. committing grand larceny and much civic irresponsibility.
According to the regional constabulary, we're looking for a skilled criminal and a scrupulous spiritual medium. They're nondescript, less than five feet tall and disguised. Where they are is unknown. So we can say safely that there's a small medium at large.
Okay.
Yeah, it is a bit of a joke game. It does look quite fun. It's a duet game. One player is the small medium at large, and the other is the unclear buoyant who's attempting to cut off their escape. What? Sorry. The unclear buoyant. It's like, yes, you have caught the drum roll. Yeah. Okay.
And this was released on the 1st of January, New Zealand time.
Yes, around about midnight.
Oh, so it would be pretty difficult to beat that then, yeah.
As I say, pretty safe, Ben. Pretty safe, Ben Meadows. You may as well get in. It does say it was last updated on December 31st, 2024. So it's either, if you go with DriveThruRPG, probably the last game Yeah. Well, the first game of 2025. I'm inclined to say first game released 2025 because that's what Ben thinks. It sounds better as well.
Yeah.
Why not?
It's more fun for New Year's.
We'll go with that. Small, medium and large available for £4.06 if you buy in English. And probably about $1,200 New Zealand dollars.
Oh, yeah. I'll take your word for that. Right. More news. What have we got? We...
Well, as we do every year, it would be good to discuss... Oh, dogs barking agree. Good to discuss the most anticipated games coming out in 2025. Yes.
But before we do that, very quickly, because I think that's going to be our sort of finishing thing... We've got some news about the Origins Awards. Very quickly, the Origins Awards nominations have opened up, announced by Gamma, the Game Manufacturers Association. So the Origins Award nomination 2025 will happen on January the 9th. When is that? Is that today? That was yesterday.
That was yesterday. OK. That was yesterday.
even later into this podcast yeah um the categories have been changed yet again um this year they are oh i don't want to list them well there's lots of categories yeah yeah listing all the categories isn't fun podcasting but um the categories have changed slightly yet again um kind of trading card games and trading card game accessories have kind of been left out this time oh yeah
which is interesting. It sucks to be trading card games, which also very strange choice. Yeah. I mean, they're still valid for like product of the year and things like that. But as a separate category, they're no longer there. Oh, weird.
Yeah. Fair enough. Well, I suppose Gamma knows Gamma's business. They're big on America.
Yeah. So basically there's a link you can make your nominations for the origins awards via that link and the finalists get announced i think it's at the end of february ish and then of course the winners are announced at origins game fair in the summer yeah yeah
All right. So people can vote for games they're excited about that are out. And that will segue us nicely after the break to talking about games that people are excited about already.
So shall we take a five-minute break and then... Well, I thought I'd like to finish off with some exciting news for the Level Up community.
Oh, right. Okay. Yeah.
because advanced fish edition um yeah i can't i can't take sole credit for this i'm sure other people are finding books somehow although if you come anywhere near me it's like very easy to tell because like that's pretty much what i enjoy talking about most on social media it's like i hate iai um Trans rights, humans rights, and Level Up A5E is awesome. You should totally have a look at it.
I'm a very stimulating conversationist, I assure you, and great fun at parties. The A5E subreddit, which is reddit.com slash r slash Level Up A5E, has managed to hit 1,000 users. And people do seem to be looking at it. It's not the most active place, but if you have questions, it is a good place to ask if you don't do Discord.
Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's various places you can go. You can go there. I don't go there because I don't use Reddit.
Well, why would you? You literally have your own website, Russ.
Yeah. There's Discord. There's the Facebook group, which obviously you can no longer use because you're no longer... Yes. Mark Zuckerberg is no longer... For no good reason. It's like... You've been zucked, apparently. Yeah. And there's the EN World Forum as well.
Yes, yes.
And, of course, if you look for the hashtags on things like Blue Sky or even, goodness help you, the Fediverse, Macedon, then there is definitely stuff that you can find in conversations that do occur there. Certainly there are more designers from Level Up A5E on Blue Sky. We recently had DM Sarah coming along. Nice. So that's pretty cool, yeah.
Let's take a break and then we'll come back and we will talk about the 10 most anticipated tabletop RPGs of 2025. We are back and we have got the top 10 tabletop RPGs of 2025 to talk about. Amazing. How exciting. It is exciting. Yeah. So we do this every year. And what happens is I do it on EN World and I've done it since 2014, I think. So this is like the 10th year.
And what we do is we get the entire community to nominate whatever tabletop RPGs they're excited about in the coming year. So Table Top RPGs, which they have a, let's say, a reasonable belief will be released in 2025. Sorry. Because 13th Age was in the most anticipated list like two or three years in a row. Yeah. And some other things happened as well in the past.
In fairness, a lot of publishers reasonably anticipate it will be out that year as well. But things do happen.
It's hard getting games out. Anyway, so basically something like 40-odd different games were nominated. There's a few criteria. It has to be a standalone game. So it can't be an adventure. It can't be a supplement. It has to be a standalone tabletop role-playing game. And We had about 40 nominated. Then the big old poll went out for people to vote on those 40 or so.
That went on for about two years over the Christmas period, including the Crimbo Limbo, as it is officially known. And then I compiled the top 10. And we can now count them down from 10 to number one. which are the most anticipated tabletop RPGs for 2025. Do you remember what last year's was? And we sat here this time last year and did this same thing.
Well, yes, because it's on the screen in front of me.
Well, close your eyes. Do you remember? Oh, it's on the screen in front of me. I still can't remember. So last year it was Shadow of the Weird Wizard.
Yes.
Yeah. So let's find out what this year's was then. So how do we want to do it? Should we count them down one at a time?
Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. So should we start at number 10 then?
Okay, I'll scroll down. You ready? Okay.
Number 10 is from Poiseu Publishing, Starfinder 2nd Edition.
Oh, yeah. I don't know why I'm so excited about this. I just am. OK. Yeah.
I'm excited, too. I'm excited.
It's like I played Pathfinder Second Edition. Doesn't excite me. Starfinder Second Edition is going to be the same game. But for some reason, I'm like, yeah, let's go.
Does the modularity of it feel more suited to a sci-fi game to you?
Is that possibly it? Yeah, maybe it's like the design, the breaking down, the mechanics, the precision feels maybe more like a sci-fi storytelling. Or maybe it's just like I get excited about big lasers. Maybe I get super excited about weird fiction, which is the melding of sci-fi and fantasy. So I can't tell you. It's unreasonable.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Starfinder is obviously the, I say sci-fi, it's not sci-fi, it's science fantasy, isn't it? Because it mixes the magic in as well. Yeah. From Python Publishing, it's like the twin game to Pathfinder. It's set in the same universe. Like Galarian is the Pathfinder world.
and it's a world in starfinder but i believe and i'm not 100 like up on the law it's like vanished or something in the starfinder universe i think or something like that people are going to be shouting at us now why don't we know this well i haven't played a lot of pathfinder or starfinder i played one pathfinder like intro starter module just so i could
experience the game and see what it's about but i haven't explored beyond that but i know a lot of people really love it so i'm not surprised that it's in the top 10 yeah yeah um yeah i mean yeah it was going to be in the top 10 i actually thought it would be a bit higher to be honest okay i'm only going to show how much people are looking forward to these other things all right well shall we segue on to number nine then let's do number nine then oh one i'm looking forward to
yeah because you you played the original one haven't you russ the first edition of this i played one session about two years ago at the first edition um for those listening we are discussing alien yeah um yeah i might have to say what we're talking about yeah so alien evolved the new second edition of alien basically from free league um i've i'm looking forward to it i mean i don't know necessarily what changes it's going to make or whether it even needs any because
first edition was fine when i played it well i enjoyed it in their press release they said that it was a lot of tweaks and updates um from having had the game out for a number of years and just having a lot more people play and they basically just took on the feedback from people playing it a lot so i think it's it's it's a new edition but it's not completely reworking it i've still got my original editions in the starter box set which i haven't got to the table yet so i think i'm gonna
get them out before i look at um getting the evolved edition but um i don't think it's going to be anything it's got like new artwork a bit of new content yeah it's got delayed a little bit to include stuff from alien romulus all right okay put some of that in i believe nice which i think amounted to like a spaceship and a gun
yeah or maybe one other item wasn't a lot of content but yeah yeah well i think for me my thing would say because it looks like it's more of a tweak than a brand new overhaul so unless you're a collector if you've already got this game i'd say you don't need to rush out to replace it but if you've not got any alien games here would be a good place to jump in i guess yeah there's a new starter set coming as well so
I love Free League starter box sets. They always have loads of fun handouts and goodies in, so I'm a sucker for those.
Cool.
Well, shall we carry on with our list?
Let's carry on. Peter, you're going to like this one.
Oh, yes. It's a very good year for me to be me this year. Maybe it's a sign. I don't know. But yeah, 13th Age, second edition. I have played and run lots of 13th Age. I've had a great time. 10 out of 10 would recommend.
Yeah, yeah. For those who aren't familiar with 13th Age, how would you describe it?
How would I describe 13th Age? Um... It's basically like D&D if you just turn the power fantasy up to like 13, way past 11. Very simple, easy to play, very improv heavy. an anti canonical setting in that the description of the world has between 8 and 13 different options for each location, which can all be true or all not true, even though some of them are like, you know,
It's a lot of fun to play around. I've run very silly games. I've run quite serious games. I've played in both. I do have a lot of time for 13th Age Second Edition from Pell Grain Press. Again, 10 out of 10 would play.
Interestingly, 13th Age First Edition came out 10 years ago, 2014, and it was in our first... list of these yes the first time we did this and it won yes so back in 2014 13th age first edition was the most anticipated ttrbg of that year yeah yeah
And in fairness, the second edition came third in the poll in 2024 and 2023, I believe.
Yeah, this is the third year running. To be fair, other games like Conan from Aditya's, I think, was in the top ten, like three years running as well.
Yeah.
It does happen.
So the anticipation is still there, but it is waning because it's gone from third to eighth. So maybe people are a little bit tired of waiting.
Yeah, I think that's a little unfair on 13 days this time because the Kickstarter was only this year.
yeah yes yeah no yeah last year sorry i think two years ago it wasn't there yeah the kickstarter was like delayed by a year for when it was going to come out and then then it yeah it came out last year so yeah this isn't but people have been excited about it for a long time yes yeah i'm looking forward to it i am definitely looking forward to it right let's go to the next
Next, I will announce seventh.
Free League again.
It is. It's Coriolis, The Great Dark.
Free League always does well in these things.
Oh, they do. Well, they make pretty stuff. They make good stuff, yeah. And I think once, because they use their in-house system, once you've played a Free League game, it's not too intimidating to jump to another one. Yeah. Because you kind of know the basic engine behind it.
Yeah, they tweak it for each one.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
But it's not scary to jump from one to the other. Yeah. Original sci-fi game. Yeah.
I don't know much about this one. I'm just glancing at the Kickstarter page for it right now. So it looks like you're members of the Explorers Guild and you undertake dangerous missions flying around into different, you know, places in the sci-fi future. Yeah.
Ancient ruins.
There's a metropolis called Ship City. You know, I'm literally reading this off the Kickstarter page. I'm not familiar with the setting at all, but I have heard of it.
I have one of the books. It looks very pretty. I've not played it. It does feel like a space Indiana Jones, but moody and dark.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how I will describe it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it's very, the universe is cold, dark and unforgiving and not a safe place. That's very much.
This is basically second edition, isn't it? They're not calling it second edition, but I think this is basically second edition.
Yeah. So this is the great dark. Yeah. So it's like a new, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
But I think a lot of games have done new additions and things like that to just set up there, you know, making sure they're in line with stuff post OGL. So yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, I don't think Guardiola's affected by that, though.
No, but a lot of people, no, no, no, not because they had to, but a lot of people have been doing revamps and stuff like that now to tidy up rules and things like that.
Yeah, and I think the trend these days is to not say edition. Oh, okay.
Yeah, I know.
I like an edition.
I like an edition, too, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Sorry, I scrolled down and gave away the sixth place for those.
Oh, no. The surprise is ruined.
OK, so shall we let the cat out of the bag then, Ross? Yeah, go on then. Who's in sixth place?
Sixth place is Dolman Wood. So this is set in the British Isles. Well, sort of inspired by the British Isles.
Yeah, that's about it.
And all the fairy tales and folklore of the British Isles. So it's kind of dark and whimsical.
Mm-hmm.
It looks fun. Again, I mean, a lot of these things, I'm not super familiar with them. I've been aware of their existence, but I've never delved into them. And what I like about this list is it kind of curates a list of things for me to check out.
It's not necessarily a list of the best things or anything like that, but it's a fun list of things that maybe you've heard the name of or haven't heard of. And it's like, hey, check this out. You might like it, which is how I use the list.
oh sorry i was gonna say domo looks like something i would very much enjoy no absolutely it's been described as fairy osr to me and yeah okay i could go with that um sounds like uh fairies and brownies and pixies uh like it's gonna be nasty brutish and short your life as an adventurer but you know that's uh sometimes that's what you want in the game it reminds me a little bit of what's the
Basin, maybe. Basin, yes. Yeah, that's what I was just going to say.
I was going to check.
And Basin has a British Isles version as well. They do, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, British folklore I really love because it's very dark and the general vibe is... The Fae are terrible. Don't interact with them. It's not safe. They will do awful, awful things to you. And it's not because they're evil or mean. They just have a different perspective on morality. So they're just doing things. But to you, it will be awful. Don't get involved with the Fae.
Don't put welcome on your mat outside the front of your door. Don't invite them in. Don't make promises. Don't accept food.
It's all very... If you have a welcome, Matt, and it says welcome, is a vampire allowed in your house?
Yeah, it could be. Is that how it works? That could be a loophole, which is why I'm not having... Or any message that could potentially be that. They'll look for loopholes.
Right.
You need to be careful.
That's why the latest in top quality door signs say no circulars, no hawkers, and no vampires. No, of course they do, yeah. Why wouldn't they?
Yeah. But vampires usually come in through the window anyway, don't they? In most of the Dracula films I've seen, he turns up at someone's bedroom window.
Yeah, rude. Of course, we do know when a door is not a door, they can also come through. Because you know when a door is not a door, when it's a jar. Yeah.
Okay, so let's look at number five.
I was going to say, I was just looking at the list of characters you can play. This looks fun. So you can be a proud goat-headed breggle. You could be a starry-eyed elf stepped straight from the fairy. You could be a tricksome Grimalkin cat fairy. A worldly or hapless human. A fungus-riddled mossling. Nice. Or a capricious bat-faced wood group.
I think I'd like to be the bat or the clueless human.
Yes. Yeah. So you could be basically a goat, a cat, a human, a fungus or a bat.
Well, what else could you possibly want to be, in fact?
I guess, yeah.
There's even an elf in there as well.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's the exhaustive list of things you can be.
Yes. Yeah.
Love it.
I can't argue with that.
Yeah.
Anyway, thanks on the list.
When I played, when I voted for. I'm a little surprised to see this, to be fair, because I thought you'd actually already played it, Russ. So surely it's out already.
It's not out already. All I played was the demo on the Kickstarter.
And of course, we are discussing Terry Pratchett's Discworld and Adventures in Ankh-Morpork RPG by Modiphius. Yes.
But yeah, I had fun playing that. Basically, there's a free PDF starter adventure slash starter kit rules thing on the Kickstarter. It was about 30 or 40 pages or something with adventure and rules synopsis and some pre-gen characters, which is what I played. But yeah, it's set in Ankh-Morpork, which is the big city in Discworld. It's sort of... How do you describe it? It's parody slash...
whimsical kind of surrealism comedy satire set in a fantasy world basically by the late great Terry Pratchett I enjoyed the game I played of it I ran it immensely it's very rules light rules light almost to be non-existent but it was fun I felt it captured the feel of Fitzgerald reasonably well.
I didn't feel like I was sitting there in an audition trying to be as funny as Terry Pratchett when I was running it, which is the main concern I would have going into something like this.
wow yeah that'd be yeah but what you find is the game itself and the adventures provides you with that material i think as a player i'd want to be the straight man in that comedy routine because i guess the setting and the situation is ridiculous and common well that's the thing none of them none of the characters in terry pratchett think they're comedy characters do they no no no they're all played as straight men
yeah well that is the key to good rpg humor the characters take themselves seriously they're not laughing at themselves yeah but the adventures will provide you with the ridiculous situations yeah i believe it's a verging on farce possibly yeah yeah exactly exactly yeah so yeah looking forward to that looking forward to that and it looks gorgeous as well and it's like the pictures of the books and things it looks absolutely lovely
I think it's going to be a bit of a coffee table book as well. So people that collect Terry Pratchett things will be interested in having it for, even if not to run it as a game, but just as a beautiful Pratchett.
I think like Avatar was.
Yes.
For a lot of people. Absolutely. Okay, next.
Coming in, in fourth place, we have Draw Steel, the MCDM RPG. Hmm.
So this is Matt Colville's game.
Yes.
Matt Colville's game company who they did like four and a half million dollars on Kickstarter for this.
Yes.
That's a lot of money. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's what, the third biggest, is it? I would guess. So Cosmere would have been number one, Avatar number two, Drawsteel number three. I'm guessing it's the third biggest. What about Bloomhaven, if we're counting that? Oh, fourth biggest. Fourth biggest, okay. Fourth biggest, yeah.
Definitely in the top five.
Yeah, definitely in the top five. It is without doubt in the top ten.
Live on Morris' unofficial tabletop RPG talk. Watch the host, Morris, backpedal furiously.
This is science. No. What? Well, yeah, massive, massive Kickstarter. They've got massive, massive playtests, public playtests going on. This is a fantasy game, but it's very, as I understand it, tactical in nature. Drawing inspiration, I think. It's not a D&D clone and it's not a D&D spin-off or anything, but drawing inspiration, I think, from D&D 4E and that tactical kind of nature of the game.
Yeah, I think it's a fantasy. It's got the setting as in like you're a fantasy hero and you're fighting things and there's magic and your classic Lord of the Rings style fantasy. But it's a different system. So I think it's an alternative to D&D. So it's an option for people that like play a lot of D&D and like that style of storytelling, but are looking for a different system.
This this takes that place, I think.
And burdened by sacred cows from the 1970s.
Indeed.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a quote from their material. Yeah, yeah.
Oh, I thought that was just you. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's a great description, PJ. I was really impressed. But yeah, yeah.
They got there first. I'm not entirely sure what it means. I do remember they made a big thing about getting rid of exploration, at which point my interest went from high to non-existent, because exploration is such a key part of the game for me. They probably meant something else, I suspect. They probably meant survival. But never mind.
But what they do have is negotiation rules as well, which is interesting. I don't really know how they work. but there's rules for negotiation and the NPCs are stats like patience and interest. So I don't know how that works exactly, but I guess they're kind of like maybe hit points or something.
Like they run out of patience or they run out of interest in what you're talking about, I guess, depending on your roles or something. I'm making that up. Don't assume that's what it is, just because I said it.
No, it's not. It seems like an educated guess. But yeah, social hit points. Yeah, okay. Awesome people. Amazing.
I am intrigued to see it. I definitely will get a PDF and read through because I think it's something interesting and I want to see what they're bringing to the RPG space for sure.
Yeah, yeah. And the MCDM stuff always looks gorgeous as well. They spend a lot of money.
Yes.
And they make a lot of money on their Kickstarters, but they pay people a lot.
They pay people well, yeah.
And they get really great art and it all looks lovely.
I think it's got a really nice community of people around it as well. And that's why it did so well in this poll, because there's a whole community of people that really enjoy their stuff and enjoy what their company stands for and what they do. So it's really nice to see them doing well.
Yeah. And Matt Colville's got a big sort of YouTube following.
Yeah.
And things like that. Yeah.
Okay.
All right. Let's move on.
We're now in the top three. Who would like to reveal who's in third place?
Go on. You do this one. You haven't done one yet, I don't think.
I think I have, because you two keep forgetting to say the name of it before going into the description.
by darrington press there we go yes yes yeah uh this is from the people who i believe did critical role uh yeah studio yes and there's a role-playing game uh yeah party shape your world yeah yeah so this is coming out in the spring
Yes. There's been lots of public playtests and things of this one as well. So people pretty much know what it is. And there was a lot of demos of it at Gen Con, I believe, last year. This is the one, they have the two G12s and the Hope and the Fear die, I believe.
Is it Hope and the Spear or Hope and Fear?
I think you're right.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
D12s, yes, I believe. Yeah, so this is their big old fantasy I mean, people keep calling it a D&D killer. It's not going to be a D&D killer. It's going to be on the terms of 2D&D, but it's not.
But I think what people mean by that is a lot of people that watch Critical Role came into that and attached themselves to D&D, and this might be a really good opportunity for them to try something new because Critical Role will guide them in. So I think it will introduce a different game to a lot of people that primarily play D&D.
Yeah. That'll be interesting. And that's... An introduction to the world, the wider world of...
Yeah, and I think that's only a good thing because a varied TTFPG diet is a healthy diet.
Yes, and my dogs think that also.
Yes. How many different books have they eaten this week? No, but it is true. Even if there's one-shots of games I've played one time and I'm like, oh, this isn't necessarily for me, but there's some aspect or element of that that I can take into another game, either as a GM or as a player. Yeah. You know, anyway.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And this is going to do really, really well. It really is. It's going to be big.
I'm excited to see it. I liked Candela Obscura, and I know that's a different game, but it's from the same publisher.
Yes.
So, yeah.
Okay. So, let's dig a hut from Critical Role, Darrington Press.
And in second place.
Next is a big one.
And please, it is the Cosmere role playing game.
It is the biggest Kickstarter ever in TTRPGs. Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever.
How much was it again?
Oh, I can't remember now. It was...
10 million 13 or 14 or something it was oh yeah it shot because avatar was about 10 and it shot past avatar wow well congratulations to them so yeah so based on the brown and sanderson novels um it's an original system yeah i don't know what there more is there to say about it because we covered it when it was coming out yeah i haven't read the books or anything but uh you have haven't you peter
I haven't read all of the books. I have read the first book of the series where they drink and partake in heavy metals in order to unlock their superpowers. And I've read the first one of the Stormlight Archives. Right, right.
There we go. So a lot of people are very excited for this, I think, because they're fans of the book and there's a crossover. And I think there's a lot of collector's edition pretty things that, again, go into that coffee table. If you're a fan of the setting and the books, you might pick it up for that reason as well. So no surprise to me.
No surprise to me this is in the top ten with the number of backers it had.
Although it's interesting because Avatar did really, really well. Have you really heard it mentioned since? But we mention it when we ever have.
Well, it's been, they decided to take the opportunity to run it under Powered by the Apocalypse. And like, you know, in a similar fashion to, say, masks. And if you like Powered by the Apocalypse, this will be fine. Great.
time it will do the job the books themselves really nicely laid out very pretty yeah um lots of foil covers like great artwork yeah um yeah even quite interesting but it's like just sort of like entered the zeitgeist in a way that i thought it would given the size of the kickstarter
Yeah, but I think what PJ is saying, because it's powered by the apocalypse, we've seen that style of game before. And it's not, so there's nothing really in the industry to discuss and you'll be like, oh, look how it did this and that, because it's using a system that we're quite familiar with and know.
Yeah, but you'd expect to see people online talking about it, the games they're playing, asking questions about it and things like that, which isn't happening particularly, unless I'm just missing it.
Maybe not in our space of the internet.
Yeah, maybe. I've seen it on offer at a convention a couple of times.
James Cameron's Avatar movies, which are enormous and make billions and billions of dollars, and yet they don't seem to penetrate the cultural zeitgeist for some reason.
Well, I mean, I saw the first Avatar movie, and it was a big, spectacular...
like you know it was it was fun like you had school new weaver in it like that's a lot like the movie you know you know where you said like there's a good new weaver where it's officially a sci-fi movie we're having a good time yeah but then they did the second one i'm like he released at the same time has uh i'll say aquaman i'm like i've seen enough blue colored
sea-bound people's... The second one did very, very well as well.
Yeah.
I've reached my quotas, you know what I mean? I've seen enough of these movies. I'm good for CGI for the foreseeable. There's a different avatar to the Rob Lane game, which was a big cartoon. Yeah, which was an amazing series and had an amazing sequel as well. I did try to watch that first episode.
uh i can see how that would not be few this this that's aimed at small children um yeah i i mean it's just like the thing is with avatar they finished in a fairly conclusive fashion like yeah it was pretty much all the loose ends are tied up dunzo and a lot are and in doing so they sort of
tied up the world building as well so you can only really do prequels which means that you can't really have a realistic threat of the world ending because the world still carries on yeah yeah i mean that's kind of true of any established law though isn't it really yeah
And I think for people like myself, I would be wanting cool mechanics I could play with, so I could do something really cool, and that would get me talking about it online, about how that cool time I did 836 damage at level 4 because I found this cool exploit. And I'd be very happy to talk about that. I'd also want to talk about the stuff that happens, but again, you've got a lot of canon...
weighing down on you like these things happen they're really important a lot of emotions hide up with them and your mechanics are changed again uh defy danger i mean yeah sure It's playable. Nothing wrong with it. Perfectly good implementation. But it's not exciting for me personally. But probably just because I'm old and cynical and jaded. Maybe.
I see what you mean. And I see your point about that, about lore and the world. But I always think there's bigger things in the world to interact with. Because for me, that's like saying, well, there's no point playing a Star Wars game because you know you're not going to blow up the Death Star.
but I was like yeah but there's other stuff going on in the world and like you could do like a Rogue One situation that feeds in you know I just I see your point though but I
I think that's a really good point, actually, because Star Wars has always had that expanded universe, the sense that something else is going on, like there's gaps which are not the Skywalker family's trials and tribulations which people have been able to get into. Me personally, again, my very unpopular, my own personal beliefs are the less Jedi are in my Star Wars, the more I like it.
The thing with Star Wars, though, if you take out the Jedi and you take out the Empire... You're left with Guardians of the Galaxy. And this really struck me when I was watching Skeleton Crew. I'm really enjoying Skeleton Crew. It's great. It's amazing. It's great. But it occurred to me that there's no Jedi in it and there's no Empire in it.
Basically, if you told me I was watching a Guardians of the Galaxy set I believe you, because it was indistinguishable without those iconic Star Wars elements. There wasn't the music, which is another big Star Wars thing. There wasn't the iconic Star Wars music. It's got its own music, but not the Star Wars music you know. It hasn't got Jedi. It hasn't got the Empire. So basically...
it felt like Guardians of the Galaxy. And that's not a criticism. I'm just saying those are the things that, to me, make something less generic and more Star Wars specifically.
Well, I, I feel we could go on a tangent talking about Star Wars and I'm not against this, but we are leaving people hanging on knowing what the number one most anticipated tabletop RPG.
Let's find out. What is it?
I'll let you answer for us because ready?
This is something that I wasn't really familiar with. Legend of the mist or legend in the mist. Um, so, um,
it did really really well um partly because it just had a very very recent kickstarter so people are excited about it now it's one of these things these lists is that the timing if you've got a big kickstarter going on at the time um people are going to be excited about it yeah at that moment um so um this is i'm going to describe it as a rustic fantasy tabletop rpg based on the acclaimed city of mist um
Again, I am not personally familiar with it. It's from Son of Oak Studios. I mean, it looks great. It looks great. If you like, like Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, Princess Mononoke. Is that how you say that?
Mononoke, yeah.
Mononoke and things like that. That's the kind of inspirations for it. It looks gorgeous. It's got, you know, it did very, very well on Kickstarter, made nearly a million dollars on Kickstarter.
It looks great. I mean, we talked earlier about Powered by the Apocalypse, which might lead some people to think that I don't like Powered by the Apocalypse, which, you know, largely true. But I have played a lot of City of Mists, which I've found to be pretty interesting, which this is based off. City of Mists is a superhero RPG, but aiming a bit more towards the...
More towards the gritty, I'd say, is a fair assessment. And one of the things I like about it is they have mythos and logos, like, you know, the story and the word. And that basically puts your character in the world of mythos, like the supernatural, the superpowers. That's mythos. And then the logos is their, like, their prosaic, their mundane identity.
And it's like, you know, seeing how the character engages with that is pretty interesting. And that, to me, is a core part of...
city of myths and it's like you know like i said it's like not maybe my game but i have enjoyed it i've had some amazing dms run it for me um yeah so legend in the mist i'll be interested i'd be interested to find out a bit more about how they're going to implement that are they leaning on that saying like you know fundamentals play it and if so what is it yeah
yeah it's got tons of stuff with it as well this one this is um this is one of those big kickstarters with dice screens and cards and and special editions and cloth maps and art cards and tokens and yeah so much stuff but it's all really gorgeous i love the art style it's all really really nice looking Yeah. That was the most anticipated tabletop RPG of 2025.
Congratulations. Yeah.
Well done. Well done indeed. Yeah. Yeah. So what do you think about this? Is that sort of what you expected to see? Any big surprises there for you? Anything that you're surprised isn't on there?
I wouldn't say surprised, but my one I was most excited about isn't on there, which is So You've Met a Thousand-Year-Old Vampire. But maybe that's too much of an indie little darling of a solo RPG to gain. I mean, it was nominated. It was nominated, absolutely.
But yeah, I think the fact that the top five are all these big IP names like Legend of the Mist, Cosmere, MCDM, Daggerheart, Pratchett, is telling of like what the non-D&D TTRPG space is like. I think if you have a big IP in things, things tend to do quite well.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Whether that's sort of like an IP that you've licensed or one that you built yourself.
Yes.
Like MacHulk with NTDM, of course, has built that brand up himself. Whereas obviously Cosmere is licensing the brand from Brandon Sanderson.
Yes.
Yes. But yeah, no, I thought Starfinder would be a little higher in the list. That was my one surprise. I didn't think it would be number one, but I thought it would be a little higher in the list. So, you know, Pfizer's popular and big and Starfinder's cool.
All true things that you said, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Perhaps all the fans are too busy playing Parfiner's second edition.
Part of it, there's an element of how much did publishers get their fans mobilised to vote as well. I mean... I know that if you look on that City of the Mist, what was it? Legend of the Mist Kickstarter, they put out an update asking fans to vote. And I know the Brandon Sanderson folks, who was producing that again? I forget.
uh wise games yeah um they i i know at least i saw some social media stuff from them asking people to vote i don't know if they did anything else so it is a little bit there's an element of like mobilizing your fans to vote which how many how many people did vote uh i don't know exactly but thousands thousands wow i couldn't tell you i could do offhand though no that's fine and and like was it close or is it just like and son of oak is just like miles ahead of everyone else or um
Again, I can't remember.
I don't think there was any super, there was like a reasonable spacing going down the top 10. Yeah, I don't think there was any sort of like, if it had been another day, that would have been a different list type things. Okay.
It was clear.
Yeah. But I generally find whenever you get a big poll like this, and it can last two weeks or a month or whatever, once you've gone past the first day, it doesn't really change. Like the numbers go up, but the numbers all go up proportionally the same amount. And that I tend to find, it's like with Kickstarters, you can predict how it's going to do from its first day.
And these things just don't really change. So a lot of these things, you could just do a one-day poll. And to be honest, if you do a 30-day poll, you get pretty much the same results, just with bigger numbers. Because proportionally, they all go up the same amount. So anyway, things that I've observed over the years. Well, why representative samples work, though, because you see it in live action.
You literally watch as sort of like sort of 500 people vote. And then once 10,000 people have voted, the percentages are still about the same. And you say, oh, you can really see why you don't need the 10,000 people, because 500 is a perfectly good representative sample and won't give you a different result. And it's kind of unintuitive, but that is how marketing research works, isn't it?
A whole industry is based on that.
I guess, yeah.
Going way off topic here.
Well, so bring us back on topic as well, as we're nearing the end of our time recording. So this was the first podcast back in 2025, and we've now established what we are all excited about in 2025. So, yes.
Well, I do reserve the right to be excited about other things as well.
Oh.
I'm excited about my new car.
I'm very excited about that. My new car around. It's been so much fun.
I have some exciting art that I would love to show you. You're going to love it. It's going to be amazing. And I'm looking forward to getting some layout. I've got cover that's under commission. There's going to be a lot of very, very nice little visual bits and bobs that I will wish to share with you. You get to see them whether you like it or not. So just brace yourselves.
Meta can't stop you.
They can try.
They can try.
Zuckerberg can try. Well, on that note. I suspect. Yes. we are going to be talking a lot about the Monster Manual.
Yes.
I suspect that's going to be the big topic next week.
So we'll brush up and read up on that.
Yeah.
And I guess we'll see folks next week then.
I guess we will. Yeah, let's go and have a weekend.
All right. Happy New Year, everyone. Thanks a lot.
Bye. Goodbye, everyone.
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