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Hello everyone, Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! New Unearthed Arcana for Dragonlance, previews of Blade Runner, a new 5e project from EN Publishing with pets, and more!
For a quick summary of the week’s news, Jessica Hancock will bring you up to speed with This Week in TTRPG.
Don’t forget, you can keep up with all the week’s gaming news in detail with Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk! This week, Morrus, Peter, and Jessica talk about the big D&D Beyond announcements including Spelljammer and Dragonlance.
In case you missed it elsewhere on EN World this week:
- The first episode of the official Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition Let’s Play series The Star-Crossed Seaway premiered this week. You can watch see new episodes every Tuesday at 3 PM Eastern or catch up on the archives on the EN Publishing Twitch channel, on YouTube, or listen to the audio from the EN Publishing Actual Play podcast feed.
- EN5ider #451 is a villain spotlight on Lavinia the Wight Shepherd, a psychopomp who uses her necromancy to comfort and protect the undead rather than to dominate or control them.
- The first footage from the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves live-action film, a full 30-second preview, premiered at CinemaCon.
- Charles Dunwoody reviewed the new Warhammer 40K: Wrath & Glory sourcebook Redacted Records about space hulks and Adeptus Mechanicus Frameworks.
- Beadle & Grimm is offering their deluxe treatment of the Spelljammer setting for pre-order for $499.00 with an estimated Q4 2022 delivery.
- The results are in and we have a list of the most and least favorite monsters from the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual voted on by EN World readers.
- Michael Tresca continues his look at sources of inspiration for your campaigns with non-fiction sources like paleobiology, speculative evolution, and speculative apocalypses.
- Lewis Pulsipher’s newest Worlds of Design takes some cues from video game level design to talk about how to improve the character advancement in your games.
- Don’t miss out on the newest RPG crowdfunding projects ending soon with Egg Embry’s RPG Crowdfunding News.
- Keep up with all the new print RPG releases with Charles Dunwoody’s RPG Print News.
- Find the big TTRPG sales, bundles, and charity fundraisers with the RPG Bundles, Freebies, and Sales News.
Wizards of the Coast posted another new Unearthed Arcana playtest document for Dragonlance. They’ve taken another crack at the Kender, this time removing the ability to grab random mundane items from the Feywild and replacing it with a Taunt ability that causes the target to make a Wisdom save or suffer disadvantage on all attack rolls. Feats have been tweaked with all characters in the War of the Lance setting getting a bonus feat, either the feats provided by the Knight of Solamnia or for Mage of High Sorcery backgrounds or, if your background doesn’t provide a feat, your choice between Skilled, Tough, or a new feat called Divinely Favored. This new Divinely Favored feat grants access to a cantrip from the Cleric spell list and the ability once per long rest to cast the spell augury and an additional 1st level spell from the cleric (good), druid (neutral), or warlock (evil) spell list based on your alignment. There’s also a bonus feat gained at fourth level in addition to the ability score improvement with the options for non-Solamnia non-High Sorcery characters between Alert, Mobile, Sentinel, or War Caster. The survey for feedback on these changes is available now.
EN Publishing launched a new Kickstarter for Can We Keep It? made specifically in mind for the players who see the biggest, creepiest monsters in the bestiary and goes “Who’s a cutie! You are! Want a treat?” The rules allow players of all classes to adopt nearly 50 different pets including five new tamable pets from the Elemental Planes: The Bubble Puppy, Dust Bunny, Lightning Sparrow, Mud Cat, and Root. The mechanics go beyond the “can we keep it?” stage through to the “only if you promise to take care of it” stage with rules to manage pets and keep them happy. There’s also a mini-adventure featuring Lady Philomina, an eccentric noble who keeps rust monsters as pets. And yes, it is fully compatible both with the original 5e rules and with Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition. This Kickstarter funded in under four minutes and runs until Monday, May 9.
Free League released several previews from the upcoming Blade Runner RPG coming to Kickstarter in just a few days. The preview features the high production design and amazing art we’ve come to expect from Free League over the years along with a peek at how the Stress and Resolve mechanic has been adapted to the setting of Los Angeles 2037. This also firmly places the setting of the game in between the first Blade Runner film released in 1982 which was set in 2019 and the sequel film Blade Runner 2049 released in 2017 and set in, well, 2049. The pre-launch notification page for the Kickstarter is live now and it is expected to launch on Tuesday, May 3.
If that’s not enough cyberpunk for you, Green Ronin Games announced the Cyberpunk Slice sourcebook for Modern AGE. This 50-page PDF adapts material from the Modern AGE Companion and the campaign setting Threefold along with all-new material to create a trove of options for adding dystopian near-future science fiction to your Modern AGE games. Character options including Virtual Combat focus, the anti-tech Wrecker fighting style, and a street soldier called the Kinetic. There will also be rules for cybernetic augmentations, cyberspace, exoskeletons, smart weapons with guided bullets, body swapping and consciousness transfer, player character androids and other synthetic beings, and a selection of new backgrounds and professions. There’s no release date yet, but it’s expected for release “very soon”.
Paizo released Pathfinder Book of the Dead, the undead sourcebook for Pathfinder 2nd Edition. The book contains new character options to control or become undead creatures, new haunts and other tools for GMs, information about the undead-plagued lands of the Lost Omens campaign setting, and a bestiary with variations of existing undead monsters and brand new creatures from beyond the grave. The PDF is available for $14.99, the hardcover for $49.99, and the deluxe edition for $69.99 with a paperback pocket edition expected next month for $24.99. This release comes along with nine other products out this week including the first adventure in the Punks in a Powder Keg Adventure Path, new character decks, new adventures for Pathfinder Society and Starfinder Society, and more.
Modiphius released Star Trek Adventures Mission 18: Storms of Kiselia 7, a new 23-page adventure for the Star Trek Adventures RPG. On a routine resupply mission to one of Kiselia 7’s moons, the crew looks forward to some rest and relaxation with shore leave to the hot springs and lush forests of the moon. Unfortunately, the ruthless criminal organization the Orion Syndicate gets in the way as they have their sights set on exploiting the science team researching on the moon. The adventure is designed for the TNG era with a Federation starship crew in mind, but has guidance for adapting the adventure to other time periods and parties. The PDF is available now for $4.99.
Several new miniature and terrain products were announced this week from a variety of companies. Alongside the D&D Direct announcement of Spelljammer: Adventures in Space, Wizkids announced a tie-in miniature line featuring 47 figures coming this October. The pre-painted line will come in random boosters with one Huge or Large figure plus three Medium or Small ones or with just 5 Medium or Small figures for $19.99.
Wizkids also announced a set of unpainted miniatures from their Critical Role series adding ten new minis ranging in prince from $4.99 to $14.99. Paizo announced a partnership with Archon Studio for a new terrain line Abomination Vaults themed around the adventure path of the same name. This plastic terrain comes on sprues, unpainted and unassembled, and is backward-compatible with Archon Studio’s other terrain Dungeons & Lasers with the same interlocking bases for the tiles so they don’t shift around. The doors also open and close, the walls are half-sized for convenience, and there are terrain elements like pillars, rubble, and torches that can snap into place. The base set will be available for $69.00 and will begin shipping on May 12.
Gale Force Nine announce they are taking over the distribution and manufacture of Tenfold Dungeon from Room 17 and are releasing the product to retail. The features no-prep terrain made of nesting cardstock boxes that pack together in a tight, lightweight system that allows setup of dungeons in moments that can be stored away for easy transport. Four versions will be available at launch, The Castle, The Temple, The Town, and Dungeons & Sewers available for $60 each. Gale Force Nine is taking over production from Room 17 after a successful Kickstarter in 2019 ran into issues with manufacturing, shipping, and fulfillment in 2020 due to the everything that happened in 2020.
Paradox Interactive, the video game company that owns Vampire: The Masquerade, has created “World of Darkness Unbound”, a new license agreement targeting indie video game studios. This is not an open license as there is still an application process, but the license uses standardized terms so that smaller companies can know exactly what to expect when applying such as revenue sharing and other limitations. Developers must pay Paradox 33% of net revenue made from the game, and Paradox claims ownership of all material that Paradox determines is derivative from the World of Darkness. While creators will maintain ownership of all intellectual property they create that is not dependent on the World of Darkness (for example a music track that doesn’t directly relate to V:TM), creators must sign over “a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sub-licensable, and transferrable right and license” to any assets created for the game. The license allows for sales only on Itch.io, and the game must be available either for free or at a minimum price of $5.99 (so no games are allowed priced between $0.01 to $5.98). This license only applies to “a computer game using the Licensed Property that can only be made available on itch.io”, while tabletop RPG titles will continue to have access to the Storyteller’s Vault license through OneBookShelf.
That’s all from me for this week! Don’t forget to support our Patreon to bring you more gaming news content. If you have any news to submit, email us at [email protected], and you can get more discussion of the week’s news on Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk every week. You can follow me on Twitch to get notifications when I go live, subscribe to Gamer’s Tavern on YouTube for videos on gaming history, RPG reviews, and gaming Let’s Plays, or you can listen to the archives of the Gamer’s Tavern podcast. Until next time, may all your hits be crits! Note: Links to Amazon, Humble Store, Humble Bundle, and/or DriveThru may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.
