2022 Release Schedule – RPGBOT.News S2E28

Show Notes

In this episode of the RPGBOT.News, we discuss upcoming TTRPG releases in 2022. We take a brief aside to discuss the upcoming(ish) D&D movie, then dive into upcoming releases from our favorite TTRPG publishers, including Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, Free League, Kobold Press, Frog God, and AAW.

Materials Referenced in this Episode

• RPGBOT.Podcast Episodes
  • RPGBOT.Podcast Episode 13 – The Future of Dungeons and Dragons
  • RPGBOT.News – Jonathan G. Nelson of AAW Games
• Dungeons and Dragons 5e
  • Dragons of Deceit – new upcoming Dragonlance novel, coming August 2022
  • Unearthed Arcana: Heroes of Krynn
  • Unearthed Arcana: Travelers of the Multiverse
  • WotC Release
    • Critical Role Presents: Call of the Netherdeep (affiliate link)
    • Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel (affiliate link) – June 27th
    • Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse (affiliate link) – May 17th
  • Kobold Press
    • Tome of Beasts 3
    • Tome of Heroes – July 2022
  • Frog God Games
    • Splinters of Faith
  • AAW Games
    • Rise of the Drow on Foundry VTT
  • Paizo
    • Kingmaker Bestiary for 5e
    • Abomination Vaults for 5e
• Pathfinder 2e
  • Book of the Dead – April 2022
  • Dark Archive
  • Beadle & Grim’s Pathfinder collection
• Free League Publishing
  • Alien RPG
    • Heart of Darkness
  • Mork Borg
    • Cult: Heretic – April 12th
  • Symbaroum
    • Ruins of Symbaroum 5e adaptation
    • 5e adaptation demo adventure (affiliate link)
  • Death in Space
• Other Stuff
  • Dungeons & Dragons Move (2023)
  • Mazes and Monsters (1982)

Transcript

Randall  00:00

Welcome the RPGBOT.News. I’m Randall James and with me is Tyler Kamstra.

Tyler  00:04

Hi, everybody.

Randall  00:05

and Random Powell

Random  00:06

Howdy.

Randall  00:08

All right, we are gathered here together to talk about what has been at the top of everybody’s mind the past couple of weeks. That’s right. We have news on the D&D movie.

Tyler  00:18

I mean, kinda…

Randall  00:22

We’re kidding. That’s not why we’re here. Please don’t turn this off.

Random  00:29

No no, so there, there have been two previous D&D movies, and they were both, without a doubt, some of the movies that I’ve ever seen in my life.

Tyler  00:37

There have been three officially titled D&D movies. The third one wasn’t better than the first two. You’re not missing anything.

Randall  00:46

Oh. How do you know which one he’s skipping?

Tyler  00:50

Let’s see. You saw the one with all of the dragons, yes? Jeremy Irons?

Random  00:55

The stereotypical party, the stereotypical party like goes off and yeah, and there’s some dragons. Yeah.

Tyler  01:00

Yeah. So that the one with all the dragons fighting is 1. The one with stereotypical parties 2. The one that’s clearly fourth edition is 3.

Random  01:08

Oh, yeah. The fourth edition want to have not seen.

Tyler  01:10

Okay. Anyway, so there is a new dungeons and dragons movie coming. It is slated for release in March of 2023.

Randall  01:18

It was slated for release…

Tyler  01:20

In… I believe, March of 2021. But then COVID. So, you know…

Randall  01:25

and here we are.

Tyler  01:26

Yeah, so I’m really excited about this. The three existing official Dungeons and Dragons movies are not great works of cinema, but they are, like, a good, campy sit down and like, Ah, this is ridiculous and I love it kind of movie. This is going to be another swing at making a real, good movie with real, good actors. Like, the the lead protagonist is Chris Pine, who’s been in… long list of movies. The Star Trek remakes.

Randall  02:01

Captain James Tiberius Kirk! Come on!

Tyler  02:03

Yeah. He was the guy in Wonder Woman.

Random  02:06

Yep.

Randall  02:07

He was the guy and Wonder Woman,

Tyler  02:08

Sure was.

Random  02:09

He was also he was also in the the Tom Clancy movie that came out. Five-ish years ago. Yeah. And then they just abandoned that and went for the the Amazon series with John Krasinski instead.

Randall  02:23

Which was also fine. I like the Chris Pine movie, I will say, like, I enjoy. Anytime a Chris Pine movie comes out. It’s like this. This is one of these Chrises that I enjoy when he does the acting.

Tyler  02:34

So my point is, movies coming out, it has some big names in it. There basically hasn’t been any press on it since it was delayed in 2021. And then randomly, somebody asked Chris Pine a question like, “Hey, what’s up with the DND movie?” in the past, like month or two? And he’s like, Oh, it’s really great. It’s, it’s somewhere in the vein of Princess Bride, the Goonies. It’s an like an adventure comedy romp. So,

Randall  03:01

Monty Python?

Tyler  03:02

Monty Python? Yeah. So it’s very much setting the stage like you’re gonna go in. It’s gonna be like a goofy D&D story, but you’re not gonna go in, it’s not going to take itself too seriously. And I’m really hoping that it really captures that feel of me and a bunch of my friends are going to murder hobo our way through this adventure in the most comical way we can possibly manage, because in my opinion, that is the truest form of D&D.

Randall  03:26

Yeah, I feel like this has to be campy. I swear people this isn’t actually what we’re doing this episode. But let’s just keep going for a minute longer. Bear with us. It it has to be campy, one. What would you say though? What would you do if you walked into the theater and they went the Jumanji route? Oh, no.

Tyler  03:42

Like real people dragged into D&D?

Randall  03:44

Yeah, exactly. It’s like, you know, it’s like, oh, it’s literally like in the 1980s. It’s what our moms warned us about, right?

Random  03:51

You’re just describing Monsters and Mazes.

Tyler  03:53

I think what we’re saying is, it’s been done.

Randall  04:00

That’s fair. Okay. Here’s the deal. When it comes out, we’re gonna go watch it.

Tyler  04:05

Yes. Yes.

Randall  04:06

Hey, you know, Hollywood producers listening, you’re taking advice you think, like, I need to learn mechanics need to brush up. We’re gonna make this thing happen. Please don’t cancel the film.

Tyler  04:15

Please. Yes. I’m very excited for it, really!

Randall  04:19

Okay. All right, good. So Tyler, what are we actually doing tonight?

Tyler  04:23

Well, tonight, we’re going to talk about a whole bunch of RPG products that are coming out in 2022. Now, this isn’t a full schedule of everything that’s going to be released in 2022 because tabletop RPG companies are often very tight-lipped about the release schedules. So we’re going to talk about all the cool stuff that we know about from the handful of companies that we, the three of us, very actively follow. Like, if your favorite RPG company does not make it into this episode, it’s not because we don’t like them. They’re probably wonderful, but you know 30 minute News episode we can only say some much.

Randall  05:00

And I once again get to make a personal commitment to you at home who has that topic, that book that we didn’t talk about in this session. We’re sorry, we didn’t cover it. We didn’t mean to miss it. And the next time we do this episode, we 100% promise, we’re going to include that content. I guarantee it.

Tyler  05:17

Roll for deception. No, no, but seriously, if there are other companies that people think we should be covering, please let us know. We’re not omniscient. And there’s a lot of cool stuff out there that we don’t know about yet but that we would very much like to

Randall  05:32

Yeah.

Random  05:32

Well, speaking of role for deception, let’s let’s take a stab at 5e first, so, you know, one big obvious thing, the Monsters of the Multiverse, which may or may not have morning kindness at the front of it, depending on how many letters you want the standalone, we’re going to get that on May 17. If you have been enjoying your your three pack of previously released content, that’s not super big news for you. But there’s some really cool stuff in Monsters of the Multiverse. And so if you already had all the stuff and now you want to pick that up and take a look at it, you know, if you perhaps hear something about an episode about surprise you you may enjoy the the new bugbear that we get in there. Because surprise features heavily.

Tyler  06:16

It won’t all be completely done by the time this episode drops. But by the time Monsters and Multiverse is available as a standalone book, all of our character optimization coverage will be updated to cover everything that’s in the book. So if you’ve been waiting for the standalone book, you grab it, and you think “I don’t know what to do with these things. Someone please help me.” We’ve got you.

Randall  06:36

And if you’re listening to this after June of 2022, that content’s there. Just go to the website and find it right now. It’s here. It’s available.

Random  06:44

Time. Time is a construct. Wait, you know what else are constructs? I’m going to torture this metaphor. Citadels. Citadels are constructs.

Randall  06:53

That’s true, buddy. Why don’t you keep going with that?

Random  06:55

So in particularly if you happen to once a journey through a radiant construct, a Citadel, you know, same thing. That comes out June 27. It’s sort of like an anthology book functionally, in kind of the vein of Tales from the Yawning Portal. But like even more anthology, like their diet, as I understand it, they’re very loosely related, as opposed to, like, trying to follow a plot arc. We get 13 standalone adventure spanning levels one to 14. There’s some cool stuff about it.

Tyler  07:26

Yeah, this is the first official adventure for Dungeons and Dragons that was written entirely by people of color. So this is very exciting that Wizards is really embracing diversity here and trying to bring in new concepts, new ideas, new ways of telling stories. So I’m really hoping that we see some exciting new ideas explored in this adventure that maybe we haven’t seen before. Also, on a personal note, my brother in law, Hans, worked as an editor on this book, so I’m very excited to see his name in the credits for the first time.

Randall  07:55

All right, have we heard anything else from WotC? For what’s going to be coming out?

Tyler  07:59

*sigh* No, they’re being very tight lipped because that’s what they do. Generally, from Wizards of the Coast we learn about things about two months before they come out. They generally don’t announce anything until it’s basically being printed. At that point it’s generally too late to make any changes to the book.

Randall  08:16

So they know it’s safe to get it out there.

Tyler  08:18

Exactly, exactly. So we don’t know anything else that’s coming out past Journeys through the Radiant Citadel. We’ve already gotten Call of the Netherdeep this year. Monsters of the Multiverse comes out in May. Journey says radiant Citadel comes out in June. If you go back to our future of D&D episode, we talked about how they said that we’re getting between two and three classic settings returning for the first time in fifth edition.

Randall  08:43

Help me count how many have we gotten this year so far? I’m just trying to…

Tyler  08:46

Zero.

Randall  08:47

Oh, okay, good. It’s zero.

Tyler  08:48

Yes. So when they say classic settings they need like from before fifth edition. So people are waiting for Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Birthright. Like, those are the four big names that people are still asking for to come back. We’ve gotten Unearthed Arcana with the heroes of Krynn was Dragonlance. We’ve gotten races of the multiverse, which was both Spelljammer and Dark Sun, so it’s entirely possible that we get all three of those. I think once he may have actually forgotten that Birthright existed, which is… I can’t blame them. It never got updated third edition. Most people don’t know exists.

Randall  09:25

So what’s the signal that birthright might be coming out?

Tyler  09:28

There isn’t. It’s most likely we will not get Birthright back and I, I’m…

Randall  09:35

Two to three would be Dark Sun?

Tyler  09:37

Yes. Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and Dragonlance all… I think Dragonlance got in the third edition. Random, remind me?

Random  09:44

I don’t think it had a… er, no it didm It had a 3.0 setting book that I don’t think ever got any kind of 3.5 content.

Tyler  09:52

There you go. Yeah, so Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Dragonlance all got brought into third edition. Birthright did not, so most people just don’t know birthright exists. So it’s probably not coming back.

Randall  10:04

And good news though if you’re a Dragonlance fan, we are gonna have a Dragonlance novel. Dragons of Deceit Coming out August of 2022.

Tyler  10:10

Yes. And that’s the first time we’re getting a Dragonlance novel in a fairly long time. So it’s, it’s possible that the long-standing legal disputes have been quietly handled or something and I’m hoping that between that and Heroes of Krynn that’s good indication that Dragonlance is going to make an official comeback in the rules.

Randall  10:29

Yeah, I think that makes perfect sense. It feels like if we were in the business of reading tea leaves, that’s a good reading of said cup of tea leaves. All right. There’s also a lot of really cool third party publishing content coming out. So we get to talk to the folks at Kobold Press when we were at Garycon. And yeah, they’ve got, as it was put, there is constantly a Kickstarter going. But from these Kickstarters, we’re going to be getting Tome of Beasts 3. I’ve been looking a lot at Tome of Beasts 2. Some of the older monsters that were able to pull from that. They’re really awesome. And so at this point now I’m like anticipating Tome of Beasts 3. As soon as it comes out, I’m probably going to pick it up, because I want to heckle you folks with these monsters.

Tyler  11:13

Yeah, I can’t blame you.

Randall  11:14

When we talked to Alex. It was also really cool talking about Tome of Heroes. So there wasn’t a lot that got put out there. I think some people have been able to playtest it. We have not been able to yet, but we would love to. The cool thing that he talked about was telekinetic gun wizards.

Tyler  11:30

Yes, I went and dug up the art on their Kickstarter. It’s in one of like the last couple update posts. There’s a gunslinger dual wielding pistols looking like a gunslinger and next to the gunslinger is a Wizard telekinetically wielding five pistols to flex on the Gunslinger. And it… just peak Wizard. Perfect.

Randall  11:51

 Yeah, I… How does this not wind up being, like, OP unless like, Okay, you can’t go through the full like, imagine like, I’ve got my five guns running around like a giant like Gatling gun kind of thing, just spinning and shooting at the same time. And then through the hole that they make, boom fireballs!

Tyler  12:11

Perfect.

Random  12:12

No, I mean, you know, realistically, we’ve actually seen a depiction of a gun Wizard in some popular culture media. If anyone remembers, you know, a little movie the X-Men, the first X-Men movie, you get that wonderful scene of Magneto. Just telekinetically wielding you know, like 150 guns. It’s a good time. Just get to do that. In D&D.

Randall  12:37

He did that repeatedly, right? Like even when when they reset it, and then it was, oh, what’s his name?

Random  12:42

Michael Fassbender.

Randall  12:43

perfect. Yeah, I think he does the same game right. Like he’s good at it.

Tyler  12:46

What’s Michael Fassbender’s is mutant power.

Randall  12:48

He’s Magneto.

Tyler  12:49

Oh, I was trying to… Anyway, I’m very excited about gun wizards. And I’m sure they’re gonna balance it with the classic like, gunslinger just has to reload. Wizard needs to go take a nap.

Randall  13:03

That’s fair. Actually. Each of those guns gets one bullet off, and then Oh, yeah. feeling very sleepy.

Tyler  13:10

So pre-orders are available for Tome of heroes right now through the Kobold Press website. Let’s see, I believe Alexander told us that it will be available in July. I don’t have a specific date in July for that. We haven’t gotten that specific yet. And then Tome of Beasts 3, the Kickstarter just ended. So the release date is still to be announced.

Randall  13:33

Okay. And yeah, like, we don’t have links to those things from the internet. But we’re, we’re hoping sources are good. And that content is going to be available. Also, incidentally, July of 2022. That’s what we meant.

Tyler  13:43

Yes.

Randall  13:44

So again, if it’s the future, just go get it. It’s there. So Frog God Games has a lot of cool stuff coming out.

Tyler  13:50

Yes, there Splinters of Faith Kickstarter just finished. It’s one of their classic adventures that’s been out for a few years. It was just updated to fifth edition and for OSR rules. I don’t think we have a release date on that one either, but generally, they’re pretty quick from what we understand from Frog God. And then, what was his name? I can’t remember.

Randall  14:13

You’re talking about Alex Kammer.

Tyler  14:14

Yes, Alex Kammer. Famously the owner of Gamehole Con and True Dungeon. He also works with Frog God Games, apparently, which was another great thing that we learned at Garycon. He’s working with them on another adventure set to be kick started sometime this fall and released somewhere in the October/November timeframe. And from what he told us on our pull-aside interview, it’s gonna have some like Cthulhu cosmic horror things that maybe not specifically to my tastes, but…

Randall  14:46

I’m super stoked. I’m gonna make Tyler play it.

Random  14:49

Right? I feel like this is the thing where Randall and I are gonna just sit here and be like, oh, yeah, this is awesome. It’s slowly dragging Tyler through spiders with too many legs.

Tyler  14:57

Yes. I’m very scared.

Randall  15:02

The only thing they have more than legs are eyeballs anyway.

Tyler  15:04

Oh. Oh god.

Randall  15:06

Sorry, too far. Too far. Moving on! Adventure a Week Games, AAW Games. So Rise of the draw, we talked about Rise of the Drow already. Something really cool residents Raul is going to be available on foundry and then other BTTS are coming soon. Another cool thing for folks looking for more PF2 content coming from Aw. So we talked about the mini dungeon tome that they have out for 5e, they’re going to have a version of this for Pathfinder, too. So now you buy one book, in this book, a ton of mini dungeons that you can use to either insert into your adventure, build an adventure, or basically have, like, go-to book of one shots ready to go. So that’s going to be really cool from them.

Random  15:47

One of the reasons why I was pumped to make this episode and one of the reasons why it’s coming out now, the internet is currently on fire with Paizo announcing their first book for Dungeons and Dragons in a long time. And the first one for fifth edition specifically. So Paizo actually started out as a company writing third party content as a… Pathfinder was a setting for 3.5, which we’ve talked about in the past, but like Golarion was a setting the same way that like Krynn is a setting, Dark Sun is a setting. And you know, they got very popular, they started doing their own thing, Pathfinder happened as sort of a response to lukewarm reception of fourth edition. And now they’re off doing their own thing, which is awesome. And so finally they’re coming back. Like, they’re taking all of that experience that they’ve gotten in 15 years of being kind of the the biggest Pepsi to D&D’s Coke, like we’ve talked about in the past, and they’re bringing that back, folding it in. So yeah, we’re getting the Kingmaker AP bestiary. It’s gonna be awesome. We’re getting the abomination vaults going to be awesome. There may be some kind of tie-in… we were talking to more folks at Garycon. Beadle and Grimm. They’re a third party company that makes like, functionally props for your games. And so like they have, like boxes of things to enrich an experience playing, for instance, Descent into Avernace. Enrich an experience playing Wild Beyond the Witchlight. Because they’re third party, they’re like, fourth party in this context. They have to go through some extra hoops. So I, I know that they’re, they’re interested in some of that stuff. We’ll see if that happens. But either way, Paizo publishing for 5e again is very cool.

Randall  17:27

Yeah, I think it’s really great. So I’ve enjoyed the experience I’ve had Pathfinder 2. And of course, in the… what are we going to call this? Like, the D&D family tree, which, you know, Pathfinder is certainly part of. I’ve only played 5e and Pathfinder 2. That being said, I’m really impressed with the quality of the content, and that it feels like a mature game, a mature world, but a different game, a different world. You know, in my mind, like, I know, you could run it any way that you want it to, but D&D almost feels like you know, it takes itself very seriously and it’s dark and brooding and Pathfinder 2 is like slapstick, like, Nah, I’m just going to gunslinger run in and let’s make these things happen. Look, I’m throwing the goblin Artificer and it’s gonna be wonderful. We’re not in Artificer, what are we calling them?

Tyler  18:08

Inventor in PF2.

Randall  18:09

Inventor. That’s what I meant to say. Sorry, team.

Random  18:12

I feel like this is you’ve just spent too much time playing Rime of with the Frostmaiden and that’s why everything’s so grim dark for you.

Randall  18:17

It could ne, yeah. All the wrong games all the wrong DM’s. Me being the wrong DM most of the time. But I say that to say like, the coolest thing to me about this is that folks who maybe have been playing D&D for a long time, and for whatever reason, never dipped their toe into the Pathfinder world will have an opportunity to say, Okay, I’m just going to try this out. I’m not throwing out all my books, I’m not changing my ruleset. I’m just going to see about the quality of that content. And I’m hoping, I’m hoping that that gets people to try a little bit of the Paizo content. And maybe, you know, sometimes you play a game of Pathfinder 2. That’d be pretty cool.

Tyler  18:57

I am a little sad that they’re not outright converting Kingmaker to 5e. Like, they’re just doing the beast theory. And then like if you buy the updated version of Kingmaker that they’re putting out you can without too much difficulty convert the rest since the monster stats are really the hardest part. They’re also converting their Abomination Vaults adventure path, which I don’t think we said previously, but it was very, very well received. We did say that previously. My memory is bad. But it runs from like levels one to 12. So it’s not insanely long. It was very, very well received by Pathfinder community. I haven’t read it yet, so I’m very excited to see it once it comes out later this fall.

Randall  19:38

And I guess we’re this knee deep in it already. It’s let’s like keep going and Pathfinder 2. What else is coming out.

Tyler  19:43

We have two new source books coming out that we already know about. I don’t know if we’ll get more this year but we might get one or two more close to the holidays. The Book of the Dead comes out in April 2022. If you’re… if you have been playing since for third edition days, you might remember Libris Mortis, which was the book of stuff about undead. It’s that for Pathfinder second edition. There’s options for playing undead, there’s options for controlling more undead. Random has mentioned on this path- on this podcast many times the Dread Necromancer, and I don’t think we’re getting any new classes in Book of the Dead, but I can see him visibly having flashbacks.

Random  20:25

No!. It was really cool, but man, there were some problems.

Tyler  20:34

Yes.

Randall  20:34

I’m very excited! I feel like I just said that I wanted like, I want to control many zombies. And you’re telling me I can control many zombies?

Tyler  20:40

I believe so. I don’t know specifically what options are going to be in it? I haven’t seen…

Randall  20:47

You promised.

Tyler  20:48

It says in the book description there’s options for controlling undead. I haven’t seen anything more specific than that, unfortunately.

Randall  20:55

Curse you… What do you call it when you can’t tell whether something’s plural or not? You never call them undeads?

Tyler  21:01

It’s like deer. It’s already plural.  Yeah, I think.Okay. sSurely.  So fortunately, the wait on that is very short. It comes out this month. So I’m very excited to see that come out. The cover art is really cool. And people have really latched on to the art of what people are calling a baby zombie. But I’m, I’m gonna hope it’s a halfling.

Randall  21:23

Sometimes it’s both.

Tyler  21:27

Second, the dark archive supplement is scheduled for release in August of 2022. If you read the Occult aAdventures supplement in Pathfinder first edition, and that one was very popular for people who like ghosts and haunted houses and stuff. This is essentially a callback to that. They’re bringing in the Psychic class. And one more that I’m going to stare at the name of for just a moment… This is great podcasting,

Randall  21:55

If you just do that voice…

Tyler  21:56

The thaumaturge, that’s the one. Alright, so we’re getting the Psychic, which was a class in Pathfinder first edition, and the Thaumaturge, which I don’t think was, but they may be rolling up some of the other occult classes into one concept. I think there were like four or five standalone classes in Occult Adventures, so consolidating them into a few, like a smaller number probably makes sense considering the direction of PF2. So does the Thaumaturge, like, put a small flame in their hand or clean a small patch of clothing? or…  Or make their voice very loud?

Randall  22:30

Yeah, is that…? That’s the whole class?

Tyler  22:34

We’ll find out.

Randall  22:35

Great news! So we talked about the D&D family tree. And that’s pretty cool. So Free League Publishing, also has a lot of really cool content coming out this year. A lot of it actually fairly soon.

Random  22:47

Yeah. So due to the magic of podcasting, you will hear this before you hear me talk about Alien in an upcoming episode, but so they have an Alien RPG that I have gotten to read through. There’s some really cool stuff in there. The mechanics of it are really neat. And the reason why I’m bothering to mention the mechanics is because it’s functionally two games slapped together. It’s… one version of the game is meant to be, they call it “cinematic play.” It’s like, I want to roleplay one of the Alien movies. I want to have short, brutal, survival horror experience. And, you know, at the end of it, probably everyone’s dead. And then they also have campaign play. And campaign play is much more freeform. It’s much more like, what if Firefly had, like, instead of a Western skin on it, it had like a retro futurism, cyberpunk skin on it. And it’s… yeah, so there’ll be a whole article, it’ll be neat. But upcoming, summer this year, they are putting out their third big cinematic scenario. You can think of it like a one shot, it’s a one to two shot they’re kinda meant to be about four to five hours. You can play it as a standalone, or it can be the conclusion to the three arc that they have. Where the first one, Chariot of the Gods. And then the second one was, I think, Destroyer of Worlds. So yeah, basically, you can either have this be like, let’s have like a 15 hour campaign, which, you know, if you, especially if you want to play that slowly and like really be cinematic, you could stretch that out into, like, a short campaign. You know, maybe over like a handful of sessions. So more of that. Gonna be very cool.

Randall  24:29

Awesome. Alright, I want to talk about Mork Borg. Alright, so Mork Borg. The base rule set won four Ennies in 2020. Three gold, one silver. Last year’s Mork Bork Cult: Feretory won gold any for best supplement. This year, they have Mork Borg Cult: Heretic coming out. So supplement’s coming out. GM Screen is gonna come out with it. Essentially heretic…

Tyler  24:52

Heretic?

Random  24:53

Heretic?

Randall  24:54

Heretic?

Tyler  24:55

Heretical. Heretic.

Randall  24:57

Her… heretic?

Tyler  25:00

I just learned how to pronounce “agate,” so like no judgment.

Randall  25:04

That’s fair… heretic.

Random  25:07

Heretic.

Randall  25:08

Horror. Producer Dan, I’m so sorry. This year they have Mork Borg Cult: Heretic coming out. What I will say is that it looks really cool. If you’re a big fan of Mork Borg, if you want more adventure, there’s more adventure that’s going to be there. If you want more rules, a way to kind of expand the ruleset, take the universe just a little bit further. That’s going to be there too. That’s coming out April 12th of 2022.

Tyler  25:33

Now me as a terrified, terrified person that I am. Looking at Mork Borg and being scared. Are there cool things in this that I should, you know, maybe brave the bright yellow pages and look for?

Randall  25:46

I think all of, like… hoo. It is… The answer is yes. Certainly the answer is yes. It is not a power fantasy. You are not going to play this game and and be the shining hero. You are a cretin put into this world to suffer until it ends. And that is the game.

Tyler  26:10

Cool.

Randall  26:12

So it’s… Yeah, it’s a lot closer… I guess, I haven’t played the Cthulhu world yet. But I imagine it might be a bit closer to that, like, cosmic horror, except for not cosmic horror, just run of the mill… These two two-headed basilisks have told me the world is going to end and it probably is and I have to run from the church people that worship them. And oh, by the way, this this Wraith automatically wins initiative against me. It’s great.

Random  26:13

Good elevator pitch. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that my elevator pitch for Mork Borg is “what if you were playing D&D as a peasant?”

Randall  26:48

Oh, 100%. Yeah. It’s like, what if you weren’t a leveled character?

Tyler  26:51

What if the entire game was a funnel?

Randall  26:53

Yeah. Okay, perfect. Okay, one more quick thing, and then we can leave this alone. The leveling up mechanic for Mork Borg, like, base Mork Borg is, depending on the number that you have for a given skill, the modifier you have for a given skill, you roll a d6. I think if you’re less than that number, you lose a point. And if you’re more than that number, you gain a point, and if you roll the number, nothing happens. So literally, like when when your DM says “it’s time to level up” if you’re looking at your stats, like I don’t know, I feel pretty happy, please leave me alone! The trick is though, I’m pretty sure he can’t go negative. So if you’ve at least, like, you know, the worst that can happen is just constantly at zero and one.

Tyler  27:34

Okay, great.

Randall  27:36

Yeah. Okay, I’m seeing this… wow, this… I’m hearing what I’m saying. It looks awesome.

Tyler  27:45

Okay?

Randall  27:45

Like this, if you’re an optimizer if you’re the person who is like, oh, you know, I want to build the best character possible, you are missing the point of this game. Get in there and just be awesome. The world’s gonna end anyway man. Like, what are you worried about? Why do you need to have like a six modifier to your presence? Who cares, man, just get in there. Stab some things, get some gold, solve some problems.

Tyler  28:07

Does not compute.

Randall  28:08

You’re gonna love it. I promise.

Tyler  28:09

All right. So continuing in the things from Free League that are dark and scary: Symbaroum. So Symbaroum has been around for a very long time. This is one of… I think it’s been under free league for a long time. Very big name in Scandinavian countries, in Northern Europe. It’s a dark fantasy setting. Less of the, like, grab bag setting that is D&D, where we’re plundering other cultures and taking some ideas from them. It is specifically just like dark forests, trolls by edges of lakes, spooky stuff like that. So very focused on that. And it’s been around for a long time, very popular in that part of the world. And this year, we’re getting a fifth edition adaptation of the rules. There is a free tutorial adventure available on Drive Thru RPG that we will link in the show notes. It looks like Kickstarter copies are going to start shipping on March 21, because the conversion was kickstarted. And I totally missed the boat on that, which makes me sad. But it occurs to me that March has already passed, It is now April, which means if you kickstarted this thing, you may already have your book. Hopefully physical copies will be available to the rest of us very, very soon. I’m looking forward to it.

Random  28:18

One last thing I want to touch on. We don’t have a ton of information yet about Death in Space, apart from the fact that it’s basically like also from Free League and it’s grimdark and it’s in space. And if this sounds to you like what I just described, when I was talking about their Alien RPG… hm.

Randall  29:46

I’m pretty sure it’s just going to be Among Us in space. Right? So it’s sort of like one giant monster, it’s a bunch of tiny monsters and like, you know, air duct.

Random  29:57

You know, we haven’t really seen something… Oh, no way we have it’s called Vampire. I was gonna say we haven’t really seen a role playing game that was just like, what if it was mostly, like, you know, social bluffing and that sort of thing? And then I it occurred to me that that was just absolutely a vampire. So there you go.

Randall  30:14

Vampire in space?

Random  30:15

Vampire in space!

Tyler  30:17

Hey, yeah, so I’m hoping we will get some new information on Death in Space. Free League is friends of the show. So we’re hoping to get some early information that we can share with the rest of the world very soon. For the time being, all we know is it is grimdark survival horror in space. Like ,that is basically the elevator pitch of the game. That’s all we’ve got for now. But hopefully, we’ll have more soon. I’m very excited about it.

Randall  30:43

it. No kidding. Like, I would actually be really excited to see that world without the explicit presence of the xenomorph trying to kill me because space is scary without evil space monsters that melt your skin. You know what I mean?

Random  30:56

Oh, no, 100%. And honestly, I think like the campaign play… and you should just read my article. I should write this article, then you should read this article. The campaign play, it’s basically says you shouldn’t be throwing xenomorphs at them all that often. So there’s like a whole chart that you can roll on for like complications. And like Zeno, morph is a six on a d6.

Tyler  31:17

Oh.

Random  31:17

Theoretically, you might get one every once in a while. But it’s mostly just deal with the fact that space is terrible and trying to kill you. So I’m excited to see how this is different.

Randall  31:27

Same. All right. If you’ve enjoyed the show, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts and rate us on Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. It’s a quick free way to support the podcast and helps us to reach new listeners. You’ll find links in the show notes. You’ll find the affiliate links for source books and other materials linked in the show notes as well as on RPGBOT.net. Following these links helps us to make this show happen every week. Thanks folks.

Tyler  31:55

Oh, that’s what the joke was.