Hello everyone, Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! Updates on D&D releases, new showrunner for the D&D TV series, Arby's dice are back, Renegade Games crossover sourcebook for Transformers, GI Joe, and Power Rangers, and more!
For a quick summary of the week’s news, Jessica Hancock will bring you up to speed with EN Live's This Week in TTRPG every Friday.
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 conclude their coverage of the Dungeons & Dragons Creator Summit.
In case you missed it elsewhere on EN World this week:
Lots of small news coming about upcoming Dungeons & Dragons products. First, D&D Beyond has some new bits of information about upcoming releases with a video from Chris Perkins. The 2024 Vecna adventure will be a world-hopping journey, some art previews of Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants, the upcoming Planescape book will be reimagining the setting while honoring the roots of the original, the Book of Many Things will introduce new cards to the deck, Venger will be a “redder Red Wizard” when he appears, and the new Phandelver book will include an updated Lost Mines of Phandelver as the first half of the adventure then expand on that for higher levels.
Another video posted this week went into more details about the updated Dungeonmasters Guide coming in 2024. The book will be eight chapters long and we know what seven of them will be. Chapter one will be basic rules and concepts like “how do these funny dice work”. Chapter two will be advice and troubleshooting for common issues that come up like players going off the rails or evolving styles of running a game. Chapter three will be the “rules cyclopedia” with all the core rules not in the Player’s Handbook organized in a single chapter. Chapter four will focus on adventure building while chapter five will be about campaign building. Chapter six focuses on the cosmology of the D&D multiverse while chapter seven is the magic items, which will include the existing items plus common items from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and some new items. Chapter eight will be “a surprise”, and there will be appendices with maps and a lore glossary.
We also got a look at the new anime-inspired artwork for the Japanese “iconics” with artwork from Chamoran for the Japanese localization of the game. Finally, with all the new merch coming out, it was inevitable: You can now get artwork from the iconic Red Box in officially licensed boxer briefs.
There has also been movement on the Dungeons & Dragons live-action television series for Paramount+ as another showrunner is attached to the project. This time it’s Drew Crevello, whose only credits are a co-producer credit on The Grudge 2 from 2006 and a writer/showrunner credit on the AppleTV biopic mini-series about the website WeWork starring Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway from 2022. However, Crevello was previously an executive at 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros who was involved in several comic book films including Deadpool and X-Men: First Class according to Deadline. Crevello marks the…I believe third showrunner attached to this project? First was Derek Kolstad (John Wick) then Robson Thurber (Red Notice, and who may still be writing the pilot episode of this series?) Either way, more information about the series should be coming soon as it heads toward production.
Darrington Press, the publishing arm of Critical Role, announced two new roleplaying game systems. The first is Illuminated Worlds designed by Stras Acimovic and Lyla Adelman which uses a d6 dice pool system RPG for a wide variety of settings and genres. This game will be optimized for one-shots and shorter story arc. The second will be Daggerheart, a new fantasy roleplaying game using a brand new rules system and designed for long-term campaigns with rich options for character progression. Both games will be previewed along with demos this year at Gen Con.
Renegade Game Studios announced the upcoming release of Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th Edition. Originally announced in 2019 and scheduled for a 2021 release, the 300+ page hardcover will finally make it to game stores soon with a ground-up rebuild of the Werewolf setting updated for the modern day and using the 5th edition of the Storyteller System used by Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition. The core rulebook will feature eleven werewolf tribes with full rules, character creation, and advice on building a troupe. The hardcover will be available on August 31 (though attendees of Gen Con can get theirs a few weeks early) with a retail price of $55.00.
Speaking of releases from Renegade Game Studios, did you ever grow up smashing all your action figures together creating a giant multi-franchise crossover of Transformers, GI Joe, and Power Rangers? Well with the Field Guide to Action and Adventure you can do that at the game table! The sourcebook for the Essence 20 Roleplaying System adds crossover information for the three major licensed Hasbro franchises of the system (though not My Little Pony). The book will include new rules, a crossover adventure, GM resources for scaling threats, along with new character options like 9 new influences 4 new origins, 3 new factions, 10 new perks, and a new role. This book is also scheduled for release this August (though does not at this time have a Gen Con early release pick-up option) with a retail price of $55.00.
Free League has opened pre-orders for the new edition of the Dragonbane core rules. The first English language release of the Swedish RPG Drakar och Demoner originally launched in 1982. This updated version of the “mirth and mayhem roleplaying” is available now in PDF of DriveThruRPG with the physical set coming this fall with he core rules, an adventure book with 11 connected adventures for a full campaign, pre-generated characters, over 70 reference cards, a full-color world map, and more. The PDF is $24.99 while the hardcopy set is 498.00kr (US$48.25, £38.91).
Catalyst Game Labs and DriveThruRPG announced a community content program for the Shadowrun RPGt tiled Holostreets: The Shadowrunner Collective. Similar to DMs Guild and Storytellers Vault, the program will allow fans to publish their own material for any edition of the Shadowrun roleplaying game including the core games and the rules-lite Shadowrun Anarchy. Full terms and rules for posting are available on the website including disallowed material. There are also multiple free art packs, layout and cover templates, and more materials to make it easier to create your own Shadowrun content.
Finally this week, the American fast food chain Arby’s released – again – a set of polyhedral gaming dice with the restaurant’s branding. The seven-dice set features the iconic Arby’s hat in 3D inside the clear dice with the highest number on the d6 and d20 replaced by the Arby’s logo. For those unfamiliar, Arby’s is one of the smaller fast food restaurant chains with just over 3000 stores across America with limited locations in Canada, Mexico, Turkey, Egypt, and South Korea that specializes in hot sandwiches including their classic roast beef and beef ‘n cheddar sandwiches. The company’s marketing for several years has been very “geek-focused” with social media posts referencing comic books, fantasy and sci-fi films, video games, and of course tabletop roleplaying. The dice set was originally released in 2021 before selling out, then was released early this week before selling out once again. The third wave of dice is set for release at 11 AM Eastern today, Friday April 21, with a retail price of $12.00 and a limit of 2 sets per person.
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 news@enpublishingrpg.com, 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, follow me on Mastodon for RPG chat and general nonsense, 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.
For a quick summary of the week’s news, Jessica Hancock will bring you up to speed with EN Live's This Week in TTRPG every Friday.
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 conclude their coverage of the Dungeons & Dragons Creator Summit.
In case you missed it elsewhere on EN World this week:
- The EN Publishing adventure path To Save A Kingdom for 5e and Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition is still on Kickstarter.
- EN5ider #510 is an adventure on the ship Lysymachus as a brutal murder has occurred placing the Level 3-5 party at odds with not only the mysterious killer but an increasingly hostile crew.
- The EN Publishing April 2023 Live Stream is available now featuring the To Save a Kingdom Kickstarter, an update on what’s coming next for Level Up: Advanced 5e, and more.
- More details on the upcoming Kickstarter for the Gloomhaven Role Playing Game including a preview of the over 600 miniatures that will be available.
- Charles Dunwoody reviews the boxed set for The Deck of Many Things & The Deck of Many Fates from Stratagem.
- Egg Embry interviewed Emmet Byrne from Cubicle 7 about their upcoming 5e fork rules system C7d20 and their new Kickstarter guarantee.
- Dawn Dalton covers all the news from Paizo for Pathfinder, Starfinder, PaizoCon, organized play interactive events, and more.
- Lewis Pulsipher’s newest Worlds of Design is about combat tactics and how to make the most of your skirmish fights in RPGs.
- Mike Myler’s newest ENterplanetary DimENsions is Pannerok, a planet plagued by a potent phage (alliteration Mike’s) where the people are trapped by their own fears.
- 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.
Lots of small news coming about upcoming Dungeons & Dragons products. First, D&D Beyond has some new bits of information about upcoming releases with a video from Chris Perkins. The 2024 Vecna adventure will be a world-hopping journey, some art previews of Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants, the upcoming Planescape book will be reimagining the setting while honoring the roots of the original, the Book of Many Things will introduce new cards to the deck, Venger will be a “redder Red Wizard” when he appears, and the new Phandelver book will include an updated Lost Mines of Phandelver as the first half of the adventure then expand on that for higher levels.
Another video posted this week went into more details about the updated Dungeonmasters Guide coming in 2024. The book will be eight chapters long and we know what seven of them will be. Chapter one will be basic rules and concepts like “how do these funny dice work”. Chapter two will be advice and troubleshooting for common issues that come up like players going off the rails or evolving styles of running a game. Chapter three will be the “rules cyclopedia” with all the core rules not in the Player’s Handbook organized in a single chapter. Chapter four will focus on adventure building while chapter five will be about campaign building. Chapter six focuses on the cosmology of the D&D multiverse while chapter seven is the magic items, which will include the existing items plus common items from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and some new items. Chapter eight will be “a surprise”, and there will be appendices with maps and a lore glossary.
We also got a look at the new anime-inspired artwork for the Japanese “iconics” with artwork from Chamoran for the Japanese localization of the game. Finally, with all the new merch coming out, it was inevitable: You can now get artwork from the iconic Red Box in officially licensed boxer briefs.
There has also been movement on the Dungeons & Dragons live-action television series for Paramount+ as another showrunner is attached to the project. This time it’s Drew Crevello, whose only credits are a co-producer credit on The Grudge 2 from 2006 and a writer/showrunner credit on the AppleTV biopic mini-series about the website WeWork starring Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway from 2022. However, Crevello was previously an executive at 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros who was involved in several comic book films including Deadpool and X-Men: First Class according to Deadline. Crevello marks the…I believe third showrunner attached to this project? First was Derek Kolstad (John Wick) then Robson Thurber (Red Notice, and who may still be writing the pilot episode of this series?) Either way, more information about the series should be coming soon as it heads toward production.
Darrington Press, the publishing arm of Critical Role, announced two new roleplaying game systems. The first is Illuminated Worlds designed by Stras Acimovic and Lyla Adelman which uses a d6 dice pool system RPG for a wide variety of settings and genres. This game will be optimized for one-shots and shorter story arc. The second will be Daggerheart, a new fantasy roleplaying game using a brand new rules system and designed for long-term campaigns with rich options for character progression. Both games will be previewed along with demos this year at Gen Con.
Renegade Game Studios announced the upcoming release of Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th Edition. Originally announced in 2019 and scheduled for a 2021 release, the 300+ page hardcover will finally make it to game stores soon with a ground-up rebuild of the Werewolf setting updated for the modern day and using the 5th edition of the Storyteller System used by Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition. The core rulebook will feature eleven werewolf tribes with full rules, character creation, and advice on building a troupe. The hardcover will be available on August 31 (though attendees of Gen Con can get theirs a few weeks early) with a retail price of $55.00.
Speaking of releases from Renegade Game Studios, did you ever grow up smashing all your action figures together creating a giant multi-franchise crossover of Transformers, GI Joe, and Power Rangers? Well with the Field Guide to Action and Adventure you can do that at the game table! The sourcebook for the Essence 20 Roleplaying System adds crossover information for the three major licensed Hasbro franchises of the system (though not My Little Pony). The book will include new rules, a crossover adventure, GM resources for scaling threats, along with new character options like 9 new influences 4 new origins, 3 new factions, 10 new perks, and a new role. This book is also scheduled for release this August (though does not at this time have a Gen Con early release pick-up option) with a retail price of $55.00.
Free League has opened pre-orders for the new edition of the Dragonbane core rules. The first English language release of the Swedish RPG Drakar och Demoner originally launched in 1982. This updated version of the “mirth and mayhem roleplaying” is available now in PDF of DriveThruRPG with the physical set coming this fall with he core rules, an adventure book with 11 connected adventures for a full campaign, pre-generated characters, over 70 reference cards, a full-color world map, and more. The PDF is $24.99 while the hardcopy set is 498.00kr (US$48.25, £38.91).
Catalyst Game Labs and DriveThruRPG announced a community content program for the Shadowrun RPGt tiled Holostreets: The Shadowrunner Collective. Similar to DMs Guild and Storytellers Vault, the program will allow fans to publish their own material for any edition of the Shadowrun roleplaying game including the core games and the rules-lite Shadowrun Anarchy. Full terms and rules for posting are available on the website including disallowed material. There are also multiple free art packs, layout and cover templates, and more materials to make it easier to create your own Shadowrun content.
Finally this week, the American fast food chain Arby’s released – again – a set of polyhedral gaming dice with the restaurant’s branding. The seven-dice set features the iconic Arby’s hat in 3D inside the clear dice with the highest number on the d6 and d20 replaced by the Arby’s logo. For those unfamiliar, Arby’s is one of the smaller fast food restaurant chains with just over 3000 stores across America with limited locations in Canada, Mexico, Turkey, Egypt, and South Korea that specializes in hot sandwiches including their classic roast beef and beef ‘n cheddar sandwiches. The company’s marketing for several years has been very “geek-focused” with social media posts referencing comic books, fantasy and sci-fi films, video games, and of course tabletop roleplaying. The dice set was originally released in 2021 before selling out, then was released early this week before selling out once again. The third wave of dice is set for release at 11 AM Eastern today, Friday April 21, with a retail price of $12.00 and a limit of 2 sets per person.
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 news@enpublishingrpg.com, 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, follow me on Mastodon for RPG chat and general nonsense, 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.
