Hello everyone, Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! First D&D One playtest survey live, Fandom sells Cortex RPG, new Pathfinder merchandise, new D&D minis and accessories announced, 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 talk about the upcoming Dungeon Delver’s Guide for Level Up: Advanced 5e.
In case you missed it elsewhere on EN World this week:
EN Publishing launched its newest Kickstarter this week for Dungeon Delver’s Guide, a supplement for Level Up: Advanced 5e that’s also compatible with original 5e rules. The over 300 page book features new character options including six new heritages (races for 5e), ten new cultures, four new backgrounds, and thirteen new archetypes (subclasses for 5e) along with new gear, spells mounts and more to help characters survive underground encounters and exploration. And for the Narrators/GMs out there, there are expansions to exploration rules, a dungeon-building system to create interesting adventures, pre-made dungeons ready to drop into any campaign (with a brand new preview of the “Palace of the Amber Prince”), over a hundred brand new traps, and a new underground campaign setting: the bright and mushroom filled Underland. If you want to take a look before backing, EN Publishing’s posted a huge number of previews over the past months:
Wizards of the Coast announced that the One D&D playtest is already larger than the D&D Next playtest for the launch of 5e. In a tweet featuring a GIF from the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon (again with the cartoon!), the official D&D Twitter account said that the first week saw more downloads than the entire run of the 5e playtest, which was over 175,000 people according to the Player’s Handbook. The first survey covering character origins playtest document is live now and will be open until September 15.
Fandom announced the company is selling the Cortex roleplaying game to Dire Wolf Digital. This will mark the exit from the tabletop RPG business for Fandom following the sale of D&D Beyond. Dire Wolf is best known as the creators of the tabletop game Clank! and the licensed card game Dune: Imperium as well as creating the video game versions of Root, Wings of Glory, Pokemon Trading Card Game Online, Game of Thrones: The Board Game, and others. Designer Cam Banks will stay on with Dire Wolf as the Cortex Creative Director as plans continue to expand the Tales of Xadia RPG based on the Netflix animated series The Dragon Prince and the upcoming expansion The Sunfire Chronicles. However, the announced Legends of Grayskull RPG based on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe has been placed on indefinite hiatus and it’s unclear if Dire Wolf has access to the license for the property.
WizKids announced an expansion to their D&D Classics Collection featuring sculpts based on classic Monster Manual artwork. The Monsters D-F boxed set will include pre-painted miniatures of the displacer beast, doppelganger, efreeti, air elemental, earth elemental, fire elemental, water elemental, and ettin. The set will retail for $89.99 with a scheduled February 2023 release. This will follow the October release of the Monsters A-C set featuring an ankheg, basilisk, beholder, bulette, carrion crawler, chimera, cockatrice, and couatl retailing for $99.99. Coming in August 2023 is the Icons of the Realms: Adventure in a Box: Wererat Den collection. This boxed set comes with six pre-painted miniatures (four wererats, one swarm of rats, and one giant rat) along with nine pieces of terrain (small trash pile, large trash pile, rat’s nest, moldy cheese hoard, rotten table, prisoner, cage, rotten crate stack, sludge puddle, and a rat covered bone pile) with a six inch square double-sided map. The boxed set will retail for $99.99.
Ultra PRO announced their licensed Dungeons & Dragons products for the Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen. The Character Folio will come with empty sleeves inside, ten of which will be for standard 8 ½” by 11” (or A4) sheets of paper and two 9-pocket pages for spell cards. The folio will also come with a sticker sheet with over 50 stickers, most decorative but also fold-over tab and binding edge stickers. There will also be a playmat measuring 24 inches by 12.5 inches and a wall scroll on silky fabric with hanging rod measuring 26.8 inches wide by 37.4 inches tall. All accessories are scheduled for a December 2022 release and while no retail prices are yet available, similar products in Ultra PRO’s D&D line retailed for $10.49 for the folio, $21.99 for the playmat, and between $24.99 for the wall scrolls.
Entertainment collectible company Sideshow announced pre-orders for a collector’s edition Tiamat statue. And Sideshow has gotten into the spirit of the thing by presenting the details for the figure as an RPG stat block with skills such as “Dust Resistance +10” and “Attention-Getting +26”. The highly detailed statue stands 28 inches high and is 37.5 inches long with a wingspan of 31 inches standing on a15 inch wide and 16 inch deep base of craggy rocks and lava. Expect a bit of sticker shock even for the price of expensive D&D collectibles as the pre-order price for this statue is $1,980 with a Deluxe version that adds lights to each of the heads corresponding to its breath weapon for $2,145. The figure is expected to ship sometime between April and June 2023.
Paizo announced a partnership with Savagesparrow Studios for a line of clothing based on Pathfinder. The new line called Kit and Kaboomle will be a celebration of the goblins of Golarion “featuring peak chaos and epic explosions”. Savagesparrow Studios is an independent design store created by Jen Brazas with unique designs inspired by games, anime, and comics. Jen also appears on the Penny for a Tale live stream actual play of Pathfinder 2nd Edition. The line will feature a dress (with pockets), t-shirts, enamel pins, and a hoodie with more revealed. Attendees of PAX West get a peek at Booth TT7304, while the line will officially launch via a Kickstarter campaign coming soon.
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, 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 talk about the upcoming Dungeon Delver’s Guide for Level Up: Advanced 5e.
In case you missed it elsewhere on EN World this week:
- EN5ider #471 is Dangerous Scenarios: Brickbeak, a drop-in encounter for 8th level characters pitting the party against a flock of monstrous birds.
- Beth Rimmels reviewed the Dungeons & Dragons accessory pack Campaign Case: Terrain featuring a reusable grid and vinyl terrain clings.
- Rob Weiland looked at the new 40th anniversary edition starter set for Call of Cthulhu from Chaosium.
- Egg Embry talks about the MAZES at MIDNIGHT event from Gen Con this year and 9th Level Games’s MAZES Fantasy Roleplaying.
- Ben Riggs, author of Slaying the Dragon, posted a blog entry detailing the time D&D co-creator Dave Arneson wrote to Wizards of the Coast owner Peter Adkison asking for a job running the newly-acquired TSR.
- Andrew Peregrine wrote about returning to Gen Con after the pandemic hiatus and the games he played at the convention.
- Michael Tresca returns to Stranger Things to talk about the difficulties in keeping a group together.
- 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.
EN Publishing launched its newest Kickstarter this week for Dungeon Delver’s Guide, a supplement for Level Up: Advanced 5e that’s also compatible with original 5e rules. The over 300 page book features new character options including six new heritages (races for 5e), ten new cultures, four new backgrounds, and thirteen new archetypes (subclasses for 5e) along with new gear, spells mounts and more to help characters survive underground encounters and exploration. And for the Narrators/GMs out there, there are expansions to exploration rules, a dungeon-building system to create interesting adventures, pre-made dungeons ready to drop into any campaign (with a brand new preview of the “Palace of the Amber Prince”), over a hundred brand new traps, and a new underground campaign setting: the bright and mushroom filled Underland. If you want to take a look before backing, EN Publishing’s posted a huge number of previews over the past months:
- Preview of Myceliad and Ratling Heritages
- The NODES System of Dungeon Design
- A Look at Traps
- Welcome to Underland
- Equipment Preview
- New Backgrounds
- Skeletal Hordes Monster Preview
Wizards of the Coast announced that the One D&D playtest is already larger than the D&D Next playtest for the launch of 5e. In a tweet featuring a GIF from the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon (again with the cartoon!), the official D&D Twitter account said that the first week saw more downloads than the entire run of the 5e playtest, which was over 175,000 people according to the Player’s Handbook. The first survey covering character origins playtest document is live now and will be open until September 15.
Fandom announced the company is selling the Cortex roleplaying game to Dire Wolf Digital. This will mark the exit from the tabletop RPG business for Fandom following the sale of D&D Beyond. Dire Wolf is best known as the creators of the tabletop game Clank! and the licensed card game Dune: Imperium as well as creating the video game versions of Root, Wings of Glory, Pokemon Trading Card Game Online, Game of Thrones: The Board Game, and others. Designer Cam Banks will stay on with Dire Wolf as the Cortex Creative Director as plans continue to expand the Tales of Xadia RPG based on the Netflix animated series The Dragon Prince and the upcoming expansion The Sunfire Chronicles. However, the announced Legends of Grayskull RPG based on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe has been placed on indefinite hiatus and it’s unclear if Dire Wolf has access to the license for the property.
WizKids announced an expansion to their D&D Classics Collection featuring sculpts based on classic Monster Manual artwork. The Monsters D-F boxed set will include pre-painted miniatures of the displacer beast, doppelganger, efreeti, air elemental, earth elemental, fire elemental, water elemental, and ettin. The set will retail for $89.99 with a scheduled February 2023 release. This will follow the October release of the Monsters A-C set featuring an ankheg, basilisk, beholder, bulette, carrion crawler, chimera, cockatrice, and couatl retailing for $99.99. Coming in August 2023 is the Icons of the Realms: Adventure in a Box: Wererat Den collection. This boxed set comes with six pre-painted miniatures (four wererats, one swarm of rats, and one giant rat) along with nine pieces of terrain (small trash pile, large trash pile, rat’s nest, moldy cheese hoard, rotten table, prisoner, cage, rotten crate stack, sludge puddle, and a rat covered bone pile) with a six inch square double-sided map. The boxed set will retail for $99.99.
Ultra PRO announced their licensed Dungeons & Dragons products for the Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen. The Character Folio will come with empty sleeves inside, ten of which will be for standard 8 ½” by 11” (or A4) sheets of paper and two 9-pocket pages for spell cards. The folio will also come with a sticker sheet with over 50 stickers, most decorative but also fold-over tab and binding edge stickers. There will also be a playmat measuring 24 inches by 12.5 inches and a wall scroll on silky fabric with hanging rod measuring 26.8 inches wide by 37.4 inches tall. All accessories are scheduled for a December 2022 release and while no retail prices are yet available, similar products in Ultra PRO’s D&D line retailed for $10.49 for the folio, $21.99 for the playmat, and between $24.99 for the wall scrolls.
Entertainment collectible company Sideshow announced pre-orders for a collector’s edition Tiamat statue. And Sideshow has gotten into the spirit of the thing by presenting the details for the figure as an RPG stat block with skills such as “Dust Resistance +10” and “Attention-Getting +26”. The highly detailed statue stands 28 inches high and is 37.5 inches long with a wingspan of 31 inches standing on a15 inch wide and 16 inch deep base of craggy rocks and lava. Expect a bit of sticker shock even for the price of expensive D&D collectibles as the pre-order price for this statue is $1,980 with a Deluxe version that adds lights to each of the heads corresponding to its breath weapon for $2,145. The figure is expected to ship sometime between April and June 2023.
Paizo announced a partnership with Savagesparrow Studios for a line of clothing based on Pathfinder. The new line called Kit and Kaboomle will be a celebration of the goblins of Golarion “featuring peak chaos and epic explosions”. Savagesparrow Studios is an independent design store created by Jen Brazas with unique designs inspired by games, anime, and comics. Jen also appears on the Penny for a Tale live stream actual play of Pathfinder 2nd Edition. The line will feature a dress (with pockets), t-shirts, enamel pins, and a hoodie with more revealed. Attendees of PAX West get a peek at Booth TT7304, while the line will officially launch via a Kickstarter campaign coming soon.
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, 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.
