Hello everyone, Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! Errata for D&D and Pathfinder 2e, another preview of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, World of Darkness changing developers again, more information about the Terminator RPG, and more!
Don’t forget you can get all the week’s gaming news with Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk! This week, Morrus is joined by guest co-host Shane Stacks of Shane Plays to talk with returning guest Ed Jowett of Shades of Vengeance.
You can also find out the latest in RPG Kickstarters with Our Favourite Game in All the World, Guess the Kickstarter From Just the Name and Nothing Else. For the latest in RPG crowdfunding projects, check out Egg Embry’s RPG Crowdfunding News every week.
In case you missed it elsewhere on EN World this week…
Gizmodo has one final preview of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything highlighting the new group patron mechanic. Similarly to Eberron: Rising from the Last War, the new group patrons are a person or organization that the party works for and, in return, receives benefits from. Examples listed include Academy, Ancient Being, Aristocrat, Criminal Syndicate, Guild, Military Force, Religious Order, or Sovereign plus there are rules for being your own patron. Each example patron will come with their own perk, but DMs are encouraged to creating new perks that fit their campaign. The hardcover for Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything will be available in North America on November 17 and the rest of the world on December 1 for a retail price of $49.95.
Speaking of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, Wizards of the Coast has once again updated their Sage Advice Compendium with new rules clarifications for Dungeons & Dragons 5e to bring several rules in like with the upcoming sourcebook. Only two changes were made to the core rules: the Paladin ability Divine Strike cannot be used with an unarmed attack and clarification on how animate dead works on the bodies of creatures like zombies or ghasts. A new errata for Eberron: Rising from the Last War is now available and several updates to the errata for Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide.
The Pathfinder 2e Beginner Box is set for release next week. The set includes an 80-page Hero’s Book with a solo adventure (similar to the other Beginner Box offerings from Paizo, this is a choose-your-own-adventure style story to help choose a character class and create a character), and streamlined rules for character creation, skills, spells, and equipment. There is also a 96-page Game Master’s Handbook with an introductory adventure, over 20 pages of monsters, rules for creating your own adventure, and magic items. Finally, the boxed set includes four pre-generated characters, over 100 character and monster pawns, four rules reference cards, and a complete set of polyhedral dice. The boxed set will be available in mass market outlets on November 24 with a retail price of $39.99.
In time for this release is the second printing of the Pathfinder 2e Core Rulebook along with a new set of errata. Several changes were made to the Alchemist class to strengthen it, all classes gain proficiency with unarmed attacks, changes were made to the already-streamlined encumbrance system to make it easier to use, several minor changes to spellcasting to make the intent more clear, and more. You can find the full list of changes on the Paizo website.
Finally, Paizo has begun a new series of articles called No-Prep Characters, fully stated NPCs with a complete backstory read to drop into your games. The first in this series is Morlibint, Small-Town Bookseller. This fourth level wizard runs a wooden bookstore attached to his three-story stone tower stocked with books as mundane as novels and travelogues and as unique as rare tomes and arcane scrolls. In addition to the full character stats, the article also comes with three convenient plot hooks to make adding Morlibint to your campaign as interesting as possible.
The World of Darkness is undergoing yet another shake-up as Paradox Interactive is one again taking direct control of the game line. New books for the 5th Editions of Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse will be developed in-house by Paradox and published by Renegade Game Studios. The first book out of this new arrangement will be a free digital supplement titled Vampire: The Masquerade Companion this December which will have rules for the Tzimisce, Ravnos, and Salubri, the Disciplines related to those Clans, and rules for playing humans and ghouls. It’s unclear what will happen to work currently being done under previous licenses for Vampire: The Masquerade by Modiphius and Onyx Path and Werewolf: The Apocalypse by Hunters Entertainment. Paradox originally licensed out the lines following controversy surrounding the Vampire: The Masquerade 5e playtest document and later with the supplements Camarilla and Anarchs published by a new company Paradox formed using the White Wolf name.
There is a tiny bit more information about the Nightfall Games licensed adaptation of the Terminator series through a series of posts on their Facebook page. This new game will use the S5S system that is the core rules system for the second edition of Nightfall’s other big title, SLA Industries. This system uses six ten-sided dice (one success die and five skill dice) and Terminator will be the first game from the company built from the ground-up for this system. We’ll get our first look at this new system in December when a free to download quickstart will be available with all-new art, introductory rules, and a complete scenario. No release date has yet been announced for the full version of the rules.
Wizards of the Coast is auctioning off five pieces of Dungeons & Dragons art for charity. The five pieces are galley proofs of the mass market and alternate covers of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden along with the mass market cover for Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount. Bidding at the time of writing ranges from $150 to over $400, with proceeds from these auctions going to the charity Extra Life. These auctions run through Tuesday, November 17 at 11:00 AM Central Time.
The Game Manufacturers Association announced the cancellation of the GAMA Expo in March. The event held annually in Reno, NV, is an industry trade show meant for publishers to show off upcoming products to distributors and retailers and generally isn’t frequented by normal consumers. However, the cancellation months in advance indicates the trend that, at least in the United States, the pandemic is not at a stage where in-person conventions can resume. The GAMA Expo will instead be replaced by a four-day virtual expo spread over two weeks with a virtual exhibition hall on March 16 and March 23, a professional development day on March 17, and a friendly local game store day on March 27.
Fantasy Flight Games announced Descent: Legends of the Dark, the next in the Legends series of dungeon-crawl board games. While FFG says this is not a “third edition” of the game, they do say it is a ground-up redesign of the series. The biggest change for the series is that there is no longer a human “gamemaster” as the game will now be an app-driven fully cooperative story and narrative centered roleplaying board game. The core boxed set will have the first act of an ongoing campaign titled “Blood and Flame, with this first act split into 16 different quests and about 50 hours of gameplay. As you’d expect from the Descent series, the box is packed with 46 pieces of 3D terrain, 40 hero and monster miniatures, plus the assorted cards, tiles, dice, and other items necessary to play. Descent: Legends of the Dark is due for release in the second quarter of 2021 with a retail price of $174.95.
There are two big RPG bundles on Humble right now. The newest is the Conan bundle from Modiphius featuring Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of. The $1 tier features the Player’s Guide, a quickstart, a Free RPG Day adventure, the Art of Conan book, character sheets, and a coupon for 30% off the print copy of the core rules. The $8 tier adds on the core rulebook, gamemaster’s screen, and two sourcebooks while the top $15 tier has ten more sourcebooks to expand the game further. This bundle supports the Worldbuilders charity and runs until Wednesday, December 2. There’s also a few days left in the Dungeon Crawl Classics bundle from Goodman Games. This bundle features over $400 worth of adventures plus the core rules for the Dungeon Crawl Classics line. This bundle benefits the American Red Cross and runs until Monday, November 16.
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 where I’ll be streaming as soon as I get a proper night’s sleep, 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.
Don’t forget you can get all the week’s gaming news with Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk! This week, Morrus is joined by guest co-host Shane Stacks of Shane Plays to talk with returning guest Ed Jowett of Shades of Vengeance.
You can also find out the latest in RPG Kickstarters with Our Favourite Game in All the World, Guess the Kickstarter From Just the Name and Nothing Else. For the latest in RPG crowdfunding projects, check out Egg Embry’s RPG Crowdfunding News every week.
In case you missed it elsewhere on EN World this week…
- EN Publishing has a new Kickstarter, Advanced Rules Miscellany, a collection of plug-and-play optional rules for your 5e games including archery contests, battlefield events, chases, and more.
- EN5ider #361 is a mini-adventure for 5e, “Sword Village” for 5th-9th level where the players must unravel the mystery behind the village of Cedar Hollow and the massive sword hundreds of feet tall sticking in the ground in the middle of the town.
- Monte Cook Games has a new Kickstarter for the Cypher System, Heroes of the Cypher System, a superhero roleplaying game with Claim the Sky and a supplement for non-superpowered heroes in First Responders.
- Charles Dunwoody interviewed author Ben Aaronovich about the Rivers of London urban fantasy novel series and the upcoming Chaosium roleplaying game based on the books.
- Cubicle 7 released a new detailed map of Middenheim for Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, a massive poster-sized labeled map of the city-state.
- Keith Baker released a new 26-page sourcebook for the Eberron setting, Eberron Confidential which features a collection of character secrets to use as plot hooks and minor player abilities.
- Ben Reece reviewed the full six-chapter installment of Starfinder for Alexa and Incident at Absalom Station.
- Michael Tresca has a column about loss and working through grief using roleplaying games.
- Lewis Pulsipher’s new Worlds of Design column talks about the lost art of making things up and the use of imagination.
- Rob Wieland dives into the world of OSR with a review of Low Fantasy Gaming from Pickpocket Press.
- You can keep up with all the crowdfunding projects ending soon with Egg Embry’s RPG Crowdfunding News and all the RPG books and products coming out in print with Charles Dunwoody’s RPG Print News.
Gizmodo has one final preview of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything highlighting the new group patron mechanic. Similarly to Eberron: Rising from the Last War, the new group patrons are a person or organization that the party works for and, in return, receives benefits from. Examples listed include Academy, Ancient Being, Aristocrat, Criminal Syndicate, Guild, Military Force, Religious Order, or Sovereign plus there are rules for being your own patron. Each example patron will come with their own perk, but DMs are encouraged to creating new perks that fit their campaign. The hardcover for Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything will be available in North America on November 17 and the rest of the world on December 1 for a retail price of $49.95.
Speaking of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, Wizards of the Coast has once again updated their Sage Advice Compendium with new rules clarifications for Dungeons & Dragons 5e to bring several rules in like with the upcoming sourcebook. Only two changes were made to the core rules: the Paladin ability Divine Strike cannot be used with an unarmed attack and clarification on how animate dead works on the bodies of creatures like zombies or ghasts. A new errata for Eberron: Rising from the Last War is now available and several updates to the errata for Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide.
The Pathfinder 2e Beginner Box is set for release next week. The set includes an 80-page Hero’s Book with a solo adventure (similar to the other Beginner Box offerings from Paizo, this is a choose-your-own-adventure style story to help choose a character class and create a character), and streamlined rules for character creation, skills, spells, and equipment. There is also a 96-page Game Master’s Handbook with an introductory adventure, over 20 pages of monsters, rules for creating your own adventure, and magic items. Finally, the boxed set includes four pre-generated characters, over 100 character and monster pawns, four rules reference cards, and a complete set of polyhedral dice. The boxed set will be available in mass market outlets on November 24 with a retail price of $39.99.
In time for this release is the second printing of the Pathfinder 2e Core Rulebook along with a new set of errata. Several changes were made to the Alchemist class to strengthen it, all classes gain proficiency with unarmed attacks, changes were made to the already-streamlined encumbrance system to make it easier to use, several minor changes to spellcasting to make the intent more clear, and more. You can find the full list of changes on the Paizo website.
Finally, Paizo has begun a new series of articles called No-Prep Characters, fully stated NPCs with a complete backstory read to drop into your games. The first in this series is Morlibint, Small-Town Bookseller. This fourth level wizard runs a wooden bookstore attached to his three-story stone tower stocked with books as mundane as novels and travelogues and as unique as rare tomes and arcane scrolls. In addition to the full character stats, the article also comes with three convenient plot hooks to make adding Morlibint to your campaign as interesting as possible.
The World of Darkness is undergoing yet another shake-up as Paradox Interactive is one again taking direct control of the game line. New books for the 5th Editions of Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse will be developed in-house by Paradox and published by Renegade Game Studios. The first book out of this new arrangement will be a free digital supplement titled Vampire: The Masquerade Companion this December which will have rules for the Tzimisce, Ravnos, and Salubri, the Disciplines related to those Clans, and rules for playing humans and ghouls. It’s unclear what will happen to work currently being done under previous licenses for Vampire: The Masquerade by Modiphius and Onyx Path and Werewolf: The Apocalypse by Hunters Entertainment. Paradox originally licensed out the lines following controversy surrounding the Vampire: The Masquerade 5e playtest document and later with the supplements Camarilla and Anarchs published by a new company Paradox formed using the White Wolf name.
There is a tiny bit more information about the Nightfall Games licensed adaptation of the Terminator series through a series of posts on their Facebook page. This new game will use the S5S system that is the core rules system for the second edition of Nightfall’s other big title, SLA Industries. This system uses six ten-sided dice (one success die and five skill dice) and Terminator will be the first game from the company built from the ground-up for this system. We’ll get our first look at this new system in December when a free to download quickstart will be available with all-new art, introductory rules, and a complete scenario. No release date has yet been announced for the full version of the rules.
Wizards of the Coast is auctioning off five pieces of Dungeons & Dragons art for charity. The five pieces are galley proofs of the mass market and alternate covers of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden along with the mass market cover for Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount. Bidding at the time of writing ranges from $150 to over $400, with proceeds from these auctions going to the charity Extra Life. These auctions run through Tuesday, November 17 at 11:00 AM Central Time.
The Game Manufacturers Association announced the cancellation of the GAMA Expo in March. The event held annually in Reno, NV, is an industry trade show meant for publishers to show off upcoming products to distributors and retailers and generally isn’t frequented by normal consumers. However, the cancellation months in advance indicates the trend that, at least in the United States, the pandemic is not at a stage where in-person conventions can resume. The GAMA Expo will instead be replaced by a four-day virtual expo spread over two weeks with a virtual exhibition hall on March 16 and March 23, a professional development day on March 17, and a friendly local game store day on March 27.
Fantasy Flight Games announced Descent: Legends of the Dark, the next in the Legends series of dungeon-crawl board games. While FFG says this is not a “third edition” of the game, they do say it is a ground-up redesign of the series. The biggest change for the series is that there is no longer a human “gamemaster” as the game will now be an app-driven fully cooperative story and narrative centered roleplaying board game. The core boxed set will have the first act of an ongoing campaign titled “Blood and Flame, with this first act split into 16 different quests and about 50 hours of gameplay. As you’d expect from the Descent series, the box is packed with 46 pieces of 3D terrain, 40 hero and monster miniatures, plus the assorted cards, tiles, dice, and other items necessary to play. Descent: Legends of the Dark is due for release in the second quarter of 2021 with a retail price of $174.95.
There are two big RPG bundles on Humble right now. The newest is the Conan bundle from Modiphius featuring Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of. The $1 tier features the Player’s Guide, a quickstart, a Free RPG Day adventure, the Art of Conan book, character sheets, and a coupon for 30% off the print copy of the core rules. The $8 tier adds on the core rulebook, gamemaster’s screen, and two sourcebooks while the top $15 tier has ten more sourcebooks to expand the game further. This bundle supports the Worldbuilders charity and runs until Wednesday, December 2. There’s also a few days left in the Dungeon Crawl Classics bundle from Goodman Games. This bundle features over $400 worth of adventures plus the core rules for the Dungeon Crawl Classics line. This bundle benefits the American Red Cross and runs until Monday, November 16.
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 where I’ll be streaming as soon as I get a proper night’s sleep, 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.
