Hello everyone, Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! More D&D previews and a delay announcement, new Pathfinder playtest document out, Asmodee’s sale finalizes, a new game-based film announced by DreamWorks, and more!
The new Dungeons & Dragons adventure has gotten a lot of previews just in time to announce a delay. As part of the ExtraLife campaign from Wizards of the Coast, Nathan Stewart shared two pages of Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage detailing various quests that look a lot like the D&D equivalent of a video game sidequest. From paying debts in Skullport to finding magic items and spells in the vast dungeon of Undermountain to finding a missing noble, it looks like there will be plenty of hooks beyond simple dungeon crawling for DMs to exploit. Additionally, Fantasy Grounds posted their official preview for preorders of Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage featuring samples of artwork from the book along with game screens of a lot of monsters, NPCs, magic items, and locations – so many in fact that they’re obscuring one another on the screen leaving much left to still figure out. Unfortunately, it appears a printing issue has delayed the planned release by a week. The new release dates for the megadungeon adventure are November 9 in Play Network stores and November 20 to mass markets. The book is available for a retail price of $49.95 and is still available for pre-order with an updated date on Amazon (though accessories such as the map pack, which will also be delayed by a week, still have the original release date).
We’ve also received a new preview of The Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica courtesy of Amazon’s product preview page. The new preview features the front and back cover as before, but now includes the complete Table of Contents and the first page of Chapter 1: Character Creation. The biggest news from this preview is that your Guild choice will replace Backgrounds from the normal 5e rules, and that there will be extensive guidance for DMs and players in creating a party that works together within the setting whether they’re all from the same Guild or from separate Guilds. We also know how much content is available now, with sixty pages devoted to the guilds themselves, twenty-four pages on the city and world, ten pages of magic items, seventy pages of NPCs and monsters, and fifty-four pages on character creation options split into two chapters (Chapter 1: Character Creation and Chapter 4: Creating Adventurers). This plus additional content means a page count of 256 pages total. This book is also available in game stores on November 9 and in mass market stores November 20 with a retail price of $49.95.
The Pathfinder 2nd Edition Playtest received another update, making the current version as of this past Monday 1.5. This new update includes the adventure Red Flags which is meant to test higher level characters, specifically above 10th. The rules update overhauls the death and dying rules again, this time having a flat DC for Stabilize Checks equal to 10 + Dying Value (which is based on previous damage and number of times you’ve been knocked out in the combat) and a change for the Treat Wounds ability under the Healing skill to make it easier for higher-level characters to heal lower-level ones. Additionally, direct-damage spells are getting a small boost in damage with base values increasing without changing scaled damage. This is in addition to the normal tweaks and minor changes that each of these updates have had. You can find out more at the official blog post for the update, which now conveniently has links to download the update directly.
EN World is currently running a poll that’s very near and dear to my heart, and not just because it will influence the next episode of Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk podcast (which I do editing and post-production work on). This poll is for your favorite horror roleplaying game looking to find the Top 10 best horror games for spoopy fun…or abject existential terror depending on the system. Pick your ten favorites and, on next week’s podcast, find out what the results of the poll are! And no, I'm not trying to stack the deck as GURPS: CthulhuPunk isn't on the list at this time.
Asmodee, the largest hobbyist tabletop gaming company in the world, has officially been sold. PAI Partners closed its purchase today for approximately $1.4 billion from previous owner Eurazeo. Both the current and previous owners of Asmodee Group are financial investment and holding firms. No official changes to structure of Asmodee have been announced since Asmodee North America CEO Christian Petersen announced he would be leaving the company at the end of 2018, so it’s currently unknown if the new owners will allow Asmodee to maintain its hands-off approach to the tabletop publishers and distributors it’s acquired over the years in its massive buying spree of game companies. In fact, Asmodee announced another acquisition this week of ADC Blackfire Entertainment, a European distributor of games and toys in Germany, Czech Republic, and Romania. Asmodee Group and its subsidiaries publish most likely the vast majority of games you associate with hobbyist board and card games, including Catan, Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, 7 Wonders, Small World, and more others than can be listed as well as owning Fantasy Flight Games.
Catalyst Game Labs announced release dates for several products leading into the new year. In additional to reprints of several game products and BattleTech core rulebooks, a new edition of Shadowrun Crossfire was announced in the Shadowrun Crossfire Prime Runner Edition which updates the rules and expands on the deckbuilding card game with new characters and missions, out now with a retail price of $59.99. There is also the Shadowrun Crossfire: Prime Runner Refit Kit available for $24.99 which has all the components, cards, and rules for current owners to update the game to the new edition. New expansions for the licensed Dungeons & Dragons version of the Crossfire game, Dragonfire, were also announced. Out now is the Campaign Box: Moonshae Storms available for a retail price of $29.99. The Adventures: Corruption in Calimshan adventure pack will be out on November 14 with a retail price of $19.99, the Character Pack: Heroes of the Wild available for $24.99 and Adventures: Ravaging the Sword Coast for $19.99 both due on January 23, 2019, and Adventures: Sword Mountains Crypt releasing on February 6, 2019, with a retail price of $19.99. Finally, in preparation for the new BattleTech Beginner Box due out before the end of the year, the main rules reference guide for the system is back in print with a new cover. Yes, BattleTech: Total Warfare finally has the Atlas back on the cover for the current edition, available in PDF for $14.99 and in hardcover for $39.99 (though Amazon hasn’t updated with the new printing yet).
DreamWorks Animation announced it has greenlit a film based on the Plaid Hat Games adventure board/roleplaying game Mice and Mystics. Alexandre Aja is currently attached to direct, best known for horror films including the remakes of The Hills Have Eyes and Piranha 3D along with the French-language indie cult favorite High Tension. Aja will co-write the film with David Leslie Johnson, writer of eight episodes of The Walking Dead, the soon-to-be-released Aquaman film, and (at least according to IMDB) the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons movie (though I personally don’t buy that one). Johnson is also no stranger to horror as he wrote Orphan, The Conjuring 2, and The Conjuring 3 and is currently attached for the second reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Mice & Mystics is a cooperative adventure board game-roleplaying game hybrid where the players take on the role of loyalists to the king who have been turned into mice by evil magic as they escape the castle and its many dangers in order to save the kingdom, advertised for players age seven and up. I look forward to your comments trying to figure out the studio executive logic there because I don’t know either.
Humble Bundle has a new horror-themed roleplaying game bundle for 5e and Pathfinder, the Horror Unbound Stank Hog Bundle. The bundle includes adventures, settings, and DM’s tools such as collections of terrain and individual encounters and in-depth examinations of monsters and fantastical beasts. The bundle comes in two levels, the $1 level getting five DRM-free PDF books and the $7 level adding on an additional seven more with a total value of over $90. This bundle is available until November 11. And if that’s not enough horror for you, there’s the Tales of Horror bundle still available with novels, short story anthologies, and graphic novels from authors including Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Kelley Armstrong, Patricia Briggs, Anne Rice, Harlan Ellison, and more bestselling names in horror and urban fantasy. This bundle runs until October 31.
The Kickstarter for Americana came up on the podcast and I think Peter came up with the best elevator pitch: Shadowrun meets Happy Days. An alternate 1950s America full of drive-ins, big cars, teenage rebellion, malt shops, greasers, and more meets an urban fantasy world full of orcs, dwarves, elves, dragons, and more. Players take on the roles of teenagers using a unique lightweight D6 system where you balance your adventuring against your obligations of school, job, chores, and more. The PDF is available for a $10 and $19 to add on an at-cost hardcover. This Kickstarter is fully funded and runs until Thursday, November 1.
Going along with very unique games, Scherzando! is a musical tabletop roleplaying game. The GMless, diceless story game centered as much on the soundtrack as it does on the story, as you sing and play along with the game (or just hum or drum on the table for those not musically inclined). The main mechanic is based on emotion, as one player in each scene secretly selects one of five emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and tenderness) and trying to communicate that emotion to the other players. At the end, you guess what the secret emotion was and the more people who guess correctly, the better the scene turns out for everyone. The PDF is available for a $10 pledge and the physical copy available for a $26 pledge. This Kickstarter is fully funded and runs until Saturday, November 3.
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@enworldnews.comand you can get more discussion of the week’s news on Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk every week. You can follow me on Twitter @Abstruse where I’m going to announce some test streams for my new layout on Twitch as I get finish up Dragon Age: Origins, subscribe to Gamer’s Tavern on YouTube featuring videos on gaming history 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.
The new Dungeons & Dragons adventure has gotten a lot of previews just in time to announce a delay. As part of the ExtraLife campaign from Wizards of the Coast, Nathan Stewart shared two pages of Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage detailing various quests that look a lot like the D&D equivalent of a video game sidequest. From paying debts in Skullport to finding magic items and spells in the vast dungeon of Undermountain to finding a missing noble, it looks like there will be plenty of hooks beyond simple dungeon crawling for DMs to exploit. Additionally, Fantasy Grounds posted their official preview for preorders of Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage featuring samples of artwork from the book along with game screens of a lot of monsters, NPCs, magic items, and locations – so many in fact that they’re obscuring one another on the screen leaving much left to still figure out. Unfortunately, it appears a printing issue has delayed the planned release by a week. The new release dates for the megadungeon adventure are November 9 in Play Network stores and November 20 to mass markets. The book is available for a retail price of $49.95 and is still available for pre-order with an updated date on Amazon (though accessories such as the map pack, which will also be delayed by a week, still have the original release date).
We’ve also received a new preview of The Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica courtesy of Amazon’s product preview page. The new preview features the front and back cover as before, but now includes the complete Table of Contents and the first page of Chapter 1: Character Creation. The biggest news from this preview is that your Guild choice will replace Backgrounds from the normal 5e rules, and that there will be extensive guidance for DMs and players in creating a party that works together within the setting whether they’re all from the same Guild or from separate Guilds. We also know how much content is available now, with sixty pages devoted to the guilds themselves, twenty-four pages on the city and world, ten pages of magic items, seventy pages of NPCs and monsters, and fifty-four pages on character creation options split into two chapters (Chapter 1: Character Creation and Chapter 4: Creating Adventurers). This plus additional content means a page count of 256 pages total. This book is also available in game stores on November 9 and in mass market stores November 20 with a retail price of $49.95.
The Pathfinder 2nd Edition Playtest received another update, making the current version as of this past Monday 1.5. This new update includes the adventure Red Flags which is meant to test higher level characters, specifically above 10th. The rules update overhauls the death and dying rules again, this time having a flat DC for Stabilize Checks equal to 10 + Dying Value (which is based on previous damage and number of times you’ve been knocked out in the combat) and a change for the Treat Wounds ability under the Healing skill to make it easier for higher-level characters to heal lower-level ones. Additionally, direct-damage spells are getting a small boost in damage with base values increasing without changing scaled damage. This is in addition to the normal tweaks and minor changes that each of these updates have had. You can find out more at the official blog post for the update, which now conveniently has links to download the update directly.
EN World is currently running a poll that’s very near and dear to my heart, and not just because it will influence the next episode of Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk podcast (which I do editing and post-production work on). This poll is for your favorite horror roleplaying game looking to find the Top 10 best horror games for spoopy fun…or abject existential terror depending on the system. Pick your ten favorites and, on next week’s podcast, find out what the results of the poll are! And no, I'm not trying to stack the deck as GURPS: CthulhuPunk isn't on the list at this time.
Asmodee, the largest hobbyist tabletop gaming company in the world, has officially been sold. PAI Partners closed its purchase today for approximately $1.4 billion from previous owner Eurazeo. Both the current and previous owners of Asmodee Group are financial investment and holding firms. No official changes to structure of Asmodee have been announced since Asmodee North America CEO Christian Petersen announced he would be leaving the company at the end of 2018, so it’s currently unknown if the new owners will allow Asmodee to maintain its hands-off approach to the tabletop publishers and distributors it’s acquired over the years in its massive buying spree of game companies. In fact, Asmodee announced another acquisition this week of ADC Blackfire Entertainment, a European distributor of games and toys in Germany, Czech Republic, and Romania. Asmodee Group and its subsidiaries publish most likely the vast majority of games you associate with hobbyist board and card games, including Catan, Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, 7 Wonders, Small World, and more others than can be listed as well as owning Fantasy Flight Games.
Catalyst Game Labs announced release dates for several products leading into the new year. In additional to reprints of several game products and BattleTech core rulebooks, a new edition of Shadowrun Crossfire was announced in the Shadowrun Crossfire Prime Runner Edition which updates the rules and expands on the deckbuilding card game with new characters and missions, out now with a retail price of $59.99. There is also the Shadowrun Crossfire: Prime Runner Refit Kit available for $24.99 which has all the components, cards, and rules for current owners to update the game to the new edition. New expansions for the licensed Dungeons & Dragons version of the Crossfire game, Dragonfire, were also announced. Out now is the Campaign Box: Moonshae Storms available for a retail price of $29.99. The Adventures: Corruption in Calimshan adventure pack will be out on November 14 with a retail price of $19.99, the Character Pack: Heroes of the Wild available for $24.99 and Adventures: Ravaging the Sword Coast for $19.99 both due on January 23, 2019, and Adventures: Sword Mountains Crypt releasing on February 6, 2019, with a retail price of $19.99. Finally, in preparation for the new BattleTech Beginner Box due out before the end of the year, the main rules reference guide for the system is back in print with a new cover. Yes, BattleTech: Total Warfare finally has the Atlas back on the cover for the current edition, available in PDF for $14.99 and in hardcover for $39.99 (though Amazon hasn’t updated with the new printing yet).
DreamWorks Animation announced it has greenlit a film based on the Plaid Hat Games adventure board/roleplaying game Mice and Mystics. Alexandre Aja is currently attached to direct, best known for horror films including the remakes of The Hills Have Eyes and Piranha 3D along with the French-language indie cult favorite High Tension. Aja will co-write the film with David Leslie Johnson, writer of eight episodes of The Walking Dead, the soon-to-be-released Aquaman film, and (at least according to IMDB) the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons movie (though I personally don’t buy that one). Johnson is also no stranger to horror as he wrote Orphan, The Conjuring 2, and The Conjuring 3 and is currently attached for the second reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Mice & Mystics is a cooperative adventure board game-roleplaying game hybrid where the players take on the role of loyalists to the king who have been turned into mice by evil magic as they escape the castle and its many dangers in order to save the kingdom, advertised for players age seven and up. I look forward to your comments trying to figure out the studio executive logic there because I don’t know either.
Humble Bundle has a new horror-themed roleplaying game bundle for 5e and Pathfinder, the Horror Unbound Stank Hog Bundle. The bundle includes adventures, settings, and DM’s tools such as collections of terrain and individual encounters and in-depth examinations of monsters and fantastical beasts. The bundle comes in two levels, the $1 level getting five DRM-free PDF books and the $7 level adding on an additional seven more with a total value of over $90. This bundle is available until November 11. And if that’s not enough horror for you, there’s the Tales of Horror bundle still available with novels, short story anthologies, and graphic novels from authors including Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Kelley Armstrong, Patricia Briggs, Anne Rice, Harlan Ellison, and more bestselling names in horror and urban fantasy. This bundle runs until October 31.
The Kickstarter for Americana came up on the podcast and I think Peter came up with the best elevator pitch: Shadowrun meets Happy Days. An alternate 1950s America full of drive-ins, big cars, teenage rebellion, malt shops, greasers, and more meets an urban fantasy world full of orcs, dwarves, elves, dragons, and more. Players take on the roles of teenagers using a unique lightweight D6 system where you balance your adventuring against your obligations of school, job, chores, and more. The PDF is available for a $10 and $19 to add on an at-cost hardcover. This Kickstarter is fully funded and runs until Thursday, November 1.
Going along with very unique games, Scherzando! is a musical tabletop roleplaying game. The GMless, diceless story game centered as much on the soundtrack as it does on the story, as you sing and play along with the game (or just hum or drum on the table for those not musically inclined). The main mechanic is based on emotion, as one player in each scene secretly selects one of five emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and tenderness) and trying to communicate that emotion to the other players. At the end, you guess what the secret emotion was and the more people who guess correctly, the better the scene turns out for everyone. The PDF is available for a $10 pledge and the physical copy available for a $26 pledge. This Kickstarter is fully funded and runs until Saturday, November 3.
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@enworldnews.comand you can get more discussion of the week’s news on Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk every week. You can follow me on Twitter @Abstruse where I’m going to announce some test streams for my new layout on Twitch as I get finish up Dragon Age: Origins, subscribe to Gamer’s Tavern on YouTube featuring videos on gaming history 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.
