News and Advice Round-up

News and Advice

Chaosium is Under New Management (Again):
Moon Design is now part of Chaosium’s ownership group. Moon Design acquired the rights to Glorantha and the game systems RuneQuest and HeroQuest in 2013. This also prompted a change in leadership within Chaosium, “The four principals of Moon Design are the new management team of Chaosium. The new officers of the company are Rick Meints, President and Secretary; Jeff Richard, Vice President and Creative Director; Michael O’Brien, Vice President – Product Development & Community Outreach; and Neil Robinson, Chief Financial Officer.” This announcement also brought new hope in terms of receiving Call of Cthulhu 7e, it is on it’s way to the printers and should be available for Halloween 2015. Moon Design has had previous experience with Kickstarters and should be able to help get CoC 7e back on track.

Strange Aeons: A Lovecraftian Pathfinder AP: 
Pathfinder has finally joined in on adding the Mythos to their game. This adventure path will be released next August, and feature Mythos monsters. Unlike most Lovecraftian RPGs, like Call of Cthulhu, this will not be investigation based, focused more on killing the horrors. There will be insanity rules and a Corruption system. Wes Schneider is writing the first module, so it should be pretty interesting. I’m curious to pick this up, a huge part of Lovecraftian horror is that it’s inexplicable, so turning it into a monster hunt seems to miss the point. However, I trust Paizo enough to give it a chance!

Another Dungeons and Dragons Movie:
Warner Bros. and Hasbro have announced they will be making a Dungeons and Dragons movie. They already have a script by David Leslie Johnson, who wrote “The Conjuring 2” and “Wrath of the Titans.” Stephen Davis said, “This is such an enormous opportunity to bring the rich fantasy setting of the Forgotten Realms to life and, together with the creative powerhouse of Warner Bros., use movies to tell the stories that have enchanted passionate D&D fans for decades. D&D is the role-playing game that started it all and now we have the opportunity to ignite a franchise for its legions of avid fans in a way never done before.” I’m not holding my breath, every D&D movie I’ve seen has been not good, and what is great about RPGs is telling your own story.

Gen Con has record Attendance:
Gen Con attendance went up another 9%, making this the 6th year of growth for the convention. 61,423 people attended and there were over 400 vendors. I imagine it will only continue to climb, and I can’t wait to go next year.

Congratulations to Ennie Winners!:
Several TRF favorites won Ennies this year, including Horror on the Orient Express, The Strange, Numenera, Miskatonic University, and Roll20! Congratulations to everyone and thank you for putting out so much wonderful material for us to enjoy!

News and Advice Round-Up

News and Advice

Pour Over Lovecraft’s notes for At the Mountain’s of Madness
Lovecraft’s notes have been posted by Author Paul Tremblay on Instagram. It looks like you might have to sacrifice some sanity to decipher them. Just don’t stare at it for too long…

NASA Discovers Earth’s Older Cousin
“This particular planet’s combination of factors – including the type of star, the planet’s distance from it and its size – make it the closest analogue to Earth ever found, the scientists said.”

Kepler-452b circles a sun-like star about 1400 light-years away. It’s bigger then earth, but has a similar orbit around it’s sun. They’ve determined it is approximately 6 billion years old, giving it time to develop life if other important factors are present. This is super exciting as a geek, and is it wrong that my first thought went to how to incorporate the aliens that live on Kepler-452b into a game? I don’t think so.

4 Tips for Running Published Adventures
I run a lot of published adventures. I’ve only recently begun feeling comfortable enough to tell my own stories, or even change published adventures to make them my own. The railroad tracks are nice and safe. But I think the advice given here is a great way to let go of the railroad track set down in a published adventure. It’s alright, just let them go and embrace the story that is being developed between you and your players. It doesn’t mean you have to throw the whole story out, it just takes a little more work.

Meet the New Pathfinder Iconics
Pathfinder is releasing Occult Adventures on the 29th, and they’ve begun to introduce their new iconic characters. You can find them on Paizo’s website, or all the links are in the article I linked to. The new classes that will be available are occultist, spiritualist, psychic, medium, mesmerist, and kineticist. I’m interested to see how these new classes work in a game, but I can see them to be a little difficult at first to figure out exactly how to fit them in.

 

New Products

There’s a new expansion pack for Munchkin, which is full of a great evil. Well, it’s full of hipsters. It’s available on ThinkGeek for $9.95

Worlds Numberless and Strange was released this week, a supplement for The Strange. It has over 70 new recursions and great info for your Strange GM. I wrote a review here. You can get a copy on DriveThruRPG and the MCG Store. The PDF is $16.99 and the book is $44.99.

Sales and Bargains

DriveThruRPG is doing their Christmas in July sale, with 25% off thousands (and thousands) of PDFs. There are deals for Numenera, The Strange, Dresden, Achtung! Cthulhu, and more. You should check it out – it lasts for a week.
Lost Lands BundleFrog God’s settings and adventures written for Pathfinder

Looking for a Game?

We’re itching to try the Leverage RPG, and just need a few more players. We’re planning on trying for a Friday night. Interested? Email us at redactedfilespodcast@gmail.com!

News and Advice Round-Up

News and Advice

Cthulhu on Pluto
The New Horizons probe has made it to Pluto and started sending back pictures. So far no signs of the Mi-Go, but NASA has unofficially named one of the spots on Pluto’s surface Cthulhu. Whether or not this choice will lead to all of humanity’s demise is still unknown.
 

 

 

Roll20 Signs Monte Cook Games
Roll20 is now officially Monte Cook Game’s virtual gaming partner. This is pretty exciting news for those using Roll20 to play various Cypher System games. They’re integrating The Strange first, and you can currently get a Strange Starter Pack for free to help run your virtual games more smoothly. You can use this pack to do things like roll for Cyphers, play music tracks, and track XP with in Roll20. We haven’t tried Roll20 for our Cypher games since a grid isn’t necessary for the game, but this partnership is adding some great features that will improve your online gaming experience. You can also get specific modules for the adventures The Curious Case of Tom Mallard and The Dark Spiral.

 

Five Ways to Save Your Campaign from Summer
The summer can be very busy and with everyone’s busy schedules it can be hard to keep your weekly, or even bi-weekly games on track. Tribality has some advice on not letting these interruptions disrupt your game! We’ve had to skip some games this summer, but planning ahead and keeping a good calendar and everyone appraised has really helped us not miss too many sessions.

 

 

 

 

 

Things Worth Preparing
Every GM prepares for their sessions differently. However, things almost never go the way you think, which can throw all of your careful planning out the window. I also find a rigid plan for how the session much go is less enjoyable, players never enjoy being railroaded. But Sly Flourish has some great advice on what you should put time into prepping for your game.

 

GenCon!

How to Even GenCon: Advice from TheAngryGM
GenCon for the Cypher System Fan

Bundle of Holding/Gaming Deals

Fantasy Frontiers Bundle: A collection of Fantasy RPGs set in a wide variety of cultures including Native American, Indian, Viking, and Egyptian. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Ehdrigohr, the Native American setting, and the rest look intriguing as well.

Lost Lands BundleFrog God’s settings and adventures written for Pathfinder

Chaosium is having a sale on their classic PDFs, 25% off!

Looking for a Game?

We’re itching to try the Leverage RPG, and just need a few more players. We’re planning on trying for a Friday night. Interested? Email us at redactedfilespodcast@gmail.com!