Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Morris' unofficial tabletop RPG talk.

I am Ross, a.k.a.

Morris.

I am being attacked by a dog.

Or Morris, a.k.a.

Ross.

And with me this week is...

P.J.

Coffey from the Southampton Guild of Roleplayers and also Homebrew and Hacking PT RPG Design.

I am, as ever, delighted to be here.

joining us also we have someone who is absolutely fantabulous she provides the joys of the grown up in the room for the absolute madness that is Ian Publishing, left to his own devices it's the one.

It's me Jessica from Ian Publishing, and also if you're watching the live stream you would have seen Marvin on the screen who's also joining us and will occasionally attack Russ throughout the podcast We also have Hudson as well.

Don't leave that poor old Hudson.

I haven't seen him because he's sat on the floor behaving.

He is here.

Yeah, he is also here.

Hudson and behaving, those are not phrases that go together.

For those who remember, Marvin is, of course, the Ian Publishing Quality Control Officer.

Not anymore.

He got fired.

He got fired?

Why did he do too enthusiastic a job?

Oh, you know, budget cutbacks.

Wait, wait.

For HR reasons, we can't actually discuss it on the podcast.

But as mentioned we are recording live so if you'd like to join us we record live every Friday at 2pm UK time which is 9am Eastern time and you can catch that on YouTube, Twitch or Facebook or you can just listen to the podcast if you're listening to the podcast why change it if it's working?

So I was up here last week, I was poorly.

I was very, very, very poorly.

Basically, the week before, I had been out for Halloween to a very crowded party.

And both me and Sharon, my wife, came home and basically caught the plague, slash Ebola, slash malaria, slash, insert disease of your name.

Probably COVID, to be honest.

But we were not well.

We were not well.

Which is why I wasn't here last week.

But I'm back now.

I'm back.

And at full health, like Wolverine, I have recovered and regenerated, and I'm now at full health, 110% health.

Like Wolverine, that explains the haircut.

Yes.

The lack of a haircut.

The lack of a haircut.

I know, it's sort of going up spiky on the sides, a bit like Hugh Jackman.

Yeah, that's just a very, very bad application of hair product.

It was only, I wasn't thinking of that at all until you mentioned it, and I was like, oh, yeah, it's like Wolverine.

Yeah.

Maybe I am Wolverine.

Maybe I am.

Well, last week, though, well, the week before last week, I wasn't Wolverine.

I was Captain Kirk when I went away to this Halloween party.

And I thought, would you like to see some Halloween pictures?

Always.

Raveting podcast.

Postumed.

Let's go.

Yeah.

Well, you know.

Okay, here we go.

This is us for Halloween.

So there's me as Captain Kirk there.

Ah, yes.

Yes yes okay i can see that there's my friend al or your friend al also as um uh a killer rabbit of some kind is it not the bunny from donnie darko but also apparently so i've never seen donnie dark so i couldn't tell you there we go that makes sense yeah okay and then there's sharon there as count docula that's an epic count docula costume that is a full-on headpiece with like 3D Duck Bill coming out that she made all herself didn't she yeah completely made herself yeah out of foam and um.

That's I mean it's a top it's a top quality cosplay um really can't anyone else say it it's like yeah that's just like yeah that's Count Duck there's no guessing involved yeah no someone did think she was Orville, as in Keith Harris and Orville, I think they're just not very smart and have confused their green ducks.

Possibly.

But they recognized a green duck when they saw one.

There was one very, very drunk lady at the Halloween party.

Very drunk.

Who just came going up to Sharon and shouting, duck, duck, duck, duck.

Okay, yes.

Well done.

It's nice when you do a costume and someone else is enthusiastic about it, I guess.

I guess so.

I guess so.

That was the problem nowadays.

It's fine.

Yeah, yeah.

It's fine.

Very nice.

The other thing that happened this week was this arrived.

I'm very ordered.

I haven't actually opened yet, but this is the One Ring Starter set, Overhill and Underhill.

I'm not going to unbox it because it's not very good podcast type material, but I am looking forward to unboxing it after the show.

Oh, I'll see your copy of the One Ring.

Okay.

One, two, three.

One Voidrunners Codex.

I'm attempting to show the Voidrunners Codex, which is an absolute beast of a box set.

Yeah, well, I've forgotten to do it.

I've forgotten to bring scales.

You haven't weighed it.

I haven't weighed it.

I'll put it this way.

It probably weighs more than you do.

So if you could put it on a seesaw on the other end, it just wouldn't budge.

It's pretty hefty.

I have the weight somewhere, because I had to weigh the parcel, for calculating shipping costs and such.

Um and it's a lot it's the heaviest thing we've ever shipped yeah it's it it's like definitely over a kilogram oh yeah getting towards two three kilograms yeah like yeah i yeah i mean it's got like the maps and tokens i've got escape from death planet star captain's manual, The actual World Games Codex.

I believe there's a GM screen in here.

There is.

There is.

There's 30 double-sided poster maps as well.

Yeah.

Nice.

Yeah.

A lot.

Loads of Starship deck plans, which is really nice, because I think that works for other sci-fi TTRPGs you're doing.

Not that you would play another sci-fi TTRPG.

Well, if you want to play What's Old is New, for example.

You know right i let you off but i'll allow that one no but it's yeah the token sets are really good for that as well so um due due to a series of ideas that seemed like a good idea at the time i am currently running styles without number one week and 13th age the next week so just just i don't have any prep time at the moment and both those games you get you can basically run like Like off the cuff, you don't need any prep time for it, unlike any version of 5e, like any 5e I would say is probably one of the lower prep versions, just because I've got so many tools working for me, I don't have to think about so much stuff, but I don't That's a bit rude.

That's a bit rude Peter, you've got so many tools working for you.

Well, I don't normally like subscribing that fashion round.

I don't mean, sometimes you just don't have the time and it's nice to have something in your back pocket to run.

My last Sunday, I ran the Level Up A5E, the Valley of Misfortune that I've edited down into one shot because I've run that so many times now.

I can just quickly be like, yeah, I can run that because I know I've done it so many times.

And each time, every group does something different with it because it's a big exploration and people go different places.

but there's still one location that no one has been on in the 10 plus times that I've run it.

Really?

Maybe you should signpost it more.

Maybe you should literally put a signpost.

There's about seven or eight places that you could go in this haunted woods.

And if I was running it in a campaign, I'd take two to three sessions.

But for a one shot, I'm like, okay, they're going to do maybe three of them.

And there's one that just people haven't gone to just because of where it is.

And this group on Sunday got so close.

They were literally on the path and intending to go there, and then they got sidetracked by...

What you could have is have a small dog run up to them, look at them with puppy eyes, and then run off in the direction of the place that no one's ever yet been.

I did that with a shamblin' mound.

And it still didn't work.

But anyway, that's very funny starting Box Adventure, but that's what I run.

I also love Ten Candles as my go-to Zero Prep RPG as well.

but you have to have the right table and the right mood for that as well because it's sitting in the dark with lit candles and it's horror and, Not everyone likes playing horror.

No.

I tend to use Honey Heist because that's more my speed as a GM.

And it's bears, it's hats, it's doing heists.

I can talk about all those things.

It's like throwing a ball around in the park as opposed to doing a proper game of cricket or whatever.

Yeah.

You just get up and do it.

You don't have to practice much.

Anyway.

Oh, there's always the awfully cheerful engine.

Yeah, there's always that.

That is a good quick...

I still feel I need to do a little prep for Wolfly Cheerful because I usually like to run all the adventures we have, so I need to at least read the book.

But it's not an in-depth prep, anyway.

Can shambling mounds actually run?

No.

They should shamble.

They should shamble quickly.

But they shamble quickly, but because the size of them, a step for one of them, goes quite a distance.

It's kind of like when I walk next to a normal height person, I have to take three steps to see the person's every one.

Similar thing, but on a different scale.

I think they had legs, so I'll describe it more as a high-speed undulation.

Well, like, yeah.

Anyway, anyway, anyway.

Shall we get on with the news?

Because we're kind of like 12 minutes in and we haven't started yet.

So, let's get on with the news because the first minute news...

It is fun.

Dark Sun.

Dark Sun.

You know, we've had all these clues that Dark Sun's coming.

We've had the psionic Unarth Arcana over on D&D Beyond.

We had that Unarth Arcana that had a load of sort of defining and preserving magic type stuff.

All stuff that is very, very iconic to Dark Sun.

Well, now Wizard of the Coast has filed an application to register the Dark Sun trademark, one that had previously lapsed.

And actually got cancelled in 2024 by USPTO, UF something, trademark office, patents and trademark office.

I'm going to guess.

I'm going to guess.

They have re-registered.

They filed it on October 13th, 2025, so last month.

It's a trademark for downloadable electronic games, games and playthings, and entertainment services.

And it's very similar to the trademarks they registered for Spelljammer, Forgotten Realms, and things like that.

So we feel confident that it is Dark Sun.

It's one more clue in the big pile of clues.

Fair enough.

We do have someone in the comment asking about what the Dark Sun setting is.

So in a nutshell, could you explain, in case people are jumping in and aren't familiar with Dark Sun?

It's kind of a post-apocalyptic-esque kind of setting.

I've never played in a Dark Sun setting.

It's never been one that particularly appeals to me personally.

But it's pretty popular in a certain segment.

And basically there's these sorcerer kings which rule the land and there's lots of deserts, cannibal halflings.

It's quite a bleak kind of setting.

You've got magic can be fuelled by draining the life from the land.

It's called Defiling Magic.

That's not how they got into that trouble in the first place, didn't they?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's quite a big sort of Mad Max-esque, kind of fantasy Mad Max-esque setting, I guess, might be a good analogy.

But as I say, I've never played it.

It's never particularly appealed to me, but, you know, different strokes to different boats, as they say.

Yeah.

Well, there we go.

But we are sure it's coming next year.

We are sure.

I would be willing, if I were a gambling man, which I am not, but if I were a gambling man, I would be willing to bet on that.

How many dogs?

How many dogs?

Or this one for sure, because, well, hi.

He is determined today to be part of the show.

There he is in all his majesty.

Yeah, there he is again.

There he is again.

Yeah.

I just carried my face in here.

Yes.

Marvin, could you get off, please?

Get off.

He was maybe just excited about the next news item.

Do you think he was?

Yes.

Well, why would he be excited about the next news item?

It's not a good news item.

Well, I don't know what news item's coming next.

So you tell me.

It's a disappointing news item.

Oh.

So, the Forgotten Realms books, released in that there America in the last week or so, and in hobby stores and on D&D Beyond two weeks before that.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, we in Europe and those in Asia, and it's worse for those in Asia because they have to wait even longer, the books have been delayed.

Oh.

We don't know why, but in Europe, the release date is now December the 12th.

Oh.

Oh.

And in Asia, late January.

Wow.

There's somebody in charge of sales and operations at Wizard of the Coast that's unhappy with that, because having them out that close to Christmas is not good.

Because if you want your Christmas sales, you want them in the shops now.

Yes.

Yes, yeah.

I mean, they haven't given a reason.

There's so much going on right now, isn't there?

It could be anything.

I mean, my guess would be customs and tariff-y things, because across the world, customs.

and because there's so much shipping prior to Christmas and people wanting to get stuff for places, there's always backup at ports.

So, which is why any crowdfunded film we have that we think we can do in December, we always put January.

Because December's just ending on there.

Right above us, is this because book sales and our secondary, no, because it has been released in North America, is initially about shipping and something like that.

Yeah.

There's some blunders.

something's happened on that front we don't know the details but that's i mean it is being released digitally on the original date i think like two weeks ago isn't it two weeks ago yeah they're out and available so if you want the pds and you can get enough yeah i think it was a certain tier on dnd beyond like the mustard here got it two weeks ago and then november the 11th which was a couple days ago for the regular people, like us, normal people, should we wish to get such things.

They've also said, everyone thought of the Artificer is coming out later this year.

Eberron Ford with the Artificer as a December the 9th release date.

As a physical book, do you mean?

Yes.

They're going to advise on the status of European and Asian releases.

It was originally supposed to be released in August.

Then there were some printing errors, and it moved to December the 9th.

And now, it looks like, from what they're saying, European and Asian releases, just like with Forgotten Realms, will also be delayed again.

It's sounding like they're hinting, they're saying, get ready, get ready to be told that European and Asian releases are going to be delayed.

So there's something shipping going on.

Yeah, that's exactly it.

And I mean, someone said in the comments, because these books are printed in the US, so it's so easy to just get them out in that country and send it over to Canada as well, but getting them on the boat, I think it's just this time of year and ports and shipping.

That would be my guess yeah i mean i i was wondering because i know the 2014 players handbook was infamous for having production issues and quality issues like again the pages are coming out so they've upped the quality you expected and the public the publishers the actual printers themselves sorry are having trouble meeting these standards whilst also keeping up the rate for production, maybe I don't know I don't know it just seems a bit sparing, I mean good by the crew in chat says because we don't matter outside in the US today no it's not no it's just it's not the same thing without you, people inside the US don't matter I was just gonna say we print in Europe and Pets and Sidekicks is starting getting ready to go out to people in the UK and Europe because getting from the factory to the UK is a lot quicker than getting from the factory in Europe to the US.

So it's just that.

It's geography.

It's geography.

Geography.

Places that are closer are quicker to get to.

That's how geography works.

Man.

I know.

Okay.

And cheaper to get to that.

So there's the delay.

So I'd say if these books are on your Christmas list, pre-order it with your friendly local gaming store to make sure you get it in time.

Mm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it doesn't look like you'd better get everyone in time for Christmas, but hopefully you can get a copy of Forgotten Realms if you want to.

Yeah.

Okay.

Great.

So, Welcome to the Hellfire Club came out recently, which was the new starter set linked with Stranger Things.

Oh, because Stranger Things is coming back imminently, isn't it?

Yeah, a couple of weeks, I think.

Very, very soon.

November the 26th.

The final season of Stranger Things, Netflix, November the 26th.

Okay.

That's when it comes back.

So, we've covered this before.

We know it's out now.

There have been reviews out and all sorts of stuff about it.

But I thought it might be fun because what do you two know about the actual Hellfire Club?

You mean the real one, the real world Hellfire Club?

I don't.

In High Wigan.

Yeah.

That neck down, that cave and so forth, not too much, a bunch of nobles, too much time in their hands, too much money.

They were being edgy emo kids before edgy emo kids were invented.

That's what they look like.

How edgy and emo do they look?

I mean, it's a very fight for us.

So everyone on the podcast, there's tights and there's wigs and long coats.

I can't remember what those type of shoes are called, but the slip-on high heels that men wore.

Yeah.

They're wearing tights, high heels, long coats, man, and wigs.

Yeah.

So the original Hellcat Fireclub was started by the Duke of Wharton.

This was in the 18th century in London, and he was a man with a reputation.

A reputation as, and I quote, a drunkard, a rioter, an infidel, and a rape.

Wow.

I mean...

Certainly not let me have tea with him.

I mean, to be fair, to get that sort of reputation at that time, the man must have been putting away some serious quantities of alcohol.

Possibly, possibly.

One other member of the Hellfire Club was the fourth Earl of Sandwich, who famously invented the sandwich.

Oh, was it the fourth Earl of Sandwich?

Famous member of the Hellfire Club.

It was, unusually, a mixed club.

Most clubs back then were basically for gentlemen only, as most private clubs were at the time.

This was a mixed club.

Women were also allowed to be members.

Actuiscandalous.

Quite scandalous, I know.

Well, ladies of good health would certainly not attack.

Well, they're like a little domino mask.

It'd be completely...

I don't know.

Well, the members tended to be high society.

Yes.

And they were interested in taboo activities.

And by taboo activities, we're mainly talking, drinking.

Blushing a bit of ankle.

Dambling.

Dambling.

And religious ceremonies.

Wow.

You really did have to make your own statements in those days, didn't you?

Well, there was no Netflix, you say.

Oh.

What were you going to do?

There was no TTRPG podcast you could listen to, so you just had to, you know, you had to drink gamble and have mocked on in the ceremonies instead.

And indeed no TTRPGs either.

Wow.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, it sounds like a proto-lock to me.

I guess.

Do you know who the president of the club was?

No, go on.

The dog.

The devil.

Not the dog.

Maybe the dog in that picture is the devil in disguise.

Who knows?

He heard the word dog, and here he is.

Oh, there's a real devil in disguise.

This is the real devil in disguise.

Off you get Marvin, please.

So, it was tongue-in-cheek, though.

They weren't devil worshippers.

They referred to themselves as devils, and it was kind of in a tongue-in-cheek, religious...

They were a mocking religion, essentially.

Yeah.

Wow.

Over the years, there were lots of clubs across Britain and Ireland called the Hellfire Club.

over the decades and centuries.

Um, the most notorious of these was the one that you mentioned earlier, which is the new one in High Wycombe.

And it was known at the time as the Border of the Friars of St.

Francis of Wycombe.

And it was run by a chap called Francis Dashwood in the 1750s.

That's right.

Yeah, yeah.

That's Gringsville.

And the motto of that club was, I mean, I'm going to mangle my French here.

Any French speakers will have cringed at that, but do what thou wilt.

Do what thou wilt.

A phrase later used by the infamous vocalist, Anastasia Crowley.

Yes, which is a takeoff from quicker, which was, because he went with, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, as opposed to do what thou wilt and harn no one." So this club are met at the George and Vulture Inn, which is our restaurant to this day in London.

So you also mentioned the High Wycombe Caves earlier.

So typically, the meetings were held at members' houses, riding clubs and inns, but at one point the Hellfire Caves near High Wycombe were used.

And these are now a tourist spot.

You can go visit them yourself.

That's true.

Yeah.

All right.

Excuse me one second.

I have two dogs fighting right behind me.

You two, come on, stop it.

No.

No.

Anyway, the High Wycombe case.

The name is also used to refer to a gentleman's club which exists to this day in London called Brooks.

It was founded in March 1764.

Still exists to this day.

It was also the name of a group of mutants in the Marvel comics.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Goodness.

Yes.

I find the costumes quite telling there.

Like all the men are wearing suits and all the women are wearing their underwear, basically.

Yeah, that's fair.

Who'd have thought that in graphic novels and comics?

Yeah, yeah.

High-weights and bustiers, it looks like.

Yeah, yeah.

Slightly bigger than the tree string, maybe?

And cloaks, to be fair.

So they've got that going on.

Capes.

Yeah, yeah.

No, they're cloaks.

Capes are for riding.

They only go down to like about mid-waist.

Do they now?

They do.

Well, I understand why they wanted the full cape, because they need something to keep them.

Superman's cape and Batman's cape don't only go down to the mid-waist.

Like, basically, you couldn't sit on a horse in those sort of cloaks, because it's too long.

So, never mind.

You don't care.

I don't care, River, so let's move on.

It's just like, yeah, those are cloaks, not capes, but anyway.

PJ gave up the will there.

We saw him real soon, PJ going, I don't care enough to fight about this.

But my arguing for us is just like, no, no.

Anyway, it's also very trivial.

Wow.

There you go.

Ed Mermot said no cakes.

Anyway, of course, the Hellfire Club was also the D&D Club run by Eddie Munson at Hawkins High in Stranger Things, which is where we come full circle back round to.

Welcome to the Hellfire Club.

There you go.

I thought we'd just do a quick little dive into the origins of the actual real-world Hellfire Club, just so people who haven't heard of it might get a little bit of context of where that name came from.

Yeah, thanks for that.

I didn't know.

Oh, yeah.

I was unaware.

I suppose it wouldn't be common knowledge, would it?

Oh, yeah.

It's going to be a little bit of fun.

A little bit of fun, just to dive into it.

All right, cool.

Maybe we'll find out in this new season of Strange Things where and when the Hellfire Club started.

Well, we know where, probably not at high school, but when did it start?

Well, he's dead now, isn't he?

Eddie, you ran it?

Oh, spoilers, sorry.

No, we know.

Oh, come on.

If you haven't seen the last days.

In fairness, we don't actually know for sure because we didn't see it, did we?

I don't recall him.

Yeah, he was pretty unambiguous.

It was a really, really long time ago.

All the actors, all the teenage actors are now 45.

I couldn't tell you what happened.

Yeah, but, you know, that's our time.

But anyway.

Yeah.

Anyway, right.

Hey, Jess, one of your favourite comics coming up.

Let's talk about Baldur's Gate 3.

Everyone take a shot.

Hey!

So do you recall that with the New Forgotten Realms books, there was going to be some DLC, downloadable content, to go along with the books?

Yes.

There were four pieces.

Yes.

Yes.

And we've got a quick look at two of those pieces.

The first was Astarian.

Astarian or Astarian?

Astarian?

Astarian.

Astarian.

Astarian.

Starling.

Starling.

And the other was Netheril's Fall, are two of the ones that we've got a quick look at.

So Christian Hoff has written a sort of first impressions look at each of these two.

Okay, great.

One of which he was more impressed with than the other.

Oh, okay.

So let's start with Astarion's Book of Hungers.

Basically, his criticism of this is it costs $15.

Okay.

And it's quite skimpy for that $15.

Oh, okay.

Is basically what he's saying.

I mean, it's like there was $60 for Heroes of Therun, and that had 194 pages.

This has a fraction of that for $15.

Mm-hmm.

And it's, you know, online only.

It's not available in physical format.

So what you get in this is three backgrounds, a collection of vampire-related feats, a handful of new monster stat blocks, and three kind of stripped-down adventures.

You know, like the ones in the 24 DMG, which are like a page each?

Yeah.

Yeah, so three of those, all of which are set in the Rats Run Tavern and themed around Astarian's vampire spawn family.

It feels like it's at least $5 overpriced.

I'd be like, oh, $10, I could see it.

It's really more of a $5 to $8.

Bear in mind that we sell our Adventurers Guide, which is 600 pages for about $20.

So $15 for a handful of pages is...

Impediat.

Just clarify it for $400.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

But, like, it's a digital-only release.

And, like, yeah, it's a proven brand.

It's got the various things.

But still, it's like, like, this $15 is maybe twice what it feels like it should cost.

Yeah, yeah.

And, like, can I get that?

Market's charging.

Let's put it that way.

Yeah.

And, I mean, I get it.

Because, like, I'm wondering, because you basically get this because you want to play, like, a vampire character.

Yes.

You know, you play Baldur's Gate 3 and you're like, that's really cool.

I'd love that in my D&D home game.

And they're like here you go i know it has other stuff in like it has you know the adventures and stuff but i think the majority of people would look at this for the player facing content because they want to you know want to do that and if you if you compare that to prices or other things if you're buying a particular um heritage and or is it ancestry or heritage in dnd now whichever one of those they're calling it uh species yeah species in dnd we we use heritage pathfinder The user's ancestry.

That's what I'm getting.

You know what I meant.

So normally, if you're picking another species or player class, how much does that normally cost in D&D Beyond?

It's not 15 quid.

Yeah.

I mean, to be perfectly honest, if you wanted to play a half vampire elf.

Level up, advanced fifth edition, has got an elf stat block you could use half of.

And you can give it one of the starts of the vampire feats, which are included all for free.

Just use that and save yourself $15, and it will work just as well it's not better and it also has some extra expansion feats as well I'm just throwing that out there yeah honestly I mean I think a lot of people or use the vampire feet, on top instead of like the regular background ones there you go custom background jobs are even easier, Yeah.

What about the other one?

I shouldn't complain, but that's very naughty to me.

But honestly, it's $15.

Rude.

Yeah.

But the other one, also $15, is a little more substantive, a little more beefy.

So this is Netheril's Fall.

It's a desert here for the Lost Kingdom of Netheril.

It's like an overview of the kingdom.

Look at two of its cities.

One of them is a flying city, and one of them is a regular old, you know, land-bound city.

I mean, come on.

land-bound cities.

God.

Who would be interested in such a thing?

The pools.

Well, I never.

It's got some magically themed environmental hazards, a collection of mini-adventures, again, in that same one-page style.

So it's a mini-gazetteer.

It's not as...

If you've got adventures in Faerun, it's not as chunky as the...

Because that's got, like, five regions detailed.

It's not as chunky as one of those no but it is more chunky than Astarian's Book of Hungers yeah, this did interest me because I don't know much about Netheril or you know Nethery's Magic my only introduction to it was from Baldur's Gate 3 which I don't know if you haven't played it but if you follow some storylines you can learn a lot about it.

And yeah and it was interesting but it doesn't go into the full detail than Baldur's Gate because it's like a, the background for other things going on.

But yeah, I was interested in the whole thing and it was interested.

It's good and glad to hear that it's well-reviewed.

Well, is it well-reviewed, fair to say?

I mean, no, I wouldn't say that.

I'd say better reviewed than Astarian's Book of Hungers.

He does say he's a little underwhelmed by it.

His main problem is, well, he hasn't got a problem with the amount of content in this one because it is a bit chunkier than the other one.

It doesn't feel very fantastical given that netherworld was supposed to be in an ancient clay magic society, oh yeah because that's what I was excited about because the bits you hear you're like oh that sounds sounds pretty fun like this is all interesting and that sounds weird bit of a like your like high magic and fantasy it's like you know, yeah break out the weird stuff it's a different type of magic as well because it's tapping into a different thing and it's, yeah oh that's a shame but it's not because you've it is The criticism is the very thing I was excited for.

Huh, maybe I won't.

I am.

I was never going to buy it.

Why am I acting like I was going to buy it?

I mean, you have to be a Forgotten Realms fan to buy it in the first place.

Yeah.

But you are not.

I'm just stubborn.

I've never bought a D&D product and I will continue to never do a thing.

It's my most stubborn thing.

You'll never ever buy a D&D product.

It's become my stubborn thing now.

I mean, you do work for a company that makes it, so why not?

We don't make D&D.

And also, Jess doesn't buy you the books that we make, does she?

Oh, well, exactly.

I know, it's like, well, D&D, the popular lexicon, it's like, this is, it's all the same stuff.

I mean, never mind.

I meant, sorry, Wizards of the Coast.

I've never bought a Wizards of the Coast product, and I know that's not true, because I bought a lot of Magic the Gathering.

So much back in the day well that's probably made up for it yeah probably made up hardboard crack yeah yeah yeah oh right Starfinder.

Exciting Starfinder Starfinder Starfinder in a slight spin here we have got some well we haven't got some Savage Sparrows has which is a studio has partnered with Paizo to produce an officially licensed bunch A bunch of apparel and accessories for Starfinder 2nd Edition.

Cute.

It's Amanda.

So in these things, we have a dress with pockets.

Yeah, I was going to ask my first question.

It's got pockets!

We have T-shirts.

We have pins.

We have a snapback cap.

This is the Cosmic.

The thing that you can see here is the Cosmic Features dress, which is a stator dress.

I'm not sure what a skater dress is as opposed to any other type of dress.

Is that style and cut of dress the picture you can see?

Okay.

There's different dresses and different names so you can know.

I believe you.

Thank you.

I believe you.

I feel validated.

So other items include the Captain Concierge T-shirt.

Captain Concierge, if you recall, was that cute little thing that you like.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is a helpful Starfinder AI.

And he has a tiny hat.

A tiny hat.

Delightful.

Yeah.

Little Captain's hat.

Yeah.

And then we've got four zinc alloy pins.

These include the squawks, the itch-tickery, the anxious mahoi.

Which is like a shark-like guardian spirit.

Get off.

Get off, Marvin.

A shark-like guardian spirit for gender non-conforming individuals.

There we go.

I don't have a picture, unfortunately.

I've only got this one picture.

I think it's on the dress.

Wow.

I can't see it.

Yeah, I think I can see it there.

But anyway.

Yeah.

Cool.

So, 10% of the post-campaign sales, so not the, because it's on Kickstarter, not the sales, presumably the Kickstarter tags, but post-campaign sales that the Cosmic Creature dress will go to the Trevor Project, which is a charity dedicated to crisis intervention and Suicide Prevention for LGBTQ Young People.

Yep.

And the estimated delivery for this collection is February to March 2026.

Cool.

I think if you're a big Starfinder fan, that sounds good.

And the dresses have pockets, which was going to be my main question.

So, because, you know, you can use that to distribute feminist propaganda.

Yeah.

Pockets.

That's why there was a big anti-campaign about pockets for women at suffragettes time.

Why are you like pockets?

You're some sort of feminist and they're like, ah!

Wow.

You can't be able to do pockets.

I've learned a new thing.

I've learned a new thing today.

Anyway, so...

Although when we went out for Halloween, we had a bit of a problem because neither of us had pockets.

Meh.

Well, they don't have them on Star Trek, do they?

Well, yeah, my Star Trek trousers didn't have pocket.

They had phasers and communicators held on by Velcro, apparently, in the show.

They'd have like a Velcro belt underneath the tunic and a Velcro patch on the side of the phaser and the communicator, and they'd stick on.

And I do have a phaser and a communicator.

I was too nervous to risk going to a crowded place full of drunk people who then held on just by Velcro.

I was like, I'm not getting them.

That happens.

So I didn't take them off.

Yeah, I found a lot of spacey costumes because I'm going to, as you are, going to be the captain of a space station in February in a LARP.

And I'm getting my costumes together.

And I was like, I have no pockets in this, so I hope I do not need to carry anything because it's, yeah.

Well, I had a phone, which was awkward.

I had to sort of find ways to carry that.

I kept it in my boot for quite a bit at the time.

Your boot?

Yeah, that's the only thing I had to put it, the only place I could put it.

That's been quite uncomfortable.

It was like a Star Trek boot.

it came up almost to my knee.

Oh, okay.

So it was quite high up.

Okay.

So it was fine.

Yeah.

It wasn't like standing.

It wasn't like...

Yeah.

What I'm hearing is that in Star Trek, we should expect them to really be wearing more bum bags.

I guess so.

But they're not.

For our American listeners, that's a fanny pack.

We don't have to explain everything to Americans.

They are clever people.

They can work things out by context.

They don't explain everything to us.

They don't go sidewalk.

Oh, for our British listeners, that's a pavement, do they?

We don't have to do it either.

They're clever people.

That's a more ethnocentric difference in cultures.

So, anyway.

Well, they're all working out better.

You don't deal with the plastic services either.

Especially our listeners.

Our listeners are especially clever.

They're especially clever and well-rounded.

did and they were working out.

Anyway, next.

What's next?

The One Ring because this obviously arrived today.

I've got a surprisingly large collection of One Ring stuff I've realised.

I picked up when I sorted out my shelves the other week.

Half a shelf full of One Ring stuff which none of which I played.

Really must fix that problem.

If you don't grab it now when the Tolkien's like yoinks back the license you won't be able to get it anymore will you so it's through your boots now, I have a One Ring campaign that is due to start as soon as we finish the Warhammer campaign we're in.

So I'm ready and primed, but I too have a stack of One Ring stuff.

I really want to play it.

I want to play the Mario campaign.

I'm going to learn the Mario campaign at some point.

But this bit of news is not the Mario campaign.

This is called Hands of the White Wizard, which Free League Publishing has announced.

It's an adventure anthology for the One Ring.

And it features well I think you can guess who it features Saruman so you can choose to either serve Saruman or you can spy on him.

There's six adventures leading up to the beginning of the War of the Ring pre-orders are available now with a PDF immediately available, I'm sure like the other one link stuff I will pick this up because I seem to be accidentally doing that with the Warpenshirt display.

I don't even know why if you actually haven't played any of it.

But, you know, no one's right.

It's pretty.

It's from Free League.

It's pretty.

It's got Lord of the Rings on.

I mean, I can think of very little that would make finer rest bait.

Maybe if they somehow worked Star Trek in there as well.

Yes.

Yeah.

Modiphius is doing Star Trek for us.

Yeah.

And have you collected all the Star Trek stuff?

No, I've got very little Star Trek stuff.

Very little.

Interesting.

I have an entire Star Trek shelf up there, which I don't think you can see.

And the dogs are right again, because I dared move, which was clearly a signal to be pounced upon.

I have an entire Star Trek shelf up there, but most of it's faster stuff than back in the 80s.

I think there's literally just one single Magithius Star Trek up there.

I think that's all I've got.

You got the tricorder.

Oh, yes, I've got the tricorder over there, too.

Yes, I know.

I have that one.

Yes, and the dice.

The dice, the funny dice.

Wow.

Yeah.

I know you've got some funny dice.

Yeah.

Shall we move on?

Shall we move on?

Okay, next.

Fantasy Browns.

Oh.

So up until recently, it has been kind of a premium option for Virtual Gemini users, $50 for a license.

It launched in 2004.

It's an old platform, but it's been around for over 20 years.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you pay $50 for a license.

It was a downloadable thing, which you had to host on your computer.

You can get it on Steam as well, or you can buy it separately.

It's a standard thing.

And then, additionally, you would have to buy the games and modules you wanted to use with it.

So it wasn't the cheapest option out there, by any means.

No.

As of this week, it has gone free.

So that's the $50 license is going free.

Obviously, the adventures and modules are not, because they're sold by third parties in their marketplace.

Well, they're licensed.

They're sold by Fantasy Grounds.

But they've got Dungeons & Dragons.

they've got Pathfinder, they've got Level Up Advanced 5th Edition, they've got Traveller, they've got loads of stuff.

Loads of stuff.

All the big names you can think of, they've pretty much got them.

Over 50 major game systems, more than 3,000 products.

Lots and lots and lots of stuff.

So now you can...

Download and run the virtual tabletop itself, the application itself, for free.

No license needed.

But then, of course, you still have to buy it when you could play D&D on it.

You still have to buy, you know, the players' handbook or whatever.

You still have to buy the systems.

And that's a big, big risk for them, I guess.

It's a big change because they've gone for 20 years on a very different model and they've just gone free.

Well i think the hand has been sort of forced in many respects because like there's been a real proliferation of tape props roll 20 has always been free with a premium option strong model there's a good 40 or 50 virtual tabletops out there now most of which are free yeah yeah and you've got founder out there which just looking at his screen seems to be doing very similar things which is paid for but you don't have to have everyone having a coffee so I can see that, maybe they're looking at their user numbers like well time to join the free-to-play bandwagon yeah I guess so.

Does Foundry cost a license?

I can't remember I've actually got Foundry but I've opened it once or twice and gone this looks complicated and closed, yeah not the easiest thing to use but um to host to host it costs but um people can just like dial in show manager um and play really really quite easily um and probably the other major factor is having a server like uh i found out my internet provider doesn't have a static address or some description I don't know the details so I can either pay 20 quid to my internet service provider or I can pay $50, has Roll for Combat which is a one-time fee $50 per year.

To, like, have a...

The Forge, I think, is what they use for, is the semi-official...

Well, it's very popular.

It works very well.

And, yeah, I'm just not running online games at the moment, but it's good.

So, yeah, it's a welcome change to see...

Because, I mean, I must say, this Fantasy Grand stuff does look pretty mint.

It's just the costs of entry have just been too high for me to contemplate it.

Oh is that for okay right well um i don't know if if brawl combat is talking about foundry or about fantasy grounds because certainly um foundry tried to charge me 50 the force tried to charge me 50 for a renewal fee so there we go um but somebody's charging 50 dollars to host for, forever for free.

So there we go.

Very exciting.

Anyway, so basically, it was kind of Foundry and Fantasy Grounds were kind of comparable price-wise over here now.

And I guess Foundry and Fantasy Grounds were the most similar two as well, both being downloadable applications rather than just in your browser like Roll20.

So I guess I guess Foundry was probably Fantasy Grounds' biggest competitor, Yeah, I think the adoption by the Pathfinder 2nd edition community.

Probably sealed the deal in some respects because I didn't think you could play anything else on it for a while because they were the only people I saw talking about it.

But yeah, I was wrong, but it's very popular.

And I can see why it just takes a lot of the strain off the GM, which is a really good thing for online play.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

They've also got another thing called an online reader they've just launched.

Oh, okay.

Which basically means it's a web-based compendium.

So your Fantasy Grounds library, you can now browse the content of it from your browser.

I assume beforehand you had to do it from within the application.

Ah, right, right, right.

Okay.

So maybe you could do it like maybe on your phone or a tablet or just some other device.

Yeah.

It's useful to have that availability.

Yeah.

Good luck to them.

Good luck to them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In the old virtual tabletop wars, and there's so many of them now.

I mean, I think last time we counted them, there were 27 or 28, and that was like three or four years ago, I think.

And now it's like easily 50 or so.

Possibly more.

There's so many of them out there.

Well, I think EM Publishing is moving into that space as well, aren't you?

Slowly.

I mean, we're concentrating on the character building and stuff now.

And campaign management tools.

But yes, eventually, yeah.

I'm quite looking forward to that.

Good to see.

Yes, us too, us too.

But it's some way off.

It's slow progress and there's a lot of work.

yeah yeah okay um i think the next uh news item was one that you put up there peter affinity studio yes yes so last week uh it was last week wasn't it yes yeah we talked about um the fervorance of the affinity versus adobe conflict um adobe the industry leader there's know two ways about it um massively annoying for many professionals because they have a very high subscription fee um and it's just like it is a constant drain uh affinity uh.

Gained huge amounts of customers when Adobe switched to using AI and using artists', work without seeking commission.

So that was a big thing.

So there was a lot of worry when Affinity said it was going to be producing something large on the 30th of October.

There was a lot of people in...

I'm trying to just say what Affinity is.

What is Affinity?

Affinity is like Adobe.

It is a suite of programs which lets you do graphic design things.

I have all three Affinity programs.

I use precisely one of them because I know what that one does, sort of.

Okay.

So the equivalent from Adobe would be InDesign or something like that.

Because that's the one I'm familiar with.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's like InDesign.

It's a graphic designed software.

Yeah.

You've got Affinity Publisher, Affinity Photo, and Affinity Designer.

So it's InDesign and Photoshop.

Yeah.

Okay.

The equivalent of.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that was the version two, which the advantage was you paid once and then it was yours, which sounds like, so what?

But it's basically everybody's trying to rent you their software nowadays and many people like myself are like, no, I'd rather just buy it one time.

And it was quite a reasonable price.

So I ended up buying all three, even though as is very clear to any listeners, I have no idea what a couple of these things do.

Moving on, a 33.0 is free online, and if you create a Canva account, you have access to it.

It's quite a big deal.

There's, like I say, in the show notes, Clayton Notestine has produced an extensive review about it.

Long and short it's still it's very customizable um but it's it's not as polished as adobe, but you know it's it's doing a lot of the things you want to do and how to say free is a very hard price to beat yeah uh concerns are in place and uh we don't agree rightly in fact we were having a little chat prior to the podcast about the use of canva who own affinity because they do use ai but they are uh unusually for such companies being pretty forthright about their intended uses and saying yes you can switch it off so yeah it's it's interesting and it's a lot less money like than adobe like there's a significant chunk of change that people lose to pay for it so yeah it's um it's quite a big deal so yeah we've got a fairly in-depth review i don't understand all of, I guess the question I would ask is, because I know if I use, for example, Pages on my Mac, I can still load a Microsoft Word file into it.

If I were someone who decided to switch from, I'm not a layout designer myself, but I know that all our layout designers use it, mainly because they can share the files and someone can pick up on a product someone else has been using or pick up a project or do a new version of a product years later.

Can you take a project which has been designed in InDesign and load that into Affinity?

That would be the sticking point, I think.

I know if you create stuff with Affinity 1 or version 2, you can take it into Affinity 3, but you can't take it back.

You don't know if you can load in an InDesign file.

Yeah, but I don't believe that they said about it.

Or because...

Just having a quick look through the article.

If you want to go back to Affinity 2, well, it says you can open these files.

There are quite a few export options, including SVG and PSD.

But if you want to go back to Affinity 2 or InDesign, we're out of luck.

And that's the biggest problem they have with it.

Yeah, so that's going to be a problem when you've got people on different platforms working on similar projects or having to hand over products.

Yeah.

I think if you're in a place where you have a product that lots of professional designers are working on, I think Affinity, and the reason we're talking about it on the TTRPG news, is because this is really useful for a lot of smaller creators that perhaps are doing their own layout because you can't afford a graphic designer to work with.

So you're like, I need a tool to lay this out and get it to print.

This is something that you could access as a small creator if you're doing it all yourself.

So I think that might be a lesser concern for that end of the market.

But obviously if you're If you're hiring graphic designers to...

Oh, yeah, yeah.

This is very much coming at it from the micro-publisher point of view.

Yeah.

I won't say...

I like to say micro-publisher because it makes me sound scrappy rather than one-man band, which I dislike for many reasons.

What about...

At least for which I can't blame these instruments.

What about craft or, you know, cottage industry?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Artisanal TTRVGs.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I can be a hobbit in the cottage or something.

That's right.

That's me.

Hand crafting like a little chisel and hammer just make them sound like really really high end rare products think of it like what's the most expensive rare car brand like a, Ferrari or something.

It's not like that.

Like one of those cars which is handmade because they only make like 50 a year.

I think there's definitely some British workshops that do that sort of thing.

They just like, they make like tiny, impractical race cars for people.

They basically glorify go-karts with a V8 engine, which will go like Sting.

But yeah, absolutely.

So, yeah, if you are on a budget of a shoestring and a shiny 50 pence, then this is very good news for you.

But you do have to be careful to switch off the AI options, which will hopefully be respected and won't be randomly switched back on, looking at you, Microsoft.

Talking about AI, we had a post on the NWorld earlier this week, a brand new thread from a new user.

And I looked at it, and it was kind of slightly nonsensical.

And I was like is this just you know it might be it might have been like a language barrier thing yeah so you know, you don't automatically assume but it had attached a piece of art and the file name of the piece of art and you right click to see what the file name was it was chat tpt something something like that so it was it was a so that clues you in so okay so the art is AI generated, that is now making me think the rest of the post is or not I still wasn't sure I still wasn't sure.

But the more I looked at it, the more I looked at it, I was like, this is definitely this entire post and account.

So then I looked at the account itself.

The email address was from an AI company, something.ai.

Then I looked up the URL of that.

I'm not going to promote them by saying who it was.

I looked up the URL of that company, and it was a use site.

And it was journalism, powered by AI, where it boasted that it had no human journalists.

It was all AI, and it was posting news.

And the post on E&World, on my forum, was presumably one of the AI journalists or something.

And why they were posting it on my forum, I don't know.

Obviously, I spam-banned it because I was like, that is spam.

Yeah, it's not a person, yeah.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Oh, just this happened completely information.

For now, it's just another thing we've got to keep an eye out for.

It's like everything new comes.

Is this a person?

And they're going to get better at it.

It's going to be harder to spot.

I'm waiting for the people to burst.

I'm pretty hopeful before the end of the year.

I mean, just because their business numbers are hysterical.

I'll put it this way.

Yeah.

that's what I'm talking about, it's just, huge, unimaginable sums of money that they need to keep going.

And it's just like, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, sure, you can have a trillion dollars.

Yeah, why not?

You've got no income worth talking about.

Yeah, yeah, why not?

Give them some more money.

At least Hollywood's on the right side of it.

Hollywood knows AI is evil.

Yeah.

When you're watching, like, Terminator or Mission Impossible or whatever, the AI is always a bad guy.

Ah, that, that, that.

Generative AI is the ones we have a problem with.

You know i think we could talk about yeah it's a representation of ai yeah but as wife says they're waiting till all the youtubers so many times i start watching a youtube and i think the pronunciation's a bit off or why have i not seen a human yet just on lots of like spanning pictures of and i watch quite a lot of watch youtube because you know i like watches so i'm like you know reviews of watches and things like that or new watches coming out and some of them you look at them and you look at the watch and the numbers it's like it'd be a picture of a new rolex or something like a fancy watch but the numbers aren't actually numbers they're just like you know like ai sometimes gets text from and it's just like a squiggle that's weird and then it's sort of talking about like uh you know a famous watch like a rolex submariner and it was like a submarino or something it's like okay that's uh yeah you know that is definitely ai talking and you can recognize the kind of rhythm of an ai talking as well can't you they tend to have quite a repetitive.

I know I'm getting better and harder to distinguish, but I think I can still tell at the moment.

At the moment.

Yeah.

But the thing is, it's kind of like the dead internet theory, isn't it?

When so much of what's on the internet is created by bots.

So much of the traffic on the internet watching that is bots.

Who's actually using the internet now?

It's bots making stuff for bots.

I have my humans that I like to keep my eye on and they're generally quite entertaining How do you know they're human then?

Because they've been going for a while and because they've got the correct number of fingers.

The correct number of fingers.

We know that Chester's got no human and she's got the correct number of fingers.

I do.

Probably.

They're getting more advanced, you see.

They're getting harder to detect.

If I was an AI, I'd hope to be more like GLaDOS and just have a level of gravitas.

If you were an AI.

If.

I would be more confident if I was.

That's exactly what an AI would say, though.

That's true.

Anyway.

Should we move on, perhaps?

Yeah, so the next one.

Tell us about the Codex of Celestials.

Oh, okay.

Now you're for it.

Now you've asked for it.

And this is human-made with no AI.

Yes, yes.

This is definitely human-made by a couple of creators that I see on Blue Sky.

and uh there's also a supporting youtube video which i was very excited about so yeah i mean, Essentially, it is called the Codex of Celestials.

It's a supplement for 5e systems, and it expands greatly upon the number of celestial types that you have in the game.

That's the goal it's going towards.

A whole bunch of new monsters.

Well, I say monsters, but currently things, you've got stuff like, I want to say Pegasus and so forth.

No unicorns or something like that and it's like you'd be fighting a zoo you won't be fighting actual creatures so it's like they're doing all sorts of like um i'll put it in quotes biblically accurate angels so yeah yeah if you spinning lots and lots of eyes oh yeah it's like and weird shapes if you if you go to the kickstarter page and you scroll down a bit it's actually got a free sample and rather than that i was like oh okay i quite like this because it's got the level up style lore roll to give you some information about what the creatures are which i'm like oh that is pretty good and saves me job it's got some tactics as well i'm like okay i i approve this level of detail that's what i'm looking forward to um yeah like uh the crater i quite enjoyed that they did like a little um you might like this one russ uh the battle of aginoc which is what if i want to say King Henry II or King Henry I, what?

King Henry I.

Rocks up to aid in the Battle of Minas Tirith.

I don't know.

Distracts a Nazcaul general with a horde of orcs and trolls and spiders and so forth and says, oh, time to go for English Battle Plan 101, go stand on a hill, put some sakes up, and then shoot them with lots of arrows.

Yes.

It just runs through the whole thing about how the battle would go.

I think probably using a total war or something, I thought it was great fun.

Yeah.

So they're a historian and the art they've got as well is absolutely top notch and the artist.

Makes a lot of monsters and they're very cool ones so yeah, I have already backed this I'm not backing it live on the podcast I'm not just like, yeah, I'll have some of this, That's what I wanted to share Yeah, like I say, they've funded they've got all sorts including some stat blocks as well so yeah there's no physical copies, so it's all going to just be digital, so if that's a problem then that's a problem but like I say I thought it was a very reasonably price so I've got in and has it as funded guaranteed to go ahead.

I'm just really excited about that because I've got books of demons so many demons but like if I wanted to I don't know storm heaven attack and defrone god, I'd even do that in D&D and now as one does sometimes as one does feel the need to do.

So, you know, I now have the materials for that campaign.

I'm hopeful that I will have the materials for that campaign.

That is the thing.

If you have enough caffeine, you feel like you can either fight God or become him.

So, yeah.

Bye, let's both.

Woo!

Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.

Okay pj's nice brunch plan start too much coffee but like let's go yeah okay next one what is dark space tell us it's show doc and space yeah yeah it's using yeah it's like quite a good idea i mean yeah it was gonna happen eventually uh it's not made by kelsey and the arcane library this is a different set of people.

Who's it by?

Yeah, I mean, the World Press.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know too much about them, but it's Shadow Dark, and they are essentially doing a 200-page hardback, which will be a certain amount of re-skinning, but also include machine-based archetypes, ship classifications, stock vehicles, and you know I love a good vehicle.

They've got some mecha and vehicle combat rules.

They've also got some solo, emergent, and GM-less play rules.

So yeah, that's pretty good.

12 one-page settings to survival, space horror, cyberpunk, space western.

So that would be stuff like Aliens, Blade Runner, and I want to say Firefly.

Maybe a bit of Outland if such is your thing lots and lots of monsters lots and lots of equipment.

Hacky rules corruption rules they've got a zero level adventure like it's all in that style, I mean if you like Shadow Dark and you like sci-fi this seems like a strong prospect oh my goodness it has launched it's done 41,000 US dollars it's a 15,000 dollar goal 5,000 backers 27 days to go so yeah like it it looks good pledge levels for hardback oh hardback and pdf will cost you 49 dollars shipping extra but yeah um the art looks pretty good um i don't believe there is any use of ai otherwise we may have to redact everything i just said but uh.

Although the adventures might feature AI.

You might go and you might have to kill artificial intelligence too, but that's only in the role-playing scene, so that's okay.

So, we're nearing the end of the show.

I've just got one Kickstarter I wanted to quickly mention.

And this was from Mongoose Publishing, who have just launched the Pioneer RPG.

And this is set like 10 to 20 years in the future.

Right.

And it's based around space exploration.

But you're doing things like you're, you know, building a moon base or the first to mine an asteroid or walk on the surface of Mars or doing stuff in no Earth orbit, that sort of thing.

Okay.

So it's kind of traveler adjacent, they call it.

So it's a standalone RPG.

It's similar rules to traveler, but it's not the traveler system.

If you know Traveller, you'll find this quite easy to pick up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and so...

Yeah, you create your own pioneer.

You configure spacecraft for specific missions, you know, brave the hazards of space.

There's like a whole bunch of missions for your pioneers to embark on.

But it's near future space exploration.

Hard sci-fi.

Love it.

Love it.

I had the team of mongoose on Not D&D to talk about Traveller when I was doing this sci-fi month.

I remember that was September or October.

but at the end of the Traveller episode they talk a bit about Pioneer because it's coming up so if you want to hear more about it from the Monk if you catch the end of the Traveller episode on Not D&D, you can hear it straight from the horses or the, yeah, Yeah, I'm batting this for sure this looks awesome it's like right in my wheelhouse like Masso and stuff like that I love that stuff Yeah, the authors do include Dr.

Sandy and Tunis it's always nice to see someone who's feeling confident to put their academic credentials in there.

There's a 90-page PDF available.

Yeah, yeah.

Preview.

You can download a preview for free.

Yeah, yeah.

It looks great.

It looks really, really great.

I'm excited.

And they've got an actual play, which is kind of cool because they've actually got, I mean, I say a set, but they've got a room which they've sort of decked out the walls and stuff to make it look a bit like a lunar module or something like that.

Oh, yeah, nice, nice, nice.

Thank you.

This one's kind of cool.

Oh.

Oh.

Anyway.

I am super tempted by this.

It is very cool looking.

Very cool looking.

I mean, I'm not just tempted.

I'm getting there.

There's no question about that.

Go check the covers and come back.

No question about that.

Might have to check out the back of the space.

Down the back of the sofa and so forth.

I quite like the art style as well.

I'm struggling a bit to think what it reminds me of.

but it's quite fresh and clean.

That was pretty solid.

Yeah.

Oof.

Not the cheapest.

But yeah, that looks good.

That's very good.

Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, PDF is $50.

And then, oh, and it's $60 for non-PDF.

So basically they're pricing PDFs close to...

That's 60 quid, which is nearly 80.

Quid, yeah.

Sorry, not dollars.

Yeah, I apologize.

So, yeah, so $50 is about 70 quid, isn't it?

50 pounds is about $70, I think, for the PDF.

So, yeah, it isn't cheap.

In good news for me, and possibly that's good news for our American listeners, it does appear to be based in Swindon, UK.

So, I wouldn't...

Yeah, it's hongish, yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Hongish, you keep inviting us up there.

And we keep saying we'll go up there and have a little tour of their headquarters.

And they do this interesting employee-owned company.

So if you get a job there, they do things like you get a company car and you get free meals and stuff while you're there.

And also, the company is, if you become an employee, you own part of the company.

So it's an employee-owned company.

And I really want to talk to them about that because that's just fascinating to me about how that's working and, you know, ooh, I think that's unique in our industry, aside from white man bands and things.

Yeah, but I think it's unique in our industry.

Micro-publishers, micro-publishers, please.

Yeah.

Well, my sort of thought is, because my only sort of window into that is when I used to watch things like L.A.

Law and stuff like that in the 80s, where people would try to become a partner in the company they worked for.

But to do that, they would have to obviously write the company a massive check for like, you know, two million dollars or something, because by becoming a partner, you've got to buy your...

Because a company's got assets and stuff and wealth and money in the bank.

They don't just, like, give you a share of that.

You've got to buy your share of it.

So how does that work on a...

How does that work when it's an RPG company?

Say the company's got half a million dollars in the bank.

I don't know, but GPs, general practitioners, that's how they go about it.

They have to buy in.

Right.

That's generally how you become a partner in a company.

Yeah, you have to buy in.

And I think I got the impression I mean it could also be stuff like John Lewis because that's in the British company which is quote worker owned I don't know too much of the details about it but I mean a lot of companies do give shares as part of their, you know benefit yeah yeah, but only a tiny amount though yeah almost a significant amount it's not going to give you any well, we'll have to go yes I want to talk to them and find out because I'm fascinated.

Let's go let's go do a podcast and like yeah have a chat with one because that would be good yeah we've been invited up we've been invited up a couple of times, well okay we'll do it anyway anyway, That is the end of the show.

That is the end of the show.

So let's get out of here.

Let's have a weekend.

It could be a horrible-looking weekend.

It's drizzly out there.

It's not looking very nice.

Oh, it's just been constant rain.

It's not going great.

Yeah.

I do want to quickly remind people, Dragon Meat is coming up.

Yeah.

We will be there.

It's in, I think, two weeks now, is it?

29th or October?

Two weeks.

The event is on Saturday the 29th in London XL.

But russ and i are going up on friday the 28th to set up our stand and do things so the show that morning will be done earlier uh than 2 p.m so we can do the recording uk time in the morning and then go off and go to set up the show so that will be a different time for the live stream but we'll put that up shortly which basically means we'll have no one watching it live but it'll be fine that's fine but it'll be there but if you come and catch it the usual time in two weeks over there.

But I won't be here next week as well, because I'm going to go to a LARP convention and be lots of different people for the weekend.

It's that time of year where having all three of us on at the same time is just kind of a rare occurrence.

I was off last week, and then you were in China for a couple of weeks.

I'm off LARPing.

I am stuck in the UK for the foreseeable, so I think we've only got a couple more episodes until Christmas at this rate.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's good six weeks till Christmas.

Weeks.

Five weeks.

I'm not going to be here on Boxing Day.

I'm not going to be here on the 2nd of January.

So if you want to do a podcast then, that's with you.

I don't mind, but I won't be here.

Anyway, anyway, anyway.

Yeah, so Dragon Meat in two weeks.

We'll remind you next week as well, but we will be there.

Ian Publishing will be there at Dragon Meat.

Come by and say hello.

Come and buy stuff from us.

If you want a copy of Voidrunners codecs we will have a couple of copies there but we're not taking many now if you so if you want to make sure there's some there for you on the website you can buy it on the website and there's an option to do free ship not not penny shipping and have free pickup at dragon meat there is that drop down in the shipping option um so you can do that if you want yeah i mean like it is a great value for many.

The maps and tokens, I've got to say.

Founds of stuff there.

We're also going to be trialing a new line at Dragon Meat as well.

Something called Short Quests, which are kind of digest, A5-sized little adventures, for about 10-15 pages each, max, or whatever, under a tenner.

And we've got three of them, which we'll have on sale at Dragon Meat, and we're just going to see if people like the idea of them before we commit to making a whole line out of them.

So we've got three coming up, which we'll have on Saturday Dragon Meet, and if people like them, we might do more.

Do you want to draw on some at my club?

Because that's a natural testing ground, so if people...

To play money for it.

They have been tested.

Maybe.

I'm in a game at the moment.

I think they have been tested the adventures and tried out.

So it's just...

Yeah.

They're older adventures that we've heard.

Had a while.

Had around.

We're kind of repackaging just as a test run to see if people like it.

No, it sounds amazing.

Right.

Yeah.

All right then.

Anyway.

Anyway, we're done.

We're done.

So let's get out of here.

Let's go and have a nice weekend.

Yes.

Yes.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

See you all.

See you all next time.