GenCon just happened, and that means there’s lots of news to share! This past week in tabletop RPGs brought us closer to the launch of DnD’s 2024 rules refresh. This is good news for Wizards of the Coast, who used Gen Con and BG3 favorites to showcase its upcoming virtual tabletop program. It’s also bad news for content creators who got punished for showing early previews of the 2024 Player’s Handbook.
Outside of DnD, Brandon Sanderson scored a huge win and Free League announced a new Alien update. Let’s get into it.
DnD YouTubers Get Copyright Strikes For Showing New Player's Handbook
Wizards of the Coast is back under scrutiny for dishing out copyright strikes to DnD Youtubers. The new edition of the Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook has been in influencer hands for some time, but reviews were just allowed this past week. Many YouTubers are showing pages in their reviews or doing full flip throughs, which according to EN World is garnering punishment.
Some content creators had their video taken down via a copyright claim, while others even received a YouTube strike. Three strikes can mean the termination of a channel. Sly Flourish mentioned getting an email from Hasbro asking him to blur out book pages in his flip through over concerns that pirates could take screenshots to make their own PDF.
Flourish’s account does raise the question if it’s the Hasbro legal team getting overzealous or if WotC itself is behind the strikes. Still, many creators see their channel as their livelihood and care little about the difference. Just like in previous incidents, some are taking it as a call to cover other TTRPGs.
Stormlight Archive RPG, Now Cosmere RPG, Challenges Avatar Record
The Stormlight RPG finally hit Kickstarter this week to much fanfare. It came out the gate with one last surprise– it’s not just a Stormlight Archive game, but a system built for Brandon Sanderson’s whole Cosmere universe. This means a bundle with the Mistborn world guide in the Kickstarter and that Sanderson will work with the TTRPG team to adapt more of his novels.
The Cosmere RPG crowdfunding campaign raised over $1 million within its first hour and continues to climb. As of this writing, it’s close to $6 million. It seems like a real possibility that Cosmere will beat the record for highest-funded TTRPG Kickstarter currently held by Avatar: Legends.That game ended with a little over $9.5 million. Cosmere still has 20 days of funding to go.
Official DnD VTT Demoed At GenCon By Baldur's Gate 3 Cast
WotC held a DnD Live event at GenCon to show off its in-progress virtual tabletop, now officially known as Project Sigil. The demo took the form of an actual play show starring BG3 actors Samantha Bèart as Karlach and Neil Newbon as Astarion. Anjali Bhimani and Brennan Lee Mulligan rounded out the party with Aabria Iyengar as Dungeon Master.
The first half of the show was about the antics of the above players, but halfway through they brought out computers to have the cast play on Sigil. A 3D dungeon was displayed, complete with digital figurines representing Karlach and Astarion. While the visuals certainly impressed, social media opinions were not entirely favorable. Critics saw a downturn in the energy of the show as the cast focused more on their screens and needed to call for help navigating Sigil.
It’s worth noting that Project Sigil is still in beta with a presumed launch date sometime next year. A closed beta was revealed for this fall and D&D Beyond users can sign up to try it for themselves. Access to the beta includes five codes so a DM can bring their players along.
Alien RPG Announces Second Edition
Free League will hit Kickstarter with a second edition of its acclaimed Alien RPG this fall, reports Polygon. The new edition comes pretty soon after the first just released a new core book. The good news is that Alien RPG 2E is set to be backwards compatible, more of a rules refresh than a whole new game.
Free League says that the new edition was mostly inspired by the new Rapture Protocol scenario that will be part of the 2E Kickstarter. Its aim was to rework the stealth rules and provide expanded options for using miniatures which will come with Rapture Protocol. While developing these elements, the team saw an opportunity to flesh it all out into a new edition.
And with that being the last of an eventful news week, it’s time to sign off. Thanks for reading, and may your dice be kind!
