NuTSR Goes Bankrupt, Cocaine Bear TTRPG, And 2024 D&D Changes Subclasses - TTRPG News 6/15/2023

As you step down into the dungeon, you smell a rank odor. You are greeted by the unmistakable scent and sight of a corpse reanimated, shambling towards you. Meanwhile, a bizarre grunting comes from a room further ahead. As if this wasn’t all strange enough, you can swear that you saw colorful ponies in the distance. Just another normal week in tabletop RPG news. 

NuTSR Files For Bankruptcy, Made $621 This Year

Justin LaNasa and Stephen Dinehart’s attempt to revive the TSR name didn’t pan out so well, it seems. NuTSR has reportedly filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The company set out to bring back the “old school” way of playing TTRPGs when it began business in 2020. The brand quickly became embroiled in controversy as its most significant voices used their platform to take shots at newer styles of play, trans people, and D&D under Wizards of the Coast. It all came to a head when WotC decided to sue NuTSR last year. Now, NuTSR filed bankruptcy, postponing their court date with WotC and reporting $621.93 in revenue for 2023. 

Honey Heist Goes On A Bender Thanks To Cocaine Bear

The comedy film Cocaine Bear made waves earlier this year thanks to its aggressive social media marketing campaign and strange-but-true premise. Now it’s about to take on the TTRPG world thanks to designer Mike Lafferty. Cocaine Owlbear is a Honey Heist-based game where you play the role of a woodland creature given sentience by the good stuff. Players must acquire more cocaine before it wears off by staging an elaborate heist, but must also balance their animal nature with their newfound intellect. Going too far either way results in game over. Cocaine Owlbear is available for $1 on itch.io.

Play A Transformers Game With A Pro GM Today!

New Adventures On The Way For Power Rangers, Transformers, And My Little Pony

Renegade Game Studios just had its own digital event packed with announcements for new products. As the official game designer for Hasbro IP, Renegade manages the Power Rangers, GI Joe, Transformers, and My Little Pony board games and TTRPGs. All of these brands got a little love with announcements for sourcebooks and adventure paths. Fans will be able to fend off crystal ponies, join the Time Force, be a Decepticon, and more. Pre-orders for all the new products can be found here. 

WotC To Get Less Experimental With Upcoming D&D Playtests 

In a new video update, Jeremy Crawford talked about “What are the 2024 Fifth Edition Core Rulebooks.” Crawford continues the pattern of saying how this update is still compatible with the 5E people are currently playing, just with new ideas and refinements of old ones. To that end, recent Unearthed Arcana playtests have been focused on experimenting to see how players might accept big changes to the game. That phase is apparently over, and upcoming playtests will instead be focused on the refinement process. The given example was subclass progression: subclasses will now be uniformly chosen at third level but will retain the current progression system. 

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That brings us to the end of this week! As always, have a wonderful weekend and enjoy your games!