Vol 29: Riegel & Roll
Spires, squids, and Sallowlands. Then, social anxiety and underrated opinions. There are monster squads and magical decks, a bit of schmaltz, and a whole lot of VTT. Learn how to use action to drive reaction, then test your skills against RJL. Plus: free stuff and pond play.
SPOTLIGHT
There’s nothing quite like this video to remind you of the Critical Role phenomena. Online view counts can tell you reach, but to stand behind Sam Riegel and face a sea of Atlantans during the Maelstrom Kingdom show is to understand connection.
NEWS & RELEASES
Aspire for the Spire
It’s FREE RPG Day! Head over to your FLGS and ask—nay, demand—that they supply you a copy of The Dying Spire, Darrington’s T2 adventure from Colossus of the Drylands and Pistolheart designer Carlos Cisco. No nearby store? Rumours abound a digital copy may drop next week. Bonus: Tips for running TDS.
Squid Game
Can’t wait to watch Matt GM Daggerheart in Age of Umbra: Sallowlands? It’s a vibe shift, but he’s doling out Fear in the delightful and aforementioned Maelstrom Kingdom: Echoes of Exandria. PS: Don’t swim too close to Marisha.
Beauty and the Beasts
Speaking of Sallowlands: CR dropped this sick promotional art earlier in the week. Illustrated by Daniel Jimenez, it reveals two important party character traits. One is how everyone except Laura Bailey is grotesque. The other is the corollary: Laura Bailey is sticking to her strategy of [gesticulates] “some ancestry/race/class—but hot.”
Sorcerous Sundries
A guy named Chris Perkins plays Luck of the Draw and damn if he doesn’t spit a great backstory for the character he met three seconds ago.
Roll Models
Know some women who’d be good GMs but worry they’re not good enough? Point them to Amy Vorpahl’s GM Fest, a collection of three female-fronted APs where Amy hosts a post-game discussion with the GM about how things played at the table. Amy leads the third AP and runs Daggerheart on Alchemy.
Dread Reckoning
The winners of Heart of Dagger’s Fear Fest competition are up. These talented folks now get mentored by Mike Underwood and Carlos Cisco on how to sharpen their knives to draw even deeper cuts. The final results will be published later this year.
VTTTTTT
VTT grab bag: Heart of Daggers added premade characters, ability trackers, and readied character sheets for different languages. HeartForge released encounter tokens, compendium collections, and drag-to-reorder adventure content. Owlbear added chromatic weather effects. Daggerbrain shut down (good riddance). And Alchemy shared their philosophy on making VTTs disappear while also announcing Free VTT Day, where titles like Blades in the Dark, Degenesis, City of Mist, and Call of Cthulhu can be claimed, FOR FREE, FOREVER—but only during the 24-hour window.
DISCUSSIONS
Ctrl+Alt+Del
“Can I just kill the guy?” Yeah, sometimes you can. That’s ThisIsVictor’s reply for a question about managing stealth moves. “Call for an action roll. Success you kill him, failure you don’t.” Bada bing.
Sweaty Socials
True to our generation, everyone’s anxious about social encounters—even in a game. A good thread evolved on how to manage them. Dancovich reminded the OP to start with narrative rather than mechanics, then provided an example. PrestigiousEmu noted there a tools (plural) for socials—and to use them as needed.
