Welcome to the News Collider, a weekly newsletter that collates, arranges and redirects the best and most interesting boardgame and tabletop gaming news back to you.
Now that we have Little Christmas and New Year’s out of the way the tabletop gaming industry is waking up after it’s festive slumber as tidbits and announcements have been peppering inboxes and social media forums over the last week or so for many of us, so here they all are neatly assembled and summed up with pictures.
New D&D Supplement Announced: Explorer's Guide to Wildemount
Wildemount is the setting for season two of Critical Role and now players around the world can join in. This new book, written under the watchful eye of Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer, will feature heaps of lore and campaign setting info to allow a new or existing band of adventurers to explore every region of Wildemount.
It will also include new subclasses and other character options, a Heroic Chronicle to help craft an epic backstory, a load of spells, magical items, monsters and four starting adventures.
Pre-orders start today with the book being released on March 17th
FFG RPG Department Lay-offs
Fantasy Flight Interactive, the video game arm of Fantasy Flight Games has been dissolved just two and a half years after it was formed. This news was broken by the former head of FFI, Tim Gerritsen, in a LinkedIn post. After this announcement though further rumours began spreading that more redundancies are already in progress and that there is a significant threat to the entire RPG department at Fantasy Flight Games.
One cannot help but wonder at what the future holds for FFG, after these rumours and announcement and also considering that in recent years
Christian T. Petersen (Founder, former CEO and designer of Twilight Imperium),
Corey Konieczka (Battlestar Galactica) and Nikki Valens (Mansions of Madness 2nd, Eldritch Horror) have all departed the company the outlook for the publisher doesn’t look quite as rosy as the industry on the whole.
Butterflies for next Elizabeth Hargraves Game
After the huge success of Wingspan, designer Elizabeth Hargrave’s next game, Mariposas, will be published by AEG (yes, that AEG who vowed to publisher fewer and better games) this Autumn.
The game follows the migration of Monarch Butterflies as they leave Mexico to fly to North America, reproduce and head back. The game will play out over 3 phase, Spring - the first flight, Summer - Reproduction, and Autumn - the return home. Mariposas makes use of a set collection mechanic and points are scored at the end of each phase.
Expect to see and learn a lot more about this game as we get closer to release.
AEG’s Pre-Order Program (P3)
Alderac Entertainment Group or AEG will launch a new pre-order system for retailers starting in 2020. To help ensure the stores receive the number of games that they want/need and thus ensuring that these stores don’t ever face a drought of AEG games.
A simple Google Form will be used to ensure that should an allocation system be employed by distributors, retailers that have made use of the P3 system will receive there’s as a priority.
This new system launches with Mariposas this Autumn.
Marvel United Announced
CMON (and Spin Master Games) teased their next big release from designer Eric Lang: Marvel United. There is virtually no information about the game so far, all anyone really knows is that it features Chibified Marvel heroes and villains which has many to believe this game could be a reskin of the very popular Arcadia Quest. Lang has said that this is certainly not the case and this game has been in the works for over 2 years now but we’ll need to see more to get a better idea of what it’s all about.
Free League Publishing reacquires Coriolis
After a very successful Kickstarter back in 2016 ]the license to the sci-fi RPG Coriolis (described as Firefly meets Arabian Nights) was picked up by video game studio, Paradox Interactive. After a few years of “stewardship” the RPG is returning to Free League Publishing and conveniently to where the game’s designers now work.
Free League Publishing released the Alien RPG last year and a tonne of supplements for it and plans are already underway to introduce new material for Coriolis in the near future.
New Virtual Tabletop RPG System
If you like to play your RPGs online you’ve probably already using a system you like, however, it’s good to keep abreast of what else is out there, especially when it’s new, shiny and in this case, free.
Virtual Tabletop has been designed and built for creating, playing and publishing tabletop RPGs, board games, war games and tradable card games online. Still very much in its infancy, the designers are currently seeking user feedback from players and creators to build the best application possible.
If you fancy having a poke around and a play with what looks like a really decent system you can join in here.
Also, let us know what you think too :)
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