Feb. 1: Blades in the Dark Goes Cold War

In This Edition

• Wizards of the Coast

• Major Publishers (Paizo and Co)

• TTRPG Tech

• Actual Play and Content Creators

• Hold Back the Dead is a new free one-shot that Wizards of the Coast has published. The campaign tells the story of a Red Wizard of Thay sieging a fortress with waves of undead.

• WOTC confirmed that they’re not releasing a campaign book in 2025. Rather, Jeremy Crawford hopes to offer many “discrete” adventure options through things like the collection of dragon books, the Eberron and Forgotten Realms setting guides and the Starter Set. They also claim that releasing campaigns isn’t how players actually play, and that they want to have more “micro material” for players to enjoy.

• Hasbro can’t make up their mind. While earlier reporting alleged we were not getting another sequel to Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, the change of Hasbro’s relationship with organizations like its in-house entertainment studio could allow other companies and partners to create D&D-themed property.

Blades in the Dark has its sequel, and it is a 1960s spy thriller titled Blades ‘68. The game has a quickstart available on DrivethruRPG and is being playtested by Evil Hat Games in the coming weeks. The game is penned by Tim Denee, who made Deathmath Island. It builds on the Forged in the Dark ruleset and modernizes the rules for this sort of game. I’m honestly hyped to give it a try.

Magpie Games released a Quick Start adventure for its upcoming Fallen London TTRPG. Fallen London is built around an old server-based video game setting where London found itself underground and that came attached with all sorts of spooky gothic goodness. If you like Blades in the Dark but want something with a bit more strange attached (rubber men, talking rats, hallucinogenic honey), this could be a delightful addition to your library.

TTRPG Technology

Battlemarked is a new VR-powered GM-less video game that is supposed to have players cooperate in a tabletop experience. It’s built using the VR game Demeo’s systems and is intended to be a “game night substitute for Dungeon Masters who wanted an out-of-campaign way to have fun with their groups,” according to game designer Resolution’s CEO. I’ve never used Demeo before, but the notion of playing TTRPGs with a VR headset on doesn’t appeal to me. But I’ve never been a big VR guy, anyway.

A new app is raising funds on Kickstarter called the Oracle RPG App. The tool appears to be a collection of resources for helping fantasy RPG creators to randomize and generate things like worlds, cities, people and treasure for a 5e campaign. The tool isn’t AI-powered and they claim it’s all penned by humans. It’s not necessarily the most innovative tool as we have an internet LOADED with random 5e generators, but putting it all in one place could be useful to some creators.

Actual Play and Content Creation

Critical Role’s third campaign will hit its climax next week, so it’s time to reveal its following projects. CR ran a one-shot this week raising funds for Los Angeles relief efforts. It also has pre-recorded the final episode, which will be eight and a half hours long. This will be followed by a new Exandria Unlimited series about the Prime Deities’ decision to leave the material plane that will be DMed by Brennan Lee Mulligan. It’s unclear what the popular AP channel will do after, although that will allow CR to consider launching its next campaign closer to the release of its own fantasy TTRPG Daggerheart.