By now most of you that plan on attending already have your GenCon badges, reservations, and plans. But if you are like me than you are still thumbing through the massive guide looking maximize your weekend. Lucky for you Oddfish Games has a few events that can help round out that GenCon calendar and make sure you get the most out of the greatest gaming weekend in the world.

Christina, this is the first time in a while Oddfish has offered events at GenCon? Why is now the perfect time to jump in and see what Oddfish Games has to offer?

[Kick to Christina]

Let’s walk through the GenCon schedule and give everyone a little preview of what to expect at the events?

BOOTH: 105

Rise And Shine: Sparking Creative Writing For Students
Wed at 3:00 pm EDT for 1 hr
JW : 101

Improvisational Horror: Unprepped and Unhinged
Call of Cthulhu, 7th Edition
Thu at 10:00 am EDT for 3 hr
Stadium : Meeting Room 7 : 6

Round Robin Horror: Collaborative GMing
Call of Cthulhu, 7th Edition
Thu at 2:00 pm EDT for 3 hr
Stadium : Meeting Room 7 : 6

Illuminated Campaigns & Adventures
Thu at 3:00 pm EDT for 1 hr
Stadium : Meeting Room 12

Create a Custom Scented Locket
Fri at 12:00 pm EDT for 1 hr
ICC : 210 : Front

Create a Custom Scent for Your Next Adventure
Fri at 1:00 pm EDT for 1 hr
ICC : 210 : Front

Improvisational Adventure: Unprepped and Unconstrained
Savage Worlds, Adventure Edition
Sat at 10:00 am EDT for 3 hr
Stadium : Meeting Room 7 : 3

Round Robin Adventure: Collaborative GMing
Savage Worlds, Adventure Edition
Sat at 2:00 pm EDT for 3 hr
Stadium : Meeting Room 7 : 3

The Oddfish Games booth will be at space 105 next to our friends at Piazo so make sure you stop bye and say hello and pick up some of our fantastic adventure scents as well as copies of Radiance, Luminous, and Shine. There will also likely be some cat plushies to go along with our “How to Roleplay with Your Cat” game. So stop by and say hi.

You Heard it Here Last

Welcome to You Heard it Here Last where we talk about news you’ve already heard.

Let’s talk business. In 2023 exports from Poland to the US reached the highest levels in history. 2% of all those exports…...was the video game Cyberpunk 2077.

What makes these numbers interesting is that the rollout of Cyberpunk 2077 was a massive failure and the Computer Gaming Industry in Poland took a hit. But today things have changed.

Christina, What’s up with Poland?

[Kick to Christina]

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/marketing/cyberpunk-2077-s-embattled-launch-was-felt-across-poland

https://www.trade.gov.pl/en/extended-topics/polish-gamedev-is-growing-in-strength/

We have more business news, this time in the TTRPG world.

Roll 20 has acquired Demiplane. For those of you not familiar, Roll20 is an online VTT for table top roleplaying, and Demiplane is an online tool that works with virtual table tops to provide rules for a large number of games that don’t start with D&D. That’s pretty interesting in and of itself.

But that's not even the most interesting part of it. Adam Bradford, the driving force behind first D&D Beyond and then Demiplane, opted not to go to Roll 20 and is now heading up development at Fantasy Grounds.

Christina, What’s all this then?

[Kick to Christina]

https://geektyrant.com/news/digital-ttrpg-giant-roll20-acquires-demiplane

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?81600-SmiteWorks-hires-Adam-Bradford-as-Chief-Development-Officer-for-Fantasy-Grounds

Finally let’s talk Ennie Awards. The Ennie Awards are an annual fan-based celebration of excellence in tabletop roleplaying and they are awarded each year at GenCon. This year’s nominees have been announced and there are a lot of interesting stuff on it.

Christina, any of the nominees stand out to you or are there any that you are excited to see on the list of nominees?

[Kick to Christina]

https://ennie-awards.com/

https://ennie-awards.com/2024-nominees/

Well, there you have it, tune in next time for all the news you’ve already heard.

“Teamwork makes the dream work” was quoted by leadership expert John C. Maxwell in his book by the same name. The actual quote read:

“Teamwork makes the dream work, but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a big dream and a bad team.”

What does this have to do with adventuring in our table top games?

Well, actually, everything.

A team is a group of individuals working together who collaborate on related tasks to achieve their common goal. Hearkening back to the beginnings of table top roleplaying games the character classes were designed to help build a basic team to solve the adventure.

How many of you have had this conversation

Ok, we’ve got Jerry as our fighter. He can keep the monsters off our back. Susan is playing the Wizard so magic is covered. Gwen is playing a thief to help with locks and traps…so…Steve, it looks like you get to play the cleric.

In this episode Mike, Christina and I are going to talk about teams and specifically building a good team from your players and characters to tell amazing stories.

Christina, have you ever had a bad team in a game?

Last Week Mike hit us up in a group email about CHAT-GP4 release and how it has basically solved all his solo roleplaying issues.

Christina follows up with expressed excitement and some questions about service plans

I responded with [Insert Raspberry Noise]

A long email thread latter and here we are. An episode on AI Gaming.

I wanted to start by pointing out that Mike is and has been a dabbler in the world of AI roleplaying. From feeding information into the new AIs, to running solo games as a player and a GM with his new AI Overloards.

Christina on the other hand is the dilettante. The idea intrigues here and she is interested in giving it a try, but like a kid at the swimming pool in early June, she is just dipping her toes in the water.

And of course that makes me the grognard. The very idea of my games being run or played by an AI gives me the heeby jeebies. I am already stockpiling my EMP grenades for the inevitable rise of Skynet.

So, with our positions clearly defined, let me turn over the rest of the episode to the dabbler.

Mike, lead us to our ruin.

You Heard it Here Last

Welcome to You Heard it Here Last where we talk about news you’ve already heard.

https://www.enworld.org/threads/2024-diana-jones-award-finalists-announced.704637/

We are going to start this week off with the Diana Jones Award Finalists. The Diana Jones Award for excellence in gaming was founded in 2000 and presented at the first ceremony in 2001, It is awarded to a single recipient each year at an industry-only event the evening before the start of Gen Con. The award exemplifies excellence in gaming among "people, products, companies, events, movements, concepts, or things" of that year.

The finalists for this year are;

Adepticon, Ami Baio, Fastaval, TTRPGs for Trans Rights in Florida, and United Piazo Workers.

Christina, any of the finalists jump out at you?

[Kick to Christina]

How about you Mike. Thoughts on this year’s finalists?

[Kick to Mike]

https://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/pre-order-available-for-r-talsorian-games-new-cyberpunk-edgerunners-mission-kit/

Moving on to one of our favorite topics, Cyberpunk, R. Talsorian Games has announced the upcoming Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit in conjunction with CD Projekt Red. The box set contains three books totaling 120 pages, pre-generated characters from the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners universe, themed dice, maps, standees, and more. The set is designed to integrate players directly into the storyline aftermath of the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners finale.

This sounds like what I have been waiting for. What about you Mike?

[Kick to Mike]

Christina, are you looking forward to this one as well?

[kick to Christina]

Well, there you have it, tune in next time for all the news you’ve already heard.

With this episode we wrap up the Pirates of Drinax Campaign.

Welcome to another edition of You Heard it Here Last, where we talk about news you’ve already heard.

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/dandds-new-rules-will-be-available-under-a-creative-commons-licence/

We are kicking off today with yet more D&D News. It’s funny how much we talk about a game we don’t play. But that’s a topic for another day. Today we are talking about the fact that the new D&D Rules that is being called D&D 2024 for now will be released under a Creative Commons License.

Wizards of the Coast has already put 5E material in their SRD or Systems Reference Document which allows third party contributors to use the rules in their products and now promises that all of the new game material will also be available in the SRD.

Now we can talk about something that is not D&D Related.

https://www.enworld.org/threads/asmodee-owner-to-split-into-3-companies.703830/

Embracer Group, the Swedish company that owns Asmodee, Edge Studios, and Fantasy Flight Games will split into three different companies. With over 9,000 IPs this is bound to have an affect on games we love.

The company has been going through a rough time with hundreds of layoffs and closures and this move is being made to allow the different groups to publicly trade and focus on what the do best. The three groups are Asmodee (table top gaming), Coffee Stain & Friends (Premium and Free to Play Online Gaming), Middle Earth Enterprises & Friends (LOTR Content, Dark Horse Comics, and Tomb Raider)

Before we get started, I want to give a shout-out to Distaff over on our Discord server. They hit us up asking for more in our Anatomy of a Campaign series. Thanks for listening and for the feedback Distaff. That was one we forgot about.

Christina and I had recorded Episode 3, but the audio quality was just too bad to release. We put it in the queue to get back to it, and then with the holiday’s it got lost in the shuffle.

So here we are revisiting the Pirates of Drinax campaign.

Christina, do you remember where we left off?