This week, our main story is a sad one: Flying Buffalo founder and RPG luminary, Rick Loomis, has passed away. There are some moving tributes to his work and influence, as well as some ways for gamers to support his family.
We have some gaming industry news: the Critter “Hug of Death” hits Chaosium, the future of Free RPG Day, and a pretty egregious case of RPG piracy.
There are also some delights: a university course on RPG writing, a bittersweet story of a grandmother’s love for Dungeons & Dragons, some incredible book covers, and the nerdiest American Football we have ever seen.
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The Late Rick Loomis
We were saddened to learn that Rick Loomis, veteran game designer and founder of Flying Buffalo Games, passed away on 23 August due to complications related to lymphatic cancer. Nerdvana has published a collection of tributes to Loomis.
A GoFundMe is currently being run to help support his family and pay the cost of his medical expenses.
Bundle of Holding is running a bundle of Flying Buffalo’s Catalyst products to support Loomis’ family.
The Business End
Chaosium talks about how interest in Call of Cthulhu after Critical Role’s special episode, “Shadow of the Crystal Palace”, has overwhelmed their North American distributor. This is the infamous Critter “Hug of Death”, which crashes websites, overcrowds conventions, and generally smothers with love creators and events promoted by the cast of the show.
EN World’s Egg Embry interviews Paul Alexander Butler, co-owner of Gaming Days, about the future of Free RPG Day, which was acquired by Gaming Days earlier this year.
A Patreon account has been suspended for offering pirated copies of Dungeons & Dragons material from the DM’s Guild and other third party sites.
Cubicle 7 is hiring a Producer and an Admin Production Assistant.
Things We Love
Call of Cthulhu publisher, Chaosium, is teaming up with Taylor University to offer a tabletop game writing course.
The adventures of one gamer’s late grandmother and her party, Les Bijoutiers Fantaisistes, had us tearing up.
The portfolio of Henry Higginbotham shows how the covers for Dungeons & Dragons 3e and 3.5 books were made: not as 3D animations, but as real sculptures.
The XFL professional football league may have a team inspired by Dungeons & Dragons: the Seattle Dragons. (Seattle is the present home of D&D publishers, Wizards of the Coast.) The team’s introduction video is pretty spectacularly nerdy, and caught the attention of the Wizards team.
This history of Dungeons & Dragons is hilarious.
New & Upcoming Releases
As we reported last week, there’s an Eberron book coming to Dungeons & Dragons, bringing with it the Artificer class. The book will be supported by The Oracle of War, a season of D&D’s Adventurer’s League organised play. Lead rules designer, Jeremy Crawford, has explained that the cover shown on Amazon (which received an astonishing amount of hate), is a placeholder image.
DC Comics is releasing Watchmen RPG material as part of the Watchmen Companion collection of rare and out of print material.
Cubicle 7 previews the cover art and gives a development update for their Warhammer 40K RPG, Wrath & Glory.
Mythras publisher, The Design Mechanism, is teaming up with Quills Media to create an RPG based on the works of M.R. James.
Modiphius is releasing the Aleph sourcebook for the Corvus Belli Infinity RPG.
Bundles & Deals
As referred to above, Bundle of Holding is offering a bundle of Catalyst products in support of the late Rick Loomis’ family.
Bundle of Holding is also offering two bundles of Mythras RPG books.
Indie publisher, Sandy Pug Games, is running a bundle of indie games to send game designer, Brie Beau Sheldon, to Big Bad Con.
Crowdfunding News
Fantasy 5e & Pathfinder
On Downtime and Demesnes: A collection of rules for downtime activities in 5e, by Courtney — August 31st
The Lost City of Gaxmoor 5E: An adaptation of the classic D&D 3rd edition adventure to 5e, by Stephen Chenault/Troll Lord Games (Castles & Crusades, Amazing Adventures) — September 14th
General Fantasy
Trudvang Chronicles: Muspelheim: An expansion to the Trudvang Chronicles, covering the dwarven homeland of Muspelheim, by RiotMinds (Ruin Masters, Lex Occultum) — September 14th
Post-Apocalyptic
HOPE RPG: A post-apocalyptic base-building RPG, by Cody Beatty — August 29th
Teen Angst Robot Anime
Never Knows Best: A FLCL/Fooly Cooly-inspired RPG of teenage angst and fighting robots, by Fraser Simons — September 6th
This update was made possible by Keenan Collett and the rest of our Patreon supporters.