As I write this, I’m sitting in the aftermath of quite an important event. I don’t usually write about current events in this column; the delay between when I write and when something is published can mean that my article is out of date or someone said what I was saying in a different format. Despite that, this gave me pause and thought about quite a number of things about the RPG sphere.

Editor’s note – Apologies to Ben; his work gets stored in a long-term archive and used when the situation arises, and as a result I’ve delayed a timely article.

As you may know, the online store Itch.Io was hit with a form of censorship, forcing them to edit the content they sold and get rid of a number of more ‘adult’ games or face an inability to process payments via Mastercard or Visa. This censorship, undertaken by the payment companies themselves, was a dystopian move straight out of a Cyberpunk game. The side effect of this is Itch felt it had to remove anything that might trigger the Payment companies’ ire, including games where the ‘adult content’ basically featured nothing more than LGBTQ+, feminist themes or mature discussions about the impact of sexual violence. This blanket ban lacked nuance of any kind, removing not only harmful content but also content that harmed no one, maybe even saved some people.

I could spend a whole article ranting about this, I think we can all agree that just from a historical perspective, the idea of just losing the availability of a whole swathe of games is an issue. I’m of the school of thought that we shouldn’t ever just try to vanish an idea. Even if some of the content was problematic, in RPG history those sorts of games have become part of a wider discussion of who we are by the community. We hold up games that feature racist content and SA by player characters and say ‘we aren’t about this’. To whitewash over them is to paint a false picture and make us have to have those discussions all over again with a new set of people.

My stance on this notwithstanding, though, it also made me think about what we are actually doing with roleplaying games. I’m sure that some people are simply just playing a dungeon exploring game with their friends where they slay monsters and vanquish evil (hell, I’m doing this with my kids right now) but I expect most of us are at least also engaging with RPGs on an emotional level to some extent. We’re invested in the characters. We go through a journey with them. We feel a sense of triumph when they succeed. Some of us are going further still, putting themes into our campaign. Games like Vampire or Sigmata or Cy_Borg or Queerz are about something. Yes they’re games but they also explore an idea. Sometimes it is just one line that makes you realise the game is hinting at something deeper, other times the whole game is based around it.

So some games are aiming at introspection, or at least provoking discussion amongst the players. This is a function of an artistic work. We’re not just putting out a game system to be easy to play, we’re trying to make people feel something. Even the ‘back-to-basics’ OSR crowd are trying to evoke feeling more than write a ruleset, they’re invested in their games that instead make you feel something when reading them. This is important, right? While we often judge games, as we judge a lot of things, by if they make a profit or see a lot of table action, this is a kind of false metric. The question could be, did it move those people who read and understood it? By that metric, maybe the ‘best RPG’ I ever played was Blackout, it haunts me to this day. Perhaps the ‘most successful’ RP book I read was Charnel Houses Of Europe for Wraith because I openly wept when I read it. I don’t think we should be happy to ever see stuff like this taken away.

Some games might not really even really be designed to play. The game Violence was just a meta in-joke about flaws in 90’s game design. Lacuna Part 1 becomes more unplayable as you play it, We Are But Worms entire ruleset is one word. These games are invested in telling us about the person who wrote them and ourselves. They’re here to be experienced by us in and in me, they create a weird feeling of joy in the human race, a real person built this just because they could.

In the era of everything we consume being ‘content’, marketable and saleable chunks for us to consume and thus focused on the digital, sitting down and using a game to just tell a story with people is close to a revolutionary act against the modern world. We’re taking time to be with each other and share a story without it being a focus for marketing something to us. With one rulebook, we can make a game and tell whatever story we want. While games and their marketing might be ‘content’, the actual playing of them in amongst your friends is almost ‘Anti-content’. When Facebook says its main competitor is ‘sleep’ then you know doing anything for yourself when awake is an amazing act.

This is important because it means really, in the face of a future that looks increasingly like various powers might start to try to control us by what we can consume, a story where the powers that be can’t write the story for themselves is more important. Going and saying something about the state of the world or the human condition in your weird little fantasy campaign is legitimate art and if you’re doing that, I’m proud of you. Still waiting for my players to realise one of my mysterious bad guys is the arcane equivalent of a rogue LLM that is consuming worlds ravenously in order to have more datasets for its long obsolete purpose. When they do, I can’t wait for them to work out how to fight it, how to survive in the face of it. Maybe it’ll teach me some new things about people.

I hope wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, you’re safe. The world is a scary place. Pull your people together, tell stories. Make them about what you’re going through, face it together. Open up. Talk. Form bonds, support each other. Keep telling your story. For a few hours, just be with your people. Listen when someone writes a game or campaign, they’re sharing a part of themselves. Because what we are doing with RPGs, more than anything else, is being Together. We’re making stuff just for us, and we’re saying to other people, ‘I want you to be a vital part of my story’.  That’s more important than being a footnote for organisations that care nothing about you. Every time.

I’ll see you next time, my revolutionaries.

Creative Commons credit: Standing still in a moving scene by TomTC and Cambot 406 by uoa7.

Hello friends of indie TTRPG news, and thank you for your support. This month, patrons voted Red Ruin Publishing into the Spotlight. If you’re a Patreon, then we’ve a new shortlist for you to decide from.

We’ve made it through August, and our sister site, Edinburgh Reviews, still needs to tally up all our reviews, but it’ll be over 100. We kept Geek Native running throughout and now head off to Tabletop Scotland this weekend.

This month we offer thanks to; Daryle Landers, Jake @ Faded Quill Gaming, Chip Mosher, Sean P Kelley, Philippe Marcil, Adept Icarus, Noril of Cold River, R Waibel, Allen Varney, Kate, Paul Wilson, and Heike.

Patrons need only visit this private poll to vote. We appreciate each one.

Here are your choices for next month’s RPG Publisher Spotlight:

• Apocalyptic Games
• Slithy Tove Games
• Sandbox Plots
• Daggerquill
• Ember + Ash

To cast your vote and use your Patreon membership, visit this patrons-only page. You star.

Challenging civil power in fantasy worldbuilding

Traditional fantasy worldbuilding defaults to a paradox: gods wield tangible, active power, yet society organises itself exactly like 13th-century feudal Europe. We’ve used this post spotlight essay space to examine this before.

In standard tabletop RPGs, magic is real, and prayers yield quantifiable results. Divine intervention cures pestilence and reknits flesh. Yet while temples are granted a monopoly over hospice care, worldly authority remains stubbornly secular. Nobles control the garrisons. Crown courts mete out judgements. Yeoman farmers cultivate land in comfortable semi-isolation, free from magical coercion until a roving band of goblins threatens the plot.

This model crumbles the moment you take divine reality seriously.

The Monopoly on Violence

Consider a pantheon featuring distinct deities of war and justice. In typical setting design, the Church of the War God provides martial blessings, and the God of Justice inspires wandering paladins. Beyond that, the local baron still collects taxes and commands the men-at-arms.

Why would any sensible martial order tolerate an inept, hereditary warlord?

If a deity actively grants spells that bolster morale, turn steel aside, and smite foes, an army led by that god’s priesthood will consistently outfight secular levies. A noble house cannot compete with a temple that commands both the battlefield and the promise of eternal glory. The church does not merely advise the sovereign; it is an armed, self-funding power bloc with literal divine mandates.

Two logical alternatives emerge:

1. Theocratic Monopolies: The Church of War operates the standing army, and the Church of Justice runs the magistracy. Secular monarchs are reduced to administrative clerks. The only check on temple authority is inter-faith tension, such as the War cult demanding aggressive border raids while the Justice priesthood prosecutes their knights for war crimes.
2. Aggressive Secular Suppression: Nobles, acutely aware that clerics pose an existential threat to hereditary rule, ruthlessly suppress the clergy. Clerical orders are banned from carrying arms within city walls, temples are limited to strictly ritual precincts, and any priest preaching public justice is executed for sedition.

Leaving armed, spellcasting faiths in a polite feudal equilibrium with mundane aristocrats makes no political sense.

The Myth of the Independent Farmer

The agrarian baseline of most fantasy settings is equally suspect. RPG adventuring parties routinely visit sleepy villages where rustic, independent smallholders scrape by on grain and cabbages.

Agriculture in a world where gods exist cannot remain neutral:

If a priest of the harvest can guarantee a bumper crop while unblessed fields rot, the church controls the entire food supply. In such an economy, the notion of a fiercely self-reliant farmer is a fantasy within a fantasy.

Rethinking civil security along these lines strips away comfortable feudal clichés. The friction between temporal lords, aggressive theocracies, and food-producing cults offers far more tension for an adventuring campaign than yet another predictable hereditary baron.

Horror-focused spirits brand Macabre Spirits has revealed its first flavoured spirit, Ghost Face Vodka Blood Orange, alongside a nationwide retail expansion into Total Wine & More stores across the United States. The launch builds on the brand’s debut in February, moving the product from limited online allocations directly onto American high street shelves. Co-founded by actor Matthew Lillard in partnership with Easter Unlimited’s Fun World division, the label pairs the licensed slasher iconography of Scream with potato-based spirits distilling.

The rollout marks a major operational change for parent outfit Find Familiar Spirits, taking the company beyond its established direct-to-consumer model. Following the retail release in early September, Macabre Spirits will also release an online-only Ghost Face Blood Orange Killer Collection box set on 29 September. The original collector set sold out within two hours earlier this year, and this second run looks to test whether physical shelf space can match that boutique digital demand.

As covered in Geek Native’s previous coverage of Ghost Face Vodka, Matthew Lillard has spent recent years embedding himself across premium geek culture ventures. Beyond his work with Beadle & Grimm’s luxury roleplaying games boxed sets, his spirits business launched the tabletop-themed Quest’s End Whiskey before spinning out Macabre Spirits for genre collaborations.

Matthew Lillard, co-founder at Macabre Spirits, said in a statement,

Ghost Face always comes back, and the best sequels always have a twist. We’re thrilled to work with Total Wine to bring the original flavour and blood orange to stores all across the country, and to introduce even more fans to a scary-good vodka worthy of the most iconic mask in horror.”

The actor and businessman added;

We were blown away by the response to the first box, but disappointed so many of our fans weren’t able to get their hands on one. If you weren’t able to score the original, we’re confident the sequel won’t disappoint.”

Distilled from 100% non-GMO potatoes, the spirit is naturally gluten-free and processed at the company’s contract facility in Florida. To produce the flavour profile, distillers steep pressed lemons, sweet oranges, grapefruits, and blood oranges in the neutral spirit. The wash is then decanted and redistilled through a custom hybrid still. This stripping process extracts the citrus oils while leaving behind residual sugars and pigment. The result is a water-clear liquid rather than the crimson red that slasher fans might expect from the “The Sequel Is Always Bloodier” campaign line.

For international horror enthusiasts, the real nightmare remains unchanged: access. None of Find Familiar Spirits’ releases, whether Quest’s End Whiskey or Macabre Spirits’ licensed lines, are officially distributed outside the United States. Navigating the legal labyrinth of overseas spirits export, state-by-state control boards, and international alcohol duties is a genuine horror story in its own right. As with previous drops, fans in the UK, Europe, and beyond remain locked out while the US market drinks up.

The online box set goes live on 29 September via Find Familiar Spirits and Ghost Face Vodka. Matthew Lillard will also make in-person promotional appearances at select Total Wine & More locations throughout September and October.

Standard discourse about RPGs is that they are games you can’t win. No one party is declared the victor, in theory there’s no ‘end state’ where we are told by the game that it is over, we have succeeded and beaten the game. Part of understanding the game, we are told, is knowing that we are telling a story as a group. The important things are the narrative flow, the decisions made, and how the world is changed by the characters.

So why does it feel bad when stuff happens to those characters that sucks? Why are there multiple examples of advice content that tells GMs to remember that they aren’t supposed to be trying to kill the players? We’re told to think about the power fantasy and agency, and how not to torture players with constant pain. Shouldn’t this all be just part of the story?

I’ve been thinking about this recently because I’m considering jumping back into PBTA games as a GM, and I started reading The Black Madonna, a longform campaign that has been republished for the latest edition of Kult. It’s an unbelievably cruel experience for player characters, from the start of the game, things happen that mean they are in for a rough ride and continually up against disadvantage and setbacks. Now this is to be expected given the game is supposed to be somewhere between Clive Barker at his most graphic and Silent Hill in tone. However, I found myself wondering if players would actually enjoy the game. Could they divorce themselves enough from character to enjoy the spiral of degeneration that was happening, or is the manifestation of character too much?

Fail States

I’ve noticed in games before that there’s a sort of training in games where taking damage to a statistic or incurring a mechanical disadvantage seems to result in a player feeling like this is a loss. To begin with, I didn’t even see this as a thing to think about because I’ve also been trained to see it as a penalty, something which hampers my optimum operating efficiency. But I think I first realised this thought process might be an issue when looking back at my player group playing Masks, a PBTA game. In that game, when the teen superhero characters take a hit, be it physically or emotionally, the player chooses a box to tick which hampers them but also speaks to the emotional state they are in. The damage is not only a number but has a narrative effect chosen by the player.

The players would rush to clear the box by doing whatever it was they needed to clear it, usually by acting out in some teenage way or seeking council from a friend. This created a situation where every player felt like a teenage whirl of emotions constantly zigzagging between being fine and supported and needing support. And while I am sure that is part of the games design, I wonder what would have happened if a player had said ‘My character is scared, I’m going to sit with that feeling for a session or two, see what it does’.

Doing that requires a suboptimal playstyle, right? Well only if you main objective is ‘I must avoid harm and operating inefficently’ not ‘I am telling a story where I explore an emotion’ because under the second criteria, you aren’t failing to operative optimally because the game is not asking you to operate optimally. It’s asking you to tell a story. The success state of the game is not being powerful. It’s telling a good story. It therefore stands to reason that the fail state is not being in a position where you are unable to operate at full strength. Instead, the fail state is being uninteresting and not having drama.

This made me realise that I kind of need to think about how I help players understand what a game is about. About what a ‘win’ looks like.

Success States

While it’s not possible to win RPG games, we can be ‘winning’ at playing the game. It’s quite possible to look back at any campaign you ran and be able to feel which ones went well, which the people playing it to really elevated. So while it’s not possible to succeed, we can agree there’s a sort of ‘success state’ where everyone understand what the game is asking of them and does that. In a D&D game this a campaign that slowly increases its stakes and drama, becoming a story of people rising to the top despite the odds. In Call Of Cthulhu, it instead requires the players to understand that going mad is part of the play experience. It’s not even just a penalty you suffer for failing a roll, it’s the Desired state in the game. You are supposed to slowly go mad and live on a knife edge between effective understanding of what you are facing and total horrid knowledge that breaks you. The character being in that despair should, in theory bring the player joy. Being committed to an asylum while muttering about old ones is something the game considers a ‘good story’.

I think it’s the reason that PBTA games are often a complicated beast to sell to players raised on a more ‘invested in character over narrative’ games can be. Because the success state of the game is often counter to making character choices that keep the ‘avatar’ of them safe. The game attempts give them additional tools to control the narrative outside of the character, not only improving agency if bad things happen to that one character but also sort of separating them character from the player, helping the player see the narrative as a whole, If you make the choice in World Wide Wrestling to purposefully make a choice that your old warhorse wrestler sustains an injury overdoing it, the game does its best to take you right into a bigger story as player reminding you the promotion continues and it’s easy to pick someone else up for a while. But telling the best story sometimes means putting them through it to get to that narrative. You’re gambling investment into pay-off at a pace a D&D campaign would never entertain.

So it can be really complicated to do, especially if we’ve come to love our character or feel kinship with them. Bleeding at the edges of our personality and theirs is often a fact of playing these games with a level of investment. Watching them suffer isn’t always easy. As I’ve mentioned before, my recent Cthulhu campaign ended with several of the character retiring from the fight because the players wanted them to have a happy ending. No shade there, the campaign was beautifully uplifting at the end. But it was a decision by the group that we were telling a certain type of story, one slightly more hopeful than I think the game originally intended. We’d maybe invested in the characters harder than the game expected us to and therefore the games narrative intent had ceased to matter, we decided to seek an ending that made sense for us. It only worked because we as a group were still committed to telling an effective story. So it was a wonderfully effective end to a campaign and one we all loved, but a ‘success condition’ as defined by the game? Harder to tell.

It’s always worth thinking about how a game might have a success state that is more complex than ‘fight the bad guy and succeed, get more powerful, repeat’. We all need to be on the same page about where the game is going. I have no issue with a D&D player getting upset if we resolve a plotline without some form of heroic confrontation. But if a Vaesen game ends with talking the monster down and resolving a misunderstanding and then a player gets upset, I’m going to realise we aren’t on the same page. So check your success states and make sure the players understand what you are all aiming for.

Creative Commons Credit: Screens of Terror by ptitvinc.

East Lothian social enterprise Random Monster Table CIC will host the first public preview of its cooperative roleplaying game, DaunderMyth, at Tabletop Scotland 2026.

Designed to build mental health resilience in young players, the game replaces strict mechanical penalties with a peer-supported “Your Emotional World” system and arrives in UK schools this November and December.

Founder and director Barry Martin developed the DaunderMyth rules over four years, initially testing a prototype built with sleeved Pokémon cards to build confidence among local primary school children. The project has since evolved into a clinically supported educational product, securing funding from the Co-op Local Community Fund and the Social Entrepreneurs Fund. Director John Sharp and advisor Jen Martin complete the core development team, bringing experience from The Prince’s Trust and Teapot Trust to the community interest company.

DaunderMyth tasks players with exploring enchanted forests and labyrinths to stop the spread of Corruption. Rather than traditional combat loss or player elimination, the game relies on dedicated tokens and cards to navigate emotional challenges safely.

The boxed set includes:

• 1 Game Master Book and 1 Player Guide
• 1 Tree of Hope and 40 Leaves of Hope tokens
• 40 character sheets and 4 Hero Boards
• 80 cards, featuring specific Strife Cards
• 5 Dice Sets and 1 Combat Tracker

Convention attendees can find Random Monster Table at stand Q-10 on the Tabletop Scotland main hall floor. The booth sits in the central trade hall aisle, flanked by Red Dragon Craft at Q-09 and Fights & Fancy at Q-11, positioned directly opposite Trywin Games (R-10) and just steps away from the Playtest Zone, Townsfolk Glasgow, and the ad-hoc Blood on the Clocktower area.

Tabletop Scotland 2026 Coverage

Our thanks to Thistle Tavern for sponsoring our coverage of Tabletop Scotland. Visit their spacious store at 79 Shandwick Pl, Edinburgh for a huge selection of wargames, board games, and TCGs.

Shop Thistle Tavern Online

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• Dates: 4th to 6th September 2026
• Location: Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh

Official Website Find a Hotel Rent a Car

Pinnacle Entertainment Group has released a free preview of the Petersen Asylum to mark the final days of their Kickstarter campaign for Deadlands: Mysterious Maze. Slated to close on Saturday, 5 September 2026, the crowdfunding project expands the Weird West setting with a California sourcebook and two campaigns, raising over £109,000 against a £5,906 goal. After the previous hospital in Lost Angels burned down, Dr Darius Hellstromme donated funds to build this new facility overlooking the Great Maze, and prospective patients can now preview its sinister secrets and staff before the full release.

Arriving at the tail end of the busy August 2026 tabletop convention season, this campaign capitalises on the ongoing 30th-anniversary celebrations for the iconic setting. The expansion requires the Deadlands Core 2026 rules and provides comprehensive updates to California’s shattered coastline.

Quakes, Floods, and Famine

California is presented as a land of upheaval. Following the gold rush, a devastating earthquake and subsequent deluge tore the coastline apart, leaving scattered settlements and treacherous waterways in their wake. The 180-page Mysterious Maze sourcebook details this fractured geography where prospectors and mad scientists risk everything for a few pounds of ghost rock. The guide introduces over 40 new cryptids and monsters, alongside 30 new Savage Tales set across Donner Pass, Death Valley, and the coastal ruins.

While Famine’s Servitor is gone, new evils known as the Harbingers are gaining power in the region, aiming to replace Reverend Grimme at Famine’s side.

Vampires and Riverboat Gamblers

Pinnacle expands the region with two distinct adventures designed to test both new and veteran posses. Curse of the Maze Queen is a boxed set adventure focused on a deadly 1884 poker tournament aboard a stately riverboat. Players compete for the Heart of Darkness diamond while navigating the flooded waters of the Maze, facing off against rival cowpokes and environmental hazards.

The second campaign, Red Tide, is a 96-page hardcover that brings Dracula to the Pacific Coast, tracking his path of vengeance from Seattle to the ruins of Lost Angels. Deadlands maestro Shane Hensley issues a clear warning regarding the campaign’s difficulty:

Red Tide is a brutal campaign for Veteran heroes and experienced players. The odds are long. The enemy is legendary. And if the posse fails, the Pacific Coast will drown in blood.”

Pledges and Rewards

Rather than offering an exhaustive shopping list of add-ons, Pinnacle Entertainment Group has structured the campaign around clear bundles. Backers can secure the Everything New digital tier for $50 (approximately £38), which includes PDF versions of The Mysterious Maze, Curse of the Maze Queen, Red Tide, and digital pawns. For those wanting physical hardcovers and the pawns, the $120 tier (roughly £91) delivers the three new books in print and PDF formats. At the top end, the $600 Fist Full o’ Deadlands bundle provides a comprehensive library of over 40 books and map packs aimed at entirely new players looking to enter the Weird West.

This is an all-or-nothing campaign. Funding will be collected only if the project meets its goal by Saturday, 5 September 2026, at 2:00 AM BST. Physical rewards have an estimated delivery date of July 2027.

Quick Links

• Deadlands: The Weird West – Red Tide Petersen Asylum Preview
• Back this Campaign

Tabletop Scotland 2026 opens from 4 to 6 September at the Royal Highland Centre in Ingliston, presenting hundreds of playable titles across the main trade floor, the prototype Playtest Zone, and the First Floor roleplaying suites. Finding hands-on table space across a busy convention floor requires clear planning, especially with publisher demos, scheduled prototype sessions, and tabletop roleplaying tables competing for floor space.

The main exhibition hall features running demos from independent studios alongside established UK distributors. Upstairs, the event hosts one of the largest dedicated roleplaying programmes in the country, separating tabletop systems from the rapid board game playtests running downstairs.

Publisher and Studio Demos on the Trade Floor

Commercial stands across the Highland Hall offer open drop-in gaming throughout the weekend:

• Grumpy Gorilla Publications (Stand B-01): Running live demos for the Revised Edition of Rosebyrne Manor. The studio is showcasing new character expansions, fresh power sources, a convention-exclusive character, and physical rulebooks alongside its gamer coffee line.
• Neowulf Games (Stand D-02): Hosting walk-up sessions for Viking Raiders, a card and resource game centred on clan building and naval raiding. The studio is also running a dedicated tournament on Saturday at 19:00.
• Medusa Games (Stand X-01): Demonstrating the period trading title Oranges & Lemons and its expansion, Here Comes a Candle. Designer Richard Denning is showcasing the title alongside the co-located UK Games Expo stand.
• BadCatGames (Stand T-07): Featuring running sessions of DreamEscape alongside tabletop demos for Zen Monkeys.
• Play-It-Now (Stand S-04): Presenting Death Mancer, a competitive dark fantasy card game built on combo chaining and engine development.
• Escape Envelope (Stand G-05): Running hands-on puzzle sessions for its tabletop deduction envelope titles Lock Ness and Disappearance at Blackridge.
• Zatu Distribution (Stand R-01): Hosting table demos for The Glasgow Train Robbery (designed by Ferran Renalias and Eloi Pujadas) alongside Reiner Knizia‘s tile-placement strategy game Rebirth.
• HABA UK (Stands A-02 & I-01): Operating the dedicated HABA Family Zone with accessible titles including Rhino Hero, Monza, First Orchard, and Animal Upon Animal.

The Main Hall Playtest Zone

The ground-floor Playtest Zone hosts over 20 scheduled slots for unpublished prototypes. These sessions allow creators to test game mechanics directly with convention attendees under live conditions:

• Saturday Schedule: Featured prototypes include Dead End (a tactical, two-player cooperative zombie shooter), Onex (a pattern-recognition card game), Deep Trouble (a push-your-luck mining game), Match 51, Artifacts of Linmarch, Mercenary, Farm Tycoon, The Alterra TCG, Explorers of the Lost Isle, Happy Valley, Spylinks, and single-player tile puzzler Puzzle Tracks.
• Sunday Schedule: Highlights include Parhelia (a semi-cooperative generation-ship colony builder), Panopticon (a hidden-faction orbital surveillance game), The Alterra TCG, Cinder, Majority Rules, Pipe Down, SpyJinks, The Tree Game, Kentucky James, Pressure Dive, and Christmas Cat-astrophe!.

First Floor Roleplaying Games

The ground-floor Playtest Zone does not host traditional roleplaying games. All tabletop roleplaying sessions run upstairs on the First Floor, which operates 35 dedicated tables per slot across seven sessions over the three days.

The RPG schedule features established systems and indie releases, including Call of Cthulhu, Dragonbane, Draw Steel, Mothership, Daggerheart, Delta Green, Twilight 2000, The One Ring, Wildsea, and Dungeons & Dragons (2024 rules). Players looking for unscheduled games can use the Games on Demand desk on the First Floor, where boarding passes for hourly games are issued 1 hour before each start time. The convention enforces the X-Card safety tool across all roleplaying tables as a mandatory standard.

Organised play forms a core part of the First Floor setup. As an official Premier Organiser for D&D, Tabletop Scotland is running five new Forgotten Realms regional modules set in Murghôm, written by Colin Tweddle, Ian Hawthorne, Richard Green, Bulb Donaldson, and Greg Foster, alongside Colin Tweddle‘s new multi-table Epic, Flotilla of Fate (EP-01-02).

Tabletop Scotland 2026 Coverage

Our thanks to Thistle Tavern for sponsoring our coverage of Tabletop Scotland. Visit their spacious store at 79 Shandwick Pl, Edinburgh for a huge selection of wargames, board games, and TCGs.

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• Dates: 4th to 6th September 2026
• Location: Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh

Official Website Find a Hotel Rent a Car

Iron Studios and Sideshow Collectibles have opened pre-orders for an officially licensed Dungeons & Dragons Beholder statue, priced at £458.46 ($600.00 USD). The hand-painted, limited-edition collector piece joins the Brazilian studio’s Icons range, with shipping scheduled between July 2027 and September 2027.

Standing 30 cm tall and weighing 3.1 kg, the sculpt captures the classic aberration created by Gary Gygax and Terry Kuntz in 1975. The beast hovers over a cavernous hoard littered with gold coins, a studded kite shield, a buckler, a dropped mace, and an abandoned scroll. Ten writhing eyestalks surround a central purple eye and an open maw with a textured, salivating tongue.

The studio’s promotional imagery highlights a luminous green magical flare charging around one of the eyestalks. While this glowing burst appears to be an added visual effect in the prototype photography rather than an integrated physical light, the underlying sculpt has a sharp physical presence. For groups running high-level dungeon encounters, the scale and detail establish it as an imposing centrepiece for a gaming table.

Unlike open-license monsters rooted in mythology, the Beholder remains proprietary Product Identity fiercely guarded by Wizards of the Coast. Unofficial models routinely face legal action, such as the copyright takedown that halted the 3D-printable Behold My Brain! Kickstarter in 2022. Because third-party creators cannot legally market commercial sculptures of the floating Eye Tyrant without a license, collectors seeking a large-format display model must rely on official releases like this one.

Beholder Model Specifications

• Product: Dungeons & Dragons Beholder Statue (Icons Line)
• Manufacturer: Iron Studios
• Distributor: Sideshow Collectibles
• Dimensions: 30 cm (H) x 27 cm (W) x 21 cm (D) / 12″ x 10.8″ x 8.3″
• Weight: 3.1 kg (6.8 lbs)
• Edition Limit: Limited Edition (Maximum 6 per customer)
• Price: £458.46 ($600.00 USD) or flexible layaway from £41.26 per month
• Estimated Shipping: July 2027 – September 2027 (estimates extend through December 2027)

Practical Buying Notes for UK Collectors

Sideshow operates international distribution out of California, meaning UK and European buyers need to budget beyond the base retail price.

• Import Duties and VAT: Sideshow does not collect UK VAT or import duty at checkout. These charges will be calculated and invoiced by the courier upon arrival in the UK.
• Production Lead Times: The production timeline spans nearly a year, with fine print noting that final fulfilment could extend through December 2027.
• Prototype Disclaimer: The images display a studio prototype; final factory production paint applications and seam finishes may vary slightly.
• Trump:

Overall, this blogger is impressed. If I had friends around more often at the flat, then I’d want something like this to dazzle them.

Quick Links

• Pre-order the Beholder Statue at Sideshow

Will BF: Moon Team IIIV delivers a sharp, chaotic sci-fi satire at Underbelly Cowgate that dissects galactic franchise tropes, Hollywood greed, and the inevitable curse of the sci-fi prequel. Staged inside the Jelly Belly space during the final stretch of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, solo performer Will BF constructs a live mockumentary about the disastrous making of a fictional space opera sequel.

The production frames itself around the ruins of Moon Team IIIV, Roman numerals deliberately botched to mean “Moon Team 2”, a box-office disaster designed to chart the villainous origin of Lord Munis. That origin begins with Prince Apollo Moon, an entitled space aristocrat whose entire galactic rebellion is sparked by a refusal to pay a 1% tax levied on the interstellar super-rich.

What follows is an inventive deconstruction of space fantasy conventions. To execute his rebellion, Apollo assembles an absurd away team portrayed through lo-fi puppetry, physical gadgets, and multi-character roleplay:

• Swimothy: An existential, ever-growing extraterrestrial fish.
• Houston: An omniscient rodent.
• WD40: A morally compromised robot with severe ethical blind spots.
• Flora: A telepathic space plant possessed of immense cosmic power who simply chooses silence.

The technical execution sets the show apart. Using a flatscreen television and projector as on-stage scene partners, pre-recorded industry “talking heads” and critics tear the production apart in real time, synchronised with live-action stage scenes behind the curtain. The lo-fi analogue setup extends to overhead projectors, physical puppets, and a self-coded video game segment that recruits front-row audience members into live hacker duty.

The musical numbers hit their marks, balancing sharp lyrical cynicism against classic sci-fi homages. Rather than relying solely on cheap parody, the show takes aim at corporate IP milking, George Lucas-style prequel overreach, and the commercial urge to over-explain every minor villain backstory.

Solo multi-character shows often risk losing momentum, but the relentless cue timing, custom tech integration, and comic momentum sustain the hour cleanly. It is an ambitious, genuinely funny slice of geek comedy that succeeds precisely because it understands the ridiculous mechanics of the genre it mocks.

Tickets for Will BF: Moon Team IIIV can be booked via the EdFringe box office or directly through Underbelly.

Welcome home. This is Audio EXP, the weekly podcast from Geek Native. I am your host, Girdy, and today is the 29th of August, 2026.

[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #346]

[Also on Stitcher | Spotify | Apple | YouTube]

This week, we examine the destructive corporate pipelines targeting out-of-print gaming history, cover White Wolf adjusting its mechanics following early community feedback, look at legendary fantasy designers reuniting for a new setting edition, and celebrate Chaosium launching an entirely new original game line.

Before we get to the news, our August community spotlight is officially in the books. Our wide-ranging interview with Paul Vincent of Table Cat Games is live on the site. Paul gave us a remarkably honest look at the grind of small-press production, reflecting on his synthwave retro-thriller Street Wolves, the standalone Zero Hour project, and the sheer discipline required to run small-scale crowdfunding fulfilment without burning out. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the practical business of self-publishing.

With August wrapping up, voting is currently open for our September spotlight. Head over to our nomination page to cast your vote for one of this month’s five independent studios:

• Skydawn Game Studios
• THE OG GM ADVENTURES
• Red Ruin Publishing
• Eldritch Tides Games
• TTRPGkids LLC

Our lead story this week exposes a destructive threat directly targeting out-of-print physical gaming history. Tech sector AI developers are buying up out-of-print physical tabletop RPGs and destroying them in bulk scanning machines. To acquire high-quality, human-written text untouched by synthetic generative models, tech brokers are using automated ISBN crawlers across platforms like AbeBooks and Biblio to purchase physical books published between 1980 and 2015. Because many niche 1990s sourcebooks had print runs of only 500 to 2,000 copies and never received legal PDF conversions, feeding these physical books into automated guillotine slicers to rip off their spines permanently erases them. The practice is now facing antitrust petitions to the FTC, with civil society groups arguing that destroying non-renewable physical literature creates an anti-competitive data moat that locks gaming history away from the public forever.

In major publishing news, veteran horror studio Chaosium is branching into fresh territory. Chaosium has launched a free 62-page quickstart for Time Without Tide ahead of its September crowdfunding launch, marking the debut of a brand-new, original intellectual property for the publisher. Developed over nearly a decade by Australian designer James Coquillat, the game completely steps away from the studio’s traditional d100 percentile engine, using a bespoke d6 pool system focused on light management and survival in a ruined, fog-covered world.

Over in classic fantasy design, key creators behind TSR’s legendary 1991 Dark Sun setting are joining forces once again. Timothy Brown has announced a new 5E edition of Dragon Kings with original creators Troy Denning, Brom, and Rich Baker. Launching on BackerKit this September, the release brings players back to the desolate, low-resource world of Khitus. Unlike the 2014 edition, this standalone hardback integrates setting lore directly with 5e rules, featuring six unique ancestries, over thirty monsters, native psionics mechanics, and conversion guidelines for 2E roleplaying games, all supported by more than sixty human-illustrated pieces of artwork.

In rules development, design choices are shifting quickly over at White Wolf. The open alpha playtest for Vampire: The Masquerade 6th Edition closes today, with designers officially dropping the Drama mechanic following community feedback. The team reacted quickly to alpha reports that the abstract pacing element created too much distance between players and their characters, proving that early table feedback is actively shaping the next edition.

In pop culture auctions, a famous piece of cinema history has changed hands for a fortune. Steven Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park mosquito-in-amber walking stick prop has sold for 400,000 dollars at a Los Angeles auction. Used by Richard Attenborough on screen as John Hammond, the piece remains one of the most recognisable physical artefacts in modern film.

Closing out our local updates, Edinburgh is transitioning from festival season straight into convention mode. We filed a late theatrical review for Extra Lives: The Interactive Video Game Concert at the Edinburgh Fringe, analysing how the live performance blends classic chiptunes with real-time audience voting.

Meanwhile, transport across the capital has cleared a critical hurdle. Princes Street tram lines have reopened following a major city-centre fire, ensuring clear travel routes for Tabletop Scotland next weekend. The convention runs from Friday the 4th to Sunday the 6th of September at the Royal Highland Centre in Ingliston, and with the tram lines running smoothly, attendees travelling from the city centre or airport will have uninterrupted public transport straight to the venue.

That is it for this week. Thanks for listening to Audio EXP. For all the links, the spotlight interview, and full stories, head over to Geek Native. Next week is Tabletop Scotland. Thanks to our event sponsors, Thistle Tavern, the team will be there, but we’ll try to do a podcast anyway.