This week begins Idle Red Hands Weekly, a shorter format update podcast to let you know what we are working on and what’s coming up in the future. We will talk about gaming news, our favorite new releases in the tabletop world and also our favorite crowdfunding projects. In addition, we answer questions from listeners and give you teasers for topics of our upcoming longer episodes. All of this in under thirty minutes! Subscribe to the podcast, if you haven’t already, and along with our regular in-depth discussions, reviews and gaming inspiration, we will keep you up to date.

In our premiere episode we discuss two Kickstarter projects in their final week Swordsfall and Mysthea: Legends from the Borderlands RPG. Also upcoming topics on the podcast and dodging magic in the Forbidden Lands RPG.

In our last (first?) episode of the year, we discuss some of the big stories in the geek and gaming world from 2014. While they may not be the same stories everyone else is talking about, they’re the ones that had the most impact in our little circle across the Pacific.

“Dungeons and Dragons, first edition, you raped it. You murdered it. You killed my childhood.”
Bradley Martell, the Red Gamer

All seasons must end, so at the end of the fourth, we discuss Game of Thrones, the most illegally downloaded show of all time. (I’m not sure that counts as the iron price.) We share our favorite and least favorite characters as well as the storylines we love and the controversies we, well, love.

SPOILER ALERT: There was no way to discuss the series without discussing the series.

 

Please take the survey below. It asks how and why you play tabletop role-playing games, what other games you play, and how to get children more involved in the hobby. If you play TRPGs, the survey should take under 10 minutes. If you don’t play TRPGs, then you must love our extremely late movie reviews and will be able to complete the survey in a couple of minutes.

This survey is for a school paper I’m doing. The results of the survey will never be presented in any way that individuals will be able to be identified.

I would really appreciate it if you shared the survey with as many people as you can.

https://mcgillmgmt.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_dgmqjaiZHn2EHKl

Thanks,

Lyal

We were absolutely crushed to learn that Margaret Weis Productions have canceled their Marvel line. The licensing costs were high, as you would imagine, and turned out to be too steep. If you don’t have one of the books in this line, we encourage you to get one.

While we’re sad to see the Marvel flavour go, it was the Cortex Plus Heroic system that really grabbed us. Hopefully, we’ll see a few generic genre books coming out from MWP using the Heroic system. In the meantime, we’re looking forward to their Heroic fantasy rules in the soon to be released Cortex Plus Hacker’s Guide.

We’re planning to help kickstart this “anthology of ways to use Cortex Plus from MWP’s award-winning Leverage & Smallville RPGs: hacks, settings, and options“. It looks really good in its own right. However, we’re really excited about the possibility of a Marvel Heroic Roleplaying fantasy hack. (Those who listened to Gladiators know why.) Unfortunately, it’s a $25,000 stretch goal.
They are over $20,000 with two weeks to go, but we don’t want to leave anything to chance. If you are at all interested in any of these games, the book looks well worth the $10-25 price. If you don’t support this product, many children will grow up not knowing the pleasures of playing gladiators with the MRH system.

We here at Idle Red Hands were saddened to learn of the devastating apartment fire that affected Jen Dixon and Kevin Weiser, hosts of The Walking Eye podcast. Though the damage is still being assessed, they appear to have lost nearly everything.

If you’re a fan of The Walking Eye or just RPG podcasts in general, please consider donating something to help them out via the Chipin site, located here. Every little bit helps.

With Lyal’s work and school schedules and Chris having a baby in less than a month, we’re having trouble recording on our usual day. In order to maintain a weekly schedule and to ensure all three hosts are available for as many episodes as possible, we’ll need to switch to a Sunday upload. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.

Fashionably late as usual, Idle Red Hands now has a Twitter presence. In the future, we’ll use it to announce when new episodes go up, reveal the topics of future episodes, link episode-related media that may not have been mentioned on air, and tell you about contest updates. You can follow us at @IdleRedHands.

Speaking of contests, the “Leave a Comment” contest is still going for another three weeks. All you have to do is log on to DriveThruRPG.com, download one of our episodes (for free, of course), and leave a comment for a chance to win a $10 gift certificate. Everyone who leaves a comment before the deadline of 11:59pm March 7th, 2012 will be automatically entered into the drawing. It’s the easiest $10 you could possibly make in your life, so don’t miss out.