DMDave/Henceforth Games News - January 2023 (Patreon)

Happy new year, folks!

I hope you had a safe and wonderful evening last night. The wife and I got a date night out to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. We watched Glass Onion and Dirty Dancing. 

Here's a look at what to expect in January and in 2023

Two Years of New Fifth Edition Content Published and Ready

In anticipation of the forthcoming introduction of the new commercial license from Wizards of the Coast and the revocation of the 1.0a open gaming license, I spent the last week of 2022 publishing super basic versions of Dungeons & Lairs posts to cover us for the next two years (or 54 weeks) of content. 

Since those posts are so basic, our writing team will need to take time to edit them to get them up to snuff with our typical content. Fortunately, it shouldn't disrupt us from our normal Friday posting schedule. 

TL;DR: no matter what changes are coming with Wizards' licensing, barring any legal disruption from Hasbro's army of attorneys, you'll still get Fifth Edition content that will last you until the end of 2024.

Phoenix Engine RPG System Coming Soon

In addition to pre-publishing two years' worth of Dungeons & Lairs content, I spent the holidays writing my own ruleset, which will debut in two Kickstarters this year: 

• Horror. A Roleplaying Game. This has long been my "white whale" as a writer, to create a horror RPG that has the horror feel of games like Call of Cthulhu but still enough tactical play to keep Dungeons & Dragons players happy. Expect the Kickstarter in Mid-March, shortly after printing finishes on our last two projects.
• Endless Journeys Fantasy Roleplaying Game. Since I've got a ruleset and Wizards is basically barring folks at my level from creating new content (without a ton of restrictions, bureaucratic nonsense, and IP-grabbing, that is), I figure it makes sense to release a fantasy book, too. This will come after the horror set. While, yes, the last thing that the world need is another fantasy RPG, the main draw of this will be the true open gaming license that will accompany this set. Not only will it do exactly what the 1.0a was designed to do—allowing third-party creators to create games using an existing ruleset—but I intend to support all third-party creators' work fully. Expect the Kickstarter for this one in the fall.

I should have a working copy of the rules once our OGL/SRD is finalized, likely this week. I plan to share it here and start running playtests for it. Once we've tweaked it a bit, I'll be shipping free copies of the basic rules to all of our Electrum+ patrons. ETA on that is currently unknown since we're still working on GMSG.

As always, feel free to hit me up in Discord if you have questions.

Peace and love, folks and have a happy new year!

 - Dave