If you are unfamiliar with it, Syrinscape is a sound design app that adds evocative ambient background sound and a movie-like soundtrack to your tabletop gaming experience. From ethereal forests and stony shorelines to dank vermin-filled dungeons and the spooky depths of the underdark.

And now they have landed a partnership with D&D. This along with the recently announced Call Of Cthulhu RPG soundtrack and their existing collaboration with Pathfinder RPG, not to mention their vast library of original soundtrack content, Syrinscape has taken the lead on making a fully immersive gaming experience.

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Pathfinder enters the mobile CCG market with Pathfinder Duels, a new head-to-head battling game with simultaneous turns and cards decks built around the iconic characters of the Pathfinder RPG. Available now for Android and iOS.

Dire Wolf Digital has added a solo scenario for Clank! In Space! to its Renegade Game Studios Companion App (Android, iOS).

Hasbro has launched a game-show style version of Trivial Pursuit played with Amazon Echo Buttons.

Metro, Queen Games’ tile-laying title about Paris rail-lines, has arrived on iOS and Android, with AI opponents and online play.

The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game materialized recently on Steam. Evil Hat and developer Hidden Achievement say that mobile versions will follow on the 7th.

Asmodee Digital put out a new version of Carcassonne with a 3D look to Steam and Android.

There’s also a new version of Catan in the electronic game space. Catan Universe is available for PC, Mac, iOS, and Android and allows cross-platform play. Previous mobile versions of Catan have been renamed Catan Classic and owners of those versions are eligible to receive certain content in Catan Universe for free.

Set in the “Catan universe” but not the traditional board game, Catan Stories is a new scenario-based text adventure game from Asmodee Digital (Android and iOS).

APBA Go, the online version of APBA Baseball, has added solitaire play.

Referring to it as “everybody’s favourite board game,” Ubisoft announced the release of Hasbro’s Monopoly on Nintendo Switch. The game includes three themed boards (Classic City, Amusement Park, Haunted) and dice rolls that players can feel with the Switch’s HD Rumble.

Also now on Nintendo Switch from Ubisoft is the card game Uno, with themes derived from video games, Rabbids, Just Dance, and Rayman.

Kinkajoo, which already produces a Rummikub game app, now has out a free Rummikub score tracker and timer (Android and iOS).

Other cardboard-to-computer ports:

• 7 Wonders to Android and iOS by Repos Productions.
• Renegade Game Studios’ Lotus to Android and iOS by Dire Wolf Digital.
• Tokaido to Steam (Windows & Mac) by Funforge.
• Hasbro’s Battleship to Facebook Messenger by CoolGames.
• Fowers Games’ Burgle Bros. and Paperback to Windows/Steam.

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Jaipur, Asmodee’s head-to-head, set-collecting card game about trade caravans in India, is now available on mobile (Android, iOS). It can be played against three levels of AI or against another live player online.

CMON has a new companion app for Zombicide: Black Plague. Among other features, the app manages the zombie spawning deck, helps with inventory maintenance, and tracks experience and skill options. It also synchronizes over a network to track all players’ game states.

As announced by Paizo, two digital Pathfinder games are in the works. One, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, is a computer RPG and is being developed by Owlcat Games. In it, players start out as adventurers but are able to claim the lands they explore and, thus, carve out their own kingdoms. The other, Pathfinder Duels, is a digital collectible card game based on the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path and is scheduled for release in September. It’s being developed by 37Games.

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Pathfinder Worldscape is a new fantasy crossover comic series from Dynamite and Paizo. Appearing in the comics alongside Pathfinder iconic heroes Valeros, Seoni, Merisiel, and Kyra will be sword & sorcery characters Red Sonja, John Carter of Mars, Tarzan, and others.

Each issue includes a pull-out, miniatures-scale encounter map depicting a location from the comic’s story, as well as an appendix with supplementary material for the Pathfinder RPG. In issue #1 (available now), that’s stats for Red Sonja and details on her sword-devil archetype. For issue #2 (in a couple of weeks), there’ll be stats for the green Martians of Barsoom and rules for radium weapons.

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Paizo has announced that it’s holding off on the release of the next Pathfinder Adventure Card Game set. Mummy’s Mask adventure path was scheduled to ship in February of 2016 but will now not see retail until at least the summer and possibly the fall. This change in plans, Paizo said, was brought on by numerous comments the company received (from both customers and retailers) explaining that players were having difficulty keeping up with the release of new scenarios.

In the meantime, Paizo will continue to put out class decks and the Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild will revisit Rise of the Runelords in a “full-on epic” season that mixes up the previous adventures and includes new villains.

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There is this idea floating around about customized cards made by fans. The idea being that anyone can create a card for a favorite game and fold it right into the deck. If that sounds too fictional to be plausible, think again.

DriveThruCards.com now has a Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (PACG) card creator that anyone can use to build a custom made character, armor, weapon, or whatever card to add to the core deck. Read the rest of this entry »

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Paizo’s new Monster Codex for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game provides an in-depth look at 20 monster types, including orcs, ogres, trolls, kobolds, and more. For each, the book includes detailed background information, sample encounters, special material (such as feats and magic items), and a series of new stat blocks covering a range of challenge levels.

Another feature of the Monster Codex is a set of simple class templates, which is a way to add character-class features to a monster without having to go through the usual tedious level-by-level process.

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In addition to three major releases at Gen Con, Paizo also pulled in nine ENnie Awards (including Best Publisher), announced a license to Obsidian Entertainment (Fallout: New Vegas) for electronic games based on Pathfinder (starting with a mobile version of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game), and hosted nearly 10,000 Pathfinder Society players.

Those releases, by the way, were:

• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Advanced Class Guide—featuring ten new character classes, including arcanist, bloodrager, brawler, hunter, investigator, shaman, skald, slayer, swashbuckler, and warpriest.
• Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull & Shackles—which launches players on a series of pirate adventures, includes improved rules, and introduces four new character classes.
• Pathfinder Adventure Path: Iron Gods—a fantasy and technology mash-up, with barbarian, robots, cultists, and crashed spaceships.

Product news aside, Gen Con presented me the opportunity to sit down with Paizo’s publisher, Erik Mona, for a fantastic discussion about growth, diversity, setbacks, and surprises. I invite you to listen. The recording is just under 22 minutes.

Download: Interview-With-Paizos-Eric-Mona-at-Gen-Con-2014.mp3

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We’ve briefly mentioned this before, and now we have more information. Paizo will be debuting the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (PACG) at GenCon 2013 that tries to recreate the feel of Pathfinder without the GM. The base set will come with 500 cards, dice, and everything else 4 players need to create a character and start playing. A 110 Character Add-On deck will also be available, and allows up to 6 players to play. After that Paizo will be releasing bi-monthlty, 110 card Adventure Decks.

MSRP will be $59.99 for the base set, and $19.99 for the Character Add-On Deck and bi-monthly Adventure Decks.

While I’ve never gotten into Pathfinder, these products really excite me. I can’t wait to see how they turn out, and give them a whirl.

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Ignitus Innovation, publishers of Untold, have just released a Tangent for the Pathfinder RPG system called Harvester.”

“What’s a Tangent,” you might ask?

Ignitus describes them as: “Tangents are a line of simple, straightforward and super-awesome mini-adventures for your Pathfinder (or Untold) game! Designed to be easy to slip in between two adventures, in the middle of an existing adventure, or even to be used as the stepping off point for a brand new adventure, Tangents are ‘plug-and-play’, ‘quick-and-dirty’ RPG goodness!”

As stated in that description, you can also use this Tangent in your Untold games.

Here’s what the book includes:

• One (1) new Pathfinder Creature: the Harvester
• One (1) new Pathfinder NPC: Buzzsaw (and advanced Harvester “build”)
• A tangent for 5th level characters – complete with Overview, Background, Encounter Setup, and Monster Tactics sections!
• A section on Expanding the Tangent into a full-fledged adventure
• 6 pages, brimming with beautiful, full-color art

I love the idea of bite-sized adventures, and it’ll be cool to see what else Ignitus comes up with in this series. I don’t have any Pathfinder material, but I’m interested to see how well this will work with my Untold stuff.
Tangent: Harvester is available from DriveThruRPG for $1.

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