More games about us

One notable thing about 2025: the appearance of more games about Aotearoa New Zealand, particularly those including Māori perspectives. 

When KiwiRPG started, we were conceerned about this! We were making games that often didn’t represent our home. (Why? Genre expectations, writing to an international market, and a lack of known Māori designers. Pākehā designers are reluctant to engage with the complicated bicultural context of Aotearoa alone!) 

And now? Looking at the new game releases and the game bundles, it’s obvious a shift is underway. An exciting trend!

(WHAT ABOUT SHOWS??? I hear you say – well our shows have always been more balanced – although they are mostly located in fantastic D&D realms, they have Kiwi voices centre stage by their very nature and of course there have been Māori players and GMs right there since the start, and often they incorporate local ideas and concepts as well. The game creation side of things is catching up!)   

Blades ’68

Across the Shattered Isles, it is the Age of Consensus. Superstition has been replaced by the superior values of science, conformity, and consumerism. It is a world at peace.

Or that’s what they try to tell you.

It’s only in playtest, but it still made headlines: Tim Denee (Deathmatch Island, Odyssey Aquatica) has been given the keys to Doskvol and he’s going somewhere groovy! Blades ’68 is a remix of hit game Blades in the Dark, advancing the timeline and the technology one hundred years into the future. 

You can grab the enormous playtest version now, free!

Sam Robson Chaosium win

In September, all of KiwiRPG was delighted for Sam Robson who was named as one of the winners of Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying Design Challenge! 

The BRP Design Challenge is Chaosium’s TTRPG design competition which financially assists new and upcoming creators in bringing their games to independent publication (be that digital or print). We seek to empower designers from all walks of life, with original ideas, concepts, and systems, with the goal of seeing all shortlisted entries eventually published independently. 

We love the kaupapa of Chaosium’s competition, and Sam is a generous and supportive member of the community so seeing this success is just fantastic. Seasons of Magic is in public playtest now and part of this week’s livestream lineup!

Gaming Research Survey

KiwiRPG is getting academic!

Shaun Garea from Massey University’s GRAIL Gaming Research Lab is part of KiwiRPG, and GRAIL has a survey underway to build “a picture of tabletop gaming habits, play motivations, and the personality of players here in Aotearoa“.

Here are the details: https://grailgamingresearch.wordpress.com/tabletop-gaming-survey/

If you’re based here in NZ and you’re 16+ you’re invited to take part! Only takes 10-15 minutes to get involved!

Steve Wrigley standup

Friend of KiwiRPG Steve Wrigley is touring around the world and working on a bunch of D&D material. His show at Gen Con has already sold out but there are still opportunities to see him in the US, and then on to the UK and Ireland. Don’t miss!

 

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FiveEvil in the newspaper

Morgan Davie (it’s me, i’m writing this blog post) was in the newspaper, the actual physical newspaper on newsprint as well as the website, talking RPGs! I was featured in the arts & culture section talking about the (then-upcoming) game FiveEvil Fiendish 5E Horror (now available in PDF, print coming soon!). So there you go: role-playing games are arts and culture! Proved!

Fury of the Small

The Spinoff is a crucial part of Aotearoa NZ’s media landscape, an independent voice in the news and media scene that frequently wins awards for its journalism. And it’s just brilliant to see it throwing its weight behind a new D&D podcast, Fury of the Small!