Attempted Aura Farming

The only way to describe Episode 33 of the Rascal Radio Hour is "suffuse with unsurprising levels of ribaldry. Thomas and Caelyn join Chase to create a Rascal trifecta barely seen this year. The news? Discussed. The Question Dungeon? Delved. Tangents and meanderings? Absolutely assured. We've definitely got a brand of bullshit, and it's on full display from minute one.

From the cancelled Neopets RPGs to pedantic arguing over the definition of a licensed RPG, the crew cover all their bases. Later on, Thomas describes an esoteric fishing trip with a friend that he's not sure either of them can recreate – or want to. Chase is getting esoteric, as well, with a video game that's doing mighty interesting things with Dungeons & Dragons' assumptions. And Caelyn schools the crew on the difference between doctors and misters.

You can find Rascal Radio Hour on Apple, Spotify, and all the other various podcatchers. Leaving a five-star review helps new listeners find our show and website. Since we eschew traditional advertising, these reviews and any word-of-mouth are genuinely a massive help — thank you!

Here's an excerpt:

Chase: I was thinking about how, back in 2021, A24 produced The Green Knight RPG, which was a boxed set one-shot that didn't call itself an OSR game, but was essentially just like OSR, OD&D style rules with The Green Knight's aesthetic trappings laid over it. It wasn't even playing through the movie. It was a very, mythical tenebrous version of England and Europe portrayed in the film that was used that as a setting for a RPG. Even though that was like, it didn't make probably any sort of like headway within the hobby, it was a good licensed game. Like it understood what it was trying to do. I don't know, this whole practice is really fascinating.

Thomas: I don't even call that a licensed game because that's the license holder making a game. Like, it's not licensed to anybody. A24 released that game. That's like saying the Wendy's RPG was a licensed game. Sorry, I just needed an excuse to say the Wendy's RPG.

Chase: So I was also thinking about the Wendy's RPG. I would call that a licensed game. You are leveraging the power of the license, of the brand, in order to sell the game.

Thomas: But I'm... If Wendy's make a Wendy's game, who's the... Where's the license? Like...

Caelyn: Okay, then how about this? Renegade make a lot of games that are licensed from Hasbro properties. which is so weird when you think about it. It just shows how little Hasbro thinks of RPGs in general. We make an RPG, we have Wizards of the Coast. Do we make any RPGs based on our own stuff? No.

Say if they changed their mind and decided to announce the Wizards of the Coast Transformers RPG. Would that be a licensed game? Because from what I'm getting here, Thomas says no because it's being made by the actual owner of the IP, and Chase says yes because it's specifically leveraging an existing brand.

Chase: I say maybe.

Thomas: You're one step away from saying D&D is a licensed game. Chase, that's what you're saying! Like, D&D is calling itself D&D. That smells.

Chase: Hmm. I will go on record saying I'm not fully convinced by my own definition here, but I think it's interesting. I think it is generative to think about it... like, yes, I agree with Thomas: a licensed game in the traditional sense is where there is a formal relationship between the IP holder and the IP contractor, right? The sort of the Hasbro/Renegade relationship for the Transformers and GI Joe RPGs. Very much a licensed game.

The Wendy's RPG still feels like a licensed game, right? But it doesn't fit that traditional model. I am sitting here and playing a little bit of devil's advocate for myself, but if it's not a licensed game, what is it?

Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does feel like one, but the flip side of that is the Children of Time thing not feeling like a licensed game, right? The Streets of Jade RPG with Fonda Lee? That also is technically a licensed game, but it doesn't feel like one because the license holder is a human being, an individual that you shook hands with and who likes you.

Caelyn: You realize that this is actually our opportunity to coin an obnoxious acronym that we can start using. My first suggestion is that they are intellectual-property-leveraging RPGs, so an IPL RPG.

Thomas: Fantastic, yeah. Now, it doesn't have the good thing that an acronym can do, which is can be its own word, right? So, if you made it "leverage intellectual property", you could say LIP. They're "Lippy games"!

Caelyn: What's wrong with saying "Ipple games"?

Chase: That's too close to Nipple. I'm not gonna say "Nipple game." Because if it's not a licensed RPG, then it's a "NIPL game" because it's Not IP Licensed RPG.