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WotC Stats a Seattle Raccoon While Paizo Dumps Nethys

issues ttrpg  2026-07-24

Issue #004 · Week of July 24, 2026

This Week’s Verdict

The most consequential D&D release of the week is a stat block for a raccoon named Jimothy, which tells you where the summer news cycle sits. Beneath the novelty, Paizo quietly severed ties with the community rules archive it leaned on for years, and Gen Con season is spinning up its exclusives machine. Read the second story, not the first.

Releases & Announcements

Wizards of the Coast posted official stats for Jimothy, a wild Seattle raccoon that went viral, because that is the kind of year it is.

More substantially, Chaosium released what it bills as a definitive guide to Innsmouth for Call of Cthulhu. Evil Hat put Thousand Arrows, Luca Vampiro’s PbtA game of war in 16th century Japan, out in PDF and print on demand. Renegade Game Studios announced Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe Roleplaying Game, coming this year via BackerKit. Marvel Multiverse Roleplaying is getting Godzilla, complete with kaiju-scale combat rules and maps.

On the print-news front, EN World logged supplements for Amazing Adventures, 2300 AD, and Cloud Empress (new edition), plus a new game called Warrenguard. Kobold Press dropped its Gen Con 2026 exclusive releases and first looks. Beadle & Grimm’s co-founders Jon Ciccolini and Bill Rehor sat for a long interview on the state of luxury RPG boxes.

Rules & Errata

No official errata for D&D 5e, Shadowdark, or DCC this week. The nearest thing to a rules event is procedural: Paizo has ended its relationship with Archives of Nethys, the community-run Pathfinder and Starfinder rules reference, per EN World’s July 18 news digest. If you rely on Nethys for at-table lookups, that arrangement is now in question, which matters more than most actual errata would.

The rest is homebrew and house rules. Ruckerworks published three rules “stolen” from Shadowdark to make 5e grittier, and Tintenteufel worked through balancing dwarf, elf, and halfling ancestries against Cairn’s inventory-slot economy. Useful table tinkering, not official anything.

The Community

The recurring argument this week is the beginner-onboarding question. Ruckerworks made the case that new players learn D&D faster through Shadowdark than through what he calls 5e’s cumbersome character creation, and separately reminisced about the 1980 “assemble the IKEA bookshelf without instructions” era of learning the game. His earlier video on players being voted out of a table apparently drew a more heated comment thread than he expected.

Elsewhere, deinol poked at the tired “if you can run Keep on the Borderlands with it, it’s OSR” definition and asked for the most indie way to run B2. A separate thread admired B4: The Lost City for its desert water-provisioning hook, with martin arguing a dungeon where water matters more than gold sounds genuinely fun. Gnome Stew wrote up three mechanics from Blades in the Dark worth stealing, on the occasion of a campaign clearing its first year.

Convention season also produced the eternal lament, courtesy of squeakyears: the post-con high of new systems, followed weeks later by the realization that the group will never assemble to play them.

On the Horizon

Gen Con 2026 is the gravity well here, with Kobold Press already showing exclusives. The ENNIE Awards posted a “Dream Date” auction guide letting you attend the ceremony with a publisher.

On the crowdfunding side, Sly Flourish’s Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster Kickstarter continues, with a free 36 page preview available. Geek Native’s Routinely Itemised roundup flagged Andrew Misisico’s Fright at the Museum as the headline campaign, alongside Shadowdark Triple Feature, Pirate Borg, and others. Hit Point Press is teaming with Felicia Day on a setting book tied to The Guild’s new crowdfunded movie. Watch for Arcana Unleashed factions and backgrounds, and a Between Earth and Sky RPG, both previewed in EN World’s digest.

Resources

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