Obsidian Entertainment announced that it has signed a long-term licensing partnership with Paizo Inc. to produce electronic games based on its popular Pathfinder Roleplaying Game franchise. Obsidian's first licensed product through this deal will be a tablet game based on the Pathfinder Adventure Card game, a cooperative game for 1 to 4 players.

This one's for the old-timers among you: A new company has launched made up of former Strategic Simulations Inc. (SSI) employees called Tactical Simulations Interactive (TSI). The company features the talents of former SSI veterans Paul Murray and David Shelley, and David Klein. In its early days SSI was known as one of the best war game publishers in the world, but by the late eighties it managed to secure the rights to make Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games.

Wizards of the Coast announced that it is giving away a free Dungeons & Dragons basic rulebook, downloadable via its official website. While the basic Dungeons & Dragons PDF won't go into any great detail on any game setting, it is equivalent to the old Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia.

Playdek has released a brand new update on the Kickstarter page for its game Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians. The latest update, answers a lot of questions fans have about this game being made by several principles that worked on such hit Japanese tactical strategy titles as Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. More importantly, Playdek is almost near its funding goal of $600,000, but the campaign only has a little over two days to raise the $90,669 it needs to get fully funded.

Playdek has released a new update on the Kickstarter page for its game Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians.

Some good news for fans of the RPG being developed by Obsidian and South Park Studios: It will be a Steam game and will not use Ubisoft's uPlay DRM. Responding to a question about whether the game would require uPlay to be installed in order to play, Obsidian Entertainment's official twitter account confirmed that the PC version of the game will not use Ubisoft's uPlay; instead it will be fully integrated into Steam.

The rights to publish the game were acquired by Ubisoft in an auction following the bankruptcy of its previous publisher THQ.

Here's a pretty cool story from Gamasutra - and a particularly awe inspiring thing if you happen to be someone developing a roguelike game. Glenn Wichman, one of the original co-creators of the super popular 1980s dungeon-crawler Rogue, served as a judge on the "Ultimate Roguelike Challenge" competition.

G3 Studios and Guido Henkel have launched the Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign for Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore, a new first-person, party-based role-playing game with a focus on story and character development. The game is being developed by G3 Studios and overseen by Guido Henkel, who has worked on such RPG hits as Planescape: Torment, the Realms of Arkania Trilogy, Fallout II, and many other games.

G3 Studios wants to get out in front of an upcoming crowd-funding campaign to bankroll its upcoming PC role-playing game, Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore. Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore is described as a first-person, party-based role-playing game with a heavy emphasis on story and character development. A prototype of the game is already in development by G3 Studios (using the Unity engine), and veteran role-playing game designer/producer Guido Henkel is leading the project.

Publisher acttil announced that the Kickstarter campaign for Reborn has launched today. Developed by Elemental-Labs, Reborn is a real-time 3D action role-playing game with a heavy focus on weapons and cyborg augmentations. The game is set in the future sounding Neo-Tokyo in the year 2188 where a futuristic version of the legendary Japanese swordsman Musashi Miyamoto battles an evil corporation.

After disappearing for over a month because of contractual issues with Atari, Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is back on sale for various platforms.

This week's Humble Bundle Weekly sale ended a few minutes ago, netting Jeff Vogel - the one man army that operates Spiderweb Software - a fair amount of change. As of this writing, the Humble Bundle Weekly Sale generated over $182,000 from the sale of nearly 39,000 bundles featuring Spiderweb's catalog of role-playing games. As is usually the case, Linux users paid the most for the bundle, with an average purchase price of $6.35, followed by Mac users who paid an average price of $6.19, and Windows users who brought the average down by paying an average price $4.43.

While the folks at the Humble Bundle continue to ignore my suggestion for a role-playing game-themed Humble Bundle, this week's Humble Bundle Weekly Sale is as close as you can get: for the next six days consumers can get 15 games from indie RPG developer Spiderweb Software's catalog DRM-free and with plenty of extras.

The developers of the indie action RPG game Cube World have been trying to sell early alpha access to the game for a little under a weak but fans who try to purchase the game keep getting an error and can't complete the purchase. At first developers thought the problem was that too many visitors were trying to buy the cute little voxel-based RPG at the same time.

It turns out that the problem is that someone has been consistently bombarding the servers with an intentional distributed denial of service attack.

Baldur's Gate 3 could still be made if the parties involved sort out the legal issues with the franchise, Beamdog studio head Trent Oster told Rock, Paper, Shotgun in an interview. Last week the company put production on Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition and patch updates for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition on hold and removed BGEE from various marketplaces.

Larian Studios is off to a rousing start with its Kickstarter for its new Divinity computer role-playing game Divinity: Original Sin. The game, which adds another chapter to the long running series, will be self-published by Larian and is well into its development cycle at this point. The series used to be published by German publisher JoWooD, but that is no longer an option for obvious reasons.

When Diablo 3 lands on the PS3 and PS4 it won't have some of the features or the requirements that its PC counterpart currently has. According to Polygon, a Blizzard official told them at PAX East this weekend that Diablo 3 will not require a constant internet connection in order to play.

Richard Garriott's Kickstarter campaign for Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues is within striking distance of being fully funded. The campaign has generated $905,628 of the $1 million in funding it needs, and a new announcement today from his studio Portalarium will likely put it over the required threshold.

While Bethesda Softworks' popular role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been out for over a year on various platforms (PC, Xbox 360, and PS3), the company says that it is far from done with the game and that downloadable content is helping the company keep the RPG relevant to this day and make some money in the process. Speaking to UK publication MCV, Bethesda European MD Sean Brennan is using retailers to help push the game’s DLC (Dawnguard, Hearthfire and Dragonborn) on Xbox 360.

InXile has managed to raise over $2.1 million dollars in just a few short days for its spiritual sequel to the hit RPG Planescape: Torment. Initially the company was looking to raise $900,000, but that number was surpassed in the first six hours of the crowd funding campaign. Torment: Tides of Numenera is a single-player role-playing game based on designer and writer Monte Cook's new tabletop role-playing game, Numenera. The game will be distributed DRM-free for Windows (PC), Mac, and Linux and will be available in English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish.

While Richard Garriott (also known as Lord British in most circles) may no longer hold the rights to the Ultima series of classic CRPG games or Ultima Online (he sold it, along with Origin over a decade ago) that hasn't stopped him from returning to his roots. Today Garriott announced that his Austin-based studio Portalarium is hard at work on his newest game, Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, a sort-of spiritual sequel of sorts to the Ultima series, but set in a whole new universe.

Chris Taylor's and Gas Powered Games' Kickstarter for their MOBA-style action RPG strategy hybrid Wildman is well on its way to raising the $1.1 million it is seeking on the crowd sourcing site from the community. Yesterday after the announcement I posited on Facebook that they would need to raise at least $50,000 a day to be well over their goal in the time remaining (around $1.6 million).

Gas Powered Games founder Chris Taylor today launched the official Kickstarter campaign for his next big game called Wildman. Taylor and GPG are seeking $1.1 million in funding for the development of what he calls an action game that combines some of the best elements of his previous titles including Dungeon Siege, Supreme Commander and Demigod. Taylor is best known for creating the ultra popular real-time strategy game Total Annihilation while at Cavedog Entertainment.

We've seen some interesting Kickstarters looking for funding, but a new Kickstarter that features Tom Hall (Commander Keen, Doom, Rise of the Triad, and Anachronox) and Brenda Brathwaite (Wizardry RPG series) promising an "old school" role-playing game is one that probably deserves your rapt attention. The legendary developers, who will work with John Romero's Loot Drop on this particular project, are seeking $1 million, with a stretch goal of $1.9 million.

Late last week Obsidian Entertainment announced a new RPG project and a Kickstarter campaign to fund its development. In only a few days the new RPG managed to rake in $1.5 million in funding from 37,482 backers with 29 more days to go. They have also passed one stretch goal ($1.4 million) that adds one new playable race, class and companion. Obsidian has a bunch of ideas for further stretch goals on the Kickstarter page.

You may have heard the announcement that "Black Isle Studios is back," but is it really? The Interplay label responsible for such role-playing game hits as Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment, and many others may be back but it is in name only and the developers that once wandered its hallowed halls are somewhere else working on such games as the upcoming enhanced edition of Baldur's Gate and a South Park PRG.

Last week it was reported that Square Enix had abandoned development on Final Fantasy Versus XIII. Final Fantasy fans put on sackcloth and ashes. Hands were wrung raw. Prayers were said. Incense were burned to dark gods and souls were offered up to creatures that slither in the underbelly of the universe. It is too bad that those reports weren't completely accurate.

I find this fascinating.  Having just crossed the million dollar mile marker, the Shadowrun Returns Kickstarter was just updated to say that if it reaches $1.5 million, developer Harebrained Schemes will build a special mission exclusive to backers as a thank you.  A thoughtful gesture for sure but the comments show that backers are overwhelmingly against the idea.

Hairbrained Schemes' Kickstarter for a 2-D turn-based RPG for tablet devices and the PC has managed to raise $897,767 of its original goal of $400,000 from 20,895 backers. The company that has worked on such franchises as Shadowrun, Mech Commandeer, Crimson Skies, and MechWarrior, hopes to hit a new milestone of $1 million. They say that if they meet this new funding goal they will add some new content. As of this writing the game, Shadowrun Returns, will be developed for PC, Mac, iOS, Android, and Linux.

Bethesda's Peter Hines revealed on Twitter that same-sex marriage will be allowed in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Hines made the comment after a Twitter follower accused him of being "hush-hush about this aspect of the game. His reply:

"Not hush hush, just not making a huge deal out of it. You can marry anyone." In a subsequent tweet he clarified by adding: " ... not any NPC, [I] just mean any male or female. Doesn't matter what you're playing."