News Roundup: Ennies 2026 + A Necromantic Industrial Revolution

In This Edition

• Legends in the Mist, Dolmenwood, Daggerheart Lead …

  • Explore a Victorian Fog-Addled Land in Chaosium’s …

    • Other News of the Week

  • Finland Embraces Its TTRPG/LARP History in Heritag …

    • Q&A W/ Ben Somers on Machines of Bone & Blood

Other Stories from This Week

• Board game maker Ravensburger is going all in on the “Season of Horror” with the release

• Pelgrane Press is embracing the cozy mystery genre with its upcoming Merryshire Detective Club TTRPG, which is crowdfunding on BackerKit.

• Zweihander is adopting a third-party license that will allow others to make third-party content for the game.

• EN World previewed the Beadle and Grimm’s take on the recent Ravenloft book

• Old Oak Games, best known for the upcoming Irish 5e supplement Beyond the Woods is expanding into Resident Evil-style horror with Ink Ribbon.

• Wizards of the Coast postponed the D&D Fan Expo: London until 2027

• D&D Beyond dropped its July drops, which include elemental bad guys and some martial feats… like being good at hitting people while prone.

Q&A W/ Ben Somers of Machines of Bone & Blood

There are a plethora of Dungeons and Dragons supplements that attempt to capture a distinct vision of the art of necromancy; one of the darker magics within the traditional fantasy setting. But what if you viewed it like the Industrial Revolution? This was the idea that Ben Somers, aka somanyrobots, had for Machines of Bone & Blood. Somers decided that he wanted to tell a story based on the Luddite Revolution that followed the Industrial Revolution.

Somers is best known for Songs of the Spellbound Sea, a nautical 5e supplement that was released earlier this year. Now he’s turning to a new setting with a new set of ideas. The book contains two new necromancy-themed classes and a variety of tools and options for telling a darker story.

TTRPG Insider spoke with Somers about the book, its inspiration, and more.

1. What inspired the decision to make MACHINES? It’s notably such a pivot from the themes of your last campaign Spellbound Sea

Ben Somers: I didn't actually set out with this theme from the beginning: I knew I'd have a necromancer element (since I was already working on that class), but I was originally dancing around a few different themes to attach to it. But when I read Brian Merchant's Blood in the Machine, a history of the Luddite period, I got the brainworm about running an Industrial Revolution campaign and came up with the idea of using necromancy to make it a better fit for a fantasy setting. I was a couple of months into prep for the book when I realized it'd make an even better book than just a campaign.

2. How did the Luddite Revolution come in and influence the writing and story for this?

Ben Somers: Blood in the Machine was definitely the genesis: a history of the Luddite rebellion, told with real attention and care for the rebels' concerns rather than just repeating the "mindlessly anti-technology" stereotype. It drove home the cruelty of the industrialists, the desperation of the workers, and the brutality the government used to put down the rebels and then write them out of history afterward. If anything, the necromancers aren't evil enough; if I included all the worst behavior of the early industrialists, the book would have come out grimmer than anyone wants to play.

Ben Somers: And of course, the big thematic resonance here is AI. We're living through a moment in which AI companies have all but taken over the economy, workers are being told they have no alternative, and artists are being relentlessly devalued by machines built to plagiarize them. And ordinary consumers are being force-fed the resulting slop, and we can see the miserable quality of the results. The Luddite history speaks to that struggle, using automation to devalue and depress labor, and I wanted Machines of Bone & Blood to be able to speak to it too.

3. Necromancy is a common theme in fantasy fiction. How does your book approach it?

Ben Somers: Mechanically, the Necromancer class learns from all the other attempts designers have made over 5E's lifespan. It's possible to use it to command hordes or to play a generic dark spellcaster, but it's swimming against the tide: the class plays best when you focus your resources on 2-3 minions and use magic to fill in the gaps. Thematically, the Necroindustrial Revolution underpins everything. Many of the monster stat blocks are both undead and constructs, and some of the subclasses feature bonuses against both types. The entire Necrografting system has a very cyberpunk flavor to it, with the idea that workers are getting undead grafts just to be able to keep pace with the machines. And while necromancy is definitely one evil in the Ivory Empire, it's not The Big Evil; that's the industrialists who are calling the shots. It's a more interesting moral picture and leaves a little more room for PC necromancers and other characters who use evil's own tools against it.

4. What is something you are excited for fans to discover in MACHINES? 

So much! I think the adventures are going to turn out really well, and that's something people haven't seen from me before. I think the heavier emphasis on monsters is going to produce a lot of fun stuff that'll be really easy to use: one of my big principles is to try and produce a book that's just intensely usable, easy to pull stuff from, and easy to chop up and remix. I intend to include a bunch of historical notes (especially for the adventures) to help relate the book to the Luddite struggle: I think people will genuinely learn stuff here, without being distracted from their main goal of beating up a bunch of skeletons. And I think the book will be even more beautiful than Spellbound Sea was; I can't wait for people to see all the awesome art that's going in.

You can back Machines of Bone & Blood on Kickstarter now. The campaign ends on July 9.