From active timer battling to zombie slaying, Waffling Taylors covers all kinds of gaming and beyond.
This week we were joined bit Rob and Tim of Gold Mountain Gamers to talk about their new TTRG campaign "The Saltreach Isles" and how they went about creating it.
It's important to note that we recorded this episode during the height of the changes to the OGL (or Open Gaming License) from Wizards of the Coast. This is the backbone of Dungeons & Dragons and Dungeons and Dragons-like content, and the changes brought about by Wizards of the Coast brought about a LOT of backlash from the community; which we talked about.
Also, unfortunately Squidge was ill when we recorded episode, so he's not in this one. But I talked with both Rob and Tim afterwards, and they are more than happy to come back to the show and talk both Squidgey and myself through their updates as they continue their world building and production of "The Saltreach Isles"
- Jay

Yeah, absolutely cool. We've got a couple of one shots out and we've also got a settings book. We can go into a bit more detail about that later on, I think, but yeah table-top RPGs is what we do.
- Rob

And we like to approach everything from a very professional mindset. Right. So as much as we're all still fans that are playing the games and really wanting to make this a fully realized company and everything else, we're still working with artists and writers on professional, contract level work in order to make certain that our visions are as clear and concise and as awe inspiring as possible for the end users once they get the products.
- Tim

I'm Rob. I'm the owner and executive director of Gold Mountain Games.
I've been playing tabletop RPGs for about a decade. I've been - before that, I was massively into the boardgame scene. I set up one of the biggest boardgame clubs in the UK. I've got a boardgame tattooed on me. I've got my favourite fantasy author tattooed on me. I'm a mega geek and tabletop RPGs have been a large part of my life and kind of formed a lot of my friendships and helped me with lots of troubles in my life. And I just think they're great and I wanted to give back some of that awesomeness.
- Rob

So my name is Tim. I am one of the directors at Gold Mountain Games.
My primary function is the business and the sales. The marketing, the business side of it actually my day job, if you want to call it that. Heavy quotes there is. I work within the gaming industry during the day. I'm actually a sales representative at Cryptozoic Entertainment and I also do contract work for other companies.
So it's funny, when Rob actually reached out to me the first time, I was just like, "yeah, I want to do some writing." And then we got to talking, I was like, "oh wait, no, we need this slot filled more for a lot." So for folks out there, what I do is the boring corporate stuff, but it's also very necessary stuff for when we get to the point of getting the products out there, really letting them shine.
- Tim

The Saltreach Isles is a massive archipelago world. We've got 24 islands ranging from kind of big central, kind of multiple kind of species and empires on them. We've got tiny little islands that have a one group may occupy more than one of them.
It came about really from there isn't really a setting for D&D - which is what it was written for - there isn't one that kind of takes in the scope and the differences that you get in kind of island nations and archipelagos. And I think it gave us this really interesting mechanism we could use with kind of over time, the islands breaking up from a - I forget the word now - a Pangaea, one big continent. So a lot of the world is tied into kind of the evolution of the planet as a whole.
We've got Gods that aren't really Gods. We've got real kind of unique takes on a lot of the species that people would be used to from DnD. And we've also added orcs, trolls and goblins because I love me a green skin. I think they're all great. My very first Warhammer were orcs back when I was like 12 or 13 and I've just loved them ever since.
But one of the things I really wanted to do is I wanted to bring them kind of into the modern age. I wanted to get rid of this idea that they are unintelligent roots who kill and maim for fun. That had its place. I think the Middle earth needed its bad guys and the orcs were amazing. However, I wanted to do something more interesting with them.
- Rob

And for me, I really wanted to do everything I could to make certain that they felt like there was a reason for them being in this world other than like, hey, I made a monster throw it against your players. Every creature I wrote has a reason for being there.
- Tim

..one of the other things we've tried to do, and I think we've been very successful with it, is we've tried to be very open and accepting and inclusive with our writing.
We have very many kind of NPCs named characters, some of the Gods as well. They're male, female, and they/them. Inclusivity is really important to us as a company, right? Whether that's because of life choices, whether that's because of religion, whether that's because of disability; whatever it is, I think it's really important that everyone gets the chance to play who they want to be in a game.
So that's kind of that's influenced a lot of our decision making through it, especially because we're not writing a kind of Eurocentric or Western centric setting, we've kind of made sure that we've talked to people from cultures similar to the one in the Saltreach Isles. And so that's been I've learnt some amazing things and we've got one of our writers, actually South American, and there's a lot of influences from their culture within the monsters and some truly terrifying creatures from folklore from around the world that we brought in.
- Rob

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