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A fan podcast celebrating (mostly Swedish) RPGs including, but not limited to: Coriolis; Forbidden Lands; Symbaroum; Tales from the Loop; and, Alien.
Hello, and welcome to episode 244 of the InVet podcast. The the real urge to say 100 and
Speaker 2:100.
Speaker 1:But this episode is called an evening with Andreas. I'm Matthew.
Speaker 2:And I'm Dave. And, yeah, the
Speaker 3:reason it's called an evening with Andreas is because we
Speaker 2:are going to spend an evening with Andreas.
Speaker 1:Not a whole evening. We're gonna we're gonna do this. A nice, tight hour.
Speaker 2:Yes. I think And yes. So, yeah, Andreas of, Nordic Sculpts, they have just put out their, dragon bone supplement, the Windheim as it's known. But also, he is currently kick starting a game called my father's sword, or is it your father's sword?
Speaker 1:It's my father's sword, I think.
Speaker 2:My father's sword. Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is a, I'm not sure how you describe it. It's a it's a short, fantasy game which is I think I haven't read it in any detail yet, but it's not quite got the the the madness of McBoyle about it, but it has a there there is a feeling of it's a it's a shorter game. It's, it's produced in a in a lovely looking, I mean, pamphlet for one of a better word, which is, about 20 pages long. And it has that, oh, no. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Let's be 40 pages long. Let's not do this. No.
Speaker 1:Oh, massively more than 20
Speaker 3:pages. Half did. That's so good.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But again, I think it's intended probably to carry a little bit of punch in the way that that Merc Boyer does. Yeah. And and bring you a different experience at the table. So we are expecting, Andreas to join us in the not too distant future.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, that's what today's show is about. The we are slightly this week put off our axle because Matthew has chosen to go on holiday.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's my wedding anniversary, Dave.
Speaker 2:Matthew has chosen to do something for his wedding anniversary. I mean, come on.
Speaker 1:My 25th wedding anniversary.
Speaker 2:25th. Well, congratulations, mate. Well done.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you. So, yeah, it deserves taking my wife to Iceland, which is where we're going. And, we are going to see not the northern lights because, you know, they came down here to Surrey only a few months ago, and also because it's gonna be raining constantly for the entire week as far as we can work out. So the northern lights could be worldy playing great, great, stuff above above our heads, and we won't even see it.
Speaker 1:But that's what I'm doing. I just wanna say, we've got no new patrons this week. I know you've all backed our Kickstarter, but but come on. Join us. Join the happy community, the prettiest place on earth.
Speaker 1:But thank you to all our current patrons. We're gonna miss out on the world of gaming because I'm off to Iceland, and it's only a week since you did the last one. And let us welcome Andreas, who's gonna be a bit surprised by the fact we're already recording.
Speaker 2:Yes. Sadly, we we didn't warn Andreas that this is happening. Hello, Andreas. Welcome. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you ever so much. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Sorry to to to ambush you somewhat, but, because Matthew's away for some holiday for his anniversary, you know, I mean, only a 25th anniversary, you know, We suddenly thought, let's just record the whole podcast here. So we kicked off whilst we're waiting for you to arrive. So, yeah, apologies for, yeah, for ambushing you with that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We are now we're not live, but we are now live. So please don't swear. No. It's okay. You can swear because we're we have that little warning on our podcast that people might.
Speaker 1:Welcome, Andreas, as as David said.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, guys. I am amazing. Thank you. I'm amazing.
Speaker 1:We've got so much to talk to you about today, haven't we?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Don't worry. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, particularly, I want to talk to you about, the horn of dawn and, your campaign. Particularly, we wanna probably question you a little bit about this in terms of actually delivering on a Kickstarter that you've done because we're at the beginning of that journey, and you have successfully delivered your 1st Kickstarter. And, of
Speaker 3:course a while though.
Speaker 1:Perfectly timed what you didn't do while that was while while while your backers are waiting for for this to appear. What you didn't do is launch another Kickstarter. You've only done that other Kickstarter once this has started arriving in people's, doormat. So I give you credit for that, Andreas. And that's the other thing.
Speaker 1:My father's sword is the other thing that we want to talk to you about. But first of all, let's let's, obviously, Andreas, you know, he's a he's a friend of the show. He's been on before. We don't need to ask you about your life in gaming. But, what have you been doing recently?
Speaker 1:How's Sweden Rolls getting along?
Speaker 3:Sweden roles is, is, yeah, coming along nicely. Just, plodding on. We're actually doing Coriolis at the moment. Oh. We are Is
Speaker 2:it original or the great dark?
Speaker 3:Well, original. 3rd horizon. Cool. Cool. I'm too much in love with the 3rd horizon to let that go.
Speaker 1:Yeah. All. Like, it's real. Me too.
Speaker 2:Me too. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And, also, our story takes place in the 3rd horizon, so it's, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And we're not quite quite finished with that story just yet. So, yeah, so we've been doing the past few months, season 3 of Coriolis, basically. A game we all love. Right?
Speaker 1:We all love that game.
Speaker 2:We all love that game. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes. And, of course, you've been getting Wind Time and the Horn of Dawn out. Right. I I got I gotta launch straight in there. What was the biggest problem you had between ending the Kickstarter and this arriving on my doormat apart from me not completing the back of kit and giving you my address?
Speaker 3:No. By then, we were quite finished. I I would definitely say, writing 2 books in 2 languages, for sure. I deeply underestimated the amount of work that would go into the translation and, yeah, just the psychological effect of feeling like you're finished when you write when you finish the first book in the first language, which was, yeah, like, almost a year ago, like, end of December 2023. Right.
Speaker 3:And then it's taking another half a year to to translate that and write the second one and translate the second one. So, yeah, that that's definitely the the main thing. Underestimating how lot how much time that would take.
Speaker 2:Did those translations did you do those in house? Oh, yeah. I did. I did.
Speaker 3:I did those. I because I wrote I wrote the books in English and then I translated into Swedish. Okay.
Speaker 2:Right. So the whole thing was translating it into Swedish rather than writing it in English.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Because I I I I feel in in a way that English I feel more free writing in English because that language has 4 times as many words as as the Swedish language does.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But there's much more, finesse to it. You can you can choose synonyms that work better, which gives me as a writer more freedom. I I I tend. But, also, I'm more, of course, more familiar with Swedish, which means that when I need to find a translation, it's easier going from English to Swedish than than the other way around.
Speaker 3:So Okay. Cool.
Speaker 1:I gotta say, I think Dave and I prefer writing in English as well, don't we?
Speaker 3:I can't imagine why. Somewhat. Yeah. I I could write a
Speaker 2:little bit in Swedish, but it'll mostly be be rude words because that's what my wife has taught me,
Speaker 3:yeah, on the whole. So I feel like you guys being, rather proficient with sweet Swedish by now.
Speaker 1:No. Not at all. Well, me. Not at all.
Speaker 2:Well, you know. Yeah. Well, I've I've been I've been, you know, I've been, my wife and I have been together now nearly 20 years and she's Swedish and I have learned very little Swedish. It's terrible.
Speaker 1:Shame. Shame. Okay.
Speaker 2:And then the thing is the thing is though, the thing is though, she she like, you know, she ought to get her English going. And whenever we see our Swedish friends, they're like, oh, no. No. We wanna talk English. We wanna talk English.
Speaker 3:They wanna practice their English. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's not my fault. That's what I'm saying. It's nothing to do with
Speaker 3:We have the same thing here in Sweden. Like everyone I know who's from America or from from from any English speaking country, basically, very few of them learn Swedish well because everyone wants to practice their English with them. And people in Sweden talk Swedish talk English very well. So there's, like, no need to learn Swedish if you live here.
Speaker 2:It is a bit lazy, though. I mean, I I mean, quite a lot of my in laws I know it. Some of my in laws don't speak English terribly well, my my mother-in-law in particular. And I do have a Swedish tutor in the house. Even if I just spent half an hour a day Yeah.
Speaker 2:Over the last 20 years, I
Speaker 3:would be Yeah. I mean, though, the those who have actually learned Swedish are the ones who actually like, no. I really want to, and I I'm gonna dedicate time to it. And then they learn, of course, because if they live here, they learn quite fast. But it's only the ones who really, really dedicate themselves to do to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. I'm moving on to the next item now rather than getting to discuss the Swedish, of which I feel
Speaker 2:like a 3rd
Speaker 3:wheel because I
Speaker 1:don't I don't have a Swedish wife. I don't particularly wanna learn Swedish. I'm moving on. So apart from the language problems and writing the whole book twice in 2 or 2 books twice in 2 different languages, when you got we we don't have that problem, obviously, because, we just write in the one language. But when you get to production, where what are the pitfalls that we're about to fall into?
Speaker 3:Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Right.
Speaker 3:It cost, a a shitload of money to ship. And especially, unfortunately, due to Brexit, you guys are royally fucked. Because, like like, Alphaspiel, the the big, one of the 2 big game stores in Stockholm, they are the ones who've been doing the fulfillment the the the shipping, I would say. The shipping to Sweden and EU countries for us. And they, and we're talking now about them doing shipping for my father's sword.
Speaker 3:And they're like, yeah. We can ship to Taiwan and New Zealand, but not UK.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's rubbish, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Because it's such a such a bother. It's such, so much admin stuff to do. So I'm yeah. I'm I'm yeah. Check check shipping thoroughly thoroughly.
Speaker 3:Have a good deal with someone and make sure it's yeah. Because it's, it takes it takes time. Like, I did I it it either costs a shitload of money or takes an enormous amount of time.
Speaker 2:Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we will I mean, we we think we've got quite a good deal with a distributor that's got distribution channels overseas as well as being in the UK. But the the the price of that's gone up actually, isn't it, since we
Speaker 3:It has. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Talked In the last 6 months. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think we'll I think our plan is to do the pledge manager as close to delivery as we can to make sure that the the price people pay in the pledge manager is the price the shipping actually costs. That's a useful thing to
Speaker 3:That's good. That's that's very, very smart of you guys. You you really do that for sure.
Speaker 1:Working with the guys at, at Standard in Lithuania on the printing, how did that go?
Speaker 3:Oh, amazing. They are so amazing to work with. I cannot recommend them, highly enough.
Speaker 2:It is you have produced a couple of super books. They are really, really high quality. And the work is high quality. I mean, not just the printing, but the books themselves are are superb. You should really be congratulated for putting out something that was so good.
Speaker 2:It's really Thank
Speaker 3:you so much. Thank you. Yeah. We're very happy. When, of course, we could have made more money if we would have gone with another paper, another cover, and all that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. We we really wanted people to get the wind in books in their hands to feel like, oh, oh, well, this is something else. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:We've gotten exactly that response, which is, of course, delightful. Yeah. But standard, they're amazing, and they're very, thorough. That's, like, one reason that the last month of delay is solely due to the diligence of standard of getting back to us. You have to change this.
Speaker 3:You have to change that. This won't work. This will not be clear enough. Okay. So I'm on basically a back and forth for Christian, with standard, just making sure everything is printable, like a a good quality printing wise.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. Brilliant. That's good, to be aware of. Mhmm. Let's factor out.
Speaker 1:Let's see now. Let's make sure we've got that month still.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And when you talk to Christian, you're talking about your layout artist.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Christian, the one who does the maps and layouts. Yeah. Graphic design.
Speaker 1:Cool. Cool. They do look lovely. They do look lovely.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Okay. So having set yourself the challenge of writing 2 books in a different language and or 2 different languages, you've gone simpler with your next Kickstarter, which is really why we've got you on the show. Now, you sent us an early, early preview of this.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And, there aren't many words in it is the first thing I noticed. Lots of gorgeous illustrations. Are there gonna be more words by the time the final version comes out, or is it as simple as it seems?
Speaker 3:It might even be fewer.
Speaker 2:Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Because this game is supposed to be a pick up and play game that a game master can buy in a game store on their way to a game session and then read the game on the bus to the game session and then run it. And then their players can can make their characters in half an hour, and then you just go.
Speaker 1:Cool. Interesting. So and and what sort of characters are you making?
Speaker 3:Characters?
Speaker 1:Yeah. You said make our characters in half an hour.
Speaker 3:Oh, what kind of character you make in the game? Oh, sorry. Yeah. You make that into heroes that are also slightly comical, because we want people to really lean in heavily on on the humorous and comedy part of of role playing games. It's supposed to be a nostalgia game where you, live out all the all the silly things you did when you started playing role playing games in the eighties or nineties.
Speaker 3:Like, for me, for instance, we had a guy who wanted to break down a door, and he started hacking at it with a sword because the sword was the item that deal dealt the most most damage. I was like, you can't get shot.
Speaker 1:On that?
Speaker 3:Well, you can't shop through a door with a sword. You'll be much better throwing your full weight behind it. And he's like, no. It does some more damage. Or the guy who want to try and kill Elrond because just imagine the the amount of XP that you would get in Merp.
Speaker 3:We're playing the Swedish version of Merp then. So they had an XP system. Like, the first time you do something, it's it's, 4 times even higher. So it's like, well, no one's ever killed an Elven lord before. So if you do that, Netherland gives a lot of should give a lot of XP.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, all these kind of ridiculous things that you used to do, and and we also have some some quotes from famous adventure movies from from way back when. And, yeah, we try to we try to give a lot of, humorous notes, and homarches back to to old adventure movies.
Speaker 1:I quite like the, the the first page of the rules, which says, I make it a rule never to lie with someone unless they can beat me in a fair fight.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yep.
Speaker 1:Is that a quote from a movie? I don't I don't know if
Speaker 3:that Yeah. All the quotes are from movies.
Speaker 1:Yep. Excellent. Just remember, there's a thin line between being a hero and being a memory. Sorry. I I I gotta stop quoting.
Speaker 3:Yeah. My favorite is a combination. I I I managed to combine 2. You killed my father's brothers nephews cousins former roommate. Prepare to
Speaker 2:die. Excellent. So what what one of them is the princess bride. What's the other one from?
Speaker 3:Spaceballs. Spaceballs. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Long time since I've seen that. Never felt any need to rewatch it either. That
Speaker 3:was nice. So so the characters are are epic heroes that are amazing at some stuff and really crap at other stuff. So yeah. And it's really easy. The rules are supposed to be yeah.
Speaker 3:You learn them in in 15, 20 minutes. And most of the book is actually dedicated to character creation. The rules are basically one spread, maybe 2 spreads.
Speaker 1:Yes. It's brilliant. And the spreads themselves are gorgeous. Lots of I guess you might call them fantasy cliches in a Mhmm. Painted in a humorous style, but what makes them not a cliche is most of them are really close-up.
Speaker 1:You're zoomed in on a lot of these things. So, they don't quite have their heroic poses you might see in a Frank Frazetta thing, but you're right up against the thigh of a of a Frank Frazetta hero or whatever. So it looks gorgeous. Some lovely bit of graphic design as well. How is the campaign going?
Speaker 3:The campaign is going okay. I mean, we were funded, but we haven't really, it hasn't really taken off as as well as we'd hoped. We figured we'd do a a Kickstarter with a very, very cheap product where the product would cost let's see now you're in Britain. So, like, a PDF would be not even £3, and and the book would be not even £8. And then I've this is, yeah, this is really embarrassing, but I'm gonna out myself now on your pocket.
Speaker 3:Go ahead. Go ahead. I didn't really think it through because because shipping to UK and
Speaker 2:US Oh, no.
Speaker 3:Is is, twice the cost for the book itself. So the whole reason we went for such a low price is I said to Christian, it has to be a no brainer to back this. If you are even slightly, curious about this game, it has to be so cheap that it's a no brainer to back it. And it is.
Speaker 1:As long as you don't live in the In the
Speaker 3:UK or the US, which is like where we wanna be with our like, the markets we wanna reach. So it's, yeah. So, yeah, a huge mistake on on my my part there. But it's, yeah. I mean, we're gonna get we're we're gonna get funded.
Speaker 3:We're gonna be able to have an okay print run, and we're gonna, keep on talking to distributors trying to get the game out. Because I think that once it's in the store, it's gonna be in stores for maybe 11 or 10 quid.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Something like that, is is our goal at least. Might be a pound or 2 more, but, like, definitely not above £15 in stores. So we want this to be, like, easy accessible. Someone, sees it, flips through it, finds it enjoyable. And, like, if you've gone Christmas shopping for, you know, a 100, 110, 115, pounds, why not just grab this for Yeah.
Speaker 3:An extra 12 while you're at while
Speaker 2:you're at it?
Speaker 3:When when you're still in the game store and and you you spent so much money, why not, like, grab this one as well? Or if you're in there just browsing, haven't thought of getting something, and this is so cheap that, oh, well, I could I could I could try this out.
Speaker 2:A nice easy impulse buy.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. That's, yeah, that's our goal. I don't know. Some people have warned us and said the low price could be a deterrent because, it doesn't, it doesn't really sing out, quality and, and the quality products.
Speaker 3:So I don't it might be yet another miscalculation on my part. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, it's all a lesson, isn't it? It's not a miscalculation. You you you had a theory. You're testing the theory, and you'll get a result. And, you know, next time you might do things differently.
Speaker 1:Sorry, Darren. I interrupted you.
Speaker 3:That's alright. I was just
Speaker 2:gonna say it's a difficult one, is it? Because with anything you're publishing, if you go too cheap Mhmm. Yeah, you can, you know, you you can you automatically think that, it's a real bargain. People will love it. But then sometimes, like you say, people will see it and think, oh, that is a bit too cheap.
Speaker 2:So I'm not even gonna give you 5 quid of my money because it's not gonna be worth a fiver. Whereas if it's a bit more expensive Mhmm. Kind of ironically, you might have a better chance of of making the sale.
Speaker 3:And that
Speaker 1:is just when we we always say that about, drive through RPG products, don't we? You know? Yeah. When we do those reviews, we say, this is, you know, a great a great book. It looks really interesting, but you're you're giving it away too cheaply.
Speaker 1:And I think I think that really does on drive through RPG, even though it's only a PDF, people kinda go, oh, if it's that cheap, it can't be any good. And, that's a bit of a pain. This, though, tell me more about how this is gonna look then. It I mean, because visually, it's very arresting. But what it's it's not gonna be a fancy hardback like this, horn of dawn.
Speaker 3:No. It's gonna be a softback. I don't ex Christian knows more about exactly what kind of softback it it's gonna be, but I don't think we're going with a stapled one. It's gonna be
Speaker 1:It's gonna be square bound.
Speaker 2:Case bound.
Speaker 3:Yeah. In in some way bound, I think. And, we had a we had a, stretch goal planned for for some higher sons with a flashier cover where the, the logo might, like, flash the silver a bit or something like that.
Speaker 2:But I
Speaker 3:don't think we're gonna reach that, and and, we will not be able to to to do that with this, at least on with this print run. I mean, if if this print run really sells out and people really like it, we might make an updated version.
Speaker 2:Is this kind of an idea for a for an ongoing sort of series of of of games in a similar vein or, is this kind of just what your your your your nostalgic love letter to
Speaker 3:to those stupid days back when you're a kid role playing? Well, I mean, the idea for this game actually started with me, being a bit tired of very crunchy games. So I wanted to experiment with with actually 2 things, but the first thing then would be, like, what like trying to boil down the essence of number of skills. Like, how how few can you go? How how many you need to have, like, a bare minimum to to cover everything, to cover everything you need.
Speaker 3:And and and I can like, when I started making it, I was like, okay. So 8. You need 8 skills. Eight skills will cover everything. Of course, you won't have the super dynamics of the difference between intimidating and, persuading.
Speaker 3:But, in in this in this rule set, we we have 8 skills. We think we cover they cover everything. And we also write that, for instance, if you were gonna intimidate someone, you could use social interactions, but you might also use spiritual power. You know? It's not it's not set in stone, which situations you would use each skill.
Speaker 3:That that would depend on and also on on your character. So like like, we also encourage the game master to just go with, like, what's reasonable? What's reasonable? Would it be reasonable for a for a 3 and a half meter giant to intimidate with his, combat skill, if he's gonna intimidate someone just cracking his knuckles. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, it might intimidate most people if he does that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Dave, I've just I've got to admit a terrible thing. I thought, well, we've gotta give Andreas our support. So I I went and backed it, but, I didn't back it on my account. I backed it on
Speaker 2:The company account. So this is why I need to have access to the accounts, Matthew.
Speaker 3:Both is okay.
Speaker 2:I
Speaker 3:mean, it's all here. It's not even That's the
Speaker 2:thin end of thin end of the wedge. That before we know it, I'm so how are you paying for Iceland, Matt?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. That's that's that's coming out of the Kickstarter. It's research. No. No.
Speaker 1:No. It's not
Speaker 3:Well, actually, the the other thing I wanted to to to experience experiment with, I don't know if you noticed it, but, apart from the title, which is I changed the title so many times. But apart from the title, I ended up with going with my father's sword because there's nothing more cliche than my father's sword. I was rewatching Game of Thrones, with my son the other day, and it took, like, 2 episodes. And someone was like, my father's sword. And I'm like, perfect.
Speaker 3:Why do we have that title? Because there's nothing more cliche. And we have a whole rule for cliches and stuff like that. We can talk about that later. But I
Speaker 1:was gonna ask you about the cliche rule. I was gonna ask you to start about the spelling of the cliche rule as well.
Speaker 3:Uh-huh. Did I misspell it?
Speaker 1:Yeah. You've gotten it spelled with 2 e's on the end, whereas cliche effectively.
Speaker 3:Uh-huh. Oh, that must be a typo because I do think I would use just an e with a a little
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I think it's slightly it's only it's only on the page title. Nobody will notice it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You should have just said that that was a design decision, and it was always always intended that way.
Speaker 3:If it's on the page title, I will completely blame Christian because he writes those himself. He does not copy paste them. The same with, I think for a while, weakness was spelled like, you know, a week of time, 7 days.
Speaker 1:With 2 week 2 e's. K. An e's. Yeah. So I I think Christian has a thing from with 2 e's of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think so. I think so. No. But the other thing I want to experiment was was with was, gender pronouns.
Speaker 3:There's not a single, gender assigned pronoun in the entire game. Not a single one. Because I was like I mean, back in the day, there was there was like there was he, he, him, him everywhere. And then nowadays, most companies go with, like, if we take Free League for instance, they go with, well, the game master is always will always be in the name as a she, and the players will be him. And then we've balanced it out.
Speaker 3:And I I was like, do you need to have them? What would happen if you would try and write, a game completely without gender assigned, pronouns? And it it it it it it there have been a few situations where I've struggled. It might show in the text. It might not.
Speaker 3:I don't I'm not sure. I'm not gonna be the judge of that, but I do think I've managed actually quite well to to write a whole game without a single, gender song pronoun apart from the title. It's kinda ruins
Speaker 2:the whole thing. But Exactly. I was beginning to think, there's in the first page, there might be a gender like
Speaker 1:No. No. The father is a noun, not a pronoun. Remember?
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's still a it is a it is a sign of the gender, though, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Well, and there is also the classic as I pointed out to my daughter who is doing a gender studies dissertation. I pointed out that whenever she says, in this case, my father what that should be is my father apostrophe sword, then that is actually in English a derivation of my father, his sword. So every time you write a possessive in English, you're actually reaffirming the patriarchy.
Speaker 2:Just a
Speaker 1:little aside there.
Speaker 3:Yeah. No. But I'm curious if you if you go through it again, if you if you'll spot, if you you're probably gonna see it then now that I've said it. But it's interesting because no one has reacted to it. I think the 20 or 30 people have read the the early beta that you've gotten, by now, and, and no one has has reacted to it yet, which is fun because I wanted to slightly, like, slightly go under the radar.
Speaker 3:It's not something that we're we're using in the, in the marketing or anything like that. It's just, I I meant when you
Speaker 2:decided to do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. See, the problem is, Andreas, you've said that thing, and now I am going through the text going, oh, yeah. So I see.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. We might be able to miss it now you've mentioned it. We're gonna get, oh god. I wish there was some pronouns in this.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. This sentence doesn't really make sense. Oh, it's because it's trying to avoid pronouns. For sure.
Speaker 3:There are a few like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, Dave, you carry on with the interview while I try and tear myself away from the text. Salvador, I wanted to ask you. So what gives the cliche point?
Speaker 3:That's up to the to the game master and the and the pray prayer. So this game has, a rules mechanic called cliche points. Whenever you do something that's super cliche, sitting in a dark corner with your hood drawn up in the inn, for instance, or, yeah. Going on a quest to find your father's sword or being the, magical prodigy child, like a youngster who's super talented in magic, although you've never had any teachings in it. Whatever is cliche Well,
Speaker 1:of course, my background is I have no family.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Exactly. I have no family. My family was slaughtered by orcs or whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Or or my family was killed by an unknown stranger.
Speaker 2:Oh. I'm
Speaker 3:a mutt.
Speaker 1:Fingers on his hand. Yeah. Okay. So what do I do with the cliche point when I've got it?
Speaker 3:So once you get a cliche point, you can spend that to to perform a heroic deed, which is in all adventure movies, heroes sometimes do things that are ridiculous. Things that if you try to do them and would wanna make a dice roll for it, you'd get a minus modification of 1 gazillion. Mhmm. And instead, you but with the cliche points, you can spend them to make a perform a heroic deed, and then you just do it. You just yeah.
Speaker 3:It just happens. Yeah. You succeed. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Cool.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. And are you are you going to stand up to print this, or are you going, more locally?
Speaker 3:We were going back and forth on that, but we have decided to go with stand up once again. Yeah. They're giving us a good a very good deal, which no one in Sweden can can match. And and also they've because they know we want this out at least for the Christmas, shopping in Sweden. So so they've actually,
Speaker 1:saved So they're turning it around. This is gonna be this is the biggest news ever. Right. Okay. I've already got the PDF.
Speaker 1:I can see it's almost done, except you gotta correct those typos we'll
Speaker 2:spot it for you. Mhmm. And put put some pronouns in.
Speaker 1:I'll sprinkle a few pronouns in
Speaker 2:the same.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I got there's an illustration or 2 that's not in the beta, but I think all the all the may all the illustrations are actually finished. So they just have to be turned into yeah. Given to Christian to for some graphic magic.
Speaker 1:So tell your backers, your potential backers, because they're all gonna back when they realize they can back a game in November and get it before Christmas.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:What's the processes gonna be here? What what what happens when the campaign finishes the, the Kickstarter campaign finishes?
Speaker 3:Yeah. As soon as a Kickstarter campaign finishes and we did we we decided to go on a a 21 day Kickstarter campaign as well because that extra week very seldom does very much. It's just a a slot of, you know, a a back or 2 a day. You know?
Speaker 1:We've been there. We've been there.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:One one backup up, 2 leave. It's a it's
Speaker 2:a terrible Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So we decided to go with a bit short. So as soon as we basically, as soon as we finish the Kickstarter, the final PDF will go out, to backers. That's our that's our hope because we the time slot that Standard Standard has has given us is basically just like a week after the Kickstarter campaign finishes. So we'll send it to print, and then a few weeks later, we'll get it.
Speaker 3:And one reason, it also took a few weeks to to post the to ship the the Wyndham stuff was because, of add ons. And we decided to not go with add ons on this one at all just to speed up the process. This is gonna be, it's gonna be cheap, and it's gonna be fast. So it's still gonna be good because I've been writing on this game for for years. So, like, when I gave Christian the text, it's text that I've been polishing and, you know, working on for for years.
Speaker 3:I I playtested this game, in a Swedish livestream podcast on YouTube 6 years ago. And and 95% of the text or at least the rules and all that, I I did some polishing, a lot a lot of polishing this last few weeks. But but, like, 95% of the text was there 6 years ago. Mhmm. So and and our illustrator, an Italian called, Alessia Marino.
Speaker 3:Super talented. I've known her through Facebook for a while, and, yeah, really wanted her to to go along with us for this one because I knew that Robert is working on upcoming projects for for Nordisk called for Windhame, Horn of Dawn part 2. So so we decided to to go with someone else, for this one to give to not give Robert, like, stress, problems. So she's she's been amazing to work with, and she's been super fast, and we really, love working with her. We're gonna work with her on upcoming products as well for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Love loving loving some of the artwork. Some of the artwork is really, really good.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Absolutely. It's great. Okay. Then now here here's another question.
Speaker 1:It comes back to print.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And it's a question it's a selfish question because, Dave and I are now wondering about this, and, you know, maybe feedback to to your other books as well. So you're gonna end up with a certain number of people that have bought the book. You could print arguably, you know, the the the the cheapest situation above that. How many extra copies are you printing for retail distribution?
Speaker 3:We haven't decided on that yet, actually, because of the because of the kickstart not actually performing as well as as we had hoped. So we might have to go down. We were gonna go with the 2,008 each language, but, we will probably not we we we're not gonna we're not gonna afford that. Then we'd have to, like, take money from the window and campaign and put it into this. And, like, we could put in a little bit, but not not too much.
Speaker 3:So we're we're probably gonna reduce that. And we might not like, for Windhay, we did 700 of each book in each language.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And and
Speaker 3:for this one, we might actually do a larger print run-in Swedish because we have all the channels, that we need. We're like we have direct contact with all the Swedish game stores. Mhmm. So we know approximately how many they will they will buy, and and also we go to conventions here. So we know a certain amount of copies are gonna be sold at conventions.
Speaker 3:And when you go down and you
Speaker 1:just try crime convention material, isn't it? I mean
Speaker 3:It really is.
Speaker 1:Pick it off your table at a convention. Find an empty table, and go and play it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. For sure. So we and the thing is that when you go down in print run, the total cost doesn't go down.
Speaker 1:No. It doesn't
Speaker 3:go down.
Speaker 2:No. It doesn't go down. No.
Speaker 3:So it's like it's also a matter of not not just distribution, but also, like, what do you call it?
Speaker 2:Warehouse. Storage.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Storage. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So Alpha Spill is helping us with the storage. And, but these books are huge, and and my father's store is gonna be much smaller. So Tiny. Yeah. 1 box is gonna contain a lot more copies.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, we haven't really decided on on an exact print one, actually.
Speaker 1:Cool. But you did just let's step my the answer to my next question. So you are doing this in English and Swedish?
Speaker 3:Yes. Indeed. Yeah. Yeah. Cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah. We, our next product after this, which I I'd love to come back and talk to you about, but I can't really just yet because it's a little bit too early. Exactly. But but that one is gonna be English only. But apart from that, I think most of our stuff will be dual lang linguistic, do do both in English and Swedish, for the for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 2:So is that that new that new project that that isn't the next, book for Windheim then? Is it it's something new and different that you're you're kicking
Speaker 3:off? Yeah. We we might do that. We might do 2 other products before we do, the next Windheim book, and it's not because we're not writing on it because I'm I'm writing on number 2 as we not as we speak. But, I I finished the first chapter.
Speaker 3:But it's because we wanna give people time to to play part 1 before we ask them to to back part 2 because, yes, we've gotten, like, great, reactions from from all the backers and all the people who bought it and all the people looked at it. But that's all Roberts and Christian's work that they've praised, isn't it? It's gonna take them a while to to see if they if they think I have to do this now. You know? So I I we don't wanna sell, in Sweden, we call it call it we wanna we don't you don't wanna sell the pig in the bag.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 3:Because you wanna see what the pig look like looks looks like when you buy it. So we want we want people to be able to have played part 1 for for a while, and then and then we're gonna release part 2.
Speaker 2:And I like the way that it's your contribution to the book that gets described as the pig that, Andre. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It surely is. It surely is.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The writers the writers plague to be referred to as the pig in the bag. I like that phrase, though. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Cool. So so should we expect to see you over at a convention in the UK anytime soon? We really, really hope so. I think,
Speaker 3:when it comes to coming as a Sweden Roll's podcaster, it's all about us needing an invitation, because we, like, we can't lose money on going on conventions. Like, if we someone pays us to come, we can come and do a kick ass live show. We've done them in Sweden and in, many places all over Sweden. But but it's up to the the organizers if they if they wanna bring us there or not. I mean, we're we are in the hall of fame after all that over at N World, the the list over there.
Speaker 3:So Yeah. Along with some pretty pretty awesome names. But but when it comes to Nordic scolds, I think we need a few more books. I don't think it's worth it, coming to a convention with, you know, 2 books. We need we need we need 5, 6 at least, to to show off for for for it to be worth it to to come as a publisher.
Speaker 3:As a visitor, I'd love to, but my time schedule is ridiculous, unfortunately. It it's, it would have to be so many so many stars would have to align for me to be able to come to Dragon Meat or UK Games Expo, for instance. For yeah. During the foreseeable future, like, I I'd love to go. I'd love to go to SN.
Speaker 3:I'd love to go to GenCon over at the US, or some kind of, what do you call what what do they call them? Packs, unplugged. Plaques.
Speaker 1:Oh, packs. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Plaques, unplugged. And yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And and Gary Cohn and and all of those, I'd love to go to those. But, yeah, time and money. Time and money, my friend.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Same here.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes. Mhmm. And and one book to sell. I think I think I don't know.
Speaker 1:I mean, even in even in Swedish conventions, you're gonna need to partner up with other, publishers, aren't you, who've also got 1 or 2 books to sell. And they say, let's let's get a store together, and we'll manage, you know, half the day and you manage the other
Speaker 3:half of the day. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 3:Exactly. I think so. I think so. I think that's gonna be the solution for 2025, at least, perhaps even 2026. But, yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 3:But I I did go to something called. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Couple of weeks ago. Yeah. It was a big thing in the eighties where the, the pub the big publisher at the time who had, you know, Draka Optumoner and and all of these mutant and and cult and all those games.
Speaker 3:They, they had. And then, last year, Free League, revived it with the, yeah, with the Octumona Dragonbane theme. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I was there as a, yeah, 3rd party product writer, and then we got a table and, yeah, sold very well, actually. Excellent. Yeah. So it it it works, but, I mean, of course, then it was people who there were people who were there who were really, really heavily into Dragon Bay.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 3:Yeah. It was kind of an easy sell in that way, but yeah.
Speaker 1:And they hadn't already backed the book. They'd they'd these were these were people who were new customers.
Speaker 3:New customers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, some of them had been looking at the books for a while, but missed a Kickstarter.
Speaker 3:And and some were people who've never seen it and just fell in love with, you know, the feel of the paper and the cover. And there was actually one youngster. He was maybe, I don't know, 13, maybe 14. He stood in the background while I was describing the campaign to another person. And when as soon as I finished talking and the other person, you know, went away, he came up and he said, can you just wait a second?
Speaker 3:I need to go get my dad because I need I need these books. Nice. Nice. He he just went and brought his dad, and he said, dad, we have to buy these. This sounds like the the coolest adventure for RPG ever.
Speaker 3:And, you know, they ended up buying, like, maps and books and dice and everything.
Speaker 2:Oh, nice. Brilliant.
Speaker 3:But I I I can How did you
Speaker 1:describe this campaign to to this other customer who didn't buy it to impress this kid so much? What what did you say?
Speaker 3:I was ranting for a while, but I I could give you another answer, which I gave to, a guy interviewing me on Discord, actually this morning, where he asked me to describe, traces of darkness part 1 of Horn of Dawn in less than 10 words.
Speaker 1:Oh, right. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Go ahead. What I went with was, an epic adventure with, what was it, with political intrigue. What was the word I was using? Gosh. I forgot it.
Speaker 3:You're at 6. So much. I know. Yeah. Jeez.
Speaker 3:My brain is not working properly.
Speaker 2:I know. That's a lot
Speaker 1:more than 10 words now.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I know it is. I know. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna have to get back to you with that one. But if I get more than 10 words, it's it's, it's an exciting epic adventure where you where you have have to, wade through morally moral gray zones and pick a side when it's not super obvious and super easy to be on. And it's, yeah, as I said, like, so let's social interactions and, intrigues and murder mysteries and a dungeon crawl. It has it has everything.
Speaker 1:And This is what we like. We like that sort of social interaction
Speaker 3:stuff as well. Yeah. Yeah. So we we try to write it so that it's not just pile up a bunch of monsters to fight. We've Yeah.
Speaker 3:Included a lot of places where we write. If your group is a group that enjoys combat and or monster fighting, throw in monster x here. That would
Speaker 1:be suitable.
Speaker 3:And, like yeah. But but it's very it's very focused on story. It's very focused on it's it's it it doesn't really start off that way, but it will develop into a save the world story Mhmm. In a of ethnic proportions. But it's, in the beginning, it's it's all about, yeah, navigating, yeah, moral gray zones and, solving mysteries, social interactions.
Speaker 3:It's a rather the world that you see from start is a rather feudal, medieval fantasy world. Yeah. But it will turn more and more into high fantasy as the story goes along.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Cool. So has wind has wind has wind had done as well as you'd hoped?
Speaker 3:Oh, Wingham has definitely over, exceeded our expectations for sure. We we broke a Swedish record for new RPG writers. Cool. Neither Free League or Hangast or Thunderbird or Skvoggan or any of those, guys, reach neither the numbers or the amounts of backers that we did for their very first thing that they did. Now the the first Kickstarter for Helmgast was Cultivated Lost.
Speaker 3:That, of course, did better than we did, but those guys have been producing RPGs since the nineties when they did that. Yeah. So it doesn't really count as, you know, new RPG fighters.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. That's fair.
Speaker 3:But it's been doing very well, and and since people are so happy with it, the word has spread, and I think Alpha Spirit is on their 3rd order now. Cool. Like, reorder of, you know, restocking.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So That
Speaker 1:is good. That's good.
Speaker 3:It's excellent.
Speaker 1:I know that you've got another interview to go to because you are on this media trail, aren't you, Andreas?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. And we we I really appreciate you you taking the time to to talk to me about this because it's No.
Speaker 2:Thank you for coming on.
Speaker 3:It's always want to talk with you guys, and I I really need to to get out there and tell people about my father's sword. I think it might be one of the reasons I I know one of the reasons, it has underperformed is because we we started too late with building hype for it, like, beforehand. Yeah. Yeah. And that was because we have been waiting to deliver on the Windhay, Kickstarter before we do the next one, which has meant that we had yeah.
Speaker 3:But we could still have tried to build some hype for it. But, I mean, that's also difficult when you haven't even we haven't even, like, delivered your first one to start building hype to a new one. That's, and we really wanted this, like, backers to get it before Christmas and maybe even out in stores before Christmas. Mhmm. So we really tried to get this on the fast track, and it's, yeah, I think we we underestimated the difficulty in reaching people and telling them because telling people about a third party product is very easy.
Speaker 3:You go to the to the Facebook group or the Discord, channels, for that game, for the the the original game. And then you say, I I have a cool third party product. And people, like, if you do a good job with telling them what what it is, they're gonna be excited and they're they're gonna wanna buy it. With with a new RPG, like a totally standalone RPG, it's much harder to find channels where you can talk about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. When when we were were trying to promote tales of the old west, I found a number of wild west paint you know, groups on Facebook that I just with my fingers crossed saying don't hate me for doing this. I just did a bit of spamming. And I think, you know, I think that that did quite well.
Speaker 2:And I think nobody said stop spamming. So that was, that was cool. But yeah, it's a real tough one, isn't it? And that's, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's difficult. It's difficult. Yeah. So we'll we'll see with the future product over if we might like, you know, shift things around a bit with that with that in mind. My new totally new RPGs might have to wait a bit longer than we had initially planned.
Speaker 2:I guess also with your very ambitious target to get my father's sword out by Christmas, I think you'll have done an epic job if, you know, once it's if you get out in that time frame. Mhmm. Because it's, you know, it's as as we're finding, as first time publishers, there is an awful lot of gulf built into the just the process of doing stuff that you don't Yeah. You don't anticipate and it really takes a lot longer than you think it ought to.
Speaker 3:Even getting your bank account here in Sweden took us a lot longer than we expected because the banks are so afraid of, like, money laundering and stuff like that. Yeah. Mhmm. So so it took us like, we actually got refused by several banks
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Who are like some were like, no. We don't even accept new clients at all. And some so there was all kinds of obstacles that we could never have anticipated. Yeah. Because that once we've solved them, like, we don't have to get a a new bank again, and we don't have to find, yeah.
Speaker 3:So a lot of things that made us delayed with the first one. Once you've done it, then it's there. And It should be easier.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's gonna get easier.
Speaker 2:No. Brilliant. Well, as of recording, there's 11 days to go. You've you've got 190 backers and over £2,000. Well, that works out to in Krona, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, it's it's doing, you know, like you say, it's, it's too good. It's going. It's doing it seems to be doing quite well even if it's not quite on the expectations that you were hoping for. So if, if anyone's listening to this and you're interested, go and find my father's sword on Kickstarter and, back it and get that game in your hands before Christmas if, if Andreas can make it all work.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And there will only be about 4 days to go when you hear this if you are one of our things. So get don't waste time.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Our patrons will hear it a bit early on, but, but, yeah, don't waste time. If you're listening to this on Monday, get over there to Kickstarter. We will, of course, put a link in the show notes, and, thank you very much, Andreas. We're gonna finish the show now, actually, Dave and I, by telling them what we're gonna be doing in,
Speaker 3:Couple of weeks.
Speaker 1:Well, 3 weeks from now. 2 weeks when other people are hearing this. And that's gonna be quite short because we have no idea. But we'd love you to to hang on to the end so that when we sign off, you can say, and may the icons bless your adventures. You happy to do that?
Speaker 3:Mainly icons bless your adventures. Yes.
Speaker 1:I will do that. Cool. Cool. Cool. Right.
Speaker 2:So next time then, Matthew. What are you doing next time?
Speaker 1:Well, I think what we need to do next time, actually, is you remember that terrible interview I did with, it was a great interview, actually, with 2 of the mice.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 1:Their Kickstarter will be, I think, about to kick off, in 2 or 3 weeks' time. So I'm gonna try and fix an interview with them, which will be, I think, the majority of our content in the next episode.
Speaker 2:Cool.
Speaker 1:That was easy. So there we go. So it's goodbye from me.
Speaker 2:And it's goodbye from him.
Speaker 3:And may the icons bless your adventures.
Speaker 2:Perfect.
Speaker 3:Did I get that right?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. That's dead on.
Speaker 3:Always worried about that bit.