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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 200 and 32 of Effect. It's a special one. Welcome to the old west. I'm Dave.
Matthew:And I'm Matthew, and it is a special one. It is a very special one, isn't it, Dave?
Dave:It is.
Matthew:This is this is our big announcement. So, we're we're doing a slightly different format. Slightly different format to our usual, our usual presentation. There will be some things that bring you home, at the beginning. We're still gonna have, a thank you to a new patron who joined just yesterday as we're recording this.
Matthew:Excellent. We've got a few stories from the world of gaming. But the biggest story for the world of gaming is then what we're gonna devote the rest of the episode to. And we're gonna keep that secret from you, the listener, for as long as we can restrain ourselves.
Dave:(Whistles) If anybody can recognize that, probably not. That's a clue, though, just in case you didn't know.
Matthew:Is that a clue?
Dave:It's a clue.
Matthew:Yeah. Anyway. Right. Yeah. So shall we get cracking on?
Matthew:Yes. Because I'm very excited about the thing we're we're aiming towards.
Dave:That's correct.
Matthew:But I'm not so excited that I want to forget Richard Upton Bickman who has just joined us as a patron on Patreon.
Dave:Thank you, Richard. Welcome. Welcome. Is Richard the the new person on our Discord who popped in
Matthew:yesterday? I I assume so. Yes. On our Discord, he is known as Tindelos 66.
Dave:That's the man. So
Matthew:Cool. Particular favorite of mine, the hounds of Tindelos. Best best thing. Do you remember the,
Dave:I do. Yeah. I remember being in port waking up in portal space in our little bottle episode, Which is actually a superb episode of Coriolis back in the day. Just me and Tony. Yeah.
Dave:Which, resulted in me telling Tony I would forgive him for whatever bad things he'd done in the past. If he if he did what I said and got into the stasis tube. And it happened that he'd done bad things to me in the past. Yeah. It was a it was a wonderful little episode.
Dave:But yes, it's a great name. Yeah. Welcome Richard. Thank you so much for joining us. And thank you obviously to all our patrons, and all of you who come on to the Discord, the nicest place on the Internet.
Dave:If you're not there yet, come along and join us. It's, it's a lovely, lovely community.
Matthew:And I think we should especially thank our stationery and our privileged patrons who who who are getting a mention in something that we're talking about later on. They are. But you'll have to wait and see what that is. Yep. Right.
Matthew:Yeah. World of gaming then.
Dave:Look at this.
Matthew:We're cracking on with the world of gaming. I'm gonna flag that 3 minutes 22 seconds into recording.
Dave:This is unprecedented. We need to just we need to fuck up and do something wrong. Because again, unprecedented. We haven't screwed up yet. We just started recording.
Dave:We did our silence. We did our clapping to get everything ready for the for the editing. And then we went straight into it. We didn't screw up once, which is just Yeah.
Matthew:This is really disappointing for our for our privilege level patrons who like to get the unedited screw up that is our usual
Dave:It's us. Reward. Dave and Matthew, an an unedited screw up. I think that's a that's a good it's a good tagline for us.
Matthew:So, yes. Let's let's not fall into the pit of unedited screw ups this far into the into the episode, Davis. We don't want to do all of that again. That's 4 minutes worth of content we've you'd have
Dave:to look at. Exactly. Exactly.
Matthew:So, something you just I feel you've been keeping a little bit quiet for me. I knew early on you'd been writing for this thing, but I didn't know it was out. And that is Fall of the Imperium from Modiphius.
Dave:Yeah. Well, that's a Dune RPG, their latest campaign book. I kind of lost sight of it a little bit. I think I did know it was it would come out. But I'm not quite sure why why I got lost sight of it.
Dave:But yes, I I did a bit of work on that. So the fall of the imperium is a campaign book with, I think it's 15. 12 or 15 scenarios that cover the period, as the name suggests, of the fall of the imperium. So it's covering the period in, I guess, for those who've who've come to Dune more recently, the the movies, the recent movies. It's covering the period of the first book.
Dave:Yeah. I think basically the whole of the first book is is the period it's covering. And I got to write a couple of the scenarios in that, which is a fabulous give you any spoilers about what may or may not happen in those, but it was great fun writing them. And it was it was really interesting, because each each scenario comes in a in a 3 scenario act. And that meant as a writer, you have to coordinate with the writer before and after you, to make sure that the the acts played through nicely.
Dave:And that was fun. It was quite frustrating at times, because sometimes you have a really good idea that didn't quite work with where the previous scenario was coming from, or where the next one was going. So you have to modify it a little bit. But it was a really good collaborative, endeavor, which which added another level of interest into the writing process. But I really enjoyed writing those, and I really hope people enjoy playing them.
Dave:Mhmm. Yeah.
Matthew:So interesting. Let's take a look at that.
Dave:Well well it was interesting. I I did have to write one of them. No no spoilers, but on the basis of because because we're writing them obviously before the the second movie came out. But I had to then write them to make sure they were consistent with what was gonna happen in the second movie. So I got a little insight into a couple of things that were were in the movie before the movie came out.
Dave:And I then had to just make sure that the scenarios didn't blow that apart completely. So allowed that
Matthew:I have to know. What what were the secret tidbits you got about June part 2 before anybody else knew or saw it? Go on. Tell me.
Dave:Well, the main one was was as as you can guess the the the scenario called hunting the beast. You kinda guess what you might be doing Oh. In that scenario.
Matthew:The beast might be. Yes.
Dave:And so it's about how how the beast dies in the movie was something that, that I had to accommodate for in, Right. In this. So it's not it's not a huge great, you know, insights or anything. But it was quite fun to get those little tidbits to say, oh, okay. Yeah.
Dave:Yeah. I know. I know a little bit about the movie that nobody else does. Such as
Matthew:that. Such
Dave:as that maybe.
Matthew:It feels a little bit like that time when Free League told us that they were making an alien game and nobody else knew. Yeah.
Dave:And we had to sit on our sit on our hands for
Matthew:So Dave, that's a recommendation from you,
Dave:Liv, for, If one is allowed to recommend one's own work, then yes. I haven't I've I've read some of the others, obviously, cause I needed to to know what was going on before and after my scenarios. But I haven't read all of them, or played them. But, when yeah. As always with Modiphius, their their their books are are really beautifully put together.
Dave:And, you know, lovely production values. So I hope it's good. I think the scenarios I did, and the acts that they're in are really good. So, yeah. I mean, I can't recommend it, but I can heartedly ask people to go and buy it, and play it.
Matthew:Okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna ask a difficult and maybe challenging Okay. Question for you to answer. But I'd have to get it off my chest about campaign books. Particularly, you've already discussed how you had to modify your scenarios to fit in with what had happened before and what was going to happen afterwards.
Matthew:Now, players kind of don't give a
Dave:Yep. Tappens
Matthew:about that, he said, not wanting to swear too much for this episode. So and, you know, and I sometimes rubbed up against scenarios, my, a version of Secrets of the Agent, Agents, Traveller being a good one that I played relatively recently. Quite an old version, not the latest version, I have to say, where, you know, you are you one feels slightly railroaded as a character. We've made these decisions. We've done all these things.
Matthew:But it doesn't affect the fact that we've got to start the next story by following this ship to escape even though we'd cleverly managed to track
Dave:the ship or anything.
Matthew:It was fun, nonetheless. But there were moments where that had to happen. And that that slight rates and one of my as a GM, one of my favorite scenarios is, the Dracula dossier for Nice Black Agents, which isn't really an adventure. Oh, isn't doesn't have a story. It's a whole bunch of background, a whole bunch of suggestions about what might happen.
Matthew:Every character's got like 3 things, 3 descriptions depending on whether they're an enemy or a friend or victim. And and so you improvise the scenario as you go along, and, I keep talking about this. So I promise this will be the last time I say this but, my players got it into their head that some minor East European vampire I'd I'd given them to start with as an antagonist was actually Quincy out of the novel. And I thought, well, that's a great idea. Let's make him Quincy out of the novel.
Matthew:And from that point on, it was about Dracula versus Quincy as 2, 2 vampires sort of warring for the for the earth as it were. And it turned out the players were on Dracula's side and defeating Quincy. But there we go. I'm I'm spoiling it now.
Dave:Was there a question in all that?
Matthew:How did you feel about well, I've got a question. Yeah. Which is, how flexible do you think the whole campaign is gonna end up for players that turn left or decide to join the Harkonnens or whatever they do.
Dave:Yeah. So I think there's certainly in the bits that I did, I and obviously, I can't I can't speak for all of it. But the the idea was to for each scenario actually to be a a self contained story on its own. So you could just run it. If you wanted to just run that scenario out of the middle of that act, and you didn't wanna run the others, you could.
Matthew:Mhmm.
Dave:In in, Hunting the Beast, for example, do you you you can you can be working for the Harkonnens, and still hunt the beast. So, you know, so so the the options are there. There there are things in the scenario. Again, I don't wanna do too many spoilers. But there are thing there are things in the scenario
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:That give you that choice, or can accommodate. If you're coming into it as a Harkonnen, adherent, or or loyalist, then yes, you can run it as a Harkonnen. Or you can run it if you are an Atreides. Or you can run it if you are working for the imperials. Or you can run it if you're, you know, a minor house who's trying curry favour with any of those houses and wants to do something.
Dave:So certainly from my point of view, yes. You can you can accommodate for that as a GM. I do take your point, and it's interesting, because I've now written campaigns for, 3 or 4 different companies. And then obviously, the campaign that we have been writing for for Tales of the Old West, or the way the way we're doing that. We can talk about that later.
Dave:But it's it's it's each one each one is kind of a little bit different. So for Firelock, I was given complete control over doing rendezvous with Destiny, which is great. With, free league, I was given loads of control, but within certain parameters to do building better worlds. With, Modiphius, they have a different approach. So they like to as many different voices working in their campaign books as possible.
Dave:So in initially, every every scenario in that book was gonna be written by a different author. Yeah.
Matthew:An individual.
Dave:Somebody dropped out, so I got the opportunity to do a second one, which was great. But I don't know if many of them, you know, if if many others got a chance to do more than 1. So that brings that issue of dovetailing the 2 together, and dovetailing the ideas of 1 author with the ideas of the next author in in in in line. I think particularly for something like Dune and something like this, there is inevitably going to be a, a procession of when each scenario should play, because it is effectively playing through the events of the movie, or of the book. So I guess, I mean, I haven't played it.
Dave:So I don't know how rail -roady it feels. But I would hope that each individual scenario has given you plenty of opportunity to do things in a different With dreams
Matthew:dreams and machines, which
Dave:I I I wrote a, you know, so I did the so for for Dreams and Machines, the new campaign coming out, which is called the, echoes of an ancient enemy. I did the the the campaign design for that. So the the overarching story, that was originally gonna be 15 scenarios. It might have been skimmed down a bit, so it might be 12 now or something. But again, that was intended at the end of end of each of the 3 acts again.
Dave:There was there was kind of a something you needed to learn to in order to motivate you to go on to the next act. So again, in that sense, there's a little bit of rail roadiness. But in the midst of that, things can happen and events can happen. Or should be able to happen in pretty much any order you like. So yeah.
Dave:It's I feel with Dune, then there might, you know, a GM or players who are great big fans of, you know, the books and the films, might want to play it in that order.
Matthew:But I
Dave:say I haven't played it, and I haven't read all of it. So I don't know how railroad it feels, Or how whether there are elements of it that it says, okay, you need to get to this point in order to move on to the next one. It's a harder challenge for for an established IP like Dune, for sure. Particularly while you're following,
Matthew:you
Dave:know, the the core canon of the of the book Dune. It's a it's a it's
Matthew:Yes. And it's and, you know, they they haven't done the easy, if you like, Star Wars thing by saying, okay. This might be happening at the same time as the movies, but you're in a different part of the galaxy fighting a different, imperial, presence. You are, as I understand description of this campaign, in the thick of things with with with certain families that we've all heard of before, Even if you're playing some sort of minor
Dave:household yourself. Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. Talking of campaigns, I've got another campaign I want to talk about a little bit which is coming out quite soon, and that is, pilgrimage of the penitent
Dave:Oh, yeah.
Matthew:From MÖRK BORG. Now, Dave, you might think I talk too much about MÖRK BORG on this
Dave:You do.
Dave:Yes. You do.
Matthew:Podcast which which is about Swedish games, but very rarely actually about Wartburg itself, I have to say, except in these, because because I feel that of us, I'm the only one that loves I
Dave:well, I've I've still never played it. I I love the look of the book. I love the feel of the book. I don't think it's the it's it's not gonna be running games that I would find really engaging for a long time. And when I role play, I wanna get into a game that I can spread into a campaign and really get deeply into my characters.
Dave:So I probably love it. I probably love it
Matthew:as I probably
Dave:love it as a one shot. But, yeah. It doesn't speak to me in the same way that it does to you.
Matthew:This book this book may be the thing that convinces you to play because as far as I can work out, it is a campaign for Mork Borg. So, and it's I think it's set in the, original Morteborg world whose name I've forgotten. But it, you know, the apocalypse happening. You're still 7 dice rolls away from the end of the world where you have to burn your Is this a book and stuff. Is this a Stockholm cartel thing or is
Dave:this a?
Matthew:A No. It's not Stockholm Cartel. Now I can't remember who it's by, and I might have to quickly look that up, while we're talking. But no. It's it's it's a licensed product.
Matthew:And let me just see if I can find it again quickly. But, yeah, I think it's it's set in, as I say, in the the standard world. Where did I see it? Damn it. I've now lost it.
Matthew:Yep. We will, of course be putting a link
Dave:in the show notes. On, Kickstarter. Nick Rivera is the creator.
Matthew:Yes. And yeah. And it's it's a campaign It's funded.
Dave:Obviously, last year. So I guess it's now being fulfilled at the moment. Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. It's coming out now is is is what it came to my attention. It's it's even out in print if you're in the right country to be able to import books in there or or, obviously, it's on PDF. And it it it it expands the rules a bit. So there's stuff about disease and about long long term disease as it were.
Matthew:So, you know, it very much set up for campaign mode. Hundreds of MPCs and people that you meet on your journey towards well, I'm I'm hoping Salvation, but it's more Borg so probably not Salvation. But, yeah. No. So yeah.
Matthew:I just wanted to give that a bit of a shout out. Among all the other Mork Borg releases that are Mork Borg but with mechs or Mork Borg but with orcs, it called it Auk Borg. All of which have a right to exist but even I admit sometimes I come to the world of gaming with yet another borg that we've attached something to the front of. And this is actually, I feel, a real expansion for Core Mork Bog as opposed to just doing it with a slightly different style. So I might well pick it up.
Matthew:I might even try running a couple of scenarios a bit. I don't know when I'm gonna get time to do that. You know, it's yeah. Particularly with the, busy busy time that we have had for ourselves. Cool.
Matthew:Talking of which, what's the 3rd item I see here in the world of gaming? Some new publishing company I've never heard of before. Effect Publishing it says here have, they've released, a new website. And, apparently, tomorrow as we record this, but today, as you listen, if you're one
Dave:of them It should be Monday 27th May, this will be?
Matthew:Yeah. They're launching Tales of the Old West
Dave:Indeed. Quick draw.
Matthew:Available for free on drive thru.
Dave:So here we are, finally. After all these years, after all this talk, after, you know, rules writing and debates and disagreements and agreements and all the rest of it. Much of disagreement until, you know, you you I convince you that I'm right, of course, which is usually the case.
Matthew:No. I like to let
Dave:you do that. Do you now? Well well done. Yeah. So Tales of the Old West.
Dave:So we've talked about before that we are bringing Tales of the Old West to kick starter later this summer. Final date to be confirmed. But with UK Games Expo just a few days away, we were determined to get the quick drawers available. So people can get that, we can talk about it a bit at UK Games Expo when we're not obviously busy working, for free league on their stall, which we will be doing with our
Matthew:Yes. When we're on the stall, we're gonna be talking exclusively about
Dave:Free League products. It's not about our with professionalism and eye for a sale. So, but yeah. So we will be able to get people to look at the quick draw, and go and play it a little bit. As a prelude, to getting getting the full game up on kickstarter later this year.
Dave:Can't wait. Actually, this is, yeah. This is one of those pivotal milestones that, you know, you'd have in a project plan that you could then tick off with a big a big red tick. But we've done it. We've done it.
Dave:And kind of well well done to us. I've
Matthew:done it.
Dave:Well done to you, Matthew. You've done you've done a lot of work. Thank you to us. But also, a huge well done. And thank you to all those people who have helped us.
Dave:Not just all our patrons who've been behind us and have, you know, without whom we wouldn't be here. But also the people who've helped us in producing the quick draw. You know, it's we've been very lucky and have had some brilliant support and some super talented work. And it looks really good. And I think it plays really plays really well.
Dave:So go and get it. It's got an introductory tail in it. It's got 5 pregenerated characters, and it's got a big chunk of the rules that will allow you to go and have, you know, some tales in the old west.
Matthew:Yeah. And, actually, I I have to admit to a little bit of a thing. I sent the files when when you're a new publisher, this doesn't happen with community, publishing when, you know, we're doing something for, the Free League workshop or anything like that. But when you're a new publisher, you have to send your product and your your page, your product page for approval before it goes live. And, obviously, what I wanted to do is we're making it go live on Monday.
Matthew:So I did this towards the end of last week.
Dave:You were doing very well getting the approvals in early, weren't you? To, you know, which was
Matthew:I was oh, yeah. Getting the can we can talk a bit about that print product. Remind me to talk about that. Back as well. That hasn't quite come back so that's not yet live on, Free League.
Matthew:On on drive thru. But actually, what I forgot to do is I said, right now, just one thing I need to do is check with Dave when we want to launch. We hadn't actually decided that we were going to launch tomorrow, Monday. But then I thought, oh oh, but I better get this approved anyway. So I submitted it for approval.
Matthew:But, of course, what you need to really do is also have your launch date set when it's get sent to approval. Because as it happened, they approved it and it went live. So To
Dave:show how excited they are Yeah. Tells of the Old West quick draw out there. They saw it and thought, this game can't wait.
Matthew:Yes. We've
Dave:got to put it out for people to get it straight away.
Matthew:And and, about a 180 people have already got it.
Dave:That's a good start.
Matthew:Nice. Which is
Dave:not bad. Are we getting a 100
Matthew:180 reviews?
Dave:Sorry. So
Matthew:it hurts a bit shit. No. Let me just have a quick look at our product reviews. There were no reviews to show, but we're coming to 5 stars.
Dave:Good. Good. Good. I'm pleased to hear.
Matthew:It. So, I I'm gonna urge people. It's it's great. We've already had people asking us questions on the discussion bit of the Free League page. So I've answered those.
Matthew:At least I've answered everything up came in by yesterday. I'm not sure that's it today. We haven't had any reviews. Obviously, I expect people want to, you know, have a go playing the game before they commit themselves to review, but there's definitely a couple of 5 stars there. So people obviously like the look of it.
Dave:So that's
Matthew:great to see. And nobody's any less than 5 stars. Hey. I'm not sure that that won't last forever. And we've got, going live again.
Matthew:We've also got a web page, which I will put obviously
Dave:a link in the show.
Matthew:And we'll be putting links all over social media for the next week leading up
Dave:to Absolutely.
Matthew:To Games Expo. And also at Games Expo, when we're not at the free league stand, we'll be wearing our Tales of the Old West t shirts,
Dave:I believe.
Matthew:And our Tales of the Old West t shirts got a QR code on the back. So even if you're talking to somebody else, people could still look up Tales of the Old West and go to
Dave:our website. No. No. No.
Matthew:So, that's happening. We've also got a bit of a competition running at UK Games Expo. You'll see flyers about to which we will distribute discreetly, obviously. And those flyers, have a little bit of a challenge for you. If you can find either one of us, Dave or myself alone not together, then you can ask us the question why should I back?
Matthew:Tales of the Old West. And if you do it early enough and we've still got stock, we will give you a physical reward. You'll get your That sounds a bit tricky. I didn't mean
Dave:You'll get your reward for tracking down these dirty varmints. So yeah. Doc Tyler Jones and Appaloosa Dave Seamark are the men you gotta run down. But don't run them down together, because they're too
Matthew:You have to catch us, each one of us, on our own, for that. And yes, you can read all about the reward by picking up one of our flyers. But I won't I won't explain exactly
Dave:what it
Matthew:is here.
Dave:Cool.
Matthew:So, yeah. We we're gonna be promoting the bejesus out of it, and the PDF is totally free. And I think it is amazing value for money.
Dave:Well, seeing it's free, it's, it's it's it's
Matthew:It seems free. Yeah.
Dave:Value for money. But, yeah, it's about 60 pages long. It's got, lots of lovely art in it. It's got some maps.
Matthew:Oh, no.
Dave:70 pages. Okay. So, yeah. You're getting quite a chunk of, of content for your for your money, for your lack of money. And as I said, it gives you, yeah, a a really good basis to go and play the, the, the introductory scenario, which is included.
Dave:And there's a town that comes with the scenario. There are people that populate that town. So if you like it and want to play on, there's details there that allow you to continue your players adventures after you've played the introductory, tale. So, yeah. Get it.
Dave:Have a look at it. Give us a give us a review. Obviously, we're we're we're we want 5 star reviews, and everyone to love it. But if you've got comments, then please constructively feed those back as well. We are, you know, looking to get get get feedback on on what we're producing.
Dave:So we can make the final game as great as possible.
Matthew:Yeah. I mean, one of the one of the questions we've been asked actually already on on the, on the drive thru website has, in fact made us, you and I, Dave, question whether we need to make something more specific in the in the rule. Yep. So you may well get this, run it, tell us what you think. And I'm not making any promises that we're gonna change anything because we've been playing this quite a lot, and we're having a whale of a time.
Matthew:But there may be things that might make us rethink or look again at certain aspects. So
Dave:yeah. Give Absolutely. There's shout. There there are there are kind of nuances kinda lost sometimes in in the depths of of of obscure paragraphs. That when you actually bring them out on the table regularly, maybe don't have the quite the effect that we were intending to.
Dave:So that's what this, this point that Matthew's talking about refers to, which is fine. And it's a nice easy tweak to to fix that once you've had to think about it. But there. Yeah. So please, anything you get like that.
Dave:As Matthew says, you know, we are we are we've done a lot of playtesting and a lot of revision on the if we spot something that doesn't quite work, or you spot something that doesn't quite work, that or you spot something that doesn't quite work, then we wouldn't consider changing it for sure.
Matthew:Yeah. And, of course, if you wanna hear it in play then hop on over to our other channel, our actual play channel, where we have put up almost 30 episodes of one of our playtest campaigns. Obviously, the best playtest campaign because it doesn't have you as a
Dave:player, though. But Yeah. It has me as a GM.
Matthew:That's why it's the best playtest campaign. Oh, right. Yeah. That that might be it. Have you even did are you still recording your other campaign that you've
Dave:been testing? No. No. We haven't been recording that. No.
Dave:Haven't recorded that for ages. Yeah.
Matthew:Right. Probably just as well, given the sub profile of
Dave:things. In my in my campaign where I'm where I'm a player, we are a nasty bunch of people. We are. We are.
Matthew:Yeah. That's more blood meridian than
Dave:The little house on the prairie. Campaign. Yeah. Exactly. Yes.
Matthew:Yeah. Which is a nice segue, Dave. Actually, we could be talking about some of the influences. And what I thought we might, so this is a slightly different format to our usual, way we do things on this podcast. We, normally, we have a recorded essay and then we talk about that.
Matthew:But this time, I thought it might be worth you and I, Dave, talking about some of the well, mostly films that people have seen, but also some of the books that we've read. Some of the fiction, some of the mythology Mhmm. Of the old west that inspired us to make this game in the first place and has influenced some of the rules and mechanics within the game. So if you've got a favorite cowboy movie, for want of a better word, that you enjoy playing and you're wondering, will Tales of the Old West let me play that? Then perhaps by us unpacking some of our favorite movies or media, shall we say, because we're gonna start off with a TV show, which is probably the biggest influence overall.
Matthew:As we unpack some of these, you'll listen in and hear how we've adapted to the Cadix to to try and fit that. And then, yeah. And that'll help you make up your mind whether you want to buy it. But I could spoilers, you want to buy it. You definitely wanna download our free quick start, and then you want to back out Yes.
Matthew:You do.
Dave:Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, the number one, you know, key inspiration, I think, for me, and I think for you as well is drum roll. Deadwood. Is that a surprise?
Dave:Is that a surprise? Yes. I doubt it. Deadwood TV series. I've also read the book by oh, I'm not gonna remember his name now.
Dave:Oh, bloody hell. I gonna have to go and look that up.
Matthew:I don't even know there was a book date. There was
Dave:a book that had to be by
Matthew:even Pete,
Dave:something other. I'm gonna have to look that up in a minute. But Deadwood, the TV series, was a real was a real watershed, I think. Not just for us, but also for representing the West in in media. Because it was unashamedly in your face.
Dave:It was unashamedly showing the dark side of of life. How difficult it was. It was unashamedly gritty, and I love that. That was absolutely superb. But the whole thing about this is your community, and this is your town, and you're building this town whilst you're competing with the other people in it, was a key inspiration for us.
Dave:Because the town in Tales of the Old West is a really important part of the game. You you know, it's
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:Yeah. As players, you don't have to support your town. But then if you don't support your town, it won't be there to support you when things go wrong. Yeah. The town is part of the campaign play in Tales of the Old West.
Dave:Your town can develop over time, and you can help your town develop. If you're public spirited and you do stuff to support the community, or to protect the town, or to build up the town, then your town will flourish. And that will mean that the people who live in it, like your characters, will also flourish. But also, you've got all your competitors, all your rivals there. And it's it's basically a melting pot of plot ideas, and story hooks.
Dave:And yeah, a totally diverse range of characters from, you know, your squeaky clean, good guy, naive, man or woman, to your Alsverengen, who is simply out for himself. He's loyal to a few people, but not very many. And he certainly isn't loyal to you when, when you need him to be. And Yeah. So Deadwood.
Dave:That, if you if you loved Deadwood, and you wanna play a game that kind of recreates the feel and the atmosphere of Deadwood, Tales of the Old West is the game for you.
Matthew:Yeah. And we should say actually that that was a one probably one of the first conscious decisions that we made about the game. When we started, it was just after, the good lads had come out, and I remember talking to you. I think we have a lot of these conversations or we have had a lot of these conversations when I've been out on a walk talking to you on the phone. And I think this is one.
Matthew:And I was saying, you know, we could do this thing. We could take the, the sort of sandbox campaign thing and do an Oregon Trail type thing with some version of the ruined lands rules. And very quickly, we went, but we don't wanna do the Oregon Trail because the thing we want to do is Deadwood. And they, you know I mean, people come to Deadwood, but it's actually then about the town of Deadwood. And particularly so your book, David Pete Dexter.
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah. And I was thinking when you described it, it was book of the film.
Dave:No. No. This is
Matthew:TV show. But, obviously,
Dave:it looks like it's Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. This is yeah.
Dave:Pete Dexter did a dramatization of Deadwood long before HBO did the dramatization of Deadwood. Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. So it is a fictionist sort of history. Am I right?
Dave:Well, it's a well, it's a it's a historical fiction,
Matthew:I think, if I remember right. It's a
Dave:long time ago since I I read it. As is as is deadwood. Good. Because okay. This brings us on to the other point.
Dave:You know, historicity and creating something that is is reflective of the history, of the West. Deadwood obviously does that. Because it's dealing with people who are real. Al Sweyngen was real. Seth Bullock was real.
Dave:Wild Bill Hickok, obviously, was real. He did die in the way that he was killed in the TV programme. But there's obviously obviously artistic license is thrown in there. And, it you know, so it's it's like a historical novel. It's based on some history, but the creators have taken some, you know, some liberties to fill in the gaps because the the actual history doesn't necessarily give you that much information.
Dave:So it's based on historical foundation, but the actual stuff that happens is probably, you know, it's it's not a documentary. Let's put it that way.
Matthew:Yeah. And it looks to me like Deadwood, the novel is based on that first bit of the first series of Deadwood where, well, Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane Yeah. And Charliata arrive in town. But, of course, the TV series goes beyond their stories or definitely beyond, well, Bill Hickok's stories, by dint of the fact that he doesn't make it all the way through the first series.
Dave:Spoilers. Spoilers.
Matthew:And what we see over the course of just 3 series and a movie is that town developing. So at the beginning, the settlement is not much more than, Alice Waringen's hotel and a bunch of tents. But then it becomes more and more, solid and real as it develops. And we have tried to create mechanics that lets you do the same thing Absolutely. With your town, which I think is an important part of the nature of our game being a campaign game as opposed to to necessarily I mean,
Dave:the game obviously can be played as a one off. Absolutely. If you want to play, you know, the the high plains drifter who just wanders into a town for a scenario, then wanders on. You can do that. That's absolutely fine.
Dave:But our design, our inspiration was to create something that would would bring about Deadwood at the table. So it's it's our campaign is aimed at doing that. The way we are crafting the campaign, the way the campaigns work is all aimed at doing that. But it doesn't stop you. If you want, just being a gunslinger who walks into town, you know, or an outlaw who is going from town to town.
Dave:You can play that kind of campaign if you want. But the but the towns are important.
Matthew:Yeah. And talking about that, my first choice for, for the for a motion picture that that has inspired our rules is the good, the bad, and the ugly. So as you say, this is very much, Clint Eastwood riding into town and, causing mischief. And I I think it would almost be all the Sergio Leone spaghetti questions. Absolutely.
Matthew:Yeah. I picked this one, because of the fabulous three way gunfight. And also something about our game, although we have gone we, you know, we're trying very much for an historical feel. The idea of the way Sergio Leone does gunfights is probably quite ahistorical. Well, I think you've almost There
Dave:are there are there are definitely historical instances of what we would call a duel. But they are pretty few and far between. You know, there's there's a hand there's a there's a slight handful of, occasions that I've been able to find through my research over the whole history of the West. So it's not something that was happening every other Friday, in every town by any means.
Matthew:No. Unless you're in Giornada Springs, mate.
Dave:Well, then, you know, that's that's your choice. Isn't it, mate? I mean, come on. You you don't have to fight fight all these bad guys, but you choose to. So
Matthew:We have to do the right thing. And yeah. So so we definitely wanted to be able to capture the spirit of that gunfight and not just make it into a thing that was about who draws first and shoots first. We there there is drama within that gunfight, which I feel is inspired very much, at least from my point of view, by the Sergio Leone films. So there's a number of roles you make in that gunfight.
Matthew:And the, you know, I you don't do it every time you draw your pistol, but there are moments of drama in the drawing. And when the time is right for a gunfight like that, which may be at high noon, none of the films, quite a good one, but, we're not talking about today. It may be at high noon. It may be at 3:10 to Yuma, another one we couldn't do. It could have been in the high street.
Matthew:Sometimes it is in and we'll talk about another gunfight a bit later on, I think, where where it isn't quite as as as stand offy as the beautiful sort of close-up of people's eyeballs that you get in a Sergei Leoni movie. But we wanted to create rules that that that allow you to do that. If that's the bag you're into, you can have a gunfight every Friday.
Dave:Now, I I think the thing though with with those rules is, you know, we've done them so they can recreate that kind of, mythological duel. You know, where you're standing there and you're looking at the other man's in the other man's eye before you pull your draw your gun. But the beauty of the rules is you can introduce those rules in any situation where 2 characters know they're about to get into into trouble or in, you know, into a conflict with each other. Neither's drawn their gun yet, but they've just their eyes have just met. And I've done it a number of times in in different scenarios.
Dave:Where, one particular one, one of the characters, Thomas Vance, was trying to get a a young man onto a train to us, so he could escape West without being killed. Now bounty hunters after him. And the bounty hunter was right behind them, and as he bundled the boy onto the onto the train, he turned and through the crowd came the bounty hunter. And their eyes locked. And then boom.
Dave:I went into the duelling rules. So you get that moment of freaking, you know, freaking each other out, sizing each other up, and trying to make the other guy flinch. And then you go through that. And that worked brilliantly. So you don't just have to use those rules
Matthew:for
Dave:when your guy stands out there at dawn, or, you know, at midday or noon.
Matthew:Or noon. Yeah. Or 3 champs.
Dave:Yeah. As a GM, you can roll them into any situation like that to add that little extra kind of tension and and and greater sort of narrative into into what what otherwise would be, you know, just roll initiative and shoot your gun. But this builds it into a much more tense moment. Works really well, I think. I'm talking of tense moments.
Dave:Yeah. Another great example for me is Tombstone with, with, Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer and Michael Bean and a few others. And the relationship between Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo. So Val Kilmer and Michael Bean's characters is a great one. For not only the actually the way that Ringo was killed in the end, because that's a duel.
Dave:That would work perfectly in the drilling rules. But also, their relationship throughout the film. Where the number of times they were staring each other down. They were using their presence, which is a skill in our game. Using their presence to make the other man back down, or be intimidated, or apologize.
Dave:Actually, I think at one point, Ringo does apologize to Doc Holliday. Mhmm. Or you're performing. You know, you're convincing someone or you're convincing the people around you that you're the tough guy. Tombstone is great for that.
Dave:So that relationship between Doc Holliday and Ringo, jolly Ringo is brilliant. It just so our rules try to recreate your ability to look the other guy in the eye, and make him back down, and make him turn away. Even if he doesn't want to. So you can you can you can cause damage to your mental and intellectual stats. Your cunning or your dossity.
Dave:And if you get broken on those, then you back down. You lose that battle of wills.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:And I think it works really well again. But tombstone is a perfect example of of our inspiration behind wanting those those things to be equally powerful as drawing your gun. Actually, potentially more powerful. Because if you could beat the guy, or the person opposite you, by the look in your eye, or you know, how tough you are, you haven't got to draw your gun. And you don't run the risk of getting shot in the head and killed.
Dave:Because the game is the game is dangerous.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:One shot can kill you. And even just even
Matthew:just Absolutely.
Dave:Can can be a bad thing. So it's, if you can avoid drawing your gun, then that's a good thing. That's a very good thing. I mean it also
Matthew:Do I
Dave:just take it also? It, yeah, that that's a historicity kind of thing. Getting shot, I guess. I've never been shot thankfully. Hopefully neither of any of you.
Dave:But being shot, I'm guessing is a bad thing. I think there's plenty of evidence to suggest that it is. And in the old west, most people didn't go for a duel, because you had the risk of getting shot. If you had a beef with someone, more often than not, you'd poke your shotgun through the window of the saloon and shoot them in the back. And then run away.
Dave:So you know, again, maybe this the the rules that we've got are trying to recreate that feel of actually keeping yourself out of harm's way is a really important thing to do.
Matthew:And I think that is a that is a thing. You know, when the guns come out, the game gets really dangerous for anybody. So so I think that's something I feel Yeah. We've got right. Combat combat or should I say gunplay combat is still fun, but there's a real risk that you're suddenly gonna be dead.
Matthew:And And,
Dave:you know, we sorry. Go on, mate.
Matthew:I was gonna say, you know, we haven't you you know, isn't about where grinding down somebody's hit points. It, you know, it is about, and I think we're quite based about this. You can yeah. We're we're proud crit farmers in this game. Yeah.
Matthew:I think, it does encourage you as a player to to go for the crit. And the crit, as we learned when we looked at the critical tables, a few weeks ago on this road podcast, crits can be pretty deadly in a lot of year 0 games. And this, they're just as deadly in this game.
Dave:Yeah. And I think, you know, we've had a conversation with some people. You know, crit farming is a phrase I hate. Because it's it implies all the wrong stuff. It implies your min max player, who's, you know, who's just trying to be the most powerful thing they possibly can be.
Dave:Going for a crit in tales of the old west is absolutely the right thing to do. Because if you get one, you'll put your enemy down, and he can't shoot you back.
Matthew:Yes.
Dave:Now that is the key thing. You know, if you if you can put the guy down in one shot, which let's face it was not uncommon. If you got hit, it's gonna be a bad thing. If you could put your guy down, your enemy down, then they can't shoot you back. Yep.
Dave:Absolutely. That's the key thing. Because one shot back can kill you. As
Matthew:Yes. Tony. Remember, they're trying to put you down as quickly as possible as well.
Dave:Precisely. Yeah.
Matthew:And, yeah. Well, you know, the loss of your brother in that early test when we were using real guns. No. So loss of your brother in that early play test, where you rolled 66
Dave:on the
Matthew:trip for him, and he was dead. That's it. Yep. Now, that slightly brings us on though. You talked about, you know, min maxing and and and I think this is another another inspiration for us definitely is and is not a movie, although I think there is a TV series, mini
Dave:series. There was a there was a
Matthew:TV movie. There was a TV
Dave:series. Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. Called Lonesome Dove. But we again, Lonesome Dove, the the novels. There's about 4 of them. The first one is the best one as often with these things.
Matthew:Yeah. By Larry by
Dave:Larry by Larry McMurtry.
Matthew:Larry McMurtry. Yeah. And they well, particularly the first one, Lonesome Dove itself is just a glorious novel. Superb. Yeah.
Matthew:Not so much town based this one. You know, it is about basically taking a herd of cattle north at, to start a new It is.
Dave:Although although Lonesome Dove is the name of the town where they live, where they start. So there is it is it's not town based in the same way the deadwood is in our in our in our kind of conception. But it, yeah. It definitely reflects some of that town experience that we wanna bring out.
Matthew:Absolutely. And the idea of a community travelling as well that, you know, there may be different individuals within that making up the outfit that that go north. And, for me, one of the key things about that book is it features, if you like, a couple of min maxed characters. So the 2 main protagonists
Dave:Yeah. I guess. Yeah.
Matthew:Who spent all their points on on grit and presence and
Dave:shooting skills and fighting skills.
Matthew:And not so much on the social skills. And one of the core things about this book is how although they're very successful in many of the things they do, they are incredibly incompetent in even talking to each other. These 2 lifelong friends who can't even talk to each other about what they're feeling. One of them has a son who doesn't even know he's this person's son and and neither of them can really tell that boy about the fact that he's he's their son. That's slightly spoiler.
Matthew:No. It's not it's not very spoiler y. You can even though they don't understand it until the end of the book, you understand it quite early on as a reader because you're not as incompetent as they are, frankly. And, and I feel, you know, we've done 2 things that reflect that sort of lack of social skills that they had there. Not only do we have these ways of doing social conflict conflict that are more expansive than I think any of the previous year zero games.
Dave:Yeah. But,
Matthew:you know, we're spreading your skills in. There are 16 skills here like Coriolis, unlike most of the other game server 12, which means that you have to spread your skills a little bit thinner. Therefore, you know, you've got to make choices or if you would roll up your dice randomly, you've got to live with what the dice give you. Yeah. And you're not going to be great at everything.
Matthew:And even as you develop your character, you may decide to develop it one way. It will take a long time to develop that character to be great at everything. And you're definitely gonna have strengths and weaknesses and within your outfit within your group of people player characters you're gonna have to you know try and complement each other in there so that you're you're quite a a good unit. There's that. And the other thing I think comes out of Lonesome Dove is really our concept of mishaps and and troubled dice comes really mostly influenced by Lonesome Dove and the terrible accidents that suddenly happen out of the blue in that Mhmm.
Matthew:And Yeah. Really affect individual characters. When they when they slightly push themselves, it can have devastating, consequences.
Dave:Yeah. For sure. It's a it's a superb book. It's, you put me onto it many years ago now. But it's an absolutely superb book.
Dave:There is a wonderful wonderful scene, which still brings goosebumps to my to my arms when I think about it. At the end where the 2 characters, Gus McCrae and Woodrow call are having a conversation, which is just kind of a culmination of all the things they couldn't say to each other. Throughout the whole book. But then they can't really say it to them, each other even then. And it's just it's just superb.
Dave:I've got goose pimples now talking about it. Absolutely superb. If you like westerns, and you like books, you know, to Lonesome Dove is a is a top of my list of recommendations. But the one thing I would say is, the other thing it does, flag up is our concept of of, this is gonna sound crap. Our our idea around group concepts.
Dave:So you don't have to play 5 strangers who just meet in a bar. You can choose to create a group concept. And in this one, the group concept is, you know, that they're a group of cowboys who are going to be driving their cattle to the north to make their fortune and change their lives.
Matthew:Yeah. They're a business. They were they were living in the yard, aren't they, at the beginning? Yeah. In New Mexico, I think.
Matthew:And they decide to
Dave:to go
Matthew:north to
Dave:Run run a herd to Montana.
Matthew:Montana. That's it. Yeah.
Dave:To to then sell it. And then, you know, make a small fortune and change their lives. And the story is all about that. And it's but it's it like as as Matthew said, as he said, it's the sudden turn of, fortunes. The sudden trouble that might take a character out completely in the turn of the page, is again inspired our trouble.
Dave:Trouble, if it's really bad, could lead to a very bad outcome. More often than not, the trouble you'll suffer in the way we've done it, means that you'll suffer a lesser thing. So, you know, your character isn't gonna your characters aren't gonna be dying left right and center because of the trouble that you roll. But if you roll it really badly, that might be really bad for you. But that really bad trouble, shouldn't happen too often.
Matthew:Yeah. And you can buy off trouble a bit as well.
Dave:You can buy off trouble with your faith.
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah.
Dave:I mean, we haven't mentioned faith yet in the game. No.
Matthew:But actually, that's another thing. I think slightly comes out of, out of lonesome dove. And and particularly, the concept of faith being not necessarily
Dave:Religious.
Matthew:Religious Yeah. Christian faith. Although that was quite big by a bunch of people who'd gone to America, first of all, to to get away from religious persecution and then and then go west. So, but but yeah. The so there's there's a way you can recover faith in this game, which is just by going for a long ride, which is inspired directly by one of the characters in
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:In Lonesome Dove who, you know, when he spent all his faith, as it were, he just needs to get away from everybody and go out and experience life in the wilderness for a bit.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:So so yeah. The I think I think our faith concept is is heavily influenced by this novel as well.
Dave:Yeah. And and particularly, you know, influenced from a point of view of not religious faith. So when you say faith, people are gonna immediately think religion. In terms of the old west, your faith can be anything. It can be religious faith if you want your character to be religious.
Dave:That's fine. But also it can be spiritual faith. It could be faith in yourself. It could be faith in your own ability to do stuff. It could be faith in your friends.
Dave:It could be faith in anything. Anything you like
Matthew:to tag
Dave:up to the player. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, but, yes, I'd forgotten about that because, yeah, Woodrow, Woodrow Call does ride off frequently
Matthew:to To recover faith.
Dave:To recover to recover his faith. Yeah. I mean, but they do do some pretty nasty things. All nasty things do happen to them. And that brings us on to kind of the the the next inspiration, which is a book again, I mean, equally impactful, but in a different way called Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.
Dave:Now any of you who've read a Cormac McCarthy book will know a little bit about what what I'm about to say. He's brutal. He is brutal. I mean, I was I was kind of breathless having finished reading Blood Meridian, because it is so, it's so visceral. It's so unvarnished about the horrible things that happened in in in the West.
Dave:About scalpings, about killings, about people who are dying of of diseases. Who nobody gives a monkeys about. And I think you know, it reflects that. So what we are taking, what we what I've took from this is the evil in this world, in the Wild West is that that you find in the hearts of bad people.
Matthew:Mhmm.
Dave:And bad people do bad things. You know, Tales of the Old West is a, as you said, a historical game. A game inspired by the history. There's no fancy strange supernatural.
Matthew:There's no vampires or or zombies?
Dave:No nothing like that in it at all. Because there is plenty of evil out there just in the hearts of bad folk. Who would gladly do harm to you or others to gain for their own personal gain. And that came out of Blood Meridian. And Blood Meridian is a brutal book.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:I mean, if you you know, take a deep breath before you start reading it, because it is it is brutal. But it's
Matthew:And put it down as frequently as you like as well. Go out. Yeah.
Dave:But it's but it's very powerful. I mean, it again, I was I was, I guess, a little bit shocked almost having read it, read through it all. But it left a mark with me. It was, you know, it's left an indelible mark. It's an inspiration for what we are trying to recreate in terms of the old west.
Dave:That bad people do bad things, and you know, your characters I mean, if you want your character to be a bad person, you can be. But your characters are likely to be resisting the efforts of of such dark and cruel people.
Matthew:I like to think that most of the characters, most of the players that will appreciate this game are going to be resisting. But I've got to say, if you wanna be a bad person then, go to the campaign that you're playing in Dave. Because
Dave:Yeah. I mean, we we are we are bad people in that campaign. And but I mean but I mean, yeah. Our justification, I guess such as such as it is, if there is one, is that we are in doing that. We are supporting the town.
Dave:We are protecting the town. We are property protecting our own interests in that town. But, yeah. We are. Are we the baddies?
Dave:Yeah. I think we're the baddies.
Matthew:I think we're the baddies.
Dave:But I I've done but I'm I'm I'm fully suspecting that all of the bad stuff will come back badly to haunt us at some point in the future. I mean, my character's is is a long standing character now. He's he's he's got earned a lot of XP. He's quite good at the things he wants to be good at. But still, if, you know, the friends of somebody that he's killed in the past, or the law learns some stuff about what he and the other characters have been doing, they might find themselves either gunned down in the street or hanging from the nearest tree.
Dave:So it's it's unlikely to end well for them. Let's put it that way, which is good. Which will be a good conclusion to that campaign.
Matthew:Yes. Revenge, of course, is the driver for a lot of
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:Old west stories. And one more recent one that I'm gonna recommend, and I'm not sure that you've even seen this yet or seen it all the way through, is the English.
Dave:No. I haven't seen it all the way through yet. I've started it. I started watching it with my wife, but then she lost a little bit of interest. And I just haven't got around to watching the rest of it yet.
Dave:But Yeah.
Matthew:So Yeah.
Dave:I was definitely enjoying it very much.
Matthew:At the beginning, it feels a little bit like it's a cliche of every western you've ever seen. It goes radically different by the end of it and in a great way, which I love, and I'm not gonna spoil for anybody. But I think one of the things that I wanted to draw and I have to say that this isn't something that necessarily influenced the way we were thinking about the game but it was something that reinforced the way we were thinking about the game.
Dave:Because we we've been thinking about the game for a long time before the game actually came out. Yeah.
Matthew:But this one kinda justified the way. So So I was very keen that that we we're gonna have various methods of character creation. Not in the quick start that you'll the quick quick draw, I should say, that you'll download, right now. But in the full book, there is a life path way of doing it. And I was really keen that we made that life path as diverse as possible within, you know, limited number of dinosaurs we've got because I really wanted to reflect just how diverse the west actually was.
Matthew:And it wasn't Yeah. If you like the 19 fifties image of the West where even characters that we know historically were black are portrayed by white actors because that's just, you know, what they did I
Dave:hope it was done in the fifties. Yeah. Exactly.
Matthew:So, I wanted to get that some of that diversity. But not just racial diversity, but also international diversity. And the English does this really well. You've got a very competent, gunwoman and in fact, bow woman, I should say, who's an English woman. You've got a great character who's obviously scored.
Matthew:He's got good skills in his presence role but he's a native American. You've got this fabulous villain who you might not have met yet called Black Eyed Meg. Have you met Black Eyed Meg?
Dave:No. Not yet.
Matthew:Nope. She's wonderfully Welsh. She's she's great. And yeah. So that, you know, that melting pot nature of the West is brought out through the English.
Matthew:And and, of course, one of the reasons why it's called the English is that lots lots of wherever you come from, you're called the English by some of the natives because that, you know, you you just all but in one one basket which I like. But also, you know, the main protagonist is an actual English woman. In fact, the two two main protagonists are English. But it was it's great and I love it And we want to try and do that diverse melting pot. And I think in our life pathway, we we've got that.
Matthew:While it still averages out actually to, you know, you could still be, you know, there's a very good chance you'll end up being American born. But with a
Dave:Yeah. I think we've, yeah. I think we've tried to balance it as best we are able to with the research that we've done, such as it is. To try and give you the right the right proportions of those things. But also, on the life path, if you roll the dice and you get a result you don't like, just click choose another one.
Matthew:Choose one of the other ones. Yes.
Dave:So you've you've got the option there. If you want to play a native American, you can do that. If you want to play an emancipated slave, you can do that. The dice rolls might give you that character anyway. But if it doesn't, yeah, you make the character what you want it to be.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Matthew:That's how we yeah. We say that with it, you know, with every table in in that life path, You know, if you see a choice that you you think fits better, just take that choice.
Dave:Precisely. Yeah.
Matthew:So yeah. So that's really I just one more, actually. I'm gonna squeeze in. We've we've we've had 3. But this one I know you haven't seen, and it's gonna be my recommendation to you, Dave.
Matthew:And that is a TV show. Tomahawk. No. Well, there's that. There's that.
Matthew:That's I
Dave:haven't watched that one yet, but Yeah.
Matthew:I will. But, no, I was gonna talk something a little bit more wholesome than Bone Tumble Hawk, which is a horror movie. It touches on blood bridging type stuff. No. 18/83, I wanted to bring up because, Dave, I think this is particularly, something you're very interested in as being not quite a generational game but definitely a game where you are not just trying to build your town and find your place in town, but also potentially to build your family and, you know, maybe to hand over what you what you're doing to a next generation.
Matthew:Hopefully you don't die like Tony's character so quickly that luckily you did he had rolled a a brother in his character generation. So he had a brother to pass it on to but he may pass, you know, pass play on to your son or daughter in in the future. Huge game.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:And 18/83, is great at that. For those of you who aren't in the know, you may have heard a lot of media fuss about a soap opera thing that Paramount have got on their channel called Yellowstone which stars Kevin Cost that. I've tried watching it. It's a bit too soap opera for me but it's about a ranch in well, near Yellowstone National Park. And this series 18/83 was a prequel to that.
Matthew:It's kind of how the Dutton family came to Montana to, to set up the ranch. And it's lovely. It there's some brilliant scenes in it. It's got Tom Hanks is I think one of the producers of 18/83 but he makes this appearance as a union general meeting the main protagonist in the civil war. The main protagonist is a Confederate.
Matthew:And there's this beautiful scene, an absolutely beautiful scene that almost makes me cry just thinking about it. And, yeah. It's an emotional story. It starts off with oh, who's that fella? Sam Sam Elliott.
Dave:He Oh, yeah.
Matthew:The cowboy with a big bushy moustache for those of you who who're trying to put a face to a name. He he starts off the whole series in tears because his whole family is tired of cholera. And it's very much about family and, you know, we want to make this game to be about family too and we've got mechanics that help that out. And yeah. Yeah.
Matthew:I just wanted to get that one in.
Dave:No. That's cool. Because yes. Certainly. And we we've put a lot of thought and a lot of effort into the campaign game.
Dave:We we want to be able to, reflect the passage of time. So, you know, your your character's adventure, you know, might not just take place in, you know, a 3 week segment. It might take years. And we have a we have a we have rules around what we call the turn of the seasons. So every as as one season moves to another, you know, things can happen.
Dave:You know, you have you may have fortunes that apply to your character, or fortunes that apply to your town. The idea being that you play a couple of scenarios in each season. And so over time, your character will grow. The town will grow. You know, your your character may have a family, or may have like an outfit, or a group of friends who are important to them.
Dave:And it allows you to draw out that campaign, and make you feel like the world is growing with you and with your character. And I'm I'm very much yeah. I love the the kind of the generational field that we always had in Pendragon back in the day. And I loved the passage of time in that. And that was a real inspiration for tales of the old west, where, you know, if you started a game, you know, with a character in 18/70, you know, the west was lasting another 30 or 40 years after that.
Dave:So that gives you a passage of time to tell a really good tale, if you want to play that kind of campaign. And the rules allow you to do that in a period of real time that isn't 30 years, like our pen dragon campaign for for various reasons. But, you know, I love that feel. I love that idea. I love the idea that, you know, you've gone to the West to to do something, or you're, you know, you're or maybe you always were in the West, but you now wanna create it in a way that suits you.
Dave:And you know, your your the land is growing around you. And I want want to be able to create that campaign feel of time passing, and it having an effect. It actually changing the landscape as your characters grow.
Matthew:Right. I think we've gone on enough about our influences.
Dave:We probably have. We could talk a lot more, couldn't we? But,
Matthew:We yes. There's many more. We haven't and these are all the fictional, the mythological influences. We haven't even well, they're not even all of them. No.
Dave:No. No.
Matthew:These old mythological we've been reading a lot of history books as well, and I think it may be worth in a future episode maybe not the next episode, but in a future episode, well, before before the Kickstarter campaign finishes, shall we say, we ought to talk a little bit about some of the history books as well that have Yeah. Yeah. Definitely inspired us.
Dave:Absolutely.
Matthew:Next time though, you will, will be after, UK Games Expo, which is next week.
Dave:Yeah. So come and see us. We are obviously working the free league stall, which is 1538. Come and see us. When we're not working for free league, and doing everything we can to promote them, we will be tells of the old westing.
Dave:So Yes. Come and find us. And, yeah, let's make it a great convention. I'm really looking forward
Matthew:to it. I can't wait. And we will also be, running a live recording of our podcast. So come and join in with that. It will obviously, we'll we'll probably find space to talk about, Tales of the Old West there as well, but it's gonna be a quiz about all the year 0 game.
Matthew:Well, not even no. Sorry. All the free league games. It's gonna be run a little bit like a pub quiz. So come and join in on that and join in the recording.
Matthew:And that is what, if you can't come, you'll get to listen to in 2 weeks time when we're back.
Dave:The other thing to mention, which we probably should have mentioned earlier, is I'm running a seminar, as I have done for the last few years on the Saturday about, 10 top tips for game design and writing. I have a very special guest joining me. So Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games is gonna be my special guest at my seminar. We'll tag team it. We'll double head it.
Dave:We'll run it together. And, so yeah. If you wanna come along and talk to me, and talk to Steve Jackson, then it's 4:30 on the Saturday in one of the piazza rooms, you would have find.
Matthew:So suddenly, ten top tips, not just from somebody who's been doing it for a couple of years, but somebody who's got real experience.
Dave:Yeah. And Steve's not bad either. But yeah. So that was great. So he he approached me and said, oh, I'd love to come and join you, on your on your on your seminar, if you don't mind.
Dave:And I went, okay. So that would be really cool. That would be a real pleasure to have him along. And, yeah. That might get even more Fingers crossed.
Matthew:You might be watching GURPS Adventures after
Dave:this. Well, you never know. You never know. Every every, you know, every opportunity. Yeah.
Dave:Last time, the room was full, just for me. So we're gonna be like standing room only. This is gonna be great with Steve coming along. Yeah. So, That
Matthew:is brilliant.
Dave:So come along if you, if you're interested. 4:30 on Saturday.
Matthew:Yes. And I will, that will be after the Dragonbane competition,
Dave:Yeah. Got an experienced experienced team at the, at at the stand. So, that'll yeah. That'll be fine. They don't they don't need us babysitting them for the whole time for sure.
Matthew:No. In fact, I'm I'm doing fewer hours on the stand this year so that I can go off leafleting and promoting, Tales of the Old West. Cool. Given that I, you know, I don't need the money as much as you do.
Dave:Yeah. I do need the money. That's for sure.
Matthew:Yes. Anyway,
Dave:so yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. Come and join us if you're in the UK or specifically at UK Games Expo. If not, listen to our UK Games Expo adventures in 2 weeks time. But for now, it's goodbye from me.
Dave:And it's goodbye from him.
Matthew:And may the icons less your adventures.
Dave:You have been listening to the effect podcast presented by Fiction Suit and the RPG Gods. Music stars on a black sea used with permission of freely publishing.