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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 239 of effect. It's the final countdown. Woo. I'm Matthew.
Dave:Yeah. And I'm Dave. And, well, you can guess by the the the musical title that this is, this is an episode all about the, the band Europe. I think it was Europe. Yeah.
Dave:Did the final countdown, wasn't it? Now
Matthew:We are pleased to announce a role playing game based on the it's the 1st jukebox role playing game. It's gonna be Europe's entire oeuvre translated into characters, scenarios, everything you possibly need.
Dave:Well, it's not. That might be our next project. But anyway, so we have some news, which we will we will relay very shortly in our old west news section. But, yeah. Today, we've got quite a lot of world of gaming to talk about.
Dave:Mostly Kickstarter stuff, I think, but not all.
Matthew:There's all sorts of interesting news. Don't don't don't just say mostly Kickstarter
Dave:stuff. Yeah. Well, there is only one thing on Kickstarter right now that anybody anybody should be thinking about. But we'll come to that in a moment. We do have a new patron to welcome and thank.
Dave:We do have some old west news. And then, last time we said we would talk a little bit about some of the trickier issues, in dealing with a game like tales of the old west. So I've done a little essay on, difficult history. And how do we deal with, or how can we best try and deal with, the issues that that brings up in a, in a, inclusive and respectful way. So that's to come later on.
Matthew:Cool. Cool. Cool. So let's crack on, shall we? I'm gonna press the button to flag our next section, which is thank you to our new patron.
Matthew:We have a new patron, and, Jed, welcome, and thank you, Jed McClure. Yeah. We've already seen you, haven't we, on the
Dave:on the
Matthew:on the on
Dave:the Patreon internet.
Matthew:Discord. Yeah. I think so.
Dave:I think so. Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. I think we have. I think he's talking alien stuff and things like that. He's getting stuck into the conversation. So, yeah, welcome.
Matthew:Thank you for participating as well. What we love about all our patrons, those who participate, and those who just give us money is that you just support us, and it's brilliant. And,
Dave:It is.
Matthew:We had we had the most gorgeous message from one of our other patrons. I won't embarrass him by reading out or anything, but we had a lovely message on the Discord. And if you wanna know what one of our patrons said to us today, get on the Discord. If you're not already on the Discord, get on the Discord and have a look.
Dave:Yeah. It was the the loveliest comment, and it took me by surprise. And I it made me it gave me a shiver down my spine as I was reading it. It was, yeah. It was so lovely.
Dave:So thanks to him. And thanks to all of our patrons, everyone whoever has or ever will or or is currently supporting You don't know how much we appreciate it. It's difficult for us to express our gratitude words. Yeah.
Matthew:It is. So should I press the button again? This will be for world of gaming.
Dave:You You don't have to tell us you're pressing the button, mate. Is that okay?
Matthew:I guess not. No. Except that when I don't tell you, I forget to actually press the button. And I go, I've got a function that flags all these things out. Why aren't I flagging all these things up?
Matthew:Anyway, bye bye bye.
Dave:We'll have to ask, you know, our readers, our readers, our listeners to come back and say, do you mind if Matt says, oh, I'm gonna press the button 5 times an episode? Yeah. Anyway, world of gaming, what have we got to talk about there?
Matthew:We've got a lot to talk about. I think, the most exciting news, definitely, for one of our patrons, is that Mongoose has actually bought Traveler outright from Mark Miller. Indeed. Which I think is a good thing. I like the latest mongoose edition of Traveler.
Matthew:For me, it feels like, you know, Traveler's an old game. How many years old is it? Many years old. Is it almost 50 years old now?
Dave:It's gotta be 50 years.
Matthew:Because because Danny would tell
Dave:us. So it was 77 or something, was it, traveler? So not quite yeah.
Matthew:Well, for that is. So not quite getting close. Yeah. Only a few years off. I
Dave:I I do very much like the mongoose, version that I've got, which I bought a few years ago. It feels like
Matthew:Oh, that's the one with all the, typos in it as well. I've got the 2nd edition without the typos. Yeah.
Dave:But I mean, I haven't I haven't read it in great detail. I got it largely through through nostalgia. But actually, it it really has a feel of the old original books, which as everyone remember were were small books, quite thin little pamphlets but lovely. But it has a feel of that in a full sized book or what we would today call a full sized book. Yeah.
Dave:It's it's lovely. It's a really nice book. I would I would yeah, I would I would quite like to play some Traveller again at some point, but I'm not sure when I'll get the chance. But, yeah.
Matthew:Well, funnily enough, I was reaching one of my bookshelves Mhmm. And this thing fell out almost before I'd heard this, but almost almost portentous thing.
Dave:The the thing fell out?
Matthew:This thing is, the Aslan Traveller Alien Module 1.
Dave:Okay.
Matthew:Published in 1984. I think it's the oldest bit of traveler stuff I have.
Dave:Right. Okay.
Matthew:And, it it's all about Aslan. And, you know, it's funny seeing this. You know, we'd we've been talking a lot about illustration, haven't we? And we're trying to work out how many pictures can we afford, and how Yeah. How many pictures do we need per spread.
Matthew:And believe me, there are words we have got pictures in this book. We've got some on the, inner cover. I've just seen one somewhere on one of the pages. But the rest, most of the pages are just 2 columns of small type. Mhmm.
Matthew:Again and again. Yeah. I know. My son's broken up by bit of a table.
Dave:It's quite dense, isn't it? Yeah.
Matthew:It's incredibly dense.
Dave:So I've got my books down off the shelves here. And, I've got book 1, characters in combat, 1977. Woah.
Matthew:Woah. That's older than 9. Yeah.
Dave:And I think it was it was Tony's first. Because on the front, he's got t c mark 5 Paige. So that was when he was a 5th former at age what would that have been? 16.
Matthew:In Paige house, the worst house, of course.
Dave:The best house? Paige house is much better than you were. Were you were you Croft? Croft is alright. I I wouldn't mind Croft.
Dave:Cooper. Cooper was rubbish.
Matthew:No. They were the worst. You're right. Croft was the coolest house. All the cool people.
Dave:Wallace was the the absolute
Matthew:worst. Absolutely.
Dave:Yeah. Haile everybody wanted to be in Haile but No.
Matthew:No. No. Everybody wanted being clothed.
Dave:No. Everyone wanted to be in Paige really. But Haile was kind of the cool one that you wanted to get into but actually if you got into it you wouldn't wanna be there. It's the same as, at university. I went to, to Lancaster and, County College.
Dave:I went to Bowland College which is the best, but County College was the one that everybody wanted to be in, but it was full of people that you wouldn't want to associate with if you've got into County College. It did have the best end of year party though.
Matthew:Mhmm. So but
Dave:yeah. Anyway, that's a significant digression.
Matthew:It is. I just want to digress even further away though. In this book, I've just come across a photocopied, but empty character sheet for an edition of WARHAMMER fantasy role play. And I'm guessing probably 1st edition WARHAMMER fantasy role play.
Dave:Seems likely. Yeah.
Matthew:So that is an interesting artifact there. I'm sure many other gamers of our vintage have similar tat lying about there.
Dave:Next next time you, you know, you take something down off your shelf, you find that you find the body of your neighbor who disappeared 25 years ago.
Matthew:I don't know. We might find the body of Mark Speakman who, used to be a regular at HasLab, and I haven't seen him for years. So
Dave:Why why why Mark particularly? Is this is this a a a deaf cover up by you? Because you have actually murdered him.
Matthew:No. No. No. I went on a sailing holiday with him at one point. Me and Andy Gibbs and Mark Speakman all went sailing on the boards playing games.
Matthew:It was great. Yeah. Anyway, that's by the by.
Dave:Anyway As you
Matthew:say, a digression. Where are we? Yeah. Traveler. Mongoose has bought Traveler.
Matthew:Did you know that?
Dave:Apparently so.
Matthew:What I liked about this news is apparently they did it way back in January, but they didn't tell anybody. Mhmm. And I think it was leaked in some way recently. I don't know. I I don't know what the original source of the leak was.
Matthew:I, I only saw the news after it'd been made official by Mark Miller and the Mongoose guys. Yeah. But, but, yeah, I kinda find that a little bit hilarious. Secretly, let's buy this game off you, Mark.
Dave:It is quite funny, actually, because then they're not at that point, at least, they weren't trying to use it simply as a marketing campaign, which is quite good. Yeah. But yeah.
Matthew:I do think they were I wonder whether they were saving it for the anniversary, and then they were gonna make a big splash of it around
Dave:Possibly. Yeah.
Matthew:In 3 years' time. Right. And we've we've got more game acquisition news as well.
Dave:Have we?
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah. Well, you haven't read the show notes, have you, Dave? I I have. Do you want me to do this one?
Dave:I I can say, ah, so Luke Crane has bought Dungeon World, but I know nothing. That's that's all I know about it. I know
Matthew:absolutely nothing. Luke Crane, and you don't know Dungeon World.
Dave:I'm sorry. The Dungeon World. I Luke Crane, he's he's not the younger brother of Frasier, is he? The the lost younger brother.
Matthew:That would be a fascinating, episode of the second season of Frasier, of which I saw a trailer. Did you see the trailer?
Dave:I saw the trailer. Yeah. I quite enjoyed the first season. It wasn't great, but it was it
Matthew:definitely bad?
Dave:And it wasn't bad, and it had a there were some things about it I didn't like so much. But it was it was had a good blast of nostalgia, and Kelsey Grammer's always quite fun to watch. And there were some really good bits in it as well. So, I will watch the 2nd season with interest when it comes out in next month, I think, isn't
Matthew:it? The the best thing about the first season, and this is gonna sound terrible because I know you're you're a fan, but the best thing about the first season is it was short. So, you know, I watched them all. They're, you know, as you say, not great, but not crap. Highly amusing in some places.
Matthew:Some jokes fell flat, but they always did. But at least you're not going through 22 episodes to find the best bits. You get it all done in a week if you want.
Dave:That's true. Although, I mean, as a, you know, super fan
Matthew:of Aficionado.
Dave:Of original Frasier, there aren't many
Matthew:I have traveled with you, Dave. Does. I have traveled with you. I have been on planes in hotel rooms where the only soundtrack is old Frasier.
Dave:Yeah. I there isn't a day where I don't watch some Frasier. Literally. Literally. Because because I put it on if I'm in the bath.
Dave:I put it on if I'm cleaning up in the kitchen, and you know I do spend a lot of time cleaning up in the kitchen. So
Matthew:Dave Dave Dave there's a world of tat on YouTube for exactly those purposes.
Dave:I know, but the great thing with Frasier is I don't have to watch it. I could just listen to it, and I know it so well. My brain plays out the scene. So it's,
Matthew:yeah. There's another thing they've invented, Dave, called the radio. It does much the same.
Dave:Oh, they do Frasier on the radio as well. Excellent. I have to catch that.
Matthew:They probably do somewhere. This is Anyway, we're not talking about Frasier Crane. We're talking about Luke Crane. We're doing really well on the news.
Dave:So everyone, this really is a gaming podcast. We do talk about games, really, honestly.
Matthew:Yes. Go on.
Dave:Tell me about Luke Crane by
Matthew:is the mastermind behind games such as Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which people have heard of. And, rate is, they're not games that I have ever played.
Matthew:But I have looked at mouse guard thinking it's a lovely object, and I'd want it. But, but I haven't actually played it. I think, from our patrons, I think Craig has a copy and has played it. Anyway Right. Dungeon World, of course, was written by I guess now one has to say the canceled Adam Kobal.
Matthew:Adam oh, damn. I've got his names. It it begins with a k. It's got an o in it somewhere. Yeah.
Dave:I won't remember
Matthew:that. Unfortunate thing on an actual play a few years ago. And I guess needs I mean, personally, he needs to get out of RPGs where he's not loved, and so he seems to have handed that over to Luke Crane. But I thought that was interesting. 2 game brand acquisition stories happening, in
Dave:in
Matthew:the same week. We should we move on now? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Matthew:Lord of the Rings role playing game is appearing apparently on D and D Beyond.
Dave:Yeah. Is it? Do we know for sure?
Matthew:I'm pretty confident now, then when we first heard the news that Free League was putting stuff on D and D Beyond, I said, oh, that'll be Symbium because obviously they probably don't have the license to do that sort of shit on, because because we know that Middle Earth well, Middle Earth Enterprises are quite strict on the terms of the gaming license that sophisticated games have. But, I've I've since seen other people say, I think D and D Beyond have even advertised it. There's a graphic I've seen with that book and another book by another publisher. They're bringing a a whole new tranche of third party publishers into D and D Beyond. And, Dave, do you need to guffaw and that surprise, or do you know what D and D Beyond actually is?
Dave:I I'm I vaguely know what D and D Beyond is, I think.
Matthew:Tell me, Dave. Well What is D and D Beyond?
Dave:Well, isn't isn't this the subscription model where you can get loads of content by subscribing to D and D Beyond?
Matthew:It is. But also, very importantly, the thing and in fact, there's a there's a free subscription as well. It's a great way to design your characters because you've got all the resources there. You only get on the free one. You only get the sort of basic books, but, you know, it does all the maths for you and stuff like that.
Matthew:And it puts you a nice character sheet.
Dave:Okay. So it don't it doesn't act as a VTT in the same in the same brand?
Matthew:No. But I think I think people feel there is a move to make it VTT ish. It will it will
Dave:be that one day. Yeah.
Matthew:And we've seen some splendid graphics where actually you have little animated miniatures on a amazing looking table sort of thing. It looks like a really fancy one. I don't know whether those are the same products because you know how interested I am in D and D, Dave?
Dave:Yeah. About as much as I am.
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah. So Anyway There
Dave:is there is an interesting thing here, though. I know we've talked about that sort of d and d Beyond model before. But, at the free level, do you actually get enough to make it worth playing?
Matthew:Yeah. I think you get everything that's in the kind of player's handbook and, you know, some other stuff. Basic books though. Yeah. So if you're starting out playing, I think you could probably even you know, if your if your friends are GM and you're 11 and you're playing your first game, I think you'd probably get a free subscription and be able to build a character for that person's game without having paid for the, for the player's handbook.
Matthew:I think Right.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:And the best
Dave:because I mean, I you know, I just 2 I mean, the 2 things with that. I mean, one, it's a subscription model, so when you stop paying your subscription you you lose access to all the material, which I know that's a very common thing now when we all do it with Netflix and Yeah.
Matthew:You
Dave:know, Spotify and everything, and it becomes very normal. It still feels, you know, a bit in a gaming sense, it feels a bit I don't know. Not I guess I just gotta get my head around being a bit more modern. Yeah. The other one is I like to have
Matthew:Boy, Dave. I know. Gotta get your head around being a bit more.
Dave:I know. The other thing is I like to have the book in my hand.
Matthew:Well, yes. I don't I don't I don't like
Dave:to do stuff all off the screen. I'd much rather have the book. So No. I can see how it works really well for a lot of people. I do think, you know, I don't know what the subscription is for a, I don't know, a standard subscription where you get access to plenty of good stuff.
Dave:But if you're, you know, you you pay that for 10 years, or let's say you're you're 20 now or you're 18, you pay it for 40 years.
Matthew:You could have bought a lot of books with that probably.
Dave:You could have bought a damn damn load of books with that money. Yeah. Other books still other book can you still buy the books? Or it's D and D Beyond 1 D and D, so it's all the new edition stuff.
Matthew:Well, there's been a bit of a controversy about that, which I, frankly, I can't be bothered to look into. But, there was a fraud getting rid of the 5th edition books when 1 D and D came in, so you'd have to potentially
Dave:Buy 1 DND.
Matthew:Buy them or is that or or Yeah. Anyway that's all been solved now. You can still play old 5th edition on it, and you will be able to future, I believe. But, yeah, I it's the rent model, and I feel they're trying to make the rent model more attractive by giving the opportunity to play all that 3rd party content as well, including Lord of the Rings.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. And I am just intrigued because Lord of the Rings is so different from D and D. You know, they've tried to I I don't think I think they've done a remarkably good job at turning D and D into something that fits Tolkien's world. Obviously, I would say get the one ring because I think that's pretty damn perfect. Yeah.
Matthew:And I don't think Lord of the Rings does it as well as the one ring, but still, I think it feels very different from D and D. So I'm intrigued to see, you know, a character, whether you could even make a character that's got all the heroic, you know, level 3, but actually still quite superheroic power of a of a standard D and D character mixed with the low magic, full of despair, desperate for hope type
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:Character Characters. Yeah. Change you
Dave:get in The 1 ring.
Matthew:Lord of the Rings. Yeah.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:So but, you know, anyway, it's news, Dave, and it's the world of gaming. So we should be talking about news like this.
Dave:That's fine. I'm quite happy to talk about it. I it's it's it's it's interesting to talk about even if I'm never gonna go on D and D Beyond, and I'm probably never gonna play Lord of the Rings 5th edition.
Matthew:You've never no. Right. Yeah. Okay. Let's move on.
Matthew:Let's not get into that argument again. So we've got we do have some Kickstarters. You said there are some Kickstarters, and there are. There are. Now we should preface all these Kickstarters by saying to everybody, they do exist, and you can spend your money wherever you want, but don't rush to Kickstarter while we're making these announcements Yeah.
Matthew:Until you've heard our old west news. I'm not I'm not revealing what we're saying in the old west news, but don't don't
Dave:rush. You know, we are we are burying the lead very deep in this episode, you know. Yeah. I'm not sure that's it. Not sure that's a good thing.
Matthew:Frazho, we've buried it underwater. I'm a vanity role play.
Dave:It's so buried, You know? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well yeah. That reminds me.
Dave:I have to tell you what happened in in yesterday's playtest.
Matthew:Oh, yes. You did. So that that can be our other bit of old west news, what happened in your game yesterday. Right. So first of all, there is a fabulous new year zero game being kick started, and it's not yet tales of the old west.
Matthew:It's terminal state. It's a cyberpunk game, and, it's on Kickstarter. I remember seeing the logo and stuff like that. I think there may have been a beta version of Terminal State flirting around on the Discord a couple of years back, or even on drive through RPG.
Dave:They definitely have a quick start, which, Yeah. But I guess that hasn't been around that long.
Matthew:It might be a new quick start. I just I'm sure it's been around for a couple of years somewhere in the sub state, Terminal state, obviously.
Dave:Oh, yeah.
Matthew:So
Dave:So it
Matthew:looks nice. To say, I'm not a major fan of cyberpunk, and my favourite cyberpunk game is Cyborg, which I think is the only game that gets the punk bit of cyberpunk.
Dave:Yeah. So I I am a big cyberpunk fan, but
Matthew:I know you are. Yeah.
Dave:Kind of more in the past, though. My my enthusiasm for cyberpunk isn't as strong as it was. I have to say that, I very much liked the Gaia complex by our friend, Shep Shepperson, who, I bought it off him as a kind of impulse buy at UK Games Expo, not this year, year before. And that actually has got some nice ideas which which are slightly different and that takes it in another direction. So if I was gonna play a cyberpunk game, I'd probably run that one nowadays.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:Certainly certainly having been playing in a cyberpunk red campaign in my Wednesday group, which frankly, I fucking hated it. Well, I didn't hate it. That's that's unfair. It it was it was just hours and hours of extended combat.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:It was it just got really boring really quickly. Yeah. So, yeah.
Matthew:I think when we were, like, 14 or something, that was quite important to us, but it's not what we like to do now.
Dave:No. Exactly. So I think with them with terminal state, they are it's a year zero engine game. They are using the, steps dice system, not the dice portal system.
Matthew:Worth pointing that out. Yeah.
Dave:Yeah. Absolutely. If you like that, that might be something that attracts you. The push mechanic seems fairly straightforward. It seems to be mishaps or conditions.
Dave:But yeah. So I'm I'm probably not gonna back it. It looks nice.
Matthew:Some of
Dave:the artwork is lovely, and it's up at the moment. It's got 27 days to go. It's got a little way to go to get to its goal. So if you're interested, and you're you're spending money that you haven't saved for Yeah. Out of
Matthew:the old west. If you've got enough money to back 2 games on Kickstarter, then In
Dave:the next week
Matthew:or 2.
Dave:Yeah. Yep. But yeah. So terminal state, give it a look, see what you think.
Matthew:Or I tell you what, Dave. If people have got money that they can use to back it now, this can be their August game, and their September game has to be something we'll talk about later on.
Dave:Yeah. Absolutely. Yep.
Matthew:But Talking of which
Dave:Don't waste money there, guys.
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah. Be careful. Be careful where you spend your money because we know where you live. We don't know where you live, don't we?
Matthew:Sentience is a Yeah. A kind of so one of the things I was thinking about trouble of state, when I saw it as a septite system, I thought, alright. So it's gotta have it can work quite hard to distinguish itself from Blade Runner. And, Sentience is gonna have to work quite hard to distinguish itself from Blade Runner Replicant Rebellion, I feel, because that's that feels to be what it's all about. You are a, what do they call it?
Matthew:Not quite an Android. Word to that effect. I can't remember what it is. Quite a clever portmanteau word I quite liked. But you are yeah.
Matthew:You you are definitely not sentient. You're just a machine, except you become self aware. And it's your adventures effectively, on the other side of the curtain from, on the other side of the Voigt Kampf machine from, the gang, in, in Blade Runner. It looks initially like it might be a year zero system, but then you'll notice that you you can succeed on on fours, fives, or sixes. So just Yeah.
Matthew:It's gotta be an easy game.
Dave:It's a yeah. It's a it's a it's like a year zero engine game, but not quite a year zero engine game.
Matthew:There's pushing. That makes it a bit like a year zero
Dave:engine game. There is pushing, and it's a d 6 dice pool where, like you say, you gain you gain one point effectively or what they call marks for a 4 and a 5. You gain 2 for a 6. So it's a bit like, you know, a mash up between the two types of year 0. So you've got the step dice, and you've got the d 6 dice pool.
Matthew:Yeah. I mean, what obviously, what you're gonna need is a target number of a number of marks, which is more than 1, generally. So, so, yeah, it's a little bit too much adding up and taking away from my liking.
Dave:And it looks lovely, though. Some of the the artwork is really good. Mhmm. Looks really nice.
Matthew:Not as good as, say, the artwork of a game that we will be talking about later on there. I just want to, you know, assure everybody No. Not as they're not
Dave:as good as that. No.
Matthew:If they if they want to invest in one game with really good artwork, they should hold on.
Dave:We are we are desperately trying to to dig up the, the the buried lead here, guys. It'll it'll be it'll be to the surface soon.
Matthew:But Dave, Dave, you know, we are champions of all games because a rising tide lifts all the boats. And so, you'll see us, you know, we we we are doing this entirely without bias. We are recommending
Dave:A rising a rising tide swamps the shore and destroys destroys the barns.
Matthew:We are lovely people, Dave, and we are recommending all these other games Absolutely. A bit. Absolutely. A bit. I mean, you know, once you got loads of spare money lying around that you don't need to spend on on something coming up soon.
Matthew:And then Is
Dave:this is this a great example of damning with faint praise?
Matthew:I like that.
Dave:But they yeah. They are there, folks. Go and have a look. Go and have a look. Yeah.
Dave:See anthroids. That was the word you were looking for.
Matthew:Anthroids. That was the thing. I like that because it was anthropomorph and, yeah. So, our friend, Christer Sunderland, and the gang at, Helmgast have got a new expansion to troubleshooters out.
Dave:They do. It's a it's a 2 scenario expansion, 2 adventure books. One's called the ghost knight and the other is called the great champagne gallop. Yeah. I I just saw that today, this morning.
Dave:I haven't looked into them anymore. This is just what I got on on kinda on email. But again, yeah. I mean, troubleshooters is one of those games again that I really want to get to the table, but I've never never managed it. No.
Dave:So it's I I love the look of it. I love the the, you know, how the the book feels and how the game reads. I haven't played it. I don't know how well it plays. I've heard from others who have played it that it plays pretty well.
Matthew:Yeah. There's, it's broadly speaking BRP, but with some very interesting twists to it. So it it it makes it an interesting variant on BRP. The Minoan affair, I ran, which is the hardback scenario adventure that came with, the original Kickstarter. Came with
Dave:the book. Yeah.
Matthew:Quite hard work to run.
Dave:Okay. But for what reason?
Matthew:It did. I think it made some assumptions about, player character actions that doesn't necessarily follow. So you have to do a lot of obviously, they they are going to do this, but when they don't do this, what do you do instead? And, you know, you are very much playing in a genre, of European band desine. Yeah.
Matthew:And sometimes character choices go way outside that genre, and you Okay. Yeah. You gotta think, well, how how do how how do I stay within genre here and yet, you know, satisfy the players and their sense of action? So, yeah, it's quite a challenge, but I might be inclined to get those 2 because they're all numbered like proper old tinted albums and stuff like that. So one feels one has to have the full set on one's shelves.
Matthew:So
Dave:Yeah. I don't yeah. You either have the collection or you don't, I guess. Yeah.
Matthew:If I wasn't investing in a fabulous new game that I'm gonna talk about in a little while, or you are, then I'd definitely be doing this. This I'll have to see how my pay packet spreads, whether I can get
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:Obviously, I'm not gonna invest in my own game. We've we've invested blood, sweat, and tears in a way.
Dave:Well gonna
Matthew:buy our own game off Kickstarter. That's just giving Kickstarter money.
Dave:You have a pay packet?
Matthew:Well, I I do actually have a pay packet. Yeah. But I'm as I say, I'm I've
Dave:forgotten what one of those looks like currently. But,
Matthew:yes.
Dave:Anyway, I think that's
Matthew:the end of
Dave:the world of gaming.
Matthew:That's the end of the world of gaming. Yeah.
Dave:So
Matthew:And what I did there is I pressed a button without talking about it, but now I'm talking about it.
Dave:This is becoming a bit of a nervous tick now, isn't it? You just can't press the button without without talking about it.
Matthew:Have you got any news from the old west, Dave?
Dave:We have some news from the old west. The news that we've had deeply buried for the last half an hour is
Matthew:Oh, yes. What your player did in the game you ran yesterday. This is gonna be exciting.
Dave:Before we get to that though, let's look very even further. So we can announce the Kickstarter for tales of the old west is going to go live on Tuesday, 3rd September 2024 at 1600 British summertime. So next week, or by the time this comes out, wherever we're now, it'll be a couple of gird your loins, gather up your wallets, and, come and back us. Yeah. So
Matthew:Please.
Dave:Yeah. So there we go.
Matthew:I there there has to be a little caveat behind that. Something may intervene, and we may have to delay it a bit because I've seen Kickstarter launches delayed, but everything going according to plan. 4 o'clock in the afternoon, our time, it's gonna go live.
Dave:Which would be 11 o'clock EST, and I think, what, 8 o'clock Pacific. It'll be 5 o'clock for Central European time. So, all a good time for everyone who might be interested to, to be waiting by their computers ready to press the pledge loads button.
Matthew:Pledge loads. I don't think there is a pledge loads button. I think you have to decide how it's but I'm I'm loving the way our Kickstarter page is looking, Dave, right now.
Dave:It's coming it's coming. I haven't looked at it today. So if you don't
Matthew:see Oh, you haven't looked at it? You wanna look at it and see what the new back end levels are.
Dave:Right. Oh, okay. Yeah. We did talk about those. Yeah.
Dave:They're they're quite cool, aren't they? Yeah.
Matthew:They're quite cool.
Dave:Yeah. So there we go. That's the news. That's the news that I guess nobody had thought that wasn't going to be the news for the last half hour. But, yeah, here we here we go for god's sake.
Dave:Blimey. Fuck. It's like, you know, like being at the
Matthew:top of the family show, Dave.
Dave:Are they? Well, mostly. It's like being at the top of a a a ski jump and literally just taking our ass off the chair, and we're beginning to move down towards the point where where the thing happens. So yeah, it's exciting but terrifying at the same time.
Matthew:And also terrifying. Yeah.
Dave:But I think, you know, we are we are quite confident in what we've done, and we are also massively humbled by the support that we've had so far, and the number of people we've had sign up to the to the pre launch page. So we are we are remaining optimistic that it's gonna go really well. Go on, Matt. You say?
Matthew:I I just wanna say Dave, that 456 people have followed as of this moment, our Kickstarter page. And that is just a page that says coming soon.
Dave:Yeah. That is superb.
Matthew:So thank you, all of you, if if you, listener, are among those 456.
Dave:But also thank you if you're amongst the unknown number of people who saw it and said, I'm not bothered about doing that, but I'm gonna back them anyway when it comes out. Thank you as well. You know, we just don't know what that audience, like, that that community looks like. But, so yeah, exciting times. But I was gonna say we had a great game of Tales of the Old West last night.
Dave:Tony was running our playtest. There's there's 2 things that are great about this, so I'm gonna digress a little here.
Matthew:Go ahead. You've got time to talk.
Dave:And I think and I think they both illustrate a couple of the great things I think that we've got in Tales of the Odd West. So the first is the whole scenario was based on a role that I made on the last turn of the season.
Matthew:Which is a point of turn of the seasons. I love that. Exactly. What what role you made?
Dave:So the role was, there's a problem with my compadre. It didn't specify what, but there's something going on. So what happened?
Matthew:Is this something you've talked about in, previous interviews, what we have been doing about, this is grandpa Joe or something has murdered somebody? Or
Dave:That's it. Yeah. Grandpa Willie. So grandpa Willie had gone on a as as as you do with your compadres, so our NPC close friends of your character. Although, if you mistreat them, the GM can run them as well, and they can betray you.
Dave:So you need to be but otherwise, you get to control them. So I sent him off to go and speak to some native American friends of ours to keep the relationship warm. And he came back through a town called Sherman. And a little while later, I had some deputies from Sherman turn up saying, oh, yeah. Your, grandpa Willie, who we we know works at the Anaheim ranch, is wanted for murder.
Dave:I was like, okay. That doesn't sound like Willie. Anyway, so the whole scenario was based on that. So I I managed to get Willie off into the into the woods. So he was hidden, and we then went to Sherman to try and work out what was going on.
Dave:So the whole two sessions, this is 2 weeks worth of of play, was all based on that one role that I made several weeks ago, a couple of months ago, that Tony then as the GM noted it down, stuck it in his back pocket, and then brought it out a bit later on to, you know, make the story entirely about me. You know, I could have just let grandpa Willie go and let them take him and say I'm not gonna risk risk myself for him. But he's an old friend of mine, so I was, you know, prepared to risk my life and, you know, it didn't end up in a gunfight. We managed to negotiate with the bad guy, but it was very close. We were all expected to have a big gunfight in the main street of Sherman.
Dave:But the funny thing was, so the the so that was great. That shows how the turn of the season really works to help the GM run stories that really matter to your players. The great thing was so the guy had been murdered, was a doctor, and he'd seemingly got caught up in the middle of a gunfight in, in a bar, and had apparently been shot through the chest with a shotgun. Now he'd been buried, and we obviously had a lot of suspicion about that maybe he wasn't shot through the chest with a shotgun. So 2 of our characters, Pete's character and Paul's character went up to the graveyard 1 night to dig him up and check and see if there was a shotgun wound on him.
Dave:So as they were doing that, there was some old like warden in the church.
Matthew:Mhmm.
Dave:He obviously heard them, and he came out to see what was going on. So Paul tried to sneak up behind him just to keep him quiet. Screwed up his role, pushed it, got 2 ones on his trouble, had no faith to buy them off, because he had one faith point left. He rolled his trouble die, got a 6, so that became a 3. And then the role on that on that column gave a result of something goes wrong for a by a bystander.
Dave:They suffer a 6 dice attack, crit 1, damage 1. So we had Paul basically stumble in the dark, bump into this guy, knock him into an empty grave where he then got a bang on the head, basically gouged his eye out when he hit hit some rocks on the bottom. And then he had to deal with him. So he then jumped into the thing and killed him. And all of this was completely from, the trouble dice and Paul pushing his role, and it was just so funny that that, you know, we we had no intention of killing anybody, but here we go, trouble meant that Paul had killed this poor guy.
Dave:As it turned out, the guy the the doctor who'd been shot did have a shotgun wound, so they then buried the guy they'd just killed in the same grave as the doctor. So he just disappeared. Yeah. So and then, you know, the rest of us didn't know anything about it. So we kind of had the moment as we're sort of riding out of town after the adventure, and me turning around to them all saying, hey, great.
Dave:We we visited the town. We didn't kill anybody. Great fun. It was a really good really good session. Cool.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:So so yeah. Ted, that is an example of the fun you can have when you're running this game. If only you could back it. Let's just remind me. Have we got any news about when that's going live?
Dave:I've heard a rumor it might be next Tuesday. 3rd September at 1600 British summertime.
Matthew:That's brilliant news. That's brilliant news.
Dave:So yes. Great. Yeah. Cool. So, you know, it's it's been a great game to work on.
Dave:It's been a lot of work. We've done a lot of research. And one of the things that we had to sort of work, you know, particularly thoroughly on was, you know, trying to get the history right and then dealing with some of the more difficult questions that that history brings up.
Matthew:Yeah. I mean, we, you know, we realized that the easy way out is to just add vampires and zombies. But, we determined we weren't gonna do that. So
Dave:Yeah. So here's my take on, on on, you know, dealing with dealing with difficult history. Making a historical role playing game brings challenges that other RPG's don't face or at least don't have to face if the design is mindful from the start. I can see why game designers like to go for the fantastical and supernatural creating enemies that are undoubtedly evil so it's 100% fine to kill them without a second's thought. But even these antagonists, in a mature RPG that isn't just black and white, perhaps deserve more respect than simply being placed in the way of player characters so they can hack them to death.
Dave:It always brings to mind the Lord of the Rings movies and particularly the scene in Fellowship where Aragorn finally kills Lerts, the Yurikai leader, by slicing his head off. Why is that okay when they'd never have shown a human character being decapitated in the same way? It's because Lerts is bad, a monster. And it's okay to slaughter monsters because they don't have a backstory or a history or wants, needs, motivations, or anything like that. Right?
Dave:So actually, I think all games need to be careful in their design and representation of the individuals and characters, human or otherwise, in any game, historical or fantasy. But there is greater onus on those trying to recreate a historical setting in an RPG. And that's me. It's on well established record that I love historical settings. I co designed war stories and wrote the campaign which was specifically about 2 weeks in June 1944 and the lives of a specific set of people.
Dave:I've long had an ambition to bring a historical Roman RPG to the table as well as a medieval one. All of these come with a plethora of issues from misogyny and prejudice, racism or classism in some cases, slavery or quasi slavery in some cases, total disregard for and violations of what we would now call a person's human rights, ethnic cleansing, religious genocide, and on and on. The history of the human race is pretty bleak for the most part, but it is our collective history. Nothing we can say or do will change what happened in the past. But what we can do is shine a light on that history.
Dave:Sweep away the myths, the legends, and the rewriting by the victors to reveal as far as any historian can what really happened. And bring to the fore the lived experience of those people who did, in fact, experience those times. I feel a strong sense of responsibility to those people who actually lived through what we can only experience through games, books, films, and the occasional larp. As I said in the introduction to the war stories rendezvous with destiny campaign, the history we explore has been immortalised through many books, films, and television shows. And written at the cost of the lives and suffering of countless men, women, and children.
Dave:A historical role playing game invites you into the lives and experiences of those real people. And we must do so mindfully and with respect. What does mindfully and with respect actually mean? Well, first up, it means laying out the histories that really happened. In the case of the wild west, it means, amongst other things, laying bare the imperial ambitions of European powers and how that affected 300 years of colonization of continental North America.
Dave:Laying bare the impact on those who already lived in those lands. Laying bare the impact of slavery on the millions who suffered it and on the political and cultural landscape. And laying bare the power that rested largely in the hands of men and the power of money. Secondly, it means understanding, at least as far as possible without having lived them ourselves, the traditions and history of the people who lived there and being respectful of those traditions. As a key example in the Wild West, understanding the perspective of Native American peoples is vital to telling the tale of the West.
Dave:Now this isn't easy. As Native Americans across the continent are not a single entity, as they all too often have been portrayed in the past. But are a hugely diverse range of cultures and communities. But it's important to understand enough to represent them respectfully. To encourage others to challenge the bad history rather than revel in it.
Dave:And to encourage others to research themselves and learn some more. 3rd, it's about getting underneath the myth of the history and uncovering the stories of those who've been marginalised by that myth. In the Wild West, the myth is all about the white cowboy working the range and riding off into the sunset. But what about the tales of the black cowboys? For there were a lot of them, and the vaqueros, who were working the land centuries before the white cowboys turned up and taught them everything they knew.
Dave:What about those who were once enslaved and suddenly found themselves emancipated? Free, such as it was, to try and usually fail to find their loved ones from whom they'd been separated by a callous slave owner. What about the women who all too often in the myth are terrorized by those savage natives only to be saved by the cowboys? The stories of real women in the west like Belle Starr, Mary Fields, Eleanor Dumont, and Susan McSween are very different to that. And those savage natives, were they really so savage?
Dave:I think we find that they were on the whole not. In fact, if you look at the history, there are literally hundreds of examples of treaties being signed guaranteeing Native American people eternal rights over certain lands that were not worth the paper they were written on as soon as the settlers got a whiff of gold. It's no surprise that many natives chose to fight. 4th, it's about being clear on the injustices and misdeeds of the past. If indeed those two words are strong enough to describe what happened to so many people in the west.
Dave:The realities of racism, prejudice, discrimination, and exploitation in all the forms they took need to be recognized. Not to be glorified and reveled in, but to be understood as key threads in the tapestry of the time. Managing all this takes a lot of work, effort, and research. But if you want to do right by those people who once lived through these times and present yourself as trustworthy and credible, it's work you must do. The most important part of this work is seeking the perspectives of others.
Dave:And particularly of those with cultural knowledge and experience. There's no substitution for approaching those from within those communities to get an understanding that cannot be gained in any other way. Nowadays, we call it sensitivity reading. But at its heart it's simply having the respect respect to ask those who really know what they're talking about for their advice and guidance. An endorsement of the way you're approaching a subject.
Dave:This is really important in building your understanding of that subject matter at hand, but also respecting those for whom that subject matter is so much more than that. It's their history and their heritage. While the history is what it is, in understanding it we can explore the actual lives of those who lived through it. The people of the wild west are not the stereotypes that the myth would have us believe. Of course they aren't.
Dave:There are real folks with faith, big dreams, hopes, fears, loves and motivations. In seeing the myth for what it really is, and getting to the real history behind it, we can start to explore the fascinating and spellbinding stories of all these people. And hopefully, honor their memories by respectfully recreating their world within our
Matthew:own. So, yes. I the thing is I know all this because I've been working with you, through it. But,
Dave:you
Matthew:know, and it still it still makes me a little bit nervous because here we are about to go public. Reach you know, all our patrons have been with us on this journey. Lots of them have read, you know, the drafts we've done of this. But we're about to get out there on Kickstarter to a bunch of people we don't know, who don't know us, who aren't necessarily aware of, you know, what we've talked about in the Discord and stuff like that. Yep.
Matthew:And, yeah, I'm just, yeah, I'm just curious to see how they'll take it, and whether whether they think we're the right people even to be doing a game like this. And that's always been a worry for me, which is why I was quite keen quite early on in the process to involve, as you say, people who are now called sensitivity readers.
Dave:Yeah. No. Absolutely. You know, that like like I said in the piece, that's, yeah, that's a really you know, sensitivity reader is is a label for doing things in the right way. You know?
Dave:So there's, you know, I think sometimes even when I was writing the piece, it felt the term sensitivity reader almost feels like just a little bit of sometimes a bit of a flag that someone waves and say, oh, sensitivity read. I've I've, you know, therefore, I've done what I need to do to, you know, to make it okay to do whatever I'm doing. And I think, you know, you we shouldn't maybe the point I didn't bring out very well is that just just saying, oh, yeah. We've had a sensitivity reader isn't enough. What you need to do is unpack what that actually means and what you've done under that.
Dave:So Yeah. In our in our sense, we've had sensitivity readers, professional sensitivity readers read it. We've had, you know, a lot of our
Matthew:The lovely soul, one of our patrons.
Dave:We've had we've had Mexican heritage.
Matthew:We've asked
Dave:Personal friends with, yeah, like I say, with with some of the heritages that are involved in this, reading it. So it's it is it is a tricky one, and I think you'll always get someone whose view would be that, you know, as 2 white boys we shouldn't be from England. We shouldn't be doing this kind of thing. Now I disagree with that, and I can go into the reasons why if if if you want me to. But you do need to treat it in the way that I think we've treated it.
Dave:And we we've gone into it with a genuine intent to do it respectfully, to do it properly, to do it with, with knowledge. You know, with insight that we gain from all the work we've put in and from those people we we speak to and get to help us. And if you do that and you do it with all the right intention, then I would hope that everyone would see that, you know, even if we do make a mistake somewhere, it's it's not been done through kind of lack of effort to
Matthew:to try and
Dave:make things in the right way, and do it in a sensitive way, and and not upset somebody unnecessarily. Not that there's a way of upsetting somebody necessarily in this process, because we're obviously not trying to upset anyone. Yeah. And I and I think that's my big thing point about about getting to the history and getting underneath the myth and getting to the history of the myth and the, you know, the lived experience of the people who were there, whatever culture or heritage they might have been. So I think that's that's that's the really key point for
Matthew:me. Yeah. And particularly, with coming back to us, you know, as you say, it's important with with any time, any period of history. I mean, I guess, as it as it comes out of living memory, as it gets beyond living memory, it becomes slightly less important, but if you're doing a thing on ancient Egypt, you know, I'd like I'd like to think we'd be involving Mohammed in that, rather than just Yeah. Assuming that we can read a few textbooks on the ancient Egypt and, and make some assumptions about Egyptian people.
Matthew:Yeah. But but Well,
Dave:it's an interesting it's an interesting point. So there was there was a whole huge hoo a while ago about a Netflix docu drama that they did about Cleopatra. And the the state of Egypt sued Netflix for portraying Cleopatra and the people of the time in the wrong way. And so, you know, they've they've made a decision to portray her in a certain way, and that wasn't what, you know, all the archaeological evidence or, you know, the, you know the the egyptian, I guess I don't I don't want to say egyptian people, but the authorities in Egypt who, you know, who I guess have a view of this. And yeah, the the state of Egypt, I think it was the state of Egypt sued Netflix over it because they were so angry at the at the at the depiction.
Dave:So that's where you get it spectacularly wrong. Now I think if you if you wanted to depict someone like Cleopatra, his historical figure, or that culture as something different, then either you you do that with all those people on board, and you explain to them where you're coming from, and you take their advice. And, you know, if their advice is don't be stupid, don't do it, you take that bit of advice. Or you say, this isn't a documentary. This is a drama, and we are not presenting it as history.
Dave:We're presenting it as a fictionalized drama, in which case, you know, you know, you're kind of off the hook. You can do what you like, I guess.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:Not everyone can agree with that. But yeah.
Matthew:But I think it becomes more sensitive, you know, where the the old west is not quite within living memory, but still people know grandparents who, you know, potentially live through this time. So it's it's not far off. And, obviously, it is a heavily it's a time of great conflict and heavily contested reading. And coming back to myth making, which is actually where I started this, you know, and then there was and I I I was watching something recently, and I realized that there's, there's this film, I I was I know. I was watching Blac klansman, is is it?
Matthew:And BlacKkKlansman have you ever seen that film? I can recommend it.
Dave:No. Okay.
Matthew:So BlacKkKlansman is a Spike Lee film. It's based on the true story of a black cop in Colorado who manages to join the Ku Klux Klan.
Dave:Yeah. I haven't seen it. I've seen yeah. I've seen bits of it. I've seen some clips.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:And it starts off with this silent movie called Birth of a Nation, which is now a, you know, it's recognized as being a thing that sort of, you know, coalesced white anti black racism in a in a popular culture media. And, of course, what you kind of realize with Birth of the Nation is it's one of the first Westerns. So it kind of sets the tone then for westerns, shall we say, that are this heavily whitewashed version Yeah. Of the American west. And so that's what we're you know?
Matthew:And on one side of us, we're celebrating those westerns because we've got gunfight rules and things like that. And, you know, we talk about if you liked Tombstone, you know, you'll like this game, or if you like, Deadwood and things like that, which are part of that genre. But we've got to recognize the early part of that genre making is exclusively white, and actually, in I think intentionally racist. You know, it got better over time, through the decades, but it's only recently that we're seeing anything like the levels of representations of different, different cultures in the American West at, at a time. So that's what that's what we're fighting against.
Matthew:You know, we want to celebrate that myth make or the the the wholesome parts of that myth making, but we don't you know, we also want to recognize the actual history that went on. And at the same time, again, give our players the opportunity not to be hidebound by people saying, oh, you can't do that because you're a woman, or you can't do that because you're Absolutely. You're black. You would have been, you know, so
Dave:Yeah. Indeed. Completely.
Matthew:And in fact, that so that was the first thing that we sent to sensitivity the, you know, to our sensitivity reader in America. I've I'm just trying to find her a book because I want you to mention her name because she did say we could Yeah. Jordan's name.
Dave:Something. Jordan. I can't remember the surname off the top of my head, but it's
Matthew:Yeah. I can't find her report. I was only looking at it a few, a few weeks ago, because I wanted to check something on, Native Americans, she said. Anyway, so I've I took it as a great compliment, because I guess there's times when your sensitivity reader, and you can say, well, I'm giving you this advice. You can take it or leave it as you want.
Matthew:But I imagine sometimes I say, but please don't put my name in the credits, whatever you do with it. Yeah. And, and she said, it was kinda, you know, there's elements
Dave:of this.
Matthew:I feel a reform letter, but she had the the line in there that said, if you want to use by name of the credits, you can. So that almost is the it was, okay. We're we're not doing badly here. She gave us some great advice, but she saw our intentions were. And, yeah.
Matthew:And I and I, yes. So,
Dave:And we have we have worked very hard. I mean, right from the very start, the very first, you know, when we when we sat down and said, okay. What's our philosophy for the game? The very first thing we had was, you know, get the history right, not whitewash anything, portray all the people in the west in the right way, you know, and give everybody, you know. And you said it really well the other day, remove barriers to people understanding or playing those particular characters.
Matthew:And I
Dave:think that's one of the things that we have worked very hard over the last few years to try and get right. Now Yes. But that's not saying that we haven't got something slightly wrong somewhere or Yeah. The tone wrong or something. And if that's the case then, you know, we want to know because we wanna get it right.
Dave:You know, we're not gonna be defensive about it. You know, we wanna we wanna understand what if we've missed something, then then we ought to, you know, we want to know about it.
Matthew:And so, particularly, the a good chunk of what we sent to Jordan was, our life path character creation system, which is at this moment still a stretch goal. So, guys, if you want to see it, pack it. And that was an interesting challenge because, and in fact, I think, you know, we've improved the life path based on her, feedback. Yeah. But there, you know, you can't make assumption.
Matthew:You've got this thing where you've got really a tiny amount of words to to sum up a culture. So you've got a hint at the culture, but you can't say, I feel, this is what that culture is. We've Yeah. We've given and in fact, I think this is a lesson I learned for Coriolis. We've given hooks for you to look into that and for you to come out there, but we're not telling you this is what playing somebody from, say, New Mexico, be they Apache or Comanche.
Matthew:We're not you know, we we haven't gone into pages and pages of description is this is what Comanche, life was like. And I feel for two reasons. One is that we're not really doing that with Europeans. We, you know, we haven't got a page on this is what Englishmen were like at the time. Yeah.
Matthew:And so there's some textbooks.
Dave:Yeah. Exactly. Because that in itself is almost becoming, you know, a bit
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:What's the word I'm looking for? Stereotyping again, isn't it? It's like It's yeah. It's
Matthew:all we could do
Dave:The average Comanche was like this. Well, yeah, it that doesn't no. That doesn't work.
Matthew:So in in in the life path, we've given prompts that and we haven't even said that these are Comanche prompts. What what we've done now is if you said, if you come from this area, you could be a white European, certainly. You could be this, that, or the other, or, you know and these these particular, indigenous communities were living there at that time. We've just named them. It's up to you to decide.
Matthew:Some of the some of the the sort of historic events may apply to some of those things, but what we've tried to do is create, like, just a hook rather than saying this is what all the native Americans were like in that corner of the the continent.
Dave:Yeah. Absolutely. I think, you know, what we have tried to do is is is draw out some of the history, and there are probably some generalizations in that because we're talking about the history of of the continent in a in a in a
Matthew:We're talking actually about the history of the whole bloody world. So
Dave:Well, yeah.
Matthew:There's gonna be some generalizations.
Dave:But also, we've I mean, I did a lot of work to try and get the the the endonyms for different native American communities right, different tribes right. Now I've done a lot of research there, but one of the things I found out in that research is you probably gotta get it wrong anyway in some way or another. Because the complexity of those communities is such that even if I find an endonym that works for some people in that community, then that won't work for others. So we've done our best to try and give a flavour of that, and try and reflect that. Encouraging people to treat those kind of characters with respect rather than treat them as as you know mythological, in the 1950s or 1960s movies characters, and encourage people to go and do a bit of their own reading or research to understand them a little bit better and fill out their characters through you know, it only needs a few Google searches, frankly.
Dave:There's quite a lot of stuff that you can find. Now we've read a lot of books and have gone through a lot of sort of scholarly stuff, but you can find out a lot of good information just just by a little bit of effort. So I mean Yeah. We this is, you know, we are not crusading here for people to become historians of Native American history. What we are doing is saying, don't make stupid assumptions.
Dave:Don't make stupid stereotypes. Have a little look behind the curtain of the myth and see what those people really were like and what they what the kind of thing they really went through. And then you can build your character out of that.
Matthew:Yeah. And it'll be more fun for that as well.
Dave:Yes. Absolutely. Completely.
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah. Right. I think we're done here. We're coming up to an hour of recording, and my friend's back today.
Dave:So the next time we, we get together, we will we will be 10 days, 2 weeks into the Kickstarter.
Matthew:Yeah. Expect a expect an old west news in that episode.
Dave:Yeah. Even if it's just, you know, us, you know, hanging ourselves because it's gone so badly.
Matthew:Yeah. Canceling the Kickstarter because nobody backed it.
Dave:No. Hopefully not. No. But yeah. So thanks everyone for listening.
Dave:Really excited about what's gonna happen over the next few weeks. Really excited for Tuesday. Tell all your friends. Tell all your enemies. Just tell everyone.
Matthew:Tell everybody. I'm gonna put it on my bloody LinkedIn. That's what I'm Do. So all my professional colleagues who don't know that this is my hobby, I gotta find out.
Dave:Cool. But I thought I'd
Matthew:wait until we were actually live before doing that.
Dave:One last thing, which you should have mentioned in the word of gaming. I'm gonna be at tabletop Scotland of
Matthew:Don't touch us.
Dave:6th, yeah, 6th to 8th September. So I'm gonna be running demos of tales of the old west. I'm gonna be talking to people about tales of the old west. I'm gonna be wearing tales of the old west t shirts. I might even have a cowboy hat.
Dave:Come and see me. Come and have a chat. Come and play the game. Come and back, it's yeah. See you see you in Edinburgh.
Matthew:Yeah. And there's a lovely new banner you've got as well.
Dave:It's fabulous. That was really nice. I the the artwork we've got is is super. But actually, you don't I didn't quite realize how good it was until I rolled up that banner when it arrived this morning in my kitchen and had a look at it really close-up. It is fabulous.
Dave:Very, very pleased with that artwork. It's yeah. Some great work from both both our artists, Thomas and Malin. Really super
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:Right. Brilliant. We should call it there. So Call it. Until next time.
Dave:It's, goodbye from me.
Matthew:And it's goodbye from him.
Dave:And may the icons back our Kickstarter. 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.