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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.
[silence] [silence] [music] [music] Hello and welcome to episode 235 of Effect. Automata for the people. I'm Matthew. You're Matthew and I'm Dave. I love you, it's like, "Automata for the people!" It's like sometimes it's like... Well, a little bit, you know, I was trying to get a little bit... Yeah, yeah. That's a good connection. Um, yeah, anyway, welcome to the show everyone. We have a packed show out always. Um, we have a, um, the main event of the show is a fabulous interview we had with a lovely, lovely game designer called Nick Francia. Well done for getting his day off. I know, I know. So you didn't do that in the interview. Listen to the interview and you'll see what went horribly wrong. Um, of Gehenna Gaming and he's got a game out at the moment, or they've got a game out at the moment, up on Backkit called Eldritch Automata. Or Eldritch... Automata! As Matthew would describe it. So, yeah, so we've got a lovely long interview with him. Um, really, really, uh, interesting and, uh, you know, exciting interview about that. Um, we also have a new patron to welcome and thank. We, um, Well of Gaming, we don't have a bumper crop, um, as we might normally do on Well of Gaming, but we've still got a few things to talk about. Yeah, one of which you're gonna bore a silly on, Dave, but that's okay. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Well, no change, no change from normal then, you know, that should be our strap line, isn't it? Effect podcast, we bore you silly. Um, and then a little bit of Old West news, which is obviously our new little, um, segment that we have on the show these days, whilst we are getting to the point where Tales of the Old West will become a thing that you can get in your hands. And that's our show for today. So, uh, let's kick off with our new patron. I, uh, want to say a great big thank you to Ewan Dougal. Indeed. Thank you, Ewan. Lovely to see you. I don't know if Ewan has appeared on the Discord yet. I believe he has on the Discord. I vaguely remember him appearing and having a little bit of a chat with us. I'm trying to think what a username is, but, um, I'm now scrolling back. We've talked a lot about an election that happened in our country between when he joined. And then we've probably been him off actually with our politics. Yeah, we have, we have got a little bit. I mean, we have, we have a, we have a fuss and misery channel, which, which we put up, um, during COVID to allow people to vent a little bit and share their, you know, share, share their unpleasant times. But it's, it's now become the fuss and misery channel. And this last week it became the politics channel. But the worst thing is, I, I'm pleased to say, I'm, I'm at fault for this. I kind of live chatted, um, election night and I didn't put it in fuss and misery because I was quite excited by it. So there's a lot in our general chat about this as well. You know, normally, and we know that some patrons do turn off fuss and misery because frankly, you know, they're here for gaming content and that's cool. Um, but yeah, the general chat did get a little bit swamped with politics for which I apologize, but there we go. It was an exciting time for some of us. Um, yeah. Yeah. So I can't scroll back and find his name, but I'm sure he did join. I'll have to work out who he is and drop him a line. Yes. So I, it's, it's, it's one of the weird things about the patron is that you only ever see people's handles and rarely, I mean, occasionally, but rarely do we, do we find out a new person's real identity unless they volunteer it, of course. Um, so, so I end up talking to people and, you know, and they say, oh yeah, I am diddly diddly on the patron. I was like, oh, okay, that's you. Unless someone comes in, I think I found him here. Uh, I think he may well be Camaraice. K-A-M-M-E-R-I-C-E. And I found his message because we all said hello and he said, and this is important. He said, bloody hell, this has to be the single most welcoming discord server I have ever been in. This is fantastic. So welcome. We are. It's the nicest place on the internet. That's what we say to ourselves. And it's obviously true. Yes, but yeah, welcome you and lovely to have you. And, um, yep, sorry about the politics. We'll, we'll talk less about that now. Yeah, yeah, it's all over now. Well, until until the US election, I guess. And, and, and, and, well, three starts. So, uh, American patrons are more polite than I am when it comes to mentioning politics on the, yeah, on the discord. Yeah, well, they don't tend to talk about it too much, actually. Um, no. And when they do, they restrain it to the fuss and misery channel. They do. They do, which is the whole point of the fuss and misery channel in the first place. They don't spam with the other channels that other people are calmly trying to, to scroll down and have life like nice friendly conversations with politics, politics. Yes. It's my discord. I can do what I want to. It's not discord. It's, it's, it's the community's discord. Yeah, but I'm an admin. You're, well, I guess you've probably been given on this one occasion. Give yourself a stern tawning to talking to you. Yeah. Oh, I can do that. I'll send myself a DM actually. Yeah. So, yeah, so that's, that's, uh, welcome. Yes. Thank you for joining us. Yes. Yeah, that's what we were doing. We're welcoming our new patrons. So again, for a third or fourth time, you're welcome. Welcome. You're great to have you on board. How many times can we do it? What's up? What's our record? Let's not go for that. Let's go straight into the world of gaming now. Welcome. You and it's great to have you on board. Damn, he's fortunate again. Can I find your power button and plug me in again? Fair enough. Well, Dave's turned off. Maybe I'll quickly get over the bit of news that the Ennies have come out of the nominations for this year's Ennies have come out. And there's nothing really excited to talk about. I'll plug Dave back in again now. Dave, world of gaming, Black Madonna and Hostile Waters are arriving on the door mats. So the Ennies this year. So the Ennies this year, I'm obviously very, very delighted to say that Building Better Worlds has gained another couple of nominations. One for the best cartography, which is interesting because I did I designed all the maps that are in the book. Obviously, people with real. Hold on. Hold on. I mean, I'm sure you are a very good map maker, Dave. I've often completely made a few mapmakers' kills. But did you do the final graphics? So I was just about to say then somebody else with the skill to make a graphic version of it did a lovely graphic version of it. And then Stefan Isberg, who did a lot of the the the map work, turning my maps into the lovely maps in the book, did a great job. He's he's a lovely guy, actually. He didn't realize I messaged him the other day when the nominations came out and went, he went, really? Oh, that's really cool. He hadn't even known that the book had got a nomination for the cartography, which is really cool. And also, it gets a nomination for the best supplement. So very excited. Fingers crossed. It would be fabulous to win Ennies as well with Building Better Worlds. So, yeah, but I mean, it's brilliant just to get nominated in the first place. So I'm yeah, I'm yeah, I'm made up. I'm brilliant. So fingers crossed. And anybody from around the world can vote, can't they? You don't have to be a conference delegate for the Ennies. I don't know, actually. I suspect so. I'm sure I've voted on Ennies in the past. Yeah. It's got quite a good voting process. So it does clever things to make sure that you're not multiple voting and stuff like that. Yeah. So we will we will send a link. Not not because we're saying vote for Dave's book. But I'm saying Dave's book. But we will send a link so you can vote for whatever you want to vote for. And and you can join in the voting process and maybe your favorite products will win prizes. Gold and silver are the options in the Ennies. And yeah. Yeah. Well, best of luck, Dave. Thank you. Thank you. Of course, I'm already an Ennie Award winner from last year. With what? I'm already an Ennie Award winner last year. With what products? With Versun, mythic Britain and Ireland. What like like me as well then? Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Ennies, you know, really massive amounts of work that we've done. Well, I know. I mean, who hasn't won an Ennie? I mean, you know, come on. Anyway, anyway, new listeners should be aware that Graham Davis did 99.99 percent of the work on that book. But we were still mentioned in the Ennies credit. We're taking the credit for the tiny bit that we added around the edges. Anyway, right. So that's that's the Ennies out of the way. Coming back to where I was when I switched you back on. Yeah. Products are arriving on people's doormats. People who preordered Black Madonna and Hostile Waters are actually getting it. And responses, well, as usual, quite positive for a free product. Yeah. I mean, I don't think there's anything else we could add because neither of us have got it. No, I haven't got either of them. I haven't played Twilight 2000 fourth edition yet. I'm not sure when I will. Although, again, every now and then I get a little bit of a nostalgic of desire to do it. But then finding the time and all the rest of it. But yeah, I mean, from what I've seen, they look like they're doing a few adventures with one of our patrons, Dave. Hi, Dave. And we without he'd slightly changed the setting because we're feeling a little bit sensitive about the invasion of Ukraine. Yeah. But it was. Yeah. The system plays very well. Actually, I have to say it's very good. And of course, Batman is a classic adventure from the old days and Hostile Waters is an adaptation of some classic material from the old days as well. So there's an enormous back catalogue that the guys can mine if they choose to do so for for Twilight 2000. But I'd like to see some brand new stuff as well. Yeah. Yeah, that would make sense, wouldn't it? I mean, it's all right and proper to to reproduce the stuff that was such a fan favorite back in the day. But also, you know, let's let's have some new stuff, too. That would be cool. Yeah. Yeah. Like, for example, for Lord Lillie's role playing and for the one ring, Moria is coming very shortly. So those of us who backed it should be getting it. I don't know. Within the next month, I would have thought pre-orders are live for people who didn't back it. You can now go to the site and and buy it. They're very firmly said that pre-orders won't start being delivered until the backers have got theirs. Yeah, that makes sense. That that feels to me like everything is going to be arriving shortly. So far we have a PDF, which I know you don't like reading PDFs, but and I've tried not to because I'm playing in a campaign that I think will go to Moria. So I've not looked at in in too much depth, but I have had a little flick through and it as usual is lovely media. Yeah, it's not something I'm likely to play any time soon, but I would like to, you know, as with the other one ring stuff, I would like to have it adorning my shelf. Yes. And I went for the deluxe version of that simply so that it matches my deluxe. One ring. Talking of adorning your shelf or playing stuff, I've heard that you've gone back to an old game, Dave. Yes, so it's not really well of gaming news, but I just wanted to reflect. So with my with my my group here, I have I'm just finishing a Walking Dead campaign. I've got one scenario left to do for that. But the other day I I did this session zero for a new Coriolis campaign that we're going to run with basically the same crew or the same players as last time in the same in the same kind of setting in universe. But we had great some doing the session zero creating the characters, getting all their personal problems, designing their ship, coming up with an idea about how they got their ship, where they came from. And I just wanted to say that this has reminded me how much I love Coriolis as a game. It is. I mean, it does stand out really at the at the head of the line, I think, against the vast majority of other games out there. It is so good. It's so well put together. The look and the feel of it is just so good. The it was it was it was it was wonderful to be playing with darkness points again. And I know we've we've had many conversations about the pros and cons of darkness points, but dropping my little black bead onto my little brass tray that I've got this that I've got for it, which made a really resounding zinging noise. And then it rolls around the edge of the dish with like a wheel like a thing in a roulette wheel, continually making the news, the news, making the noise. It was brilliant. And yeah, I just wanted to reflect again, actually, how much I've missed it and how much I'm looking forward to this campaign, because I kind of forgotten how good Coriolis really is. Yeah. Well, we do owe our long term fans the final part of Mercy of the Icons as well. So we do. I should. The problem is I've had my screen extended as well. It's squeezing it in, as it's not it's not easy. It's quite it's quite a commitment. It's like we found with Alien the Colony. I loved doing it. But the commitment even running one every two weeks was just too much. Yeah, it's just with everything else, everything else going on. It's it's, you know, for running, it might seem like it's one two hour session every couple of weeks. But it obviously is not just that it's getting everything organized, it's getting ready, it's writing the scenario. Yeah, it's in busy lives. It's quite difficult to squeeze an extra game in, even if it is only an hour and a half a week or a fortnight. Yeah, I think I think I think I'll share and stands ready to play whatever we can get it get it going again. So excellent. Excellent. We will take off. It's got to fit in with everything else, isn't it? So yeah. So next in the world of gaming. Well, actually, the next part of the world of gaming kind of segues, although it won't be a segue because we've got old west news beforehand. What we should mention is we're halfway through the Kickstarter for a new year zero game from the Gehenna Gaming. It's called Elgich Automata or Elgich Automata, depending on how you like to pronounce it. Or to pronounce it. Or to even say automata. It's a slash slash e. Maybe the way to say it. No, e slash slash. Anyway, I've totally screwed this up. So I was sold on this game by the interview and I actually backed it. It's not a Kickstarter campaign. They did a Kickstarter campaign earlier in the year or even last year, which didn't succeed, didn't get its target. We were very interested, actually, to interview the guys to talk about that as well. So that will be in our interview. But it's they've kind of sold me on the concept of the game and I wasn't entirely sold during the Kickstarter. But talking to Nick, I was I was actually kind of sold. And so, yeah, it's obviously it's kind of giant robots versus monsters. A bit Pacific Rim, very, very, very obviously influenced by all that Japan. Yeah. Stuff with giant robots fighting monsters. But some lovely mechanics in there, which you'll hear about in our interview. Anyway, there's a link in the show notes. That's what I wanted to say, really. So the long way round, as always. Why take why take the short route when, you know, we've got an hour's content to film. I think we've managed that already just about. Anyway, yes, 20 minutes. I mean, even come on. Elvish Automata does look lovely. The kind of the the mech. The mech style gaming doesn't appeal to me a lot. Really. No. Although like you said, there are there are a couple of interesting mechanical tweaks on the user engine because that's what the game uses, which is really interesting, actually. I'm listening to Nick talking about them. But so I didn't back it and I'm not going to say at the moment I need to be careful about what I can back. But it does look lovely. And it's it is it is successful this time. So they've definitely they've smashed their target, which is which is great news, but great interview a bit later on. But before we get to that, we need to give you an update on old West News, don't you, Matthew? And what have we been up to this last week? We had a fun day, a little reenactment site, not reenactment. Actually, that's the wrong word for it. LARPing site. Yeah. There had been pirates there the weekend before, but we went on Monday afternoon and found a few interesting backgrounds to record all of our promotional videos against. Yeah. So we've we've we've done that and we will I say we I'll be editing them into some little short videos talking about different aspects of the game. Yeah, it was great fun, actually. The place is called Aylarp, E-Y-E, LARP down in Eversley in Hampshire, that is. And they were really helpful. The guy we spoke to, Johnny, was super helpful and couldn't have been more more open and amenable. And in the end, they just gave us the run of the site for the day. So we were able to do whatever we pleased. And the site's cool and looks really good. It's got a lovely vibe to it in the woods. And yeah, had a great day, but a great big thank you out to Aylarp. If you're interested in the idea of LARPing, it's basically do a number of different kind of events. They do Wild West as well. They do pirates and they do there's some paintballing things going on there as well or Airsoft, one of the other. And yes, look up Aylarp.com and we stick that in the show notes and see if you can go along. I mean, a few of our patrons have been along to some of their events and I think one of them, Sol, was at the pirate event and said they had an absolute blast. So it was really good fun. Another one, Andy, is going to their Deadwood event, which is next summer. So, yeah, so I don't know how often they run these events, but there's a steady stream and obviously everything we've seen seems to be that if you like LARPing, then you're going to have a really, really good time. But yeah, great big thank you to Johnny for all his help and to everybody else at Aylarp for letting us do that. It was cool. It was. It was very cool indeed. And the other thing that there's more art coming in, which you will start seeing, you know, very possibly breaking up things that we need to cover up in our recordings. We'll have to stop and start again. But not only that, we'll be we'll be putting them out on some social media as well to get people excited by the art in there. Just had some lovely, really lovely pencil sketches from Thomas Eliot, who's one of our artists of, well, we, various wildlife, some nice, a nice horse portrait. I think we need to have a couple of those. What else? Oh, and just a sort of little vignette with a gun and a chevish badge, which I can imagine will be be at the end of a column somewhere in one of our books where we've got a little bit of space to fill and something, you know, if you like, entirely generic, but lovely, still lovely. Yeah, really nicely done. Yeah, really nicely done. Yeah, we're very lucky with our artists, actually. They're both really, really talented. Yes, yeah. Malin's doing another colour spread for us, even as we speak for one of our chapter headings. So I will be writing to both of them, commissioning the next few works. Our plan is to try and have not all but most of the artwork done before we go into the Kickstarter. So that, because I think that's one of the things, and it does, it's the one thing about the Kickstarter that slightly keeps me awake at night is if we don't manage that, and then we're waiting for artwork to get completed. That's one of the things that can delay a Kickstarter from a small operation like us. I mean, yeah, it's really great at this, obviously, because, you know, they're a big company. They're not a big company, but they've been reasonably successful in previous Kickstarters. They get a lot of their artwork done beforehand. But small mom and pop operations like, like you and I, Dave, very often they can only afford the artwork once they've done the Kickstarter. Then the artwork becomes the... The delaying factor, yeah. The delaying thing. Yeah, obviously, like speed of fulfillment is something that's very much on our minds. And we want to get as much done ahead of the Kickstarter as we reasonably can. And limit that delay between, you know, between the Kickstarter and fulfillment. Make it as short as we possibly can. But it is, of course, dependent on our ability to fund the company, as it were. So, you know, we're putting our own money up and we have a little bit of spare money we can afford to put in. But yeah, it's not as much necessarily as a more established publishing house might have. Yeah. I mean, we are brand new doing this for the first time. Like you say, you know, mom and pop, if that's the way to describe it. Yeah. Or pop and pop, but that sounds a bit incestuous. It's not incestuous. It's just homosexual. No, no, no. Which is fine. What's wrong with that? Well, I don't know. We have to ask our wives about that. Well, your wife already thinks we're having an affair, doesn't she say? Yeah, that is true. Which, you know, if she, you know, all she needs to do is speak to me and realise that you're not my type. You know, that's what I tell your wife all the time. So this is this is this is not family, family viewing. This is this is digressed into something a long way away from what we were talking about. But yeah, fulfillment. So yes, we've got lots of lovely art. We're commissioning more. We want like we say, we want to get as much done of that before the kick start goes live. And, you know, limit the the amount that we've got left to do to a minimum. So we can make sure that you don't have to wait too long between pledging to support us and getting the actual book in your hands. But yes, some of this artwork is lovely. It's really good. Very, very impressed with it. Yeah. Now, the issue with the pencil sketches is there's a bit of preprocessing that has to happen to make them look good on the page in the layout. So sadly, that's my job to do. Hopefully I won't fuck it up. But I'll pop you up. No, don't fuck it up, mate. It's fine. Because it's lovely art. Yeah. Shall we shall we move on to our interview with the lovely, lovely Nick? One more one more thing just to say on the old West News. So as we are now beginning to draw towards the towards Gen Con and August when we are looking to launch, say final dates to be confirmed. We are going to be doing a few online things. So we've got a few actual plays coming up. We've organizing one with the band of Badgers guys, friends of the show, Dave and Steve, lovely guys. We just need to confirm some dates on those, but that might be coming pretty soon, actually. So keep your eyes open on your socials and we'll we'll let everybody know when they're coming. So we'll be doing that. We'll also be doing some question and answer sessions as well. And so hopefully you'll see quite a lot of us online on various platforms and shows over the next few weeks. But watch out. Watch out for those. Yeah. OK, then. Right now, shall we talk to Nick? Yes. Now let's talk to Nick Francia. So here we are again in the Effect podcast, her mum. And we have a fabulous guest with us today. We have Nick Francia Francia. I knew I was going to get it wrong. I wonder how the fuck did I get that wrong? Frankie is actually an alternate pronunciate. That's actually not. OK. I'm perfectly right in certain regions. OK, listeners, I specifically asked before the show. Not 30 seconds ago, Dave. And I then got it wrong. So Nick, Nick Francia of Gehenna Gaming. It's a delight to have you here. Apologies for insulting you in my first breath. Lovely to have you on the show. Welcome. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. No, brilliant. So what we always do with our new guests in her mom is once we've got our clothes off and got sweaty, which is what happens in her mom's. I'm glad this is a podcast. Yeah, we always like to ask our new guests just to tell us a little bit about themselves and about how they got started in gaming or sort of what your first memory of gaming was and sort of briefly how you got to where you are today. Awesome. Well, you know, so I'm Nick Francia. I'm the creative director over Gehenna Gaming and I'm also the lead designer of Eldridge Tamada. How I got my start in gaming. Wow. That's a very multifaceted story. But it started when I was 12 years old and I had just stumbled across like 1213 actually, I stumbled across Acquisitions Incorporated. It had just started fourth edition of D&D had just come out and I had heard of D&D, but it was almost you know, I very much grew up in the Catholic school system of suppressed nerdery. So you know, you don't want to talk about D&D because it was you know, Satanic. Yeah, which I remember we were like we brought in Harry Potter into school once and we got in trouble for that. But I ended up really liking fourth edition and then I was I was wanting to play it to play my first TTRPG. And funny enough, I did not start with 4E despite that being my first exposure to listing it on like an actual play. I was recruited into a New World of Darkness game. We played Mage, which everyone tells me is a hell of a first game to start out with. I think so. I on my graduation going into high school, I begged my parents for the core rulebook set of fourth edition. So I got the three books. Of course, none of my friends had it. So I had to GM and that's kind of how I so I started as a GM, you know, very much that's always been kind of where my story is. And then my first actual long campaign and I always think this is very funny. I played Marvel Phase Rip for about five years from I believe that was from the 70s or 80s that was released. And I played online with a cornucopia of people that were varying different age groups and backgrounds. And I actually really much thank that game to my formative years because it kind of showed me how diverse the hobby was and then how many people from ages and backgrounds, everyone kind of engages with the hobby. So by the time I got to college, I was very much well in tune and exposed and kind of just took off from there. Cool. So obviously you're here today to talk a little bit about the game you've currently got on Backerkit, Eldritch Automata. But before we get into that, tell me a little bit about Gehenna Gaming because you're not just a publisher, are you? You do a lot more than that. No, actually, publishing is sort of a new wheelhouse for us. We started as a kind of horror entertainment company, which our focus was when originally this group was created was to make World of Darkness adjacent content, run World of Darkness games. And we kind of branched that out to horror in general. So we started showing up conventions, started running game tracks, started recruiting GMs. And that really has been our main bread and butter for the past four years. You know, we're at PAX East, we're at PAX Unplugged, we're having our first showcase at GenCon, running huge game tracks and just kind of providing horror to the mainstream and kind of getting people into it. And it's been very interesting because before we got there, it didn't feel like there really was this kind of niche into the even like sci-fi or horror or even like mystery because, you know, for the longest time, indie games and general and then just, you know, fantasy had been kind of the dominant game force at conventions. I mean, there still are, you know, I'm not going to lessen that impact at all, but I think horror has really peaked its head in to kind of, you know, make a new contender on the convention track. And then when COVID hit, you know, that kind of upended everything because here we had focused mainly on conventions and now all of a sudden we couldn't go to any conventions. So in March 2020, everything had just closed down. Ian, who is the founder of Gahini Gaming as well as Rick Wheeler and Mark Anderson, who were kind of still on the team at that time, they all decided, you know, the three of them, because they had founded the group originally, they were going to make this thing called the Virtual Horror Con. They were going to set up a convention in two weeks because everything had closed down and they were like, hey, I think everyone needs this right now. So I'm not sure, particularly on the start date and the stats, but I believe we might have been if not the first one of the first online conventions in post-COVID time because we launched in March 2020. So right on the cusp of like everything closing down. And actually, that's where I was brought on because I had interacted with Gahini Gaming and played in their games in 2019. I had joined the community shortly after and really enjoyed it. And then Ian brought me on to do video editing because that's kind of like my actual real life profession, what I do as my day job. And so I came in, helped the streaming and joined the team from there. And the rest, as you can say, has been history. Yeah, cool. I was leaving a gap in case you wanted to say something that. So I was just making something I do want to ask about later. But I mean, this probably brings us to Elgitsh Automata. Or automata, I should say. You can say however way you want. I have heard automata is like the weirdest pronunciation I've heard so far. But I'm okay with it. It's Latin. Who really knows? I guess the Romans. So this is a horror game. But it's a year zero game, which is why we're talking to you. Now we've seen year zero horror in Versohn and in Alien, of course. But what made you decide when you were conceiving the world of Elgitsh Automata to go with year zero is the engine that underpins the game. So this will all kind of start with the origin story of EA, if that's okay. Yeah, it does lead into this. So I started creating this system back in 2017. I was currently living in Phoenix, Arizona. And I had an online gaming group and we really loved the we really loved mech anime and mech games and stories like that very much. So I was a big fan of Neon Genesis Evangelium. So we had talked about wanting to run a Neon Genesis Evangelion style game. And at that time, the really only resource that you had for that was either super anime games that kind of really push the over the top power fantasy. And then you had something that was called the Deptice Evangelion, which was very much a Warhammer 40K reskin that while it was enjoyable, it was just it was very complex. And I kind of set forth and I said, you know what, I've been playing games, you know, most of my life at this point. So why don't I try writing one? And so I wrote the first build of Elgitsh Automata actually, and we were obsessed with power by the apocalypse at the time. And so we ran in power by the apocalypse because that was like that was kind of when it was emerging. That was like the hip new thing. And plus playing everything on play by post. That was kind of what you had to do in order not to get bogged down and actually move forward. I don't know if any of you have done play by post, but I'm sure if you have a very, very long time. Yeah, it's a it's a slog like a session time is like months of posting. It's very much a slog. And so when we finished that campaign after about a year, I realized two things. One, that the idea in my head of making a like mech horror game was a good one that I should keep building off of. And two, I realized that PBTA, while it worked for a lot of other games and it's done spectacular on its own, it really wasn't the good fit for what I wanted. So I actually had started trying to expand it, trying to make like more of an expanded, you know, D6 system like powered by the apocalypse, looking at things like City of Mist and Cult. And then in 2018 or end or early 2019, that's when I got heard of that the Alien RPG system was being announced, it was being created. And so Alien is my favorite film of all time. It is pretty much the film I credit with me wanting to do all what I do as a as a you know, as a video editor, as a director and producer and whatnot. So to me, that was always like the the peak of storytelling and cinema. And I really loved Alien. So I remember 2019 PAX and kind of where I met Kahana Gaming, funny enough, it all kind of converges there. I went first day, 10 o'clock, open up, I bought the Alien RPG bundle, I bought it all. I immediately ran Hopes Last Day. So, you know, funny enough, it's almost like we're coming full circle here. And then a week after PAX, I ran Chariot of the Gods and my players told me this is the best game you've ever run. And at that at that point, the year zero license, the open the open license wasn't officially out yet. But I had an inkling. I said, well, this would be really good for a horror game. So I had kind of kept in the back of my mind and I'd already started writing some stuff for it. And then, you know, whether I believe it, I think it was like another year in twenty twenty one, they released the first version of the years, your open license. And at that point, I said, well, I have all this lore. I have all this gameplay from from Power by the Apocalypse. And here's a system that I really like that I think I could really adapt in here. Let's let's take a crack at it. And at that time, the alien like Stressfuls and Panic, those weren't even in the open license. So it wasn't even until I think twenty twenty two when the license had gone through another rerelease. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we had gotten all the extra mechanics in it that I was like, OK, I think we're really in this place. And I had been working on it. So now I was like retroactively fitting stuff, fixing it where it was. And kind of the reason I chose year zero was because I believe it's the perfect blend of narrative and gameplay. You can still do things like theater of the mind, but you can also with the zone based combat still have battle maps, which to me was important as as you know, as a mech game, you're normally going to have battle maps and maps like that. But I didn't want to do a glorified miniatures game because I feel like if I wanted to do that, I should just make a miniatures game. Yeah. Yeah. And then I really like the D6 pool system. I liked how even if you have a high dice pool, there were still a nonzero chance. That you could completely flub the role. I like that you only had to get one success nine times out of ten. And then you the extra success would help you kind of build stunts forward. I really enjoyed that. I love the stress system out of Alien and the panic system as well. And I kind of took it all a step forward and using that as it was honestly the perfect framework for me to build this mech horror game to to equal parts horror. But also, you know, being in a mech, you're going to have that power fantasy element to it. Yeah. So so I've read I've downloaded the Quick Start, which is available and obviously we'll put a link in our show notes to the Kickstarter and stuff like that. The Quick Launch as it's called. The Quick Launch. Yeah. Great games just slightly changed the name of their Quick Start, don't they? Absolutely. Quick to make it genre appropriate. And yeah, I can see a lot of alien in here, not only the green on black, but the panic table, as you mentioned, but it's a different sort of panic table and it brings up some new mechanics that that we haven't encountered in the alien RPG. What can you tell me about stability and ego and particularly strands? Awesome. This is my favorite part because this is the actual mechanics that I built originally for the system to kind of build on the initial framework. Stability and ego are two new stats we've added to the game. Stability is a measure of your pilot stability, their mental health, their ability to kind of keep their morale. And I do apologize if you hear anything in the background. There is work going around my house right now, but I just noticed because I'm hearing it. So just giving that little quick disclaimer. So stability is like your how your pilot is in doing in the long term. And so I knew when playing games such as like other games like Call of Cthulhu and like Delta Green that I wanted something that could track long term health, like mental health. But I really still enjoyed the stress because stress was kind of the short term health of the time. And so stability was my answer to that. And then ego very much in the lore. The game is about, you know, obviously you're piloting these things called automata and the Tom is are slightly living. They're not like talking to you, but they are. They have their own personalities. There are their own type of beast. And in order to interface with the automata, you use the system called the ego chamber, which is you are fueling yourself conscious into the automata and it is sapping that from you. So your ego is how you recognize yourself as a person. So as you use your automata abilities and when I mean their abilities, I mean like they're super, you know, they're more supernatural abilities. They're you know, abilities to shrug off harm when they shouldn't be able to to create these big bombastic attacks to do all these maneuvers. And as you do that, your ego starts to drain. And when your ego hits zero and you know, you can stop, you know, some of some attacks will drain your ego. Some of your own choices would drain your ego. But nine times out of ten, it's going to be on you whether your ego hits zero or not. And when your ego hits zero, your pilot has in the narrative lost their sense of self and they can't distinguish themselves from the automata. So the automata takes fully over and that's where we have like the mechanics of like berserking, which is what does your time to do when you're no longer in control? And then strands was a way that I wanted to put Nick before we come to hands just across on the ego. So does this work similarly to things like shadow in L5R and corruption in the Simber Room in that when your character gets down to zero ego, they are effectively an NPC and the automata takes over? Oh, no. So can recover from it from zero ego. So you can recover from it. So when you have berserking, you have a text that you read that every automata archetype has and it tells you. So your berserking actually makes you stronger, funny enough. It also sets you a kind of narrative limit where it's like you don't you don't just say, you know, mainly like as always, like you don't differ friend from foe. You keep fighting no matter what and such and such. And, you know, the mechanical edge of that is that you can choose to go against your berserk, but that reduces your die pool to one. So it does really become this sort of kind of tightrope block that you have to go. Because if you want the benefits of the berserk, you know, if you're already in this horrible situation, you might as well play up to it. And that kind of also features with stuff such as like the breakdown and everything else, which is what the kind of the pilot archetype equivalent of that is. Right. Right. So this felt a little bit reading this and I'm not a massive mecha nerd. So forgive me, but I have seen Pacific Rim and there you've got that thing where you need two pilots for each mech. No, Jaeger, each Jaeger. Yes, see, I know. I know my. Yeah, you may be drift compatible. And you've got to be compatible. And when you're piloting, you go into the sort of special effects. Yeah, the interface of it all. Yeah. Yeah. And it felt to me a little bit like this was I could imagine in my head playing this game that there's some similar special effects going on. And that's that, you know, clinging on to your personality and stuff. What I haven't yet, you know, we've not played this game. I've only been looking through the rules. You talked about each automata automaton. Actually, each automaton is singular has its own particular berserk mode. Am I right or am I reading that wrong? No, you're right. So every archetype. So we have 12 and 12 and actually in less than four hundred dollars in the back of it, we'll have 13 and 13. We have 13 pilot archetypes and hopefully 13 automata archetypes. And each of them has their own unique berserking mechanic. Right. So give me three examples of what those pages might be. So my favorite one is most likely is going to be the overload, which is about an automata that has a nuclear reactor built into it. And they have an overheat mechanic that's specific to that archetype. So when you berserk, it completely hijacks the the heat mechanic and you are set to maximum. So you're in meltdown, essentially, and you can't get out of meltdown until you destroy every enemy that's in front of you. So it becomes this race against time. And when your meltdown, because your meltdown will hurt you every turn. And once you hit zero during your meltdown, you blow up, explode. Yeah. And it's usually not fun for anyone that's around you. So that becomes a highly volatile one. I was going to say, why have you got a big smile on your face if it's not fun for everyone around you? It's fun for me as the GM. And it's fun for me as the player of the overload. And I'm like, well, this is everyone else's problem, which is very much, I think, one of the core principles of Eligitatomata is making bad choices and being like, well, this is everyone else's problem now, not my own time. And then the the other berserking I really like is the prototype, which requires you want you to feed an enemy or you see your ally fall. Your Tom has to eat them. Right. Yeah. OK. I'm I'm I'm doing this and I'm seeing how it's going into the horror thing as well. Just briefly, I do want to get under strands, honestly, but just briefly, instability. Well, both both of these I noticed that as is typical of year zero, generally, the numbers are low in this. Your your your stability, your ego, I think equal a stat. Your stat is obviously kind of, you know, two to five sort of thing. So the numbers are low here. You talk about stability being a long term tracker of mental health. But I thought, well, well, when you said that, I thought, but I might only have like three points of stability. Yeah. Long term is long term. I'm pretty long term because stability is is in the actual like, you know, micro of the session as opposed to the macro of the campaign. You might only be losing a point of stability if you're unlucky, like one point a session because the only way to lose stability is either by certain effects, self activated talents that you decide to do or when your stress hits 10 and you end the and you end the operation, you immediately take that damage and stability for doing that. So and then you roll a night on this on a panic. Yes. Yes. Which is a low number is what I'm saying. So you can you can gain it up fast. But if you're careful, you can quickly keep it under control. And then stability does require does recover at a slow rate. It is, you know, a point or two per day. And you need to be in like the stress free environment. And we have mechanics for how you can hasten that. And that's something that was actually interesting talking about. Well, you know, if these mechs are really messing with your head, you know, would they have psychologists on standby for the pilots and and what that would look like? So actually writing that mechanic into the actual core rulebook, not necessarily in the quick launch, unfortunately, that was really awesome to do as well. So I I haven't in this in a session, I've seen someone hit their breakdown in all the play tests. The fastest I've seen it happen was within four sessions and the breakdown. And it's not like what stability when it hits zero and like other games like where you like to say, we come up an NPC and the characters over, you can't you can recover and you will recover. It's just going to exact a toll on most more likely on everyone around you. So I do think the pacing for that is a lot slower than people might originally think when they first look at that role. But I mean, I have seen it where stability can go down chaotically. Cool. Right. Are we ready to talk about strands now? Trans. Yeah, absolutely. So tell us all about strands, Nick. So strands is kind of addressing a core principle that I had when going into designing this game. So I'm a role player. Like I love talking at the scenes. I like being as GM being the NPCs, having conversations with people. But not everyone wants to do that. And I understand that the reason why people don't want to do that is because they want to roll dice. They want to get that mechanical benefit. They want to actually play the mechanic side of the game. And I completely get that. So strands was my way to kind of bridge the gap between role players and joking aside like role players. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember I wanted to award good role play for the role players, but also incentivize role play for the people who normally wouldn't do that. And I don't mean like you'd have to force your person that really likes rolling dice to just sit there and now or conversation, but to at least engage with the NPCs. So strands are your connections between other people. So between the players, between the NPCs and strands aren't always positive. Like they can be your friend, they can be your sibling or romantic partner. They can also be your rival. They can also be strands you have with villains. That was something that happened a lot in our extended tests, which is really cool because then it kind of has this this mechanical stat that you can track. Well, how intense are like, you know, and before it through as our relationship with each other is. And the nice thing about strands is they are two way streets that are shared by the recipients of the strand. So say, Dave, you and Matthew are playing and your characters have two strands together. Maybe you're like battle buddies, maybe your rivals. We don't know how that that's built out so you can tap one of your strands or sorry, I shouldn't use that. We had to change that terminology. You can exhaust one of your strands in order to gain a benefit, which is two strand dice, which is a dice that can succeed on a one or six. It's kind of like the flip of the stressed eye. So it's a very awesome boon. And then in doing so, your pool between each other would be reduced to one. Now, Dave, you could use both those strand eyes and be very greedy, but then Matthew wouldn't be able to use any of that. Right. And strands aren't once they're spent or they're exhausted, they do come back. You do actually have to in your downtime, you have to nourish that relationship, whether that's, you know, hanging out, playing cards, go getting a drink, getting into a fight with each other. You know, something like that will refresh your strands in the meantime and then allow you to access them again. And then any time you have a significant milestone in your relationship, whether good or bad, the GM, you know, you can turn to the GM or ask or the GM can simply be like, I think you get a strand here. And then at that point, there's a really awesome pilot archetype, which has a strand talent, which is whenever you're in like an intense, like emotional, intimate moment, you read the mechanic out, you do it. And then at that point, you normally get the strand as well as some other benefits. So that's been really awesome because, you know, as a player, I have friends, you know, and I specifically when we did test groups, I made sure to grab people that I knew weren't like the best role players are so into it. And it was great because they could be a little bit like, all right, you have downtime. What do you want to do with your day? Like the shift of your day, the first shift. It goes, I'm going to go hang out with the NPC engineer. We're going to hang out. And like we didn't have to do a scene that but they still like actively engage with that NPC because they knew that was going to refresh the strands that they had built with them. Yeah. And at least kept them in the game in order to not, you know, just be at the phone at the table while someone's doing a scene. So it kind of gives, you know, benefits to everyone. So just strands, are they do you define them at all? So when you earn a strand through a moment that happens in the game, do you then does the DM say this is your rival strand or this is your your strand that I'm a better pilot than Matthew or something? Well, that's ridiculous. You couldn't possibly have a strand. So do this strands have that kind of narrative tag to them as well? Or is it up to the player kind of at the table to decide what it means? Yeah, it's usually up to the player. We didn't want to really make like different types of strands, because strands are just strands for the mechanical benefit of it. Right. But narratively, we do always say like in the rulebook that says, well, each strand is tied to a specific moment. So you can definitely like write down or remember, well, I got the strand because of this that happened in us. And that could be kind of like, at the end of a campaign, you can look back and be like, wow, this is a like memory map of everything that we've been through. Yeah, remember when you stole my pudding and I cried for like two hours and punched in the face? Well, that was an intense moment for us in our relationship early on. Cool. Yeah. And this does feel to me like it's a great way of capturing what I've seen. Again, I speak very much not as an expert here. But from what I've seen of McAnime, as it were, you know, yeah, there's giant robots bashing the shit out of each other. But there's also lots of lots of melodramatic kind of soap opera happening around those scenes with with our various pilots getting themselves into all sorts of emotional tangles. And this is obviously meant to be encouraging that sort of play in your downtime. Right. Absolutely. And, you know, there's just a simple like fact of the matter where if you're playing a campaign of Eldritch Tomata and you can't it can't always be met combat. Like you can definitely do that for a one shot. You could even do it for three shot. But eventually after a while, going from battle to battle, you don't want the gameplay loop to be we go on a mission. We get back. We go on a mission. We get back because it doesn't feel like there's there's stakes or there's actual like a character growth in your arc. And a lot of that and strands is kind of how we handled that in order to have downtime while not alienating other players that we want to have an actual like the game to it. One thing because we leapt straight into the mechanics of the game. Nick, can you just give us a quick one minute? You know, what's the elevator pitch? What's the setting of the game? And what are the what are the players doing when they're in their automata? So the quick three sentence elevator pitch that I always give people is this is a game about fighting horrific beings that want to eat you that are being controlled by mimicries of angels that want to control you while piloting giant robots that are slowly killing you. And the kind of lore base of the game is that there's this day that they called Advent Day that this demiurge godlike being and we're not sure if it's divine. We're not sure if it's alien. It's only known as the architect. It comes down and pretty much slaughters most of the population. It jump starts the apocalypse out of the bodies of the of the of the people that it's the architect has killed the horrors are spawned and the seraphs come from the horrors. What are seraph come from the architect, which they're all like aspects of the architect. So the architect just goes away after that has never been seen again in the lore. And, you know, during that time, the so the apocalypse happened. So a lot of the lore of the game is okay. What does the world look like after that? Most a lot of governments and cities has fallen. Most civilization hubs have like hunkered down, either gone underground or kept themselves closely tightly packed as to avoid being detected. And in doing so, in kind of the research of it and, you know, through the architect and some of the other things that have happened. Funny enough, the architect itself has kind of led to the knowledge of the automata, which are not something that are entirely are invented by humankind. They are built off these blueprints. And that this is like the secret GM information that you find in the world. But yeah, the automata are built off a primordial blueprint. So like, group hints of like old gods or old primordial beings. I don't like to use the word God because I don't want to lend the fact that this is divine because you don't know if it's divine. And I think that's really cool just to treat them as if they're aliens as well. And a lot of like the groups in the setting are like, well, how do they see the architect? So there's a cult that views the architect as a god. There's obviously there are more of your political figures that view the architect as an opportunity to take control of the world. People that use it that think we can advance humanity with it. People that, you know, worship the automata. People that think the automata are a scourge. And that's something that we really like to play with because I love the fact that the pilots, you know, can be heroes to some and and demons to others because the one thing I always love to say is that your job as an automata pilot isn't to save people. It's to kill horrors. And if that means leveling a city while you do it to kill horror or, you know, even better a seraph, then you do that. Yeah, you're kind of exempt from that. And whenever an automata fights in a city like people, if there are people around, they're probably going to die because I mean, when we were designing these mechs in general, we thought of the we wanted to do the Pacific Rim design. We wanted to do mechs of weight that were heavy every time they step a shriek. It's destroyed. They fall into a building. The building is gone. Yeah. So it's definitely a very volatile world. Cool. Cool. Sounds. Yeah. Sounds really interesting. So, yeah, I'm just looking at your Kickstarter, not sorry, your crowdfunding. And let's be specific. It's being crowdfunded on Backkit here. Yes. I'm looking at this now and you have done very well. Where we at at the moment. A little over eighty four. Eighty four thousand dollars. We got twenty one days at the moment of recording listeners. By the time you listen to this, it'll be about two weeks still to go. So you're safe. You're home free. But I remember seeing this before on Kickstarter and you didn't do so well in that campaign. I remember backing it. And I want to talk a little bit if you don't if it's not too painful for you. No, I'd like to talk a little bit about what are the lessons you learn from that because Dave and I are about to go into a Kickstarter campaign of our own. And we want to, you know, not screw up like you did. No, we want to learn from those before. No, it's sage advice is what he means. And you know what we I don't know. Like I would I could definitely say we screwed up in a few things. And honestly, a lot of it was just not being prepared. But I will definitely talk about the Kickstarter. I feel like it'd be a different story of the back of it hadn't funded yet. And then I'll be saying that question very differently. But there are great things to be taken from Kickstarter. So I'll be entirely just transparent about this. So most of this game has been funded out of the pockets of Ian and then a bit by myself. And initially, when we were doing all the writing, I had gotten about 60, 70 percent of the book done on my own just writing it. And I knew that I wanted to bring on writers because I didn't want to make a game that was just me writing it. And I wanted to make a game that we had different perspectives. So we brought on writers and we paid them out of pocket in order to write their stuff a good amount of them. And so we had got to about I want to say eighty five ninety percent of the manuscript was done. And so I have some opinions on crowdfunding. I there are some good practices. And I think there are a lot of bad practices that I don't like. Like I I I abhor long fulfillment times. I absolutely abhor them. And I think if you take more than a year and a half to two years to fulfill, I think there's something wrong. Maybe you should did some more R&D and set up before I've been in kickstarters that haven't been fulfilled for I had finally gone stuff after four years. And, you know, we we know the old crowdfunding trope. Oh, you get something in the mail. Oh, I forgot I backed this like five years ago. And it's a go. It's a pleasant surprise. But I didn't I didn't want Elgert Tom to be a present surprise. I wanted it to be a game that people were like, OK, I ordered the Z year back. Yeah. The boat is sailed, doesn't it? If you get it three or four years down the line, you've forgotten about the game and maybe your exact initial excitement about the game is potentially long gone as well. And I feel like that's how you get a lot of games that are almost like Dead or Unarrival, where like you have these one off books that never get supplements because it's just so like, you know, if you if you know every time you pre-order, something you're going to get it five years later. I mean, you're probably going to stop pre-ordering that because it's just not going to be worth it. So we came with the finished manuscript like very close to dawn and I said, OK, well, the game is pretty much done. All we need is layout and art as and then some like editing and then obviously some readers in order to kind of adjust them because we were running horror. So we want to make sure that we use a proper language that we're not crossing the lines that we're just ignorant of. So we got to that point and I said, well, that's going to cost a lot of money, you know, paying writers. We can do it in short bursts because, you know, and we're paying like, you know, we're playing 10 cents a word, which I wish we could be paying a little bit more. But that's how we did out of pocket at that time. And we were still at like that industry standard. So I was very happy with that at least, especially after researching and seeing that some people that were a lot more successful in us and established companies paying it like five cents a word, which I think is ridiculous. But that's that's that's a rant for another time. So I'm happy to join you on that run when it comes to it. So we we paid our writers. And the other thing I wanted to do is I wanted to make sure all all our debts were settled before we went to Kickstarter. Like I didn't want anyone to be like, oh, you'll get paid when the Kickstarter is fun. Kickstarter is fun because I feel like that is that's another predatory practice that's used. And I hate that. And I wanted to do better. And ultimately, I think it's better for the business as a whole, because now you're not on the hook for a bunch of past debts when you get that funding. So like, as of right now, when we get the funding for EA, like, it's it's not like we have to back pay a lot of bills or anything like that. We can just go straight into commissioning the new stuff. So when we we commissioned the cover art and then when we went to Kickstarter, I said, OK, we have the cover and we have a finished manuscript. And I told everyone the majority of this project funding is going to go to art and layout and obviously like shipping logistics and whatnot. So because we didn't have a lot of capital and a lot of stuff done up front, you know, more so that require a lot more investment from us. We had to set our goal high. So we had to set that 65 K goal, which is already kind of I realize now is a red flag, because unfortunately, there's an effect where if your game isn't funded, people won't back it. Yeah. And so you have a greater chance of getting more backers if your game is funded because people are like, oh, assured that it's going to it's going to come out. I'll spend their time on it, which is very like counteractive to the way crowdfunding is. Well, crowdfunding is meant to do exactly. Yeah, but you can't fight that. And sometimes and we didn't really have the capital or the kind of backup funds to set our goal artificially low and then be able to cover it. Right. Yeah. You know, MSM, you know, MOS costs and whatnot. And so we went to EA. We had our own minimum marketing budget. We put about a grand into marketing and we did a lot of kind of grassroots style marketing at Pax Unplugged. I know we had the banner. We talked to people. We got about 300 signups, which is great. And then, you know, we launched we launched immediately in January because we wanted on second because we wanted to take advantage of EA being fresh in people's heads that we had talked to about. And I still think that that was a right call. But I think the problem is that we we just hadn't developed enough because unfortunately telling people, hey, the game is done is one thing, but showing them a lot of art pieces, a lot of finished stuff, design mockups. That's another thing. And that's what our campaign really lacked. And that's what it failed to grasp in people that came in. And I can understand that. And looking at the Kickstarter now, like you go and you see the cover and you see a video of me talking, see one mock up, but there's no other art to it. It's really basic. You see this team of writers, but you're you know, you're not necessarily unsure of what you're getting, unfortunately. So it didn't do that well. And plus, our marketing wasn't that wasn't that amazing either because we didn't really have a marketing budget at that time. So it got about I mean, it got, you know, 15000 the first day. It was good. You know, we thought it was carrying strong. But unfortunately, I just feel like if you don't clear, if you don't clear that 50 to 75 percent, 50 to 75 percent hurdle within that first like couple hours. Yeah. Your your chances go down dramatically. And that's just unfortunate. That's just the numbers game at that point. Yeah. And so when we recovered from that, we said, OK, we took and people were like, well, we wanted to see more art. And so we knew we needed to a fund more art out of our pocket. We needed to actually put out a quick start guide because people couldn't just play the game. They had to rely on us running at cons at that point. Yeah. And the quick start means we had to do layout and we had to make art for the quick start. So we took the next five months after that kind of pulling together money, funding art, building out the quick launch. We released the quick launch early May and then all of a sudden we saw the downloads skyrocket. We got like I want to say a couple hundred like three hundred downloads within the first day, five hundred within the first week. And then it started. We gave up this free quick launch, 50 pages, and then it kind of started going off from there. And, you know, that's when people start coming in and was like, oh, I don't like this and I like that. And it's like it's cool. And you take the criticism here and there. And so but now people were talking about EA and then we were getting contacts with press. And they were like, hey, would you like to talk about PA and EA? And then we were reaching out. And so I mean, and we got more art done. And we said, OK, we have art done. We have the actual quick start out. What's the last piece of the puzzle? And that thing was marketing. And so this is what shifted our change from Kickstarter to BackerKit. So BackerKit, we had originally we're going to do marketing for Kickstarter because BackerKit will work with Kickstarter. But if you do it through the BackerKit platform, you actually get a little few more perks and a little bit of discounts here and there, which is really nice and helped us. And so when BackerKit started running those pre-ads in the month leading up to the once we had planned and like, all right, this is the Kickstarter is going to go live on the on the 25th. So this is what we're going to do that month beforehand leading up back. It started running ads and then we started seeing every day, you know, and we were obviously spending money on those ads. So I mean, like the thousand dollars we spent on the original campaign. We've we've 10 times that by now, but it's all been worth it because we were watching that pre-order list go up and up and up and up. And, you know, originally we were like, well, maybe we'll watch it. Sixty five can't it's like, no, we can't do that. We need to be able to hit funded as soon as possible. Yeah. And that that's a tough conversation to have because you're either get you don't want to you want to be transparent about it. You don't want to put yourself in the hole, you know, because we're we're you know, we're two normal people that have day jobs and have responsibilities and people that were in our own finances that we have to pay. And it was a really hard pill to swallow. But we ended up navigating really well by cutting a lot of the extras and hiding them behind stretch goals and being like, OK, like all of a sudden done. What is it going to take to ship and make this book? Yep. And so we got it down. We got it down. We're like realistically ten thousand dollars. If we get ten thousand dollars, that at least will cover all our production costs and then we can keep funding the art out of pocket and we'd be and we'd be able to fulfill this still in our year time. So we kind of made that acceptance with ourselves that that's what we're going to do. And then, you know, Backer kit was like, OK, well, you know, here's your conversion rates. We have all close to like fifteen hundred people that are signed up for the pre-backer kit launch and curating that list and getting that list. That number rate as high as possible is super important because the minute you launch, you want people to to back immediately within the first hour. Yeah. Yeah. Because as soon as it hits, it floods. So you're seeing fifteen hundred people are getting that message to their phone. They're like, oh, EA has launched. And you're hoping that five to ten percent of those people immediately back in that first hour. And then you and you start getting closer and closer because then once you hit that goal, you know, the algorithm starts kicking you up. And that's the same one back or get that on Kickstarter, you start trending. And that's when it all starts kicking into overdrive. So we were very we hit our goal in thirty six minutes. And that was amazing for us. And then from there, once we were actually funded, everything just started skyrocketing. And, you know, I look I look every night at the campaign and I tell myself, I was like, you know, this could have been a fluke. We did our goal. You know, I'm only as best as my last at bat. You know, don't don't think it'll go the same next time. Like it took a lot of work and a lot of pre-planning. So I guess my lessons that I've learned from Kickstarter is that you can't assume that people are going to back on good faith. And even like when you try to have the best practices, you need to have content and you absolutely need to have a marketing budget. And at first, that marketing budget is going to scare you a bit, but it's going to be worth it. And you need to make sure when you launch you have that that follower rate ready to go. Yeah, because that that first hour to two hours is so crucial. And I apologize for ranting for like 20 minutes on that, but it's yeah, it's great stuff. Yeah. Yeah. But enough. I was talking with with Andrew Gasco about his plans of the apes, Kickstarter, and they although they are on Kickstarter, he said best thing you can do is use back of kit marketing. Absolutely. So he said that's his big lesson that he's learned. So they've been spectacular. I would highly recommend recommend them. Kieran, if you're looking right now, if you're watching this right now, I appreciate everything that you've done for us. Like you get your own like agent or marketer that's helping you. And it has been I don't like I don't think I'll ever launch a crowd funder on Kickstarter again. I might you know, or I might, but I would always use back of kit 100 percent. I would I fully believe they were worth it. So why is it I mean, obviously, we're not just we didn't just go it's Kickstarter. We thought a bit about the various things as European ones as well. Obviously, Kickstarter's we felt was a good one to go with because it's got a captive market. If you're trying to market a new product itself, then you've got all those people there who know to go there for for tg RPGs. Absolutely. And obviously, back of kit has got a bit of that, but you haven't felt there's been any disadvantage to being with back of kit. I mean, obviously not because Kickstarter failed and back again succeeded and you've got more money than you are. So Kickstarter. But yeah, I it would be tough. I would I guess I would have to have like seen all this scenario where I use the same back or hit marketing and so on. So where my Kickstarter go, I think if you have the money for it, I think Kickstarter and the capital, I think Kickstarter could probably be more advantageous to take advantage of that. But I think that the because working with back or kit on their platform and allowed us so many more perks that we didn't need to, you know, shell out extra for just because we didn't have the money. It really did help us out. So I think if you are a person and you are starting that that first indie project that you're doing, you know, that first game that you're really being serious about, I think back is a great place to go and not do yourself into a hole where Kickstarter. I feel a lot of it is, you know, Kickstarter doesn't really, you know, it's a platform, but they don't they themselves don't give you the support. So you really have to build up that support yourself. So I guess I guess it really depends with how much are you willing to dedicate to building up that support? And I mean, obviously, you two have built this awesome. We were talking about your own effects with like, you know, and experiences of crowdfunding. And like you built this awesome podcast that's been like a staple of your zero. And I don't mean just to fluff you up by and say that I'm being very serious. Like when I saw the email, I was like, oh, like these are people I've listened to quite a bit when I was first getting into your zero and even still. So cool. Thank you. So we're coming to the end of our allotted time. I have one big question to ask. But Dave, do you have any other questions you want to ask? No, I don't think so. Just it's, you know, from my point of view, Nick, it's been a fabulous 50 minutes. It hasn't felt like it hasn't felt like 50 minutes at all. It's been superb. But now I'm over to you, Matthew, for the last question. OK, so, yeah, I just thank you very much. That last 20 minutes was all for me and Dave and maybe some listeners out there who are on the same journey. I'm sure they're eating all that up, but I just want to come back to the rest of our playing and GMing listeners. And then I have, while we've been talking, backed Eldritch Automata. Thank you. I've got the screen up. I did see the 831 number go up to 832. It's now 834, actually. So I've done that. But why should our listeners and we're going to bring a massive audience to you. This is why your Kickstarter failed, of course. You didn't come to us for an interview back in the next couple of days. Absolutely, yes. But our massive audience. Not that Kickstarter was kicked out of the park already before talking to us. I was honestly, I was intimidated. I was like, I feel so weird about going to people and being like, hey, can I be on your podcast to promote? I get that that's how you do it. It just feels so weird, though, to me. I feel like in such a weird position to do that. I'm not sure we've said no to anybody yet. Yeah, we're desperate for content. We'll take any old content. Why should your listeners back Eldritch Automata? Well, I'm assuming if you're listening to the Effect podcast, you love Year Zero. And you should always seek to grow your Year Zero library. And this would be a great addition to that. Not only that, it is very much unlike any Year Zero game that's been out there. And there are some amazing Year Zero games out there. So I think it'd be really great on your shelf. The one thing I love about Year Zero books in general and like freely books in general is that they always double as art books. And that has been a design principle that we have taken to go forward. We want to make some beautiful art. We want something that you can flip through. And even if it falls to the collection curse where you never run the goddamn game and you only just flip through it, at least you have some pretty art to say and be like, wow, that's a cool world that I got lost in for a little bit. So if you like mechs, if you like power fantasy that can turn into complete utter horror at any given moment, if you like cosmic horror, high octane action, Eldritch Automata is for you. And if you want to see some unique systems that aren't really in a lot of other Year Zero games, could be designed it specifically. Like we didn't even touch upon the equipment system, which I think is some of my best writing I've done for mechanics in so long. Definitely go check us out and then also join our Discord and badger me with questions because I'm always down to talk about this. Brilliant. Thank you very much. You know, back it off to hearing that then you are a pauper, I guess, probably. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of reasons why you can't back everything. But I'd like to think that some more of our listeners are going to back it now. So thank you so much, Nick, for taking the time out of your day to come and talk about a game on our podcast. It's been a real pleasure talking to you. And I'm really excited by Eldritch Automata. Thank you. That means a lot coming from the two of you. It really does. Because it's like I said, it's been this this podcast has been very transformative to my experience of Year Zero. Thank you. That's brilliant. Thank you. So I guess we should explain to our listeners that the reason we on the recording made such hilarity around mispronouncing Nick's name there is you had only just before the recording started. Carefully checked how he wanted it pronounced. And then immediately got it wrong. Then immediately got it wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that shows the sort of professionalism that we have, which is not much. Luckily, Nick was very, you know, understanding and tolerant and forgiving of my blatant and inexcusable error. But yes, yeah, interesting stuff. I mean, as I said earlier, I'm I'm not going to back it not through any dislike of the game, but because at the moment I'm not earning very much and I have to be very careful where I spend my money. But yeah, again, I think also, I mean, fighting in Big Mac is is not necessarily something I'm that excited about as a player. Yeah, so me neither. But as is expressed in the interview, he convinced me that it was interesting enough for me to back. And I guess I'm feeling a little bit flush at the moment. So so I can I have because it's coming from America and packing and stuff like that. I'm only going for the PDF level, as it were. But I'm kind of looking forward to getting in more detail. The thing that I still don't really quite have in my head is how in character creation, you know, you kind of build your character and choose your mech, your your your frame, I think it's called. And I I want to say a little bit about how they gel together and how together they effectively become, if you like, a third thing, the combination of you. Yeah. And the character, which I think a lot of the mechanics that he was talking about will really go into that will will will make that quite special. I kind of want to read more a bit about that and, you know, whether there are options then to, you know, borrow somebody else's frame, as it were, and whether there are issues around that or new effects. So, so, yeah, I'm I'm looking forward to the full version of that coming out. I might even organize a bit of a play of the Quick Start just to see all the quick launch. If we expect people to call our game a quick draw, we should do the decent thing and call other people's games the quick launch or whatever variation on quick. They want to cut. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, yeah, I'm interested. I think I'm a lot more interested. I was interested to interview Nick, but kind of as possibly came out during the interview, I was kind of more interested to see, to learn lessons from their failed Kickstarter and what they've done this time to succeed. Because obviously that's of interest to us now. But actually, I'm more genuinely interested in the game now than I was before. So, so I backed it. And yeah, I kind of want to play. I think some of the mechanical tweaks that they've made to the years or engine sound quite interesting. And, you know, it will be interesting to see how they how they played out. So next episode, Dave, we we have again, this time, two weeks ago, we said we've got two potential interviews lined up. And I think although Nick came through and we obviously did the Nick interview, we've still got another one lined up with Neil. Well, we haven't actually got it lined up. We should line it up with Neil, because I'm very keen to get him on the program to talk about his Simber Room book that he just put out on the. Free League Workshop. Absolutely. So we should do that, whether that's going to be next week, though, or the week after will depend a little bit on our recording when we get together with Neil to record that. But also, I wonder whether actually next week we should look in a bit more detail at some of the mechanics of the Old West game. And particularly, I wondered about looking at the development of and rolling a character in our life path generation system, which will be a stretch goal on the game. What do you think? Yeah, I think that's a really good idea. I mean, I love life paths. We've done a few for different games. And so you you you wrote most of this one. Yeah, that's I think that's a great idea. Let's do that. Cool. Well, I'll tell you what. I'll record a little bit about how we developed it. I keep it quite short, though, I think. And then maybe we will roll up characters live in our recording. Yeah. Because I think one of the things that I'm quite proud of is it's a relatively short length of time to roll up a new character. It's actually pretty quick. So I've been I've been writing short scenarios for the actual place that we're going to be running over the next few weeks. And I've been doing pre generated characters for that and doing five pre generated characters all through the life path system. I've done all of it in about 20 minutes. So it can be done really quickly, which is what my intention was from the outset. And I think some of the earlier versions were taking a bit longer. But but yeah, I think we've got it down to something that gives rich impossibilities, but also quick to set up. Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, shall we say we've got lovely Nick has given us our sign off. So all we need to say, Dave, is goodbye from me. And it's goodbye from him. And may the icons bless your adventure. 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. Music. [BLANK_AUDIO]