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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 291 of Effekt, Scottish Blood. My name's Matthew.
Dave:And I'm Dave. And again, we have a packed show for you today. I know we weren't gonna say that, but I completely lost any any any attempt to say something more original. But yes, so in the show today, we have a pretty packed section of World Gaming. There's a couple of quite interesting and potentially controversial things to talk about there.
Dave:I've got a tiny little bit of Old West news. But while IOU was busy at my my niece's wedding last weekend, one of us, that might have been Matthew, was at Tabletop Scotland.
Matthew:Very busy.
Dave:The well, going by the list of bullet points that you've noted down from it, it looks like we've got quite a lot to talk about from your time at Tabletop Scotland. So we will then Yeah. The main feature is gonna be a conversation about the about the convention, about what happened, and I think about all the nice things that some people did for you. So
Matthew:Yes. Gareth Ryder had my hand bought me a coffee. That's that's the big news.
Dave:That's the yeah. Let's not let's not bury the lead. That's the big story today. Woo. Okay.
Dave:Excellent. Yes. But Right. But you survived, obviously, and you are here.
Matthew:Yeah. I did survive. I was very tired. Well, we can talk about my tiredness later on in in that part of the program. Shall we crack on?
Matthew:First of all, we've got no new patrons to thank this time, but thank you to all our patrons. Indeed. However long or short you stay with us, you are lovely people to have, and we couldn't do this podcast without you. You. Or indeed, I've just been doing the accounts because we're we're we've got to move to actually having an accountant now so that, only only an accountant can, submit our taxes for us now.
Matthew:So, so I've been doing our accounts, getting getting the books up straight for Charles, and I notice how much every month you help support things like the software we use to make our stuff and the, you know, the the the cost of actually hosting a podcast and having a domain name and all that sort of stuff. It's great to see Patreon money coming in as money goes out for all those things. So thank you very much. And the art, of course. We're getting a head start on the art for gold gold country, which is how you have to do these things because that's the thing that takes time.
Matthew:And it's great to be able to do that that because of the support of our patrons. So thank you very much.
Dave:Yes. Indeed. Thank you all very much indeed.
Matthew:World of gaming then.
Dave:What are we having look? World gaming. What are we having a look?
Matthew:The first thing I noticed, Dave, was your mate, Steve Jackson, is stepping down as CEO of Steve Jackson Games.
Dave:Yeah. I I I noted that as well.
Matthew:Did he ask you about it? Did did he say a
Dave:lot of conversations with you. He did he did offer me the job of CEO, but it's, you know, it's, you know, it's just not the right time for me. You know? So, yeah, I mean, obviously, Steve and I are are like old muckers. We, you know, really meet.
Matthew:You're like that. You're like that. I'm holding my two fingers up.
Dave:Talk once a year at UK Games Expo when he comes, and we have a brief conversation, which is always very nice. But then we don't talk again. I might have to actually, having said that, he did drop me an email the other day just asking how I was and how things were going, which is really sweet.
Matthew:If you'd responded more positively, he might have actually offered you to
Dave:respond positively, and I asked him how things are going. I didn't get a response back afterwards. But again, I'm not quite sure. There There wasn't any particular reason for him to drop that email. So it was just quite nice that he did.
Dave:But yes. So stepping down from Steve Jackson games. Do we know any more about it?
Matthew:I've only seen what I've seen in the news, and I can't even remember which bit of news that was. I'm guessing probably End World. That's generally my first kind of news source to go to, but it could have been might have even been on Blue Sky or something like that. Yeah. And he's handing over to somebody else in a very managed transition.
Matthew:It would be great if I could remember who he was handing over to.
Dave:So he's handing over to someone called Sabrina Gonzalez, who is a long time of staff with SJG, and she has now taken over as the CEO.
Matthew:Cool. And and the the now, it would be very worthy of him after his career. And I'm gonna talk a little bit about the length of his career. Mhmm. Because he's been making games about as long as you and I have been playing them.
Matthew:Yeah. So if he wanted to retire now, and I say, speaking as a 60 year old, and thinking about retirement myself, if he wanted to retire now, that would be all well and good. But apparently, according to the statement, it's so that he can spend more time focused on designing games.
Dave:Mhmm. Yeah. It's I mean, in our small way, I've I've found kind of exactly that, that the the the small amount of stuff I have to do to kind of just run the mechanics of the business, which actually, you know, you do most of, but Yeah.
Matthew:The fuck do you have to do to run the mechanics?
Dave:But those kind of boring things that I I have got involved with completely take me away from the thing that I actually love doing, which is all the creative stuff. And so I'm very, very appreciative that you do most of that legwork, allowing me to crack on with things like writing The Gold Country, which we will talk about later on.
Matthew:Cool. So, yeah, good luck to Steve Jackson going I to Steve mean, you know, to be honest, actually, we've not really he's not been a major influence on our gaming. We've not played GURPS. We did play a bit of Car Wars, I seem to remember, back in Yeah. The
Dave:But that kind of got that kind of got overtaken by Battle Cars, if you remember.
Matthew:Yeah. You could
Dave:you could argue that Car Wars was a better game in terms of
Matthew:I think it probably was. Yeah. And do you remember back in those days, those games used to come in at Lay five ziplock bags.
Dave:Yes.
Matthew:Yeah. With counters and stuff in. We will return to that topic later in this episode. But, yeah, you know, how far games have come since those days where Yeah. I guess, you know, Steve Jackson was a young man in his early twenties or something, probably sat at home packing those little Ziploc bags.
Matthew:Yeah. And sending them out to subscribers and distributors in what was then a really, really small niche industry. And, you know, we talk about indie gamers now, and it comes back to my point that pretty much everybody was in indie at some point. And and even when Hasbro took over Wizards of the Coast and made them not very independent, and when Games Workshop effectively, you know, became a public limited company in there, I guess you can say they're not independent. Pretty much everybody else is still a bit indie.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:Anyway, thank you, Steve Jackson, for everything you've added to gaming and also for taking my mate Dave off my hand for a couple of hours every UK Games Expo. God, the relief.
Dave:Well, actually, I think it was it's me taking Steve off somebody's hands for a couple of hours. But, I mean, you know, the effect works either way, I guess. So,
Matthew:Cool. Other thing I briefly wanted to mention, just because we got a name check. Time without Tide, we we spoke about a few weeks ago. Yep. And it's doing quite well on on
Dave:Very well.
Matthew:Back of
Dave:BACKER kit. KIT. Yeah. It's doing very well.
Matthew:It's about halfway through the campaign at the moment. So if you're listening to this, then you may well still have time to to back it if you want to. We talked about it being very, very, very, yeah, zero engine feeling. But I I just happened to notice on some article on Facebook about Time Without Tide. One of the posters said, oh, I heard about this game on the Effekt podcast.
Matthew:And immediately back to it. I thought, oh, hey. We're helping Chaosium. They're a small company. They need all the help we can give them.
Matthew:It's
Dave:nice to see that we're supporting these new guys on the block, isn't it? You know? Yes. Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah.
Dave:Give them a leg up with our enormous clout.
Matthew:No. But it is it is a little bit of clout there. Tiny little bit of clout there that I liked that people really I mean, we sit here Listen to
Dave:the crap that we spit out.
Matthew:Speaking bollocks
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:For an hour.
Dave:Yeah. And people As far as
Matthew:we know, nobody actually listens. I mean, you know, we've got hundreds of subscribers, but on on on on podcast, their, you know, their podcast catcher software is just downloading us without fail every couple of weeks. Is anybody actually listening? We don't really know. But, yeah, somebody was listening.
Dave:Seems like some people do. Yes. So no. That was cool.
Matthew:And they're making their buying decisions based on what we say.
Dave:I ought to be a bit more responsible about it then really. But no, I mean it looks good, isn't it? I mean it looks lovely. But like you said, it's it's, yeah. It looks very much like a user engine, like, bastard child with, Pirate Borg.
Dave:But it does look
Matthew:like But that's okay, because those are two great games.
Dave:That is true. Yeah. But it's doing super well. It's got a $190,000 if it's got ten days to go. So it's yeah.
Dave:But cool.
Matthew:Now here's here's a new game that is going to hit crowdfunding. It's going to be on GameFound shortly after you listen to this, if you listen to this on the very first day of publication of this podcast. And that is Gridshock Zero Edition. And it's from friend of the show, Chris Wermeran and his brother Paul.
Dave:Indeed. Yeah. I haven't heard of this one before. Obviously, Chris is behind Terminal State that we talked to him about a few weeks ago or months ago now.
Matthew:Months ago.
Dave:Yeah. And subsequently back. Yeah. So this one, you are a new breed of heroes fighting to restore hope to a warped world in the grip of villainy. A new standalone tabletop role playing game of superpowered resistance on the run powered by the year zero engine.
Dave:It looks nice. Yeah. How's the campaign doing? The campaign is launching in
Matthew:It's still ready. It's launching on the fifteenth. Yeah.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. So so it looks lovely. Gridshock already has a bit of a following because there was I think Paul designed it with its own system and released it as a kind of zine on itch io or something like that. And and so it's got a bit of a backing there. And and, yeah, they've ported it over to the, Xero engine.
Matthew:I'm always interested to see what sort of changes they've made to the Zero engine to make it I've got a vague idea, Dave, that we should invite them on maybe for the next show to talk
Dave:about Yeah, something that's a good idea.
Matthew:In the middle of their campaign. So we'll drop him a line. I'll drop him a line after
Dave:recording. Yeah, sounds like a good idea. Yeah, and it looks it looks cool. I'm not super familiar with the with the setting. But yeah, it looks alright.
Dave:Mean, I I'd say that it looks lovely, actually. But, so I don't know anything else about it. Do we get a chance to speak to Paul, actually?
Matthew:Yeah. No. We shall drop him a line and see if we can get them on board and find out more about the setting. Other things I noticed kick starting, Good Society Mhmm. Which has nothing to do with Year Zero, but I've noticed it before and it's kind of it crosses over into my the academic side of my life.
Matthew:Good Society is the eighteenth century Jane Austen esque role playing game. Yeah. And it's coming up for a second edition, so I wanted to flag that one up.
Dave:It seems it seems to be quite popular and seems to have a It's good absolutely the kind of game I'd rather boil my nuts in hot marmalade than play, I think, personally. But that's just me.
Matthew:Right. Oh, but some marmalade on the stove.
Dave:I'm sure I mean, again, it's got a following. So obviously, many people like it. I mean, I I need to have a look at it. But just just from from from a brief investigation it doesn't look like the kind of thing I would particularly get invested in as a player.
Matthew:It's always popular. I have a sneaking suspicion I don't think I need to back it, but I may get a copy on PDF to have a look at it just just because I'm feeling, in my current state of unemployment, I'm looking once more university work and wondering whether there's post doctoral projects I could get involved in. And there might be, and they vaguely cross over with this sort of stuff. So, might have a look at that. Now, the other bit of news, just wanted to bring out partly out of interest, because you and I have talked about something similar in the past.
Matthew:And this is a chap who deserves a mention for the sheer chutzpah of coming to coming to tabletop Scotland as a guest and going around touting his game. Not having a stand or anything or even selling physical copies of
Dave:his game.
Matthew:He had a couple of physical copies to show. They look very nicely done. I think he's probably got a graphic design background. But it's called Halcyon Stars. We'll put a link in the show notes to this.
Matthew:You can buy it already off it table what do I call it? Dry food.
Dave:Dry food.
Matthew:Yeah. You can do it as print on demand and stuff like that. And it's a space western, an interesting space western. I thought I might even, when I've got a bit more time, download the quick start. It it feels it looks very kind of firefly except there are aliens in it.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah. It's alien and interstellar. So it's there's always Yeah. Interstellar transport and that kind of stuff, faster than light travel.
Dave:I guess it's, you know, a mix of the two, perhaps. So Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. But I just thought he he's a nice bloke. Had a chat with him. And I just thought I'd mention it on here because I'd never heard of it before, and it kind of crosses over with your interests and mine, Dave. So there we go.
Matthew:Indeed. Consider yourself informed.
Dave:Yeah. I mean, I I'd be quite interested to take a quick look at the quick start. I mean, again, from the from the page I'm on, drive through, it it looks very nice. Actually, the artwork looks pretty good on the whole.
Matthew:Yeah. That's what caught caught my attention.
Dave:The cover the cover artwork for the quick start looks super. Absolutely brilliant. The artwork for characters that I can see on a page in the background doesn't look so super, for for my style anyway, for my taste. But that cover image is lovely.
Matthew:Looks lovely.
Dave:Really good.
Matthew:Right. Well, I might download the quick start. I imagine you're already downloading the quick start, so we can
Dave:have a
Matthew:look at it a little bit later on.
Dave:I haven't found the link for it yet, but I I almost I almost certainly will. Yeah.
Matthew:Now the other bit of news, this comes in a slightly strange way, in that I saw somebody from board game wire tweet about this on not tweet about this. Skeet about it on Blue Sky. And the way they found it the the way they skeeted about it, I thought, is very obvious that what we should do is say, we heard this from Board Game Wire. But it was interesting. So Board Game Wire was skeeting about the fact that somebody, I can't remember, Polygon or something like that, had nicked their article.
Matthew:They'd published an article about this bit of news, and then somebody had just pretty much cut and pasted their article into a news article themselves without even mentioning that it was Board Game Wire that had done it. And Board Game Wire have done a bit of actual kind of investigation looking into company accounts and stuff. And that is that, Seamon, cool minis or not, are really, up against it financially speaking.
Dave:Right.
Matthew:And, you know, they've they've always looked they've always they've always done these massive kickstarters generally involving large numbers of figures. Yeah. Often for kind of board games. The sort of board games I can never quite understand where I'd put them in my house if I bought them because you know, they come not just with the box of the board game in but with many other boxes of all the figures.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:And there's a real Yeah, I think we talked about
Dave:this last time when we
Matthew:were talking about crowdfunding in general.
Dave:We did, yeah.
Matthew:You know, having a lot of figures seems to be a really good thing in terms of making money. But then you've got to produce a lot of figures and you've to mail them out and all that sort of stuff. And it strikes me that Simon's financial model has been do a Kickstarter. Do another Kickstarter. Do another Kickstarter.
Matthew:And actually getting a little bit further behind every time on the Yeah. On the fulfilling the project. So I would direct everybody to Board Game Wire to read the article itself and give them some business, particularly because they're bit cross about other people stealing their research.
Dave:Yeah. Okay. Interesting. What's the what's the takeaway for the Semark situation at the moment then? Are they gonna are they are they are they saying it's gonna go under?
Dave:Or
Matthew:Well, I think I think the broad thing is it's gonna crash and burn. I don't know whether go under. I mean, it's one of those things where you think it's too big to fail. But I I you know, there are various things I thought of. Our friends at Too Little Mice were involved with C Mod for a time.
Matthew:Yeah. And then parted company in, I don't know exact terms, but then there was an issue about the game they'd co published, was Broken Compass, was still Seamon's and they were a bit aggrieved at that. They created Outgunned Adventures
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:In in a way of sort of recreating Broken Compass but with without the IP that had lost to CMON. And then they got the IP back from CMON. So I don't know.
Dave:I I just Yeah. Because I just just have a quick look. They've got eight undelivered crowdfunding campaigns at the moment.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:Which basically about $14,000,000 worth of unfulfilled pledges. Yeah. Which is a lot of work and a lot of effort.
Matthew:Yeah. I you see, I think I think they're going to crash and burn. I I they may get rescued by somebody with a load of money, but why would you do that, frankly, and take on all that commitment?
Dave:Well, I guess I guess it depends on, you know, are are the problems with well, obviously, they are losing money or they've certainly, their revenue has taken a a massive hit in the last couple of years. You know, is this is this a logistics problem and they've got the money to do the fulfilment, but they just you know they've got too much work to do? Or is this a financial thing? They'd splurge the money on something else and and they actually are struggling to get the money together to do the fulfillment. That that latter one would obviously be a bigger problem.
Matthew:My feeling, reading between the lines of the article, is of course, is they use the money from the current Kickstarter to fulfill the last Kickstarter sort of thing. And as know, when you've got eight unfulfilled Kickstarters, people are gonna be less inclined to jump in on another one. Plus, I think there are other, you know, in the last couple of years, tariffs. I bet you most of their manufacturing is in China. Most of their customers are in America.
Matthew:I they've probably been well screwed by the orange one. And but, you know, they were probably sailing too close to the edge.
Dave:Anyway. Yeah.
Matthew:Anyway. So something like that.
Dave:Didn't have any kind of room for maneuver or something stupid like that. Yeah.
Matthew:Now I don't know whether Alfred and Federico from of the One Ring fame, he he had did have a job there as a sort of creative director or something for a time. Mhmm. I don't know if he still does, but I hope he doesn't get burned in this. No. Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. Because I reckon, you know, a lot of the names if if they do crash and burn with eight unfulfilled Kickstarters and millions of dollars owing, then I I think some of the people behind them will be, you know sort of shunned by the community.
Dave:Per Serna and on Gratham.
Matthew:Which
Dave:would be very unfair for some creatives who weren't involved in the actual decision making behind campaign after campaign. But, yeah, mud sticks, I guess, isn't it?
Matthew:Talking of delivering on Kickstarters, we have made the very valid decision not to kick start the Gold Country too early, because we were nowhere near finishing it. How close are you to starting it now, Dave?
Dave:Well, I know. Well, I mean,
Matthew:I had
Dave:it had been I had done quite a lot of work, particularly around some of some of the really actually quite hard and time consuming research around maps and stuff. So I've now finally got well, I had quite a good map for San Francisco in about 1851. I've now I'm now very happy with that. I'm happy with that. A lot of that work had been done already, and we had a pretty good idea of the structure and pretty good idea of what the campaign was going to look like.
Dave:Having now finished working up at the park, with my my day job, which interestingly, it took them ninety minutes before they rang me after I finished. So on the Monday morning, I got a call at 09:30 saying, Dave, can you help? Which is
Matthew:Oh, god. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Help, Hal.
Matthew:Help because I've, you know, the keys to the the shed is not on the hook where the key to the shed is, or help as in this is a serious issue that we No,
Dave:it wasn't a serious serious issue, but it was it was something which I'd managed. It's something that was like unusual. I'd managed to fix it a couple of weeks ago, and nobody noticed. Issue had recurred, so rather than working out for themselves, they just gave me a call. But that's fine.
Dave:That was fine. They're great people and I want to help them. But anyway, so two weeks now have passed, and I've been focusing full time on writing, gaming stuff. Interestingly, in both of those weeks, something has happened to sort of knock me slightly off the the track I was planning I. E.
Dave:Writing the words for Gold Country. A little bit. Only a little bit. First week, I can't remember what is there something on the Monday, and I had to do some extra research for something. So I wasn't writing.
Dave:I was researching. Last week so when I'm not doing this, in my in my free time, I've been doing stuff on this other game that I'm not sure whether we're telling people about it or not.
Matthew:Yeah. This is Yeah. Okay. Let's let's not for the moment.
Dave:But anyway, I've got really excited about that. So I I was doing something over the weekend, and I really wanted to finish it. So I finished it the beginning of last week.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:That took me a couple of days. So overall, I've done about one week's worth of work, I've done but I've done about 20% of the words. Actually, the at the rate I'm writing, this is gonna get done quickly. Is gonna get finished in, I think I don't wanna overestimate. Six weeks, maybe, I think.
Dave:And I'll have a full first draft pretty much done.
Matthew:I will start reading that because I'm looking for ideas of things we can illustrate. So I'll
Dave:Yeah. I'll I'll so I'll I'll I'll give you a nod when each chapter is finished. So but you can read chapter one, but that's quite short. I'm I'm in the middle of chapter well, I'm near the end of chapter two, which is I mean, the big thing in chapter two is, our representation of San Francisco. I'm now the original plan was to have Sacramento in there as well, but San Francisco has taken up so much words, many more words than I'd anticipated originally.
Dave:There's a question of whether Sacramento and Stockton become stretch goals. Stockton was always gonna be a stretch goal, but I was thinking we could put Sacramento in anyway, and I've done some work on that. So I'll keep working on that as a principle for the moment. But I mean, it's
Matthew:Okay. Just ask let me ask a question here. I'm a bit vague on timings here. When is Sacramento declared capital of California?
Dave:Off the top of my head, I've got no idea.
Matthew:Cool. That may have a basis on our decision making.
Dave:Well, I think at this time I think at this time, San Jose might be the capital, because that is where the governor was based.
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what I was
Dave:But coming I'm not I'm not planning on on San Jose doesn't really
Matthew:That's fine.
Dave:So I'm not planning on
Matthew:visiting San San Francisco is the gold country bit, as it were. So San Jose, I'm less worried about. But, obviously, Sacramento is also a bit gold country ish.
Dave:Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Because because, I mean, you've got you've got San Francisco on the coast where everyone comes to. And then Sacramento and Stockton are the kind of the two feeder towns actually at the at the base of the rivers. So Yeah.
Dave:They are both they are both big important towns. But, I mean, San Francisco is the number one.
Matthew:In our playtest campaign, it's been Stockton for the most part that has been the Yeah. The the gateway, as it were.
Dave:Yeah. That's because that's the way we we kind of set that that campaign slightly well, down the rivers from Stockton. So, obviously, Stockton is the place you'd go to.
Matthew:Yeah. Although, it looks to me like in the nineteenth century, it's really hard to get where where we've set the campaign from there to Stockton without actually going way north, skimming past Sacramento, according to the research Seriously? I did for Yeah. Seriously. I think, if you look at I mean, there's a road there now, obviously.
Matthew:But if you look in the area around China, with the area that was called Chinese Camp, I think it may well have been kind of impassable in terms of steepness and stuff.
Dave:Okay.
Matthew:At the time. Sorry, this is, this is the sort of thing we should be probably discussing over at dining room table rather than, Yeah. In a But it was an interesting thing. It, it was what became, I thought, a relatively short hop for an early part of the campaign. It was following on actually from the setup you did when you did the first adventure.
Matthew:And I click on. Yeah. I thought, oh, that'll be a short hop down there. And then I could not see a way to make it work in the eighteen hundreds. Nowadays, quick, you know, little freeway or something.
Matthew:But back then, it it seems that it required a long journey north through oh, what's the place? The famous town of Sutters You're
Dave:talking of Plough. You're talking of Coloma, which is where Sutters Mill was.
Matthew:Sutters Mill. Yeah. You you have to go up through
Dave:where the first find. I mean, that's a long way out of the way.
Matthew:Yeah. But it seemed to me I could own that's the only way I could see a trail
Dave:in a look. Yeah.
Matthew:In the eighteen fifties to to get there. So anyway, I mean, deserves more work, but we need to need to press on it. This is also when I found that we that your initial map has kinda got the rivers a bit wrong, but I've told you about that already.
Dave:Yeah. I've I've amended the map. The the location that you'd mentioned was I checked it and you're right. It a bit wrong. So I've corrected that on the map.
Matthew:Cool. Anyway, we don't need to that's why we work as a team, Dave.
Dave:So I can
Matthew:slag you off in public on a podcast. Well,
Dave:you know, if you're nitpicking the odd thing out of all this stuff then that's fine it just shows how good the quality is of most of it. I'm inevitably going to make the odd mistake.
Matthew:But
Dave:but anyway so basically my map of San Francisco had been changing while I was writing the San Francisco stuff as I was learning more stuff. And I've tried to make it as historically accurate as possible, but there are some, some some decisions I've Don't made follow that in order to make the gaming element of it better. Brilliant. But I think I'm I'm quite I'm quite excited by it. I think it's very cool.
Dave:And there are some beautiful beautiful little bits that come out of the history, that are just I I just I mean, love they're lovely in a historian and in a gamer's point of view. Horrible for the real people going through them. But, the the one I'll if if I if I can digress, the one
Matthew:Go ahead.
Dave:The one that I particularly love, so issue of slavery. California in 1850 was brought into the union, as a a free state. No slavery. There had been a long argument about whether whether it should be a slave state, whether it should be kind of cut in half, because there was a a, I don't know what the line was called, but there's a latitude line that was set in the eighteen twenties, and everything above that was free. Everything below that was slave, and that runs right through the middle of California.
Dave:Anyway, the 1850, compromise ended up with California being a free state, but to keep the South Southern states happy because that changed the balance. So there were more
Matthew:In terms of
Dave:yeah. Yeah. The political there were more free
Matthew:The national political balance.
Dave:Yeah. Exactly. So they did a few things, like allowing some other territories to decide for themselves whether to be slave states or not. But also they really
Matthew:And we should point out this is, of course, before the civil war.
Dave:This is before the civil war. Yeah. Ten years before the civil war. And this is all part of the prelude into that horrible But they also, as a sop to the southerners, also agreed to really beef up the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act, which basically meant that you were you'd get, I think, a, you know, a criminal you'd be a criminal if you were not supporting federal officers or authorities trying to track down runaway slaves. Now this this had two issues.
Matthew:One Oh, this has some some slight modern day sensibilities in it as well. Yeah. Carry on.
Dave:There were two issues for the for the whole situation as as as it stood. One was it meant that, in free states, people were being kind of forced or feeling that they were going to be forced to track down, slaves who'd fled to the North, even though in the North they're free, and that just really really, enhanced the anti slavery feeling because people being this all this stuff that they hate was being done on their own streets. But in San Francisco, in California, if a if a slave owner came to California with their slaves, those slaves are still theirs. But in theory in California they're free. Right.
Dave:But if they then
Matthew:If they go off and get another job or something.
Dave:If left that person and went and did something else, or run away from them, they would then be obliged, the people of California would be obliged under the Free Fugitive Slave Act to track them down and and capture them and take them back to their previous owner, at which point they're kind of free again. So it's it's a really interesting kind of dynamic that, you know, an unintended consequence that nobody ever thought of. And and the history here is full of that kind of that kind of really beautiful nuance for a story and for a game, albeit at the time we need to recognize obviously it was pretty horrible for the people at the time going through it. But in gaming terms, there's lots of lovely little nuggets like that, which is just really, really exciting. I'm really enjoying putting this stuff together.
Matthew:Excellent. Yeah. So we'll be done by Christmas on the writing. Yeah. Easy.
Matthew:We're a good way with the art, but we're not gonna do a Kickstarter just before Christmas, are we? Cause that would be stupid.
Dave:Yeah. So I think, I mean, we are we are considering early in the new year. We will make an announcement in due course. Cool. Will we share
Matthew:sort of draft copies with our silver level patrons and above?
Dave:By which I mean
Matthew:our privileged and stationary patrons. Yeah. Cool. Cool.
Dave:Cool. I've got no problem with that. Yeah. So at the moment, chapter one is is finished. It's quite short.
Dave:And I'm working on chapter two, which is a lot lot longer. I'll let I'll let you know when they're finished.
Matthew:I will have a look at chapter one, because at chapter one, it still needs illustrations anyway, even if it's short. And just see if there's any interesting facets that we can commission illustrations on and get those underway. But I guess it's time for our main feature.
Dave:Indeed. You were in Scotland.
Matthew:What I did on my holiday in Scotland.
Dave:Hopefully, listeners, this will be more interesting than that sounds with a bit of luck, because that sounds really boring.
Matthew:Okay. What I did when I was working in Scotland. I yeah. I've I've been very good. I've already invoiced Free League.
Matthew:Partly because I wanted to help Paul out and will come to Paul very shortly. But I've also already spent the money. I haven't even got paid the money by Free League, but I forgot I had a tax bill to pay and that tax has swept up at least half of the money that Free League are gonna be paying me. But there we go. Anyway.
Matthew:Yeah. Let's start off with Paul. Paul was marvellous. Sorry. Paul is Paul O'Sullivan.
Matthew:Paul Sully was marvelous. What a lovely coworker.
Dave:He is super guy. He? One of one of my big big disappointments of not going to Scotland this year was not catching up with Paul because he is a lovely, lovely, lovely fellow.
Matthew:Brilliant. I mean, we I mean, we would we will return again and again and again to things that Paul did that were brilliant. But I just want to start off with the fact that, you know, when you're driving ten hours from Surrey to Scotland, you you may turn up a bit late. And Paul, I think, was there ready to help me probably at 04:00 unload. And I didn't get there till about seven, half past seven, I think.
Matthew:On Thursday. Ready Oh, wow. On Thursday, ready to unload. I mean, I think he had you know, obviously, there's a community that he's part of there. So I'm sure he wasn't sitting around board or whatever, but he he stayed there waiting to unload.
Matthew:And then, of course, we unloaded and we booked the put the booked the stall up and just unpatched the books because frankly, I couldn't think about merchandising them. But we, you know, then we we we just and, again, he the other thing he did, this is brilliant. You know how we have to take the books out of the car and take them to our stand on the other side of the wall or whatever. Yeah. Paul had organized pallet and a So plate with one of those pallet we just unloaded out the car straight onto a pallet by the car and then
Dave:Wheeled wheeled it
Matthew:in. A volunteer or member of staff, whatever, wheeled them in Cool.
Dave:And put them
Matthew:by the house stand.
Dave:Nice.
Matthew:So that was lovely. Brilliant. I love Paul. I'd work with him again. If if, and this is the caveat that we'll come to in a bit of time, if Felix want to go back, but I'm not sure Of they course, I was knackered after a ten hour drive.
Matthew:And so Yeah.
Dave:It is. Much. I mean, it's funny. When I went up there, not last year, year before, when I went up there.
Matthew:Well that's when you went on your own. Yeah.
Dave:Yeah. I I was it was it was a really interesting thing for me personally because as a driver I have a schedule in my mind, and I'm gonna get to my venue by then, and that's the plan. For this one, because it's such a long drive, I thought, fuck it. I'll arrive whenever I arrive. Who cares?
Matthew:You hadn't got Paul waiting for you back then?
Dave:I didn't have anybody. No, because I didn't I was I was just going there to demo Tales of the Old That was when the Kickstarter was running.
Matthew:Didn't even need to unpack.
Dave:Didn't really need to unpack. No, exactly. I had very little to unpack. But it was I really enjoyed the drive, and just in my head, I'm like, I'm gonna poodle, and I'm gonna get there whenever I get there. It doesn't matter.
Dave:And it was a really nice thing for me, because otherwise, I'd have been like, you've got to get there on time. Traffic. And I didn't do any of that.
Matthew:You did get stuck in in Edinburgh, you told me. Seem to
Dave:have That was yeah. That was but even then, I was I was more relaxed than I might otherwise have been. But, yeah, it took me it took me ninety minutes longer than it should have done, because I took the wrong turn off the bloody Ring Road. And what what should have been a ten minute drive turned into a ninety minute drive through the middle of
Matthew:Edinburgh. But I could believe that.
Dave:Yeah. But
Matthew:here's the thing about as well. So you know, the last time that we were there together, Freddie put us up at the hotel that is right next to the Yeah. Thing. This time, they didn't, I'm they put us up at the Moxie, which is a bit closer to the airport end of the stuff. Ten, fifteen minute walk away from the
Dave:Oh, think that's where I stayed for the first time, I think. Yeah. The Moxie.
Matthew:Right. You know, that wasn't that wasn't bad. I always have this problem where I can't sleep in hotels or can't sleep when my wife isn't in bed with me or stuff like that. So I didn't have a very good night's sleep that first night, and I was knackered.
Dave:Even after you were so tired. Yeah.
Matthew:Even after I was so tired. And, of course, that made me even more tired the next day. But I wake up early. So the beauty of the way they time things at tabletop Scotland is you've got all of the morning to set up before anybody turns up at 12:00. So that's nice.
Matthew:So went through, made sure we'd got the right number of everything, checked all those off against the can't remember if we did that on the Thursday night or the Friday morning, but, anyway, counted them all. I think we did it on Thursday night actually when Paul was there. And on the Friday morning before Paul arrived, generally, I started merchandising the stuff. We had a lot of stock for our few three tables. But there was stuff I noticed that we hadn't ordered, which I thought might be a problem like Blade Runner, which we'll come into.
Matthew:But we definitely Yes.
Dave:So how did the sales go?
Matthew:Right. So sales. Fine. A bit more than last time. I know on Friday I was going, oh god, this this seems really slow.
Matthew:I'm not but we made about £700. And last time you were there, in the year before, we only made £400 on the Friday.
Dave:So Yeah.
Matthew:I thought, that's not bad. If it carries on like that, that'll be good. It didn't really carry on like that. Yeah. Saturday, we were, again, maybe a couple of 100 no.
Matthew:Maybe a couple quid more or something like that than we had last year. And then when you and I were there last, I was obviously doing the Cowboys stand. So you were doing most of Free League and you sold about 700 quid's worth of stuff on the Friday and this time we only sold about 400 quid's worth of stuff. Not Friday, on the Sunday. And Sunday was really quiet and not helped by a fire alarm.
Dave:Oh, no. Did he have to evacuate?
Matthew:So we had to evacuate everybody out. Oh, bloody. I was kind of hoping that it was a really good sort of live experience, like somebody had just one upped us on and it was an emergency Ghostbusters type operation or something.
Dave:Right. But
Matthew:no. But it wasn't. No. No. We actually had to evacuate.
Matthew:Only for a few minutes while they, I don't know, checked somebody who was smoking the toilets or something. But, yeah, that was a bit of a pain in the ass. And that was a pain in the ass for people sitting down to play role playing games. It was just after everybody had sat down for the first session of role playing games. And we were in the middle of a transaction, which Paul was doing.
Matthew:I the bloke came back and finished that transaction later. But I don't know. Yeah, so that wasn't great. Sales weren't great I think, in the long run. There's machines.
Dave:Was Modiphius there this time?
Matthew:No. No. They weren't there at all.
Dave:They didn't because they were there last year, and they were sort of saying, you know, we we feel that we ought to come to these kind of things, but maybe maybe for them it's not worth it anymore. That's a pity.
Matthew:Yeah. And Chaosium were there, and they weren't even attempting to sell, which is a thing that we've seen them do. Think they were there at salute not So selling stuff as they're just demoing games and waving the flag. And I wonder whether maybe that's a thing. Well, we can talk about this a bit later on.
Matthew:But yeah. They're they're they're doing that thing, not actually with any intent to sell anything. They were selling a few things, which we shall come back to. But they weren't actually generally selling, and they weren't looking for sales to cover costs
Dave:No. No. Okay.
Matthew:And stuff like that.
Dave:So what was up with your devices then?
Matthew:Oh, thank thank you for asking that. You're obviously reading off the same bullet point as tonight.
Dave:Yeah. I'm trying to get us through it because otherwise, we're gonna be here all day.
Matthew:Hey. We're forty five we've got fifteen minutes to fill before the end of the episode, mate. So devices. You remember we got those new readers that are kind of all in one and we didn't need to worry about, you know, pairing them online?
Dave:Super easy and, yeah, everything will just work.
Matthew:Yeah. Got a couple more of those. Well, lovely Matthew at Games Crest gave me one of those on the Wednesday beforehand. And I said, oh, you know, one of these really didn't work last time. And he said, well, I'll give you another one.
Matthew:And then he also gave me the the old fashioned pairing one. And I brought them home, and I tested them this time here at home and made sure they were working. One of them looked like it had the same issue that was happening last time where it, for some reason, wasn't connecting to the, LTE network that they use
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:For that sort of stuff. But the other one seemed to be working fine. So, well, there we go. Know, Rajima reassured. Woo.
Matthew:Yeah. The very first transaction on the Friday morning, it does the transaction and then goes, oh, major security error. I'm turning myself off. Every time you turn it on again, it's a major security error. I can't do it.
Matthew:I turn myself off.
Dave:Oh my god.
Matthew:So I phoned Blokey Boy. And that and of course, that was the only one I charged actually because the other one was a bit flaky anyway. It still had some charge in it, but it wasn't the the the charged up one wasn't playing. So I dropped a line to Matt, and he said, oh I sent him a screenshot and said, this is what it says. He couldn't do anything remotely.
Matthew:Apparently, the device had been dropped and that's what triggers it. Now, neither Paul nor I had dropped it. Maybe Paul was doing that first transaction because I've given it to him because it's our first transaction. I just showed him how to do it. Yeah.
Matthew:And the bloke wanted a receipt. So he just, you know, it's got a little cradle where you can print out
Dave:Print the receipt out.
Matthew:Yeah. And so he put it in that cradle. Not really sure whether you needed to be in the cradle to print the receipt or not, but put it in that cradle. And maybe dropped it like a centimeter into that cradle. And that may be the drop that to the studio.
Matthew:Poor bloke never got a receipt anyway because the machine was done, but the pavement had gone through. And then
Dave:It ought to be more resilient to cope with a a one centimeter drop.
Matthew:Yeah. Exactly. Exactly what I said. And then the other one so the other one was was a bit charged. I charged it up more while we were going, and we started using that one, working fine then.
Matthew:In between as well, we used my phone. And my phone now you can actually do tap to pay on your phone if it's if it's my phone at least. So so we still have kind of two machines. And then the next day, that one that had been working wouldn't connect to the network at all.
Dave:Right. Oh my god.
Matthew:So now we were two modern ones down, and we had the little old one that needed to be paired with the device. Yeah. Now I hadn't taken the iPad app that we normally use to pair with that device because the machine's working fine.
Dave:Yeah. Well, you you gave me that iPad. It's just sitting on its I haven't done anything with it, but it's just sitting here. So if we still need it, at least we've got it.
Matthew:Yeah. Well, we don't particularly because, obviously, what your man, Paul, was able to download the software onto his phone and pair that with the device, and I signed it on my on my login, No longer with the rude password that it used to have before.
Dave:Good.
Matthew:Because I can be shared.
Dave:It's about time. Yeah. Exactly. It's about time, really.
Matthew:So so I used my phone. He used that device and and the little one. But that was a pain in the ass on our very biggest sales.
Dave:I can imagine.
Matthew:And then the next day, on on Sunday, that device was working again and connected to the network. Bloody. POS does not stand for point of sale.
Dave:No. I didn't think it did. Yeah. Okay. Well, that sounds exceedingly frustrating.
Matthew:We sold a bunch of Alien. The starter set was the best seller, which is great because you and I wrote that. So, hooray. How clever are we? We are.
Matthew:We are. Gareth Riderhanran wrote the next bestseller, which was the Hands of the White Wizard. That was quite popular in demand. Yeah. And also the new starter set for the One Ring was Yep.
Matthew:Was quite a good seller. Versum, as usual, we had a number of Versum products. Not all the Versum products, but a good number. And then most of them except for one or one book sold out, I think. Yeah.
Matthew:I think we were had a couple of books left of Mythic Carpathia, but that was about it. We didn't take Blade Runner, but nobody asked for it. You know, they asked more people asked for the five e edition
Dave:of the One Ring, Lord of the Rings, than asked for Blade Oh, I do wonder whether they they might not renew the Blade Runner license when it comes up.
Matthew:Yeah. I Yeah.
Dave:It's it's seems to I mean, it's a great little game, but it's not it's not landed with the the, you know, the popular splash that that, you know, Free League might have hoped.
Matthew:Yeah. And I thought Replicant Rebellion might might be a real might be a real popular one. And when I realized we hadn't actually ordered any for for this show, I thought, oh, dear. I bet we're gonna get asked a lot about that, but no bullshit at all.
Dave:Nobody.
Matthew:Yeah. We have Invincible sold quite well in the sold okay. I mean, it was our biggest stock. We had more of that than we had anything else, we didn't sell out of it. We sold quite a few starter sets.
Matthew:Those were piled quite high at the beginning of the show and we were down to about four by the end of it. We sold only a few of the core book and we sold none of the accessories. Oh, no. No. We did sell maybe one pack of dice, maybe one pack of cards, something like that.
Matthew:But not not much of the accessories. None of the dice trays, interestingly.
Dave:Okay.
Matthew:So Invincible was not as popular as I thought it was gonna be. The thing that people did ask for, we had one person asking for the Outcome series of which we bought. None. Right. A couple of people asked for more board products that we didn't have.
Matthew:And Frontier scum. Frontier scum, we had a couple of people asking for. So that was the thing I think probably we should have stopped.
Dave:Did you did you tell them about this other great Wild West game you're
Matthew:They aware don't want a year zero game. They want a waterboard game.
Dave:But yeah. Right. Yeah. Fair enough. Twice.
Dave:So
Matthew:Not that, you know, not that I was selling Childs of the Old West. I did point people to it available at other stands and Okay. Cool. And I did have a little stash of it under the counter, but I didn't sell any of those partly because they were all deluxe books. So one person did ask her and said, well, I've got a deluxe book under here, but you can go and buy, you know, the standard
Dave:The standard book. Yeah.
Matthew:Over there. And they went off for the standard book. Right. And would have given them a discount on the deluxe book, but but they didn't wanna get that because they like the picture on the front of the standard book. Who's Yeah.
Matthew:Argue with that?
Dave:No. I mean, again, we've had this conversation before, but frequently, I I prefer the look of the standard book to the look of the deluxe limited edition books because Yeah. Quite often, the artwork on the standard book is just so good.
Matthew:Yeah. Generally, am of the same case. And I like the fact that because I own the company, I've got both persons to buy. Well, you and I are in the company, obviously. I'm gonna say I in the company.
Matthew:I'm not making you into staff, mate. You hearing a single word I'm saying?
Dave:I I am. Yes. I'm I'm desperately biting my tongue. Oh, man. Try it again.
Dave:Try it again. So to not swear on the podcast. But, yes. As owners as owners of the company, owners Yeah.
Matthew:We've got we've got both copies.
Dave:We do have access to certain copies.
Matthew:And it's funny. When when I pick up the the clothbound version, like that best. And when I pick up the standard version, I like that best.
Dave:I mean, I them both. I think if I could only have one, I'd probably have the artwork.
Matthew:Oh, it's funny. I think if we were restricted to only having one each, then I would have a complimentary clothbound one and you could have the artwork one
Dave:yeah and I but I
Matthew:love it the artwork well enough
Dave:the feel the feel of the clothbound one is really cool
Matthew:yeah and I'm all about feel me you know that
Dave:I know
Matthew:you are
Dave:that's that's why I'm not sharing a bedroom with you again.
Matthew:Anyway. Did give a copy of the Cloth Band one, give a copy to Robin Laws.
Dave:Ah, okay. Yeah, fair enough.
Matthew:Which is interesting. So Robin Laws, this So okay. Let's talk about Robin Laws. Bruce and I went off to see
Dave:Kenny and Robin talk about stuff.
Matthew:Kevin talk about stuff. And I spoke briefly with Cat and I had a lovely lovely lunch with not lovely. Not a planned lunch. I sat down at the same table in my lunch break as Simon from from Pell Grain Press. We had a bit of a chat.
Matthew:There was some stuff I think I can't tell you on this recording, but I'll tell you a bit afterwards.
Dave:Okay.
Matthew:Good for that. Which is interesting. And then interestingly, I had Robin come over and ask about what we thought about Tabletop Scotland as a venue. They've been enjoying going to Edinburgh and stuff. But I think they're going to do a bit of a tour.
Matthew:So they've always done their kind of AGM meeting where they've all got together at Dragonmeat. That's not happening anymore. We'd already had that bit of news. But it isn't, I think, going be a dead service. It's always going to be at Tabletop Scotland.
Matthew:And I think they're gonna go a bit on tour. And I was encouraging him to come to UK Games Expo because I think Ken and Robin would go down a storm there.
Dave:Yes. I'm sure they would. Absolutely.
Matthew:And, you know, at Dragon Meet, Ken and Robin's recording, there's people bursting out of the door to get in there. It's a more ticketed event. So, you know, you're only meant to turn up if you've got your if your name's on the list, as it were, at Tabletop Scotland. But actually, it felt a little bit I asked a question, not because I really wanted to know the answer, but because I thought there might not be enough questions.
Dave:Okay. Was the audience a bit, a bit, what's the right word, a bit docile?
Matthew:A little bit. A little bit docile. You know, like, maybe, you know, there was definitely one patron of their podcast there because they make all the patrons stand up so we can applaud them. And and so one there was one real fan there. But I don't know how many of the rest of the audience were were massive fans.
Matthew:So I thought that was interesting. It was nice to have Robin come and ask, you know, what we thought about it as well. But that's not as important as the best thing. I was working at the stand and I think Yvan Paul was off on a break. I don't think Gareth ignored him.
Matthew:Gareth walked by and he was buying coffee for the gang at the Pell Grains stand and he said just as he walked by, oh, I'm gonna get coffee. Do want a cup of coffee? And I said, oh, thank you very much. I'll have an Americano, black. And he came back with a Americano.
Matthew:So my highlight of the weekend is Garified Handmands.
Dave:Garified you a cup of coffee. Okay. Cool. He So that was is a lovely person, after all.
Matthew:Yeah. No. He is a lovely person. And this is broad proof of it. Yeah.
Matthew:Can't remember so at some point when we were all leaving on one day, I can't remember whether it was the Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, actually evening. Paul and I happened to be leaving at the same time oh, I think it was a Saturday, actually, because this has some better
Dave:Doesn't really matter.
Matthew:As the Peregrine crew. And Kat wanted to take a group photo in front of the kind of the entrance display. And I just had to be walking past, and she knew me. So she said, could I take a photo? So I took a few photos for them, which may appear on their social media in a bit, or maybe I'm shit at taking photos, and they never will.
Matthew:Who can tell? Anyway, they were going off to dinner because there is a thing that they go off and have a nice meal somewhere and talk about it in their podcast afterwards. And the next day, I was talking to Robin, said, oh, where did you go for dinner? And he was going to Now weirdly, I had been planning on not being too tired to go to Tushoom that night on the Saturday. Yeah.
Matthew:But I was. As I walked back to the hotel, I got tireder and tireder. And even though I was gonna catch the tram into Edinburgh from the hotel, I I thought, oh, that's not a problem. Nah. Sorry.
Matthew:I'll just I'll just eat here and sleep. And that is what I did. I probably had the best night's sleep of the whole weekend, so it was the right decision. But then the next day, he said he'd been to Deshumi. I said, oh, I would have been there.
Matthew:And actually, that was the Sunday. And on the Sunday, finally felt awake enough, partly because I left my car at the show in the in the show parking for the whole weekend. But of course, on the Sunday, I had to take it out of there and drive it to the hotel. So I didn't have that walk where I got tired and tired at, and I did feel awake enough then to get on the tram. And I've got to say, next time, if we go again and we're together and we're in that hotel, and I recommend the moxie as opposed to the other one.
Matthew:Because that's like five minutes walk through a tram station in the airport, and then that's like twenty minutes, twenty five minutes ride into Edinburgh. And then you're in Edinburgh and actually having some Edinburgh fun without going mad driving around the car park. I think I think you'd enjoy that. You don't have to go to Deshumme. That's what I did on the Sunday night.
Dave:I mean, I I quite like Duchoom. My my only down I think I've only been once or twice. But I remember when we went when I think we were were we at Salute? And we went No.
Matthew:I think that was an earlier Dragon meet, I think. Yeah.
Dave:But me, you, and Tom. And it was so fucking noisy. I couldn't I couldn't just wait to get out. It really
Matthew:It was very noisy. Yeah.
Dave:Ruined the the experience.
Matthew:And and there's a couple of Deshumes that are like that. Honestly, I can't tell you what Edinburgh Deshume was like because I was on my own, so I wasn't talking to anybody. So I don't Yeah. Remember the noise being a pain in the ass or not.
Dave:It probably implies that it wasn't so noisy because even if I was on my own and it was that noisy, it would piss me off.
Matthew:But I did get a matka, which is the thing you get where you get free meals. And I'd
Dave:Okay.
Matthew:And and weirdly, it's a d six. It's a d six on a key ring. So I thought that was a perfect end to my tabletop Scotland experience. Yeah. As to other swag I got from tabletop Scotland, I didn't do much shopping.
Matthew:I walked past three sales and promised them that I was gonna get Callow's Corner from them early on during the setup. And then I didn't. That's the second time I've done that with them.
Dave:Didn't
Matthew:get Sorry? Made
Dave:You didn't get it from anyone.
Matthew:I didn't get
Dave:it from
Matthew:anywhere. No. I didn't buy it. And in fact, I found myself talking myself out of it. One of the so yeah.
Matthew:I should mention, we did well, we didn't. I did nothing. I had nothing to do with it apart from write it. But Paul organized all hands on deck and that went really well. Whale of a time was
Dave:up And by
Matthew:yeah, no, it was good. Everybody seemed to love it. One of the GMs was there and he was talking about getting Gallows Corner and I talked about the fact that I'd played it. And then I managed to talk myself out of by yet talking to him. Just highlighting some of the problems we'd had when Thomas ran it for us and Right.
Matthew:The problems that Thomas has sorted out and stuff. And also saying that, you know, we were a particular group of people. I had once had a girlfriend in the town that was set and we were all of us kind of archivists or historians or stuff like that. So it felt that we were bringing a lot to the game and I worried that people who weren't familiar with the period wouldn't
Dave:Would struggle.
Matthew:Would struggle. He he was fine on hearing that because he's a reenactor. So obviously a whole bunch of historians and stuff like they won't they won't struggle at all. But in that conversation, I think I taught myself how to buy in Gallows Corner.
Dave:Alright.
Matthew:Okay. Then and then Chaosium, who weren't selling stuff, had a couple of copies of Credo on the way. Credo's written by my friend Chris Kiddler. And I said, oh, if you were selling that, I'd buy that off you. And they say, you can't buy it till the end of the month.
Matthew:It's only it's only coming out on the end of the month. But then it turned out that their these two copies they had were their staff copies that had been sent with the thing. And they'd got to carry them home on the train. Right. And they didn't want to do that.
Dave:So I said, well, well, you know, if you wanna go into it, I'll buy it off you. So we can't
Matthew:buy it off us. You know, we can't say it. But tell you what, I'll put it on the books and you can buy it off Chaosium. Just don't tell anybody you've got it. So just you, Dave, and all our hundreds of listeners are hearing the secret that, yes, I have got Credo, and it's lovely.
Matthew:This brings us back to the conversation we had right at the beginning of this about those little bags, a five ziplock bags that Steve Jackson games used to make. Because Chaosium used to do that as well. And I remember, in fact, in Aldershot, seeing a copy of Credo hanging at what was then called as Stevium Games in Audishot and thinking about buying it. And then a bit later on, meeting Chris Kidlow for the first time. Because back then when I was living in Audishot, I was working for the company Past Pleasures.
Matthew:When we employed Chris then to work for us at Tower of London. And Chris said, oh, you know, I I well, you know, we got to talk about start from the shared interest in things Chaosium. He said, oh, Chaosium, we've published a game of mine, and it's called Credo. And I thought, oh, wow. I know somebody that's actually had a game published by by Chaosium, who were, of course Mhmm.
Matthew:These these mythical elder gods that created marvelous stuff. And not ordinary people like you and me, but Chris. Well, Chris isn't strictly ordinary. But
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:But I you know, it was impressive. And then a bit later on in his life, Chris showed me this wonderful French edition of the game that they'd stolen the IP of of Chaosium, but they'd created a lovely boxed and illustrated version. And that was his dream. And finally, a properly made, properly boxed version of Credo, is out there and it will be for sale next month or But the end of this I've got one now, and it's lovely. I love it very Nice.
Matthew:And that is the end of what I did on my holidays.
Dave:Right. Cool. So so what what's this Scottish Blood thing that we've got?
Matthew:Scottish We've gone
Dave:for the title for the episode.
Matthew:Right. So I got the tram into Edinburgh.
Dave:Is this you just got into a fight in Edinburgh Town Center?
Matthew:No. Well, I was witness to something that might have grown into a fight, but it's it's kind of hilarious. On the way back, a tram was a bit crowded, and I was standing and I was standing in front of, I guess, least at least three Americans in a family. Two grown up daughters, you know, kind of
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:Late twenties, early thirties at least, and their mom had come on holiday to Scotland. And one of them said, oh, know, I'm very excited about the stuff they'd done that day. I feel the Scottish Blood in me flowing.
Dave:Right. And
Matthew:then these two sisters had an argument about which of the two of them was the most Scottish.
Dave:With In in a with In American accents.
Matthew:In American accents. Yes. In a tram full of Scots people, which I don't know, you know. Given they got the same mother as well, it boils down to the fact that they were born to two different fathers, obviously. And I think the older one, her father, had been at least 75% Scottish compared to whatever the younger one's father had been.
Matthew:Okay. And they had this argument here that, therefore, I am the most Scottish and the blood flowing through my veins is more Scottish than yours. Therefore, I'm more excited than you about being in Scotland. I feel more at home here. And I feel that can sum up, I'm sure, the American tourist experience for many, many people in Edinburgh.
Matthew:I've just had a little vignette of it on the tram for five minutes before they got off at whatever stop they were aiming for. But there are a lot of American tourists. Will say that about that tram in Edinburgh and the Moxy Hotel. And, yeah, not so much at our show. We did have one Canadian, actually.
Matthew:This is a thing I forgot. I found potentially a Canadian distributor that I'm gonna get in contact with. I'll copy you with the email.
Dave:Oh, okay.
Matthew:But he might ease our Canadian backers' problems in the next Kickstarter. Right. I'm done now.
Dave:Cool. Cool. Well, it sounds like you had a good time. Well done, mate. Next time, we are talking about maybe getting Paul Vermaeran on the show if we can arrange it.
Dave:But if not, we'll find something else equally interesting and exciting to talk about. But until then, it's goodbye from me.
Matthew:And it's goodbye from him.
Dave:And may the icons bless your adventures.