Dave is co-host and writer on the podcast, and part of the writing team at Free League - he created the Xenos for Alien RPG and as been editor and writer on a number of further Alien and Vaesen books, as well as writing the majority the upcoming Better Worlds book. He has also been the Year Zero Engine consultant on War Stories and wrote the War Stories campaign, Rendezvous with Destiny.
MT
Host
Matthew Tyler-Jones
Matthew is co host of the podcast, as well as writer, producer, senior editor, designer and all round top dog. He was also been involved a couple of project for Free League - writing credits include Alien RPG, Vaesen: Mythic Britain and Ireland, and Vaesen: Seasons of Mystery as well as a number of Free League Workshop products.
What is Effekt?
A fan podcast celebrating (mostly Swedish) RPGs including, but not limited to: Coriolis; Forbidden Lands; Symbaroum; Tales from the Loop; and, Alien.
Dave:
Hello and welcome to episode 254 of Effect, Sanctioned. I'm Dave with a rather nasty cold.
Matthew:
Indeed, a very nasty cold, and I'm Matthew. I'm glad we record remotely.
Dave:
Well
Matthew:
We may have just ruined the illusion for a whole bunch of alasdors. We do not sit across from each other at some table with a couple of fancy mics. We're in two different places.
Dave:
Sit on each other's laps. That's what we do.
Matthew:
What that's
Dave:
it really is. Anyway, yes.
Matthew:
No. No. We don't. We don't. No.
Matthew:
Take that take that image out of everybody's head. Take that in my head.
Dave:
Sorry. Yes. Okay.
Matthew:
Will try not to make you laugh, Dave, as I tell you
Dave:
what we've
Matthew:
got coming up. So it's it's a very exciting thing. Now we did promise in the last episode that we would bring a sort of play report of Coriolis, The Great Dark. And I've got to say, in discussion with my fellow players, we decided now is not the time to do that. Because in our adventure, we have only just started doing the delve.
Matthew:
And so we thought we ought to play through the delve in its entirety before coming back. So that's gonna be in probably, actually now, four weeks' time from when you're listening to this.
Dave:
Oh,
Matthew:
okay. So so that's that's the first thing. No choreo list of great dark information for a couple of episodes. But we've got plenty more to talk about. We have, excitedly, we've got some exciting Year Zero news of all sorts in, the world of gaming, and we've got an interview with well, sorry.
Matthew:
I should say, we've got some exciting Old West news as well. And we've got an interview with Paul Baldowski of the D sanction about his current Kickstarter for the deluxe version of the D sanction.
Dave:
Indeed, we do. Pack show as as always. So I think we have
Matthew:
Let's start off by saying we don't have any new patrons. So we're not gonna thank any of our new patrons, but we are gonna thank all our existing patrons.
Dave:
Indeed. As we always do. And, yes, massive massive thank you for for everyone's support as always.
Matthew:
I just want to say a thing actually about patronage, because I haven't actually put it up on the Patreon site, but you've distributed via our Discord your first draft, or I don't know if it's actually a first draft, of your year zero version Rome rules. We haven't got a title for it yet, have we?
Dave:
Well, Rome year zero is the is the working title, though it does.
Matthew:
It's our working title.
Dave:
It doesn't entirely.
Matthew:
But it's very specifically not year zero, is it?
Dave:
Well, no. It's it's year a 10. Although, the Romans didn't really count them like that. So it's the year in the consulship of I can't remember which two consuls it was in, a hundred and ten BCE. Right.
Dave:
But yeah. Yes.
Matthew:
Rome One Hundred And Ten BCE is our second working title that isn't going to last very long, and we will have another title scene. And so we have promised all our patrons, of course, work in progress copies of Tales of the Old West, but it seems to me that that's kind of lost its value as people will soon have in their hands the finished version of Tales of the Old West. So, I think Rome Year Zero will take its place for our $5 patrons, silver level patrons, shall we say, and gold level patrons. I just wanted to say that about our passage because I suddenly remembered that I haven't actually uploaded it for the patrons, but I will do that shortly.
Dave:
That is that is cool. So, yeah, I mean, I don't know at what point we wanna talk a bit more about Romeo Zero, but the the rules we've got out there at the moment are well, it's not really a it's kind of a version 0.1, but based on a variety of drafts over the last few years that I've kind of been tinkering with. But yeah. I mean, the headline is I've been playtesting it with my Wednesday group, and there are things coming out of that which are which are which are good learning points and things that we need to think about. But actually, they're loving it.
Dave:
They're real they're really good into it. I had though in the last in the last adventure arguing for an hour about whether they should open and read a a sealed letter they'd been given to deliver to somebody. It was great. It was brilliant. And so I'm I'm very heartened by how much the players are enjoying it.
Dave:
Once they've got over that initial entry level obstacle of kind of working out in their own heads what the game how the game should play. And I think we can do stuff to make that a lot easier than than we've done in the playtests. So I'm I'm quite heartened by by all of that so far.
Matthew:
Cool. That that that sounds to me a little bit like almost world of gaming news there, Dave. Shall we move into the world of gaming?
Dave:
Let's do that. Yeah. So first first and foremost maybe not first maybe not foremost. But first, Free League launched their Alien Evolved Edition Kickstarter, well, about four days ago now at the time of recording. And they've done rather well.
Matthew:
It's doing very well indeed, isn't it?
Dave:
It is. Oh, yes. With one point one point two five million pounds so far.
Matthew:
And this is on day, as you say, day five or something that we're looking at this. Day five. Yeah. They've got another twenty days to run or something like that.
Dave:
Nineteen days to go. They currently have seven eight 7,858 backers. They've unlocked all their stretch goals, including I hadn't realized that the couple of bits of work I'd done for them were both gonna be stretch goals, but they've both been unlocked, which is great. So that's the Life Path character generation and Tartarus sextre as a campaign Now
Matthew:
I know and knew about the Life Path character generation thing because I I read I read your almost final version and made some comments on it. Tartarus, though, I'm confused by. Did you not write a Tartarus section for Building Better Worlds, or is this something new?
Dave:
No. This is new. So Tartarus sector is in a different part of space than the
Matthew:
Farthpinwood Right.
Dave:
The Farthpinwood colonies, which is Building Better Worlds. Yeah. So basically, Thomas wanted to create a, I don't know, a like, a campaign space in Alien. And, you know, we both we settled on Tartarus' sector for for a variety of reasons. And then I basically worked up that sector, and, yeah.
Dave:
That was great fun. I think did I did I not ask you to proofread or read over some of that? I did ask somebody.
Matthew:
No. No. Maybe maybe you did, actually.
Dave:
I I had loads of ideas. My original word count was kind of inevitably bigger than the final word count I was given, so I had to condense it significantly. But I'm kind of getting used to that now with with Free League. And, yeah, I'm I'm really pleased with that. I think there's a lot in there.
Dave:
And, you know, I'm I'm quite pleased that they are putting that in because it, you know, demonstrates a bit more of a focus on on really trying to help campaign play. Whereas in Build A Better Worlds and and Colonial Marines operations manual, you had a campaign given to you, you know, a seven scenario campaign, which was great. Think and that was really good. One thing that we've sort of found with Tales of the Old West, or certainly I have, is for the kind of sandbox games I wanna create, having a kind of set campaign like that can potentially be a bit limiting. So it's nice to have in Alien, I think, Tata sector laid out with lots and lots of story ideas, lots of hints and prompts, lots of stuff going on for a GM to pick the bit that they like and start to to craft their own campaign around it.
Dave:
So I'm pleased that they've done that because I think, hopefully, it shows that they are focusing at least, you know
Matthew:
Yes.
Dave:
More attention on the campaign game side of of of Alien than just the cinematics, which is obviously gonna be a very big part of this this Kickstarter with with all the minis and the battle maps that you you are getting with the Kickstarter if you want them.
Matthew:
One of the criticisms that can be raised of the first edition, and indeed was raised at the first edition, was although it talked about campaign play and cinematic mode, it didn't really offer much support for campaign play. So this feels like some of the missing support that should have been or that people were wanting then. It intrigues me, though. I was kind of under the impression they'd go for a slimmer rule book than before because that's the way all their other rule books have been going. Mhmm.
Matthew:
But with all this extra content, is it not gonna be even bigger?
Dave:
Oh, quite possibly. But I I I guess perhaps they think with something like Alien where they are going to make possibly multiples of millions of pounds to produce it. Having a having a bigger book doesn't matter so much because they know they're
Matthew:
I guess not.
Dave:
They know they're going to do very well. They're obviously gonna get more than enough money to produce what they want. So so perhaps that's less of a less of a worry for them for for any I mean, that said I mean, that said, again, my so the the initial conversation I had with Thomas for both the Life Path and and the Tartarus sector gave me many, many more words. You know, officially, you know, I was allowed to use more words than what I was then This
Matthew:
is x thousand words, and then it became Yeah. Half of x thousand words.
Dave:
Yeah. Then what what I was told after I delivered x thousand words, and then it was like, oh, no. We need it down to x minus quite a big y. You know? In other words.
Dave:
Which, I mean, which is fine. I mean, maybe that's, you know, that that's it's it's a very good way of of making sure as a writer you expunge every last unnecessary syllable because every syllable is is important when you get it down to so few words.
Matthew:
Yes. And by having made you write more in the first place, they've managed to you haven't padded out a very few ideas to make it y thousand words, say. You wrote x thousand words, and then you have to edit it down. Yeah. So it's it's real, you know, it's it's condensed.
Matthew:
It's it it every word is efficient.
Dave:
It's distilled. A Down to the Distilled.
Matthew:
That's a better word.
Dave:
Yes. Down to the down to the, you know, the really important bits. And, I mean, give them their give them give them their due. I mean, I they they stood by their original, you know, commitment for, you know, rewarding me for my work. So that was great.
Dave:
Yeah. And they are very, very good at at at looking after, you know, their their freelancers
Matthew:
They're righteous.
Dave:
In in that way. Cool. Excellent. Better than better than
Matthew:
Better than some. Mention no names.
Dave:
Better than most. Dave. Yeah.
Matthew:
Well, you may find you're not working for those. I'm just looking out for you, Dave. I'm just looking
Dave:
out for No. That's cool. That's cool.
Matthew:
Yeah. And if you want to
Dave:
That's great.
Matthew:
If you want to find out who, get Dave drunk at UK Games Expo coming up in at the May. Right. So that is a very successful edition. Or, sorry, Kickstarter for a successful Year Zero game.
Dave:
I mean, it's interesting.
Matthew:
Are there any other Year Zero games on the horizon?
Dave:
There there there there might be. So Firelock Games have now announced although they haven't launched the Kickstarter yet, they have announced that War Stories, the Pacific expansion, is coming soon. I'd heard April. I think you've said you may have heard late March.
Matthew:
Here, I'm looking at a post which is at the March that says late March. Kickstarter will launch late March. And I just suddenly thought, have they got a maybe a holding page already? So I'm just quickly checking
Dave:
out War
Matthew:
Stories on Kickstarter to see what it comes up with. War Stories in tabletop games. Let's have a quick look. Yes. There is a placeholder.
Matthew:
We will put a link in the show notes.
Dave:
Excellent. Good stuff.
Matthew:
And it says launching soon. Can't see how many backers it's got. Does it not tell you how many backers? I thought it told you how many people have already signed on for it, but you can notify me on launch. I'll do that.
Matthew:
And I'll be the first to receive Project Launch But
Dave:
yeah. So that's that's looking good. So that's taking the war stories away from the from the European theatre, obviously, to the Pacific Theatre, which is something that I know Gabe and and Al were always keen to do. But also, not only do you get that in this Kickstarter, that we are also kick starting part two of the You Wonder if It With Destiny campaign. So the the campaign that I've been writing for them based on the exploits and the experiences of the hundred and first airborne, you know, like, famously recounted in Band of Brothers.
Dave:
But the second part of that, operation Market Garden, which is, you know, was written, finished over a year ago. That is that is gonna be part of the Kickstarter as well. So if you enjoyed part one, Normandy, then you can carry on that story with your your playing group into into Holland. Excellent. Yeah.
Dave:
And, also, I mean, the the the campaign is designed so that if you haven't done Normandy and you don't want to go back and do that, you can just launch with a a new platoon straight into
Matthew:
Well, obviously, I mean, I guess there were some people whose first experience of frontline combat was the second stage of Operation Overlord.
Dave:
So there so there were there were a lot of replacements, obviously, because so many men were killed or wounded during the Normandy campaign.
Matthew:
I would rather like for our friend Thomas to run that second bit, because my character in that game is Dutch.
Dave:
Okay. Cool.
Matthew:
And so I would love to get him home. He almost didn't make the final climactic battle of the the last campaign. A grenade exploded very near to me, and I was quite badly injured, but not not enough to be invalided. Well, possibly enough to go back home to hospital, but not enough to be invalided right out of the army.
Dave:
Sent back home properly, yeah. Yeah. No, cool. And that was great fun. It was great fun writing that.
Dave:
I mean, as with Normandy, I need quite a lot of the history anyway, but but it it it obviously allowed me to investigate and research that history in much greater detail than I might otherwise have found the time to do. And, yeah, it's fascinating stuff. Yeah. So, again, you play the hundred and first Airborne doing what they did to try and try and help Market Garden succeed. So I think it's
Matthew:
I think it's a good
Dave:
one again. Think it's a good one.
Matthew:
Excellent. We will put a link in the show notes, as I've said. Cool. Then oh, this is this is an interesting story. So one of our illustrators for Tales of the Old West sent us his book, which you can now get on DriveThru RPG.
Matthew:
It's a solo game, and it's called A Practical Guide for the Amateur Exonaturalist. When I say one of our artists, I should actually mention his name. His name is Mate Zinner, and he has put this beautiful book together. Did you get a chance to have a look at the PDF I sent you, Dave?
Dave:
I did have a quick look through. No. Actually actually, Mate sent me a link to it as well, which is great. But
Matthew:
Oh, cool.
Dave:
But, yeah, I did it's it's really nice. It's, you know, it's a journaling game, solo game. You know, I I don't really well, I haven't played any solo games, and I don't really get it, which is why you're doing the solo rules for Tales of the Old West. But it looks it looks lovely, and some of the things he's done so so the the idea of it's about you exploring and you find a planet and you land on the planet and you are you are you're basically, you know, Charles Darwin doing doing his stuff before he became famous kind of thing, but in a voyage of the space beagle kind of way. And it's really nicely done.
Dave:
It's it's a really good little book. When you get to sort of the the tables to to find out what what you are discovering, discovering. They're, I mean, they're they're simply done, but they're very nicely done. I think it's it's got quite a lot of charm about it.
Matthew:
Yeah. We will, of course, put a link in the show notes to it, But it is an a five book, about a 10 pages long, nicely illustrated. So Mate did a few of the spot illustrations and all of our weapons. Weapons and objects mostly were his his thing for us. I'd like to
Dave:
commission him Those best pictures are really good. I I Yeah. Every time I look them, I love them a little bit more. They are
Matthew:
really, really good. Me too. And I think we we underused him, actually, in in the great scheme of things, and maybe maybe we should use him some more in our next version. But we'll we'll talk about that maybe later.
Dave:
Yeah. We'll talk about Tales of the Old West second edition, which we're working on now. No. Not really. Not really.
Matthew:
And and in fact, talking of second editions though, the last item we should mention in World of Gaming is, in fact, what we're going to be spending most of the rest of the episode on, which is the Desunction Monad Edition, which is currently live on Kickstarter as you listen to this, as long as you're listening to it in the next couple of weeks after we put it out. So we won't say much about that now except to say it's doing pretty well. They've, you know, it's funded. They're about halfway through their stretch goals that they've announced. And we will talk with Paul about it later in this episode.
Matthew:
Yeah. Are we done with Old West News? Sorry. Are we done with the world again? Are we ready to move on?
Dave:
We haven't started the Old West News. Yes. I think that's probably everything for this for this week. Yeah. So Old West News, what do we have to say about that today?
Matthew:
Oh, well, we might have been announcing that we'd just closed the pledge manager because our plan originally was to close it yesterday as we record this on the March 28. Two things have stopped us closing it. One is there are still a number of you with physical rewards out there who have not finished your Kickstarter. So I'm not going to name and shame. We're getting down to the sort of numbers where I could name and shame, where we're not covered by data protection laws, isn't it like?
Matthew:
But but there are a number of you out there. We've sent you personal reminders on Kickstarter. We've put a reminder yesterday out on on Pledge Manager. No. No.
Matthew:
On Kickstarter
Dave:
as Kickstarter. Yeah.
Matthew:
And I think I did actually send a a reminder email on Pledge Manager to all those who haven't finished. So a a good chunk of you who haven't done anything, you're only back to PDF level, and you've got your PDF. So I can understand why you don't wanna close the pledge manager. But there are a bunch of you with physical rewards. And it's particularly important for those of you in America, because what we want to do, if you're in The US, North America, and anywhere else in, on the Continent Of America, you're gonna get it sent straight from England individually to your house.
Matthew:
But US patrons, because there's so many of you, we can parcel those up, put them on a pallet, send the pallet to a a partner company of our distributors in America, and they will then distribute it on, which reduces your postage. If you don't
Dave:
potentially by quite a lot, depending on the package that you've ordered. So
Matthew:
Yes. Important
Dave:
to get get on that shipment.
Matthew:
So do that. You've got a few more a few more days to do that, Partly, not because of our generosity, because we are mean spirited people, but mostly because the dice haven't quite arrived yet. I've had the notification from Royal Mail that they're on their way, but I don't think they've got through customs yet and into Royal Mail's hands. So you have until the dice arrive, everybody. And then we will put a final warning out and close the pledge manager.
Matthew:
And if you come back to us after then, the postage rates may be a lot higher, particularly if you live in North America.
Dave:
In The US. Yeah.
Matthew:
In The US, I should say. Yes.
Dave:
Yeah. I mean, part of the part of the part of the reason why we're not kind of hanging on a bit longer is because we wanna get this US shipment for all
Dave:
of those backers who have already finished completed their pledge back their their pledge manager into The US as quickly as we can in the hope of sliding it in ahead of any US government tariffs that might be might be imposed. We depending on depending on, you know, the current news is that there's there's going to be an announcement by Donald Trump on April, and then apparently another one on April. Hopefully, he sees sense and doesn't impose unnecessary tariffs.
Matthew:
There's already a tariff on the dice, but we've we've priced that in Yes. Because the dice is coming from China.
Dave:
That's already taken care of. But, yeah, the book's coming from the EU and the dice trade's coming from The UK. So if there are any European or UK sanctions imposed, that will have an effect. And we would love to get all the stuff into The US before that happens because then nobody has to pay anything extra. So that would be good.
Dave:
Yeah.
Matthew:
Right. So that that's that's that.
Dave:
I am hoping that by
Matthew:
the April, most people will have the book in their hands.
Dave:
That's exactly what I was just gonna say. Yeah.
Matthew:
Beat you to it.
Dave:
Yep. No. Well, that's fine. I I decided not to shout over you this time. So I know that makes a change.
Dave:
Yeah. This time. But yes. So yeah. Exactly.
Dave:
Yeah. So we we targeted May, end of May for completion of all of this. And I would hope, all things being equal, that everyone will have their their products by the May. But as Matt said, April for quite a lot of people looks looks like a reasonable expectation at the moment. Fingers crossed.
Matthew:
Yes. Right. But that's not all the old West news, is it Dave?
Dave:
No. Well, we've been doing quite a lot of of, like, head scratching and thinking and planning. And and not only do we have to to finish the the couple of stretch goals that we'd we put into the into the campaign, so the the campfire tales as as as we called them, and the solo rules. Well, we've also been thinking ahead as to what's next. Because, you know, this isn't a one trick pony for us.
Dave:
This is something that this is a line that we want to nurture and expand and continue to produce for some time. So I put together a number of suggestions based on I mean, on discussions that Matthew and I had had and some others ideas that I'd had. And we've we've pretty much decided that we are gonna look at the gold country for the next tales of the old west book. So California and the gold rush and what would become Nevada and the silver boom is gonna be the focus of the first Tales of the Old West supplement.
Matthew:
And as we intonated, inferred, implied in earlier announcements, yeah, that word there. What we're going to do is not only expand the geographical area that we're looking at, but also expand the time period we're looking at as well.
Dave:
Exactly. Yeah. So the so the so the gold rush, as everyone would know, so kind of started in 1848, went through till about 1855 in California, at which point it was kind of overtaken by the silver boom just on the other side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in what was at that time Utah territory, but then shortly afterwards became Nevada. And that runs until at the end of the sixties, at the end of the end of the fifties, early '18 sixties.
Matthew:
Yeah. The '18.
Dave:
Eighteen. Eighteen. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Dave:
Yeah. Did I say did I say '19?
Matthew:
No. No. You did just say the sixties. And when I think of the sixties, I think of hippies.
Dave:
Okay. Fair enough. So yes. So we're taking the game back in time twenty years. But also, I think what we will do is is is put stuff into that supplement which will allow a GM to take their 1873, '18 seventies campaign into those locations and play them as they would have been in the eighteen seventies.
Dave:
So we'll cover that as well. So but we're focus on the eighteen fifties. But if you want to go to San Francisco in 1873, we will give you what you need to be able to do that as well.
Matthew:
But if you were one of those people who was a bit disappointed to see that there were no rules for cap and ball pistols in in in the first edition, shall we say, of Tears of the Old West, And we we said, well, you know, there's very little gaming fun to be had there for a lot more complex reloading process, apart from the fact you can make your own ammo. Cap and ball guns will appear in Gold Country. I promise.
Dave:
It might be You
Matthew:
won't want them, but No. They will appear.
Dave:
And it might be a very short bit of rule about it as well, and it might simply be it takes longer to load. But we will see. But you
Matthew:
can make your own ammo.
Dave:
But actually, I mean, what would tend to happen anyway, yeah, I think even in later times, is you you you don't have time to reload your revolver in the middle of a gunfight. So you would just drop the gun when you finished it and draw a different one Yeah. And hope that the 12 bullets you've got stacked up in your two pistols is enough to win the fight, which I think more often than not, it certainly was.
Matthew:
Well, it seems to work that way. I I can't remember in any of the games we've been running playtesting. I can't particularly remember ever having to reload by pistol.
Dave:
No. I don't think we've ever had an occasion where you had to reload your pistol in the middle of a gunfight.
Matthew:
No. Which is just as well.
Dave:
Yeah. Which is just as well. But also, again, it shows that gunfights tend to be short, sharp and dangerous.
Matthew:
Yeah. When the guns come out, everybody loses.
Dave:
Yeah. Exactly. But yeah. So that's what we're looking at. We've kind of worked out the the content, actually.
Dave:
I've done a bit of research on on San Francisco and a couple of other places already. That's something we'll now crack on with quite when, you know, we'll be ready to to to put it out is another question, but we will keep you informed as development moves on.
Matthew:
Yeah. I think it's worth saying that we will take from it the many, many lessons we learned from doing the first edition.
Dave:
Absolutely.
Matthew:
So we are going to properly flat plan this from almost day one as opposed to trying to squeeze the flat planning in at the end and have a far better idea of what illustrations we need and get get even more of a head start on those than we did in Yep.
Dave:
We'll be a bit stricter on word counts.
Matthew:
And we'll be stricter on word count. Which is think this will be. I think we can both say this will be a slimmer volume than the Corebook.
Dave:
Yes. Yes. This supplement will be slimmer. I mean, other supplements that we're looking at doing, we've already I think we've talked before on previous shows about wanting to do one for the Oregon Trail, which would then take us another fifteen years, ten, fifteen years earlier than 1850. There are what was the other like a lonesome dove style cattle driving focusing on ranch hands and cowboys expansion.
Dave:
Robber Barons, your
Dave:
question Robber
Matthew:
Barons. Yeah.
Dave:
To explore the Robber Barons and see what we can do with with advanced capital rules. So, yeah, we've got lots of ideas. And I think there's also, you know, thoughts about I mean, I would you know, we would love to do something set in Deadwood or set in Tombstone or Silverton or one of those you know, Dodge City, One of those really notorious well known towns. Do something do something there. But maybe that could be a smaller supplement, which would be, you know, this is the town.
Dave:
This is the stuff around it. Here are some adventures. Maybe. But
Matthew:
Have at it. Yeah.
Dave:
To to be to be decided. To be decided.
Matthew:
Yeah. So I hope that excites everybody who's listening to this. Spread the word. We will, of course, will be spreading the word ourselves. But I think we're done on the Old West news.
Dave:
I think so. Yeah.
Matthew:
Let's kick on with, Paul Budowski's interview on the D Sanction. Today in the Hamab we have our old friend Paul Budowski. Welcome!
Paul:
Good
Paul:
to be here. Thank you very much for inviting
Dave:
Hi Paul.
Paul:
Hi Dave.
Matthew:
It's the first time you've met Dave, but last time you were on
Dave:
Well it's not the first time we've met. We've met many times over recent years. Obviously we've met at convention.
Paul:
I'd like
Matthew:
to point out.
Paul:
It's weird. It may be the first time we've met virtually, but we've met you know in person many times.
Dave:
Exactly, we've done the untraditional thing of actually meeting face to face. Yes. And now we're doing the proper thing of meeting online. Yeah.
Matthew:
And of course, we will be muting again quite soon at DragonBeat too, won't we?
Paul:
Indeed, indeed we will. What a strange feather that will be, returning to town We're
Matthew:
taking the smallest amount of Free League stock ever to that
Paul:
Shopping bag?
Matthew:
No, they're more than a shopping bag. The boot of my car though.
Dave:
Not a lot more though. Yeah, exactly.
Paul:
Yeah, that has occurred to me. This could easily be the first time we almost went, you know, in a car for like a ten a decade. Know, we used to all rolled up used to travel in the back of my car, a a Golf. But, you know, for the last whatever six, seven years, we've upgraded to a transit and then onwards to a loot and it's only a matter of time before she wants an open panel
Matthew:
and a forklift truck on the back to lift the pallets in.
Paul:
Wouldn't that be glorious?
Matthew:
So, but we're not here to talk about games and conventions although we will be doing a lot of conventions this year. We're here to talk about the D sanction. Now I'm gonna bring up the elephant in the room very early on because you are competing in the Kickstarter states with Alien but I'm not gonna
Dave:
go I thought you said you weren't gonna mention Alien.
Matthew:
Yeah you were gonna mention Alien.
Dave:
Oh, my All I gonna
Matthew:
say is that when Alien says they were doing a second edition, a lot of people threw their hands up in the air and said, no, it's too soon for a second edition. Really, you're just grabbing extra money. And Blow me down, but surely my first question is isn't it too soon for a second edition of the Deshunctions? Surely you're just grabbing extra money with this?
Paul:
And I absolutely agree with you. Yeah.
Dave:
And what's wrong with that? Guess.
Paul:
Because most importantly, this isn't the second edition.
Matthew:
Tell me what it is then.
Paul:
So we have had some interesting discussions with distributors for overseas sort of Americans so forth who find the form factor of my games, tend to be slim to be a challenge to consider for ease of distribution to a wider audience. There's definitely this sense of something a bit chunkier with more material in it as well as the core rules, you know, and inventions. Something that is, you know, a bit more substantial for some reason is perceived as an easier sell into distribution.
Dave:
Going large, that's what it is. You've got to go large for the American And
Paul:
so that was what was on my mind. So this is not this is, it is a it's not effectively a second edition, it is a new print of the game where I will take the opportunity to do some cleanup in terms of a bit of a little bit of streamlining, a little bit of, you know, around the actual presentation of the existing rule set.
Dave:
It's not evolved rule set, is it, Paul? Sorry. Sorry. I couldn't No.
Matthew:
No. No.
Paul:
Although there will be a predator stretch goal where John D goes up against the predator. It was only a matter of time. People have been asking for it.
Matthew:
And if you are the license holder of Predator, you may not have heard about this yet, but if the Dutch Golden's reached, I'm sure Paul will be getting in touch.
Paul:
Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it was the idea here is that to improve the potential for those distributors who might be concerned about the slim form factor to have a more robust book. It is also an opportunity to expand the content, include new adventures.
Dave:
So presumably, is based on your experience from last time or previous things you've done where it hasn't landed as well in the American market as you'd hoped? And this is kind of the feedback you got?
Paul:
So the American market is definitely there, though. I mean, as with other games where, you know, with Kthuli Hack and and and sanction last sanction last year, about half of the backers in our Kickstarters are American. Mhmm. So the the audience is there. But when we've had the opportunity to talk to distributors there's just been a bit of reticence about what comes across.
Paul:
It's not quite a pamphlet, but it's a 60 page book.
Dave:
They go we need a bigger book.
Paul:
Yeah, I mean there's not a lot of zines, you know, and it's not a zine by any mean but it's in that kind of category flying around in distribution. You wouldn't go in The UK to a company like Asmedi and order zines. You know, it's not quite the right market. While, for example, Cthulhuac has been through AsthmaD, did actually go through some distribution in The UK, that was in its box set form. So that's where you had multiple books within a box So the notion here though is not to go that necessary direction but to just to get a chunkier book.
Matthew:
Okay, that in itself raises an interesting question. So what we're kind of saying it's about how it looks on the shelf in terms of when a retail outlet is organising, is ordering their stuff, they're thinking this is going to sit on my shelf and be a thing as opposed to if I ordered even three copies of this, they're to be squished between all my other books or whatever. And a box obviously deals with that. Why didn't you go, though, with a box set for this? Because you could have essentially ordered a bunch of boxes, stuffed your pre existing books into those, including the site by the marvellous death writer Andy Brick that is a patron of this show.
Matthew:
So I have to
Dave:
I'm obviously We're contractually obliged to mention him at least once an episode. Usually, it's an insult, but today, we'll let him off with it
Paul:
being a positive thing.
Matthew:
You could put all those in a box, maybe some snazzy dice as well, and and package that up. Why didn't you go that route?
Paul:
I think I would have to say at this point in time and for a good while, I mean I am the I don't know whether there's different there are probably different classifications of indie publisher and I'm at the end of the spectrum that is still doing most of what I do out of my own pocket slash backyard type, you know, whatever. So, you know, I know there are If I was to take, for example, pull a game out of the air, Mothership, right? Which is in and of itself, you know, of a zenish game. That's what it was. Obviously, they went the route of going for a box set.
Paul:
There was, you know, that box set wasn't made in, you know, their backyard. It wasn't made in their house. And it would, you know, would have come from one of the big manufacturing, you know, probably, I imagine possibly China or somewhere, where they've had to have it all shipped. I'm not quite at that stage yet and I don't think I have the logistical mind actually even to get to that stage.
Matthew:
But you did manage that with Cathedral Hack, didn't you?
Paul:
Yeah, I mean, the campaigns where I have run, you know, I've run up towards a thousand backers, but I'm not looking at, you know, the thousands of backers that, you know, other concerns are getting to. So as of yet, everything I do is driven out of The UK. My publisher, so to speak, my distributor all rolled up is here. My printer is here in Essex. You know, I haven't even transitioned to printers elsewhere where you
Matthew:
The marvellous stand out in Lithuania.
Dave:
Indeed. It seems to be doing everyone's business.
Paul:
Yeah. But at this point, yeah, I have not quite hit that level so you know I understand absolutely what you're saying but I think I felt that the form factor of a chunkier book
Matthew:
was the way I
Dave:
wanted
Dave:
to
Matthew:
And in terms of chunkier book it looks like a lovely chunkier book. You've got new illustrations in it, you've also got a lovely cloth cover and I have to say, you know, covers are where it is at the moment.
Dave:
Are a fan of cloth covers. Deluxe Editions
Matthew:
of our game are available via our Punch Manager as long as the Pledge Manager lasts.
Paul:
Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew:
Yeah.
Dave:
You know, we have a whole show, Matthew, to promote ourselves. It's very good
Matthew:
with Paul.
Dave:
And you have to do it in the interview with Paul. I mean,
Matthew:
that's
Dave:
just
Matthew:
a big part This is going out probably at the beginning of the last week of the pledge of allegiance. So I've got to get it in there.
Dave:
Yeah. But we have the rest of the show to do that. You know, anyway. Sorry. Yeah.
Dave:
I apologize for Matthew.
Matthew:
Paul's audience might be listening to this and they might never have heard of tales of the old way. And we do do chapters now so they might skip over our bit and then go straight to the pulpit because that's all they really want to listen to. Not two fat old white men talking about life.
Paul:
It's certainly what I will recommend, yes.
Matthew:
We get the plug in here as well. Anyway, yes,
Paul:
it will be a cloth cover. I mean, so there is a cloth cover of Cthulhu Hack, there is a cloth, a previous cloth cover of desanction, there is one of sanction. It just seems to be, yes, an appearance of sort of a form factor that people like. And it's fairly straightforward. Again, not quite reached the fancy business of, you know, UV spot whatever thing on,
Matthew:
know, on
Paul:
fly jackets and what
Matthew:
yeah. But,
Paul:
yeah. So that yeah. So the book will be, I believe, ruby red fabric cover with a black sigil of the hieroglyphic monad, was part of John Dee's business when he was looking into his communication with angels and so forth. Was on the cover of one of his final books, one of his later works. It will be 180 pages.
Matthew:
Wow, so that's quite a lot bigger than the first version.
Paul:
Yeah, but so in the original version there was Core Rules and One Adventure, and then I released six adventures as a separate book. So notionally, it's not substantially bigger than the combination of those two. Although in this new in this Monad edition, all of the adventures are brand new because, yeah, what I wanted to do is have, shall we say backwards compatibility. More specifically, I didn't want any overlap beyond the essentials of having the rules.
Matthew:
The ruleset.
Paul:
But even the rules will have been not quite be written from scratch, but I will go back to the bare bones and work them up to allow me to give, have the opportunity to perhaps streamline explanations, provide alternate examples, and just take an approach to it. You know, if I, if I was writing it today, which I will be rather than rather than five years ago, Yeah. How how would I have written or structured it differently? But the game will be the same. And how I want to sell it effectively is it's not quite a GM's book, but it kind of means that the GM could have the Mono edition and you could have a soft cover edition on the table and there would be no, you know, no friction between the two.
Paul:
So there'd be something for the players to look at and something for the GM to work with, for example. And at the same time, Andy will be relieved to hear that the site remains its own thing. And, you know, is entirely usable because nothing in it is being dragged into the Monet edition. It remains a supplement to the game and the adventures as well. So there's an adventure in the existing core book that won't be copied.
Paul:
So that will remain its own thing. As I said, it's kind of like there have been some questions from backers along those lines. I currently own this. Do I need this? What am I paying for here?
Paul:
And I've been quite clear to say there's probably 45, 50 pages worth of core rule material, which I will, as I said, revisit and then the rest of the, you know, 130 plus pages will be brand new material. Will be new stuff.
Matthew:
Yeah. Excellent. And talking of revisit, we'll come on to the new stuff in a moment, don't want to forget that, you've got some great writers guessing on this as well. Sticking with the rule set, are there changes or let's not say changes because they're not changes but are there new ways of explaining things or smoother ways of doing things that you've discovered when you wrote sanction, which is the, if you like, generic version of the D sanction?
Paul:
Yes, yeah, I think there are, for example, elements of explaining the use of the challenge system in the game, which is just about when you are dealing with a situation like opening a locked door, how that applies if you are fighting somebody. I don't think the fighting part is as as well explained in the desanction as it is in the sanction version of it. And other another element would be tradecraft has been a bugbear since I I I put it into the desanction. I had a very clear idea of what it is, and Tradecraft is effectively a way it's a way of offering something to the players which is dressed up as espionage based, but is really a representation of, for one, additional resources that you can kind of draw upon just long enough to get through an adventure. But the other key part of it is to render certain adversaries and enemies and villains as almost like a TV series rather than where you've got a serial in ARC where the villain is involved where you can't get to the end of the adventure and just destroy the enemy.
Matthew:
Yeah. You
Paul:
don't have ammunition, so to speak, to be able to do that. And the notion of tradecraft was to have the more tradecraft that was required to defeat an enemy, the more adventures that effectively needed to be chained together over a period of time. And in a way, it was both an idea of making a, creating a structure, an actual mechanical structure whereby you could have these more substantial villains, but also provides kind of a framework that a GM might consider for a short series of ventures or a campaign to say The notion of a lot of series that you'll watch will have little bottle episodes, you know, which are not connected to the arc of the plot. They will have little side quests sort of thing that don't necessarily exactly tie in. And I wanted to get that sort of feel as a a way for you to be able to put together a desanction campaign and have a big bad behind it who you couldn't just, you know, pop on the knock on the knock yeah.
Paul:
Pop on
Dave:
the knocking at the end of
Paul:
the first adventure and say, well, let's move on now. So, yeah. So I think that needs, it needs more explanation and a little bit more, meat around it because I think that has been something where I've certainly had lots of questions from people.
Matthew:
Brilliant. Okay, so then the new stuff. Let's come on to your guest writers in a moment. What are you doing that's new? What are you bringing to the table So apart revising the odd rules
Paul:
and maybe correcting a few small oversights, are bits and pieces of errata. The key part of it is developing and expanding the background material on like personalities and factions and the elements that give you the tools to be able to create these these stories. So especially where they diverge from actual history, because the notion of desanction is you can potentially just pick up a history book that covers the period of time and you've kind of got your source material. But so there are elements which take history as the sort of catalyst, but take it in a different direction. So, for example, Emperor Rudolf, who was fascinated with the esoteric occult.
Paul:
In the desanction, he kind of goes further than this. In actual history, he traveled to Europe with like a caravan of stuff, you know, surveying his territories. In desanction, he kind of takes it to another level. He has like a almost like a clockwork army of creatures which aren't quite undead and aren't quite robots. But it's there's this weird sort of, yes, sideline he's got in quite grotesque occult stuff, which isn't really thoroughly there's a picture of him in the original core book surrounded by like zombies, And he gets a very vague reference, but not much more than that.
Paul:
There are things like organizations that said like, so there's the school of knights, which at the very end of Elizabeth's reign, there are a group of people that kind of that again kind of existed. It's referenced here and there. There's a notion of various members of like the court being involved in this little this occult group. And within the Dee sanction because Dee goes on some travels in Europe in pursuit of more information effectively in his efforts to speak with angels. While he's away, the mice literally did the sort of play and someone else found a sort of wedge to be able to get in while he was away so that the desanction falls out of favor by the end of the 1580s and the school's knight becomes Queen Elizabeth's go to people for dealing with occult matters.
Paul:
Some really really weird little spin off in true history Dee is famous for having at university performed or organised the performance of a play, which included somebody flying on stage and he used the mechanical means to do this, but he did it so well that people were genuinely convinced at that point in time that he was a wizard. Used magic.
Matthew:
This
Paul:
connection with the theatrical and also the fact that the court had its own theatre and entertainers, there is a an actual office department of the government around the Queen called the Office of Revels who were responsible for these entertainments And I want to connect that with Dee's history in coming up with these almost magical approaches to presenting things to provide you with the de sanctioned equivalent of Q Division effectively as a way to introduce some unusual devices into the game which have come out of the Office of Rebels. So there are things that have been bubbling away. They've been mentioned certainly in games that I've run at conventions, even if I've not sort of written them up and actually presented them. Things have developed over the last five years and I'm really quite excited and keen to sort of roll them out as official parts of desanctioned canon.
Matthew:
Those are all brilliant ideas, so I thoroughly understand your glee at looking forward to doing that. So tell us though about if you're not writing the adventures, who's writing the adventures?
Paul:
So when I was thinking about doing this, I was quite clear in my mind about the sort of content I wanted to add. I wanted to have adventures. I wanted to have no overlap. So I had this idea in mind, 180 pages. I needed to have about six adventures would take up a third to a half of the book as a result.
Paul:
The idea was within the Kickstarter that if if I'd only reached funded, I would have to write All Those Adventures. It was it feels like a feels like a threat to both the world and me that that would be unwise. But, so but the notion was that, by, reaching the first five stretch goals, five of the six adventures will be written by guest writers. So, part of what's happened over the last few years is that I have stumbled across people, for example, who are running games at the D sanction, which is always a delight when you create a game and you by chance go to a convention and you see somebody's running it. Or you go on to drive through and actually with this one I have to be clear given permission to be able to use the desanctioned sort of engine and providing you put a little logo at the bottom.
Paul:
Going on to drive through and seeing other people publishing, you know, is just it's really quite, you know, warm, fuzzy moments. So for example, Stephen Dosman, who was the first stretch goal, wrote a trio of inventions called the Witches of When Locked Liberty, which I had hell of a time running at a convention in three separate slots. I managed to squeeze what really needed to be run over more than three slots of anything. It probably needs to be about a fifteen to twenty hour sort of set of adventures. I run it in whatever, nine hours total across the convention and I really enjoyed running it.
Paul:
So I invited him. Richard August, who is a famous games designer in his own right, who has done many things, but most importantly wrote The Harrowing of Harrowing Harrow Hall in the Desanctioned Adventures. A good friend of mine and used he's in my gaming group. But yes, he's a very enthusiastic sort of supporter and I was really happy to bring him on board. He had a great idea.
Paul:
Jason Durell. Yeah. He, I went to an event, well, the Kraken in Germany and he was running desanction with his own adventure.
Matthew:
Now I've got to say we too have experienced somebody we don't know running our game and that there's a special thrill but then somebody we do know and admire like Jason Derrell running our game without us having given it to them.
Dave:
Yeah, yeah,
Paul:
yeah. So he ran that he's run it more than once, I think. My wife, Phil of all rolled up fame, played the game. She was really enthusiastic about it. Never enthusiastic when I run the games, but apparently if Jason's running it, oh, it's So Jason ran that and I just approached him because I knew him from the Kraken and said, you know, have you know, could you write it up and, know, take take part?
Paul:
And oddly enough, I think he was the first person I asked and actually it was quite a while ago when I might have had a glimmer of a thought of writing this. And actually he sent it to me like in 2023. He'd already he had written it. It's written up proper and everything. And so, yeah, his his is already in hand.
Paul:
It's it's one of the latest stretch goals. So please, please, please, everybody keep, keep funding. And then we've got Steve Dempsey. Now Steve is just, I mean, he's got a lot of interest in Dee to begin with. I mean, if you've met him recently, he's beginning to probably look increasingly like a wild and woolly John Dee who's been found wandering the streets of Old London town.
Paul:
Yeah, I approached him, having known him for a while and had some communications around Dee before, and he was more than happy to do that. And then at the tail end of the stretch goals is Shana Germain, who you may also have heard of.
Dave:
Yeah. She worked on Tales of Old West Forest. Yep.
Paul:
Yeah. That's great. So I I think I originally had met Shana when she she was at UK Games Expo a very long time ago. 02/1617, something like that. I don't know.
Paul:
It was it was almost ten years ago we originally met. And for a while, example, Puzzol World Up did some Monty Cook games accessories, licensed accessories. But then at DragonMeet, I knew that Shyna was going to be there. Yeah. And I I was actually more than anything, going along to get my copy of old Gods of Appalachia signed.
Paul:
Because I'd run it recently and I was really, really enjoyed running it and I just, you know, thought I'd take it along and get it signed. And I was wearing my desanctioned t shirt and as I was approaching, Shana had looked was dealing with another customer, looked up as that customer walked away and made an immediate comment how she loved the design on the shirt and wanted to know what the story was behind it. So we had so it was my Dee's Angels basically with Dee Walsingham and the Queen in their youthful guys in the very early years of the D Sanction almost as a trio of supernatural hunters. And yeah, so we we'd had a chat very briefly, busy event Dragon meet last year. But when I got back, I knew she was kind of on holiday.
Paul:
So I dropped a note and then followed it up. And she was just really keen on the idea of getting involved. Yeah, added to the roster of guest writers.
Matthew:
So of the guest writers she's the only one who hasn't played The System before?
Paul:
Yeah, I assume so. Yeah, I mean unless she's just secret desanctioned player. Maybe that'll be revealed.
Matthew:
Sign
Paul:
it, sign it. No. Yeah, but I mean I've had, I think with the original adventures and actually with sort of talking since, actually with other games, I quite often will get an adventure which has a minimal amount of system driven stuff in it anyway because I will have pushed the notion of what the game's about and I think it's fairly obvious, you know. So, yeah, I I am really interested in seeing what Shanna come comes up with. Yeah.
Paul:
Are you giving
Dave:
them any guidance to, you know, to for what they're gonna write? Any
Paul:
I did. I I well, I I so all of the writers have been given some broad guidance on the background of posit history of what the D sanction is about even where I know that you know they may have read it or actually run it. Yeah. But more importantly what I wanted to do was focus on the Fae and the supernatural sort of folkloric side of the game because I think with adventures that I've did in the Desanctioned Adventures, there was, I think at least half of them were a little bit culty, I think would be the first. As in so the human minions sort of seeking to do nefarious things, potentially using magic.
Paul:
And it was it wasn't in there was a split then. It wasn't entirely London centric. There was some half the adventures were outside of London, but it did feel like I wasn't necessarily looking at the more supernatural side of things. And I was quite keen to push that notion. So there is the idea in the game that part of what has literally sort of pushed through into our reality, due to the notion that King Henry the eighth has sort of of weakened and breached the walls by dissolving all the monasteries fifty years ago.
Paul:
What's begun to push through is the great basically the great wood, the great green wood that spans the whole of Europe and the supernatural equivalent of it is sort of just appearing all over the place and is serving as a gateway for the supernatural to enter our world. I wanted to get into that because there's really a lot of interesting stuff about, you know, the green man and, the sort of the Fae. And, yeah, I want to explore that more than I may have done because actually they they actually feature quite heavily in the bestiary of the original core book and then I proceeded to have no adventures about them. So that's another thing I want to do actually is within the bestiary section but also in these adventures is to have more hooks and ideas about how you can use these these entries in the bestiary to fill out your game and provide you with ideas for how adventures might spin out from them. Cool.
Paul:
Brilliant.
Matthew:
Brilliant. Well, you've convinced me and I have to say, I was pretty firmly in the camp of I've got the D sanction do I need another one on my shelves and I'm gonna have to back it now. I was tempted by the cloth cover but you've sold me on the rest so how far are we're about twenty days when we go to broadcast which will be Monday. There'll be a good well, maybe not a good twenty days in the high teens though still on Monday.
Paul:
So at the moment, at the moment, we are right at this very moment in time while we are speaking, we are halfway through the stretch goal to get Richard August on board.
Dave:
Cool.
Paul:
And this very evening I kicked Mr. Dempsey to get him to provide me with his own hand tools blurb for what he wants his adventure. I have a pitch but I'm leaving it to each writer to actually write their sort of back of the novel blurb for what the adventures are about. So I have poked poked Mr Dempsey with a sharp stick. So at this point, yes, we are at that point at 14,005 The goal was 10 for the base book.
Paul:
Because part of that as well is the writing is artists. There's going to be Evelyn Moreau who did the art for the original is already working on some pretty impressive, very impressive stuff for Yeah,
Matthew:
I've seen her share some on some social media, haven't I?
Paul:
Yeah, I mean, on the actual Kickstarter itself, I've included a stunning picture she did of Dee looking into the the Obsidian mirror while angels whisper in his ears. And I have to say when I got that through in the email, I nearly I genuinely nearly wept because it was just so perfect. So she will be doing more of that. Basically she's quite keen on updating some of the art which you know, five years ago there are bits and pieces that she wanted to update, while clearly working on lots of new stuff. But on top of that, we have got other artists involved.
Paul:
So I have got Melissa Spandry, who is a Italian artist who has, as it happens, worked with Free League and Fantasy Flight Games and other game companies. She will be doing a revision of the front cover of the original book. So taking the court experiment picture and effectively redoing it. The original picture, because it's a portrait, is portrait shaped. So I want a landscape picture.
Paul:
So the notion is both to widen the image, but also to add in features that emphasize the theme. There will be supernatural creatures lurking amongst the crowd. Will be the original skulls around Dee, which appeared in the X-ray they took of the picture, the original picture. So those bits will be added back in. And on top of that, I have Simon Leach from Bramble Down Designs, who does a lot of great lino cut work and I am a big fan of his.
Paul:
And there will be a scattering of JE Shields stuff as well, which I've used quite heavily in sanction. I back him on Patreon and he's a really reliable stock art artist who I thoroughly recommend any small game designers who just want to liven up their product. He does and monthly he does tons and tons of illustrations. And being part of his Patreon, I can actually pitch him stuff. So, you know, it's been a rather nice little relationship there as well.
Paul:
There will be more out.
Matthew:
And it is worth saying that in Evelyn's art there's a certain sort of woodcutty, linocutty quality to that already, isn't Yes,
Paul:
I mean, so when I was originally writing it, I wanted, I had it in my mind that I wanted woodcut art, that sort of, that appearance.
Matthew:
Chaplin style.
Paul:
Yeah. And so I had looked, I had looked at examples of it that kind of like in public domain, realized that
Matthew:
I wasn't,
Paul:
yeah. But I wasn't going to be able to get exactly what I wanted that way. And I know when you look at the likes of like Mark Borg and stuff where there are amazing things have been done with what is effectively public domain pieces, you know, of art.
Matthew:
Art by dead people, as they say.
Paul:
I wasn't certain that I was going to be up to the task of producing that kind of thing myself. And again, it's back to me being kind of like a one person sort of indie company trying to do everything by myself if possible. So I stumbled across Evelyn's art, probably on Google plus originally, and I reached out and yeah, I'm really happy that as I said the relationship there is very has been very good in terms of while she'd be the first to admit that she knows nothing about the Tudor period, it has been a fantastic experience working with her. And in the same way actually of the experience I had with Cthulhu Hack where I was, you know, sort of working with Paul Tomes who was this sort of art artist who was doing things, you know, a picture a day before he opened the hardware shop sort of thing. Yeah.
Paul:
It is interesting these the experience of finding, you know, artists who just kind of fit the vision of the moment, something that's in your head. It works for me especially because I'm really I sometimes struggle at the whole art commissioning side of things, you know, pinning down an exact, you know, the exact appearance of an image. I'd much rather have somebody who I can work with who kind of gets what I'm asking for and has that creative spark to actually just run alongside me rather than, you know, leading me to pinpoint exactly what it is that I want.
Matthew:
It's going reasonably well. You're halfway to your next stretch goals, is it? Yes. Two or three more writers you've got to fund before the campaign is over.
Paul:
I hope it's not over at that point. I hope there's more to come, to be clear. So if we hit the 25,000 marks at just over double what well, no, just less than double what we're on right now. That will be Shana. So that's all the guest writers.
Paul:
Then the fun starts.
Matthew:
Oh.
Paul:
Well, so when I produced the original, I did something called the Oselstone Hundred, which was a map of London. Now the map of London that I've done so far is only East London. So the stretch goal beyond Shauna is West London, which was a really interesting experience. I really enjoyed creating that map. And so, yeah, a map of West London comes after that.
Paul:
And then a couple of digital adventures because I'm a masochist and I'm still quite keen on writing. But you never know. Extra digital adventure might be an opportunity to call on the talents of a certain Mr. Brick. You never can tell.
Paul:
But I'm
Matthew:
You heard it here first.
Paul:
And then if we if it does really well, a map of Manchester because Dee spent time as the warden of Manchester and that would be lovely as well because I live in Manchester and it would be a marvelous opportunity to have a good old delve into what Manchester was like when he was around. So
Dave:
Yeah. I was gonna ask because I I I love the map creation side of of game design. And we've done a lot of that with tales of the Old West trying to get maps of Las Vegas in New Mexico in 1870 is quite difficult. How how are you finding that? Do you find that very I mean, I I love it, but it's a very onerous and time consuming task.
Dave:
I mean, how how do you find it in doing this research for for for for Dee?
Paul:
I think the actual map drawing, which I do, I find incredibly therapeutic. There is just something delightful about the sort of hash work of basically just working up from a bit of a pencil sketch to do that. There are actually a lot of maps around. It was definitely a period, you know, that given it's London, there are lots which cover the whole of the sixteenth century from end to end. But it was definitely it was for me, it was an opportunity.
Paul:
I've been drawing my own maps rather haphazardly, but better better and better over time for the last forty years as a gamer. And this was an opportunity to actually say, okay, I'm gonna really buckle down and do something to be proud of and which which I am the the original Austin One Hundred map. I'm really happy with it. And all rolled up sell it as a separate artifact printed on fabric. As you should absolutely.
Paul:
Yeah. So, yeah. So I'm I would really love to be able to get to that. And as I said, the map of Manchester as well. And if we went really crazy, you know, I know not many Kickstarters reach 50,000.
Paul:
Only the more evolved Kickstarters passed on the first day.
Dave:
They they chip over 50,000 as they start the bloody campaign is what happens.
Paul:
Yes. In the first eight minutes. If I was to get that far, I'm then going to go crazy and add an extra 20 pages to the book. If probably so I can include the adventures that have just been, funded digitally and add them to the book as
Dave:
well. Right.
Paul:
And if it went beyond that, I would be the first person lying on the ground. So I wouldn't be able to reach the keyboard to add any more stretch Well,
Matthew:
this is brilliant. I've got to say it sounds great. I'm
Paul:
definitely going
Matthew:
to fund you now and I'll yeah we'll aim to get you lying on the ground.
Dave:
That just sounds a bit strange Matthew you say like I'm gonna lock all the doors we're not that crazy though are we?
Matthew:
I'm blue sky I said we were gonna drag you into the torture chamber again yes
Dave:
anyway on that note it's been fabulous having you in the hamam, Paul. Always great to chat to you. Best of luck with the rest of the Kickstarter. I mean, you've done brilliantly already, so onwards and upwards. And, yeah, great to see you soon in the flesh again.
Paul:
Indeed. Yep. Thank you very much for having me on, and I hope you get better soon, Dave.
Dave:
So that was a real pleasure chatting to Paul. So it's it was nice to e meet him for the first time as opposed to meet him in the flesh. But, I mean, Desanction is something that I haven't really looked at before. And it you know, it's it's it's an era. Actually, there was something I I was gonna ask him about, you know, a bit more a bit more detail about his creating a historical game and and the the the problems, the hassles, and and issues that arise that we're finding out.
Matthew:
We can always invite him back. Yeah. We we we have already done an episode a bit like that with Thomas, but maybe it's worth having another group chat at some time. Or maybe we should Sort of pee. See what the seminar program is like at one of our one of the cons we'll be going to
Dave:
That's
Paul:
good and
Matthew:
invite him onto that.
Dave:
Yeah. That's a good idea. But, yes, so what was what was my point? So that that period of history is one that, you know, I know a little bit about. I'm no expert on on on, you know, Elizabethan history.
Dave:
And it was it was something that I've I've it's never really grabbed me as a as a role playing setting. Now we've but I've really enjoyed our our game of Savage Worlds of of Solomon Kane set in exactly that time. Basically doing the same stuff because Master Dee is our is our
Matthew:
Yes. He's our patron in that, isn't he?
Dave:
Yeah. So so basically, there's there's a very clear parallel there. So I'm really enjoying that. But actually, having listened to to Paul and and and heard heard a bit more insight into the game, I mean, it's actually interests me a lot more than I than I thought it would. Not not enough.
Dave:
I'm not gonna back it, but that's only because I don't have much in the way of cash at the moment. So I have to be very careful on what I choose to back. But but actually, yeah, it it it's it's made me much more interested in the game. And maybe I'll pick it up at retail at some point, maybe at a convention.
Matthew:
But no. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you my first edition copy.
Dave:
Okay.
Matthew:
Because if I'm gonna buy myself a new you know, the Monad edition, you can at least have a look at the first edition.
Dave:
Oh, yeah. Cool.
Matthew:
It is it is not without flaws. And, you know, Paul talked about how he was smoothing over some of the rules in this one. But it is a very simple game to play. As you know, Andy Rick, our patron is and friend, is a huge fan of it. So Yes.
Matthew:
He you know, you should join one of his games maybe at some point when he does another one. But, yeah, but I'll lend you just out of interest, I'll lend you that well, no, I'll give you that first edition.
Dave:
Okay. Cool.
Paul:
Thank you.
Matthew:
And you can have a look at that. Yeah. It it is very interesting. We're doing another interview next week. Hey.
Matthew:
Woah. You know what? We're already on next time and goodbye. How did
Dave:
that happen? I know.
Matthew:
So Andreas came to us this week. We couldn't fit him in this week because, look, we've got a whole episode here already. But his Kickstarter is going to start oh, that's what we should have said, actually, in quick quick wind back to World of Gaming News. Iskadrill Burns is a very Nordic Morkborg variant that is kick starting probably this week as you hear it, as you hear this episode. It opening now?
Dave:
What do you think? Or is it not?
Matthew:
No. I think it's opening on the April, I think.
Paul:
Okay.
Matthew:
And we will be talking with Andreas about Iskadrill burns next week. Es and Yggdrasil. Next week. Next episode. It's not Yggdrasil.
Matthew:
Yeah.
Dave:
Sorry. It's not Yggdrasil burns. That's like something from the eighties. It's Yggdrasil Burns.
Matthew:
Yes. Yggdrasil Burns. Yeah.
Dave:
It hasn't got a launch date, but yeah.
Matthew:
Yeah. Think I think soon.
Dave:
Yeah.
Matthew:
I think by the time you guys are listening to this, our dear lister, it will have launched or be just about to launch, and we should have included it in the world of gaming. But we didn't. But we're talking about it now, and we will talk with Andreas about it in our next episode in two weeks' time.
Dave:
We will. Excellent. Cool. Good stuff. Right then.
Dave:
Well, if if if that's enough of me sniffing and coughing, yeah, it's goodbye for me.
Matthew:
And it's goodbye from him.
Paul:
May the icons bless your adventures. 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 Free League Publishing.