Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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 two seventy five of Effect. Location. Location. Location. I'm Dave.
Matthew:And I'm desperately trying to remember the name of one of the two people on location, location, location. So I can introduce myself as that. But that didn't work.
Dave:Kirsty Alsop is one.
Matthew:Kirsty Alsop. And That's what I should have said. And I'm Kirsty. That's what I should
Dave:have said. And the bloke is I don't remember his name.
Matthew:Anyway, I'm not Kirsty or the bloke. Phil. Phil. Phil. Yeah.
Dave:It's only the weekend that you're Kirsty, isn't it, mate? So Anyway, go to that special club of yours. Anyway
Matthew:Anyway, I'm Matthew. And I'm pleased to say that we genuinely do have quite a full program this episode. Full only because much to our surprise, the interview recorded earlier on in the week went on twice as long as we were expecting for reasons that will become apparent. But that is with a chap called Duncan Rhodes, who has written a book that we will tell you about later on. Before that, we have got some news in the world of gaming.
Matthew:And we have also got a little bit of Old West news as well. Mhmm. Then after the interview, we'll say what we're doing next time and wish you all goodbye. That is the entire running order. Oh, I should also say, Dave, that we've got no new patrons to thank, but we love all our existing patrons, don't we?
Dave:We do. Oh, and all our previous patrons as well. For those people who've
Matthew:seen And all our previous patrons. We love We've had to drop out of patronage.
Dave:We love everyone, especially our patrons and former patrons and future patrons. And, yeah, I'm not quite sure
Matthew:where I'm
Dave:going there, but thank you, everyone. As we always say, we can't do this without your support, so thank you so much.
Matthew:Yeah. Thank you very much. So shall we kick on with the world of gaming?
Dave:Let's. So most anticipated TTRPG of the year. What is it?
Matthew:Well, there were 10, of course. This is created by nworld
Dave:is top though. So
Matthew:Well, okay. You want me to go straight? I was gonna do it like number 10.
Dave:Don't bury the lead. Come on. Don't bury the lead. But no. No.
Dave:That's fine. That's fine.
Matthew:Well, number 10, there's an exciting entry from newcomers freely.
Dave:Sorry. I'll stop that. That's gonna be very annoying for people.
Matthew:Yeah. It's quite good, though. You you knew quite a lot of that dude.
Dave:That's I
Matthew:could have done that, mate.
Dave:I was amazed that that came back, because I never really followed the charts at all. But Yeah.
Matthew:No. There's there's a lot of that. And, you know, not just the intro, but into the sort of, like, the the little stings as well. Yeah. I am very impressed, David.
Matthew:I you know, I'm not I'm not normally very impressed by you in anything you do. But in that, that impresses me.
Dave:Well, that says more about you than me, think, frankly, pal.
Matthew:So Twilight Swords scrapes in at number 10 from Two Little Mice and Free League. We've spoken about it before. I think it's not massively anticipated anticipated by either you nor I.
Dave:I mean, it looks it looks lovely, but it's not a game I'm gonna pick up, I don't think.
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's not our genre, really, is it? No. I think.
Matthew:And then gonna whisk through old school essentials Essentials at number nine. Discworld at number 10. Black Company at number seven.
Dave:Discworld at number 10, did you say? Number eight. You're you're
Matthew:going I'm sorry. Number eight.
Dave:You're going
Dave:down, not up, mate.
Matthew:Yeah. Because the previous number was 9, and then, obviously, 10 comes after nine.
Dave:But it's kind of count unless unless you're counting down, in which case, eight comes after nine, of course. But anyway, you're you're poorly so, listeners, Matthew is poorly. He's not been very well.
Matthew:So I've got a stinking cold.
Dave:So we we should we should give him some additional latitude for being a complete fuckwit. Right. But yeah.
Matthew:Broken Empires. Is it number six? I had no idea what that's about. It looks fantasy. Slightly dark ages, but he's in jail.
Dave:A sim lite d 100 skills based TTRPG.
Matthew:Yeah. I can read it from the fucking website as well, mate.
Dave:I'm just adding additional content for our listeners, pal.
Matthew:Okay. Okay. You know? One that I do know about, and it's something I've always kind of wanted and and at the same time not wanted to be bothered with, is Ars Magica, which is a kind of European fantasy magic game. It preceded all those story telling games, vampire and and mage ascension and stuff like that.
Matthew:It just looks like a tremendous amount of hard work. So I I was not anticipating. And this is a collection of everything from the last edition sort of bound together in one massive volume.
Dave:Yep.
Matthew:And yeah.
Dave:Obviously, some people obviously, some people are anticipating that one for the
Matthew:A lot of people are anticipating. I mean, I think your man your man Andy Bader on our on our Discord.
Dave:Oh, okay. Yep.
Matthew:Yep. He's well, he I I think he was, you know, he was going, oh, it's a lot of work. And and it's a great game, but it's a lot of work. And and it's probably too much money. But then when they announced they were going on the strike because of Minnesota thing, because they're based in Minnesota, he Atlas Games, this is.
Matthew:He immediately then went in for it and backed it all. Yeah. Did a late pledge or whatever. So
Dave:Okay. Yeah. Okay.
Matthew:As a reward for that. Then so that's good. That tipped his mind there. Then we've got Warhammer Fantasy role play at number four.
Dave:Fifth edition. I mean, fourth edition wasn't that long ago, was it?
Matthew:No. It didn't feel like it.
Dave:No. I mean
Matthew:In 2018, indeed, Cubicle Seven featured in this list for the fourth edition of I'm a fan yours.
Dave:Eight years.
Matthew:So seven years.
Dave:It doesn't feel like that long.
Matthew:It doesn't. But then that's what people said with Alien two, didn't they?
Dave:Well, that was then five years, isn't it? Even less.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:But still, I mean yeah. Okay. Fine. Fine.
Matthew:And then we've got Mistborn, which is the first appearance or the second, if you count it in last year's Cosmere's thing. So it's a Cosmere role playing game. There's a lot of fantasy in these lists. Come on, guys.
Dave:Get out the
Matthew:whole fantasy rat, everybody. How many fantasy games do you need?
Dave:You do you do
Matthew:realize You could do it all in D and D, couldn't you?
Dave:Your your comment from earlier about me reading off the website, you know, has has pulled back the curtain of our expertise. Because now we just we we sound really good. Like, we know what all these things are, and we've got all this knowledge at our fingertips. But actually, we just read it off the screen.
Matthew:Now, I've had a thought about the Invincible role playing game as well, which is number two.
Dave:Number two.
Matthew:And this is an original thought, not not rolled off the
Dave:website. Okay.
Matthew:I was thinking, the problem with for me, with the Invincible Universe is, partly because it's so deadly, everybody except the core characters, and I will happily argue with you for months over who the core characters are, but I'm thinking Invincible, his dad, who died in the first series of the TV show, but is apparently back because, you know, superheroes.
Dave:Yeah. Well, I wouldn't argue with you over any of it because I don't know any of it.
Matthew:You know nothing. And his girlfriend, the pink girl, whose name I can't remember, everybody else is there's a lot of superhero types created there, but they're all expendable. So can can you love any of them? No. Can you care for any of them?
Matthew:No. Because they're likely to have their arms ripped off or something at some later stage. That is my problem with the Invincible game.
Dave:Okay. The what? The the
Matthew:Invincible franchise.
Dave:The the core characters are have plot armor. Is that what you mean?
Matthew:Not just they have plot armor. Because actually, I've got because do get beefed up a bit.
Dave:Yeah. Because, I mean, I quite like the idea that any character is is fair game, you know, like they do in in Game of Thrones largely. Although, there were some characters there, I guess, they were never gonna kill off early. So I like the idea that, you know, characters aren't, you know there is always a threat to them. There's always a risk that they might be they might be killed.
Dave:Because if you've got a character in something that, you know, you're pretty sure they're not gonna die, then, you know, it does you do lose some of that tension potentially.
Matthew:Yeah. Except these are superheroes, and Yeah. I think they have different rules, fictionally. You know, gritty gritty we all loved Game of Thrones because it's gritty. By the way, have you seen any of that there, Night of the Seven Kingdoms?
Dave:I haven't. No. I've recorded I'm recording it. So I'll watch it when I've got most of the episodes recorded.
Matthew:Right. But it was quite episode.
Dave:Was it good?
Matthew:I quite liked it. Yes. That's good. I'm a bit annoyed though, because I thought, oh, this young actor, he's quite clever. Who who's he?
Matthew:I looked him up on Wikipedia, and I found out his character's full name, and it's fucking spoiled the whole series for me.
Dave:What? The character's full name? Yeah. Right. Okay.
Dave:And why has it spoiled it?
Matthew:Well, no, I can't, because it will spoil it for anybody, but I'm fucking pissed off with Wikipedia. Don't look up the actor's name on Wikipedia.
Dave:Right. Okay.
Matthew:And it's not even it wasn't even you had to bury it down. It was on the little line that comes up on Google.
Dave:Okay. Right. Is is this one of those things that you really shouldn't have a bee in your bonnet about, mate? You should just get over
Matthew:Well, I I generally don't have a bee in the bonnet about spoilers. I think people would get pissed off about spoilers.
Dave:Okay. Is he gonna be he's gonna be a Targaryen, isn't he, or something? Have I have I just spoiled it now?
Matthew:You've just spoiled it now.
Dave:It turns out that all along, he's a fucking Targaryen and he's not actually Okay. A Well, that's a bit of an old that's a bit of an obvious spoiler, isn't it? I mean
Matthew:Well, yeah. But I just like the little moment of going, oh my god. I wonder if he's a bloody Targaryen. Yeah.
Dave:Well, because the thing is that I I there is a bit of me that does hate that. You know, it's a bit like, you know, making Rey, you know, Palpatine. Well, I don't know that's Palpatine's not bad idea, but making a Skywalker's stupid. But having but having a character, you know, why does your okay. I'm gonna go on a slight rant here.
Dave:So Alien and Ripley. One of the best things about Alien and about aliens is that Ripley Ripley was fucking normal. She was a normal working Joe, did normal stuff, had normal problems, and that normal person was put into those extraordinary situations and was able to find the strength, you know, resilience, the power, the skill, whatever, to come through. And then going on and turning her into something, you know, making her the the the the the kind of key link in in in everything, which has been suggested. I still haven't seen Alien Earth, but which has been suggested.
Matthew:Just just I don't know whether Ripley features a
Dave:Delian Earth. I don't know, but I remember reading something where there was a thought of having some kind of backstory that was relevant to her in that. Yeah. But but making her more than that just spoils the whole point of those two movies. Because
Matthew:She's talking about Americans. Can I just slag off Americans now? Sorry to all our American listeners. But for for a culture that has grown up as meritocracy and and, you know, being against inherited titles and kings and shit, the number of fictions that require you have a family and, you know, that every generation of that family is important pisses
Dave:me off.
Matthew:Yeah. So I've got a cold. That's why I'm going.
Dave:But I think also, they've done that already in Game of Thrones with Jon Snow. And that was fine.
Matthew:Do it once. Why did he have to yeah. Exactly.
Dave:Well, but that's fine because there was a bigger story there and, you know, it it lent into why he was living with
Matthew:this Who is Jon Snow again? Is he a bloody Targaryen?
Dave:Targaryen. Yeah.
Matthew:Why has he got white hair
Dave:then? I know.
Matthew:Why has he got white hair? Don't get me started.
Dave:I know. But then doing it again, straight away in this series, the great thing about this series is this guy, in my mind, was this guy is a nobody who manages through whatever and through all the trials and everything to make something of himself.
Matthew:Not Hold on. We may be thinking about two different characters.
Dave:Right. Okay.
Matthew:So you haven't spoiled it after all.
Dave:Alright, Corey. Okay. That's fine. Anyway, we we have digressed.
Matthew:Yeah. Come on to we're just holding off attention for number one most anticipated golf game according to mWorldsList. We'll put a link, of course, in the show notes. You can read all about this. It is remarkably not a fantasy heartbreaker at all.
Matthew:It's something entirely new. I'm lying, of course.
Dave:Is it? I was gonna a ringer. Yeah. I was like, it looks quite fantasy to me, mate.
Matthew:It's an old school game. Expect rules like Grimdark stuff. And in fact, it looks like that. I'm pretty sure I've seen the illustration on the front cover of some old episode or some old illustration from Games Workshop. Pretty convinced it was something to do with Warhammer years ago.
Dave:Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew:So I I may be wrong there. I don't wanna slag off the answers to to
Dave:It's a good it's a really good image, but it does have a very old Warhammer feel about it, as in the original, you know, back in the nineteen eighties Warhammer. Yeah. And it looks nice. The cover looks
Matthew:good.
Dave:Yeah. I think it looks cool. I I won't be I won't be buying it, but
Matthew:Yeah. Because I think I really need another fantasy game.
Dave:But, I mean, doesn't doesn't this list just show you though? I mean
Matthew:People do.
Dave:It's what most of
Matthew:the fantasy people games.
Dave:It's what people who you know, most people who play role playing games wanna play something fantasy. Yeah. It it seems going on this list. But, well, you know, that and there's nothing wrong with that at all. It just means that if we wanna make big bucks, probably have to make a fantasy game.
Dave:But yeah. Okay. I can't hear you now. I don't know if you've just gone quiet.
Matthew:No. No. No. I'm just I'm suddenly into reading where somebody says, oh, I think it's gonna be based on Shadow Dark when levels going up to level 20. Ah, okay.
Matthew:And then somebody says, oh, I think that's old news. It's actually gonna be a bit different. But it may be Deathbringer powered by Shadow Dark. But, yeah. Snoresville.
Matthew:Snoresville, guys. Yeah. It's you.
Dave:It's a bit like all these things, like, you know, Age of Sigmar and yeah. There's another one. Soulbound. Yeah. Is it Soulbound?
Dave:Which is basically I
Matthew:can't remember.
Dave:I don't Basically, the same thing, but with a slight twist to it. But Yeah. You know, you're you're basically D and D superheroes. Yeah. Not not our not our shtick, but Not our shtick.
Dave:It it is obviously the shtick for many people. If you're if you're interested in those games, good luck. I hope you enjoy them. Hope they're as good as you anticipate them to be.
Matthew:I know none of the games that you voted for are on that list, Dave, but one of the games that you voted for has just completed a very successful backer kit campaign. Do you want tell us all about it?
Dave:Well, I can't well, I can't tell you all about it. I can tell you a bit about my reasons for for backing it. So we talked about this before. Toon, the role playing game, is having a revival under Steve Jackson Games. And they've their backer kit campaign completed about ten days ago at the point of recording.
Dave:Now, I wasn't. I have very fond memory. We were talking about this before the show, but I have very fond memories of playing tune back in the day. But actually, it's it's it's surprising how flimsy those memories are because I can't I'm I'm remembering the feel. I'm not remembering the game, because I don't even remember what character I had at the time, and we were talking about it.
Dave:But it comes with a very long, very large, you know, dollop of of nostalgia sauce, and I wasn't gonna back it. I then relented and backed it, and but it did well. So they got they got a 140 over a $140,000 from their 50,000 target, about nearly 3,200 backers. I'm not sure what they were expecting, but probably for this kind of thing, that's probably pretty good. So yeah, I look forward to getting it.
Dave:I I don't know when I'm gonna play it, because it's not really the kind of game that I I play nowadays, but it just looks lovely and it's got such a dollop of nostalgia on it that, you know, having it on my shelf when I can find space on my shelves to put it somewhere is gonna be worth having it in the first place. So
Matthew:It will make you feel good.
Dave:It'll make me feel good. I will enjoy reading it, and you never know. It might inspire me just to give it a quick one shot for a laugh down the pub sometime.
Matthew:Cool.
Dave:But
Matthew:and Bane, Chewdvang is about to kick start. Now this is interesting in that I think when we spoke with everybody at Spell Congress. Congress. Yep. We imagined it was gonna be a supplement to the rules, but actually, it's gonna be standalone, which is to say it'll have the new Dragonbane rules incorporated in it.
Matthew:Apparently, there's been demand for that. Said, we're responding to popular demand. This is what we're gonna do. And I I thought, well, I haven't particularly seen demand for that. And I went over and looked at comments on the Kickstarter, I couldn't particularly see any.
Matthew:But I wonder whether there are Swedish feedback that says we want this to be standalone.
Dave:Quite possibly.
Matthew:Yeah. Because we don't read Swedish for her. No. So, anyway, it's gonna be effectively standalone. You don't need the Dragonbane core rules to play it.
Dave:Did you say that there are changes to the rules from core Dragonbane for this?
Matthew:Not that I particularly I don't think I remember them saying that particularly. I mean
Dave:You kind of implied it with what you said a moment ago. That was all.
Matthew:No. No. No. I I I don't I don't think so particularly. I mean, I think there's an interesting change in tone.
Dave:And style. Absolutely. Yeah.
Matthew:Because I think Trudvag is a little bit grittier and darker than Jagged Baden.
Dave:The art the art style is a lot less cartoony. And it's not it's I don't it's not Johann Ogekranz doing the artwork here, is it? It's Alvaro Tapia. He did one or did quite a lot of one ring stuff, and a couple of other names I'm not familiar with, Paul Bonner and and Daniel Zerome.
Matthew:Yeah. And I think Paul Bonner might be one of the original artists of the first edition. And the art thing was a thing that I remember. They did do a limited English language version of Chuld Fang called Chuld I Fang remember it being a bit weird. It's not something I looked at any great detail, but I remember somebody I was listening to on a podcast being disappointed because they'd paid for it.
Matthew:And it was a kind of only web delivered. It wasn't a book, and they thought they were getting a book. Yeah. Yeah. And they actually got access to a website.
Matthew:And so that's that's kind of all I know about it. Yeah. But I It looks This is an interesting idea.
Dave:It looks lovely. I mean, it's coming in four volumes, which is like a core rules, a world book
Matthew:Monster Manual in some description. Yeah.
Dave:And what looks like a campaign, black sun. It
Dave:looks lovely. I'm not
Dave:gonna back it, but I'll look forward to maybe seeing a copy in the future at some point. I the style and the look of it does draw me in a bit more than the style and the look of Dragonbane, I will admit.
Matthew:Ah. Well, I I can So this is it. I wonder whether Dragonbane is a bit off putting to a certain generation of
Dave:Or a certain
Matthew:Octaminer player. Constituency of players. Yeah. If you grew up with Chudvang, then maybe Dragon Bait is a little bit too cartoony in its style, and mirth and mayhem isn't what you're what you get into Jackal Octoped up for. Yeah.
Matthew:So maybe so I wonder whether that is behind some of the feedback that Feeling Gavad. I don't know.
Dave:It is. It's an interesting, like, publisher philosophy though, isn't it? Or strategy of of doing effect what what they've done effectively is have two versions of the same game, but one but one of your mirth and mirth and mayhem aimed at perhaps a younger audience. Yeah. And the other being a grittier, more adult, perhaps, approach to to the to the game.
Dave:By having the same game, but produced twice. Yeah. I'd you know, I'm not sure that's happened a lot in the past. No. I'm racking my brain a bit, you know, I'm not I'm not a comprehensive, you know, expert library of previous role playing games by any means.
Dave:But I can't think
Matthew:No. No. But no means whatsoever. I'm more of a library than you are, and I don't know very much.
Dave:There might well be something in the D and D world, perhaps, that that echoes this. But, yeah, it's it's an interesting decision to make. And they obviously feel there's a big enough group of of players and customers out there who want Trudhvang to to do that, to take that approach. And, you know, it's interesting.
Matthew:Yeah. And there's also there is the business thing though, you know, core books sell better than supplements. So by being a core book, we Yeah. Be more successful than than if it was a supplement. Who can tell?
Matthew:Shall we get on to more closer to home news? Yes. We're gonna be at Tabletop Live in Dogcaster. Well, I say we, Dave. I say we, but your brother told me that you're not available that weekend.
Dave:I I did I did warn you that I might not be, but then I never got You
Matthew:did say, oh, I've gotta go and check, but you never came back to me. Didn't
Dave:know I found
Matthew:out for your brother. Yeah. That's pathetic.
Dave:My my selfish brother is is turning 60 and
Matthew:60.
Dave:60. What the fuck happened there? That's a lot that's not that's not good. I've now got I now have two siblings who are 60 or over. It's just shocking.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:But, yes. So we'd arranged to to take him out for his birthday, and sadly, that has landed slap bang squarely in the middle of tabletop gaming in Doncaster. So I won't be there, which is a real pity. This is a This this is a bit like that, because I'm not gonna be able to be at tabletop Scotland either. No.
Matthew:Actually, you're scurvy off on all the My long
Dave:selfish eldest niece has chosen to get married that weekend. So, I mean, why she didn't check with me first, I don't know. It's just shocking. But, yeah.
Matthew:So Well, at least your brother's, you know, only gonna have one sixtieth birthday, but your niece will probably get married again.
Dave:Let's hope, But yeah. So sadly, I won't be there, but you will be.
Matthew:Yes. And and I won't be on my own, thank God, despite you letting me down at the last minute.
Dave:Well, it's not quite the last minute, but anyway.
Matthew:Patron Frank and Rauder Dash will be joining me.
Dave:Nice. Nice.
Matthew:For at least some of the time to, you know, let me go off and have a wee occasionally.
Dave:Thank you, Frank, for for stepping in so so ably and willingly. It's it's
Matthew:greatly Go and check out Frank's podcast no. Not podcast. What's it called? YouTube channel.
Dave:YouTube channel.
Matthew:And Twitch. Oh, which brings me on yes. Talking of
Dave:talking of YouTube channels.
Matthew:Talking of YouTube channels. Let's move on to old West news. I hope you ought to have a little jingle where I can press it and go, old west news or something, shouldn't you?
Dave:Or something that sounds a bit western, maybe.
Matthew:Maybe.
Dave:Yeah. Rather than something that sounds like a a shampoo advert.
Matthew:Like the themes of The Magnificent Seven, which you celebrated yesterday as I was actually watching The Magnificent Seven.
Dave:That that theme is absolutely the film's great, but the theme is just wonderful. We have a slight digression. Back in the days when I used to play World of Warcraft, we had a we had a a battleground p v p guild called the Magnificent Seven. And I think the plan was there was seven of us in it, but I don't think we ever got to seven. But, basically, whenever we went into a battleground, when you were in the waiting room before the battle started, we would play the the the Magnificent Seven theme to our to our raid group, which people didn't didn't tend to appreciate.
Dave:But You
Matthew:remember before we started this podcast, you said let's keep it to, you know, take
Dave:10 Yeah.
Matthew:Digressions like this do not help.
Dave:I did say that to to Jenny, my wife, before, just before we started. And she went, yeah. Right. See you in an hour.
Matthew:So twenty six minutes in. Yes. Let us get round to the Old West news that we're actually gonna be talking about. Tomorrow, as we record this, today, maybe, if you're listening to it, we're gonna be on the YouTubes
Dave:We are.
Matthew:From 08:30 GMT in the evening.
Dave:That is right.
Matthew:And we are gonna be taking a group of players through character generation for a new campaign that will then regularly be on the YouTubes Indeed. Every couple of weeks. I think. That's what we've decided, isn't it?
Dave:I think that's the plan. As long as we get others to to jam, then that's that's cool. And we do have volunteer. So it's gonna be a West Marches style. It's gonna be based around the Gold Country.
Dave:So this is this new supplement that we are creating. So we are going back to eighteen fifties California, possibly, you know, Nevada, if the people wanna play set their town in Nevada. And we'll be looking at, yeah, the the gold rush, and that's where the West Marches campaign will be set.
Matthew:Yeah. And talking of eighteen fifties, I've been commissioning a new cover for the Gold Country book and stuff like that. Cool. Actually, looking at just how weird eighteen fifties fashion was compared to the eighteen seventies. Loads more top hats.
Dave:This is what I'm Okay. Interesting. Oh,
Matthew:it should be interesting. And and big bow ties as well, interestingly, is what I'm noticing as well. On the men, that is. Interesting.
Dave:But but yes, so if you're so we are we're probably gonna have two session zeros. So it'll be this Monday coming, which is gonna be the what, the twenty sixth. And then a week later, the first one is principally gonna be character creation. There will be a bit of character creation, and the second one for those people who can't make it tomorrow are out of players. But also, the second one in a week's time will be creating Town town.
Dave:And working out where we gonna be. And then two weeks after that, we'll have the first session. So, yeah, really looking forward to that. Yeah. I really enjoyed when we did Alien the Colony back in the day, which is basically the same the same kind of approach, except that that time I I I took on all the ing responsibilities largely, although we had a couple of volunteers who pipped in and helped.
Dave:And that just proved to be a bit too much. So at this occasion, I'm gonna open it up, but then we are allowing others to GM. In fact, we are expecting others to GM because Yeah. I won't I won't be able to manage it all all myself. But, yeah, it should be great.
Dave:I'm looking forward to playing as well. That'll be really cool.
Matthew:So I'm gonna take a turn GM ing as well, and we've got Bruce. I think Jed signed up to GM too. So there will be a variety of voices in the GM's chair.
Dave:Which be great.
Matthew:Yeah. We'll see how it goes.
Dave:Yeah. So, yeah, tune in at 08:30 tomorrow GMT for session zero part one.
Matthew:And that is the end of World of Gaming. Let us talk about Duncan Rhodes.
Dave:Yes. So this is slightly interesting, wasn't it? Because we we weren't originally keen to interview Duncan when we came to us because he's he's he's he's
Matthew:His publisher got in touch with us or his publisher's marketer or whatever. And I and it was D and D, basically. It's a D and D book.
Dave:But it's not quite. It's also slightly agnostic. Yeah. Let's let Duncan explain, shall we?
Matthew:Let him explain. In the Hammam today, we have with us the marvelous author, Duncan Rhodes. Duncan, welcome to the Hammam.
Duncan Rhodes:Thanks for inviting me in. It's a bit steamy, but I can just about make you out.
Dave:That's just Matthew's aura, that is. That's
Duncan Rhodes:not the deal with Herman.
Matthew:I say aura. That's a polite one.
Dave:Miasma is perhaps a better word maybe. But welcome, welcome.
Matthew:So yeah, you're new to Hamam, so you won't be aware of the fact that we do ask the same question of every new person in Hamam, which is Duncan. Tell us please about your life in gaming.
Duncan Rhodes:Oh, thank you. Yes. This is I guess this is my initiation. Doesn't too tricky. I started well, curiously enough, I I wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons before I even knew what Dungeons and Dragons was.
Duncan Rhodes:And I was just going around as a 10 year old asking people, you know, how do I play? Who can I play with? And no one could answer. Someone even got me a book that said, what is Dungeon and Dragons? And I didn't understand the word of it.
Duncan Rhodes:And then I got to secondary school, and there were some guys in the in the other class who were playing. And I was like, great. I'm in. And, yeah, I was I was kinda blown away. I'd I'd only obviously played board games, and in those days, that would be like monopoly and and cluedo.
Duncan Rhodes:So they weren't even particularly, you know, inventive or or avant garde. So it was it was quite a shock and and a good one to kind of discover what a role playing game was and and to live in these worlds of seemingly infinite possibilities. Although I was probably I think I was a first level dwarf cleric or something. So I was just like the the the healing scam guy, you know, that you get when you're the the new new guy on the block.
Dave:At least at least you weren't killed for your starting money. That's what we used to do without buying the clothes.
Duncan Rhodes:I I wasn't yeah. I I lasted a few sessions at least. I I can't actually remember much from those games, but, eventually, I started you know, I bought the books, started DMing myself, taught friends to DM so I didn't have to DM anymore. And then I gave up. And I, you know, went to university.
Duncan Rhodes:I kind of thought about playing. Never did. And I just assumed that everyone else had given up as well because Dungeons and Dragons, that was that was the eighties.
Matthew:That's good stuff, isn't it?
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah. Yeah. Surely no one's playing role playing games anymore. And then sometime in 2015, I was in a concert in Barcelona. And I asked this guy who I knew was like a a party going guy and I was like, what have you been up to?
Duncan Rhodes:And I was expecting him to tell me these, like, crazy stories and he kinda looks a bit sheepish. Like, he was embarrassed about something. He was like, you know, I've just kind of been taking it easy playing Dungeons and Dragons and I was like, what? Wow.
Dave:What do
Duncan Rhodes:you say? I fucking love Dungeons and Dragons. And yeah. So apparently, people were still playing and As
Matthew:grown ups.
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah. Exactly. It was a fifth edition out. It was good, apparently. And whether or not you agree with that, I and it may vary, but I I was I was back in.
Duncan Rhodes:I was back in the game and totally fell in love with it again, started blogging about it to just get some frustrations off my chest. Okay. Or, you know, to share some thoughts and insights. And I've kept that blog going for, I think I think it's ten years now. And it must have been discovered at some point by by the American publisher that got in touch with me, and, they said, hey.
Duncan Rhodes:We're looking to commission a d and d book. I ignored the email because I thought it was probably spam. And then somehow I turned it up again in my inbox. I was like, well, I've kind of wanna write a book, and they seem to be offering me the opportunity to write a book. Maybe I should actually answer this email at least if a serious
Matthew:And this is Bluestone Books who are the publisher of
Dave:this guy.
Matthew:Wow. That's pretty amazing. Your blog must be pretty good.
Duncan Rhodes:Well, I think it's okay.
Matthew:We'll have to put a link to that in the show notes when we when we do that
Dave:as well.
Duncan Rhodes:It's hipstersanddragons.com if you if you wanna check it out. I mean, guess as well maybe they noticed that I'm kind of a professional writer. I'm a professional travel writer.
Matthew:All right. That's your day job, as it were.
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah. That's my day job. So yeah, I've got some journalism credits. And probably they thought I was maybe a safe ish pair of hands so that they can trust this project too. So, yeah, I I started discussing what what I thought would be a good good topics for the book.
Duncan Rhodes:And I kinda landed on locations because I think every GM can use locations in their world. Well, maybe we'll get into this, but I I've noticed from my personal experiences trying to sell adventures that they're a very hard sell. People wanna kind of run their own adventures, especially in d and d. It's absolutely flooded with Yeah. Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:So there's all the official ones. There's all the ones on the DM's guild. There's all the third party ones. No one's gonna pay attention to a book of adventures unless they really invested in the writer, and I I don't think my blog is so famous. Yet.
Duncan Rhodes:Not yet. So I thought, no. I need to I need to provide tools, not, you know, not linear adventure paths are too limiting in how GMs might use them.
Matthew:Well, that's really interesting because the whole reason we invited you on here is we were a little bit skeptical when BlueStone contacted us and said, did we want to have you on the show? Because we thought, well, we're not a D and D podcast. So Understandable. The audience is relatively limited. We're yeah.
Matthew:If if we still think that role playing games is a niche, then being free league is a bit of a niche of a niche, as it were, as opposed to D and D, which occupies the whole niche with a great big statue probably of a beholder or something.
Dave:Usually, they're
Duncan Rhodes:a very diverse niche, I've noticed. I've just started paying attention to their work.
Matthew:Oh, excellent. We can talk about that later on. But what we noticed is that your book, as you say, is about these adventure locations as opposed to necessarily a linear story. And that's how Free League often set out a lot of their books. There are procedural stories and and I guess Alien, which you mentioned to us before, starting, is slightly more linear.
Matthew:But a lot of the stuff in Forbidden Lands, which is yeah, Zero engine uses, broadly speaking, the same, DOS engine as Alien, and that's their Fantasy one. And we've also got Symbaroom, and we've got, they have got, I should say. And they've got Dragonbane, which is the oldest Swedish role playing game. And I guess as well, you know, in a way, the One Ring, their Tolkien adventure, again uses these adventure sites as the bulk of their content. We thought, well, this is a book on how to write adventure sites, really.
Matthew:So maybe you do fit in our podcast.
Dave:It was also interesting in that in quite a lot of the stuff I've done over the last few years, locations and settings has been a very big part of that. So, yeah, I was very interested to see what, what you've done with, with your sort of approach to locations.
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah.
Matthew:At which point, I guess it's worth saying, what is your approach to
Dave:locations? Exactly.
Duncan Rhodes:Well, yes. I I mean, I do think, you know, what what makes a fantasy game fantasy? You know? Is it is it sometimes, yes, it's casting spells or or wielding a magic weapon, but, really, what's behind fantasy is the incredible settings that we we go into and we explore. I mean, they're the they're the things that create that sense of wonder.
Duncan Rhodes:They're the things that are different to our mundane lives and and the world we see around us. So I do feel that, you know, if you wanna be a good games master, you you have to introduce your players to really interesting settings. So whether that's, you know, borrowing them from a publisher or creating your own, different ways to do it, of course. But I I do think the written the richness of your games is very much tied into the richness of your settings. Not the only thing, but you're off to a great start if if you're having an adventure in in somewhere that captures the imagination.
Dave:Mhmm. Yeah. Absolutely.
Matthew:Cool. And so I'm going to be really blunt here. I have flicked through the book.
Duncan Rhodes:Didn't give So it to you what
Matthew:is the format in which you what is the help you give a GM who's going, right, I've got this great adventure or whatever, but I'm a bit stuck for locations to set it in. How have you gone about guiding the reader through creating an interesting, unique location?
Duncan Rhodes:Yes. So I've I've I've done the book's essentially two parts. The first is an introductory chapter where I share my design tips. The second part, which is the much bigger part in terms of word count, is 30 locations that are already ready to drop into your campaign. And, yeah, the the idea is that they're they're not they're law agnostic, to the greatest possible extent.
Duncan Rhodes:So they're not they don't belong to any particular setting. They're, any they should fit into any kind of low to high fantasies, RPG, I hope. And you can just cut and paste them into your own world if you need somewhere for the you wanna run an escort mission. Okay. This could be your final destination.
Duncan Rhodes:When you get there to that final destination, there's an interesting faction that you can interact with. There's little bits around the map you can explore. There's maybe a suggestion how something might kick off when you get there, you know. A murder mystery or a threat to that location. So suddenly, you're in a kind of seven samurai scenario where you're, you know, defending this location against against their enemy.
Duncan Rhodes:But that those you know, every location is really designed so that you, as the GM, can use it as you like. You might decide, okay. They let's do a heist. There's a casino location, but it doesn't have to be the casino location. There's a orc village in an old giant windmill.
Duncan Rhodes:Maybe you just have to go and rescue a slave. You know, maybe it's not a typical heist. But the options I've tried to keep the options as open as possible.
Dave:You
Duncan Rhodes:maybe you have to go to that same orc village to negotiate with the chieftain for passage through it's a nomadic tribe. So if you don't wanna be attacked by some riding warriors, you're have to go negotiate. Maybe that leads to a quest. Maybe you have to prove yourself in a bison riding joust. And also some giant law that's hidden on a submerged temple at that location.
Duncan Rhodes:So maybe you have to go and find the secret of taming hippogriffs. So there's lots of I've tried to create these locations with lots of seeds and then the GMs latch on to what's interesting to them and attach any type of quest model they want. Rescue one, delivery one, taking shelter, negotiation, defending. Yeah. There's
Dave:Yeah. It's just by by by a bit coincidence. I was just looking at the page where it's got negotiate with chief Umigong Mhmm. Which I guess is your orc chieftain
Duncan Rhodes:Yes.
Dave:In that in that in that setting. Yeah. No. It's it's good because one of the things that so so with our with our game, Tales of the Old West, one of the things that we were very focused on was, not so much in creating a location thing that will give you hooks, but providing as many hooks and as many tips to the GM as possible to give them make their life easy in running their campaign and making that campaign very focused on what the players care about. And so I love something that gives you lots of little ideas that you can then pick up and run away with and take it whatever every direction you like.
Dave:So that's that's a really nice it's a really good thing. I like that very much.
Matthew:Yeah. And and in fact, I wanted to touch on that. So the the first chapter or after the introduction of the first chapter is quite a lot of tables saying, you know, if you're really stuck, you know, roll these dice and let's give you, you know, is it a what what sort of location type is it? What's it made of? What themes might there be around this, like art or beauty or hedonism and debauchery?
Matthew:Which fantasy race, the generic fantasy races generally, 20 of them have created it and so on. Then I noticed there's a and there were more of those because the subsequent chapters, you've grouped your example locations into particular, if you like, terrain types. Yes. So there's a city a a set of city locations, island locations, and coastal locations, forest, wetland. I like the inclusion of wetland, the way, not enough wetland.
Duncan Rhodes:Love wetland. Jungle locations. Do you have to wade through the
Matthew:You can't feel about mosquitoes and all that sort of stuff. Desert, of course. So you've got all those and those have got some extra tables with them to bring some local color to the location there. But there didn't seem to be, at least in my first reading, which I just clicked through today. You've got a section in the first chapter that's plan the drama, and there's not much in the way of helping people come up with those factions and what they might be wanting to compete with.
Matthew:So do you offer any advice on that later on in the book?
Duncan Rhodes:Plan the drama. I'm just looking at that myself to give. I actually finished Raymond's book nearly a year ago, so sometimes I'm not.
Dave:Come on. Remember every word of it. What are you doing? What are you talking about?
Matthew:I need to know your exact process, Duncan. Your exact process.
Duncan Rhodes:I I think, I don't think I give any more specific advice on that. I think what what I was worried about doing is that's kind of the end of my how to create cool locations kind of guide. Right? And as you mentioned, really, the the 12 tips about remembering different things that could help you create unique location. So one of them would be, yeah, don't think about building materials other than stone.
Duncan Rhodes:You know, what what happens if it's made out of ivory, brambles, copper Yeah. Clay. Another one which you picked up on is, what if it has a strong theme? Or one of my favorite ones is just thinking about, you know, what what does a tomb made by a minotaur look like? You know?
Duncan Rhodes:Does Yeah. Totally different to a a human tomb. Yeah. What does
Matthew:The thing that always used to warm me up about early D and D adventures is the rooms are generally all of kind of human scale, and then you'd put a random monster in there.
Duncan Rhodes:Has no chance of being used
Dave:to this room for?
Duncan Rhodes:It's got a cat like ability to squeeze through tiny people. So at the end of that, I think what I wanted to kind of say with plan the drama is, yeah, don't forget that there has to be something to do there when the players get there. Yeah. Yeah. Because sometimes you can create what is a brilliant concept, but if that king, you know, the kind of grizzled old king that sits on the old throne that you you imagine is this kind of romantic depressed figure.
Duncan Rhodes:If he doesn't have a quest for the party or he doesn't get antagonized by the party or he doesn't demand that they give him a magical item in obedience, then you don't have any drama in that interaction. So it's just really about thinking about how is this really gonna play out when the players get there and providing enough tools and toys even, you could say, for them to play with when they get there. But, yes, maybe that is a good subject.
Matthew:Well, that's the obviously, the title of your next book is interesting characters and factions. I'm sure. Already lined up with Bluestone Press. So just talking about the practicalities, this is now for sale. Am I right?
Duncan Rhodes:It is.
Matthew:They said when they first contacted me, it was going be published on the January 13, Yes. Which is just gone Tuesday, my birthday, for any listeners that might want to know about that.
Duncan Rhodes:It's definitely on sale in bookstores in in The US. You can pick it up Barnes and Noble and places like that. I think in England, I think distributions to bookstores I'm I'm not a 100% sure it is gonna reach bookstores. I think it's up to how sales go in America, and how I don't understand publishing and international distribution. But you you can pick it up on Amazon and the Barnes and Noble website.
Duncan Rhodes:And I think even the distributor, Simon and Schuster, I think you can you can pick it up there.
Matthew:Oh, Bluestones, are they part of Simon and Schuster or are they distributed by?
Duncan Rhodes:So Simon and Schuster are the distributor, I believe, and Bluestone the publisher. It's Bluestone and my content. Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew:Cool. And I've gotta say the maps are lovely. Did you do these maps, or is there another cut?
Duncan Rhodes:I I designed them. I was worried about the maps, I have to say, because, you know, any publisher comes to me and says, do you wanna write something? I know I can do it. Yeah. But the maps, they wanted me to take charge of the cartography as well, you know, manage it.
Duncan Rhodes:And, yeah, I I wasn't sure how well I could design the maps and if I could find the right person to actually render them professionally because, yeah, I'm not I'm not a cartographer. In the end, I I was so happy to find a guy who lives in Barcelona. I live in Barcelona, and I haven't had a chat with him. His I'd seen him already on Instagram, but he he's mostly focused on battle maps. He's he's sorry.
Duncan Rhodes:It's Arturo of Nerd
Matthew:Arturo Martinez. I'm just reading his bio on the back of the book.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:Very talented guy. Very nice guy as well. And I I thought he was mostly doing battle maps using, I think, one of the big incarnate or something like that. And I I didn't want that style. I wanted a more pastel style, less thick black lines, more hand drawn.
Dave:Mhmm.
Matthew:But he
Duncan Rhodes:does he does do that as well. He does that on his regional maps. But I was like can can I take, can you do your regional map style in a battle map style? And we did a test run and he it was difficult. He had to, you know, retrain himself a bit.
Duncan Rhodes:I really like the results. It ended up I had to draw everything exactly to scale to to make it possible because we had to churn these maps out in in, like, five months, 30 maps. I had to design. Right. Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah. But they I think they're really beautiful. This guy's super talented, and he's since worked with Netflix, with Wizards of the Coast. So, yeah, I caught him. Luckily, I caught him when he was still at
Matthew:the right moment. But he wasn't quite so in demand.
Duncan Rhodes:Exactly. But
Matthew:they are they are lovely. And I'm looking you mentioned the caravan surae of the Bradley Bonds. I'm looking at that map and that's got that nice effect where half of it is covered over so you can see what the roof looks like and there could well be adventures up there, But then you cut away and you can see half of the floor plan as
Dave:well. I
Duncan Rhodes:really enjoyed developing that map because I didn't know much about Caravanasarayes, if that's how you pronounce it. And then I I I in my research, like, I've discovered this type of building I'd never heard of. And I was like, these are beautiful. They're absolutely stunning. And I'd love Mhmm.
Duncan Rhodes:To kinda spend the night in one even if it's in a in an imaginative world. Mhmm. And so I actually copied the design of what I found quite to the book. It's quite a realistic one. Mhmm.
Duncan Rhodes:Taken from the real world. And then I attached the kind of VIP section at the back where I thought, you know, we could add a bit more adventure and a bit more
Matthew:She'd done with good ones.
Duncan Rhodes:Exactly. Yeah. Drabber. Exactly.
Dave:So it's it's I'm I'm really interested because I I'm I love drawing maps. And like you, I'm not a cartographer. I can't produce the final thing that comes out in the book. But I do love designing designing maps, not only specific location maps, but broader sort of regional maps and all the rest of it. Now in in my kind of creative process, the creation of the map, as I kind of generate it out of my head, is a really important part of my creative process and is kind of often the first part or is at least coming very early in the creative process.
Dave:For you, how how did you find that? Are are these maps of locations that you knew what the location was and then you drew the map, or was there was there a sort of creative map creation process that actually contributed to the location as well?
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah, that's interesting question. I haven't even reflected on that myself, but I worked, I've come up with the concept first for sure, but then absolutely, a 100% the, I always drew the map first to get it down. Then I would start yeah. That a lot of the details of what I was gonna write would come from the map and solving solving visual problems in order to kind of create a credible location that would then lead into things that would make their way into the text. So yes.
Duncan Rhodes:So I think exactly as as you do, starting from the Yeah. Your side. Yeah. That's interesting.
Dave:I get I get a lot of my best ideas out of drawing a map and a lot of good story ideas come out of just things I hadn't considered at all but there's come out of the process of creating the map in the first place, which is Yeah. Which is a lot of fun. I really enjoy that.
Duncan Rhodes:Actually, now that you think about it, now that you make me think about it, I think sometimes there was I would draw perhaps the the core of the location and then I've I'd have a little corner of the map because each of the map is a whole page. I'd have
Dave:a corner of that where
Duncan Rhodes:I was like, I I need something cool to go in there and so I think the story ideas were probably created, just by having to fill in some, some space, you know.
Dave:Yeah. It's cool. No. They are lovely. It looks it does look really good.
Matthew:And things like the caravan Sarai, there's the research as well. Did you look at existing buildings for more than this this one that I'm looking at here? Did you
Duncan Rhodes:I I looked at several different ones and then how they might work. And there's if we look at that map, I think there's a wind tunnel, which is used to ventilate the building. I didn't come up with, like, a big adventure hook for that, actually. So feel free to consult
Dave:anyone. Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:The little temple in the middle, I think I kind of copied as well. So, there's it's quite fun. There's like a watering trough. Yeah, like a well where the animals would drink from and then you take the stairs up and there's a little shrine and I put like a traveler god in there so you can you can pray to that god and hopefully get a little benefit when you're traveling through the desert if if your prayer is answered.
Matthew:We do like prayer on this podcast.
Duncan Rhodes:There's there's a hamam where you can get a rub down from surly, like, and then and have your whiskers shaved as well. Yeah. And and the drama comes from the fact that I I suggest that maybe a couple of merchant princes are kinda staying competing merchant princes rock up at the same time as the players. And you might have to choose sides or play peacemaker or, yeah. One of them might get murdered in the night by a is it?
Duncan Rhodes:And then my pose as anyone else. And and you've got these you've got these fortified walls, which are kind of begging to be defended against whoever's lurking in the desert according to your campaign setting.
Matthew:And what I like about this book from a non D and D perspective is it's not particularly full of stat blocks.
Duncan Rhodes:No. I feel like that's There's
Dave:a few. But yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah. Most of the stat blocks, if they exist, are kind of twists on an existing stat block. I things like goblins, like, I like goblins, but so what I do is, like, deliver a slightly different reflavored goblin, you know, one that lives in the jungle and uses poison frog. What's the word? Mucus to, like, put in their darts when they ride dinos.
Duncan Rhodes:So, yeah, just most of the stat blocks are not original monsters. They are reskinning Yeah. Which is reflavoring of of an existing monster. There's so many monster books out there. I I haven't used Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:Half of the ones in the official monster manual and then all the supplements. I think a numb just when I was writing this book, I think Flea Mortals was coming out by MCDM, is it? And several other third party. I know Kobold Press have released some
Matthew:Cool.
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah. Monster Books. So I just felt, no. I'm not that's I'm not getting into that game.
Matthew:No. No. You're doing locations. You're not
Duncan Rhodes:doing lots. And you have monsters. Every GM's got plenty of monsters.
Matthew:But I think there's just enough to give somebody who really likes stat blocks. Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:There's something
Matthew:there for me as well.
Duncan Rhodes:I take pride in my monster design, and, I think I designed there's some nasty monsters in there. If you want a spider hag bog dweller is is very nasty. She's she's a bit like a alien queen, actually. She can kind of she's she can hide under the water. She's she can sense everything that's going on through tremors in the the strands of the water.
Duncan Rhodes:And, yeah, she's got some good. I I like to always make sure that monsters have a bit better action economy than traditionally. Yeah. So that they can look after themselves a bit better. Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:It's an optimized party, you know.
Matthew:Just like aliens. And I I'm loving the in in the jungle location, I I particularly like the Fort Dreadnought, which is not actually what you might imagine,
Duncan Rhodes:a fort. But
Matthew:it's a miniature fort on the back of a dinosaur, which Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:A global fort that crashes through the jungle and intimidates passersby.
Dave:As it would. As it should. Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah. That was a lot of fun. Obviously, there's some support dinos there as well. So I think you could run a good kind of running battle with that thought in it.
Matthew:But when it comes to the people, you know, you so you do you do do the work of creating factions and and some individuals that people might meet and I notice you say you point to various stat blocks that they could use. Those aren't in the book, those are in the core D and D books are they?
Duncan Rhodes:Yes. Those are references to five e stat blocks. So, yeah, I don't know how well this is gonna work with other games. I I imagine most games have some similar stat blocks to most of what I'm referring to if they're fancy. You know?
Matthew:Yeah. I'm pretty sure that I could run, run this without, without feeling the need to go to a fifth edition book. I mean, lizard men are lizard men, wherever you find them, whatever they're called.
Duncan Rhodes:Zombies are zombies.
Matthew:So that's great to see. And I think, as you say, you know, you could take these people and apply stats from whatever game, you're playing, be it Forbidden Lands or Dragonbane. I think this feels to me really useful for Dragonbane, Dave. What do you think?
Dave:Well, I think yeah. Absolutely. And it's it's got that very it's got that kind of feel to it as well, I think, which, is is a good thing. You know? It's a very positive thing because Dragonbane's got a very good kind of vibe about it and and this book has a very similar kind of vibe.
Dave:I think, yeah, I mean, probably more so because you know, Forbidden Lands is a is a game where there are a lot of tables to help GM already for creating a lot of stuff. So whilst your tables here are are very useful, I think Forbidden Lands already has some of that.
Matthew:Yeah, actually, it's true.
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah.
Dave:But I still, I I do like your 12 tips. I think that's quite good and it's it is just some quite simple things like, you know, just the first one, go beyond the obvious. Yeah. Do something just a little bit different. Yeah.
Dave:You know, and the one you were talking about earlier about, well, you know, what's it made of? You know, what's the location, you know, kind of design? Is is there a, a part of the landscape that is also part of the location? So you talk about hills or cliffs and all the rest of it. And people obviously can think of this themselves, but having having the tips there is actually a nice prompt to to to get them to think a bit more imaginatively.
Duncan Rhodes:I I absolutely agree. I think every Gamesmaster can create amazing locations by themselves really but it it's just nice to have some already done for you and also to have just those tips laid out and to refer back to them. Yeah, I it's really just about putting every single consideration I had to go through in order to create interesting locations, just putting that on paper.
Dave:Yeah. Did you go did you roll the dice from your your location and 12 tips to create any of the locations that are actually in the book?
Duncan Rhodes:So I kind of any, not many. No. Because I'd already I already I found that I had concepts for enough already.
Dave:Right. Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:Second if there's a second
Dave:Just thought whether you were gonna put your money where your mouth is and use your own advice and your own tables to make
Duncan Rhodes:I know. I I feel bad that I didn't use it. Some of the things I rolled up afterwards, I was like, that's that's maybe more interesting than what I wanted. Maybe I should have used these tables more. I shouldn't have come up with this table last.
Duncan Rhodes:The epithets table, you really get some wacky stuff off that.
Dave:Mhmm. Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:So yeah. Especially if you use both. Like, I've I've I've broken them into, like
Matthew:Roll it twice and and Yeah. Stick the two together, you mean.
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah. Well, there's so there's I've broken this table into, like, epithets you might put before the location, like Mhmm. Sharing, enchanted, weeping, and then a second column of of heretics, of lost soul, of gluttony. So you're gonna, I
Matthew:don't know.
Dave:Yeah. The the forsaken privy of unrequited love. Came to mind. I'll have to put that into a scenario somewhere now.
Duncan Rhodes:I think that I mean, that's definitely the most creative tool in the book, I think, the epicenter. And you're gonna get some more high fantasy stuff there. So if if I I'm a little bit more of a gritty kind of role player.
Matthew:Yeah. Oh, so we.
Duncan Rhodes:Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I prefer the slightly more low magic, credible locations. And I think those that's probably more what you'll find in the book.
Duncan Rhodes:But if you prefer, like, just going crazy and throwing stuff, then that epithets table is a good start, I think.
Dave:It's the place for you. Yeah. Absolutely.
Matthew:We're coming to the end of our allotted time. Is there anything else you desperately want to get across about this book to our punters? Obviously, we'll put all the links in the show notes and stuff, but is there anything you want to say that we haven't discussed already?
Duncan Rhodes:No. I think we've covered everything. I mean, I I really had a great time writing it. I hope that comes across. I I feel like I out of conceit, my goal was to really write material that players actually use.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:And each of these locations is something I would gladly put into my own game, obviously. And, yeah, I I just there's so many books of inspiration out there, and they're fun. And I collect them myself, but I didn't want my hard work to rest on your shelf.
Matthew:Just sit on a shelf and and not be opened.
Duncan Rhodes:GREGORY I'm going to write stuff that's so good you're going to want to use it. Use it. So that was my goal. The audience will have to decide if I've succeeded or not. But that's all I can do.
Duncan Rhodes:I tried my hardest to do that.
Dave:It's looking pretty good so far, that's for sure.
Matthew:So, let's change the subject. Enough about this book.
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah.
Matthew:So you mentioned, just before we started recording that although you've been playing D and D all your life, you're graduating today, I say it,
Duncan Rhodes:to a proper game. Oh, fighting talk, kid. So, yes, I I haven't only played Dungeon and Dragons. I've I've played a bit of paranoia last year, Which is a lot of fun and I've played some mothership. And I've tried a couple of other different systems.
Duncan Rhodes:But recently I watched I don't know if you've heard of Dice Times. They're an actual play podcast. And Okay. No?
Matthew:I mean, I've heard of lot of actual play podcasts, but not particularly that one. Lots with dice in the turtle as well.
Duncan Rhodes:Okay. Okay. I I happen to chance upon Star Wars actual play they did, and they're in full makeup. And they got some good special effect. And it the format is thirty minute thirty minute kind of episodes.
Matthew:That is a big selling point to me because I generally don't like four hour podcasts.
Duncan Rhodes:I I I like the the Critical Role animated show, but I'm not gonna sit through for
Matthew:All the critical of
Dave:it. No.
Duncan Rhodes:So this this is perfect. It's edited down. The GM really moves things along, and he mostly plays systems that are very fast anyway. So I watched Star Wars, and then I saw, oh, aliens. He's got aliens, and he's playing some kind of colonial marines scenario where everyone's, like, wearing a helmet and carrying, like, a plastic gun.
Duncan Rhodes:And they've and I was like, how can I do that? I wanna I wanna give my friends this great aliens experience. And I was about to buy it, and then I thought, hang on. I'm a blogger. I should get this right to Free League and ask if someone wanna send me a free one.
Duncan Rhodes:And I'll obviously review it. So they very kindly did. They sent me loads of stuff, actually. And I've I started going through it, and I've read I started with the starter set.
Dave:Mhmm.
Duncan Rhodes:Makes sense. And and then I I was reading I was I was reading through the Stutter Adventure, Hope's Last Day, and I was like, simultaneously, I was prepping for this interview by listening to some of your old episodes. I was like, hang on.
Matthew:These two things are somehow connected.
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah. So The
Dave:serendipity there. Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:I think think we should take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity for me to interview the the the adventure designers of the actual adventure I'm prepping right now for my session. How often was that?
Matthew:That was a long time ago. Longer ago than when you wrote this book. How much about the process can you remember, Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:I was, yeah. I'll try not to keep I'll try to keep the questions as general as possible. But, yeah, I'm I'm absolutely loving the adventure. I at first, I wasn't quite sure how it all came together. And I will say to anyone listening, I think it's good to go back and watch the films.
Duncan Rhodes:Right? Because this this adventure is very much steeped in the lore of the films. Would you would you agree?
Dave:Oh, completely. Yeah. Because because it's set set in Hadley Hadley's Hope, which is obviously, yeah, the setting for aliens. And deliberately so, you know, we had to we we had
Matthew:to argue that point, didn't we?
Dave:They had to say. Little bit. Yeah. There were there were certain people who who not so much in Free League but elsewhere who were against the idea originally. I'm not entirely sure why, but, but Free League agreed with us and we managed to get them to agree.
Matthew:I think, yeah, there were people that wanted new material that didn't want to go back to a movie that's, you know.
Dave:And I, yeah, I think there was. Yeah, well, there was a sense that everyone knows Hadley's Hope. It's all a bit done kind of thing. But actually, it's been such a good, hook for people to come to it. They go oh wow Hadley's Hope.
Dave:That's really cool. So it was absolutely the right decision completely.
Matthew:I think so. And and I think it's worth saying that we originally wrote it not for this starter set or as it first appeared in the first edition in the core book, we originally wrote it to promote the game when they first announced it at UK Games Expo way back when
Dave:Twenty when they
Matthew:were just about to launch a preorder. So nobody knew anything about it, and we were sitting at their stand at UK Games Expo saying, sit down with us for ninety minutes and play a game. And but you only got ninety minutes to play a game. You don't wanna say, and this is the setting. You wanna
Duncan Rhodes:become a setting that everybody knew. So
Matthew:so that that was our main reason for choosing Hadley's Hope. But it works for a starter set. Again, you know, I I know where I am in the story with that starter set, and Yeah. The campaign can go off and do other stuff when you when you're inspired enough to to run that.
Duncan Rhodes:I I think it's a great choice because what what do you want from a starter set? You you wanna give people the you do wanna give the most cliched experience of aliens. Yeah. That's why they I mean, that's why they turn up to the table. Right?
Duncan Rhodes:So you you get straight away, you go and deliver the the the the kind of cinematic experience they're kind of familiar with. You know, obviously, they're experiencing it their own way. It's not it's not the same story. But yeah. So that works really well for me, especially when I start to understand because one thing I had a bit of trouble with is these guys disappear at the start of the adventure.
Duncan Rhodes:The the PCs is off the colony. Right?
Dave:And then
Duncan Rhodes:but in just one day, the whole colony is taken over by the the aliens. Is that seemed to be quite fast. Was that is that or is that coherent with alien law? Because I watched the films and they do they do turn from chess huggers into drones.
Matthew:They grow pretty quick.
Dave:Alien law is is very much, the speed of plot as you'll definitely notice in some of the later movies where it goes from, you know, chestburster to fully sized alien in about an hour, which is what they what they need for the thing. In the original stories, I don't think we particularly set the time limit. In the original story, the the crew were coming back from having done a a maintenance job which could have taken as long as you needed. Yeah.
Matthew:In the original story, actually, let's let's be honest here, it was even quicker. Or, or at the same time, we originally wrote three little mini adventures. So this is the second one of those three. And in the first one, there was a rumor. It was actually a heist adventure and there was a rumor of an escaped reptile, which is the original chestburster.
Matthew:And you caught glimpses of it, or you may well have met it in its nest. And, that was the first adventure. And then this was the second venture, which was sometime after. But in fact, they hadn't gone off anywhere. The original version of this, they were the union band and all they were is they'd locked themselves in an airlock to practice and when they came out of the airlock they found all
Duncan Rhodes:this yeah
Matthew:yeah so well they may have been even quicker it may have been
Dave:a couple of hours Well, they knew something weird was going on, but nobody had, like, raised the red flag yet. It was a disaster. And in the few hours that they were away not being able to hear anything because they were playing their music, That's when everything went
Duncan Rhodes:To that point. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, the idea is that stuff had started going on beforehand. It's just
Dave:Yes. Kind of in media res for all of all of those three. Yeah. The third one was then it was the last.
Matthew:You were the last few survivors.
Dave:So you're the last few surviving. You were trying to get to the the Comms Tower on the landing pad to get us message out for get to get some help.
Matthew:Or in fact, warn people not to come.
Dave:Way the players wanted to do it. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Dave:But they all so they were all trying to do slightly different things. I
Duncan Rhodes:think this one condenses all those and does all of those fantasies kind of, doesn't it?
Matthew:There's a yeah. So so we have those three and then, they asked us to put it in the book. So Dave, you rewrote it. And Dave used elements, not sadly the union ban, that was forbidden.
Dave:That was
Matthew:unions in the world.
Dave:Didn't like the idea of that. They just said, no. Just just make them colonists. It's fine. So But I don't know why like that.
Matthew:The idea is a ball free.
Dave:It it feels a very British thing, kind of the union band. And maybe it's just not so common for a Swedish or an American audience.
Matthew:Although I will point to Andor, the end of season one of Andor, which has got a bloody union band in there. So I feel vindicated.
Duncan Rhodes:What was it that the PCs were colonists and not outsiders? Does that was that a conscious decision?
Dave:Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. Because the the the idea behind it was we're gonna tell the story of how Hadley's Hope goes from being an operating, colony to where you find it at the beginning of aliens. So it was telling us the last few days or the last few hours of of the people who are already living there.
Matthew:And there is a novella. There is a novel that already does that, but it's shit. So we thought
Dave:we should write that off. We read it, and it was rubbish. Yeah. Exactly. But
Duncan Rhodes:it it has a very good knock on effect, I think, which which I understood. Another tip I'll give to anyone prepping this adventure is you have to go and read the personal agendas of all the
Matthew:Oh, yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:As as as you read the adventure because I read the adventure first, and everything made as much sense as when I when I have the agendas because these agendas are really kind of obliged the or incentivize, I should say, the characters to go and explore and rescue people and not just leave straight away. So they're they're emotionally invested, right? Because because it's their home.
Matthew:Yeah. So. Yeah. Absolutely.
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah. Let me check my list of questions if that's okay. I I did wanna ask as well. So eventually, worked out, I think, that the actual huge alien ship at the start of the very first movie is is still there. Right?
Duncan Rhodes:So these are the Yeah. Yeah. This this is the huge body of eggs that are missed
Dave:Yes.
Duncan Rhodes:That have been disturbed. And they've been disturbed because Burke has sent this wild catter, Russ Jordan, to go and investigate them. Is that correct? Absolutely.
Matthew:Yeah. I think I think the law has it that they didn't know the exact location. So they put the colony down and they were sending wildcatters. I think this is that novel River of Pain that she says they're sending these wildcatters out in every direction looking for, they wouldn't say an alien ship, but that's really what they were looking for.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So, I say in in aliens, it's it's Carter Burke that gives the order.
Dave:But whether it's like as Matt says, whether there's a lot of wild cat is going out and and Russ Jordan is just the the unlucky one to find it Yeah. Or or what is kind of less important to the story for
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah. Yeah.
Dave:The Hope's Last Day. Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:Because that then you can understand because at first, I was reading it, and I was like, well, hang on. Every drone needs a face hugger, and every face hugger needs an egg. And I was like, how do they manage to take how do they manage to get
Dave:Well, not not quite, actually. So there is there is a thing in Alien now which is called ovomorphing.
Duncan Rhodes:I've yes. This is what I wanted to do.
Matthew:And it's not now. I mean, it's featured Yeah. There's an outtake in Or in
Dave:In Alien, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where, where an alien or an adult alien, a drone alien can kind of impregnate a a victim and they then turn into a face hugger and an egg rather than into into something else.
Duncan Rhodes:Yes. And that was my question. Is that part of the RPG law as
Dave:well? Yes.
Duncan Rhodes:Yes. Yes.
Dave:Okay. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:Because that was a controversial one. Some Alien fans kinda hate the egg morphing thing, don't they? I I read on on. I think so. Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:Unbelievable.
Dave:Traditional ones maybe. Because you because you get very much into the whole sort of black goo being their generation for the aliens thing, which then throws you into covenant of Prometheus and all of that kind of side of the the law, which is perhaps not popular with the whole alien fan base.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:As a thing. Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:Can't please all of the people all of the time.
Matthew:All the time. No. You definitely can't. But the beauty of the alien role playing game, I feel, is the only thing it ignores. It's got all the law in there, pretty much.
Matthew:I mean, when it first came out, people kind of used it as a coffee table book of alien law even if they weren't gamers. Yeah. Except for Alien four, Alien Resurrection, because that's happening two or three hundred years after the the book, in the setting of the game. But you can kind of take or leave it. Like, you know, I'm not a big fan of the whole Prometheus black goo stuff.
Matthew:And although that does feature in the written the the campaign that came out afterwards, which you had a hand in Dave, you know, it's a thing that you you don't need to use if you if you don't like those neo aliens or whatever they're called.
Dave:Yeah. Neomorphs.
Matthew:Yeah. Neomorphs. That's it.
Dave:Yes. Yeah.
Matthew:You know aliens. I'm crap at names.
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah. I I did wonder I mean, I'm I'm really looking forward to playing, Alien, but I I did wonder if one of the drawbacks of of the game is that it's very hard to present a story that isn't about killing aliens.
Matthew:We have thoughts on that, don't we, Dave?
Duncan Rhodes:I think one out of the is what I'm saying. Although, you know, can you you know? Because that's part of horror is not knowing what's there. Right? And and I I thought when I watched this actual play, I think it worked very well because they were kinda playing it.
Duncan Rhodes:They were playing horror, but it was like schlock horror. You know? It was kind of fun, body horror, you know, marines in space.
Dave:It's it's a it's a really tough one. So I I did the I write the campaign for building Butter Worlds, which is the colon colonists and explorers expansion supplement book.
Duncan Rhodes:And
Dave:when I I originally wrote it and I was very mindful of not making it monster of the week and throwing aliens in all the time. And when I when I first submitted it, they came back and said, not enough aliens. So I had to go and rewrite some of it to put more aliens in. So I think it's so I I totally get that point. There there is I mean, there's there's a kind of a couple of sort of styles, isn't there?
Dave:So you've got the alien style, haunted house, powerless people or not powerful people who are then faced with an overwhelming force that they've got to try and deal with and the horror that comes with all of that. And then you've the aliens style where you've got the ability to fight back and then, you know, it's a different kind of feel, different game, different experience. And and there and there is a challenge. There is a tension there, but I think it's you you can throw different things in. You know, you don't have to have an alien in every single, you know, the the the climax of every scenario doesn't have to be finally.
Matthew:A xenomorph.
Dave:Alien. Yeah, exactly. And I think the other thing that works really well that that can mitigate against that a bit is the agendas, certainly for a cinematic game where, you know, those agendas will more often than not pit the players against one another with some form of objective each towards the end of the story, which then brings you that cinematic feel of the end of the movie when people start turning on each other or, you know, start doing things that are desperate because they've gotta try and achieve their objective. So I think there's definitely different ways of doing it. Presenting them in different ways.
Dave:Not always having them just killing people straight off. You know they are unpredictable things. You know, they might not attack you when they see you. You know, they might do other stuff.
Matthew:In fact, you might wanna check out our YouTube channel, Alien the Colony, where we were trying to be very different. We we had politics. We had corrupt police. No, didn't have corrupt police. Policeman was always a
Dave:matter You very corrupt.
Matthew:I was not. We were a UPP colony, so I was merely serving the people.
Dave:Yeah, so that was that was so we did about 10 or 11 episodes of that. And that's on our YouTube. And that and that was that was trying again to very much draw out the alien vibe with some of that in the background without throwing an alien in
Matthew:Every week.
Dave:Every session, which we didn't at all. You know, there were different there there were there were rescues that they had to do. There were, yeah underwater facilities that were abandoned. They had to go and explore. There were strange other alien creatures on the planet.
Dave:There were there were plants that were symbiotic with some insects that would then defend, you know, they wanted to to harvest the plants but then the insects would defend the plant and there's lots of things like that. Which is probably why it didn't last very long because my energy ran out as the GM to keep coming up with ideas. That seemed to work quite well. Yeah.
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah. Okay. No. It's got I I I can definitely see how you could extend it out. I just I just wondered how, you know, if you had any more specific advice because I I guess that's the major threat to the game is is that it comes with certain foreknowledge.
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah. Be a pro as well if you get you got some buy in as well because people who love the movie are going to want to play it.
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah. I think you've got to lean into the foreknowledge and don't try and give them the experience of that first crew on the Nostromo where they really don't know what's going on because all the players, no matter you know, how much they they try not to matter game, they they they kinda know what's going on. Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. And I think, you know, some of the most fun is throwing something else at them, as as Dave said, that is alien, but is not a xenomorph. And getting around that. You know, and there's again, one of the other reasons why we stopped playing that is because Russia invaded Ukraine and playing the UPP wasn't such good fun anymore. But that sort of interesting 1970s politics in space was it was a good fun thing to play with.
Matthew:Know,
Dave:we had
Matthew:hallucinogenic gas causing troubles on the base, which was all down to poor maintenance rather than any sort of alien creature. So, I mean, there are other ways to do it. The challenge, I think, is, it's not really an investigative game. So there's an awful lot of reliance on the observation skill. If you want to do anything that isn't, the many different ways of fighting or operating machinery, you've just got one skill for, is this person lying?
Matthew:What can I see? Where are the clues? It's all down to one skill.
Dave:The other bit of advice I would give is to try and make the resolution different from either running away or killing. So, as an example, in, there was a scenario I did as a cinematic originally, which then was published as part as as one of the as one of the adventures in Building Better Worlds. But in that, there's a creature called the harvester, and the harvester is a part of alien canon. It was in some book somewhere, and it's a big sort of tardigrade thing that eats rock. And it's very dangerous, but they were used to mine because they eat rock much better than the machine.
Matthew:Tunneling machines.
Dave:Tunneling machines. And so in this location there was one of those. And in that scenario there's a storm and it gets released. And they've got to try to you know find a way to get past it to get to the next part of the scenario. Killing it is an option, but it's a really bad option because it's gonna be very, very hard to kill.
Dave:And so and so I was giving them, you know, a conundrum of how do we get around it? How do we distract it? There's there's a thing called a a zapper which is a way of managing them. So when you're when you're using them, you basically prod them with the zapper to make you go the way you want. So we had one scenario where Millie, one of our patrons, was playing and she, her, her, her, her agenda needed one of the other characters to die.
Dave:So she then used her zapper to direct it to that person. So that person got attacked. So again just trying to give other ways of of managing a a situation can then spawn lots of different sort of good role playing opportunities.
Duncan Rhodes:Do those conflicting agendas, do they ever cause a bit of issues or bad feeling at the table?
Matthew:We did have one. We play tested one of the campaign adventures where my agenda was that I'd given up on the Marine Corps. We were all Marines, but I I my second act agenda was you're out. And and so I played that, you know, until, the captain Burmidge's death of the flamethrower, I seem to remember. I don't
Dave:think you shot one of them,
Matthew:didn't you? You shot one of your colleagues. I
Duncan Rhodes:may have instigated a small incident.
Matthew:So in fact, in the published version of that, that, that particular agenda was toned down a bit so that I wasn't quite so anti Marine Corps as I had become. Yeah. So I think there's some careful consideration in playtests.
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah. You you want the players collaborating to a large extent, don't you? Otherwise, it's
Dave:At least at least until the end, you want you want, but but again, some of the tension you get from an agenda doesn't have to be, you've gotta kill the guy. Yeah. Okay, it's it might be that, you know, you you just want to be better than at them at something or you wanna achieve something when they want that to be stopped and but it's not it's not worth killing each other over. But some of that, some of that tension when it builds up to the last act is is just great. And if if the players are going into it.
Dave:So I think there's a problem that I'll come to about that. That was Destroyer of Worlds, which was the second of the three cinematics that Drew Gesker wrote. The problem with the agendas in that one and in that case was it's a massive scenario. You know we we ran it for about twenty hours and didn't finish it because everyone died. If you're gonna have an agenda that kicks off into into combat between the player, into PVP, halfway through that at that scenario, then you are taking players out in a way that might be very unsatisfying very early on in the game.
Dave:And that doesn't that doesn't really sit terribly well. But if you build a rivalry that gets role playing going on at that point, then that's brilliant. And then that can come to a head right at the end.
Matthew:Okay. I don't think differ, Dave. I survived. My second character survived to the end. And then you killed me.
Matthew:Yeah. Got all the way up the space elevator. Okay. Then then something happened to me. I can't remember what.
Matthew:But we got all the way through the adventure.
Dave:But I think also with a cinematic, as opposed to campaign play, you know, the players should come into it knowing it's recreating alien movie and knowing that there's a good chance that by the end, their character is gonna suffer some pretty horrible fate. And they should relish that. They should enjoy that. When it comes, when that moment comes, they should make the most of it.
Duncan Rhodes:I've just realized now then why you're why you split the personal agendas that come with, the status set into three different acts. So that way you can manage how confrontational the conflicting agendas are and put the major conflict only in the third act.
Dave:Yes.
Matthew:Yeah. Absolutely.
Duncan Rhodes:Yeah. Design actually goes. Yeah. Yep.
Matthew:Now we could go on like this for ages and by all means drop us I'm going to
Duncan Rhodes:go and
Matthew:cook dinner. But this is going be a really long episode. It's been a great chat. Before, so thank you very much Duncan, it's been a real pleasure talking with you, particularly about our stuff but also about your book.
Dave:Yes, that was great. I'll all the links
Matthew:in the show notes But thanks very much for the for for the interview.
Duncan Rhodes:It was a real pleasure. And, yeah, it was great that this was a two way conversation about two different things. So I really enjoyed that. That's cool.
Dave:No. Lovely. Thanks. Thanks, Duncan. So that was a real pleasure.
Dave:And I I it was slightly slightly unusual because when we when we were first approached, I kind of assumed that the the the the approach of the book that Duncan was creating was something about was more about the philosophy and the guidance about creating locations, rather than what the book has turned out to be, which is a, you know, a set of random tables, plus lots of locations, which I thought is quite funny that he said he didn't use his own random tables to create most of those locations, which is quite quite interesting. So I yeah. So I was sort of I wasn't disappointed because I had it was a really good chat, he's a lovely guy. Real pleasure to talk to him. But I just had to do a bit of a change of direction sort of mentally when we first sort saw the PDF and got a chance to talk to him about it.
Dave:That it wasn't about the philosophy of creating how you, as a creator, create locations. It was more about giving tools and tips and and that kind of stuff for for doing that. But it was fine because there's there's lots lovely good stuff in that, you know, in in in his book. And, yeah, it was a great pleasure to chat to him. That was really nice.
Matthew:Yeah. No. It was a really good chat. And and and it's nice to be fanboiled at. We could have, I guess, actually chopped all that out of the interview, because most of our listeners know a bunch of that stuff itself.
Matthew:But, hey, we just you know. So so that's why this episode is well over an hour and a half probably by the time we finish talking. Which is why I'm gonna bring the chat to a conclusion and ask you what are we planning to do next time.
Dave:So we've been talking a bit about Alien, obviously, because I'm I'm working on a absolutely not space trucker alien thing for Free League at the moment. But also on the Discord, we've been having a conversation about Raptor Protocol and other other cinematic scenarios from from the Alien universe. And it brought up the question of character agendas. And having done quite a lot and having worked on quite a lot, I thought it might be useful just to put a few words together on my thoughts about how to make really powerful and exciting and interesting character agendas for cinematic Alien role playing games.
Matthew:Yes. It's interesting because I came away from a game yesterday, which wasn't at all about Alien. Although, I was suggesting that this group might playtest my adventure for
Dave:UK Games Expo.
Matthew:UK Games Expo. Cool. Cool.
Dave:I'm looking forward to seeing that when you finish the first draft.
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah. We're we're getting there. Although, we're getting there with all sorts of things that you're not seeing yet, but Yeah.
Dave:Yeah. That's true. Where the where the solo rules?
Duncan Rhodes:Carry on. Carry on.
Matthew:I I have actually put the solo rules to one side, having broken the back of them, because I thought, actually, I've gotta get this fucking thing out, you know, so that you can
Dave:see it.
Matthew:Done. See it, and we can get it approved and
Dave:Yes.
Matthew:Potentially illustrated and maps and all that sort of stuff. So this has this has now become my priority. Yep. Where was I? Oh, yeah.
Matthew:So one of the other people there had just finished Charity of the Gods.
Dave:Oh, yeah.
Matthew:And he was he was running it, but he said three of his players were dead they they were new to Alien and dead set against the character agendas.
Dave:Okay.
Matthew:They didn't like the concept of it.
Dave:Right.
Matthew:I think partly because I'm playing my own character, but mainly because they could see that they were gonna set players against each other and they all wanted to you know, like, we often say that we like to play in a group that have all got the same objective that, you know, we like to work together
Dave:with each Broad broadly got the same motivation. Yeah. Absolutely. But
Matthew:by the end of it, two of them were totally converted. One was still not entirely convinced by the whole character agenda idea. Okay. And he was the guy in the Chariot of the Gods who was the corporate guy. So effectively, the one who is never working for the same objective as everyone else.
Dave:Always trying to screw the others over.
Matthew:And I
Dave:I can get Yeah. I can get where some players might who who don't enjoy playing that kind of style might feel a bit aggrieved if they get a character who is being forced to play in that kind of style. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dave:No. That's cool because that that immediately brings to mind a couple of points that I'd want to draw out in my in my little conversation next week.
Matthew:So Cool. Alright. We shall not next week, in two weeks time.
Dave:In two weeks time. Yeah. Cool.
Matthew:We shall meet again, and you can tell me all about it.
Dave:Absolutely.
Matthew:In the meantime, it's goodbye from him.
Dave:And it's goodbye from me?
Duncan Rhodes:May the icons bless your adventures.
Dave:You have been listening to the effect podcast presented by Fiction Suit and the RPG gods. Music stars on a black sea used with permission of Free League Publishing.