Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
312 | Shadowdark with Kelsey Dionne | D&D Direct, Paizo Content Use Policy, Secret Level Animated, and more!
Sun, 25 Aug 2024
This week, Morrus, PJ, and Jessica are joined by Kelsey Dionne to talk about Shadowdark. In the news, D&D Beyond and the 2024 update, Secret Level animated series featuring D&D and 40K, Paizo brings back Community Use Policy, and more! -------------------- Kelsey Dionne The Arcane Library https://www.thearcanelibrary.com/ Shadowdark https://www.thearcanelibrary.com/pages/shadowdark Cursed Scroll Zine Volume 1 https://www.thearcanelibrary.com/products/cursed-scroll-zine-vol-1-diablerie -------------------- News [3:44] Cosmere Overtakes Avatar Legends to Become Biggest TTRPG Kickstarter Ever https://www.enworld.org/threads/cosmere-overtakes-avatar-legends-to-become-biggest-ttrpg-kickstarter-ever.706288/ Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere RPG Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brotherwise/the-stormlight-archive-rpg [10:25] Paizo Reverses Course, Re-Instates Community Use Policy https://www.enworld.org/threads/paizo-reverses-course-re-instates-community-use-policy.706269/ [17:53] Affinity Publisher Templates from Fari RPGs and René-Pier Deshaies https://store.farirpgs.com/l/affinity-templates-songs-and-sagas?layout=profile [19:54] Deadpool Roleplays the Marvel Universe review from Rob Wieland https://www.enworld.org/threads/deadpool-delivers-a-delightful-adventure-for-marvel-multiverse-rpg.706057/ [22:29] Homebrew and Hacking DriveThruRPG store page https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/21080/homebrew-and-hacking?affiliate_id=36142 [24:46] Sentients: The Roleplaying Game of Artificial Consciousness on Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/t3db0t/sentients-the-role-playing-game-of-artificial-consciousness [27:11] D&D Direct Coming on August 27 https://www.enworld.org/threads/d-d-direct-will-talk-about-project-sigil-future-of-d-d-on-aug-27th.706229/ How You Can Watch WotC’s 3D VTT “Project Sigil” In Action https://www.enworld.org/threads/now-you-can-watch-wotcs-3d-vtt-project-sigil-in-action.705988/ [32:11] How D&D Beyond Will Handle Access to 2014 Rules https://www.enworld.org/threads/how-d-d-beyond-will-handle-access-to-2014-rules.706245/ [41:48] Secret Level from Amazon Prime https://press.amazonmgmstudios.com/us/en/press-release/every-game-has-a-story-prime-video-announces-premi [45:20] Main Topic - Shadowdark -------------------- Please support us on Patreon at http://patreon.com/morrus Don’t forget to join the Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1033145023517295/ and join us on Discord at https://discord.gg/VAuxX8M Ask your Listener Question on Twitter, email [email protected], or contact us on TikTok at TikTok -------------------- Hosts: Russ “Morrus” Morrissey, PJ Coffey, and Jessica Hancock Editing and post-production: Darryl Mott Theme Song: Steve Arnott Malach the Maleficent played by Darren Morrissey Check out all the media content from EN World at http://enliverpg.com
Hi, I'm Kelsey Dion from the Arcane Library, creator of Shadow Dark, and you're listening to Morse's unofficial tabletop RPG talk.
This week, Morse, PJ, and Jessica are joined by Kelsey Dion to talk about Shadow Dark. In the news, D&D and Beyond addresses the 2024 update, Secret Level is a new animated series from Amazon featuring D&D and Warhammer 40k, Paizo brings back the community use policy, and more! This week on Morse's unofficial tabletop RPG talk!
Today's podcast is sponsored by Brandistock's Polearm Emporium. You can find Brandistock's in Upper Ramsbottom Street in the town of Thornistons, just past Mrs. Cockle's Codpiece Boutique. Brandistock's Polearm Emporium sells a wide range of halberds, glaives and bohemian ear That's not a real thing, is it? Ridiculous. What is this nonsense, anyway?
I can't believe I'm reduced to flogging this low-class commoner tat to pay my rent. Anyway, go to Brandistock's for pointy sticks.
Oh, doggie. Ha!
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Morris' unofficial tabletop RPG talk. I am Russ, a.k.a. Morris, or Morris, a.k.a. Russ.
And with me this week is... PJ Coffey from the Southampton Guild of Roleplayers. Russ. How's it? I am delighted to be here. Joining us also this week, ever-watching, ever-listening, the ever-vigilant, it's the one! It's Yomi!
It's me, Jessica from EM Publishing. I am back after a week off, but I have not returned alone, have I, PJ?
it's true you have brought with you an extra special guest which we are delighted to have with us today a person who could be rightfully described as the titanic queen of the osr scene and has doing some amazing things with her work yes that's right it's one it's the only it's the creator of show dark itself it's kelsey dion okay but the takeaway i get from that is that apparently jess found kelsey in wales
to get to Wales you go via the Shadow Dark and we met there so I thought I'd draw her back out into our realm temporarily for some respite yeah just a little stab over
yeah well welcome there are literally giant caves in wales which you can like yeah basically go spelunking around it is awesome and amazing they've got like all these pitons stuck in the wall and of course just to just to cheer you up like the occasional used up can of no other no more nails glue left beside them just to just give you that sense of safety That sounds like the best place to do it.
I'm sorry, I'm talking. Please, I'm just too excited. Go, go, go, say more.
Wales is also famous for dragons as well. Caves and dragons.
Dragons are on the flag, so yeah.
Not one dragon is on the flag. Eight dragons.
A dragon, yeah.
Yes.
Well, as far as we know.
It's more dragons than most countries have.
Yes, it is. Yeah, infinitely more. Which is why it's the best country flag.
I think we should do some news.
Yeah, what happened in the last week? Not a lot. Okay, good.
But stuff did happen. There was stuff. I want to do a quick Brandon Sanderson update, though. Oh, yeah, it's ending next week. Yeah, ending next week. It is just about, it's just over $9 million. Wow.
Wow. That's a lot.
Avatar was $9.5 million, and it has a week left to go. So I think it's going to overtake Avatar today to become the biggest TTRPG Kickstarter ever. And then it's just a question of how far does it go then?
Well, obviously, Russ, you know what question I'm going to ask. Oh.
I don't. Okay, okay.
It's a strange, palmy question. The definition is not strong here, so there's literally an army of people following Brandon Sansom. And this is Kickstarter. So I've been comparing it to actual sized armies.
Oh, right.
I've only been doing it three weeks. It's fine, Jess. It's okay.
32,473.
It just went up as I watched it. Wow. Wow. So, um,
If we wanted to stop this RPG from happening, we would need to get into diplomatic talks with Rwanda, is what you're saying? That's actually not what I'm saying, but we can do that.
That's what I heard.
We haven't had a gaming industry cause a diplomatic incident with another nation for absolutely years now. Quite frankly, I think that Ian Publishing could be the next big thing.
I think Morris' podcast could be the one to make it happen.
Great, yeah, let's go. It's my name on the podcast.
I know, that's why I'm confident about it. PJ and I are like, yeah, it's fine. My name's not on this.
You'll be like, I don't even know this guy.
Never met him before in my life.
Yeah. Anyway, a week to go. I'm guessing 12 million is my... I think...
PJ, you guessed 13, didn't you? I think I went with 13. Did you? And Jess went with 20.
Did I? That's right. I don't think it's quite going to get to 20.
Well, it's going to be a lot. Would you like to make a guess, Kelsey?
I mean, I'm notoriously bad at guessing because I thought my Kickstarter was going to do 10,000, so... But I would say I'm more on Jess's side. I want to overshoot it because it's like the price is right where we should have the price is right rules where if you go over your, or if you are like guessing 12,000, but it's 12,001, then you're disqualified. So whoever's above that wins.
I'm going to say 13,000.
13. Okay, we've got two on 13. 13 million, not 13,000.
We're talking in the millions. It's very reasonable. We're talking about Kickstarter, TTRPGs, 13,000 is a very logical thing to say, but this is not what we're talking about. This is just like, nope, nope.
My goodness.
It is incredible. It is what? I just, I check it every day. Do you? I haven't backed it because, you know, the Cosmere stuff. Well, I just haven't read any of the books. It's not, you know, it's not my, but I'm just fascinated by the Kickstarter and I just really wanted to do well and I don't know why because it doesn't affect me at all. But, you know, I'm just like egging it on. Come on, come on.
It's exciting when someone in the industry does really well. It is. I think it makes you feel as a TTRPG creative, someone else is doing really well. You're like, oh, well, there's the potential. There's that market. And maybe this will invite new people into the hobby.
Well, there's two ways you can look at it. You get some people who just get jealous. Yes. And then you get the other people who are just happy that this thing is happening. And I'm in the latter group.
Yeah.
I'm pleased to say.
Yeah. And it is, strictly speaking, not a D&D Kickstarter.
I know, that's why I'm also really happy because it's something that's not D&D.
What's interesting is if you look at the top, the list of top TTRPG Kickstarters, the top four are all not D&D. Wow. If you count this one, the top four are not D&D. So the top four are, so this one, Avatar Legends is not D&D. Gloomhaven Grand Festival was not D&D. Which we...
varying opinions on, because that was essentially a reprint of Gloomhaven, which had a little RPG attached on top of it.
There is a Gloomhaven RPG, though, PJ.
There is a Gloomhaven RPG. That is what it is. I don't mean to decorate their work, but... But the play level seems to have been increased by a $130 box.
But every big Kickstarter has stuff attached to the RPG that's not RPG stuff. Like, they have minis and coins and tote bags and stuff, which that's... Half the match. Yeah.
Well, that's not entirely true. But the third one was the MCDM. But I will say that Shadow Dark is one of only two Kickstarters, the other being Coyote and Crow, to do it without all of that extra stuff. Oh.
Nice.
There's only two that have done it without all the dice and the shirts and the plushies and the... Board games. Yeah, yeah. Stuff. So, yeah, Shadow Dark 2023 and Coyote and Crow in 2021. The only two that have ever done that. Wow. That's why... An exclusive club.
It's really because I couldn't have managed any more than what we did. Right?
Yeah.
And then becoming a logistics company, organizing plushies, moving around the globe is a whole other job, yeah.
Yeah.
Yep. Not what I wanted to do that time.
No, no, no.
I didn't get into this industry to make plushies.
They are cute. I have to give them that, but...
Pencil cases, that's a different thing. I really put into it to make pencil cases. That's what I want to make.
Check it out on our next Kickstarter.
Yeah, I mean, it's a shame we're not going to have a video broadcast because then listeners can share the joy of seeing a woman get her new directives.
Anyway, that is... That's the Brandon Sanderson news for the week. Next week, we'll get a report on what it actually did and find out that I won and I guessed correctly.
That's what will happen next week.
We'll see. That's definitely what will happen. Time will tell.
So I understand Paizo has been doing some things. Should we segue and talk about that a little bit?
Sure, sounds good.
So we, it was, was it two weeks ago we talked about Paizo updating? About two weeks ago, yeah. I was definitely here. So it wasn't last week. Anyway, so they updated their community use policies. And my understanding, in brief, is that people were not happy with that. and just discuss their displeasure in a reasonable way online as people do online in a nuanced way.
And then Paizo announced on Thursday that they're reversing course in the plan to replace the community uses policy with the new fan content policy. But yeah, so that's all that I know. I don't know if you have any more detail, Russ, but that is kind of my brief overview of understanding of it.
I'm just looking at the same announcement that you are. I don't know, Kelsey, have you... Do you follow Paizo much? Have you followed this one?
This one is new to me, actually, so I might need the primer. But so they were changing their policy, and there was a rebellion.
Yeah, so they had a community use policy for years, and they replaced it with a fan content policy.
Mm-hmm.
which I feel like I can't remember what the difference was it was trying to bring it in line because they're bringing out second edition like they're in the process of doing that and also because of the OGL crisis they were moving away from using OGL like stuff so I think this was meant to bring it all in line with all the new stuff
It was so that you could make merchandise using Paizo IP.
That's right.
But it had specific terms.
You have to be a small creator who's selling it yourself. You can't get it all made in a factory in China.
Exactly. So if you handcrafted dice bags and sewed on different character classes on there, that was fine. But you couldn't do a print-on-demand Etsy store, you know,
t-shirt thing where you know the drop shipping you couldn't do that but you could make your own t-shirts and sell them one at a time yes you could do that yes nothing that's mass production was pretty much the thing so they wanted to encourage artisans yeah is the best way i can describe it
but yeah from what I understand I haven't read into it too much I saw a bit of it online a lot of people in the community that use this and it affected them were unhappy with the policy in the same way that with you know the OGL situation people were like hey this doesn't seem very fair this is unclear here this doesn't seem you know so I saw a lot of that discussion happening online and in fair play to us it seems like they've gone back and said okay I think the thing was that the fan content policy didn't allow like
rules mechanics and character generator tools and online databases of stuff and that sort of thing okay which a lot of people make as fans don't monetize but make it as fans as part of the community yeah and just the path builder I think it affected that sort of thing is why people didn't like it.
So it looks like they're saying, well, it looks like there's for now saying you can use the old one and they're going to refine the fan content policy to clearly define
things so i think the plan is to take it away redo it and i imagine they're probably going to put out a draft and get feedback before putting it out fully this time maybe i would imagine like from a pr perspective that would be my advice i'll be like hey but yeah they've apologized and said oh sorry for the misstep let's we'll we'll redo it and I think that's fair enough.
I think that's fair enough for me.
Yeah, this wasn't an OGL type situation. No, not at all.
And I saw some people online comparing it and I think, I don't feel this is the same because it's... No, it's not the same at all.
Well, like, it's not sneaky to try and hire publishers and so forth and buy them with non-disclosure agreements. But I'm better.
Who would do that, PJ? PJ?
Who would do that? Who would do that? I don't know.
They do sound like they're listening to their community. I mean, that's the one big difference right off the bat is they're inviting feedback and they're actually going to make changes based on that, it seems. So it's already different from how the OGL was. Yeah, exactly.
Paizo is always like... I feel, been a bit more plugged into the community than Wizards has been for a long, long time. It's probably just a scale thing, partly because Wizards is so much bigger and stuff. But I think just on a company culture level, I think they are more kind of plugged into the community as well.
I've always wondered, is there, so I wonder if they actually have a writing team that's comparable in size to that of Wizards of the Coast, because I think it's, it has to be less than a dozen people at Wizards.
At one time it was larger. Yeah. But we're going back sort of 10, 15 years when Wizards was a lot slimmer than it is now. Not these days at all. I think Wizards is enormous in comparison now.
Yeah.
But, yeah, I mean, Paizo's not small, though. It's the second largest, you know, TTRPG company on the planet.
Yeah. I mean, maybe as many as 100 employees, which is... Yeah, well, yeah.
Small-port TTRPG companies.
I'm not saying it's, you know... Yeah, like a medium-end variety, as we would count the states in the UK. Yeah.
Although, although interesting, they no longer have offices.
Oh, okay.
It was a couple of years ago. They closed their offices in Seattle and everyone is remote working now.
Wow.
Yeah. Like various, like senior Paizo management and designers moved across country to different locations, you know, because apparently Seattle's really, really expensive to live in. And very wet. And very wet.
Very thin.
Yeah. Yeah.
Wow, that's going to save them money on renting a Seattle-based corporate space, which I can't even imagine how much that must cost.
Yeah.
And working from home is good, actually.
It just strikes me as strange, though, imagining Paizo as not having offices, because in my mind, they've always been a big office-based, big four TTRPGs, office-based company. And now they're not. They're...
embracing work from home uh removing commutes from people's lives and i got something that is that is a strong strong capsule yeah yeah i mean i struggle with my commute yeah all the way down the stairs oh 8 55 i'll be late i'll be like oh i've made it
How am I still late for things? I work from my house, but I'm still late for stuff.
Good work, good work. That's impressive. Dedication. The fun thing is when you still blame traffic.
Yeah.
But to be fair, with your dogs, you literally don't have traffic.
Yeah, you do. Like coming down the stairs is not an easy mission.
I had to wait my turn to merge onto the stairs this morning. It took forever.
Whereas I'm like, I sat down and my cat jumped in my lap.
Oh, you're stuck then. You can't move. Exactly. That is the law.
Yeah. I have a little tiny bit of news, which I thought was quite cool. René-Pierre Deshaies is offering free templates on Canva and Affinity to let designers, architecture designers, have them. So let me see.
templates of things for game design like layout yeah it's almost like he's offering out our trade dress which oh I see oh cool I mainly offer it to people so that you know if you're making everything in home brewery here is an option yeah my layout is definitely one of those sort of bottleneck things there yeah yes
I can write a bit and I can do layout a bit. Yeah. But not well. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, tools like that are really, really, really helpful. And I don't want to use Home Brewery because I don't want all my books to look like the indie books.
Yeah, yeah. Or the ghost books, you know, so. That's fine, yeah. Yeah. I just threw that out there because I thought that would be the most accessible option.
That's pretty cool. Yeah, that's the biggest thing. Third-party creators for Shadow Dark, their number one question is, how can I find a template to make it match the brand vibe? And so it's cool that when someone makes a template like this, it's incredibly useful.
yeah and in canva that's so accessible like you don't have to be okay you don't have to be a graphic designer like because obviously there's loads of softwares you have but if you're just maybe if you're a writer and not in that you might not have that software at all whereas can be you get for like it's like 10 or a month or there's a free version so yeah yeah i i'm a big fan of the affinity suite because they just keep on doing sales so if you wait for a little sale they can get quite cheap oh and it's on affinity as well yeah and then you own it
And I find owning things to be a pleasant experience in this day and age of digital printing.
Well, I'm a big fan of having a layout artist. No problem goes away.
I'm a big fan of our layout artists as well. Yes, they do great work.
Anyway, news, news, news. Let's have a look at some warnings. Did we all see Deadpool and Wolverine?
I have. No, but I'm okay with you saying things about it, though. I'm going to see it much later.
Such a fun film. It is. I'm not going to spoil the film.
It's exactly what you think the film is going to be there. You get everything you want from a Deadpool film is what I'll say.
They did increase the gore considerably. It wasn't a bloodless film before, right? There's always a lot of stabbing.
yeah yeah there was yeah there was a lot more I felt yeah it was kind of but it wasn't unexpected for Deadpool because well I enjoyed it immensely yes and I haven't played the Marvel multiverse role-playing game yet oh
But if I were to do so, I would be tempted to play the Deadpool adventure. Oh. Which is apparently a very silly, laugh-out-loud, funny adventure for Marvel Multiverse broadband. It's called Deadpool Roleplays the Marvel Universe. Mm-hmm. and it looks awesome.
I mean, I wasn't 100% sure I wanted to play a superhero RPG, because I've played them before in the past, and they've never really been my bag. I love watching the movies, but for gaming, they're never... But I feel like I want to play this. I feel like I want to play a very silly Deadpool Marvel multiplayer game.
Your dream can come true. That's such an achievable dream.
It is an achievable goal, yes. I think you can do it. It looks really easy to make happen. Like, I know Tim C is, like, all revved up and ready to run some, so we're going to just dissuade him from running PowerPy in the second edition for a little bit and say, would you like to run some marbles? I'd be delighted to. Sorry, this is like super local to Southampton and my club.
It's like a tiny, tiny, tiny audience, but there you go.
Yeah. Well, I'm looking at this review by Rob Weiland, and he says that not only is this laugh out loud funny, he also says that this is the strongest Marvel multiverse role-playing game adventure that they've brought out. Wow. Full stop.
Oh, really?
Wow, okay.
In what sense?
Well, that would have been reading the entire review out. Okay, okay. He just says it's a very good adventure as well as being incredibly funny.
Okay, but there is a full review people can read online.
Yeah, there's a full review on it.
That we won't read out loud on the podcast because that won't be interesting.
It feels like a real labour of luck.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I did the thing.
What did you do?
Well, my most popular book. Do you want to admit it in public on a podcast? Well, like, I guess kind of. It's not relevant to, like, most people, but Crafting Heritage and Cultures, I've released a brown version.
Oh, nice.
Oh, okay. Yeah, because there's, like, a... I thought, well, yeah, I really need to keep on, like, live in the, walk and walk, talk and talk and so forth. So yeah, it was actually really easy. So I was like, okay. Yeah, yeah. There's a tool that does that for you. Yeah, how did you do that? There is, it's called Braille Blast. It's amazing.
I think the main learning experience I have is that it doesn't like apostrophes.
Okay.
Like the tool for her reason. So I was running through it because I'm like, I can't read Braille, but some of it's highlighted. I'm guessing that's bad. I noticed that the – because it shows you, like, text and then the Braille text, I hope. I mean, it seems like – I mean, it could say anything. It could say anything. It is from a reputable source by someone I trust. So, yeah.
I don't think someone can tell me if it says something different. Yeah, so I've gone through it and changed it. So I'm hopeful this will be good. Okay.
yeah but yeah i'll put that on my sort of like i've got like a little on drive for rpg i've got like just a place for just putting all my srds so as i bring out srds i'll just put them in there so people can have them and now i shall release a very less rd alongside because might as well it was accessibility it it was it was very little extra effort Very intellectual effort.
I'm kind of curious, how does that work then? So they download it from... I downloaded the program. No, I mean from the customer point of view.
You downloaded the Braille thing from... It's just like an extra file. So I presume you'd have to... It's like a .bbz file. So I'm presuming you would have to have Braille Blaster.
Yeah.
But if you're using this, I think that is expected that you'd have such a thing. It wasn't compatible. So I don't know how my customers would need Braille. But if you happen to be listening to this podcast, which seems possible if you buy it, then you're welcome, and I'll try and do better going forward.
Good. More news, more news. Anyone else got some news? I've got a couple of bits of D&D news. Yeah, yeah.
Well, before we get into that, because that's what I was going to talk about, I've seen a Kickstarter that looks quite cool. It's ending next week, and it's at like 93% funded.
this is called sentience the role-playing game it's about artificial consciousness and it seems to do and i know there's other games that look at this but it seems to do it in an interesting way because it's looking a lot about social justice movements and and things like like like that um and it reminds me very much of the i don't know if you've seen the tv show being human
it reminded me of it had that sort of vibe to it so it doesn't look like it's like high drama like I'm a big strong robot I'm gonna like laser everything it's not that vibe it seems more like oh like I'm scared and I'm dealing with my emotions and I'm you know, in a society that doesn't acknowledge my existence and I'm under threat and like a lot of it's finding, yeah.
Joy, pain, anger and fear, that sort of thing.
Yes. And it uses a D6 dice pool system and I do like a dice pool system. So, and it's a unique system. Yeah. So the mechanics are about emotion and stress and there's hacking and there is combat in it as well, which like obviously is there, but it seemed to be more about like,
yeah like finding yourself identity and being part of this resistance and yeah and just really interesting yeah so i've backed that it's it's not due to come out to like the estimated delivery of physical books is july 2025 which i was actually pleased to see because a lot of creators sometimes do a really short timeline and i think oh are you going to be able to do that because actually
But yeah, it looks really good, and it, yeah, it knows what it's doing, and yeah, it just seemed really interesting to me and appealed to me.
I mean, it is also a game which does involve, it says, combat.
Mm-hmm, yes.
Androids, and EMPs, and potential self-destructive defensive upgrades. I noticed also, Russ, you might like, that they have, for the hacking, they have a unique wrist-die mechanic that blends speed and simplicity with texture and danger. Yeah. You can hack into it with a sentience. That does sound fun. Much like a book I'm reading at the moment.
Yeah. So I've backed this for a book because I thought that looks kind of interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it looks like it focused on the elements of this sort of storytelling that I would be interested in exploring. So, yeah. So that's my other little shout out for a new little RPG. Yeah, it's nice. It's nice. Yeah.
Should we talk about some D&D then?
Well, sure. We'd be remiss if we didn't.
It's with heavy heart because I suspect I know which one it is. It's not our most positive. I've got two. I've got two things. Okay. So we'll go with the good news and the bad news.
There's only bad news. Is it good and bad? Okay. One of them isn't great. The other one is just neutral, I think. neutral and bad let's start with neutral okay let's go on the sliding scale so neutral so next week on August the 27th that is next week isn't it that is next week on a Tuesday what is it today I don't even know what it is today Thursday It is next week. Okay. It's Tuesday then. Okay.
On Tuesday. Okay. There's going to be an event called D&D Direct. They did this last year, I think. It's an official live streamed event.
Oh, yeah.
Taking place at 9am PDT, which is 5pm for us. Mm-hmm. And they're going to talk about two things. Well, they're going to look at the Player's Handbook, which is kind of out now, so I think people know what's in there. But for those that haven't seen the Player's Handbook, they're going to look at that. But they're going to talk about the future of Dungeons & Dragons.
And they're going to talk about the Project Sigil and or Sigil 3D virtual tabletop. Ooh. Which is going to be unveiled very, very soon, I think.
We had a sneak peek a couple of weeks ago from the Gen Con.
Yeah, yeah. We saw them using it.
Yeah.
But the beta itself is coming soon. So what they say, so for the future of D&D, they say they'll be unveiling an outline for the future of D&D, the 2024 core rulebooks, and what awaits your heroes in addition to those core rulebooks. So I guess we're going to hear about some more releases later.
After them, I guess. Kelsey, do you dabble much with the old virtual tabletops?
I have done a little bit of a lot of them. So I'm no expert on any particular one, but I've done a little Roll20, a little bit of... I actually really like Owlbear Rodeo, which is... That's my favorite one.
I like Owlbear Rodeo.
It's really good.
It's just really simple.
Exactly. That's what I loved about it. I haven't done it in a bit, but I haven't seen a ton of the virtual tabletop Wizards is doing, but I'm allowed to say this now. A long time ago, many years ago, I helped write the adventure they're using for it. So that was before Wizards did some weird stuff. So I haven't yet seen it in action.
I mean, that could be any time in the last five years.
Yeah, it's been in development a long time. And it's funny because I've never seen the result of that. So I haven't seen it. But you guys did see the virtual tabletop in action?
Well, there's a video online from Gen Con. There's a video that exists.
I've seen bits of it. I didn't sit and watch the entire thing because it was long.
I should find that.
It's basically a stage actual play in a theater. Oh. It was at Gen Con. They're playing the 2024 core rules. Okay. And then for the first half, they do it the traditional way, just, you know, they're sitting around and rolling dice and using books and pens and paper. Then the second half, they bring out laptops.
Mm-hmm.
Wow.
I should find that because I'm curious how much of what I wrote made its way into the final result.
I assume that must be your adventure then, I guess.
Yeah.
Well, it's on ENworld. The link is on there, so I can send you the article link. Cool. Yeah. But they do have a... You can sign up for the closed beta, so you can try out Project Sigil. I signed up for that.
Yeah, they say it's coming soon. There isn't a date yet, but they say it's coming soon.
Yeah, I signed up for it, so I don't know when that's going on.
I haven't. I just wouldn't have the time, to be honest.
Well, I thought then I can report back here. And I'm also interested to see how it is with my Baldur's Gate 3 addiction. I'm like, is this going to feel similar?
I feel this is like a positive news story. Positive. That's very good.
Speaking of gaming, I didn't mention it, but I'm having a Baldur's Gate 3 LAN party tomorrow with some friends because that's how cool I am. I'm so excited.
Nice. You are such a nerd.
I know, right?
Hello? Pot? Yes, you're black.
Okay, all right, so that's the D&D Direct news. Is that the neutral news? That's the neutral news, yes.
What's the other news you have for us? I would say it's quite positive, to be fair, but yeah, okay.
Okay, well, the less well-received news, shall I say, shall I put it like that? Yes. That's what most put it. The more discussed news is how D&D Beyond is going to be implementing the 2024 rules and how it will handle access to the 2014 rules. Wow. So they basically posted a roadmap. Is that the right word term? Yeah. Something like that.
Something called changelog, I think they said.
Yeah. About what they're going to be doing. Yes. So the short version is you will still be able to access the 2014 basic rules and core rule books if you have them. So they won't disappear from your library if you have them. Yeah. And you will still be able to make characters using the 2014 player's handbook.
Okay.
And existing homebrew content won't be impacted. So that's kind of the three good things. So the 2014 rules will be marked with a legacy badge. But the only things that are going to be staying there with this legacy badge are classes, subclasses, species, background, feats, and monsters. So, no spells. Yeah.
see I naively assumed that would come under the web of classes
Well, unless they accidentally missed that out, but it seems unlikely that they did. So there's a few bits and pieces that aren't included, which basically means if you're playing a 2014 game using a 2014 character, using a legacy class and subclass and species, but things like your spells and certain other elements of the game that aren't in that list. Yes. are still going to be updated.
Whether you want to or not. On your character sheet. Your spell's going to change.
Even though you're playing a 2014 game. Changing other people's character sheet without asking. Seems kind of bad to me. Yeah. Maybe a consent, like a, would you like us to update your character sheet? No, thank you. Yeah. Is he playing 2014 D&D? Perhaps later.
So the best thing to do is to print off your character sheet now, and if you want to keep it as it is, just go to pen and paper, I guess.
Do the D&D Beyond character sheets show the details of the spells, or are they just a spell name?
Technically, I think. I tried printing out my D&D Beyond character, which was just like level 12 Battlemaster. I got like, I don't know, 10 pages because they're not optimized for use in this way. It's kind of a mess. I honestly don't know if they've got all the details you need to read it. I think you would still have to refer to a player's handbook.
People have suggested that the obvious easy thing to do is to, as a GM, homebrew the spell and then release it to your players so they can use that version instead. That's a lot of work. You have to do all of the 2014 spells. Well, one particular example that springs to mind because somebody was commenting saying, wow, my DM, I think that sucks, is someone who's playing a level 11 cleric.
that's a lot of spells because as we know clerics are prepared spellcasters so technically you'd have to do every single cleric spell if you've got a bard or a sorcerer a sorcerer would be a pain but it would be easy enough to do but clerics yeah that's a lot of spells that you would need to have ready even if they just stick to the standard set it's a thing I just realised does that also mean magic items as well
That's not on the list, so I guess so. Eek. Wow.
But we don't know anything about magic items, to be fair. That's, I believe, going to be in the DMG, is that? True.
Although we do know that the D&D cartoon magic items are going to be in there. Interesting.
Fun.
Like the energy bow and things like that.
I really want to see what they do with the Anji boat. It was like the coolest thing when I was a kid. It's like, yeah, the rest of it is like, okay, this is whatever. Oh, you can shoot arrows without using string or arrows. It's amazing. It's the best.
have and also you could do like of course cool things with it so it'd be cool to see what this yeah you know this is interesting because at first i didn't realize why people were upset and i think that's because i don't play a lot of spell casting characters so i looked at this and i was like what's the problem you can use the old one but now you've explained this i'm like ah because i just naively assumed that spells would come under the umbrella of the class and it wouldn't be changed but now you've mentioned it i'm like oh yeah that's that's super annoying there are things which are basically class features that we don't call class features like yeah
It's a class feature. Heavy armor is a class feature. So if you do things like take away class features, then that tends to get people's backs up.
Yeah. Yeah.
The other thing that's going to happen is tooltips across the board are going to reflect the 2024 rules, not the 2014 rules, even if you're playing a 2014 game.
Well, yeah.
That's a choice.
I kind of get why from like a digital platform reason.
Oh, I mean, Roll20's been heralding their switchover for quite some time. They've been offering, was it JumpGate or HyperGate or whatever it's called? I was like, yeah, I might give it a go. I might not. One Bookshelf has been doing the would you like to see things new super shiny view for ages and giving people a chance to opt in before it pushes it all through.
Whereas this is like, yeah, we're just doing it.
It's interesting you have to have two modes. You can't have a toggle just and switch between 2014 and 2024.
I mean, that might be too much maybe because they are trying to get 2024 out so people can buy the books. But, you know, I suppose.
Yeah. Yeah. The other thing is all the monster stat blocks will be updated for 2024 format.
Okay.
Might not be the worst thing.
Yeah, they didn't seem like hugely different. Like, I mean, there were changes, but it didn't feel... Yeah.
Like maybe a bit better balanced.
Yeah. Yeah.
possibly a little bit easier to use. So that would be a positive life improvement for GM and the Thyrum, in fact, Robert.
Yeah. I haven't... Yeah, I mean, they're not updating all the stat blocks to 2024 monsters because they're keeping the legacy 2014 monsters. Yeah. So it looks like they'll have two of each monster.
Oh, okay.
They can use both versions. As far as I can make out, as I understand it, unless I've misunderstood this.
No, they have said 2014 rules will be accessible marked with legacy badges for monsters, so...
yeah so why not do this with spells as well but but but as as i read it the monsters well yeah why not do this as well yeah the monsters will all be had the 2024 layout presumably just because they just have one monster template or something like that but um i see you'll be able to use a 2040 monster it has a new layout okay um
Yeah, all right. That's kind of a neutral change for me. I don't care one way or the other.
I quite like the new layout, so I'm okay with it.
I think it is an improvement. I think it's more functional. I just don't think it's as pretty. I don't think it looks very nice. I don't like that blocky bit, but hey.
I'll take function over prettiness for RPGs, though.
Especially if it's... I'm with you, Jess. If you're midway through a session, I want to be able to use it. I've got other plates to spin! Yeah.
Yeah. So what has the internet's reaction been to this? Because I haven't seen much of it.
Why don't we play a little game?
The internet's reaction has been... Well, the internet is very good as a collective at having a nuanced and reasonable approach to things and is good at long-form discussion.
Especially on that Twitter thing. It's very, very, you know, level-headed.
The social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Are we on the same social... Are we on the same internet?
So have people been really mad about it? Has there been a lot of people...
Yes.
Yes, okay, okay.
There have been people mad about it. I've tried to, yeah. Yes. Okay. People in my very small social circles have been quite mad, but a lot of them, I'm like, you seem mad. Do you actually use D&D Beyond? They're like, no, but I was so mad about it. I'm like, that's fair.
Because this is my thing, because I don't use D&D Beyond, and no one in my group's
do so yeah but it's there is a certain amount of principle which is you don't update someone's character sheet without asking that's just not it's not a done thing like yeah it's like it is the one thing that players have control over so if you start messing around with it then that is deeply uncalled
yeah yeah and sort of the idea that right like if you there i know some people who only bought digital versions of books and now they're worrying what if they get taken away from me or changed i don't know that's just on principle that's kind of a strange feeling yeah yeah was it 2009 they had a the problem where they just removed all their books from rpg now or something
Who did? Oh, right, yeah. Yes, he did used to be able to get PDFs. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's a long time ago, but yeah. Hello, Monty. Right, have we got any more news?
Um... It's been quiet. I think Gen Con has been... Everyone's having a nap after Gen Con, I think.
Yeah.
I've just spotted Prime Video. Amazon Prime Video have a new animated show called Secret Level. And it features 15 episodes and their stories set in the various worlds, including Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer 40K...
What?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. What's it called? Secret something? And other things that I don't know and video games that I don't know.
This sounds so cool. Oh, it's very Ready Player One. Like, yeah.
Yeah, well, the list is Armored Core, Concord, Crossfire, Dungeons and Dragons, Exodus, Honor of Kings, Mega Man, New World Atomum, Pac-Man. You're supposed to say Pac-Man.
There's Pac-Man in there. Is that going to be like an existential horror?
Just running around a maze being chased by ghosts.
Yeah.
While eating pills.
Like, yeah. It's like an episode of Black Mirror.
Yeah. We've got Mega Man, New World, ATM, Pac-Man, Sifu, Spelunky, The Outer Worlds, Unreal Tournament, and Warhammer 40,000. Wow. Wow. Okay. Two of those are tabletop role-playing games.
Yeah, I'm going to watch this.
That might be quite difficult to do because I have Prime Video and it does not appear to be available to me. I do have Prime Video, so I will watch it. I have it, Russ. Oh. Why do you have it and I don't? Is it called Secret Level? Have I misheard that? Secret Level.
I don't think it's out yet, but it's coming.
It's not out yet. Sorry.
Yeah.
December the 10th. Sorry, I missed that key bit of information. It was... Yeah, December the 10th. You've got a couple of months, three months, four months, some months, a number of months that is plural. I will put the pitchfork and torch down.
Well, there's some of my Christmas holidays sorted. That's what I'm going to do.
I have heard a rumour, and I don't know how true it is, that the D&D one features Tiamat. Nice. I don't know how true that is.
Well, we'll find out in December, won't we? Very classic of them to do that.
Yeah, yeah. Get a strong female character in that. Always did.
you're not getting a lot stronger the strongest female character yeah yeah right I think that might be the news mm-hmm
Malek the Maleficent here. If, like me, you're enjoying this podcast, please consider subscribing on Patreon for exclusive bonus content every week and the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing you are helping to keep the show going. Subscribe at patreon.com slash
like that now the things i do all right all right don't forget patreon.com slash morris can i go now it is time to delve into the shadow talk so kelsey hello hello hi and
Tell us, if you will, what is a shadow dark?
Ooh, a shadow dark is really just any place where there's danger and darkness in a gaming world, in a fantasy gaming world. So it doesn't necessarily just mean, you know, a dungeon or anything. It could be above ground, but as long as it's hard to see in there and there are some things that want to eat you, I would call that the shadow dark.
because darkness and light is very much a theme of the game so um just for those i think most people listening would have tuned in already knowing who you are and what what this game is but would it be fair to say that your game is kind of an osr style game with some more modern trappings to it is that a fair description oh absolutely that's what i would call it too Okay, excellent. Lucky guess.
So you kickstarted this, what, last year, was it? Yeah. And did over a million dollars. That's incredible.
I can't believe it.
And we mentioned earlier in the show, it's one of the only two Kickstarters to have done that without including a ton of miniatures and plushies and T-shirts and pins and badges and stuff. So it's just for the game. So that's a singular club of only two. Only two people have managed to do that.
Oh, wow.
Well, I think it definitely speaks to how some of these Kickstarters, people are fans of maybe Avatar, or they're fans of maybe Brandon Sanderson, and they're collectors of all this stuff. This speaks to how people, I think, really wanted that game, that specific experience that you're offering. So I was kind of thinking, how would you describe that?
Say to a 5e player who maybe hasn't played many other games, how would you describe how that experience differs to your standard kind of 5e style game?
Yeah, I think it really strips back a lot of the complexity that 5e adds where your characters in Shadow Dark are very simple. They're not really defined by what's on their character sheet so much as what they do and how long they survive in the game and the story that they earn as time goes on. I think that's one big difference.
And a lot of 5e players, I think, are used to playing a very combat-oriented game. Most of the rules in 5e are centered around combat. And there is combat in Shadow Dark, but I think it emphasizes exploration and trying to overcome obstacles without resorting to combat more than 5e does. So that can be one of the most significant outward differences to people who are most used to 5e.
Mm-hmm. yeah um because i i kind of noticed that obviously it reminds me very much of earlier editions of dnd and that's obviously you know deliberate um what one thing that really striked me is the the visual style of the game and the layout choices that you've made sort of topics having their own page each each topic is like one or two pages with a big kind of bold header and um
Just flicking through the book, just from an ease of use in a player navigation point of view, I think that's a really, really strong choice. And it's thematically strong as well as being incredibly useful. So I was kind of thinking, how did you come to that style of layout and how it looks and the kind of iconography that you've kind of gone with?
Yeah. Thank you so much. It's really centered around the fact that I, as a game master, want to trick my players into thinking I know the whole world and I have everything prepared, even when 90% of the time I don't.
So...
I designed the book to be a reference where it would be very easy to navigate and then find what you needed and then have generative content baked into so much of what's in the book. Like, tavern generators, name generators, encounter generators, because... Lots of random tables, yeah. Right, right. trying to make topics very easy to grasp and actually easy to remember.
So a lot of the design is centered around things being intuitive and all using a unified system so that you don't have to be looking things up all the time. Yeah.
And you can focus your attention on that generative half of the book where then you can trick your players into thinking you had the whole thing invented when you definitely didn't and you only started preparing five minutes before the game like I do.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, same with me. Yeah. So can you speak a bit about the element of light I noticed in the game? So one of the concepts of the game is like a minute in the game is a minute in real time and vice versa. So the game runs in real time unless you specifically say, okay, an hour is passing while you rest or a day is passing or a week is passing or whatever.
But otherwise, a torch will last an hour and that will be an hour of real time at the table.
Yeah. Yeah.
So...
I've never realized until bringing real time into my games, sort of just as like a tip that I was like, oh, you know, we could try to get the players to make a decision faster by incorporating real time into this. And it was something I was doing in games I was running where a lot of people have like a little sand timer or something.
So you've got a minute to take your turn sort of thing.
Yeah, exactly. And I was like, well... I wonder if we can center the game around a slightly less intense version of this mechanic where you have some time, but you see the time ticking down. And that's really to just encourage people to be decisive about their gameplay and to not waffle and get buried in the rules arguing.
Because I don't think at the end of the day, having a fight about how to adjudicate a really specific style of grapple is a lot of fun for most of the people at the table, maybe for like one person at the table, but...
it's to try to move that kind of thing along and um create some genuine suspense that the players themselves are feeling not just the characters in the game but the players are feeling a little bit of actual pressure on themselves too yeah yeah yeah i think the torch is kind of like the prime example in the game and it's the one you definitely call out in the game but what other sort of like time constraint based sort of things are there that that we might encounter
Yeah, the whole game actually plays in rounds. It plays in, you could say, a loose initiative order. It doesn't have to be super strict, but it's interesting. You'll notice that all spell durations are listed in rounds, not minutes or an hour, really. Sometimes an hour, very, very rarely. And that means an hour of real time.
So when you're playing in rounds, it helps, I think, to give everybody an action that they can do that's sort of equal in potency. It helps you track things like durations so much more easily. And yeah, the whole game is actually, it's funny because people ask, how long is a round? And I'm like, how long does it take you to play a round around the table? That's how long a round is.
So there's no concrete amount of in-game time pinned to it, which is both kind of strange to get used to, but then I think once people lean into it, they're like, oh, this makes sense. A round is literally how long it takes us to go around the table.
Yeah, so it's not like it's six seconds. If it takes you five minutes to go around the table, then the round is five minutes.
Yeah, and if you fight real slow, I mean, roll your dice as fast as you can if you want to fight fast.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And having the torch go out midway through a round It happens all the time. Sounds like a player-facing problem to me.
I mean, I've used turn timers in the past just to say, come on, you get a minute to decide what you're doing, otherwise we're going to move on. But I've never tried it with things like torches and stuff, and now I really want to. I really do. I mean, I think that's a really clever idea. And I think that's just something I'm just going to bring into my games going forward anyway now, to be honest.
Oh, I hope you try it. I think it's the mechanic that people are most skeptical of, just from what I've seen. They're like, well, I don't think I'm going to like that. And then it also is the mechanic that people have the biggest change of heart on when they actually try it in their game, which makes me happy. So I'm glad people actually give it a shot.
I can see how it would create the tension at the table. Yeah. I can see how that would work. I mean, yeah, I'm just going to start doing that. Not just for that, for other things as well.
I'm just going to start doing that because I think it's an excellent idea that's just never occurred to me before. What you need, Russ, is you need one of those little kitchen timers, the wind-up ones.
set it to an hour and leave it so it's like ticking away there yeah and then when you light a new light source you can like you know reset it because the old one's gone out and there you go get an extra extra hour of it i think i'd like i'd like the sound because i like the people to see it slowly dripping away and just have the slowly i just occurred to me what the next evolution of this rule is
You light an actual torch.
Yes.
And when the torch goes out, the torch goes out.
You have to pass the torch when it's your turn. Just, like, don't drop it on the table and melt your miniatures. Yeah, link about ten candles in.
Yeah.
It'd be very... I think it's really very fun, and it's actually a lot easier to track than marking off a torch each round, like we would do in some classic D&D versions, because I always forget to do that and... You're already tracking enough round by round things to begin with, like random encounters every few rounds, spell durations lasting certain sets of rounds.
So I like just kind of doing the set it and forget it thing with a torch. Sometimes at conventions, I'll slightly randomize how long the torch is by a minute or two so that canny players can't just be like, it's been exactly an hour and then I'll keep it hidden forever.
And players can ask and I'll say, oh, it looks like your torches may be about half burned down, but it adds a lot of tension to fun games like con games that are just one shots and stuff.
But of course, it's a bit unlike Fishnet D&D where you can carry as many torches as you like. It doesn't really matter until you can carry like 500 torches. Here, core light management is gear management and is resource management with the slot system. And it's like, oh, nobody likes encumbrance and slots. I do. I like that. I do too. I saw what you did there. I was like, yes.
And Jessica is also a big fan. It's like, you know, the logistical half of the screen is on the right.
As long as it's not bulky and gets in the way of the game. And I think that was the goal with this. There's that management, but it's not like, oh, now we have to sit and do some admin before we can have fun. I think some games do that. The resource management is part of it, but it just feels like it's annoying and it's not fun.
this is like simple enough where it matters and you have to manage it, but it's not like, I feel like I have to go and do some paperwork for my game, you know?
Yeah. You don't need an Excel spreadsheet.
Yeah.
That's exactly it.
It makes some, Oh no. And it's, it's definitely true that if you're using a slot system, you're moving a little bit away from what's realistic. You're like, why does one glass vial take up an entire slot? And then a torch takes up, but it's, You know, you're sort of mechanizing it, right?
It's like, no, it's much better if it plays faster than if you're trying to calculate the different weights and volumes of all these specific little things because no one's really going to do that because it's annoying. Well, some people do, and they like to, so I can't fault them.
Good for them. I like it. But, like, this feels like a game that really thrives as a pen and paper.
It has to do the kind of thing, too, where I acknowledge that real time is passing in the game, so I have to design the systems around not making it cumbersome for you to, like, calculate things. Otherwise, that would be kind of mean. Like, ha-ha! You have to calculate what you're carrying, but the torch is going down. This is now math class. This is a class.
Mm-hmm.
Look, I won't play a game unless it has advanced trigonometry and calculus and calculus and rocket science in it.
Right. And while you're being timed, right?
While we're being timed.
We need to add that in for maximum attention.
Yeah, yeah. So, a million dollars on Kickstarter for Emmys. This thing took off. It did. you said earlier in the show that you only expected it to do like 10 grand on Kickstarter oh yeah so this presumably was a big big surprise for you when it really took off and did a million dollars I mean how did that feel
It was like watching it happen to someone else for a while. I was like, I cannot believe this is happening. And I was like, am I delirious? Because before you launch a Kickstarter, you guys know that it's a little frantic. And you might not have slept that well for a day or two leading into it as you're finalizing everything. And about the second day in, I hadn't slept for maybe four days.
I had caught a few hours here and there. And I was like, is this really happening? Or is this me being exhausted? So it was wild. And, you know, I always project how well something's going to do pretty conservatively because I don't like to be disappointed. But I really under projected this time. Really, really. So.
Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. A million dollars. It's incredible. But, I mean, how do you adjust to that then? So one minute you're a creator making a small game which might, like, make 10,000 dollars on Kickstarter and, you know, and suddenly a month later you've got a million dollar Kickstarter, a big, big fan base. What sort of changes does that bring about? Or do you just carry on as normal?
What's... What's the difference?
Well, it brought a lot of attention that was definitely a little bit of a tidal wave. I think it was at a point where I was like, I'm just going to have to deal with all these emails later. And really isolating what needed to be done in the moment and trying to rise to the occasion. Yeah.
Fortunately, we had set everything up so that our print run could be expanded really easily without overwhelming the printer because we were working with a commercial grade printer. It was just a fact of being like, well, we're not going to need 100 copies. We're going to need 15,000 copies.
Can you guys do that?
So they were like, yeah, we can. Yeah, a little bit on the logistics side, there were a few cautious emails sent out asking if things could still be expanded in size more than projected. And everyone I was working with on the logistics side was able to accommodate an increase of that magnitude, which was such a blessing.
Because if not, we would have had to rework our whole logistics chain entirely, and that would have been scary. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Especially when you've already costed it in a certain way.
Right, right. Yeah. So thankfully, you know, going up in volume brings each unit down in cost. So that helped kind of offset the uncertainties, you know, like we're handling.
Yeah.
When you make a little mistake at that volume, it turns into a huge thing down the line. So having those things kind of evening out, ultimately we had enough of a buffer to account for the various mistakes that did happen that could be solved with money. So that was a blessing too.
Yeah, we've been there. There's always going to be. We made a mistake.
Right? Did you guys experience this where you're like, there's no way we could have predicted this mistake. It's just going to be a money sink type thing?
maybe you're smarter than me there's definitely been mistakes where we've kicked ourselves and said we could have predicted this mistake yes and it's totally on us yeah there's been other stuff as well like I've been doing game fulfillment like for about six years five six years now and so when 2020 when 2020 happened suddenly shipping costs were like two three times what they were and there was no way that we could have had that and that was just we have to throw money at the situation because
the games are, you know, in place A and they need to get to place B. And they've been promised to people. And that's how much it costs to get them there now. Like we'd budgeted, like, I think it was something like four grand for a container and ended up being 12, which is just, it was like, it was like that in 2020. It was, it was absolutely wild. It was things like that were happening.
Yeah. Yeah. There's just, there, there's always going to be something that you can't predict, I think, or at least, you know, it would have been difficult to foresee. So that's, I think that, I don't know, building that uncertainty into your budget a little bit can be helpful, although who could have predicted the 2020? Yeah, there was a pandemic and lockdown. Yeah, that one no one saw coming.
No, that's fair enough. But I think always a thing with other creators is buffering with time is a thing because when mistakes happen, it always takes you a bit more time. So I always say do your timeline really generously and the end,
add two or three months to it just because I'm usually you'll end up doing it on that time just because stuff happens oh my gosh Jess I wish I had that advice earlier I wish I'd had that because that's exactly just about the amount of time we needed to extend certain things was like three to four months past what I had initially guessed so that's that's a very insightful piece of advice right there
Yeah, yeah. And worst case scenario, if everything goes to plan, you fulfilled your backers two months early. Oh, no. Right. Yeah.
Although, although, somebody will complain and somebody did.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I was going to move.
But that's why I let them know. And for that person that complained, I said, that's fine. We'll hold it and we'll fulfill it for you in two months. That's fine. And they said, I can have it this month, but that's not the point.
I don't know what the point is yeah but that's yeah if you're dealing with like thousands of backers there's always one person which is a bit odd I think and I'm sure with customer services messages on that scale you've had one or two people you're like I don't know what you want to be happy here but you know right it was I just tell me what you want and I will try to do it but I can't tell what it is you want you know sorry PJ yeah I'm like I mean this is
Cool. And that sounds like it was absolutely incredible.
epic battles going from yeah i'm doing like 100 books oh 15 000 books okay hard hard work like yeah yeah but i i would quite like to talk about show job because i am like super excited about it i actually actually like you are the arcane library which is i believe your press you have a second print run so i actually on the 10th of august uh bought a copy of the physical book i'll throw it to you since me because i was like oh wow this appears to have won a lot of rewards and
People keep telling me I would like it.
Ooh.
And this is like people... Because I... I have whole blog entries about the sorts of games I like, and why I'm a nightmare to GM for, and why it's awful trying to do stuff for me, because this is the sort of game that I would like. And it turns out, actually, yes, this is the sort of game that I would like, so I'm very keen on it.
There's a lot of things which are similar to the OSR, but I feel you're really taking it up a notch and moving it into a new level of design, which I am deeply impressed by. It's really very cool. thank you yeah um i guess i guess my experience was like i saw like a classic car and Hop in, I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, it's a classic car, I expect this to be quite fun to drive.
There's no, there's no, it's just supposed to press a button, and then suddenly all these, like, lights came on, and I'm like, oh, okay, good. And, like, a little virtual display comes down, and I'm like, going along at light speed, I'm like, oh, okay, wow, this is quite the beat, it's an electric car now. Because it just flows so easily. What's my emotional experience of the, of reading rules?
I'm just like, It all flows together. I very much enjoyed the GM advice, which includes the pact, which is a great way to express it.
I really like it.
Thank you. The pact being, I don't know, do you want to describe it? Because otherwise I'm telling you about your own game and that feels embarrassing. No!
I'm glad that that that particular section, you know, resonated with you, because that's one of the few places where I think that I inserted a bit more of my personal philosophy. The rest of the book tries to be a bit more, you know, general use and a little bit more broad scope. But this was a very specific part of the book. So I'm really glad that you liked it. And
It's a discussion on sort of the unspoken agreement between the players and like why we're playing and that the purpose of that is for positive reasons and that things that are going to bring that vibe down are really against the implicit agreement that you have sitting at the table, which is to have fun playing a game.
Yeah.
I think it's strange, but sometimes people do lose sight of that when they're playing and they forget that this is a cooperative, fun, social thing. And that's the implicit agreement when everybody sits down. And so when you can be aware of it and acknowledge it, it kind of helps you stay on track with that, I think.
Yeah, the social contract kind of.
Yeah, exactly.
That's 100% what it is.
But this is Shepard Hart, so we call it the pact.
It has to sound more esoteric.
It's a bit of the Eldritch era. I mean, there was a couple of pieces of advice. I noted that page 180 attitudes, the attitudes of the referee... You know what? I didn't read what you... What do you call the... What's the Shadow Dark name for the cousin running the game?
I mean...
I thought it was just like a really nice way to bring all these attitudes, like the neutral arbiter, which is really, for me, at the core of what should be the OSR philosophy. And where I see a lot of people fall down, they bring a really adversarial mindset.
I'm just like, the description on the packaging and what I'm seeing, not the same thing, but I feel a lot more confident here that this is what I'll be getting.
Good, thank you.
I hope that's the case with, especially, I think especially in the OSR, there might be the misconception that the game master is out to get you more than in other editions of the game, and perhaps that's because characters are more fragile, and maybe there's this misconception that the game master... That's how people kind of take a pride of being a killer DM or something like that, don't they?
Right, right, there's...
some kind of misconception about that.
Which I find kind of weird because it's really easy to be a killer DM.
You have all the power. Yeah, it's Rock's fault. Come on, everybody knows that one. So yeah, it's strange that there's more nuance to really the best way for a character to die is when it's the player's fault. So that's what you're going for. And I think sometimes people miss that nuance.
Yeah. I mean, ultimately, poor life decisions. Right. It should be the leading call to death.
Or a heroic sacrifice, or, you know. That's right, exactly.
We all want a cool death moment.
So all this success came as a surprise, you know, the million-dollar Kickstarter for Enies. But what do you think that says? What is it about your game that you think has, like, caught people's imagination? And what's caused that success? What's drawing people in?
Yeah, I think at the end of the day, I made a game that I wanted to play, and I think that it was a very... Maybe just by fortune or by the read that I have on the community and the industry, it just lined up with what a lot of people wanted out of a sort of workhorse system that was...
that was an OSR game, because I think it filled a specific little niche that hadn't really been successfully filled yet about making an OSR game, but that's just so much more approachable than the OSR kind of has a reputation for. whether or not that's deserved. And so that, you know, that's, that's ultimately, I think I just kind of made the game that people in that moment wanted.
And yeah, that's maybe why it did well.
Amongst other things, people were mad at wizards. You made gold for XP work in a really clever way. It's like, I mean, it's going to be because it's me saying, oh, it's so clever. Okay, so the reason why I think it's clever is because normally for me, gold for XP, me, like, you know, in my simian game design would be like, ooh, gold for XP. XP equals gold pieces retrieved.
And it's like, yeah, sure, you can do that. That's how it's done before. They were like, no, no, why would you do that? Just like have them go out for a night in the town. They spend a whole pile of money and then roll advice, add a modifier from the absolute state of debauchery that they achieved. The more debauched, the better. The more it's me. And that's how you level up.
I'm like, bam, that is good stuff. I'm like, huh, this looks very stealable.
And this is why people hate it when adventurers come to town.
Exactly. Yes, yes, because it's like they have this enormous party. There's no hangover. They just leave stronger and more tiny.
They're just emboldened after that. Yeah. To do it again. I had to work that. It's too classic, like sort of sword and sorcery. Like every adventure story starts with the characters down on their luck after having spent their fortunes. And so that was a thing that I really wanted to emphasize because it's a good encouragement to go back out and adventure when you're poor.
Yeah. We're broke. Let's go in.
Exactly. We spent it all. We need more.
Well, yeah, I mean, who really wants to go crawling through caves and, you know, it's not a fun way to spend your time, is it?
I mean, a lot of people have that as a hobby. They go splunking and stuff. So, you know, some people would disagree with you. In Wales, right?
In Wales, we talked about this.
I am not one of those people. I mean, neither am I, if I'm honest.
I don't trust myself in there. Yep, I would fall down a crevasse and be like, that's it, you know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get eaten by a dinosaur or something.
Anything where you have to get through, oh, it's fine, just get your shoulder through and then the rest of you will fit. I'm like, no, thank you. I'm sort of really intrigued by maybe the future stuff because I've only just read the core book and I'm seeing little things. I love the reference, was it India Jones' The Disc of Destiny? The Kytherian Mechanism?
Oh, a little bit. It's, there's a lot of pulp movies and Indiana Jones stuff that works its way into my subconscious. So sometimes I don't know, but the, the Kytherian mechanism, there's a, there's a old mechanism they found.
Yeah. Yeah.
Which was like an old computer and old, you know, and so the, the first calculating device at that scale. So I, I thought that was so cool and I wanted to make reference to that too. So, yeah.
Oh yeah, that's like the... I was saying in the intro, because that's that mechanism. And there's stuff like the Panoply of Memlong, and we've got little personalities in there, like there's Ramlat, some sort of berserker type, and Krieg, the wizard and so forth. Is there... Basically what I want to know is, is there more fanfiction?
Yeah, yes. Oh, absolutely. It's funny because the book Shadow Dark is built on my game world, but I try to make the setting very implied so that it's loose for people to use however they want, really. You know, you could import it into other settings pretty easily, but it's all built up out of my own game world. So those are the deities from my home game and those are...
you know, some, some of a lot of the things referenced in there. So there are even some little jokes in there that are related to events that have happened in games that I've played in that I think are really only I know.
So I guess it's only funny to me, but like there's, there's a roll table in there that mentions this blue chicken, um, named Bimbles and that blue chicken has actually appeared in both games and supplements across a bunch of my other friends who were, who were, creators of their own games and systems.
So like Hank Renferno from Runehammer Games, he wrote the game Index Card RPG and Crown and Skull. Bimbles appears in his book and then Bimbles appears in another book that has nothing to do with either of our two games. So he's a common thread throughout the multiverse and people might find him where they don't expect him.
I wasn't able to read the whole thing word for word because there are a lot of random tables in there.
Yeah.
I don't even remember where I put Bimbo's, but he's in there. I do. That's why we have control find and PDFs. Yes.
one thing that jumped out to me was the magic system so I really like how you made magic scary and volatile and with cost in the world it feels like it's not just a oh I do this magic spell and it's done but it feels like oh it can go wrong even if you really know what you're doing which was really nice and
I'm not sure how so maybe you can maybe this was intentional and you can explain why I feel this way but when I was reading through I don't play a lot of magic users in things like 5e because I'm just like oh that feels like admin and work and I have to like do homework but this felt a lot more approachable and it felt a lot more accessible and like something I could try out so I don't know what your approach was with kind of almost trying to strip back magic or yeah.
Yeah. Well, I'm so glad to hear that. And I do think that there's some classic complexities in magic and D&D style magic, like spell slots and spells known and spells per day. And I understand why D&D as a brand has kept some of those things in throughout most editions, because it's a big touchstone of D&D. It's a big kind of classic element. But
I've always found spell slots and spells per day and spells known to be kind of a confusing thing. And so Shadow Dark just kind of pulled that all out and was like, you know these spells and you can cast them. And I think that that makes spell casting more approachable at the outset, just from that alone. So making the spells a little more simple too, just a little bit more.
I noticed that looking at the spells, you compare their equivalents.
from shadow dark to say well any sort of later version of dnd they are much more concise much much much more concise so i was i was going to ask about like your approach to that so when you look at a spell that um is traditionally sort of like a page and a half text and you've managed to distill it down into two short paragraphs how
How do you do that? I mean, for us, Kelty has managed to steal the three core books of D&D into one book of Shadow Dark and still have space for a whole system. I'm like, nice. Nice.
Thank you. Gosh, it's funny. It's kind of trusting that the game master is not a robot, but rather someone who's going to interpret the results of spells. So there is a little bit of interpretation needed in some of the spells based on the situation. And I think that's the way it was in the original versions too.
And so I wanted to bring that sentiment back where we're trusting the game master and the players to use a spell in a way that's going to make sense and that we're going to maybe... rule it somewhat differently depending on the situation.
Like if you're trying to cast Fireball into a Water Elemental, I think that it goes without saying that that Water Elemental is probably gonna have a little bit more ability to resist the spell. And so it's not all baked in. It's funny, my friend pointed this out to me, the Polymorph spell in Shadow Dark is one of the wordiest spells.
It still has fewer words in it than Burning Hands from fifth edition. So I was like, wow, that's pretty. It was just cutting out all the stuff that I felt was actually kind of obvious or would need to be interpreted in the moment. And hopefully that was successful. I guess we'll see.
Or not making things more complicated than they need to be at the table.
Right, right. You don't have to define every corner case in every spell. I think that. You're going to let the people playing and running the game use their knowledge of fantasy and real world to sort of make rulings as needed when needed. Yeah.
I think that also adds to the fact that maybe magic can be slightly unpredictable that way as well, depending on what the GM decides at the time.
Magic is very unpredictable. I'm sitting here. with my large tub of popcorn. Like, ah, yes, send me more. By the way, top marks from my personal thing for useful to the words ethereal bandersnatch and, of course, flubbed. Which is a word that doesn't get enough love. I'm like, oh, yes, you flubbed that spell. Marvelous, marvelous.
Thank you, ethereal bandersnatch.
I refer to the critical failures for spellcasting, and we got... Okay, mishaps by tier of spell, but mishaps by character tier, which I really love. That is amazing for me. Because if you're a first level spellcaster, you don't want to do a mishap and wipe out the entire party. You have something hilarious happen to you. And as you go up, more and more serious things go.
I'm like, oh, it's good, it's good. I particularly like the difference between wizards and priests, where wizards demand stuff to happen, and without hubris comes penalties. And priests, they supplicate for stuff, and when it goes wrong, they have to say sorry and do better. And I thought that was tremendously thematic and very magical.
Thank you. Yeah. Well, I have to give credit too to other games and other people who have sort of developed these concepts out throughout the last 20 years. Like Dungeon Crawl Classics has a really interesting and certainly more complex but comparable spellcasting system to Shadow Dark.
Yeah, I think some of their ideas were very pioneering and the design space grabbed onto those and took off with it and another 15 years have gone by of crunching these ideas around and discussing them. I think what I've written has been born out of that whole primordial soup of ideas that have come about in the last 15 years.
Absolutely. It's like one of the stages of design. You start off with something simple and crude and, you know, like, no offense to yourself, but that is sort of what it does. It's like there's lots of little bits and they sort of work and then
we move on to like sort of a complicated and sophisticated and you know stuff like a lot of modern games a lot of trad games do have a lot of complications a lot of sophistication and interesting things you can do and then the third iteration would be simple and sophisticated and for me for my personal aesthetic and
In the time I judge, I feel that this falls into that area because there's a lot of the trappings of an OSR game. Sorry, I'm telling you about your own game. I'm really sorry about that. You're telling the audience, the listeners about it. Yes. Oh, okay. But it's like,
You've got a lot of the trappings of the OSR, the aesthetics and the random tables, but the way it's all put together really uses very modern design principles to just make it all sing. Like I said, that's my impressions from having...
having read the pdf it took me a couple of hours to read the pdf and normally this is a labor like i i quite like those but making me read them it's not something that i generally do willingly it's something that i have to be super infused about i just started reading and i'm like oh yes no i understand this yes this all because i so i think if you have any familiarity with the fifth edition you could pick this book up and you'd be like oh
okay and like there's a couple of things like um the golfer xp failures critical phase for spell casting and probably the biggest criticism i would have is there's a real reliance on hard skills by hard skills and so you're not doing along there so that's something that you're aware of but uh for listeners at home i'll just run between hard skills and soft skills hard skills are player based as in you the player know these things and you can actually
do a good representation of them. Soft skills would be things your character knows and that you as a player would have no chance of doing. I feel that there is quite a reliance on hard skills which could maybe make this game not preferable. Would you agree that's fair?
That's very fair and true. I think that's an element that's sort of pulled from the OSR where it's like, well, player skill is really considered a large element in the gameplay. And I wanted to be true to that given that we're making an OSR-style game, but it can be difficult. Like, for example, people who don't feel comfortable role-playing like a...
charisma based situation where they're trying to persuade somebody to do something there are people who genuinely don't feel comfortable doing that and for them having like a charisma bonus or a charisma skill that they can roll on is great because then they can say my character is good at this I'm going to let my character handle it and in old school games and in Shadow Dark there's a little bit more like well what do you say to him you know and it's not right for everybody so that's a good thing to point it out yeah and
It doesn't lend itself well to having necessarily a very strong idea for storylines. If you've made a pageback story for your Shadow Dark character before you start playing, I suspect you may have missed the point of this game. Would that also be fair to say?
I'd say that's fair because a longer backstory for a character is probably not really going to come into play. Your backstory is what you do in your early levels if you survive them. And then you gain your character's backstory in those moments. Whereas in a more heroic style game, your character is a little bit more capable from the start. So you come in...
saying i know how to do these things this is my history these are the skills that i've already accumulated so it's a definite difference in approach there during the break we were um talking about the ennies because you've won four ennies for this game and you mentioned that you were there at the uh at the ceremony how was that winning four ennies i mean i assume you
It came as a bit of a surprise. How much of a surprise? Did you have a prepared speech, for example, or not?
I, you know, I hadn't officially prepared a speech, not because I didn't take it seriously, but because it was, again, a little bit of a superstition thing for me where I was like, well, if I prepare this whole big speech and then I don't win anything, I'll feel kind of silly.
And then, and I really genuinely, seeing what I was up against, I was like, oh, there's, you know, we'll be lucky if we win one, right? And so it's funny because I got to really say everything I wanted to say that I would have put into a speech before. sort of parsed out across a couple different times on stage, which was really special. So I did not expect to win four at all. Maybe just one.
And definitely not something like Best Rules, for example, where we were up against some incredibly big contenders. That was shocking and humbling. And I had a little bit of survivor's guilt where I was like, I'm sorry, Pathfinder. I'm sorry this happened. But it was very, very vindicating and humbling and exciting, too.
Yeah. I mean, how does it feel walking up the first time up on that stage to collect an Emmy?
I did not realize how many people were in the audience because I was sitting more towards the front. And I got there a little early. So, you know, I was facing forward and then I turned around to look out at the stage and I was like, there are people all the way to the back.
this is crazy so thank goodness I'm a dungeon master because I had to go into dungeon master mode and just be like I you know instead of totally blanking out and having nothing to say you know I think being a game master gives you the ability to speak through uncertainty so that's what I ended up doing and yeah it was not something I thought I would experience once let alone four times in one night yeah
Well, hopefully you'll experience it again because I'm sure you have things planned. Can you talk a bit about that at all? Oh, yeah. What's in the future?
Well, I'm writing more Shadow Dark stuff because now I get to. I get to make this my focus for my career. So I'm writing some, there's some zines for the game that I write called Curse Scroll zines and they're each.
Yeah, yeah. I was looking through one of them this morning. Yeah.
I love writing. I think they're my favorite thing to write because they're micro settings and I get to put all the really concrete world building into them that I left out of the core rules to make the core rules usable chameleon style across multiple universes. So I'm writing three more curse scrolls right now. And I think we're going to try to kickstart them in March.
So we're going to do some fancy fun stuff. And that's currently what I'm working on. It takes a little while to write each one. So, you know, deadlines. I'm going to make these deadlines.
Are we hoping for another million dollars? That's the question.
Oh, who knows? I think it's... Pressure, pressure. Right, the pressure. Because corals always do so well. And then supplements are sort of... I don't think they're expected to do that well, so if we did anywhere close to how the Shadow Dark main Kickstarter did, I would be floored. But I've been surprised a lot the last year, so you never know.
Yeah. When did you start working on the game? Because obviously the Kickstarter was last year, but presumably its genesis was prior to that. So how long has it been gestating?
Yeah, probably since maybe like 2018 is when I really started to think I wanted to write a system. I commissioned the first piece of art for the game in like 2018. Oh, okay. And it's actually the piece that's on the cover.
Oh.
It's like this beholder that's got all this dripping metal-looking feature.
That's the Ten-Eyed Oracle.
Right, the Ten-Eyed Oracle. Exactly. There's just the one in the game, so he's a unique character. I commissioned that piece of art and then stared at it for two years while the rest of the game was sort of formulating. And it's funny, it's almost like I feel like having that piece of art made me be like, I can't put this incredible piece of art to waste. I have to really take it seriously.
Yeah.
Because the artist Lucas Cort, he took it seriously. He did this incredible piece. And I was like, I have to write something that can rise to the occasion of this just stunning piece of art he did. So I started writing it in my mind then and then put it to paper starting in about 2019.
but for listeners who have not seen this it really is worth looking up it's uh it's definitely got a lot of similarities to this holder of which i'm not i'm not sure i don't know i'm sure i don't know what he's talking about but um it's like a Large floating ball.
But where I'd expect to see something like a bit more, I don't know, skin-like, it's got all these sort of weeping, gaping sores upon it, and all of the eye stalks are reaching out, and the central eye...
is sort of absent and appears to be have been maybe blinded or something and it's within this large stone arch and from its mouth it's like appears to be falling some sort of uh interior muck it's like if hr geiger says hey you know what let's have one of these beholder things yeah that's how i imagine it so yeah yeah
It's very not the sort of silly beholder that I think has become the... Well, not to say that they're silly, but the first beholder ever drawn was a floating ball with silly eyes coming out of it. Right, and we have to admit that they're kind of funny.
This was the more... This is not goofy.
Right, it's the Geiger beholder. And this is a weird thing about that piece of art. Lucas, he's a renowned death metal artist, which kind of explains his vibe. But if you squint, if you kind of blur your eyes a little bit, that central eye on the beholder is actually the Arcane Library's logo, which is an explanation, a hint in world at what that logo even means. So it's all very meta.
Nice, nice.
Yeah. Can we talk about the aesthetic just briefly? I mean, we need to wind up in a minute because it's nearly four o'clock. But the aesthetic you've got, I mean, I mentioned it earlier, the kind of quite a striking aesthetic, but you've gone with this sort of black and white, quite solid, bold aesthetic. Can you talk a bit about why you chose, you know, I mean, you could have gone like...
full-colour page spread art and all this sort of stuff. But you went for this very striking, bold aesthetic, which I think really, really works for the game. But can you talk a little bit about why you chose to make it look like that as opposed to what's more common these days?
To clarify for listeners, we're not talking more common. levels of aesthetic as in I can actually read and enjoy this like no offence to Morkborg but whilst I enjoy looking at the books I cannot actually read them I do like the look of Morkborg books they look great but I want to read them and this this has a like sort of that gothic Gothic characters for some of the typos, but not all of it.
It's a lovely mix.
Thank you.
You did the layout as well.
I did, I did, which is funny. It's actually pretty simple. The layout is pretty straightforward, and that was the big emphasis. I love Morkborg too, but I don't think that their design goal was for it to be easy to read. I think that would be fair to say, and mine was. I wanted to have a very stark and easy to read thing.
especially because when your eye is moving down a page, you need to catch information immediately. You get really one chance to catch what you're scanning for in the moment. And so I was trying to make that the emphasis while still being able to convey this black and white look, which is very old school. It's a nod to the artists that were the foundation of the game.
And I wanted to, even the paper choice. I did uncoated paper in the book because that was how the original D&D books were. And that's why you get cool marginalia from like nine-year-olds in the 70s writing their notes. And I wanted to make that possible. So a lot of the quality type decisions of the book were about evoking an old feeling book.
Yeah.
And the art as well. And then the writing and the text was all about being like, you have to be able to use this on the fly. That was the big emphasis.
Yeah. Yeah. And you definitely succeeded in that. Absolutely. Thank you.
It's been a real pleasure to meet you, Kelsey. As you may have been spot, I'm so sorry, actually.
It was lovely to meet you all, too. I'm so glad I got to come on this show and that you guys were willing to bring me on and suffer my shenanigans.
It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been a real, real pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, that's it for this week. Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us. Next week, we have Rich Leskufla coming on to talk about his new game, Fantasy Star. Looking forward to that. Yes. But until then, thank you so much, everyone. Goodbye and see you next week. Bye.
Bye. Bye.
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that's it I'm bored now you can go away shoo off you go goodbye get out of here if you wouldn't mind indulging me Kelsey I don't I don't mind the first is on page 256 we have a quote from the Tarrasque and I was wondering how exactly would you pronounce it
You know, that's just a good old bottom of the chest rah sound. That's how I roll. You can add some color to it, you know, depending on the volume. Amazing.
Amazing. Thank you so much.
It's a very insightful quote from the Tarrasque there. Very deep.
That was just the character wonderfully. But it probably means something in Tarrasque.
I would think so.
Yeah, it's probably the Tarrasque equivalent of Shakespeare.
Or at least an expression of emotion, yeah. Right, right. Yep.