Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
316 | Split the Hoard with Marc Kenobi | Revised PHB Released | Ravenloft Novel | ElfQuest RPG
Sun, 22 Sep 2024
This week, Morrus and Jessica are joined by Marc Kenobi to talk about EN Publishing’s new board game Split the Hoard. In the news, 2024 Players Handbook now available, ElfQuest RPG returns, new Ravenloft novel in 2025, and more! -------------------- Marc Kenobi Split the Hoard Kickstarter Pre-Launch Page https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/enworld/split-the-hoard Split the Hoard on Tabletopia https://tabletopia.com/games/split-the-hoard -------------------- News [5:26] Ravenloft novel coming in 2025 https://www.enworld.org/threads/ravenloft-novel-coming-in-2025.706717/ [8:19] 2024 Player’s Handbook now available for sale https://www.enworld.org/threads/dungeons-dragons-2024-players-handbook-officially-on-sale-today.706756/ [11:22] ElfQuest TTRPG returns for new printing https://www.enworld.org/threads/elfquest-ttrpg-returns-for-new-printing.706740/ [14:33] Daggerheart to release Spring 2025, pre-orders available now https://www.enworld.org/threads/daggerheart-to-release-spring-2025-pre-orders-available-now.706754/ [18:11] Kobold Press State of Play issues “No AI Pledge” https://www.enworld.org/threads/kobold-press-state-of-play-issues-%E2%80%9Cno-ai-pledge%E2%80%9D.706786/ [20:42] More details about Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand video game released https://www.enworld.org/threads/more-details-about-pathfinder-the-dragons-demand-video-game-revealed.706725/ [22:47] Storypath Ultra Core Manual on Backerkit https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/onyx-path/storypath-ultra-rules-manual [24:02] Faster Purple Worm! Everybody Dies Vol 1 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beadleandgrimms/faster-purple-worm-everybody-dies-vol-1 [25:10] Monstrous Menagerie II: Hordes & Heroes coming soon https://www.enworld.org/threads/monstrous-menagerie-ii-hordes-heroes-coming-soon.706768/ [33:18] Main Topic: Split the Hoard and Designing a Board Game -------------------- 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 Dave Chapman, writer for The Awfully Cheerful Engine and for Doctor Who, and you're listening to Morris' unofficial tabletop RPG talk.
This week, Morse and Jessica are joined by Mark Kenobi to talk about Ian Publishing's new board game, Split the Horde. In the news, the 2024 Player's Handbook is now available for purchase, the ElfQuest RPG is returning, a new Ravenloft novel is coming in 2025, and more! This week on Morse's Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk!
and cheese.
All the Tabletop are outplaying us We aim to amuse and we aim to enthuse And Morris is unofficial Tabletop RPG
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to Morris's unofficial tabletop RPG talk.
I am Russ aka Morris or Morris aka Russ and with me this week is... It's me, Jessica from EN Publishing and later in the second half of this podcast we have a special guest with us as well. We will have Mark Kenobi, the designer of Split the Horde, our board game that we're launching next week on Kickstarter, which I'm very excited about, our first ever board game.
He's also a tabletop RPG writer and designer, so we'll be talking about differences in designing for tabletop, whether it's board games or tabletop RPGs.
Yeah, a nice little conversation about the differences between board games and RPGs.
Because there are differences and similarities.
Apparently so.
Apparently so. As we'll discuss later, won't we? Yes, as we'll discuss later. But first, what's happened this week, Russ?
Well, should I tell you what happened this week, Jess?
Yes, what happened?
Well, you already know what happened this week, but I'm going to tell the listeners what happened this week.
Okay.
So I was sitting happily in my house, as one does, and the delivery driver from our local supermarket turns up in his lorry, reverses into our drive, keeps reversing, keeps reversing, keeps reversing, and reverses into the front of the house.
Right. And so did you not specify on your delivery where you wanted the groceries delivered? No.
I did not go out of my way to specify, please do not drive into our house.
Well, I think you have to admit some fault there then, Ross.
I am not admitting liability. As the Tesco driver told me, he was very apologetic because he'd knocked out one of the pillars at the front of the house and the balcony, one of the supporting pillars of the balcony. And we were like, that doesn't look safe. And he went back to his lorry and he phoned it into Tesco to tell them what had happened.
And he came back and said, well, Tesco have told me not to admit liability.
Should you be saying this on the podcast just in case it becomes a thing?
I'm sure it's fine.
Okay.
All right, that's fine.
It's factual. But he did. He did. He admitted liability because he said he wanted to be honest. And so after a few phone calls to Tesco this week, they are coming out, sending some builders out to fix it. I'm glad to say because I was worried about that. But they were perfectly good about it and they're coming out to fix it.
So hopefully sometime in the next week or so, we will have our pillow back, I guess.
Cool. And that's like a structural piece of the house.
It's not a decorative pillar. Yes, it's a weight-loading, load-bearing, that's the word. Load-bearing.
Excellent. It's right in front of your office, isn't it, where you're sitting right now?
It's the one in front of the front door.
Oh, okay.
Well, not in front of the front door, next to the front door. So to the left of the office.
So the building won't fall on you right now when we're recording? No. Well, I hope not. Okay, cool. Well, if the podcast suddenly comes to an end with a big crash and a bang, you'll know what's happened.
Yes, you'll know that's happened.
Anyway, but that is exciting news. Well, my week has been not as eventful, luckily. I'm doing a lot of stuff to get the Kickstarter page and the videos finished for Split the Horde because it's our first board game we've done. So I feel a little bit, I mean, there's always nervous, excited energy before you launch a crowdfunding campaign.
But because this is our first board game, I've got that a little bit more because I'm like, it feels a bit different. But it's been also quite fun because we sent out some press preview copies. to different media people and content creators of all sorts of different sizes. We didn't specify you have to be really big or anything.
We just picked a range of different people that we thought were interesting. And I've had some of the videos in this week to have a look at. And it's really cool to see people playing the game and showcasing it and talking about it. So that's really exciting. And I'm going to put a lot of them on the Kickstarter page so it's easy for people to see.
Exciting, exciting, exciting.
Yeah, it's real. It exists. People in the world are playing it. And yeah. Anyway.
Anyway, shall we do some news?
What's been happening wider in the news of tabletop RPG, beyond our little part of the world.
Well, there's a new Ravenloft novel coming next year.
Oh, yes.
Which is interesting.
I have not read the Ravenloft novel, so I'm a little bit in the dark.
Well, I have to admit, I've read very few Ravenloft novels. I mean, there haven't been, like, the 80s? Or maybe there have, and I just don't know about them. But I remember reading them a really, really long time ago. Or the 90s. Maybe the 90s, that would have been. I don't know. Yeah, it'd have to be the 90s. I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah, so obviously the Ravenloft campaign is hitting. We all know what that is. It's the sort of gothic horror, Strahd von Zarevich, zombies, all that sort of stuff, vampires, that sort of stuff.
Spooky.
But there's going to be a new Ravenloft book from Penguin Random House.
Should have been a random penguin.
They're all disappointed about that, I know, I know.
But anyway, that's fine. They made their choice. I'm sure they have their reasons.
There's no author named in the listing, at least yet, but it does say that it's going to feature Count Strahd, which I suppose is the main Ravenloft character. Is he the author?
Yeah, that's what I was saying. Is this the big teaser?
Is this like some kind of weird fourth wall meta thing where the actual... That's what I'm asking. ...fiction character of Count Strahd is the author of the Penguin Random House book about him? I don't know.
That's what I'm asking. Okay, well, we'll find out.
I don't know. Yeah, we'll find out in April 2025. It's going to be...
I was wondering if it would be out for Halloween next month or something, but April 2025, we've got to wait for that.
It doesn't say much. Basically, this is the entire description. It's almost nothing. A group of adventurers must fight their way through a dark and twisted realm known as the Domains of Dread, where powerful dark lords rule over worlds filled with supernatural horrors. That's it.
So it could be Ravenloft, could be your local grocery store.
Could be.
Yeah, could be.
Could be.
Could be many places.
Yeah, my local grocery store is full of supernatural horrors.
Depends what time you go, because I don't know if you've been to a 24-hour supermarket and gone at like 2 in the morning. I have not. It feels... A bit esoteric, but yeah. All right, cool. Well, that's coming out in April, so if you're a fan of that setting, I guess that's good. Could be some nice inspiration for your RPG campaigns, I guess, if you like that setting.
Of course, there's loads of adventures in that setting already, so you're not starved for material.
Yeah, and you can dig out the 80s and or 90s and or whenever it was novels as well. There was two where Lord Soth went from Dragonlance to Ravenloft. which I believe Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman, the Dragonlance authors, say do not consider canon.
Okay, so in the books.
They say it didn't happen. Officially it did happen because it was in the official books, but apparently they don't consider it so.
Not in their narrative. Okay, fair enough. You know what is a correct narrative, though?
Go on.
It's not a very good set point. I'm just going to scrap that and just go. So another big bit of news this week for a lot of people is that the Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Players Handbook is officially on sale to the great unwashed public.
Yes.
So the likes of you and me could purchase the book. But yeah.
How many have you purchased so far?
Zero.
Only zero?
Only zero. Oh. Yeah, I'm not planning on picking up a copy, to be honest, because I have the 2014 Player's Handbook that was gifted to me once that I have. And as I've mentioned before, as a point, I haven't actually purchased any D&D items ever. And I kind of want to keep that up now because it's a thing.
It's now become a point of principle.
Yeah, and to be honest, when I'm running that style of fantasy adventure, I'm playing Level Up Advanced Edition. How many have you bought?
A number between zero and 700 inclusive. Is it one? It is not one.
Is it zero?
good so you can have strong opinions on that i mean i've read through the materials that we had available online i have got a dnd beyond account not paid for one because i'm on the waiting list to beta test their new virtual tabletop platform project sigil or sigily or yeah sigily sigily like sounds like wiggly but anyway uh so i'm on the wait list for that so i can access and have a look at the rules and we've discussed them quite a bit on here
And I do have a group that we're playing using the D&D rule set that we play. I don't think we've got plans to change it to 2024.
rules because we've got our characters we're quite happy with how it all works we've got all the books and a lot of the adventure yeah the adventures quite a few people will be like we're going to wait till our next campaign before we switch sort of thing because yeah it does mean completely retooling the characters yeah exactly so i think we're just keeping this and also in honesty it's that campaign is we're playing dnd fifth edition 2014 characters
But the GM is using the Monstrous Menagerie from a level up A5E for most of the monsters. And the Adventure is actually from 3.5. So... But that's the thing.
There's a whole mix mash of various things.
But that's the thing with D&D. You can absolutely just cobble together the bits you like. And because the core mechanic, Royalty 20, add your modifiers, you know, it's kind of there. You can do whatever.
Basically.
But I know a lot of people are very excited to get their paws on the new copy of the book. So... Yeah.
yeah you can grab it anywhere now amazon your local game store random place anywhere you want you can why not anywhere you won't you probably can't get it from your local grocery store well you might be able to i don't know who knows probably probably in like the us probably it's available in lots of i think it's available in barnes and noble yeah so uh it'll probably be available over here in waterstones they do have a bit of a game section now
Probably. Probably.
But anyway, do you want to talk about a tabletop RPG that is not Dungeons & Dragons?
Go on then. How about Elfquest? That's not Dungeons & Dragons.
It is not. That fits the brief. Please carry on. Tell me about Elfquest.
1984.
Elfquest originally came out and it was a sort of RPG of a comic.
Okay, yep.
So there is a new edition from Chaosium, which is coming to Kickstarter in October 24. That's the next month. That is next month, yeah, yeah. Very, very soon. And this is like a classic reissue, so it's not a new edition. So it's going to be the game in its original boxed edition, boxed set.
Okay, yeah.
But with some added later supplements chucked in.
Okay, okay.
Yeah, so it's not a new edition. It's a reprint from 1984, but with extra stuff, basically.
Nice.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know what else to say about it, really.
Have you played it?
I have not played it, no. I've never seen the game in my life or read the comics, so I don't know enough about it.
I was about to say I haven't heard about it, but I like the art. There's an artwork they've got. You can see the link on EMworld. But it looks very 80s, and I assume they're keeping that, which is really nice because it does feel like a... It's a reprint of a nostalgia product, isn't it, really? Yeah, basically.
So it's one of those, if you're like, oh, I used to play that in the 80s, and I really loved it. You can just get it again now if you... Because, yeah.
I think that's really cool. Especially that you play an elf. I know that much.
I had my suspicions.
Yeah. I think you can play other species as well, but it's kind of about a bunch of elves, and they live on this planet, Earth-like planet, with two moons, and there's comics about them, and... That's pretty much all I know, I'm afraid. That's the extent of my knowledge.
I mean, I think this is going to be a real nostalgia purchase because obviously I think RPGs have come on, changed and grown quite a bit in mechanics and things like that over the last 40 years. So it might be one of those things that if you pick it up new, you might be like, I'm not sure if this stands up, but or maybe it will.
I don't know because I've not played the system because I always feel like HeroQuest like that for me. Like I love playing the HeroQuest board game because it's so nostalgic for me. but I had a friend play it with me once that didn't have that nostalgia, and they're like, this isn't that great. And I was like, and they talked about why, and I was like, I see what you mean.
I think for me it's just got that huge nostalgia factor. And I imagine Elfquest might be like that for people.
Yeah. I think it's a bit sci-fi. They fly around in these, it says here, egg-shaped spaceships, and they've got psychic powers and stuff.
That feels just very 80s though, doesn't it? That feels like metal punk.
Yeah.
So it's not Star Trek because you're being elves and stuff.
You're being elves and stuff.
I think it looks very cool. It looks very 80s, looks very nostalgic. I think if you played that, it's definitely one to get. And even have just as a collector's thing. I think it would be nice. Yeah, why not? Anyway, that looks cool. I like that.
Yeah, yeah. All right, what have you got? What have you got? What news have you got?
Well, dagger heart.
Dagger heart. So, we have this... Is that, right, a heart that's a dagger? Is it a dagger heart? Or is it, like, a dagger intended for a heart?
Well, Russ, you'll be able to find out in spring 2025 when it is released. So pre-orders are now available, so you can pre-order the book, but spring 2025 is when they're going to be out and available. And Daggerheart, and people listening are probably going to be aware, but just in case, so it is Darrington Press, which is the publishing arm of Critical Role.
Yeah.
So they have made their own tabletop RPG. And we've heard about this and this and this. So they've already had Candela Obscura, which is like so different. And a lot of people really love it. I've played it. I really like the system. Some of my friends are running campaigns of it now because they're really enjoying it. And Daggerheart was meant to be more crunchy rule set.
And a lot of people had the expectation that it would be...
a replacement for dnd uh it'd be like their their take on dnd but it's not that it's very much its own system it's got a 2d12 system and i've heard a lot of mixed views about it online so some people are really liking it and other people are saying oh it's just like this rpg but not good blah blah blah so there's a lot of information and opinions flowing around out there but i've not played a game yet so i'm holding off till i've played a game
yeah yeah i'm intrigued about the system like there's two t12s and one's a hope die and one's a fear die so i'm intrigued you know i mean i suppose i could just go and look at the uh play test versions i'd know exactly how it works but i'll wait for it to come out i think yeah and of course there are actual plays available because uh critical role of course are doing campaigns yeah with dagger heart so so you can yeah they'll have the information out there about it
You get this 300-page book, but you also get a box of 279 cards as well.
So it's got your ancestry cards, which they're calling ancestry instead of race, and they've got community cards. So that's the culture you come from. So if you like an A5E, how you have your ancestry and your culture separate things, that's very much like that. You also have your classes, subclasses.
and classes have two different domains so i think that's why they're going for the card so you can kind of piece it together and you know like a jigsaw puzzle to make your character thing yeah yeah yeah it looks interesting i'm interested in the system i'm definitely going to play it and check it out but yeah because i really i really liked candle obscure and i know this is completely different um it's a different game but yeah i enjoyed the the care and the design that went into that game so i imagine the same sort of care care and attention has gone into this as well
I know they've been lots of playtesting and they've been listening to feedback because there's been lots of changes.
Yeah, yeah. So what is it? There's two editions. You've got the standard edition, which is the rulebook and the card set. And the limited edition. And then there's a limited edition, which has a GM screen, dice and tokens as well.
I imagine it's a prettier cover as well. A different cover, yeah. But there's quite a big difference because the Corsair is just under $60 and the Deluxe is $150. Yeah.
That's a commitment to luxury. Pre-order it now. You can pre-order it. No Kickstarter for this one. No Kickstarter. You can pre-order it now.
No. There you go. Yeah. And that's all the news I have on that, really.
Yeah. Well, spring 2025, there'll be a big old splash of news about it then, I guess.
Yes, absolutely. Well, I was kindly sent a press copy of Candela Obscura, so maybe I'll get a copy of that. I don't know. I won't see. Anyway. Hmm. Some other news that is not D&D. Go on. Kobold Press. So Kobold Press.
That's not news. That's not news.
Well, all right, I've said it now, so I'm just not saying anything. Well, it's not really huge news, but Kobold Press, so people will be familiar then, they used to make a whole load of 5e stuff. They did Project Backflag in 2025, which is the Tales of the Valiant RPG, which is their take on Dungeons & Dragons 5e ruleset. So I think this is in reaction to last week there was news about...
Chris Cox and AI.
Chris Cox and his quote about AI with D&D. So Kimball Press have reiterated their statement that they have a pledge to not use AI.
They opportunistically re-announced the thing that everybody announced a year ago.
Yes. I think they just wanted to stress it because I think with that statement... I think they thought, oh, everyone's talking about this right now.
It would be a great opportunity. Yeah.
Well, why not? But anyway, they pretty much just said we're not using AI. So it's the same thing. We don't use generative AI art. We don't use AI to generate text for game design. We don't believe... A nice thing they said, which I do agree with, is we don't believe that AI is a magical pixie dust that makes your tabletop games better.
we should be skeptical skeptical even sorry about ai snake oil it's not useless but it's also not miraculous and in some places it doesn't belong and i i feel very much that way about it i'm sure it's a tool there are places where it can be good and it can be used and it can be a good thing and there are places where we don't have the legislation and it's not you know good thing and that's and that's what they feel but the full statement is on the website if you want to have a look and it's it's like you say the same as last year
I think they're just reiterating it in light of other leaders in the industry saying the opposite. Would you like to reiterate Ian's publishing statement on AI as well?
It's the same. It's like the same as everyone's.
Yeah.
We made it a year ago as well. It's like, yes, we're all saying it. We're all saying we're not using AI for art. We're not using AI for text. We want artists. We want humans to make our things. We want artists to be paid for their work. We're all saying it.
Well, hashtag not everyone.
Well, yeah.
Anyway, sorry that I count as news. What news do you have for me that counts as news then? Sorry. I try and bring news to the show and it doesn't count, Jess.
I'm like, well. I'm sorry.
Okay. Thank you for your apology.
There's some more news about that Pathfinder video game.
Oh, I haven't heard about this. Please tell me, actually. I'm interested in that.
Sure. It is based on a classic Pathfinder adventure. It's the one with the 3D miniatures and animated effects. The one that looks a lot like Project Sigily.
Yes, Sigily.
Sigily. It adapts a classic Pathfinder adventure called The Dragon's Demand, but updates it to Pathfinder 2E.
Yeah, did we talk about this last week a bit?
Oh, we mentioned it, yeah. Okay, so you have more. Just a little bit more information, yeah. So you will control a party of four characters and three companion characters, which you can choose from about a dozen different companion characters. You can potentially romance your companion characters, because that's a big thing these days.
And there's a list of the classes that you can build your characters from and the ancestries, which are basically kind of the standard Pathfinder 2e ones. But yeah, that's... It's really interesting that it's like a halfway point between Baldur's Gate and a virtual tabletop. It's kind of like halfway. It sits between those two things. So it's a video game that looks like a virtual tabletop.
I'm interested in playing it. I'm going to give it a play.
Yeah, I'm interested too. Yeah, I'm interested.
I'm interested in that. I'll give it a play. Yeah, I don't really have much more news about that. The only thing about Baldur's Gate is they did the big Patch 7 update, which we previously talked about. But unfortunately, it wasn't available on Mac. So my livestream I do every Wednesday of Baldur's Gate 3, in the group of four women that play, some of us use Mac.
And so we weren't able to play this week. Which was very sad. And we're going to have to wait until an unknown date in October. So in the meantime, we're just playing other games in between. It's a shame that they don't do the patch updates all together because it means you don't have the cross compatibility like you normally do. Yeah, that's not bad. It is.
And I get it, you do need to do different testing, but I don't see why they just didn't wait to release it on PC.
Yeah, delay the other one then.
Yeah, because then you could do more testing. But anyway, that's a good point. Do you want some other news...
There cannot possibly be more news. I have some.
It's impossible. So Onyx Path Publishing. Have you edited the Story Path Ultra?
i don't know the ultra version of it specifically but i know well it's coming to have a system it's crowdfunding on backer kit so story path ultra is you know it's refined clarified points and it's like a new kind of edition version of it um so it's a d10 dice pool same you roll against target number and compare the difficulty so same sort of thing but this has been used in a few different rpg systems i've seen the
in the background of that's powered it and this is just the core manual so no settings so this is just like a toolkit rpg um so i'm interested in getting this actually because i do like just a toolkit like it's something like what's all disney or something like that something that lets you just run your own system and setting and things and i do like a dice ball system so well yeah you say you've got six days left about the right one
Yeah, it's ending in six days. But yeah, Storypath Ultra, I thought that looked very cool and crowdfunding. So I'm just going to check my little bank account and my budget and check I haven't already spent it on stuff because I've had a few Kickstarter funds go out in the last few weeks.
Yeah, I've got a Kickstarter. Faster Purple Worm Everybody Dies Volume 1.
that fast purple one kill kill is that dnd tv show for that streaming platform they were doing comedy show yeah yes which i couldn't find anywhere in the uk so i guess it's just no i still haven't found any way to access it yeah i don't know i think maybe it's just not available in our region so it's not for us yeah well the basic concept of the uh show i believe is that it always ends in a tpk each episode i think
Not that I've seen it, but you always end in a TPK. And in this adventure, you choose a short adventure and the players can just be really reckless because they are going to die. It's going to be a TPK. I think it's a concept. So you just recklessly do all these insane things.
Cool.
As I understand it. Yeah.
And so that's just the adventures using D&D that you can run. Yeah, yeah.
And that's over on Kickstarter right now with five days to go on that one.
Okay, so that's very short. Yeah.
And that's done very well. That's done about $150,000-ish. Nice.
Nice. Speaking of other announcements, we made an announcement this week. So after Split the Horde, yeah. Monstrous Marjorie 2. Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
We did.
So, well, it's not that new an announcement. So Monstrous Menagerie 2 is going to be coming out after we've finished crowding, finally split the hordes. That'll be sort of November time it will launch. And yeah, a lot of people wait for it. The pre-launch page is up so you can click on Kickstarter to be notified when it launches.
Yes.
All the stuff.
All the stuff that it does.
Yeah. So... You can go and look at that. I mean, it is awesome. So, should we just quickly go through the stuff?
Yeah. Tell me the stuff.
All right. So, stuff number one.
What's new?
Stuff number one. So, think Monstrous Menagerie, if you're familiar with that. It's everything you loved about that, plus this new stuff.
Mm-hmm.
So we've got 300 more monsters.
Django.
These include the Whisper Snake, the Deathless Legionnaire, Death Spiders, Prismatic Oozes, Advocate Devils, and about 295 more. We've got a new monster type, which is called the Horde Monster.
This looks cool.
So, in Monsters from Legendary 1, we had elite monsters, which is designed to basically be a solo encounter. Like, it can challenge an entire party. So, you have elite versions of monsters in Monsters from Legendary 1. We have squads in Monsters from Legendary 1, which is sort of like a swarm of beetles or something. Yeah. A small thing.
But the horde monster is basically designed so that you can have loads and loads and loads of them, and the heroes can...
you know massively outnumbering the adventurers and the heroes can just cleave through them yes but they still present a challenge I really like this because this makes it feel like that epic moment it's like in this is like Helm's Deep in Lord of the Rings where there's just like so many yeah
Yeah, it's when the evil necromancer summons like a hundred zombies and then you have to fight through them to get to the necromancer and stuff. That sort of thing. So we've got those.
Speaking about the necromancer.
Speaking about the necromancer.
Heroic monsters.
Oh, yeah.
I thought that was that was cool with that but yeah so that's for the rules for I haven't read these in full detail yet because I've got the manuscript but it's reoccurring villains so you can kind of level up and improve their capability so if you want to have
yeah and companions yeah I know but I was thinking about the monsters because I was thinking if you have a villain that comes in early on and kind of slinks off the party can level up and it levels up with the party and so I thought that was just very cool for storytelling so I really liked that
Yeah, basically monsters that gain levels.
Yes.
Which is kind of cool. Yeah. Well, the fun thing about that is we're starting that in Monstrous Menagerie 2.
Mm-hmm.
But next year, we're going to be bringing out a massive book on basically companions and pets. Yes. Which will leverage those rules. More. That's going to be fun.
Yes, absolutely.
Yeah. So it's also got tons of high-tier monsters.
Mm-hmm.
A higher proportion of high tier monsters than the previous book, including a lot of unique elite villains. Yeah. Named villains, like including archdevils and lich lords and dragon kings and gods and, you know, things like that.
We have got a load of great worms because not every type of monster, every type of dragon in Monstrous Mystery 1 got a great worm because of space issues, because we had like 600 or monsters in there already. Yeah. So we now have Earth, River, Shadow, Amethyst, Emerald, Sapphire, Brass, Bronze, Copper and Silver Great Worms to fill out that list. Oh my. Oh my, oh my, oh my.
And three new dragon types we've got. We have got Purple Dragons, also called Storm Dragons.
Mm-hmm.
We have got fey dragons.
I love the artwork on some of these because there's the wings. There's one with wings and it's got like insect type wings and looks very cool.
Yeah, and they're very sort of petulant and unpredictable and these illusions and traps and stuff.
Mm-hmm. Trixie.
And then we've got spirit dragons, which are kind of bound to holy places and given shape by the belief of those around them, which is kind of cool also.
Also, the Kalkoi have appeared back, which is one of my favourite monsters. You have the Apex Kalkoi. Yep. I just hate... I hate wasps. So... Yeah.
This... They speak so highly of you.
They don't.
They do. They have a club. Yeah. They have the We Love Jess Club. And they listen... And they meet every month.
And listen to the podcast.
And they listen to the podcast. And they all talk about how much they like you. And they are going to be so upset now.
Anyway... I think that might be a false rumour that you just made there, Russ.
Oh, that's a good little segue, isn't it? Thanks. Wow. Wow. I like that one. Yeah, so in Monstrous Monotory 1, we had legends and lore for each monster so that you can make checks to find out what your characters know about a monster. Now we have added false rumours. So if you make a really bad roll, there's misinformation on those tables.
so you can get incorrect information depending on what that information is that could really mess you up i think if you yeah that's really nice for role play i like that i've done that a few times like just like kind of made it up when people have done a bad role so it's nice to kind of have that there just yeah as a resource that's really nice i really enjoy that i think in that sort of you could have to you have to switch to the gm making the roles there in that case though
Because if the player makes a roll and they roll a two, and then you give them some information, they're going to know that that's false information.
Yeah, the player will know, but the character won't. You just have to trust the player to play their character and not metagame that information.
I suppose so, yeah.
I mean, you can't stop them doing that, but I would... Whenever I've done that in my campaigns, I've kind of done that without using the book, just like made something up. The players usually lean into that because that's more fun. If the character's like, no, they're definitely allergic to garlic, we should all wear garlic.
And they go into this battle wearing all these garlic things and chucking that at it and it does nothing. That's funny. It's fun. Let's do that. Why would you not want to have fun?
If you're playing... I don't, I don't, I never want to have fun. I hate fun.
That's why I don't invite you to my tables. It's all vibes and fun here. But anyway, so yeah, so that's The Monster Sanctuary 2. I'm really excited for it. I think it's a really good book. It's obviously, it's got 301 monsters, but I really like all the new mechanics and things it's bringing in. So it is...
it's not just more of the monstrous menagerie it's bringing you you know mechanics and details in to to kind of make it more interesting so yeah and of course it's got all the stuff that the previous one had as well it's got the origins of the law and the sample encounters and treasure and the monster signs and the monster behavior and the sample names and all that stuff all that's in there as well for each monster yeah so it's gonna be awesome anyway so yeah i'm a big fan of this
Anyway, I think that is most of the news I have for this week.
I think that is all the news. I think all we have left to do is to let Mark in because he's there knocking at the door and he's been knocking at the door for the last half an hour and I'll be going, no, no, no, Mark, go away. You can't come in yet. But now he can come in and talk about... Split the board.
Malick 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 morris. There Stop staring at me like that now. The things I do. All right. All right. Don't forget. Patreon.com slash Morris. Can I go now?
so we have a special guest joining us this week some of you may already know him because mark has worked with us in various capacities over the years um so our guest is mark kenobi mark tell us well don't tell us tell the listeners because we know um what what well you know what what capacities you know what what have you worked with us over the years on
So since, well, I've worked with Jess since Coffee and Dice Times. Yeah. We closed down that.
Which is a board game cafe.
Yep. Absolutely loved that. It was a great experience. Good fun. Closed that down in 2019. And then I started writing for EN Publishing at that point on EN Cider. You guys were kind enough to let me try out my freelancing wings. And yeah, I've been writing for EN Cider pretty much since. There seems to be something for me most months.
Mike seems to have an enjoyment of what I write and, you know, really like seeing that come up on the Insider and people saying how much they like those articles. And then when the Gatepass Gazette started, I also started writing for that. Obviously split the horde. I also did like a year with you guys as admin support.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
And I'm in next month's, or whenever it's coming out, end of the year, Monstrous Menagerie. I've got a few monsters I wrote up in there.
There's one called the Mark Kenobi.
Yeah, there's one called... No, there's really not. There's really not.
Well, we couldn't have that because of licensing issues with Disney, so that's the only reason we had to exclude that.
We had to cut that monster, unfortunately. But anyway, that's not why you're here. You're here because you are a board game designer also.
Yes.
And your first game to be published, somehow we ended up being the people publishing it. Who'd have expected something like that to happen? But tell us...
What Split the Horde is? So it's a really nice card game. It's designed to play in about 20 minutes. You take on the role of adventurers who've just finished killing the ancient dragon. So all of that hard work's out of the way. All you've got to do now is chop up the treasure, which is always more difficult than it seems like it should be.
From my experience as a GM, there's always a lot of discussion about who should get what and why.
And there's always that one player that you suddenly realise has five times more treasure accumulated over the years than everybody else. Yep.
Always the rogue.
No one ever noticed that that one player was just taking a little bit more each time until you add it up. Just a little extra.
Yeah. But yeah, I've seen that scenario play out so many times in games that I've run, and it's just felt like a really fun concept for a game. So... Yeah, I mean, when I heard about the pitch requests, I got some really clear guidance from you guys about what you were looking for. So I was able to shape the game I was working on to that. And it all just lined up really, really nicely.
The game sees you bringing... It's kind of funny because in the game, the treasure kind of gets meaningless sometimes. Like the actual gold, how much money you're getting is kind of just swept away, which again is very realistic from an RPG point of view, from my experience. Nobody's really interested in, it's like, well, how much can we carry?
Like that's the only thing that gold is really concerned about and everything else is about what other shiny items we're going to get. So the game kind of reflects that in that every card is a coin until it's not. And then it's something interesting. So during the game, you grab three treasures off the top of the pile.
You decide how much somebody should have to give you if they want to take that treasure. Everyone then gets a chance to buy one treasure from everybody else. And then you get to keep whatever's left. And that pretty much is the game. I was doing this the other day. I was trying to get my one sentence or two sentences for explaining how the game plays. And that is... pretty much here.
At the end, you're going to check if you hit the objectives.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. My version of that is you each basically take things from the treasure pile and then take turns to negotiate or bluff or whatever with the other players. And then at the end, you know, you see what treasure you've got, what you managed to acquire, what treasure you managed to sort of like negotiate to get off the other players. And you basically score victory points, points.
Yeah. And see who's won, who's the best treasure grabber.
If people listening are interested, it is available on Tabletopia online for you to play. So then the rule book's all there. So if you want to play it for yourself, it's free to play on there. So you can check it out there. And of course, the Kickstarter is launching on Tuesday. So if you want to get an actual pretty physical copy of it or a print-to-play version, you can get that as well.
Because I always find Tabletopia is really great, but it always feels a bit more fiddly than playing in real life. Maybe it's just I'm not very good at using tabletop simulator type things. But anyway, but that's just me. Yeah, but I wanted, well, I suggested Mark to come on today because I found, because I'm not a board game designer or a tabletop RPG designer, writer either.
So I was wondering, because you both of you are doing both those things. I was wondering what the differences are, what the similarities are, what sort of cross learnings you take on that. So I was hoping we could kind of discuss that today. So I guess, I guess, so I was going to interview both of you, actually, if that's okay. Okay.
why not jess why not so i guess the first thing i'd say is like so when you're approaching tabletop rpg design what are the big kind of considerations and things or how do you start that process like and russ i don't know what what do you do for that i don't know you don't know it just happens
um my process has always been to start with a blank page start typing something will come out and then just go from there and i doubt very much that that's the same as everybody else's process i think everybody has their own processes that's mine it's very much a sort of like just start doing something see what comes out and then and then go and then go from there
I don't, you know, like, I don't kind of like start with an oval structure and fill it, you know, the skeleton or anything like that. That's not, that's definitely not my way of doing it. It's like start at the beginning and start moving forward. So I think that may, it's probably not the best way to do it, to be honest. But that's not what I asked.
I didn't say what's the best way to design a tabletop RPG. I asked what you do.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, Mark, same question over to you then, I guess.
So if I'm doing something for publication, so when I run games, well, in both cases, I'm really story-led. So I start with a germ of an idea of a thing. So it could be, oh, what if you made chimeras but with other animals? And that might be my starting point. And then I try and build that into a narrative. What a narrative. Who's doing this? Why are they doing this? What's got loose?
That kind of question. And then that starts to lead me into sort of where these creatures are in a story. And that tends to be, I tend to be narrative driven. When I'm doing that at home, it's a lot, you know, for a home game or for a game that I'm in the midst of running, that's all very seat of my pants, kind of coming up with the story in the moment, reacting to the players.
When I'm doing it for something for publication, I'm trying to make sure I cover all the bases. And when I get into really rulesy stuff, it's because... I feel like there's a gap in the rules for a specific thing. So on a couple of occasions, I've written rules for locks because the lock picking skill is there's a lock, you roll the DC, you win, or you don't.
And that feels, you know, if you actually want to play a group of rogues or get into that kind of roguey lifestyle in the RPG, that feels a little light. And there's nothing wrong with it. But for me, I was like, okay, well, here's the DC, you miss it by five, then your lockpick breaks, or this is what the traps on those might look like. And so you get them as packages.
So yeah, I think I'm broadly narratively led.
Mm-hmm.
specifically for RPGs, and then I try and create the story with the support that it needs. But it will start from a random concept.
I think I'm the opposite. I think I'm mechanics-led. I'm not that worried about the story because I want to write the mechanics to allow the GMs and players to tell their story.
all the games i've written they've never they've never really had a setting in them or they've always been kind of setting yeah if you look at yeah toolkits in a way so yeah so yeah that's definitely a difference in but that said i would argue a bit that a certain mechanics lead you into a certain type of storytelling like there are certain stories yeah so i might say this is kind of like a space opera genre i'm trying to do star trekky star warsy stuff
Yeah. But in that case, I'm really just borrowing a story, aren't I? I'm borrowing a genre that exists and then trying to write mechanics that work with that genre. I'm not making a story there. At least I don't feel like I am.
So to explain what I meant by that, I don't mean I'm trying to sort of... narrow people down into a story, but I like my, even when I just write some new monsters, they have a story with them. They come with some background, some story. So again, the Chimera, I kind of know who creates them and why and how that works.
Yeah.
And it's not that you can't just sweep all that away and play with the rules I've created. That's absolutely fine. But for me, the vermicilitude of having that, of making it feel real, that there's some depth, is where I live.
Yeah. When you're designing a board game, or in this case a card game or whatever, there are definitely overlaps and similarities. But what would you say the primary differences are in the process of doing one as opposed to the other?
Well, so in terms of anything RPG-ish, I'm not interested in winning or losing. That's not my objective. My objective is just purely everyone be involved, tell a story, have good fun. So with a board game, I'm always automatically limited in that I've got to figure out, are you playing against the game? Are you playing against each other? Are you playing in teams? And what is the end goal?
What does that look like?
Hmm.
I still want my games to tell stories. It's a thing I love. So in with Split the Horde, I mean, when I start talking about it, I'm talking about a dragon that you've just killed and you can see that kind of coming out in sort of my narrative.
Yeah, I mean, you can easily make that game without any of that stuff and just say, you're trying to get these points. Yes. Yeah. It's like the story shapes it, I guess.
Yeah. So there's not a lot of iteration in the RPG space. So from a board game, you want to run lots and lots and lots of iterations. So as you're developing, you're getting feedback constantly from people who've played in a way that I don't feel like I can from a TTRPG perspective. So there's a lot more sort of repetition to burr the edges and sort of file stuff down.
But the competitive is a huge side of it. And then balance is a lot more important, for me at least, within a board game. So for a TTRPG, I can get you moments in the spotlight, even if you've got the worst set of stats. I can make your character shine as a GM to give you moments where you feel awesome. I can't really do that if your character is just underpowered.
It's a much more important thing to get that balancing right so that you have an even chance when you sit at the table.
Yeah.
yeah yeah well i think in a board game you've got issues of fairness that come in there don't you so if you've got various you know four different players playing against each other it has to be fair yeah whereas in an rpg to an extent it does but not not so much because because you're not playing against each other so if one one one's a little more powerful than another doesn't really matter all that much because they're not they're not you know in conflict with each other
Yeah, I really like in tabletop RPGs playing a weak and rubbish character because I just think that's fun and you can play... Because you can find a lot of story in that and being the person that's not the most powerful in the room but still being part of an adventure is... You know, there's people out there that would be very, very angry with you for that.
well you're not putting your weight in the party you must have a fully optimised character no but I usually contribute in different ways if you think about like the hobbits in the lord of the rings they are not the strongest fighters they are not magic users but actually they they end up they pull their weight they do things So I like being the merry or the pippin in the party.
But anyway, but in a board game, if I had a character that had an unbalanced disadvantage, I would just find that frustrating and not enjoyable because I'd be like, well, I can't win. So yeah, I get that's the major difference with mechanical balance.
It's even bad in cooperative games. In cooperative board games, one player just being markedly more powerful than others is still problematic because... Your expectation coming in... Also, TTPRGs have this open timeline, so if you didn't do great today, you can do great tomorrow or the next week or whenever you can find time to play again.
You can always sort of make up for the fact that your character had a quiet session. A board game is you play and you're done, and...
especially if it's unearned some massive luck swings are really damaging to board games because you do feel like well I never had a chance he got that card or they got that whatever and therefore they won there are a lot of games I've played where you feel like a certain character oh you've got that character sure you've got 10 points on everyone to begin yeah yeah yeah
And I guess in Split the Horde, there is an element of luck because there's a horde cards and you flip them over and you get three cards and you get what you get. So there's an element of luck in there. So how do you try and balance against luck in a board game when there is an element of that?
You get as close as you can is the honest answer. Like mathematically figuring out all the variables, we've got a hundred odd cards. So there are more potential combinations than there are atoms in the universe. You can't possibly maths out exactly how balanced you make this, but what you do is you try and make no individual card too powerful.
So everything has uses in certain circumstances or in certain places, or, which I try to do in Split the Horde, every card has two uses. It has its use as its card, but it also has an ability that you can use. So there's always a lot of flex in what you could choose to do and how that will play out for you.
So I'm not claiming it's completely balanced, and I think it's difficult, if not kind of impossible. Even things like chess, going first is an advantage.
Yeah, yeah.
So some of that, I guess, chance around the edges kind of balances out what he went first and therefore, because things can swing the other way. Yeah.
But how, Russ, you're saying you're led really by mechanics. How do you like balance and test mechanics in RPGs? Because like Mark said, you can, because like Split the Hall, for example, takes like 20, 30 minutes to play. So you could sit for a few hours and play a few games. That's easy to do.
But to get people to commit to playing an RPG for a few hours, and there's obviously way more variables because they're not, parties rarely do the thing you want them to do. How do you do that?
I think there's an element of experience and being able to eyeball stuff helps.
Yeah. Yeah.
You need to have a basic sense of intuition about probabilities and how something's going to play out just because you've seen it so many times before when playing or designing or just reading games. So, I mean, that helps. RPGs usually aren't quite, I mean, not always, as mechanically complex as, say, board games. I mean, some of them are very mechanically complex.
But, you know, on average, like any individual subsystem of an RPG, like picking a lot, for example, it's not a particularly mechanically complex thing. It's you're rolling in D&D, you're rolling in D20, adding a thing, does it beat 15 or 16 or whatever? Yeah. It's not like a...
really really complicated thing to get your head around and sort of intuitively sense how that's going to play out and other than that you play test it you lean on stuff that you already know works and reuse ideas and concepts that you know you've done in previous games and they've worked or you've realized you could have done a little better and now in this game you know it's just it's a similar mechanic but it's a iteration on that so i guess in a sense like it is kind of like what mark was saying but just on a much slower scale
you know slow up because and you know and things like that so i was gonna say i've been rpg dming for 35 plus years and it it's always a learning curve but but new gms come to you and say oh wow you handled that really well it's like i did this time but this is the 14th time i've seen it like you didn't see the first time when i crashed and burned and the game disappeared you know you've seen enough iterations that you have a sense of wait this is too dangerous to do or this is going to cause problems
Yeah.
But yeah, it's a much longer learning journey.
I would also say sort of in my RPG design, I don't think I've ever written an entirely original rule that requires a massive amount of experimentation to work out how it works. It will always be based on something I've seen or played or written before and has already probably had decades of playtesting just through its existence in the industry. Yeah. I guess.
So if you're writing something based on 5E, 5E is a very well-played game. If you're using that chassis, you already know that 90% of the balancing work is done for you and the mechanical work is done for you because Wizards of the Coast did it and tens and hundreds of thousands of people have played that game ever since. You know the wrinkles. So... Yeah. I think it's easier.
I think I would find writing a board game harder than writing an RPG, I think.
What about you, Mark? Which do you find easier, or is that an impossible question because it's so variable?
They are very different. I think Russ has absolutely hit the nail on the head with the sense of RPGs just having this volume of experience and playability that other people have done. I think also with RPGs, you can pull things and you can fix things in a way you can't with a board game. So FAQs are much more common for particular rules in RPGs or banning stuff and things like that.
For me, they scratch very different itches for me. So I don't know. I think thus far, I've been writing RPG stuff for about four years more than I've been successfully designing games. So I'm going to say that the RPG stuff is easier. But yeah, I think my trajectory on board games is... Yeah, I think so. It's, like I say, 35 years versus significantly less than that playing and designing games.
I think board games are probably more vulnerable to a broken mechanic as well. So in a board game, if you've got a broken mechanic that can screw up the entire game for everybody, whereas in an RPG, if your lockpicking rule is broken, it doesn't really affect how the fight against the ogre is going to go or how a fireball spell works. You know, all these other things are not...
As closely entwined as they are in a board game, I think.
Yeah.
And they all have to feed together.
When I'm running a tabletop RPG, I run my games very much on vibes. And so the rules are kind of there if I need them and I'll lean on them. But, you know, I sometimes, you know, I've run a session where nobody's rolled a dice once because we got really into the narrative side of it.
People are much more willing to fudge with RPG rules and board game rules, aren't they?
Board games, you can't really do that. The rules are the box you're in, and you can't ignore them and do whatever you want, because otherwise you're just not playing that game anymore.
When I play chess, I replace the queen with Hulk.
It's much more fun. Yeah, like, you know, we're just not playing that game anymore. So I guess, yeah, it needs a lot more stress testing from that perspective. So there are lots of differences, and we've touched on a few. But what would you say is similar? What are the overlaps you've both experienced when designing board games and designing tabletop RPGs? What's the same?
Hmm. For me, okay, I haven't... We say designing board games. I've only attempted to design one. I'm partway through it. And if I'm honest, it's the same game that I've been working on and had versions of for throughout my career in different games, and really what it is is just a combat system. It's not a board game.
So really, I'm kind of designing an RPG combat system, and that's where I'm coming from. This one happens to be about spaceships, but that's kind of what it is. Like I said, that's mechanics first and stuff. That's what I'm doing. I'm designing an RPG combat system, and I've been designing this specific one for a long, long, long time.
Okay, but you'd say it's going to be as a board game opposed to be as an RPG system.
Yeah, in the sense that you could probably take most RPGs' combat rules and make a skirmish game out of those. I'm just doing it the other way around. I'm making a skirmish game, but you could certainly use those as the combat rules for a larger RPG. Not that the rest of the RPG will be there, but in concept, you could imagine an RPG surrounding those skirmish rules.
Yeah, so it's fair to say that all your RPG experience has really heavily influenced your board game design because it's very much in that framework.
It's not so much a board game as a war game, isn't it? That's why. There's a slight difference there.
Oh, is that? Yeah, but people have done this before. So if you remember the old people who made of Sort On Hoth and X-Wing Fighter. The X-Wing Fighter board game, I want to say North Star something, but I can't remember who it was. But it's a really old game, but it basically used the D6 Star Wars stats.
Mm-hmm.
for maneuvering in space and it had a whole rule set for you you could literally step out of your rpg and have a space battle using the system and then step back into your rpg and your stats translated across didn't battle tech do that as well started off as a sort of thing and then they built an rpg to sort of like attach to it sort of certainly felt that way
Yeah, but Mark, what's similar for you? So we're wandering into a different question, which is what's the difference between board game and RPG? But let's stay on topic. So what's similar for you, Mark, when you're designing board games versus RPGs?
For me, I still want a narrative. And the other guiding star that's always there is our players having fun. Because I don't really want to create something where you're not having fun. And so I find that easier in RPGs because I can create around it to make it fun. Whereas board games, you actually have to get to the texture of what you're doing first.
than how quite to describe it but that has to be fun so are you rolling dice that make no difference or are you rolling the dice and hoping and breathing on every second that it turns until it lands and then you're cheering or groaning like that's where the juice is that's where the fun is um And so, yeah, I'm trying to generate fun. I'm trying to generate story.
I also want you to be able to come away from the game saying, oh, I did this thing and it didn't quite work. And, oh, that was terrible. Or I did this thing and it went great and I got lucky and it all worked out perfectly. I want you to be able to tell that kind of story about your games as well, not just the narrative that I've injected in. I want you to come away with that.
And I want that for RPG players as much as I do for my board game players. Again, though, they diverge on the things that we talked about, which are pretty key to what they do. They go in different directions quite quickly once you get out kind of those overarching sort of objectives.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think going to that fun aspect, I think there is a difference between board games and RPGs there because, at least for me, with an RPG, I think it has more of a buffer, more of a cushion in that, for me, probably the people I'm playing with is more important than the game. And I probably enjoy most RPGs if I like the people I'm playing with, to be honest.
You see a lot of people say, oh, I hated that RPG, I don't like the mechanical, I don't really care. You know, I'm having fun with some people I like, it's fine. But I think with a board game, I think the actual game is more important. I mean, obviously the people you're playing with is important, but there's a good chance you might be playing with people you don't know in a board game.
With RPGs, you're more likely to be playing with friends. Not necessarily, you might be playing at a convention. So I think maybe there's a slightly different emphasis on the actual game itself as opposed to the players. Does that make sense? Yeah.
No, I see what you mean. I mean, for me, I'm not as fussy about RPG system. Like you say, it's more about the people I'm sharing a table with. But for me, I feel there's more pressure on a tabletop experience because there's more commitment from me, even as a player. I know I'm going to sit down, even to do a one-shot, this is going to be about four hours.
And of course, there are board games that last four hours. There's some that last like eight to 12 hours. But... A lot of board games now are like, you get ones that are between like 30 minutes and two hours, and that's generally what a lot of board games I play are.
And so that kind of takes the pressure off the experience for me, especially if it's something like Split the Horde that's like 20, 30 minutes. I'm like, okay, well, even if I don't like this, it's not a lot of my time. But for an RPG, if I'm worried that I'm not going to like something, I'm like, I've got to commit and sit there for four hours. It feels... I don't know. That's another difference.
Four hours is too long for me anyway on any... My RPG sessions, I don't like a four-hour session. It's too long for me.
All right. Well, there you go. See?
I like that.
Fair enough, fair enough. I'm going to rope us back though to that problematic question, just so we can start a flame war on the internet, about what defines the difference between an RPG and a board game. Because I've heard, it seems people have some interesting discussions about that. And some of those very obvious ones, like Dungeons and Dragons is an RPG, chess is more of like a board game.
But I've seen some people talking about different games, like There are some board games that are very narratively led, like Above and Below or Gloomhaven, HeroQuest. And I've had some people discuss that they believe that Gloomhaven or HeroQuest are RPGs, whereas I tend to think of them as board games.
There's also some RPGs which people say this is basically a board game. So there is a Venn diagram with something in the middle there. There is an overlap. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to start, like, addition wars and flame wars and stuff, but there are certain additions of certain games which a lot of people quite vociferously said, this is not really an RPG, it's a board game.
What's one of those? It's going to start arguments.
I think what's interesting for me in terms of the difference between an RPG and a board game, an RPG literally gives you the space to do anything.
Mm-hmm.
So I can turn around in D&D and say my character jumps off this cliff. They can't fly. They're going to fall. But they're going to jump off this cliff.
In one, you play a character. In the other, you might control a character. I think you're spraying hairs there.
Because I think in Cleveland, you feel like you're embodying that character. But you have conversations and roleplay, though. No, so this is what I'm saying, is the ability to go anywhere, do anything, is part of it, but also the embodying that character, that that character is you within this game space and interacts in social ways. Because traditional RPGs typically do combat plus social, right?
That's the two pillars they sit on.
Yeah.
And that social element isn't really... It's that freedom to say or do anything, to get into fights with the local guards or to suck up to... whoever, you know, they never really quite come out in role-playing games, sorry, in board games.
There can be a social element.
I mean, that's how I play chess, obviously, but you know.
Well, I was just thinking things like Sheriff of Nottingham or Cash and Guns, there's a big social element in that. Also, the werewolves, playing werewolves at Miller's Hollow, that's a hugely social, like social deduction games have a huge social element with it, where you're playing a character, but I wouldn't define that as a
I don't think you're being social as that character. That character is not being social in that. It's very much the player is being social.
yeah yeah maybe that's true i don't know i'm just trying to be divisive and start you know flame no you get these these lovely lines between what's a murder mystery what's an amdram versus you know what's what's uh you know improv sessions with no just like just general improv just sitting around talking and making up a story yeah that's kind of rpg ish and you got things like champions which are just like mass crunching forever which feel a lot more board gamey
Yeah. For me, it's the limitations. It's the limitations that a board game places.
I'm a lot less experienced in board games than both of you two. A lot less. I've always been an RPG guy, not a board game person. I've played a dozen board games or something. It's not like the hundreds you two have probably played.
We had to play and learn them so we could teach them because the games library was like 700, 800 unique titles or something. And between the team, we needed to be able to have the majority of them able to teach. So there was a lot of game playing so you can roughly teach someone a game in that time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not necessarily the person to really speak on the differences between the two, I guess, because I just don't have the breadth of experience needed.
Well, I mean, I play a lot of RPGs, play a lot of board games, but I don't have a clear definition. That's why I was putting the question on you two. That's why.
I think it's the role playing that's the difference. Are you role playing or are you not? I guess. That's the only real difference, I think.
I think also lots of people are trying to cross all these boundaries. So people are trying to make board games that are RPGs. They're trying to make RPGs that are board game-ish. And even within the subsections of what's a board game versus an abstract like chess to, I don't know, Gloomhaven at the other end. These are really the same thing, are they?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, board game is a very broad tent, isn't it? That's true. Yeah. I mean, board games do have subdivisions, though, don't they? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. The terminology is there to make the distinction between chess and Screamhaven.
Sure, but what I'm saying is there are games that sit between those extremes.
Yeah.
So Tortuga is a little bit of a board game where you're basically... It's a social deduction game, but where you're moving treasures from one trip to another or into the boat in the middle. So you're actually kind of doing a traditional board game thing, but it's also social deduction.
So...
You're sitting there going, well, this is a resource management and social deduction game. And so many places where people have looked at different blends of different mechanics or groupings or namings of games and tried to smash them together. It's come up with something new. And we...
We constantly see reinvention and new combinations put together that make something happen that we haven't seen before. And I think that's going to continue. I think there's always this sense of, well, does there have to be a line between X and Y? What if I bring those together?
So going back to Split the Horde specifically, let's just talk about the development of that. So how long did it take you to develop that game? I mean, obviously, it's an ongoing process. It gets tweaked right up to the last minute. But the bulk of it, so it was a game that you could sit down and play, and it was pretty similar to what will be in the box.
So we obviously signed the game in December. Mm-hmm.
But you'd been working on it before then because, yeah.
Oh, yeah, no, no. So I had a game that was actually about acquiring, obviously just to keep at your desk, stationery at an office. Mm-hmm. So this whole idea of collecting like, oh, I've got the best stapler or I've got all of the highlighters in a certain color. Okay. That was where the game started. This is the kind of the idea I had to begin with. And I met with Jess at UK Games Expo.
So that would have been the June. That game I'd only been working on for maybe a month at Expo when I met with Jess and talked about what you guys were looking for. And I rethemed and changed a whole bunch of the rules to get to when you guys agreed to sign it, the version that you guys saw first, I think. And then we had a pretty major shift about six months after that.
So I think within 18 months, maybe probably a bit less than that, maybe about 15 months, the bulk of the game was done. The stuff that's happened since, and there has been continual sort of tweaks and touches that we've done, but the stuff that's happened since has all felt very version 5.0.1. Yes. Those kind of increments, they've not been version 6, version 7, version 8.
It's felt like a very small movement.
Yeah, like a really small thing, for example, like we took a prototype to Aircon to play with people there. And there's a set collection element to one of the titles, The Way to Get Victory Points. And we realised that actually if we just made the backgrounds of those sets all the same colours, it's easier at a glance to see what you're doing.
So that changed the artwork style, which is, you know, a change to the game, but it's not like groundbreakingly different. It's just we're changing the coloured backgrounds. And actually the placement of where some of the icons were, actually, it makes more sense and things like that.
So this last year, I feel it's been loads of little tweaks because there's been lots of playtests, public playtesting.
And some of... Some of the wording has changed a little bit on certain cards to give it clarity, or we found a better way to say what we wanted the card to do.
Yeah. But at that point, it's still fundamentally the same game.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, the game's been pretty set for, you know, after about 15 months we were done.
Yeah, yeah. And then after that, of course, we had the process of getting the art and then the prototype versions of it and then playtesting it at conventions. And, you know, there's a whole load of stuff that then takes place, which is all fun. None of which I've been involved with, I've got to say. The art design, I think, is amazing, but I can't take credit for it.
Mm-hmm.
I was stunned when I saw the artwork for the first time, particularly I think Jess sent me the first image, which is I think the box cover that's being used.
That's lovely.
It's a beautiful piece of art. I knew that the artist got it at that point. I was like, okay, I'm safe. Because obviously I signed the game over to you guys and I expect you to do what you need to do to make it a success from your vision of what the game's going to be. So I wasn't precious about what you did, but you still wonder and think, oh, I hope they get it right. And it feels...
And yeah, that image convinced me. Yeah. Well, I think the good thing about that art... If I find out you did stick men or whatever, I'd be like, oh, really?
Yeah, we're doing it Order of the Stick style. Okay. But, you know, that worked.
South Park style, you know? Yeah, South Park.
Well, no, no.
Again, I'm relying on you guys. My job is to get the game to a point where it's fun and it's playable and it's good. And then, you know, I talk to you guys and we agree that you guys will take it forward to market. So I've been... And as well as the art style, the latest iteration of the graphic design and the framing and colour shading and everything has just been spot on.
Can't... Yeah, yeah. Couldn't tell you I was any happier. I think graphic designers... Graphic designers are some of the most amazing people in the world. And they're so important, just getting these things. Whether it's a book or a card game or whatever it is, it's so important.
Yeah, absolutely.
It took it to a different level.
Yeah. One thing that's been a process for me learning is writing a rulebook as well because that process has been really iterative and the rulebook has changed so many times. And we got a consultation from Paul Grogan who does that because writing for an RPG versus writing a rulebook for a board game is...
totally different skills so yeah so that's been really interesting for me and it's one of those things i think you get to a point where you're too close to see it and you have to put it out to other people to feedback and things so yeah so that's yeah you need to give it to people who don't already know how to play the game yeah so that there's no they're not going into that with some assumptions or knowledge yeah and so that if so therefore if it's not in the wall book they won't know it because yeah yeah so that's that's that's always important i think
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, I know looking back now, obviously all the changes that have happened since the first rulebook that I wrote, and I can see that I was too close. I'd rewritten those rules 10 or 15 times. I'd got feedback from 10 different people, and it had just become more and more, oh, well, you know how this works, right?
Kind of, just not even aware of it, but just kind of not really stating what needed to be said.
You almost have to tell people what a card is. You have to get that basic almost, really. You can't assume anything. You can't assume that the player knows a single thing.
Yeah.
But still. So again, really glad with where that's got to. Yeah, I think one of my favourite things is always when your first proof copy of a book arrives and you open it up and it's all laid out and you can see the art and the tech and it all looks gorgeous. So do you remember getting hold of the first proper pretty proof version? Prototype, yeah. Prototype, yeah, of the game.
Do you remember that occasion? So that hasn't happened yet.
because every version I've had... No, no, every version I've had so far has been wrapped in cellophane and with no rulebook because those things have been in the works. The first time I saw... I still have the copy that we played at Aircon because that was the first time I saw...
Like a, not a final version, but like an actual, because I had them printed, but that was a very, it was high quality printing, but they weren't really cards. But yeah, the first version I received from you guys, that was an awesome moment. And no offense to anyone, but I was like, oh, these look amazing. Hang on, that label's missing. Yeah. Because it was a very early one.
I got halfway through and went, why has this one not got this symbol on it?
And it was just that moment of... I will open it and I will instantly see a typo straight away. No matter how many times it's been edited. You open it, look at it, typo. First thing you see. Always, without fail. It's quite frustrating. That really wasn't a dig, it was an observation.
No, no, because we were still trying stuff out and doing different things as well, so... Yeah, that's always the thing that happens. But no, I've said to Mark, so what happens in the manufacturing process is they will do a digital sample, which is basically like a checking that they've got the right artwork files, the right number of things.
And it's like a lower quality print on demand version of the whole thing. So we'll get that from a manufacturer. And I've said once we've had a look at it, myself and Russ to like, you know, check things like spelling, grammar and everything's there. We'll send that copy over to Mark so you can have the first one. So that'll be like a nice, exciting thing.
Because that'll be the first proper version, like with a bot.
I am very excited about that, to be fair.
Rulebook, player boards, things like that. Because so far it has just been the deck of cards. And of course, it's like I said, it's going to have player boards and little privacy screens and other stuff that hasn't physically existed in that way. So that'll be really good fun.
it is super exciting and it's exciting for us as well because it's our first board game it's Mark's first board game I can't tell you how much I can't tell you how thankful I am that you trusted me with the first game that you're going to go to so thank you guys no worries I know you didn't do me a favour for it I suddenly will find I can't write for you in publishing anymore
but you know i i kind of feel like for you you know it's a first step in building a portfolio of games and building your brand as a game designer and for us it's exactly the same thing it's the first step in building a portfolio of board games and building a brand as a board game designer you know we're both in exactly the same position here yeah at least how i see it anyway
Yeah. And you, the listener, can also be involved because we're going to Kickstarter. It's launching next week on Tuesday. So the links are in the show notes. So I'd love it if you go take a look. It's also free to play on Tabletopia, so you can just go in and check it out and have a look on there. Yeah.
But yeah, hope everyone enjoys playing it as much as we've enjoyed developing it and making it.
Okie dokie. That's it for this week. We're all going to go and have a lovely weekend. Thank you all for listening. Thank you, Mark, so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure as always. Same here. Thank you so much for having me. Until next week, goodbye.
Bye-bye.
Apparently I now have to read this to you. This is the official podcast of Morris' unofficial tabletop RPT news, which you can find at enworld.org. You can find show notes at morris.podbean.com or wherever you found the podcast. If you feel like they deserve it, you can support the show on Patreon. In return, you will receive exclusive bonus content. Just go to patreon.com slash Morris.
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But before that, I do need to give the information you asked earlier. How many hours of Baldur's Gate 3 at the time of recording have I played? And it's 476 hours. 6.6 hours. Wow. That is how much time I have spent playing Baldur's Gate 3.
That is a lot of time. How many days is that? Was it 400 and... 476.6 476 divided by 24 is 20 full days really if you count them as eight hour days yeah eight hour days like a shift like a work day yeah okay this is how many work days 60 work days
two two months of yeah i love two months because yeah i mean coming up to three months and that's over a year though because i started playing like september october time last year because it's the one year anniversary so of the last year you spent three months of it playing builders gate yeah no regrets no regrets fair enough fair enough