Voices in the Dark

Dave:

Hello and welcome to episode 256 of Effect, Voices in the Dark. As you should know by now, I'm Dave.

Matthew:

Are you? Damn.

Dave:

I've never I've

Matthew:

never really picked up on your name.

Dave:

And you've forgotten And you've forgotten who you are. Well, I'm just thinking we've done this introduction 256 times at least now. Or was it because we had some RPG a day things as well. So probably more. So by now, people who've listened to this, maybe we should do a new intro.

Dave:

Maybe we should change up.

Matthew:

No. No. No. No. No.

Matthew:

No. No. Because we've just got a whole bunch of new listeners for this episode who've just seen in the show notes that we're talking about choreo list and great dark. They've never even heard of us before, and they came to us new. So hi.

Matthew:

I'm I'm I'm Matthew, and this is Dave. And we could talk a bit about, you know, our lives in gaming and stuff like that, and who we are. We could do that,

Dave:

you see. We could do it new every That's this episode sorted then. Great. Cool. So Matthew, no.

Dave:

No. No. No. No. Yes.

Dave:

Okay. Anyway, what what we got on the show today, mate?

Matthew:

Right. So on the show today, we have no new existing patrons.

Dave:

As always,

Matthew:

whom this podcast would not exist, and indeed a whole bunch of other stuff would not exist. Half the illustrations in our game, Tales of the Old West, would not exist if it were not for the generosity of our patrons. Anyway, that probably quite a lot less than half, but the Kickstarter pack has paid for quite a lot of illustrations. But that's by the by. In the world of gaming, we are gonna report back from the Call to Adventure that we were at yesterday tell you more about that and look forward to UK Games Expo, plus some other news from the world of gaming.

Matthew:

Stay tuned to find out what that is. We're also going to be giving you all an update from the old west, as we like to call it. Old news East, isn't it, this episode?

Dave:

Oh, you had to remember my little spoiler, didn't you? Oh, well, thank you very much.

Matthew:

And and then our main event is, as you know, Dave, even though you didn't want to play choreo list the great dark, a bunch of our intrepid patrons did.

Dave:

It wasn't that I didn't want play. I just and I said to you before we started recording, I do now have gamers guilt for for, you know, FOMO for not having got involved, actually. But sometimes it's a bit difficult to find the time to do that, so I I don't get to do those games that often. But in this case, I do regret not having got involved.

Matthew:

Yeah. I think I think those games were on a Wednesday, which is when you do your physical

Dave:

Yeah.

Matthew:

Face to

Matthew:

face group.

Dave:

Makes it difficult. Yeah.

Matthew:

So that would make it quite difficult. But anyway, we've been playing Coriolis The Great Dark, and we thought the best way of reviewing the game, what we have played, is to get everybody together for a chat about it. So that will be the the big content, and that includes our patrons and listeners who let's name check them now. We've got Thomas. He was GM ing it.

Matthew:

He was brilliant as usual. We shall talk more about that. Got Douglas. We got your friend, Pete. Hold on.

Matthew:

Your friend Pete who plays with you

Dave:

Plays on Wednesdays.

Matthew:

Face to face game. So maybe it wasn't Wednesdays that we

Dave:

were And

Matthew:

we also had Jed from America and John from Sweden as well. Am I missing anybody? No. No. That's who who was

Dave:

a friend? Didn't you? Yeah.

Matthew:

I've already mentioned Douglas. He was from Canada. So so, yeah, it was an international crew. And we had a great time, but we shall explain why we had a great time later in the episode. Cool.

Matthew:

So moving on to the world of gaming. Where were you and I yesterday, Dave?

Dave:

I'm I'm I'm well, actually, now you're getting older. I'm not surprised you've forgotten, because you are going a bit that way. We're we're at Dragonmeat Mark two Call to Adventure at Kensington Town Hall in in London, and it was it was the new new new but old. So it was Dragonmeat's attempt to, I guess, you know, try and go back to the beginning because this is where Dragonmeat started back in the day. And it was it was a it's a nice little location.

Dave:

It's a it was a really good fun day. I enjoyed it very much. The location was nice. It's very cute and cozy and it's quite small actually. But it was a great day.

Dave:

The one thing that we found was it wasn't very busy. And now that might be I mean, there's a couple of reasons for that I think. One might be that downstairs in the basement area well, it's not really a basement, it's just a lower floor. And then upstairs were all full of gaming tables, and there was a sort of demo area outside the main hall where we were.

Matthew:

Yeah. In a large sort of lobby area. Yeah. Sort of thing.

Dave:

Yeah. And they were full of tables, which were full of people playing games. So I think a lot of people, of the seven or 800 tickets that that Dragonmeat were able to issue, and they were free which might be I'll come back to that in a moment. A lot of those people came in and went straight to a game and had a lovely morning or lovely afternoon playing a game. And then maybe a lot of those didn't end up actually in the the Trader Hall where we were, which is quite small.

Dave:

It was quite cozy, but there were some, you know, some good players there. We were there. Pell Grain Press were there. Monty Cook, all rolled up.

Matthew:

Ian Livingston was there?

Dave:

Ian Livingston was there. Yeah. So so it's a good a good cast, as it were. Effect Publishing was kind of snuck in there too.

Matthew:

Effect Publishing weren't there, but but Anna from Freely did let us did say just this week, oh, if you want to sell some of your books, you can as well. Sadly, she didn't didn't tell us that before we went to the warehouse where we could have picked up a bunch more books, but I had I had picked up a box of six, so we took those to introduce those to people who may not have baptized us. And they went quite well,

Dave:

didn't they? Sold like hotcakes. Yeah, we sold all of those by lunchtime, which is really cool. Yeah. But yes, so the event was quite quiet.

Dave:

The again, think, again, part of it was it was a free event, so tickets were free. So I think, you know, the incentive once you'd got your got your tickets, because you didn't pay for them, maybe it was much easier for people to say, yeah, don't really feel like going down to Kensington today.

Matthew:

Yeah.

Dave:

So And, you know, things

Matthew:

like the Pope's funeral, I think, you know, there may well be people who stayed home before it's that.

Dave:

Possibly. Yeah. Possibly. Yeah. But it was it was a nice event.

Dave:

I mean, we didn't sell very much for free league, sadly. We sold a few bits. I don't I've got no idea what the future will be, whether whether the Dragon Meat folks will want to do it again next year. I I think that they felt, at least from an organisational point of view, that it went really well.

Matthew:

Whether It was very smoothly run by the Dragon Meteor.

Dave:

It was. It was very well done. John

Matthew:

John and the volunteers did really well.

Dave:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was Actually, it was kind of was very easy for us, actually. It was very nicely done in that sense.

Dave:

But whether what quite they wanted to get from it, I don't know exactly. Whether what they got from it is enough to make them want to do it again next year. And it was something. It was an event that was done in collaboration with, I guess, the local Kensington Council, or at least the

Matthew:

Yeah, the body service or something

Dave:

body that runs the hall, because the hall was free, nobody had to pay to Exhibit. To exhibit there, which is all great. Obviously trying to encourage more events like that. So in a community We

Matthew:

did donate. One of the key things is the price for a table was to donate five games to to the to the local library service. So, you know, we we put out five copies of Dragonbane, which I think is an excellent thing. And and that leads me onto thinking that I think, really, the Target or the idea behind it was that maybe it would be a a great space to introduce new people who are interested in gaming, you know, and families like that to to gaming without being a big scary convention. Yeah.

Matthew:

And I don't know whether that came from drug and meat themselves or whether that was something the library service were looking to do. I don't I to be honest, I think, though, a lot of the people who turned up a lot of the people we saw in the trade hall were old faces, actually, which I think contributes to the fact that we didn't sell very much because they were old faces who'd already got all our games, they were looking for

Dave:

new stuff. Exactly.

Matthew:

Except for Tales of the Old West, of course, which sold out quite quickly. So so, yeah, I

Dave:

But I I I don't know. If the intention is to try and create another community event in the calendar, and actually, this one being a huge commercial success wasn't the point, then, you know, may well have worked. These things often do take several years to generate a bit of, you know, publicity and momentum behind it. The product. Yeah.

Dave:

I mean, if we did it again next year, it would probably be better, and then it would probably be better the year after. But again, I don't know whether this will end up being a one off thing for the Dragon Dragon meat crew or whether they are kind of committed to trying to make it a proper point in the calendar for the convention circuit.

Matthew:

Yeah. We shall wait and see.

Dave:

But it was a good day. I had a good day out. It was fun. Didn't start so well for me only because I had to lug all that heaviest shit on public transport, which I haven't done for a long time. But then, thankfully, you were there with your car, so you could you drove all that home with you, which is great.

Dave:

Yeah. But my journey home was much more relaxing than my journey in.

Matthew:

Much more relaxing. Sure. And and I bought the stock in the car. So we did this ill. Working with Freely, we did this on the cheap.

Matthew:

Yeah. You know, we didn't have Freely didn't have Games Quest delivering the games. We only had a small stock. I I drove to Games Quest on Friday and and picked up the stock and put it in the boot of my car. And I've still got what we didn't sell in the boot of my car ready to I don't know.

Matthew:

I'm gonna have a no. I'll drop I'll drop a line. Do we want to send them back to Games Crest or do we want to keep them until we go to

Dave:

UK Games Expo,

Matthew:

which is only a month away.

Dave:

It's I mean

Matthew:

Oh. Oh. That would be a lovely segue, but it's not time for the UK Games

Dave:

Expo Yeah. Damn. I I guess the question is a logistics one, isn't it? Is it easier logistically, in terms of stock control and that, to give it to GameQuest and then collect it off them again, or for you to keep it. I guess we could be guided by GamesQuest on that, really.

Matthew:

Yeah. And I think. Yeah. Cool. Right.

Dave:

Well, let's let's let's restore that segue then. Come on. Let's restore that segue.

Matthew:

Yeah. Let's not restore that segue. It's not the right time because right now, we're meant to be talking. Look at the running order. It's it's called a running order for a reason.

Dave:

Yeah. Yeah. But your running order's shit. Surely, Dragon League and then moving on to UK Games Expo is a really obvious

Matthew:

No. No.

Dave:

Good segue to do. And you've put that The upcoming

Matthew:

conventions are always at the end of the running order.

Dave:

Not necessarily. And you've put Games Expo at the end of the running order. So that is,

Matthew:

Yeah. Because that's where future events are.

Dave:

But you can change for the for the flow of the world. No.

Matthew:

No. No. We're not gonna change. We're

Dave:

gonna talk now

Matthew:

about our guests from last week. Who did we speak to last week, Dave?

Dave:

We spoke to the lovely Andreas Lundstrom from Nordic School. It's talking about their current, I guess, maybe it's finished now, game, Yggdrasil Burns, which is on Kickstarter. It may have finished now. Probably has done, actually. But if you're interested

Matthew:

in And what did he mention? What did he mention? He mentioned that they were up for a lot of Fenics awards.

Dave:

He did.

Matthew:

And we said that we would put the link in the show notes so that people knew where to vote. And he said he would send us the link. And then afterwards, I said, are you gonna send us that link then? And he said, yes, but didn't send us the link. So without the help of there being a link in the show notes, I assume he lost every one of those

Dave:

wonderful awards. Au contraire. Well, massive congratulations to him and all those who worked on Windheim, because they won a huge swathe of Fenics Awards. I don't have the list of all of them in front of me, but they won eight or nine, I think. And it was

Matthew:

Yeah. It was a lot. It was a lot of certificates there, I saw in that photo.

Dave:

Yes. So, I mean, that was a superb success for them. Many, many congratulations. I, you know, delighted for Andreas and his team. And it's a lovely, lovely product.

Dave:

So well deserved. Well deserved recognition. Yeah.

Matthew:

Yeah. Many awards for Windheim and Dragonbane at Phoenix. So they, I'm looking at the list here. Best RPG product, Gold, Windheim Companion. Best campaign, Gold, Windheim Traces of Darkness.

Matthew:

Best supplement, Silver, Windheim Companion. Best maps, gold. Wind oh, I'm guessing that is a Windhime product. It doesn't actually list which one. Mhmm.

Matthew:

Best spellgebjorn, which I think must be accessories. The Windhime die set.

Dave:

Pronounce that again.

Matthew:

You? Third party product.

Dave:

Pronounce that again. Go on.

Matthew:

No. I'm not going to do You're the one who's reading this Sounds

Dave:

like something out of Monty Python.

Matthew:

Windhime No. Sorry. Best Windtime Companion is the Windtime Companion. No. Best third party product, gold.

Matthew:

And best adventure for FedEx Magazine was Winter Ravages, which I remember him telling us he wrote for FedEx. Plus awards for Andreas and Robert as writer and illustrator in Fenics. And RPG, My Father's Sword, won the best gold won gold for best RPG. So loads of awards. Superb.

Matthew:

Which raises the question, how do we get on the in on this FedEx goodness next year?

Dave:

How do we get Tales of the Old West in there winning some of these some of these prizes?

Matthew:

Swedes. Good. Our Swedish listeners. A good third of our listeners are from Sweden. Swedes, tell us how we can get in there.

Matthew:

Do we have to write it in Swedish? Yeah. Yeah. Give us a shout. Tell us what we need to do.

Dave:

Mhmm. Cool.

Matthew:

Right. Next epic epic more epic encounters and the Simba Room minis.

Dave:

Yes. So I I I think this news probably came out before our last episode, but I

Matthew:

But we didn't say it.

Dave:

I kind of overlooked it. Yeah. So Epic Epic Encounters is a collaboration with Steamforged Games to have created two box adventure sets for well, in physical form for The Ruins of Symbarum, the five e version, which also come with a range of new minis based on Martin Gripp's artwork in the book. Now that artwork is fabulous. The the pictures I've got here that I can see, the minis look pretty damn good as well.

Dave:

I mean, certainly some of those that are iconic images from from the book look absolutely fabulous. But yeah, so so this is this has come out. It's it's an adventure box set, including these fabulous miniatures. As I said, physical, just for the Ruins of Simbroom, but you can download the original Simbroom booklet free of charge, it says, from the Steamforged website. So Oh.

Dave:

If you want if you want the minis, so you can buy this, but then you can get the original Simba room rule set for it for for free for no extra money. So I mean, that's interesting. I mean, it's interesting that they've gone to do a physical for five e and then download the

Dave:

Well

Dave:

original. But

Matthew:

They do have I mean, they have a bit of a history with doing D and D epic encounters. We used to sell these in the shop when I worked in the game shop.

Dave:

Oh, right. Okay. So Steamforged have got a history of five e box sets like this, haven't they?

Matthew:

Box sets with an adventure. Right.

Dave:

Oh, You

Matthew:

know, with iconic D monsters licensed from Wizards of the Coast. And generally, they would be a big monster. So, you know, they'd be the sort of thing that is worth spending decent money on if you're into miniatures. I I recall our customers feeling they were quite expensive still, even though they were big monsters compared to some of the other ways in which you could get a big monster. But they did come with the adventure as well.

Matthew:

And customers quite liked them, but they were they were a special treat, really, very often as opposed to an impulse buy.

Dave:

Yeah. So you

Matthew:

And I've actually got two sets here, one of which is a big monster. So we've got the corrupted collus. Yeah. Yeah. It is exactly the sort of big monster style thing that

Dave:

These box sets

Matthew:

are the That I used to sell in the game shop. Yeah. And whereas the other set is, broadly speaking, a bunch of player characters and some smaller creatures. Am I right, looking at the picture?

Dave:

It looks like it. Yeah. Absolutely.

Matthew:

Yeah. Five player character

Dave:

Some those are iconic images from the books. So there's one

Matthew:

From the books.

Dave:

Yeah. With the the there's a sword wielding I'm not quite sure. There's an elf or something with a

Matthew:

Yeah.

Dave:

With a with an owl or an eagle on its on its arm, which is an iconic picture from from the Simberm books. That looks that looks lovely. I mean, they're getting again

Matthew:

Yeah. This is a good package. So this this box is £60, which actually, given the number of models and today's prices for minis, doesn't actually seem to be too excessive. Five player character miniatures of various sorts, four elf warrior models, one elven leader, four goblins and one ill goblin priest, four barbarians and one barbarian champion, a double sided battle map, adventure book, and all the tokens you need to play. And, of course, works with the Corrupted Colos as well for a big epic battle.

Matthew:

Or should we say, an epic encounter. See what I did there?

Dave:

Well, was very good. Well done. I'm very impressed. Well done, Matthew. Well done.

Dave:

Well done, you. Well done. Oh, he's so good. But, hey, that looks nice. I mean, if you're if you want to to have some minis for your Simba room games that, you know, that you don't have already, yeah, check that out.

Dave:

It looks lovely. As I say, I mean, I don't buy minis anymore, but to me, like you said, £60 for a box set with all those minis plus a game plus some maps plus other bits and bobs, doesn't sound doesn't sound that expensive. But I'm I say I'm no expert. I don't I don't buy and paint minis anymore. I haven't the time.

Dave:

If only I had the time to do these things. Haven't

Matthew:

the Nobody who buys Minis has got the time to paint it though.

Dave:

Let's be frank. Well, that's true. Well, I've still got some undercoated AUX that I undercoated probably in 1985. I probably should sell them or throw them out, but they're I don't know if they because they're all, like, original metal die casting, so they're probably full of lead. Yeah.

Dave:

And probably probably a health hazard now or something.

Matthew:

Well, no. They're undercoated. You've got it you've got it all in control. Then again, I think upstairs, we've got some undercoated creatures of some sort. I bought Tom a a sort of Warhammer variant, what sort of more board game y variant of Warhammer.

Matthew:

I can't remember what it was called when he was 11. We undercoated those, and that's about the size we got with those.

Dave:

That's the way it goes. Get them, get a little excited, undercoat them, and then don't paint them, well, ever, potentially.

Matthew:

Right. Should we talk about legal news now?

Dave:

Go on then. Stonemaier Games up to?

Matthew:

Stonemaier Games are suing the president, the president of The United States, I think, as opposed to the president of Stonemaier Games, or anything like that. Mhmm. We are joining a lawsuit that will challenge the unchecked authority of the executive branch to impose tariffs. We will not stand idly by what our livelihoods and livelihoods of thousands of small business owners and contractors in The US, along with the customers in in whose pursuit of happiness we hold dear, are treated like pawns in a political game. And that's become a bit of a class action lawsuit as far as I understand with my limited knowledge of American law.

Matthew:

But, yes, this is about the tariffs, as you've guessed. And

Dave:

Is so is this is this seeking financial compensation because of the cost of the tariffs? Is that what he's trying to do?

Dave:

No.

Matthew:

I don't know what they want. I think they want him to stop the tariffs. I could actually read the paper, but it's gonna be covered in all sorts of legalese. We probably haven't got time for me to read it now. Maybe we should make that an objective for next week's news, and we can give you an in-depth authoritative and learned account with all bringing together all our experience in in law, and those matters.

Dave:

Yeah.

Matthew:

He said ironically.

Dave:

Indeed. But it it does it's a it does look like very much like a class action now, because it says on here that I'm just reading that the law firm that they engaged has now got as many clients on the case as they can handle. So a lot of people have come forward, which is great, but I'm still trying to work out exactly what they what they're trying to achieve.

Matthew:

What are they asking for?

Dave:

Whether they're trying to achieve because presumably, a legal case couldn't end up with the court ordering the president to get rid of his tariffs, And even if they did, he'd probably just ignore them. But it might well be that they're trying to gain compensation so they don't go out of business.

Matthew:

So one of the things I have heard from other news is it's not up to the president to make tariffs. It's up to congress to make tariffs, and congress haven't had a chance to vote. But congress hasn't given the president the right to make tariffs or something.

Dave:

Well, the problem is congress have allowed this eighteen o seven emergency legislation to to to slide, which gives Trump the the power to, you know, unilaterally decide these things. Now, the Congress actually should never have allowed that because the the the actual criteria for it being declared is nowhere even close to to what the the actual legislation says. But it's a little, you know, fancy wheeze to allow, you know, the Republicans in Congress to to let it go through, because they obviously have a majority just, and it allows Trump to do this. But Congress should be able or should be, you know at some point, congress will get be able to rescind this power, in which case the tariffs would have to go through congress. But right now, it gives, at least for the moment, president Trump carte blanche to do what he likes.

Matthew:

Yeah. So we should watch that with interest. It's interesting reading the comments under this article about how commentators are split on whether tariffs are a good thing or a bad thing. So

Dave:

Okay.

Matthew:

I will not pass judgment on that. Shall we move on to other stuff?

Dave:

Yeah. Before we go down the rabbit hole, I've just read I've just looked at a couple of those comments and my Yeah. I'm itching to respond, but I'm not going to for now.

Matthew:

Let's not do that here. Let's

Dave:

No. This is supposed to be a fun place. What's next? Come on. Something more fun.

Matthew:

Yeah. So I've got my copy of Realms of the Three Rings, and it's lovely. And it's I've also, of course, got a review copy of the Keepers of the Elven Rings, which is the the Lord of the Rings version of it.

Dave:

The five e version.

Matthew:

Yeah. Yeah. The five e version.

Dave:

Not the Lord of the Rings The Lord of the Rings version of the Lord of the Rings book is is

Matthew:

No. No. So the one ring is the non five e version, and the Lord of the Rings role playing is the five e version of the game. That's what I meant.

Dave:

I know. But any you know, yeah, it's us. Any slip, and I'm gonna leap on upon you and

Matthew:

Yeah. But when it's not a slip, you're still leap on me anyway, so I have

Dave:

to guarantee. Well, there was a slip. Anyway, carry on. So, yes, I I've got my version of that as well. It's gone on my shelf.

Dave:

I'm not likely to play it anytime soon, but it it looks lovely as always with these things. Pardon me.

Matthew:

You want me to edit that out, whatever that is?

Dave:

That was me trying to suppress a cough. Yeah.

Matthew:

I'll flag that. I'll edit that cough out when you when you finished coughing.

Dave:

Yeah. I finished. I'm I'm a lot better than I was. I'm still not perfect, though, which is No.

Matthew:

Are never perfect, mate.

Dave:

Well, that I I would I would suggest that's a matter of opinion. And and and in my opinion, I'm perfect. Anyway, back to

Matthew:

And that's the problem.

Dave:

But nobody else realises I'm right. That's the problem. Anyway. Yeah. The book itself is lovely.

Dave:

Beautiful artwork. Lovely, you know, like, tactile feel to the to the cover. You know, there is a bit of me that would very much like to dive into a really deep and involved One Ring campaign as a GM, but I've got no idea when I'd be able to find the time to do it and do it justice.

Matthew:

Yeah. Yeah. I think I think

Dave:

So these books make me want to do Yeah.

Matthew:

Yeah. So I'm in I'm very much enjoying playing an elf in John's campaign. Partly because I really I really love the mechanics of how elves work in the One Ring.

Dave:

Oh, because they're super powered, aren't they? Yeah.

Matthew:

Because they can do pretty much anything. Mean, they've actually been slightly nerfed by typo corrections.

Dave:

Okay.

Matthew:

Where in in the first printing of The One Wing, they could literally do anything. Now they can only literally succeed in anything that they've got a dot in the skill of. Oh, okay. But that's fine because, you know, all you need is one dot. And that's that's relatively few experience points made that.

Dave:

Right. Yeah.

Matthew:

Now my my elf is back to doing literally anything they want. And that makes me an arrogant bastard, which I think is what elves are meant to be, really.

Dave:

Which is doesn't doesn't take much role playing for you, does it, really?

Matthew:

And also, yeah, it's just natural for me.

Dave:

Kind of playing to the trope of Tyler Jones here a bit, you know. But Yeah.

Matthew:

So anyway, a book with even more elf powers and stuff and elf history is right up my street at the moment.

Dave:

Nice.

Matthew:

But, you know, like you, actually, haven't got much time to to play with it because, you know, I feel so busy outside my day job, you know, with publishing games and going to conventions and all sorts of stuff. Yeah. Is my rather weaker segue into talking about UK Games Expo.

Dave:

I mean, that would have been a great segue into the old news West, but it's not such a good segue into UK Games Expo. But we've got UK Games Expo at the end of our World of Gaming running order, which if it had been second, it would have been much And this later segue would have worked better as well. But anyway, UK Games Expo. We've we've mentioned that, I think, on previous shows, but just to confirm, we will be there. We will be there

Matthew:

In two capacities.

Dave:

Well, was just gonna say, we will be there running the Free League stand, as we always do. But also, Effect Publishing will have its own stand at a games convention for the very first time, which is very Very exciting indeed. I don't know where we are at the moment off the top of my head. I've seen the map, but I don't know what street number or street what street number

Matthew:

Well, I can tell you our street number because it is ingrained on my memory. It is 3, which is the hall number, 601. So that is our stand number. And o one means what it sounds like. It's a corner stand.

Dave:

Mhmm. So Yeah. So we've we've we've lucked in with an excellent location.

Matthew:

Exactly. We're in the hall with all the big boys.

Dave:

As as we should be. We may be small, but, you know, we're we're we're big of heart. That that works.

Matthew:

Right. Okay. Yeah. We're the rule of big of heart boys. Anyway.

Matthew:

So that's big boys and girls,

Dave:

I

Matthew:

should So

Dave:

that's really exciting. There's a few other bits and bobs going on, which we will fill in the details of those in a future show, because I don't want to give any erroneous information out now until things are a % confirmed.

Matthew:

Yeah. About times and times and locations.

Dave:

Times and locations. As usual, I'm going to be running a seminar, assuming it's confirmed and there's a spot for it to slip in, which would be great. Always a pleasure to do that, and I love I love those opportunities to to chat with people.

Matthew:

And we can vote you into that spot because, you know, you've got two stands to be at now.

Dave:

Yeah. I should be cutting You can

Matthew:

be busy.

Dave:

In three or four pieces, which would be fine. Yeah. You know, we can manage that. Wouldn't be the first

Matthew:

I was hoping I'd get to do that. I've been wanting to do that for some time. I've got a hacksaw, especially waiting.

Dave:

Oh, I thought I thought you're gonna say the seminar, but no, you wanted to cut me into you want to hang you want to draw and

Matthew:

call to Well, thanks, pal.

Dave:

That's nice. Very just all I yeah. A little a little light banter and then now you're talking about brutally murdering me. Charming.

Matthew:

Anyway Yes.

Dave:

So that's really good. But also, you are gonna be master of ceremonies again for the National Dragonbane competition, aren't you?

Matthew:

Yeah. And I I I really actually, before we spoke about this, I should have checked with Anno and Millie. But I'm gonna say it anyway, just in case. If you want to game master a DragonBang game in the national competition, do get in touch with with DragonBeat and volunteer for that because I know a number of the GMs who were there last time, who are our patrons after all, aren't able to do it this time. So so they may well be still looking for GMs.

Matthew:

And it's a great way to volunteer. We had a whale of a time last time. And, you know, you get an exclusive look at an adventure, which last year's adventure has now become the quick start.

Dave:

I was gonna ask, is this gonna be a new a brand, completely new adventure, but based on the same on the same principles as the last one in terms of

Matthew:

Yep. I mean

Dave:

Well It'll be a tournament game. It'll be a a time limited game, and it'll be a game that will be published later on.

Matthew:

Yeah. Well, I don't know so much about whether it'll be a game that will be published later on. I don't know that that's for certain, but it it it definitely, I've seen it, the PDF of it now, and it's it's great. It's fun. It's it's very different from The Sinking Tower, which is the last one.

Matthew:

So yeah. And, you know, if you're if you're a GM, you'll get exclusive access to it for at least for the time So, yeah, do get in touch with boys and girls at UK Gangs Expo if you'd like to volunteer for that. That's all I'm gonna say, I think.

Dave:

Lovely. Cool.

Matthew:

Cool. Right. Is that the end of our world of gaming?

Dave:

I think it is. So moving on to Old West news.

Matthew:

Awesome.

Dave:

Three things this time. UK and European distribution fulfilment should be done. So if you haven't if you're in The EU or The UK and you haven't got your book yet, it's on the way. It'll be with you anytime soon. Similarly with the rest of the world, excluding The US, your books should be on the way.

Dave:

If you haven't received them already, you will be getting them very soon. So delighted that that's all happening, and thank you all so much for your support. For The US, we are on the cusp, on the verge of sending our US shipment with all of your rewards on them. That'll take about a week to get to The US. It should go next week.

Dave:

And then once it hits the distribution center in The US, assuming we don't have to pause anything because of any ridiculous tariff nonsense in the meantime, if things stay the same, that won't be an issue. It will be however long it takes to distribute from there internally within The US. So all things being equal, US backers should get it in the next couple of weeks. Everybody else should have got it before then, and we will have completed and fulfilled by our target, which was the May, which will be absolutely superb, absolutely brilliant. So fingers crossed with all of that, but that's that's the situation on fulfillment at the moment.

Matthew:

Yes. And we've reopened the so we closed the pledge manager for a time because we wanted to sort of make a definite cutoff date, particularly for people that need to be loaded onto the pallet to go to The US. We've now reopened the Pledge Manager. So if you're one of those few backers who haven't yet completed the Pledge Manager, you can now do so. The only difference now is if you're in The US, we will be shipping to you direct, which, if it's anything more than just the book, will turn out to be probably more expensive than those who manage to catch it in time for the pallet.

Matthew:

And also, of course, any tariff nonsense that is created because it's being shipped to you direct, it'll be the carrier that, you know, comes to you for for the tariffs. But we haven't got all that many people in The US who are gonna be in that situation, but there are a few of you in The US and Europe. If you're in Europe, no change at all to your prices, but you can now reopen. And we've got a few more. So those who have, in fact, found the pledge manager since it reopened, you will still be waiting for a a shipment because we haven't yet drawn down the list of backers

Dave:

from people. Yeah. That's true.

Matthew:

So, yes, if you're if you're thinking, well, I'm in Europe and I haven't got my book, it may be because of that. But if there's other reasons, if you did complete the program, you're ages ago and you haven't got your book, do get in touch with us, and we'll see what's happened to it. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

Matthew:

Yeah.

Dave:

Cool.

Matthew:

Some people have got it, including acclaimed author Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Dave:

Yeah. So I'm not on Blue Sky, so I only see these things when people who are on Blue Sky post them onto our our Patreon Discord. But, yeah, Adrian Tchaikovsky posted on Blue Sky, and I shall read it, I think.

Matthew:

Go on. Read it. It's lovely.

Dave:

Recent TTRPG acquisition, Tales of the Old West. Bit of a boom in western TTRPGs at the moment, in crowdfund anyway. Not a natural genre for me, but I'm always fascinated. This one seems to do a good job. A historical perspective that doesn't skew white, rules for building up a town deadwood the rpg exclamation mark, plus and this is a bit I really love plus some really neat systems for duels and gambling.

Dave:

Enough grit in stats for horses and weapons, that choices are meaningful without being overwhelmingly simulationist. Yet he makes a little mistake here where he says uses the Modiphius d6 system as in Mutant Year Zero, which I know people have corrected him on that, but there's a nuance there which I'm sure you're going to mention, and adapted well to the setting. A really solid feeling game. What a lovely comment. That was absolutely exciting.

Dave:

Hopefully there's quite a lot of people who follow Adrian Tchaikovsky and would have seen that and might be thinking, this game sounds good. Hopefully. But, yeah, lovely comments. Yeah.

Matthew:

So that's lovely. And, of course, there have been lovely comments from backers all over Europe, UK Yeah. Who and the Antipodes as well, who have seen it and posted photos of their books. And I honestly we said this in the last episode, but I gotta say it again. I love seeing photos of your books, even though I've been staring at this cover for for months.

Matthew:

Great to see it in other people's houses.

Dave:

In the environment of somebody else who might then play it and enjoy it. Absolutely.

Matthew:

Yeah. I mean, you know, even better than that, I'd love to see photos of your group playing it around a table. So Neil we've talked about Neil who did it at Seven Seven Hills in Sheffield last time, and he had a lovely photo of the group playing it there. Yeah. Show us your photos.

Matthew:

Share your photos. I really like to see other people enjoying this game. And since you mentioned that I would give you the nuance, of course, I do want to remind everybody who's saying Modiphius? Modiphius had nothing to do with it. They did kind of co publish.

Matthew:

They supported Free League in the early games with Mutant Year Zero and with Coriolis. Yeah. In fact, is their name even on the back of the first edition of Forbidden Lands? Have gone all the way through to there.

Dave:

No, I don't think. I think by then, Friedrich had done their own thing, but it was definitely Coriolis was a joint publication, a joint publishing thing. Yeah. But, yeah, I think that was to make life easier for them, particularly outside of Sweden at the time.

Dave:

Yeah.

Dave:

A good collaboration at the time. Yeah.

Matthew:

So, yeah. So so often, Modiphius does get confused with with Free League on on on that issue of of the Year Zero engine. Thank you, Adrian.

Dave:

Thank you.

Matthew:

I'm sure Adrian listens to every episode of the podcast as well, because that's where he gets all his ideas from. I

Dave:

would like just to point out his comment about really neat systems for duels and gambling.

Matthew:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Considering

Dave:

the debate that you started when I was doing the gambling rules about, oh, I don't need gambling rules. They're too complicated, and all rest of it. And actually, people seem to like it, including

Matthew:

No. I didn't. I I did. Just was wondering whether it might be the sort of thing that we would put into a supplement. It wasn't the rules themselves with.

Dave:

Okay. Okay.

Matthew:

Obviously, it was the the obviously, the gunfight the the dueling rules, we were totally in agreement on. In fact, we co developed those. For the gambling rules, was saying, you know, do they need to go in the court book? And, obviously, you were right, Dave. For the first time ever, I will tell you that, and probably for the last time.

Dave:

Yeah. But it's the first time you'll tell me that. It's not the first time it's the case, though. It's because because as you said, you're an arrogant bastard.

Matthew:

I didn't say it wasn't the first time. It might be the only time I've admitted it. Anyway.

Dave:

Yes, quite possibly.

Matthew:

So yeah, I don't know what's going to happen to the old West news segment, whether it's going to be a regular thing from now on. I mean, it'll obviously pop up because there will be news. We'll be developing other stuff, there's still things at the stretch goals that we'll be announcing. But whether it's gonna be every other week, I don't know.

Dave:

It's probably, we could probably sign it off, couldn't we? I think, as a as a as an actual item on the on the playlist. Because we've probably

Matthew:

As as a regular. As as as a regular.

Dave:

That's what I mean. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew:

Yeah.

Dave:

And we could just add it in as, you know, the the the end the end on the world of gaming for for future.

Jon:

Until

Dave:

things change again, and there's more to talk about. But having having gone through that experience of, you know, the kick particularly since the Kickstarter, where it felt really, really sensible and reasonable to be talking about it every time we we have a show, we're probably at the point where the need for that is is is less, less acute. So, I mean, I do wonder, just thinking off the top of my head, whether we could do something for an episode in the future about our experiences of kick starting and producing a game.

Matthew:

Well, funnily enough, before you signed up to do your usual seminar at UK Games Expo, I I was going to suggest that we might do a we've just done a kick starter. This is what we learned seminar, but but we didn't. Never mind. Maybe we'll do that to to track and meet.

Dave:

Yeah. Yeah. That's that's a good idea. I mean, what I might well do, because because I'm always quite you know, the agenda for these seminars is always quite loose. I might just, you know, leave a longer question and answer thing at the end.

Dave:

So if people did want to hear a few comments on on our experience with Kickstarters, I could I could I could talk about it a little bit. Yeah. But, yeah. Cool.

Matthew:

Let's just say this one thing in Old West news. If anybody is running Tales of the Old West, apart from Bruce, who we know about, Anybody else who's running Tales of the Old West, do get in touch with us. Come and see us and tell us how you run it. We may even if you haven't already had an exclusive gift for us, we may even have an exclusive gift for Tales of the Odd West GMs at UK Games Expo.

Dave:

Yeah. While stocks last.

Matthew:

While stocks last.

Dave:

Exactly. No clue.

Matthew:

Bruce, you've got yours already, so we'll see if we can find something else for you.

Dave:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. Good stuff.

Dave:

Right then. Well, that was kind of longer than I think we'd planned to talk about because actually the bigger part of today's show is the group discussion that you held with all our lovely friends and patrons that you already name checked earlier on your experiences of playing choreolist, the great dark. Looking forward to hearing all about that.

Matthew:

So welcome, fellow players and anointed GM, Thomas. Maybe the first thing we ought to do is quickly whiz around the table, introducing everybody so that our listeners can recognize your voices. I, of course, am Matthew, co host of the Effect podcast, and Jocina in the game

Dave:

that

Matthew:

we just played. John, you next? I did John first because I saw he was muted and I knew that he wouldn't unmute before he started.

Jon:

That's good. Thank you. I have a dog that's a bit shouting in the background sometimes. But well, I'm John, from Sweden, and, I played Asmira, the Delver.

Matthew:

And, John, have you not just played apart from Coriolis, the Great Dark, which we are talking about, have you also played Coriolis, third horizon, and prior to that, ye olde, Swedish version of Coriolis?

Jon:

Yes, I have.

Matthew:

So you are the too old hand amongst us.

Jon:

Yep. I've not GM'd any Coriolis, Only played. Cool. Strangely enough.

Matthew:

And Douglas?

Douglas:

I'm I'm Missiopio in the game. And I'm reluctant artsy and I have a teeny tiny channel.

Matthew:

And we will mainly find recordings of the game we've just played on your channel, won't we Douglas?

Douglas:

We will indeed. And I'm Canadian. Wee. Hooray.

Matthew:

Now we need to get back back to No, no, let's let's let's go the world tour and finish off with Pete. So Jed, that puts you next.

Jed:

Okay, I'm Jed and I played Verlov and never played quite a few Free League games, but I had never played any Coriolis or even read any of the books before sitting down to play this game. And, you know, I'm located somewhere near Canada, though she'll go unnamed.

Matthew:

And so you are untainted by any memories of previous Coriolis. That's what you're bringing to this discussion.

Jed:

Yes. It was very easy for me to play my character looking at your character, wondering what he's prattling on about because I myself was like, icons?

Matthew:

I don't

Jed:

know what those are.

Matthew:

Well, there you go. The truth will be revealed

Douglas:

to you.

Matthew:

The truth will be revealed. And then Thomas, esteemed GM for this for the adventure.

Thomas:

And yes. And I am I am I am nowhere near Canada or The UK or Sweden. I'm as far away from those places as you can be while still being in a triangle.

Matthew:

All places that shall not be named. All the places that shall

Thomas:

not be named for that matter. A good solid fourteen hours from anywhere by plane. And I was indeed the GM for Coriolis The Great Dark. I have GM'd a fair amount of the Third Horizon. And I have just realised the Third Horizon is the only free league game I've actually played at any length.

Thomas:

Because I am responsible for all of the capybara jokes that now do their rounds in the Coriolis universe for my Skavara. So, there you go. Sokar.

Matthew:

For wanting to eat a capybara. That's the main thing.

Thomas:

I was going to hunt it and then kill it. Anyway, let's not dwell on the cultural issues that became apparent. But yes,

Peter:

so I am

Thomas:

a GM.

Douglas:

Hell, there

Dave:

he is. Brilliant.

Matthew:

And the reason you haven't played any other three d games is because you are an eternal GM and mostly GM I

Thomas:

am mostly a GM and found it very strange to be a player.

Matthew:

Cool. And finally, let's come back to the home country. Pete, our esteemed, our greatest backer ever of tales of the Old West, actually, Pete. Yep. Yep.

Matthew:

What else do you have

Dave:

to say

Thomas:

about that?

Peter:

I am crippled by that backing. Anyway, my name is Pete. I played Attila in in the the in the in the game. I loved the third horizon. Adored it.

Peter:

And I'm also Dave's mate from Down the Pub.

Matthew:

Which is how you got to be playing Coriolis with Dave in Yes. Yeah. Down the Pub, locally. Dave is not joining us tonight. Dave has had a busy busy well, because he didn't play the game.

Matthew:

So what what contribution can he make? He'll be prattling on in either side of this, interview that we're recording now, in the in the show proper. Right. Let's crack on. We've got four topics.

Matthew:

The first topic we said we'd discuss is character creation. Who wants to go first? Nobody. Okay, I will. I am going to say I loved character creation.

Matthew:

It for me was a little bit of what would you call it? Life Path character creation. Really? That's what I'm talking about. Which did the thing actually that I remember on first reading the book for The Third Horizon.

Matthew:

As I sat down and read the book for The Third Horizon, every other paragraph kind of said, here's a story hook for your adventures in the future. You don't know what it means? We don't know what it means. You can invent it. It's just an idea we've thrown out there.

Matthew:

And that's a little bit like this. So I was immediately caught by being brought up in the slums of Aluminium Bay. I just like that phrase. I don't know what Aluminium Bay is. Actually, we do discover what Aluminium Bay is.

Matthew:

It's in the book. But I love that. Just here's a bunch of ideas. So that's my starter for 10. What did other people think?

Jon:

I think it was a traditional free league creation process with everything you expect, plus this quite handy life path thing that gave just enough without being too cumbersome or take too much time. So I think it was really good.

Peter:

Yeah. I I think it felt I think it felt like, you could pretty much roll anything on those tables, and it would make sense within your character's backstory. And that's something that, you know, needs to sort of needs to be able to happen in a random, character generator.

Jed:

I felt like the process got us to having a really well gelled group because we did character creation kind of altogether much better than some games. Like, think we ended up in a really kind of cool, if ragtag kind of like group, it kind of even though I didn't understand the universe or exactly what was going on, I understood the group dynamic and, it, you know, really clicked, I thought. Yeah,

Douglas:

I'm looking at the origin page. And I thought that that was fantastic, where you get an added talent, you also get this associated faction, and then you get some type of contact. And the way that everything worked out in the way that we did it was really brilliant. And Thomas will elaborate on the, on the process because he switched some parts around, which I thought were really, really good. The attributes, I personally really like the fact that there are six.

Douglas:

I know that there's a stigma because of the attachment to kind of more North American games. But strength, agility, and then the addition of insight and perception along with logic and empathy. Perception is the awareness and vigilance and insight is mental stability and intuition. I think that was a nice compromise of getting away from skills, putting them into attributes and then keeping the other four core attributes, allowing them to move into talents. So I, I really enjoyed it.

Douglas:

I thought that we did it really well in the game, but as kind of other people who are wanting to play this game, it'd be fantastic.

Matthew:

Okay. I'm going to put a bit of a challenge up here. Well, two challenges. Obviously my first old Corianite challenge, there are nine icons. There were four attributes.

Matthew:

I'm not saying any more than that. But this is known. No, my realistic challenge. Yeah, we did create, I mean, this wonderful group, which was, I think, enhanced by the fact that we were all doing it together, but also I think was somewhat enhanced. And I'm looking actually to Thomas here to comment on this.

Matthew:

Were we just lucky with the dice rolls in that we ended up being generally either black frog Coriolite associated with the black frogs I'm one of them. Douglas, are you a black frog? Are you a toad? Mean, not frog?

Douglas:

No, I was at nothing. As I recall, I

Matthew:

wasn't a faction. Surely you had

Dave:

a faction.

Douglas:

Yeah, did. I think that it was the navigators.

Jon:

A traitor among us.

Douglas:

I never said

Dave:

anything about it.

Matthew:

Yeah. You remember what we did to the navigators in the last

Douglas:

episode, don't you? Well, you know, things have to happen. I was more concerned about my makeup.

Matthew:

Yes. Yes. You are. So, Thomas, were we lucky without dice rolls? Or do you think the system lends itself to forming perfectly gelled groups, if not necessarily particularly equipped for the task that lies ahead of them?

Thomas:

I think a bit of luck was at hand. I think there's nothing in the system that specifically made because you're all rolling independent life paths. There was luck. There's no debate about that. But you also then made choices, right?

Thomas:

And those choices were obviously aligning across the group as you were discussing it. So, I think to Jed's point, doing it all together created both a narrative construct. And Pete was as a general statement sort of rolling first. So, that had a tendency to to bend the curb in a particular direction for want of better language. I don't think there's anything specific about the life path generation that would create that.

Thomas:

And actually, what I was going to say was the two things I was going to comment on. One, my attempt to change the structure so that you guys would build characters that would be more aligned to the role that you were going to play in the group completely But actually, in classic example of found strategies, it actually ended up being awesome because of course, then you were deliberately bending away from that. Like it was almost like it became the narrative construct is we're shit at our jobs. So that actually was brilliant. Like in a sense, the fact that you chose the opposite direction of the answer was actually what built the group really well.

Thomas:

I mean, was completely a player choice, but it was hilarious. And the second thing I was going to comment on, which is to build on Doug's point about the two additional stats. I was running Basin yesterday for one of my groups. And let's be upfront, the two skills that are rolled the most in any Free League game are the equivalent of observationinsightswhat is the person thinking? And what the hell is going on around me?

Thomas:

Perception looking for things. Like they are by far the most commonly rolled skills in any free league game, whatever name they carry. And so moving them to stats is an admission of reality. It's no different to, you know, the reason the other four are stats is because they're kind of baseline common traits, right? Like they're the core traits.

Thomas:

And I actually think it makes a lot of sense to make them stats. It's like, what does every player roll every freaking game, right? At least three times. Anyway, so yes, that would be my reflection on that. I do think as a general statement, as a big fan of life path generators and indeed someone who's written my own, I loved it.

Thomas:

I think it's really well done. I think the life path generation itself is elegant, which I'm always keen for. It's not very complex in one sense of the word, but it gives you a lot of variation. And that's a kind of brilliant mix.

Dave:

Yeah.

Douglas:

I'm sorry, Matt, but I did, didn't mention in the opening, but I did run this for a group of 12, 13 year olds Coriolis and Verge Horizon. And I think that there were actually more choices to be made in the great dark. Now, I'm not sure if that's a false memory, but that was something that struck me.

Matthew:

So Cornelius hasn't got a life path at all, has it? Absolutely. There's you can fudge a life path out of it by saying, know, there are 36 systems, so you can roll D66 to find out which one you come from and stuff, but, but, but you don't really have a life path. So that is more of a point build system. And, but yeah, you're right.

Matthew:

It's nice to have a life path where you've got choices. I remember, I think uniquely among us as a group, there were a couple of times where I said, I don't want to address this. I've seen aluminium bay. That's aluminium, aluminium bay, aluminium bay. Sorry, Jed.

Matthew:

Aluminium bay. That's where I want to come from. I love that phrase. So I ignored, or I didn't even roll a couple of times. But I think everybody else rolled dice.

Jed:

Think so.

Matthew:

Douglas, when you say more choice, what do you mean by more choice?

Dave:

I

Matthew:

mean,

Douglas:

the origin started us off really, really well. We obviously had choice there. Then we have reasons to become an explorer, which I thought was really good. Then we have our guild. We also had the bird, which was a collective that we worked on.

Douglas:

So that was a team building exercise, if you want to put it in that kind of perspective.

Matthew:

And of course, the ship and the rover as well to a lesser degree than a bird.

Douglas:

And then you have the specialities, which again seem to there's just layer and layer of building. I think that Thomas's word elegant is great. There is one aspect that I want to speak about just very, very briefly, that is quirks. So if you're at home looking on page 22, you'll see that we have quirks. Now, the quirks that are mentioned here in the Great Dark' are smokes too much, easily distracted, sleepy, suspicious, wears makeup.

Douglas:

Now these are kind of non invasive quirks. They're not something that's going to really challenge you as a team, but are something that you can build on. And I think that in some of the games that you'll find in Free League games like Dragonbane, and this has come up recently, that some of those quirks or, you know, things that you get experience points for for role playing actually can be detriments to the group as a collective. So being a berserker running into a situation or having some type of malice skill. So I think that the quirks in this work a bit better.

Douglas:

I was just looking through Third Horizon to see what theirs were, but I believe that they were pretty open ended as well and not kind of hurtful to the group. So they weren't detriments.

Matthew:

Yeah. Now there is one point on quirks. Maybe we should hold this over till the end, but maybe not. I remember one of us had a as you as you said, Douglas, play to your quirks, get an experience point. But one of us had a quirk that was not particularly playable.

Matthew:

It was like I can't remember what it was.

Jed:

Berloff had a tattoo.

Matthew:

Oh yeah. Had a tattoo. Yes. That is the one.

Jed:

I really role played that one too, think. But

Douglas:

if we spent more time, if we spent more time on Ship City, I think that that would have played more of a social interaction. I mean, mine was wears makeup or was always perfumed or both. And I mean, that would be more in social interaction than it was on the great ship. So if you're playing a campaign, I think that the perks will really come out. If you're playing something that's short term, it's nominal, but it's there.

Matthew:

This strikes me as a great segue to our next section, which is playing on the great ship. And we started off, of course, in Ship City, didn't we? Now, my first question is to you, Thomas, actually, on this one. How much of that did you create? Or how much of it was actually in because we were doing the starter adventure effectively, weren't we?

Matthew:

How much of that was added on by you as a GM?

Thomas:

Almost all of it. The adventure has a kickoff which involves, you know, the sort of the starting point obviously. So, you get it's a little Basin Y. You get a letter effectively for want of better language. In this case, it's a mission briefing or something from the Explorers Guild and you're sent off.

Thomas:

So, I flipped a lot of that around. First of all, I changed who was the bad guy and who was the good guy, for want of better language, like who was managing it and who wasn't just because it didn't gel particularly with how I had imagined it. I just flipped them. I didn't particularly mind. So, yes, so a lot of that came out of this.

Thomas:

And I listened to an actual play with another group and I can't remember who they were. And they did something similar. And I thought that was a really good move. So, as in they set up the meetings with the internal faction leads before they kicked off the actual delve. So, I took that as a bit of inspiration and then did my own riff on it.

Thomas:

So, So, the adventure itself did not have very much of that. You definitely did meet your sponsor, but it wasn't particularly significant. And the great ship was completely wasn't in the adventure at all. Like so I can I manufactured that completely from the tables that come with the game, which I use to create the superstructure for the great ship experience, and then built a bunch of notes and comments around that, which I've which I've said a few times now, which I think is and maybe it's just me? I tend to find sandbox games actually more work than non sandbox games as a GM.

Thomas:

I think it's oversold that sandboxing makes it easier for GMs. I think that's actually untrue.

Jed:

Who says that?

Thomas:

Well, there's this perception you've just got these tables and you just roll on them and then you're ready to go. And of course, that's bollocks.

Jed:

Yeah. That's never been true for me. I when I run a sandbox, it's I can't resist putting far, far too much work into it.

Thomas:

Yeah, and I think it's much more interesting, right? The sandboxes tend to give you a superstructure, but like I've run one ring, and it uses a very similar model. And I've actually found that bit the hardest bit as a GM to handle by far. So, So, those would be my comments.

Matthew:

So, yeah. So, you created a community with things. Mean, I feel particularly blessed as a Coriolite that you put me in contact with a bunch of fellow Coriolite nutters who are spoilers. And on top of the spoilers, I won't mention what those of us who are true choreolites know. So that was great fun.

Matthew:

We all had a whale of a time, and I think we could have played another session of just fucking around on the great ship. So I think that's a lesson for people, or particularly for gems is do pre roll, as you've said, those things and make it feel a little bit more than, oh, this is a chore you have to go through before you get to the adventure itself, which is to delve. Mean, me, that was the best bit.

Thomas:

Yeah, I was gonna say, I should also admit that to some extent you guys drove like so I had a superstructure I'd written out notes, but I did change those notes based on what you guys were doing. So the random courier lights living in the bottom of the ship secretly stealing oxygen and water from the ship for their prayers and therefore bringing the whole ship at risk was completely a riff on the fact that you decided, are there any Coriolites on this shit? Like it was literally you going, are there any co religious? I was like, oh, I was looking for a name for that group. Perfect.

Thomas:

There you go. It is official. They are now these people.

Douglas:

And they're sitting right there at that table.

Thomas:

They're sitting right there just at the table next to you. So, you know, I mean, I had an intention for a group of people who would be disruptors and literally your question to the effect of, are there any people like me on this ship? Oh yes. And then not us.

Matthew:

And in fact, that was of course triggered by another thing that I guess you'd rolled is we'd spotted a weird malfunction that was down in the end to a blight cyst. But my first thought was, is this sabotage? And could there be a group of Coriolis causing this sabotage? And they weren't causing this sabotage and they were kind of causing another form of sabotage, but I went to investigate those. And then I got invagled into them because let's face it, know, Corie likes to those people.

Matthew:

And they're my people. I've felt over them. But they turned out they weren't the thing that we were investigating. And I like that. I like the fact that that was, I triggered that, but it went off into effectively a red herring.

Matthew:

And there was another thing. Other people haven't talked. John, what was your shipboard experience?

Jon:

Oh, I liked it very much. I think it also was the best part, actually. I think, Thomas made it feel very real and gritty and well, things like that could happen on a ship and with all our jobs and working schemes and how we dealt with that. It was fun.

Matthew:

Douglas.

Douglas:

Well, love compare and contrast. So I just noticed that there's 30 pages devoted to Coriolis in Third Horizon, and Ship City has 20 pages. But then you have to look back to the beginning with character creation where the guilds are spoken about quite extensively. So there's a lot going there's a lot of input that the creators have put in to kind of flesh out the game. No, we don't have specific people for Alkmars, like they did, and tables for encounters in the Spire.

Douglas:

But Ship City, I think the drawing of it is fantastic. I thought that was amazing. Very retro kind of a Jules Verne esque type of drawing, which I really appreciated on the ship and with the game in the ship, because we didn't spend any time really on ship city, but I love the concept in the game. Reflecting on the game itself, I the things that I remember the most beginning, the captain's table was very vivid. I loved that.

Douglas:

I really liked the kind of mundane, oh, well, everybody works on this shit because that's what you do. And then the end part where Thomas had our kind of firefight as well with the manta. And then there was also the great ship was in peril because, you know, there were big blasts going through it. We didn't do anything to contribute to that whatsoever. But it was awesome.

Douglas:

I love that. And I, and I did like the Delft. I really, I but we'll get to that. But well

Jon:

And one thing I think to contrast to old Coriolis, it's it's I think the the great ship, it's a social thing to travel in space. While when you have just one little ship as a group, it's just a means to travel between things. I I like like the feeling of being on a real spaceship, so to speak, instead of just how we now we arrived at the new place, and let's go out and see what we'll find. So

Matthew:

Yes. Now I remember that Dave had been very impressed by the Ark in Mutant Year Zero and was hoping that the ship design in Coriolis The Third Horizon was going to feel like the Ark, and it never did. Because of course it doesn't have a community. Yes, you might all contribute to the design, but they were looking for something, I think a bit like Firefly in, or Serenity in the Firefly. But that it was just a bog standard.

Matthew:

It could have been a traveler ship or anything like that. Whereas when you've got a community that you're traveling with and other characters and you can magic up a group of Corriolites if you feel the need. That offers more actual role play. Pete?

Peter:

Yeah. I I think the the great ships, the the actual role play of of of that taking you to where you're going allows for a greater social role playing experience in that, you know, you you wanna if my character, for example, wanted to try and sell some drugs whilst he was on board. Mhmm. And, you know, to do that, he would have to be stationed inside the ship. So it was it was hit.

Peter:

It was more about him trying to get the good jobs on the inside of the ship, and also, you know, looking out for the rest of the ship as a whole, sorting out that blight assist because we needed to get it sorted because it was sapping energy from the ship's systems and, you know, put the ship in peril. We put the ship in peril later, but, you know, it's unintended, I think, is is the best way of putting that.

Douglas:

Says the pilot. Oh, no. You weren't.

Matthew:

Oh, captain. I

Douglas:

I really liked the feel and I hope that this isn't an offensive comparison. I liked the feel that it was a grittier type of Star Trek, that you were in a ship and it's kind of clunking along. So it's not in that way, but you were dealing with the ship's crew. You were dealing with day to day type things. And so that, it felt real and it felt compelling and I actually cared.

Douglas:

And that's the difference in a lot of games where you play and you want to get to the delve or you want to get to the goal, do you want to get to the, to, to something. I was very happy to, if we would have spent five or six sessions just fucking around on the great ship, I would have thought that that was awesome. There's also an interesting point that Coriolis is actually 500,000 people and the Greek ship is 200,000 people. So it's not that dissimilar and you have the variety that you can put in and the Coriolites can certainly have a much greater presence if you so desire.

Jed:

Ked? Yeah. So for the great ship, the ship city, I kind of saw that as my point of reference was like Tycho, I think from The Expanse. And since my character was an investigator, I'm like, Oh, I'm Miller, I got this, you know, I can, I can wrap my brain around that? When we got to the great ship.

Jed:

You know, I said like, Alright, well, I know it's a Dune type ship, but we don't know that much about the giant ships in Dune. But when we got invited to the captain's table, my brain, my lizard brain clicked in and I went back to space 1889 when like, you're on the ether flyer, and you have to have like this very proper Victorian kind of like dinners and things. And so I was like, oh, this is going to be like death on the Nile. Like, there's going be a murder and we're going to be investigating on the ship before we get to port or something. And and then it was like much grittier and it's more like something from alien or something like, you know, not the xenomorph part, but just the industrial.

Jed:

We gotta solve this problem on the ship, there's, weird doings down in the bowels. And so, like, I enjoyed that quite a bit, but I was still very much trying to figure out my references and and wrap my brain around it.

Matthew:

I've got to say, it's been said that one of the references for The Great Dark is The Terror, the story of a nineteenth century sailing ship stuck in the Arctic. And by God, it feels a lot like that, actually. I think that's a real success. If they were saying that great ship transport should feel like eighteenth century ocean going, then they've managed to pull that off in some way. The Delve.

Matthew:

Let's move on to the Delve because we've spent a bit too long on the great ship. I'm gonna say I'm gonna come out and say it. The Delve, for me, I wasn't there for half of it, so this might not be fair. But it felt a lot like dungeoneering. And, actually, that's not what I play role playing games for.

Jon:

I I think it was fine. We took a little bit to understand the how it worked and with the resources or the management of points. But I think it was it was good. But I think also that if the game only was the delving and spending downtown in Ship City, then I don't think this game would be that fun, actually. But also it was a short short adventure when not much mystery really or or well, there are some some themes in the Great Dark that we could have explored more if we had more time, I think.

Jon:

So now it was just get down and see what what's the source of this and then get back up.

Jed:

The Dell felt kind of board gamey to me, honestly. Like, maybe I was part of it. I think I said this on the the Discord, it's like the fact that we're looking at a side view on the map rather than, like, a floor plan top view. It's kept made a bit more abstract and then you combine that with supply, which is a pretty abstract resource because it can be both your bullets and your air. All of that was just like, okay, we're playing the game and we want to win the game.

Jed:

So I think we skipped a lot of side rooms and other role playing opportunities in the interest of like, you know, achieving the mission.

Peter:

And I think initially it felt like, oh, it's going to be tough to make our resources last. But as we got further and further in and, you know, we found a bit of, you know, some resource, it was like, oh, okay. This is fine, which is you know, initially, that I think that's why we pushed on because we thought, maybe we don't have enough. Go on, Doug.

Douglas:

No. I was just gonna say I re maybe I'm just a dungeon delver. I enjoyed it. I thought it was far better than say some of my other experiences with fantasy dungeon or castle or tomb delving. I enjoy, I enjoy the social game, I think much more in recent years than I did when I was younger, where it was, you know, you were in a dungeon and you were just going from one fight to another fight, to another fight, one trap to another trap to another trap.

Douglas:

I had a, I had a more realistic feeling in, in this type of delving. So I didn't feel that it was as board gaming as others did, but I thought that it was really fun because of the tension. And I did feel the tension and the tension was partly the supply. As abstract as it is, I like that better than micromanaging bullets or micromanaging, you know, oxygen as different from say something else where that's similar to Vassen in that, you know, you don't need to have the coinage money. You have just a kind of, this is your class.

Douglas:

This is how much you can afford. If you have to look at the price tag, you can't afford it. So with supply, we were looking at it. I didn't feel obsessed. I just felt more and more pressure as we were going down.

Douglas:

And that also came about with the bird. And I think Matthew, if you were there for the session with the bird and controlling the bird, you would have felt much more in control of the emergence of the blight and the importance of how that could really tear us apart. But we had great roles. So,

Peter:

Sorry. Sorry, Matt.

Jon:

I was

Matthew:

gonna tell you, I was there for the very first writ of the delve, and there's some lovely bird control there, I have to say, speaking as bird meister or whatever the, the, the specialist. So that was, that was good. But I guess my issue is, I don't know what you encountered, but my fear is you encountered some blight monsters and you defeated the blight monsters. There was, I think, catching up on the end of the because I whizzed through to see how the other episode ended. I wasn't there before we did the last episode, but I didn't see all of it.

Matthew:

I think there was some human contact with a fake human that was actually a blight controlled beastie. But yeah, I'm a social role player. I like the politics and the intriguing, and there didn't seem to be much of that. We didn't meet any other factions around the Delve until I returned to the next session when we had the space combat. John, you've spoken?

Jon:

Oh, I've spoken, but I can speak more. I think it's I think the resource management I I think it works. If you don't think of it too much, it gets some tension. But it's it's, as you say, it's not much social, maybe between the players, but it's it's not much, it's more of an exploration rather than

Matthew:

was

Jed:

just gonna say, I feel like I think I said this at the time, I felt like if we were playing around a table in person and we had like, you know, tokens representing our supply and you're tossing them in and you have to go around somebody has to throw one every time and things like that and make it a little more tactile. Because I yeah, I under I got the tension from supply. And I don't particularly want to be micromanaging bullets and air separately or any of that. But I was also just having a hard time visualizing what was happening. And I do like to have a clear idea.

Jed:

But I also say that in the Delt, there was some moments that I thought were really evocative, the tentacle bush thing that we had to fight at the very beginning. And just like this idea of you're going into a ziggurat, but it's completely choked with this like, you know, intelligent weed brush thing that we had to kind of hack our way through. So it was very different vibe than going into the caves of chaos. Yeah. I

Douglas:

wanted to mention what I did with the kids. And I can't remember the details, but I don't want any spoilers. So if you haven't played this module or campaign or whatever adventure, was it Station 18? Yep. In in Yeah.

Douglas:

In in in third horizon. Now I believe that it's Station 18 where you you go. And then at the very top, there's a garden. And and is that true, Matt?

Matthew:

Well, the whole the whole of the station is covered in Yeah. In in growth. Yeah. It also appears in Dark Flowers, which is an adaptation of it, which is the start of the adventure of the core book.

Douglas:

So I, I really felt a reminiscence of going back to that and that feeling with the tree. And I liked the fact that the navigators had become zombie esque because of the blight. I liked description, but I think that it's important to say to those who are listening, what we played was a brief snapshot of possibilities and trying to work through the rules to see. I don't think that the delve is integral to the, the gameplay of the great dark. But I think that if it's, if it's used well, that it can easily become a top down view.

Douglas:

It can be a side view. And I think that there are little innovations which were good.

Matthew:

Last word on the delve to you, Thomas.

Thomas:

So, I definitively had first and second edition D and D in my head with the big tables at the back of the DM's guide where you rolled up dungeons in my head as I kind of worked through the delve. So, that might be partially my fault. I think the delve works well if it's within the context of a greater story. I think everyone is right about the Delve itself being a bit mechanical. I think it would be lying to suggest otherwise.

Thomas:

It's designed that way. It's very mechanical in feel. It's I obviously pre rolled things and added to them. But at the end of the day, it's go here, look at this, go here, look at this, go here, fight this. I am actually tempted by the idea of splitting say supply into the two pools of stuff you use to fight things, stuff you use to survive things.

Thomas:

Because I actually think that would bring out the choice making component of what am I carrying into the environment much more structurally like you'd actually be trading off am I going to carry a shit like so Jed's Coiler Carbine was the bete noir of the GM's monsters. But if it was you Verlov is carrying less oxygen because he's packing six freaking boxes of ammunition strapped to his back, and everyone's going sucks to be you, Verlov, when you're trying to clamber out because Verlov doesn't have enough oxygen and then there's a genuine, alright, who's gonna give Verlov enough oxygen to get out of the thing? That actually might be much more fascinating than it looks at first. I ran an aliens campaign where the characters were exploring why is there so much cross genetic material across all the different planets? Because if you think about it, every modern science would suggest that if you go to another planet and try and eat the food, you're almost certainly going to die horribly or it's going to do nothing for you.

Thomas:

Yeah. And the fact that in the alien game, there's a whole thing about you can eat these crustaceans from this planet that's literally like that, you know, 100 light years away from Earth. You can literally they're a delicacy that you can consume is fascinating, right? Like it sets up a whole really interesting question for a science group to explore, which is why the fuck can we eat, said crustacean. So, if you took that approach to the delving mechanism where it was part of a greater arc and you were exploring a particular set of interesting things, which this could easily turn into because what was going on in the background is drug running, right?

Thomas:

Like at the end of the day, the whole story was actually about drug running. And if that then became a whole series of adventures where you were diving into places to find out the story of the drug running and and the fact that someone is basically shipping blight back to the ship city and people are sniffing it, that can't possibly be a problem in the future. What could possibly go wrong? And then you become part of that story. And so you go to different delves.

Thomas:

Think that would work really well. Think I think I agree completely that if the game I can't remember who said it. If this game was primarily about the delve, which is how it presents, which is actually a really important point. Okay, so everything we've talked about is in the lore section of the game. We have not like all of the fun stuff is in the lore section.

Thomas:

There's a couple of tables rolling up great ship travel. It's literally two pages worth of tables. Most of the mechanics from an adventure perspective are built around the Delve. So actually, in all fairness to all the people who complained about the Great Dark being overly focused on the Delve, they're right. They're completely correct.

Thomas:

It's just that as a group, you can just like you can in Coriolis, there's 15 pages of combat rules or something, Like, who gives a toss? Okay, like, like we hold Coriolis up as this fantastic system. It's not, it's actually a really average system. It's not a great system. The darkness tokens are an endless, I just ignore them conversation.

Thomas:

The combat system is overly complicated and min maxes certain weapon selection choices and talents. It's a terrible system. It's a great law setting. It's a freaking awesome law setting. And people then build that into great campaigns.

Thomas:

And there's no reason why that can't work for the great dark. You kind of have to take the same attitude. Anyway, therein does my rant.

Matthew:

Now, we have overrun in our recording. We've got limited time. So one word from everybody in turn about the mechanics. Is there is there something you want to celebrate or or or destroy in the mechanics from what you've experienced so far? And I'm gonna be really mean and gonna pick people out as the way I see them, which means, John, you're first.

Jon:

Okay. Short. I I like the the way, equipment is a very important part of the game. So you have to have the right equipment, and that feels a good way. It's it's on the theme of the game, so to speak.

Jon:

You have to plan and you have to bring just what you need.

Matthew:

And Douglas?

Douglas:

Talents. They are special skills, traits and abilities that can benefit your explorer. And they do. I love the traits. I did not miss the skills because of the fact that the attributes fit in the basically the two most rolled things that you've got socially and interactively.

Douglas:

I loved it. I really liked, I liked the mechanics.

Matthew:

Cool. Pete?

Peter:

The the delve itself, to me, felt fun and different. It's it's not typically a role playing game that I you know, the type of role playing game I would play. I am more of a social role player, but the Delve felt different to me, and I really enjoyed it regardless of its faults.

Matthew:

Okay.

Jed:

Jed? This may come as no surprise, but I really enjoyed the auto fire rules. I mean, it really evoked the feeling like you're opening up and you know? But at the same time, have to balance that with knowing that this also is going to cost me, like, air, you know, like, going back to that supply point concept. But you're just strafing across a group was a lot of fun.

Douglas:

You also must have really liked the fact that the dungeon or the the the the narrator rolled what? Was it 40 dice and got, like, two successes or something like that?

Thomas:

48 dice and Pete get two successes.

Peter:

Yeah, was against me. I loved that. That was brilliant.

Thomas:

48 dice. Anyway.

Matthew:

Thomas, what was your favorite or least favorite part of the mechanics?

Thomas:

Yeah, if you will indulge me. So, two things very quickly. One, I actually think the experience point frame is excellent. Only we didn't know that it was excellent until we got to it at the end. So, it actually inspires all of those things we've talked about on this call about working with your faction and communicating with people and playing up your quirks.

Thomas:

And we didn't know any of that until we got to it. And then we went, Oh, what do you know? Oh, turns out we were meant to be intriguing with our factions and doing all of those other And that's where the experience points are. Awesome. Good to know.

Thomas:

So, I would suggest they should bring that up a little bit in its prominence in reference to the game and that conversation on Delve. And the sort of negative, and I completely align with Jed on this, the tables for the grade ships I enhanced to death. I spent hours on working out what they would actually mean. So, actually in a sense, it's that classic line of too much too little, but they're probably pretty sparse. There's a lot of choice, but they're probably pretty sparse.

Thomas:

And so, something more like a Moria style table set where you can actually roll chambers and get lots of really interesting detail out of that die system might benefit the game.

Matthew:

Thomas, it sounds like you should create that for the Free League Workshop. Because I loved our great ship.

Thomas:

I start thinking about but I'm trying very hard to pretend that I actually work for a living at the moment and it's consuming all of my time.

Matthew:

And that's made me both remember and forget my favourite thing, which has really actually happened. There was a thing I really liked, but it's gone. Damn it. I'll probably remember it by the time the episode's out, and I'll mention it there. No, I shouldn't have gone off on that little fantasy of you creating a vessel in Japan for great ship travel.

Matthew:

So I think we're concluding. Thank you, everybody, for joining us, or whatever time of day it is for you. Good morning, Thomas. Time to wake up the rest of your family and enjoy a Sunday. And good evening, John.

Matthew:

It's always time for bed. And good afternoon, Jed and Douglas.

Douglas:

Supper time. Supper class.

Jon:

It's been

Matthew:

a real pleasure having you all here. Thank you very much.

Douglas:

Thank you.

Jed:

Yeah, thank you. Thanks.

Dave:

So now even more I regret not having got involved because it's such a great group of people that you played with despite you and it sounds like you had a great load of fun. And I and I am interested to play the game. I, you know, I you know, full disclosure, I was a little disappointed when I first heard about it and that the changes and how far it moved away from, you know, Coriolis of Third Horizon. But actually, I mean, having looked at it a bit over the time and having heard comments like these, I'm much more interested in the game than I than I kinda thought I would be. I think my my big question though, which maybe came out of your conversation, but I didn't just grasp didn't I didn't grip on it, is why?

Dave:

Why are people in the great dark delving? What's the reason behind doing that? What's the point? What drives them?

Matthew:

That's that's a good question. I don't think we particularly covered it really in the conversation. And we had a specific mission in this adventure to find out what had happened to another party, as it were. I mean, broadly speaking, the delve feels you know how in Simba room, obviously, there's your wonderful city life and your politics and stuff like that, but there's an idea and an assumption in Symbroom that you're gonna go off and go into the forest and find an ancient ruin and explore explore the thing. Well, it feels to me that the delve is is that.

Dave:

Because that because that's interesting. Because in Simba Room, it's always felt like this is just like treasure hunting. You know? Or you might you might be an archaeologist, so you're treasure hunting, but for a for a different motivation. But I wonder whether in the Great Dark, there should be a more intrinsic, more philosophical reason why you are delving rather than just this is a this is kind of a dungeon delve, and I wanna find what treasure treasure is at the bottom.

Matthew:

Yeah. I mean, it is but it is kind of archaeological. It is you know, I think we're closer here in the Lost Horizon to the builders that we used to call the portal builders. There there are more artifacts. Well, I'm not sure that there are actually more artifacts, because ancient portal builder technology seemed to be pretty damn rife in in the third horizon.

Matthew:

It just generally it wasn't necessarily a thing that, you know, you you were being the primary source of that portal builder technology, Well, at least not in the games that we were playing. So so, yeah, there feels that we are we are unearthing structures and devices and artifacts of a previous civilization that may be important to us.

Dave:

Yeah. So But I've

Matthew:

got to say

Dave:

I was just curious.

Matthew:

The build

Dave:

so the builders in the Lost Ark are are basically the the civilization of the Simba in Simberun. Is that what we're saying?

Matthew:

I I think that may be the case. Yeah.

Dave:

Yeah. Okay.

Matthew:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I haven't actually read it. I I didn't want to read too much in the background as a player. So unlike with Coriolis, I did I have not devoured the book Yeah.

Matthew:

From front to back. But you you'll you'll recall that Thomas said that he kind of has, and in fact, there's lots of great law in there. And this comes to my point, I think, which I think we as a group enjoyed the politicking aboard the great ship and the sort of random encounters on the journey, which all, you know, there are tables to make this sort of stuff, but it did require both reading, you know, being inspired by the law and doing the same thing that the law, in fact, does in The Third Horizon, that it inspires you to expand upon it straight away, which is, you know, I think one of the great strengths of the creative team behind Coriolis generally, and why we even do this podcast now.

Dave:

I mean, Thomas, I'd say, we're certainly at the end that that there are a

Matthew:

lot of

Dave:

tables in there for use, but it feels quite procedural. And he had to do, I think he said, hours of work to bring them up to to to what he presented to you guys as the players.

Matthew:

Yeah. I mean, you know you know how I like to roll Forbidden Land's procedural tables in game, then I have to pause sometimes to click it in. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think he thinks it's kind of impossible to do that, and you shouldn't do it in game.

Matthew:

You should do it pregame.

Dave:

In advance.

Matthew:

Yeah. Then absorb the stuff and expand on the stuff beforehand, which

Dave:

Yeah.

Matthew:

Which maybe, you know, maybe I'd try and wing it in game as I so often do, because, you know, me and prep. And maybe I could make a half decent hash of it. I I don't know. I've I've I've not looked at it yet. But, yeah, I think the key thing is Well, you did

Dave:

a job with that Forbidden Lands scenario that we did completely procedurally. That was Yeah. Yeah. That was very well done. That was a really good story.

Matthew:

And maybe you can do the same thing, but it does feel to me like there's a lot of lore to absorb first in The Lost Horizon. You know, he brought stuff out for our characters. We didn't make it easy for him in Couch Generation because he tried to set it up so that we could create, we we knew what our roles were before we did our character generation. So that, of course, we would then create characters that were best that, you know, as good as they could be at doing those roles. And actually, if we didn't, we just used the dice and, you know, we saw what flowed out of And we've got a great group of characters.

Matthew:

I would quite happily play Attila's Circus again. Pete, your friend Pete, our leader. I was the scout and also the, I guess you'd call it the master of the bird. That

Dave:

does sound But none of

Matthew:

us were particularly well qualified for our roles.

Dave:

Yeah.

Matthew:

And so so we all and it was great. It was really good fun and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. But I almost despite the and this is, I think, the big difference for me between Coriolis, The Third Horizon, and The Great Dark is in both games, you've got a great deal of lore. The lore in The Great Dark has evolved from the lore in The Third Horizon, so that doesn't feel too much like we've lost stuff. Yes.

Matthew:

Coriolis are religious nutters now. And no matter how hard you pray, you don't actually, you know

Dave:

Don't get a boat sorted.

Matthew:

Get answered by the gods. Yeah. Because because the mechanics aren't there. So the thing we've said that the darkness points in The Third Horizon are a clunky way of paying the cost of your re roll. But actually, within the structure of stuff like going to chapel to do preparatory prayer and then getting an extra bonus when you've done that.

Matthew:

Sweet, sweet. And that really the lore and the mechanics combine them to give us something really special. And it doesn't feel that the mechanics of this game combine with the lore in such a way. So for me, it's still essentially a slightly disappointing experience. We had great fun, but that was through the efforts of Thomas as a GM, you know, understanding our characters and where we were coming from, finding bits of lore in the book that fitted in with that, and expanding on that.

Matthew:

And it's it's a

Dave:

great work. And having a great group of players that really got into

Matthew:

And having yeah. So it's not all Thomas' effort. We, you know, we've got some obviously, you know, and here's here's here's a word for people who are considering patronizing the podcast. If you patronize the podcast, you get an invite to our Discord, which is the nicest based on the Internet. But it's where you get to meet these excellent players, players and GMs.

Matthew:

And, you know, we we there there's some lovely games happening here that you and I have no involvement in at all. And when we do get involved, we we have a world of fun. Yeah. So let's just say that. We've got a lovely a lovely team of people on our Discord.

Matthew:

I love everybody.

Dave:

Yeah.

Matthew:

And and this is so yeah. And there's just another example of the mechanics not fitting in. So as I've said, darkness points are a bit clunky. The the interesting thing is the cost of prayer now is hope.

Dave:

I was gonna say, what's what's the push mechanic?

Matthew:

So you spend a point of hope. Yeah. But, and this is fascinating, because this is something that we dallied with in

Dave:

Oh, I think I remember now. Yeah. Go on.

Thomas:

Yeah.

Matthew:

Which is that all the ones you roll cost you more hope. Yeah. So you don't know how much hope you are going to use. And obviously, when you run out of hope, bad things happen. So this is But

Dave:

you always spend one hope to push in the first place?

Matthew:

Yes. Yeah.

Dave:

Is that right? Right.

Matthew:

So it's already a bit from my version of all.

Dave:

Yeah. Well, play tested that idea with your friends and they hated it, didn't they?

Matthew:

Yeah. Now I was trying to work out why. Yeah. Why why it wasn't and I don't think anybody hated it in this system. Think broadly it's because we had a bigger pool of hope than you and I were creating on average for faith.

Matthew:

So I think my starting hope was like 10 or 11 points.

Dave:

Right, okay. So you could afford a couple of bad rolls and losing a few points without it.

Matthew:

Yeah. Completely

Dave:

lower your hope pool.

Matthew:

Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I think I might have had more hope than everybody else, I I think. So that might be kind of towards the maximum I'd

Dave:

Right.

Matthew:

It's based on a couple of the stats. You've got six stats in this one. I can't remember which stats contribute to your hope. But I'd, you know, I'd luckily, because of the sort of character I was, you know, a couple of my bigger stats gave me quite a big hope pool. Yeah.

Matthew:

But nobody, I don't think anybody felt, Oh, I'm really low on hope. Pete, I think, got down to, know, here's my last one or two points of hope. So I think by the end of the campaign, he was, or by the end of the adventure, he was, you know, not wanting to push.

Dave:

Struggling.

Matthew:

But also, he was incredibly lucky in his role, so he didn't need to push, actually. Okay. Cool. At one point in in the last I I I had to miss out on adventure for social reasons or something. I can't remember exactly what.

Matthew:

And so I came back the week later, and and Pete was in the middle of a combat where the big bad monster was throwing every sort of attack at him. And the the attacks work a little bit like they do in Alien. It's a random roll and then something terrible.

Dave:

Signature attacks. Yeah.

Matthew:

And and this monster was designed really to attack the whole party. So anybody within the sphere of influence would suffer whatever its attacks were. And there was only one person within the sphere of influence for whatever I don't. And it was Pete. So he was getting all the attacks on him.

Matthew:

And yeah, every time the monster rolled, they actually attacked dice. You know, nine, ten, 12 dice. They were getting no successes or very few successes. And Pete was a relatively resistant, resilient character anyway, so when he was damaged it wasn't that much. Was blooming hilarious to watch it.

Matthew:

To see Thomas's frustration that the big bad monster was being so ineffectual. So yeah, luckily he didn't need to do too much in the way of re rolling, having spent most of his hope. Yeah, it worked. I think it worked because, you know, there were just you had a bigger pool to work on.

Dave:

Yeah. Whereas,

Matthew:

you know, one

Dave:

bankroll in Charles Can you recover

Matthew:

easily. Yes. As well. So was it

Dave:

an economy that was going up and down throughout the scenario?

Matthew:

Yeah. I think it was easy to take a rest and recover hope, and there are other ways of recovering hope as well. So, yeah, I didn't ever feel particularly threatened. Well, my character didn't. You know?

Matthew:

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I missed out one of the one of the sessions where a lot of combat was going on. But I'd, you know, I'd I'd been pretty much flattened by a monster in the previous session to that.

Matthew:

And obviously, there were shenanigans in the last session.

Dave:

Yeah.

Matthew:

As well. And at no point did I really get very worried about my hook level.

Dave:

Yeah. Cool.

Matthew:

And I think it's one of those games, again, a bit like Versen, where because actually the chances of success are relatively low, and the dice pool is by no means as big as in Coriolis The Third Horizon.

Dave:

Right.

Matthew:

So it's less pulpy. You choose to do things other than roll dice quite often.

Dave:

Yes. Right. Okay. Cool. Mean, it sounds really interesting.

Dave:

And and like I said, my my excitement about getting the the physical copy and having actually sitting down and having a read of it is is is definitely higher now than it was when when I first backed it. So, yeah, I'm very much looking forward to seeing it. And Yeah.

Matthew:

And we've been playing off the PDFs, but it looks Yeah. Beautiful. And I think the book will be a beautiful thing to hold as well. Yeah. I mean, obviously, not as beautiful as Tales to the Old West, but but what can be?

Matthew:

Well,

Dave:

indeed. Indeed. And on that self congratulatory note, I think we're probably done for today, aren't we?

Matthew:

Yeah. We are. Bloody hell. We've talked for an hour, and there's We have. This might turn out to be quite a long program, boys and girls.

Dave:

It'll be a long show, folks. Yep.

Matthew:

But if you're listening to this at this end of the program, you already know that.

Dave:

This is very true. Very true. Anyway, well, thank you for lasting this far. If you did get this far, we appreciate it. You are a stalwart of the Effect podcast.

Matthew:

Anyway Next week next time, we will be shorter.

Dave:

Yeah. Is that all we're gonna say for now?

Matthew:

I think that's all we're gonna say. So you may have a there may be an interview in in the offing, but we don't want to spoil it if if it doesn't happen or if it doesn't happen or whatever. Yep. So you're gonna have a bit of a chat about that, and there may be an interview. Or there will be something else.

Dave:

Indeed. There will be loquacious content in one way or another.

Matthew:

Yeah. I'm partly inspired to do a little bit of Koilos of the Great Dark lore at some point, so which will get us back to our roots.

Dave:

Yeah. That'll be cool.

Matthew:

So if we don't have an interview, I might try and bash something out for that.

Dave:

That's a good idea. So do we have any idea when the great dark is likely to fulfil physically? Because I don't really have a sense. I mean, it can't be much longer. But because again, I I don't really like doing stuff off PDFs, so I really want to get the physical book in my hand.

Dave:

So I haven't looked at the PDF in any great detail.

Matthew:

So they've got their rule book from the printer, apparently.

Dave:

Yeah. So I guess we're probably weeks away rather than months then, with any luck.

Matthew:

So maybe. Well, yeah. Unless Yeah. There was quite a big gap between us getting our books back from the printer and fulfilment happening, but that's only because we hadn't done the Part

Dave:

of that was our fault, though. You know, that was our, you know, made talk about That was my rookie era, yeah, that really caused that.

Matthew:

Yeah. So

Dave:

So, hopefully, they're not going be making those kind of rookie errors after all their Kickstarter experience. So

Thomas:

But, yeah.

Dave:

Yeah. So, hopefully

Matthew:

Likely happening in month of June, possibly July, is what they say.

Dave:

Okay. Cool. So not that. A couple of months away then. So that's cool.

Dave:

Because I'm I'm I'm beginning to feel a little bit of FOMO about this actually. So I'm quite keen to get the book and and and have a read in it and and start exploring the great dark. But I said I don't really like sitting down and reading PDFs in that way. Anyway, okay. I think then it's goodbye from me.

Matthew:

And it's goodbye from him.

Dave:

May the icons bless your adventures.

Creators and Guests

person
Host
Dave Semark
Dave is co-host and writer on the podcast, and part of the writing team at Free League - he created the Xenos for Alien RPG and as been editor and writer on a number of further Alien and Vaesen books, as well as writing the majority the upcoming Better Worlds book. He has also been the Year Zero Engine consultant on War Stories and wrote the War Stories campaign, Rendezvous with Destiny.
person
Host
Matthew Tyler-Jones
Matthew is co host of the podcast, as well as writer, producer, senior editor, designer and all round top dog. He was also been involved a couple of project for Free League - writing credits include Alien RPG, Vaesen: Mythic Britain and Ireland, and Vaesen: Seasons of Mystery as well as a number of Free League Workshop products.
Previously known as The Coriolis Effect Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License