Dave: 00:39

Hello and welcome to episode 268 of Effect. We could be heroes. I'm Dave.

Matthew: 00:49

And I'm Matthew. And in a shock twist, we don't have a packed program. And why don't we have a packed program, Dave?

Dave: 00:56

Reasons.

Matthew: 00:58

Because I'm an idiot.

Dave: 01:00

Well, I'm glad you said that. It saved me from saying it. Although, you know, you know

Matthew: 01:04

I was

Dave: 01:04

thinking it all along.

Matthew: 01:07

So Dave Dave and I conducted a lovely well, no. Actually, you know, the

Dave: 01:14

It was all a bit shambolic.

Matthew: 01:16

Bedeviled with problems.

Dave: 01:17

It was.

Matthew: 01:17

Because actually, you didn't turn up for the beginning of it, did you?

Dave: 01:20

I was late. You were stuck

Matthew: 01:21

in traffic. Yeah. So I started the conversation with Thomas talking about the Invincible RPG. And Thomas, of course, Thomas Haeremstadt from Free League. But what I had failed to do at some point early in that conversation was press the record button.

Matthew: 01:45

And now I don't know how because I'm pretty sure I was talking through Thomas as I

Dave: 01:52

Pressing the record button.

Matthew: 01:53

And how it was a pain because you have to do it about three times in in StreamYard. But, obviously, if it's three times, I only did it twice or something.

Dave: 02:02

If it's twice, you you did maybe did it three times and accidentally turned off.

Matthew: 02:06

Or maybe. Yeah.

Dave: 02:07

When you were turning thought you turned it on. Yeah.

Matthew: 02:10

No idea. No idea. But for some reason, towards the end of our forty minute interview, which is erudite and entertaining

Dave: 02:18

As always.

Matthew: 02:18

I looked at the clock to see how much you'd recorded. And There wasn't recorded anything.

Dave: 02:23

There was no clock. Yes. And I and I noticed a little box at the end that said, the recording hasn't started. It's like Yeah. That that doesn't sound good.

Dave: 02:32

So what we're gonna do is an an effect podcast first. We're going to do a live reenactment with Matthew and I playing Thomas and playing no. No. No. We're not gonna do any of that.

Dave: 02:45

We'll we'll do what we can to remember what Thomas said, and we will replay, review Yeah. And then discuss what what came

Matthew: 02:54

out of it. The other thing, of course, that has happened since then, in fact, was happening that very evening after the interview, is I was having a game which you can see, and we'll put a link in our show notes to this. You can see this on on the YouTubes or the moonshines or whatever. Frank, Raldanash, as he is known on the community, ran the quick start for a group of us, including me. And you can see that, and I will give you my impressions of play.

Matthew: 03:22

Indeed. And maybe, given that you and I, Dave, were playing Spectaculars yesterday

Dave: 03:28

We were.

Matthew: 03:28

I will compare it with Spectaculars. And Okay. Yeah. And maybe we'll come to a conclusion about which we prefer.

Dave: 03:35

And it well, it was it was a particularly good game yesterday. And there have been there have been moments with Spectaculars where I haven't it's taken me a while to really grasp the core the core the core kind of thread of how you should play that game. And we I remember the gate, session before this one, we had a little debate about stuff, which is which is very helpful actually in understanding actually where Spectacular is coming from. And with that understanding, we had a great game yesterday. We had a really good fight, which we can talk about later on.

Matthew: 04:08

Yes. It was the first time, in fact, in four and and I'm admiring the campaign actually because it's building up the threat level each time as we go through this little there's 12 adventures in this campaign, which is called Streetlight Nights, and it's street level superheroes. But it's building up the the threat level each time. So this is the first time that you encountered a proper supervillain.

Dave: 04:38

Two two of them, in fact.

Matthew: 04:40

Actually, two. Although, one of them, because of my mistake, didn't play as a proper super villain. But we'll do next time. And the beauty of the story engine, the wonderful procedural story making, is we were able to resolve that my mistake in a way that fitted in perfectly with the story, which we will talk a bit about a bit later on.

Dave: 05:01

Absolutely. Cool.

Matthew: 05:03

But before then, we've got some we've got no new patrons to thank. So that's another item that isn't on the running list. Elbow.

Dave: 05:09

Thank you to all our patrons anyway. We always

Matthew: 05:11

All our patrons.

Dave: 05:12

We always we always need to thank all everyone who supports us past and present. So, yeah, thank you all very much. We couldn't do it without

Matthew: 05:19

We also have our regular section of news from the world of gaming, and we have a old West news section.

Dave: 05:28

We do. We do.

Matthew: 05:30

With some very exciting news in it in two different ways. Some of which some of our fans will know, but some of which will be brand new to most except two fans that I've heard. Indeed. So shall we crack on?

Dave: 05:46

Yeah. World of gaming.

Matthew: 05:47

World of gaming.

Dave: 05:48

Right then.

Matthew: 05:49

Okay. The first thing I wanted to bring to the world of gaming is a game I've just noticed, and it looked quite interesting. So this is only my impressions on Kickstarter and an interview I read on nWorld. I'll link to them both in the show notes. And this is called Cosmic Corsairs.

Matthew: 06:09

And broadly speaking, I love a game set in a space with swords, and this seems to feature that on the cover. So that's what grabbed my grabbed my attention. I also love the fact that the tagline is grab your laser pistol because laser pistols are what everybody should have. I'm hoping for a slightly nineteen thirties adventure serial vibe to this.

Dave: 06:32

Okay. You're you're you're looking for spaceships that are made out of washing up liquid bottles and and Buster Crab kind of characters.

Matthew: 06:42

I'm I I'm precisely looking for Buster Crab. I'm not sure what they made the spaceships out of there. Or even your man, the the fellow that played it in the nineteen eighties Flash movie.

Dave: 06:55

Oh, well

Matthew: 06:58

can Sam, somebody?

Dave: 07:00

Yeah. Sam. I'm gonna have to look that up now. Sam, I can picture him.

Matthew: 07:05

Now you're looking at you you look He that

Dave: 07:07

was he was a former American football player, I seem to think, wasn't he?

Matthew: 07:10

He was. Yes. And indeed, that was that was that was featured in the film. Yeah. For some reason

Dave: 07:20

He did throw something. Yeah.

Matthew: 07:22

He had to play American football.

Dave: 07:23

Sam j Jones, his name was. Now I wouldn't have Yeah. I have that myself, actually. But yeah.

Matthew: 07:29

Lovely bloke. I I are there rumors about his voice being actually dubbed and him not actually using his own voice on there?

Dave: 07:37

Is there? Okay.

Matthew: 07:37

Anyway, it's a great if you've not seen the nineteen eighties Flash Gordon movie, you should watch it.

Dave: 07:45

Yeah. Oh, it's it's it's got it's got Max Von Sydow in it, and and everything he's done has been brilliant.

Matthew: 07:51

As the emperor Ming is And

Dave: 07:53

Brian Blessed, bless him, is Gordon's alive. He's as bonkers as ever. Yeah. Which I mean I might Which actually tiny digression here. I mean, Brian Blessed gets remembered for things like, Gordon's alive and all of that stuff.

Dave: 08:08

Where he's basically being massively, you know, larger than life. But he's actually such a superb actor.

Matthew: 08:16

Hell, yeah.

Dave: 08:16

That that this kind of I fear that his his his acting genius gets lost a little bit in all these over the top roles.

Matthew: 08:25

But he has the fun with those over the top roles.

Dave: 08:28

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Played

Matthew: 08:30

them. I think.

Dave: 08:31

He played Augustus in I, Claudius. And he's basically obviously through pretty much most of the first half of the whole series. And he just carries it. I mean, it's it's a stellar cast anyway. But he is Augustus is absolutely superb.

Dave: 08:44

I could watch that

Matthew: 08:45

And

Dave: 08:46

any day.

Matthew: 08:46

Dritz of a certain age, you'll remember him as well from Zed Cars.

Dave: 08:50

Yes. But you may be

Matthew: 08:51

a bit too young.

Dave: 08:52

I'm not of that certain an age. I'm quite certain of an age, but I'm not that certain of an age.

Matthew: 08:58

Yeah. So, yeah, it it it's lovely. I was gonna say something else. Oh, the other thing I was just gonna on another Brian Bless let's make this whole podcast about Brian Blessings. We have to I love a story he told about when he was cast in when they offered him the job in in Flash Gordon.

Matthew: 09:17

He told this story about how he loved Flash Gordon. Absolutely loved it. So much so that he would go and watch every performance on the Saturday morning performances of the Flash Gordon cinema at his local cinema.

Dave: 09:30

Right.

Matthew: 09:31

It, you know, go in, pay for the first one, but just stay in the cinema and watch it again and again because they they ran it in rotation. Until at some point, one day, the the cinema manager came in and said, will Brian Blessed please go home because his mom wants some tea? And in telling that story just shows the joy he had for Fresh Gordon. Yeah. Anyway

Dave: 09:54

There's there well, no. No. There there there's more to this. We this is the the, you know, the the Flash Gordon, Brian Blessed show now, at least for a couple more minutes. I remember watching all those original Flash Gordons back in back in the day with Tony when we were when we were kids.

Dave: 10:09

And there was once because, you know, it always had a cliffhanger at the end of each episode. There was one there's one episode where I can't one of the heroes was trying to escape from the bad guys, and he runs to the window because he's got these, like And

Matthew: 10:21

actually gets shot. I think that might not have been Flash Gordon. I think that might have been Buck Rogers. But yeah.

Dave: 10:26

I think it could have been. Yeah. He gets shot.

Matthew: 10:28

Absolutely. He gets shot. And he falls down. At the end of the episode.

Dave: 10:31

But then we watch the next episode. He gets to the window, opens the windows, and jumps out. Yeah. Like, hang on. He got shot last week.

Dave: 10:38

That's

Matthew: 10:38

not what happened. See, that scar is all our memories.

Dave: 10:43

We all remember that. We remember that from '45 But years anyway, yes, it says here, actor Sam Jones was dubbed because he refused to return for post production to record his lines, to rerecord his lines.

Matthew: 10:55

Yeah. Interesting. Interesting.

Dave: 11:01

Apparently, director was unhappy with his voice and preferred to have it dubbed by somebody else. So, yeah.

Matthew: 11:06

Oh, dear. Well, there we go. There we go. Obviously

Dave: 11:09

Back to Cosmic Corsairs anyway.

Matthew: 11:12

Cosmic Corsairs. So

Dave: 11:14

This this this part. Yeah.

Matthew: 11:16

So I've only just seen this and seen the cover and quite liked it. So I'm looking on nWorld. I'll put link into this interview I found with a creator on nWorld. And it comes with a system called the roll track system, which you roll a bunch of d tens based on your stat, and you're looking to get a six to 10, you know, six or above to succeed. If you don't get any successes, then you fail.

Matthew: 11:46

But you get to then add a tick to the reroll track. And when you filled your reroll track, and I'm not too sure how many how many boxes you have to tick to fill your reroll track, then you get a free reroll, any roll you want to do in the future. Oh, okay. And if you get a success, you succeed at your task and add one onto your spirit track, which is a kind of confidence track that you'll get to spend for various benefits. So it looks like a simple almost year zero related system that might might be quite fun.

Matthew: 12:25

So I will consider this some more. The Kickstarter right now, if I'm looking at it, is is is more than funded so it's definitely happening. It's under stretch goals and there's twenty five days to go. So check that out. We'll be linking the show notes.

Dave: 12:43

Yeah. It's interesting because I I've I've I've always had an anchoring to do a a science fiction game that focuses on on, you know, like exploration and missions, but where your ship is and your crew is a really, really is it almost like, you know, another character in itself? Yeah. And the tagline of this reads, you know, very similar to the kind of game that I would I would be thinking about. So I don't I'm yeah.

Dave: 13:13

I might I might now I'm working again. I've got a tiny bit more money. I might I might like that.

Matthew: 13:18

I'll have to have a proper look after the show. Now interestingly, in the interview, I will just warn you not warn you, inform you that his informal fun version of the tagline is a bit different, which is magical space pirates fighting fascism,

Dave: 13:34

which I don't mind all of that except the magical bit.

Matthew: 13:37

Yeah. Exactly.

Dave: 13:39

Exactly. Was

Matthew: 13:42

offended by it.

Dave: 13:45

Okay. Fair enough. I'll I'll have a proper look at it and maybe I'll I'll I'll find that I'll find that interview that you you you were reading or you're watching.

Matthew: 13:52

Yeah. Cool. I will put a link into the show notes. So if you don't find it before then, check our own podcast, Dave. I know you never do, but you can.

Dave: 14:01

I do occasionally, actually. But, yeah. No. Cool. Cool.

Matthew: 14:04

Cool. Next item on news, Dave. What's that?

Dave: 14:08

Okay. A couple of thing free league things are are happening or have just happened. Verson Mythic Carpathia pre orders are now open. I think they opened a couple of

Matthew: 14:19

Show notes.

Dave: 14:20

At the point of recording. So if you are wanting to go and pre order that, if you didn't get into the the campaign in the first place, go and have a look. That's that's all ready to go. On Alien Evolved we we are now we've seen that a couple of days ago. Okay, so let's just rework.

Dave: 14:37

I think first in Carpathia might be pre ordering I'm getting confused. It's about now it's open anyway. Alien involved, the pledge manager has closed. That closed a couple of days ago. So that's a good sign of progress.

Dave: 14:53

And, yeah, let's let's hope that the the fulfillment of all of that happens very swiftly. Yeah. I think that's all all I had to say on those two points just to flag them

Matthew: 15:04

up Okay. And, course, one of the things I was looking at the well, here's an interesting segue. I was looking at the Spell Congress website earlier this morning. So my wife wanted to know something about it, and I was looking it up. And I noticed that they are premiering Alien Evolved at Spell Congress.

Matthew: 15:31

I I don't know what that means about whether that, know, you're gonna be able to buy it there.

Dave: 15:36

But Or whether you can get a game

Matthew: 15:37

with that. But you can definitely get a game with it at Spell Congress. If you're Swedish and in Stockholm and you've got a ticket, I will just I'll put a note in the show notes to the ticket site. So if you are Swedish, you know, listening to this, you haven't decided whether you want to come or not, I think there are still tickets available, even though it's next Friday. Not Friday.

Matthew: 15:58

Saturday.

Dave: 15:59

Saturday. Yeah.

Matthew: 16:00

But what's happening on Friday, Dave?

Dave: 16:03

Is, we're getting up very early because we're going to Sweden.

Matthew: 16:07

Are we

Dave: 16:08

are going to Stockholm, invited by Free League to come and join them at Spar Congress, which is superb. Absolutely lovely of them. So we'll be flying over on the Friday. We've got an early well, a late morning flight, so that should give us a few hours late Friday afternoon and Friday evening to relax, chill, enjoy ourselves, meet people if anybody is around. We are staying in Gamla Stan, in the old town in Stockholm, which is great as well.

Dave: 16:35

So that's really well, really well placed, really well situated. And then, yeah, we are we are at Spell Congress on the Saturday. We will have a little bit of a a table, a space to invite people to come and talk to us about tales of the Old West. And it's interesting because I I you know, I've been to a lot of conventions as have, you know, as have you, as have most of our listeners, but I'm not really sure what to expect for this one. It's gonna be quite small.

Dave: 17:04

It seems it's gonna be quite like compact and bijou, but how it'll work and what what we're kind of what we what the expectations are on us? I I don't really I don't get the sense that we're gonna be kind of standing there trying to sell stuff partly because we won't have hardly any stuff to sell, partly because we don't know if our sales mechanics will actually work in Sweden. So I don't know. Are we We

Matthew: 17:30

are take we're gonna take a few books. Yeah. A low stock of books actually because we're we're selling out this should really be new, so our next segment. But we're we're we're we're slowly

Dave: 17:41

Segue. Segue. Out

Matthew: 17:42

of stock of no. Not segue yet. We haven't been the Spoiler Congress.

Dave: 17:46

I know.

Matthew: 17:47

But there will be some we're gonna bring some deluxe copies of the book. So if you want to buy those rather than pay for postage on the standard issue, then hopefully we'll be able to sell them to you. But

Dave: 18:02

We can we can definitely try. Yeah.

Matthew: 18:04

We can definitely try anyway. Yes.

Dave: 18:06

Yeah. So that'll be cool. And there's there's a few other. You've got the likes of Helmgast who are gonna be there. Nordic Skalds.

Dave: 18:15

There's three or four others as well. So it's it's it's quite a quite a discreet little group of

Matthew: 18:22

of

Dave: 18:22

publishers, friends of Free League kind of thing. Yeah. It might be really quite quite intimate and quite

Matthew: 18:32

cozy. Chaosium does conventions a bit like this Yeah. All over the world, actually. They do one in Australia. I think they do one in The UK.

Matthew: 18:41

Obviously, do one in America.

Dave: 18:42

Yeah.

Matthew: 18:43

So the the little publisher publisher specific conventions will have a, I imagine, quite a different feel, but I'm quite excited. We've also we're we're in we're we're gonna be doing a panel or something. They've asked us whether we can talk about the Yeah. Zero engine and publishing our own book. And you know what, Dave?

Matthew: 19:05

We can. We've had a lot of practice.

Dave: 19:07

We can. We can do that. Absolutely. And we are more than happy to put us in front of and the then try and shut us up. But yeah, so once we get going, yeah, that'll be cool.

Dave: 19:20

That'd be really nice. A lot of fun. Because I mean, there is going to be, is going to be pretty expert in it anyway and understand it. So it'd be really interesting to see what what that kind of format is, you know, try and have it as a group conversation rather than, you know, like a like an interview, if that's possible. I don't know if that's what the plan is.

Dave: 19:39

But that would be

Matthew: 19:40

We shall we shall find out more, actually.

Dave: 19:41

There's a lot of

Matthew: 19:42

mean to actually drop a line to Anna and say, what is the format of this talk? So that we're slightly better prepared. But Yeah.

Dave: 19:48

A good idea we should do that. Yeah. But really looking forward to that. It's gonna be fabulous to see everyone. If you are coming along, if you've a ticket, come and say hello.

Dave: 19:56

Obviously, it'll be lovely to see everybody.

Matthew: 19:59

And we already know that some of our listeners are going to be there. Nicholas is gonna be there. Ricard's gonna be there.

Dave: 20:09

Nils is gonna be there.

Matthew: 20:10

Nils, I think John's gonna be there. I can't remember whether

Dave: 20:14

John Yeah.

Matthew: 20:15

But anyway.

Dave: 20:17

Yeah. So looking

Matthew: 20:18

forward to seeing you all and any other listeners that want to come. I should try and remember to take some listener swag as well. So if you come up and tell us you listen to the podcast, I'll hopefully have a small gift for you of some description. Yeah. I don't know where my box of listener swag is.

Matthew: 20:34

It's in those crates on the other side of the room, which has got all our stall stuff for

Dave: 20:39

Right.

Matthew: 20:40

When we're selling it. Fine.

Dave: 20:43

Yeah. Sure we can find that full of stuff. Yeah. No.

Matthew: 20:45

Cool. Remind me on Thursday evening when you arrive at my house ready for our drive to the airports and we'll

Dave: 20:51

Will do.

Matthew: 20:51

Pack some of those. Cool.

Dave: 20:54

The other thing that that we are are kind of interested in and have hopes around, which, you know, may or may not be announced anytime soon. Is

Matthew: 21:05

is But we're wondering whether it might be announced this weekend.

Dave: 21:07

Well, kinda have fingers crossed sort thing. Yeah. Hoping hoping. Is the the the open license for Coriolis the third horizon? Because that's something that interests well, at least me, and I'm sure it interests you as well.

Matthew: 21:23

Yeah. But, you know, given that we did a podcast about Coriolis the third horizon, which is us

Dave: 21:31

Is is now yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Matthew: 21:33

Shouldn't have broader. Specifically. Yeah. But most of the early in the early early episodes of this are pure pretty exclusively Coriolis content. So Yeah.

Matthew: 21:45

It would be lovely to

Dave: 21:46

It's interesting.

Matthew: 21:46

Maybe publish that under an open license.

Dave: 21:48

Yeah. Absolutely.

Matthew: 21:49

Let's see.

Dave: 21:49

And I think also I've got some I've got some ideas as well. Some other ideas

Matthew: 21:54

New ideas.

Dave: 21:54

We could include. New ideas. New ideas, which one of them about critical injuries and one of them about enhancing the spaceships. Because that was the one thing when I got Coriolis originally, one thing I was initially a bit

Matthew: 22:13

disappointed with

Dave: 22:15

the I was expecting more of the arc style in Mutiny Zero to be woven into the ships. And

Matthew: 22:23

Yes.

Dave: 22:23

It wasn't, obviously, as everyone who's who knows the game knows. But the ships are still great, and the ships are still a key element of the game. I loved it. But there I think there's more we can do.

Matthew: 22:34

Yes. And spaceships as character.

Dave: 22:37

Yeah.

Matthew: 22:37

And also as a reflection of the characters. So I remember being insanely disappointed not insanely disappointed, but there's a bit of a thing where they say, you know, the the team can get to design the spaceship, which is, broadly speaking, choose a model of the space ship and add one or two things

Dave: 22:56

to modules and weapons to it. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: 22:59

Of your your your choice. Get to decide those in discussion, but it made me think at the time I was a big Firefly fan. I still am a big Firefly fan. And the way that Serenity, the spaceship in that, reflected the crew is a thing I think that is missing from most

Dave: 23:24

Sci fi games.

Matthew: 23:25

Most most games. Most spaceship design games. And I would like to do a thing where maybe each crew member gets to add something that is kind of a reflection of their character. I don't know quite how to make that work yet, but we've got a bit of time to develop something. Yeah.

Matthew: 23:45

A week at least before they announce any sort of license.

Dave: 23:48

Well, I mean, it might not it might not be announced for ages yet. We're just we're just kind of hoping, having had the the Great Dark license not so long ago announced. And I think, you they are they are intending on doing a a Third Horizon license. So why not why not spell Congress?

Matthew: 24:05

Yeah. Yeah. And it'd be a perfect time to do it.

Dave: 24:09

It would. Yeah. Cool. Nice.

Matthew: 24:14

So that's all our old world oh, no. Not not Old West news. That's all our world of gaming news. Should we look to a new world of gaming? Should we look to the world of the Old West?

Dave: 24:28

Yeah. Old and new. Yes. Yes. Absolutely.

Dave: 24:31

Yes. So we've got a couple of couple of bits of news here. Go ahead, mate. Done all the work on both of them. With the exception of Paul.

Matthew: 24:40

Yeah. Paul's done a lot of work.

Dave: 24:42

Out of the two of us.

Matthew: 24:42

And I think

Dave: 24:43

You've done all the work on both of these.

Matthew: 24:45

Yeah. But thank you, Paul, for all the work you've done on our foundry implementation, which which is now available. If you batch the Kickstarter at £20 or above, that means the actual backing of the Kickstarter, not not pledge manager afterwards. But if you if you backed us for £20 or more of the Kickstarter, you will have a key. If you haven't found it yet, go to pledge manager and you will find a key in your receipt or the button that gives you a key, which you can then load into your Foundry implementation or website, and you will get an owned copy of this.

Matthew: 25:29

The I you own the copy as it were. We've had a bit of an issue when we first this this happened about a week ago and quite a few well, one a couple of people who actually contacted us, but quite a few people are affected by this. If you only got the PDF, which is a 20 pound version, then you may not have come to a pledge manager at all because you'd already got your PDF that came via drive through. And if you hadn't come to your pledge manager and completed your pledge manager, it doesn't show you a key because you haven't completed your pledge manager. Can't complete your pledge manager because we've closed the pledge manager.

Matthew: 26:07

Now, obviously so somebody came to us with that problem. I went through a rather convoluted thing with them, but then I realized I could actually close all all our PDF purchasers' accounts on Pledge Manager. So now if you do go to Pledge Manager, you should have a receipt even though you haven't given Pledge Manager any money, and on that receipt should be the button to press to get your key. So, yes, get that key. If you don't want to do it on Foundry, I totally understand.

Matthew: 26:40

You don't need to get that key.

Dave: 26:43

No. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's that was that was obviously a Yeah.

Dave: 26:46

Stretch goal for our backers. But, yeah, I mean, you're obliged to have it. Exactly. You're not obliged

Matthew: 26:51

to it. Yeah. You know? And it does cost us money every time that you use one of those keys. Money which, when we made that rush promise, we weren't expecting to pay.

Dave: 27:01

So Again, you know, learning learning curve. You know, we've learned a

Matthew: 27:04

Learning curve. Yeah. And it's and it's not it's not money we can't afford. You're not gonna make us bankrupt by doing it. But it was a bit of a surprise to realize that that was

Dave: 27:12

That was

Matthew: 27:12

was on Foundry. Yeah. But, anyway, yes, those keys are there, and you are welcome. If you were one of our backers and you got us to that stretch goal, then thank you very much. But if you weren't a backer, then you can still purchase the, what's called the module, which contains so maybe you ought to explain a little bit to people who are in offices, like you and I, Dave.

Dave: 27:34

Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: 27:36

We're not familiar with this. So there are two components to Tales of the Old West on Foundry. What's called the system is free, and the system is all the work Paul's done to recreate the mechanics of our game. Yeah. And that includes not much content from the core book, but it does include because it's they're integral to the system, it includes the trouble tables and includes the critical role tables and stuff like that.

Matthew: 28:06

So that system is free for anybody to download. And if they wanna type in their own content, you can play Tales of the Old West with that free Tales of the Old West system. But if you want all the rest of the content from the books, like the life path character generation and all the gear tables or all the gear as it were and

Dave: 28:27

the talents. Animals. Yeah. Everything else.

Matthew: 28:30

All the animals, then you need to get the Corebook module. And that is now available for purchase to anybody that wants it. Yep. We will, of course, put a link in the show notes. Yes.

Matthew: 28:45

And

Dave: 28:45

No. That's good. I mean, a lot of work's gone into that. And I know it absolutely hasn't been as simple as as we thought it would be. And I know you've put a lot of effort into to to

Matthew: 28:56

I don't know. I think I thought it would be very complex, which is why it was only one of our major stretch goals.

Dave: 29:02

Okay. Okay. Maybe maybe I'd thought it was gonna be relatively straightforward, which for me it was because I did none of the work. So we have to, again, absolutely thank Paul for guiding us through that process and for doing so.

Matthew: 29:14

Paul is our savior here.

Dave: 29:16

He is. He is completely our savior here. Yeah. So but it's it's done now. And again, as with all these things, we're we're learning lessons for for next time.

Dave: 29:29

If we if we remember them. So but yes.

Matthew: 29:33

So next time we can, for example, I'm sure we will make a stretch goal of for for Gold Coast, which is a Gold Country. Gold. Gold Country. Thank you. Not Gold Coast.

Dave: 29:44

Gold Coast is somewhere entirely different, mate.

Matthew: 29:47

Different. Yeah. Yes. So when we do the when we do a Kickstarter for the Gold country supplement, then I imagine the stretch goal will be a module that contains all that information and the adventures that are part of that book or whatever

Dave: 30:03

Yep.

Matthew: 30:03

In in in in in the thing. And, again, you can play that with the free system, but you'll you'll you'll have to pay for that content.

Dave: 30:11

You'd you'd buy the module.

Matthew: 30:12

Maybe a stretch goal. And if we if we price a stretch goal correctly, we may even still offer it for free to kickstarter backers. Or maybe we'll do two stretch goals. One is it gets creative, the second one is and and you get it for free.

Dave: 30:26

Yeah. Potentially. Yeah. Yes. Because that was yeah.

Dave: 30:29

That was something that we didn't factor into the original budgets particularly. Other than other than the cost of getting it actually done, as in the certainly other the way the wage cost as it were.

Matthew: 30:39

Gave us, it has to be said, a mates rate's four. So that's very generous support.

Dave: 30:44

Mates rate actually.

Matthew: 30:45

Given the time it's taken him Yeah. To to turn all our tables into into things at work and found it.

Dave: 30:52

We are we are we are making one massive assumption here, which is

Matthew: 30:55

that Paul is willing to do

Dave: 30:56

again. Yeah. Yeah. So we haven't had

Matthew: 31:01

that conversation. We have to have that conversation as well. We as you can see, we haven't really thought about what stretch goals are offering yet. No. You're hearing us doing that thinking alive even as we speak.

Matthew: 31:11

Yeah. Yes. So yeah. Yeah.

Dave: 31:15

That that is

Matthew: 31:16

that is all out and available. There will be links in the show notes. But the other exciting news a couple of people have seen this, but but is brand new to everybody. If you want to make and sell your own adventures for Tales of the Old West. As of today, you can do that because we are offering a free license that sets out the terms where you can make stuff for tells the Old West.

Matthew: 31:52

You don't have to pay us a cut of anything you make. You can give it away for free. You can sell it on drive through or any other channel you want. We've got a logo called Made in the Old West that you can you can put on the the cover of your your piece, and you can sell it as being compatible with the game. And there are, you know, there's certain terms and conditions that we've got there.

Matthew: 32:18

Yep. But that is going to be available from our website. Again, I will put a link in the show notes so you can download the the license itself and the and the logo and fill your boots. Fill your boots. We'd love to see what stories you've got and that you want to share.

Dave: 32:38

Yeah. Absolutely.

Matthew: 32:40

So, yeah. Not much more we can say about that, is there? No.

Dave: 32:44

No. Indeed. It's yeah.

Matthew: 32:47

Don't even have to wait to Spell Congress. Part of me was thinking, maybe we should announce it at Spell Congress. And then I thought, no. Maybe not. Maybe we should just get it out.

Dave: 32:56

We we we can kind of can we can do a Good.

Matthew: 32:58

We can talk about it at Spar

Dave: 32:59

Congress. We can do a kind of physical announcement at Spar Congress to those people who are there. And then a this is our digital announcement on the podcast. So that's Yeah. That works fine.

Dave: 33:11

Yeah. No. It's No. That's really good. I'm looking forward to seeing you it'd know, be great if other people do want to take that up and and produce their stuff and put it out there for others to play.

Matthew: 33:21

And, of course,

Dave: 33:22

it's really exciting.

Matthew: 33:23

You know, we're building communities up. There's a Facebook community. There's a little section of the Zero Worlds community dedicated to the game. Yep. But, you know, if you tell us about your thing, we'll share it as well.

Matthew: 33:36

Yeah. So yeah. Go on. Show us your creativity. Show us your adventures.

Dave: 33:44

Yeah. I took And I

Matthew: 33:45

think it's worth saying we we did it for free partly because it's not a world we've made up. It's history. And so we didn't feel we could copyright history or license history out. And, you know, for a lot of our US based listeners, it's your history.

Dave: 34:02

So Yeah. Absolutely.

Matthew: 34:03

You know, you know this world better than we do. So so tell your stories in it.

Dave: 34:10

Yeah. And and and also, you know, really wanna encourage people who want to do that to do it. You know? It's it's k. It's our game.

Dave: 34:18

We created it. It's the game that we've always wanted to create. But now it's out in the world. It's everybody's game. So anybody who wants to pick it up, you know, it's it's their game now as well.

Dave: 34:27

So, yeah, absolutely wanna encourage people to to create their own stuff and put it out there for others to to to buy or play for free or whatever whatever they want to do. Yeah. I mean, it's brilliant. On on on on the Gold Country, so we we are we are kind of working on that slowly. I'm now finding the time.

Dave: 34:46

Now I'm working full time again to to carve out the time to to to crack on with the work on that. But I was just gonna say, I'm I'm currently reading a book called Nothing Like It in the World, which I picked up along with a Buffalo Soldier's History, actually.

Matthew: 35:03

Mhmm.

Dave: 35:04

Very cheaply at my local local charity shop. And and this book is about the Transcontinental Railroad written by written by Stephen Ambrose, who is a very easy writer to read. His his prose is very, very readable. He's a bit jingoistic. And so it's all, you know, wonderful America, aren't we all wonderful?

Dave: 35:27

But, you know, it's it's it's a really good read. And, you know, I've read a lot of his stuff before, know, all the sort of second world war stuff that he's done, which is again super readable and very focused on on the lives of the people involved in it. Now now for the second world war, there's lots of of of source material. I think, you know, he's even said already in this book that there's a lot less of that because the people working on the on the railway lines didn't tend to write letters home and that kind of thing. So there's not so much source material available.

Dave: 35:57

But it's a really good read. And actually, I hadn't expected it. Although I should have done really. I haven't expected it to tell me much that I didn't already know about the the gold rush and the silver rush. But actually, I'm getting I'm getting lots of good stuff out of it that that is excellent background material for for the gold country as well.

Dave: 36:16

So, yeah, it's a really good read. I just thought I'd mention that because I'm I'm enjoying reading it, and it's it's it's proving to be a a fruitful little mine of information.

Matthew: 36:25

Yes. And one of the things, in fact, I I mentioned to you yesterday, Dave, I've been pulling together art references, photographs at the time because I what I'm quite keen to do is that given this takes place before the the core book. Yeah. I want to make sure that the the people illustrated in this book reflect the fashions of their time and aren't just generic cowboys.

Dave: 36:54

Yeah.

Matthew: 36:55

And so I've been pulling together a number of photos of what people look like at that time to make sure our artists have got that reference. And one of the people I pulled out was a portrait of Lola Montez. And Yeah. Of course, I she is the most fabulous character. I'm going to squeeze half a page in on her, Dave.

Matthew: 37:18

Whether you whether you like it or not, we'll find

Dave: 37:21

We will see, shall we? You know?

Matthew: 37:24

She's one of the members most marvelous characters. All all sorts of things. Ran Bavaria for a time, lover of the prince Frederick of king Frederick. I can't anyway, I've gotta pull that history out and actually make it. But she did spend a good amount of time in in Goldrush, California.

Matthew: 37:46

So I feel she'd be a perfect character to write about in there and a bit of inspiration. And there's her life in California affected the lives of other individuals in California. So I think really good adventure really good inspiration for the sort of adventures we want to tell. And just an amazing character that if you didn't know it was history, you'd think it was made up.

Dave: 38:15

Mhmm. Yeah.

Matthew: 38:16

We were talking about it with Andy. In fact, we Andy and I first came across her in a Flashman novel, which I think was Royal Flash, which is hilarious and and marvelous and funny, but entirely fictional, but uses historical characters. And she is one that really matches Flashman in so many ways, but is a real person who actually existed. So so maybe I was even thinking maybe we should put make her one of the portraits we put on the front cover of the of this book. We'll we'll think about that some more.

Dave: 38:55

There's a good picture of her here with the Native American, the lights on a cloud in the 1850s, where she's sort of got her arm in his arm, which is a really nice photo.

Matthew: 39:05

Yeah.

Dave: 39:06

That's very cool. Yeah. Yeah. So I hadn't heard about Lola Montez until you mentioned her yesterday. But, yeah, it's it's Yeah, absolutely.

Dave: 39:16

It's the kind of life you would expect in a Flashman novel rather than a real, you know, the real life of somebody. It's that it's that

Matthew: 39:25

Or indeed a role playing game, actually.

Dave: 39:27

Extravagant. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: 39:29

So she it feels something to say, look, you know, you can you know, we we said when in part since the beginning, actually, one of our first principles of design is, but you are extraordinary.

Dave: 39:42

Yeah. Absolutely.

Matthew: 39:43

And, you know, we said that because all role playing game characters should be extraordinary. That's why you're the character, not an NPC. But but she's a really good example of how somebody and let's face it, how a woman can be extraordinary in a historical period where we think, you know, women are generally oppressed by the patriarchy. And here's somebody who bucked that trend in real life and was a marvelous person.

Dave: 40:11

Yeah. Just just just reading this here. It says, in September 1855, she performed her erotic spider dance at the Theatre Royal in Melbourne, because she'd gone to Australia having been in in The US, raising her skirt so high that the audience could see she wore no underclothing. The next day, the Argos thundered that her performance was utterly subversive to all ideas of public morality. Very entertaining.

Dave: 40:34

Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Very what what a what a I mean, the color calling her a colorful character is probably under underselling it somewhat. Yeah.

Matthew: 40:44

No. She's marvelous. Marvelous. Yeah. Cool.

Matthew: 40:48

So we'll have a we'll have a feature on her, I'm sure. I'll squeeze that in somehow.

Dave: 40:52

Yeah. I'm sure we can manage that. Yeah. So I think that's probably the news for the Old West, isn't it? I mean

Matthew: 40:59

That's probably all our news for the Old West. More news than we were intending. Right. Let's get on to our interview, shall we?

Dave: 41:06

Yeah. So let's listen to what Thomas said to okay. Well, technical difficulties.

Matthew: 41:15

Yes. Wasn't there first

Dave: 41:17

I wasn't there for the first twenty minutes, sadly, as as I was struggling through the traffic.

Matthew: 41:23

But Well, let me tell you what I asked Thomas and what he told about Invincible. So my first question to him was do you remember ages ago when we were talking to them about Alien? They said, oh, we've got a we we we got a list of, like, the top five properties that we might be interested in licensing for the game. Yeah. We're not gonna tell you what what's on it and its Yeah.

Matthew: 41:49

But but Alien was one of those, and we were very lucky to get it. And then I think they told us that Blade Runner was on

Dave: 41:58

next on that list. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

Matthew: 42:00

I don't know whether The Walking Dead was on that list, but there's a connection there, of course, in the creator of both comic strips is the same person. Yeah. But so I asked him outright, was Invincible on that list as well? And he said no. Mhmm.

Matthew: 42:17

But he's long had the ambition to do a Year Zero engine superhero story. And when they got together with the the cocreator with with him, whose name have just gone out of my head entirely. So let me go to the credit list and remember who it is. Adam Bradford. So, you know, he sat down with Adam Bradford to start doing this, and it was Adam who suggested Invincible as being the world that they might want to license a superhero story.

Dave: 42:54

Yeah.

Matthew: 42:56

So so that was the first question. And then I asked him about why Invincible. And one of the reasons was Invincible is famously quite bloody. There's even blood on the logo with most issues of the comic that you get. Yeah.

Matthew: 43:16

And he said, well, you know, we've got a very bloody critical hit system, so we felt it could fit in with Yezerio Engine rules better than other more bloodless superheroes. But, also, one of the interesting things he said is it's we talked about whether you could create your own characters or you had to play just characters from the universe, the starter set. And the quick start, obviously, just feature heroes we know from the universe already. And he said, yes. And one of the advantages of using the Invincible universe is because it's quite a young one and maybe not as familiar with everybody as Marvel and DC through movies and stuff like that.

Dave: 44:03

Yeah.

Matthew: 44:04

He felt that offered more freedom to add superheroes of your own creation into the world. So that's one of the things that they want to encourage.

Dave: 44:17

Well, makes sense because, you know, in a role playing game, it's it's it's occasionally fun to role play, you know, an iconic character. But actually, it's for me anyway, it's much more fun to create your own.

Matthew: 44:30

Yeah. And I think it can be fun for a one off or for a convention game.

Dave: 44:33

Yeah. Exactly. Remember being you can

Matthew: 44:35

fall into a character that, you know so you remember

Dave: 44:39

Back at Games Day, back in the eighties, I remember being in a in a Star Trek game where I played Doctor McCoy. And that was fun. That was fun for one game, but I wouldn't want to run a, you know, run a campaign as Doctor McCoy.

Matthew: 44:50

I've run a whole campaign Yeah. Developing Doctor McCoy Yeah. Away from the the creation that we saw. Because inevitably, you would in a campaign, wouldn't you? Yeah.

Matthew: 45:02

So so that was that was interesting. We talked a bit about the mechanics. I pointed out that the dice pool seemed larger. And, obviously, as we had surmised, that's because you're playing superheroes. Yes.

Matthew: 45:15

You expect them to be competent at stuff. Thomas reminded me that there are no skills in this game. You've just got your your talents and your superpowers. And one of the reasons why the dice balls are larger, obviously well, the one of the reasons why the stats are larger is because there are, you know, there are no skills to augment them. So the dice balls have got to be a bit bigger anyway or everybody would fail at everything.

Dave: 45:47

Yeah.

Matthew: 45:47

Absolutely. Now interestingly, I've seen some chatter in the socials where people are going, oh, look. It's got six stats. Oh, they almost spell phase rip, which is the the six stats from the original Marvel superheroes role playing game from TSR. And Thomas admitted that that was kind of intentional because the Marvel superheroes role playing game was one of his favorite games from when he was a young man.

Dave: 46:15

A bit of an homage to it.

Matthew: 46:17

A bit of a homage. Exactly. And also the fact that I hadn't noticed this, but if you look at the quick start, you'll notice that not only do you have a number for your stat, you well, if you look at the couches in the quick start, not only do you have a number, but you've also got a kind of descriptor for the stat. So that is another homage to to the Marvel game in this you know, you you the number four isn't just four. It's, I can't remember what I haven't actually got any cut sheets in front of me, but it goes up to phenomenal or something like that.

Dave: 46:57

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It gives it gives you a descriptor of of kind of how Yeah. How how invincible that stat is, as it were.

Matthew: 47:05

Yeah. Exactly. In in comparison to normal people, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: 47:09

So that that was all fun. What else did we talk about at that early stage before you came in?

Dave: 47:16

It's all quite asking me.

Matthew: 47:18

No. You were

Dave: 47:18

there. Although it's quite interesting. I think that, you know, this this trend to to to allow skills to not be a part of the game. You know, this is two games now where we've seen a bit of that, isn't it? So with this end and the great dark where Yeah.

Dave: 47:33

They're leaning much more on just the attributes and and the talents. So whether that's a trend that is gonna continue or not. I mean, I haven't played either of these games yet, so I don't I don't know how it feels at the table. But I think you've played both, haven't you? So

Matthew: 47:49

Yes. Yeah. So interestingly, actually, just found the attribute scores and their descriptor word. They range from poor, which is one dice, typical, which is two, good is three, four is great, five is extraordinary, six is incredible, seven is amazing. I'm gonna run out of, tone here.

Matthew: 48:16

Eight is astounding. Keep going. I said I said that 12 was phenomenal, but actually, you only need to be nine to be phenomenal, because after phenomenal comes awesome at ten, godlike at eleven, and invincible at twelve.

Dave: 48:32

At twelve. Yeah.

Matthew: 48:34

The interesting thing that you also get, this touches a bit on and it's not a thing I've noticed until my in my reading through. It is in the quick start, but I'd kind of glossed over it. And he mentioned that you also get a team role, which is a bit like the team roles that we have in Spectaculars. Yeah. But unlike Spectaculars, they don't give you particularly a mechanical advantage, but they do suggest that they do suggest how you might play your character.

Dave: 49:11

Right. Okay.

Matthew: 49:11

So it's like a it's

Dave: 49:12

like a role playing prompt kind of thing.

Matthew: 49:14

Yeah. Yeah. Are you a blaster? Are you a controller? Are you a wild card?

Matthew: 49:19

Are you a striker? So there's some interesting stuff there. And that doesn't now the fun thing, and I'm I promise we're not gonna compare this too much with spectaculars. But one of the things I like about spectaculars is your team role is drawn round up at the beginning of every session. Yeah.

Matthew: 49:40

So it changes every time well, potentially every time you sit down to play, the team dynamics change a bit because of the role. You were leader

Dave: 49:53

Yeah. I don't think I've had the same role twice in the four or five sessions.

Matthew: 49:58

In four, five adventures.

Dave: 50:00

So I think so I'm not sure how many team roles there are, but I don't think I've had I don't think I've had the same one twice as far as I can remember. But I know I love that actually because, say in this one I was the leader, so I got an ability to boost people up the initiative track. So if I spend some hero points, I can, using my leadership skills, I can help one of the others or even myself potentially, I guess, act more quickly, which is actually really helpful because there's a couple of times where, you know, there was one where the the the big the big bad hadn't he was he was incorporeal. And we decide I I I moved somebody up, but just to after his first action in the assumption that he would become corporal in that action and then Andy could punch him. And things like that.

Dave: 50:51

So it worked really nicely. And previous to that, I was the booster, which was giving I can't exactly how that works, but again, it's a it's like giving buffs to your to the rest of your group. And it worked really well because yesterday, we we had to use quite a lot of teamwork and those abilities. And also the we got we've done four sessions or five sessions. So we've all now got what's called a a story award.

Dave: 51:19

And that is basically an extra an extra ability. And my one came in really useful. So my extra ability is inspiring something. Inspiring presence, I think it's called. And that allows me to share my hero points with with the other players if they're within earshot of me.

Dave: 51:37

And that's good because I because I can earn extra hero points by doing stuff that is saving innocent people. So I can farm is the wrong word, but I can gain more hero points and then spread them amongst the other players to my inspiring presence. And that proved really useful yesterday as well. So Yeah.

Matthew: 51:54

That made a really nice in terms of comic strip story dynamics, that worked really well because the villain seemed invincible, since we're using the word.

Dave: 52:06

He did. And and the first couple of rounds You were

Matthew: 52:09

doing a track shot him and

Dave: 52:11

Yeah.

Matthew: 52:11

You know, taking a few hit points, not called hit points, called resolve or or something in this game.

Dave: 52:16

Resilience, isn't it, in

Matthew: 52:18

I did. You know, you you you were punching him and scoring a few points, but he had plenty of points, munching him three times as much as all of you did because he's a proper villain. Yeah. So it all felt a little bit like you none of your attacks, which you'd been in previous adventures, have been knocking mooks and minor villains left, right, and center, didn't seem to be having much much effect on him at all. And then when you did that moment of teamwork, you took about a 150 points off him straight away in one attack because of cleverly using all those abilities and roles and things like that.

Matthew: 52:53

It was And

Dave: 52:54

and Andy's good Andy's really good role.

Matthew: 52:57

Andy won 97.

Dave: 52:59

Actually actually, really bad role initially, but I was able to use my inspiring presence to give him a hero point that allowed him to increase his target range by 10, which allowed allowed that to become a success. So that worked

Matthew: 53:12

It allowed Tony to increase Andy's target range, actually, wasn't it?

Dave: 53:16

Was yeah. Because something like that.

Matthew: 53:17

Is that Tony's ability that adds that that could give you a higher chance of doing stuff? Anyway, it was great. It was great. It worked really well. We loved it.

Matthew: 53:27

It did work really At some point, we'll book these out when I've got moment to think. We'll book these out. We'll let it put them out

Dave: 53:33

when We they have recorded them. Yeah.

Matthew: 53:34

Actual play stream and

Dave: 53:37

But but that fight really that one. But that fight really felt like a fight you would get in a in a superhero comic.

Matthew: 53:42

Exactly. Because because Then that killer blow at the end Yeah. When everybody teams up.

Dave: 53:46

We started on the roof. We were we we we'd we'd basically been taunting this bad guy who's been doing bad stuff around the neighborhood. Hoping he'd Trying

Matthew: 53:56

to rob him.

Dave: 53:57

Yeah. Hoping he'll do something rash and give us an advantage without kind of realizing that if we stand on the roof of his building, he might have quite a lot of guards. Know? He's little bit stupid. So we were kind of being a bit overwhelmed with all his guards as well.

Dave: 54:12

Actually, you know, very nearly putting me down a couple of times. We then decided to me and Tony to chuck him off the roof. He then survived that, but then, like, landed, I guess, with a great big smash on the ground below. We ended up getting down there with him, and the fight finished off there. But it it it worked.

Dave: 54:28

It just felt cinematic. It felt like

Matthew: 54:31

a comic.

Dave: 54:31

It was

Matthew: 54:32

It felt like a comic. And I just wanted to talk about the cards as well. So there there was a thing there's a sort of procedural nature to this game where where stuff happens by ticking boxes. And in fact, I was a bit stumped by this particular adventure that had these tick boxes where broadly speaking, the number of mooks he acquires grows. But I couldn't really see the mechanic by which that would happen.

Matthew: 54:58

But then as you went through these various acts of taunting him and trying to get him riled up, I can see, oh, I can tick these boxes off as a reaction to the stuff that you were doing Yeah. Trying to wind him up. So you ended up with what you you might fight might have been Justice Philin and six mooks. But actually, by the time you'd finished taunting him, it was Justice Philin and 18 mooks.

Dave: 55:23

Yeah. So Lesson is not to taunt taunt the bad guys. That but that was fun though because we were trying to draw him out of his building thinking that going into his building is the worst place to fight him. Mhmm. Which is exactly what happened in the end.

Dave: 55:36

We ended up fighting him on the roof of his building. But we we we managed to sneak in and and shut the power off to the building for one day so that would because it's a big hotel, that would piss everybody off. Another day, we managed to screw up the the sewers so all the all the toilets backed up. On on the third day, we were flooding it by blowing up the water tank on the roof. And that was the point where he came up and said, you guys, you're you're sort of annoying me now.

Dave: 56:02

And then we had the fight. Yeah. It was

Matthew: 56:03

Yeah.

Dave: 56:04

It was good. It was really good.

Matthew: 56:05

Yeah. But we're not meant to be talking about how good Spectacular is this. We're meant to be selling the game that's currently being kick started That's right. Yes. Here.

Matthew: 56:14

So Invincible, let's well, you when you then then you arrived, and you asked about the art, Dave.

Dave: 56:23

Yes. So I did ask about the art. Because I like the art. I think my initial comment was that the the artwork is very evocative and has given me real strong nostalgia waves of villains and vigilantes of back in the day, which is a game that we really enjoyed playing in the eighties before we then moved on to Golden Heroes. But the artwork is very similar, and it's it's a really it's a lovely kind of superhero feel artwork, which I really like.

Dave: 56:55

Yeah. So I asked about the artwork. Thomas was telling us that the the the two artists who had worked on the comic, Invincible,

Matthew: 57:04

were It's worth saying that unusually for for a comic franchise like this, only two artists have ever drawn invincible, and that's Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley. And it's their art that we see throughout the throughout the book.

Dave: 57:22

Yeah. So that's that's

Matthew: 57:23

I'm not sure that they've done anything. I'm not sure from Thomas's answer whether they've done anything specifically for the role playing game or this is just from the library of art that they've built up in the comic.

Dave: 57:37

I got the impression that there were some bespoke bits of artwork done, from what you said.

Matthew: 57:43

Mhmm.

Dave: 57:43

But I think probably not not a lot. So I think, you know, a of it a lot of it is stock stock artwork that was been produced in the comics. But I'm sure, yeah, there was definitely some that was specific that they wanted for the for the role playing game.

Matthew: 57:58

Yeah. And and three other artists have done some little incidental bits of art. So Ren Rosenberg, Todd Nourke, and Matt Herms have have done some of their little detail bits that I imagine, you know, equipment drawings and stuff like that.

Dave: 58:12

Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: 58:13

So that was all good.

Dave: 58:17

Yeah. You were asking me was it yesterday about stand whether they had standees with it?

Matthew: 58:24

Yeah.

Dave: 58:24

Yesterday? And they do. I mean So there's a stretch goal where you get some bonus standees. It says bonus standees, so does it come with? Yes.

Dave: 58:34

So I think the roll the suit the Invincible Starter Set comes with standees, and this this stretch goal which no, it's unlocked actually yet, so you'll get three extra ones for Iguana, Kid Thor, and Knockout, who presumably are three characters from the comic, which is I've never read the comic at all.

Matthew: 58:57

Yeah. It's worth saying, if you haven't read the comic, there's lots of trade paperbacks available, but there's also an animated series on Yes. On Amazon. Spoilers, I will say, if you want to watch that because I'm not sure when in the storyline this game is set. Various people are alive in the story in the game who I think are not alive

Dave: 59:24

At the end series.

Matthew: 59:26

Yeah. So

Dave: 59:28

Yes. It's it's quite a dangerous game in that sense, isn't it? It's a game where your characters can definitely die. There are adult themes in the game of violence and sex and and that kind of thing.

Matthew: 59:39

Actually, it does bring me back to a conversation that I had with Thomas before you arrived Yeah. Where I said, well, given that critical damage is such a feature of that universe and of this game, I was intrigued to see that they'd simplified the critical strike table, which, as you said, this is only in the Kickstarter, so it might be different in the final version than the QuickShot, I should say. But but in they did explain the mechanics of it. So the idea is that when you get broken, you take a critical hit as it were, and you roll a dice and add the number of points that beyond what you took to break you.

Dave: 01:00:23

Right.

Matthew: 01:00:24

So if you if you reduce to zero, you just roll a d six. If you

Dave: 01:00:28

But if you

Matthew: 01:00:28

go below zero. So effectively, you know, one add

Dave: 01:00:31

those five or something. Yeah.

Matthew: 01:00:32

Create table. And interest and then he said, but the the real thing is next time you're broken, you kinda start where you last left off. So can I find a critical hit table here just to describe it a bit better? But broadly speaking, if you roll a one on the critical injuries table, your suit is torn, which happens a lot, I've got to say, in the comics Right. Okay.

Matthew: 01:01:00

TV show. But if you if your suit is torn one, then the next time you get a critical injury, you've already got your torn suit, so you're already one above it.

Dave: 01:01:12

So So

Matthew: 01:01:12

you add you

Dave: 01:01:13

add to that. Yeah. You're you're you're build you're building upon your previous critical injury.

Matthew: 01:01:18

Yeah. And then come 13, you are torn apart. 13 or more, you are torn apart, which is what often happens, I have to say, in Invincible. So so I thought actually, it's a cleverer critical hit system than on my initial read of the Quick Start rules I had thought it was. I said to him, I I was expecting any kind of more detail in those critical hits given, you know, you can rip people's arms off and stuff.

Matthew: 01:01:52

Yeah. And he was saying, well, look at look at how it expands. At the same time saying that might not be the final version of Critical Intuitous when the game comes out. Right. Right.

Matthew: 01:02:04

We

Dave: 01:02:05

are the last the last thing the last the last thing I'll just say on on on Invincible is, friend and friend of the show, I think, or at least a friend of ours, James Semple, had asked me about, invincible and whether I knew when the beta PDF was coming out. He was hoping to run it at Dragonmeat. So we asked. I asked Thomas. So it, they're hoping their intention is to get the beta PDF out before Christmas.

Dave: 01:02:38

So it's not going to be available for Dragon meat, unfortunately. That's that seems exceedingly unlikely. It's quite possible that it won't be available for Christmas, but that's their aspiration is what Thomas said.

Matthew: 01:02:49

Yes. He said I'm not

Dave: 01:02:50

making a

Matthew: 01:02:50

promise before Christmas.

Dave: 01:02:52

Hoping to get it out for then, but it's it it may fall into into the new year potentially. So if anybody is there waiting thinking, oh, when am I gonna get the beta PDF? Now you know as much as we

Matthew: 01:03:03

do. Cool. Cool. It was a great interview. You would love to have heard all this directly from Travis.

Matthew: 01:03:10

It's my failing mayor culpa for actually not pressing the record button.

Dave: 01:03:16

Celery, these things happen. These things happen.

Matthew: 01:03:18

Or pressing it too often. Thank you very much for your forgiveness, Dave.

Dave: 01:03:22

You're you're welcome. You're bloody hell. Fucking tech support. You guys can't do anything right. No.

Dave: 01:03:29

It's always it's always a pleasure it's always a pleasure to chat to Thomas. He's a lovely guy. And, yeah, looking forward to seeing him at the weekend along with everybody else.

Matthew: 01:03:37

Yes. And he wanted to talk to you about Sibelians stuff, didn't he?

Dave: 01:03:42

He he did, which was a very nice little foreshadowing. Yeah. And he said there's there's kind of, you know, there's there's stuff to talk about. So it wasn't a quick five minute chat. No.

Dave: 01:03:53

So, yeah, I'm I'm in Thomas's Thomas' hands, and whenever he's ready to chat, I'm ready to chat. But that that'll be That's that's that's rather good. I very much want to do more alien stuff because it's great. I love it.

Matthew: 01:04:08

Cool. Cool. So what are we gonna do in two weeks' time?

Dave: 01:04:12

We're gonna talk about Spell Congress.

Matthew: 01:04:15

Yes. Yes, we are. Gonna take some recording equipment.

Dave: 01:04:19

Yeah. Exactly.

Matthew: 01:04:20

And I think I'm gonna tape that record button down so

Dave: 01:04:23

that Work out where the record button is and press it once. But, yes, so that'll be cool. If we we we might do a bit of Vox popping whilst we're there, see what we can record. Yeah. Yeah, that'll be that'll be our show for next time.

Matthew: 01:04:37

Cool. We're very excited to go.

Dave: 01:04:40

Yeah. I can't wait. It'd be lovely.

Matthew: 01:04:41

Thank you to Freely for inviting us. I remember about a year ago, I was saying, Freely, you ought to invite us to your school. Goodness. You

Dave: 01:04:49

didn't you didn't invite us. That's not fair. Yeah. I know. I know.

Dave: 01:04:52

And it worked. Whether they heard whether they whether they heard that and thought, oh, we better invite them or whether they were going to invite us this year anyway or

Matthew: 01:05:00

Well, we did also say, I think, because we said it on the podcast, we should admit it here. We did also say we should tell everybody we know at Free League that we should be invited, which we did do. We told Matt Mercer.

Dave: 01:05:11

We told

Matthew: 01:05:12

Martin. We told Nilsson.

Dave: 01:05:14

Subtle dropping it into every conversation for about three months. You know?

Matthew: 01:05:18

So one of them surely said, we should invite the guys from The Effect Market.

Dave: 01:05:23

And they have done, and and very generously as well. So

Matthew: 01:05:26

Yes. Yeah.

Dave: 01:05:26

It's very, very generous of them to invite us over. But, yeah. So next time, we will talk about our experiences, our fun at Spell Congress. Yes. Looking forward to it.

Dave: 01:05:38

But until then, it's goodbye from me.

Matthew: 01:05:40

And it's goodbye from him.

Dave: 01:05:43

May the icons bless your adventures.