Flowers in the Third Horizon
Hello, and welcome to episode 281 of Effect, Flowers in the Third Horizon. I'm Matthew.
Speaker 2:And I'm Thomas.
Speaker 3:What's that? And I'm Dave. And we have, as you can tell, don't have an Echo or a Ghost or a Poltergeist. We have a guest with us today, the lovely Thomas Bolton from Canberra, and he's joined us today. Well, we'll get into why in a moment.
Speaker 3:So we've got our usual run of things on the show today, so I don't know whether we've got any new patrons to thank.
Speaker 1:We do. We do. It's on the running order,
Speaker 3:Dave. Excellent.
Speaker 1:There's a new patron to thank.
Speaker 3:Okay. That's the patron's name, is it, rather than it just seemed a
Speaker 2:bit odd.
Speaker 1:Oh, no. That is confusing.
Speaker 3:Yes. So yeah. So yeah. So we've got we've got a lovely new patron tonight. Excellent.
Speaker 3:We've got a few things to talk about in the world of gaming, one of which I think Thomas will be able to add more insight than either Matthew or I can. Well, that's not difficult though is it really? And then we we've got our our our big part of the show. The gem of the show is our conversation with Thomas about Flowers of Algarab and porting that into the third horizon rather than the great dark. And I know Thomas has got a lot of experience of, of both, so that is gonna be an exciting conversation later on.
Speaker 3:Stick with us.
Speaker 1:Cool. And it's worth saying that in the last episode, we were promising either Thomas or the guys from Nordic Scouts about their new Third Horizon Kickstarter. But I've had a chat with Andreas. That isn't gonna be until much later, probably May time, because they're gonna launch the Kickstarter in probably late May, June, something like that. So we will we will be coming back to them, but not for a few episodes.
Speaker 3:Not for a few weeks. Yeah. Okay. Now that's cool.
Speaker 1:Okay. So, yeah, I can understand the problem you had on on new patrons. Because on our running order, it does say change later, which might imply that later on, I was gonna put a name in there if there was one.
Speaker 3:It did imply that somewhat. So
Speaker 1:But changed later is the username of the patron who I know nothing about them other than the fact that they were thinking, maybe I'll just put this username in temporarily, and I'll change it later.
Speaker 3:But didn't quite get around to it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So welcome, Changed or later. Later.
Speaker 3:Don't think
Speaker 1:we have seen you in our Discord yet. So if you are coming back to Patreon to maybe change your name or I I imagine this might just be a humorous name they like to put in. Do also, put in any Patreon not Patreon, Discord details into the relevant field, and then Patreon will do the magic, and you will come into the nicest place in the Internet, which, given that we've got Thomas here to back this up, is is our, is our Discord the nicest place on the Internet from your entirely unbiased point of view?
Speaker 2:We should have checked this beforehand because it might say something of which we would disapprove at this point. Yeah. It's it's it's lovely. It's absolutely lovely. I had a fantastic time most of the time I go there, which is, you know, better than most on the Discord servers.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 1:Excellent. We'll we'll we'll live with that. We'll live with that.
Speaker 3:We'll we'll edit out the most of the More
Speaker 2:than reasonable. I'd expect none of this.
Speaker 3:Don't want the the the, you know, the the veil to be lifted for real now, do we? But, anyway, yes. Go on. So
Speaker 1:thank you to ChangeLater. And, also, of course, Thomas, thank you to you because you are also one of our If not, one of our most valued patrons.
Speaker 2:That seems highly unlikely, but I'll take it for now.
Speaker 3:Is that just insulting all our other patrons as well? But they're all most valued. I mean, you know.
Speaker 1:Okay. Yep. Yep. They're all most valued. Even Andy Brick.
Speaker 2:Well, was gonna make the point that if you've got Bruce on your server, you're you're winning.
Speaker 3:Oh, that is very true. Yeah. That is true.
Speaker 1:That is very true. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Could apologize. You We
Speaker 1:have loads of lovely patrons, which is part of what makes our Discord server such a lovely place to be. Absolutely. Now shall we move on before I dig an even deeper hole?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Let's let's do that. Yep. World of gaming. What's in the world of gaming this week?
Speaker 1:Okay. Well, world of gaming. The the first bit of news is about an interview we did on this very podcast months and months day, years ago, about Elgic Automata, which is at the time backer kitting, I think. And they talked to us about their new Year Zero game that was gonna be coming from the publisher, Gehenna Gaming. Well, it looks like Gehenna Gaming have folded.
Speaker 1:They've handed back everything well, not necessarily everything to do with, the publication of LJC Automata to the original author and said, there you go, mate. Get on with it.
Speaker 3:Well, I I think there's an issue about whether they've handed back any of the money, isn't there, as well, though?
Speaker 1:That is the not necessarily everything.
Speaker 3:Yes. I'm not sure that there's crux of the issue for Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which is
Speaker 3:I mean, I mean, I didn't back Eldritch Automata. It you know? I think you were more interested in it than I was when we were
Speaker 1:I gotta say, I didn't back it either because I wasn't that interested in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But, you know, I worry that a bunch of our listeners probably did back. I know a couple of our patrons did
Speaker 2:who
Speaker 1:are on the Discord. And and now I think they're definitely gonna get a PDF. I think they may be asked for extra money if they want a print version, and they're definitely not gonna get any of the add ons that were promised in that backer kit campaign. So so that's really harsh, I think.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It looks like yeah. Just looking at the latest update, it looks like, yeah, they're hoping to fund to fund the PDF and then do a print run, which will be available in quarter four of this year, so after Christmas. But, yeah, it's it's put them in a really, really difficult position. It also looks like that the only way they're probably going to try and be able to get the money back from Gehenna, would be litigation, which in of itself, if the company is in administration, you would go to the the you know, you've joined the queue of other backers who are trying to get their investment back, and you probably wouldn't get all of it anyway.
Speaker 3:So it's a and it might take ages. So it's a really tough situation for Nick Frank here.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And for those people
Speaker 1:Who was the guy we interviewed, of course Yeah. All those, months years ago.
Speaker 3:Did you back that, Thomas?
Speaker 1:No. Very wise.
Speaker 2:No. I did not. No. I did not. No.
Speaker 2:But it was during the period where I was backing everything, so I'm not quite sure why they did. But, you know.
Speaker 3:There was some reason why you didn't why that was the one thing you didn't back that year.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I can't remember. Yeah. But I have a full bookcase behind me of stuff I haven't run, so I think I'm okay. But, yeah, I mean but it does seem I read the blog post the guy that put out.
Speaker 2:I think it on the Discord and then leaked out. I mean, seemed very sad. It actually just seemed very sad. Like, it seemed like Scott put his heart, my soul into the game and basically been stuffed around at the last moment, which is always very sad.
Speaker 3:Do we know what caused Gehenna Gaming to go under?
Speaker 1:I think a whole bunch of personal issues
Speaker 3:Did someone leave and quit or something? That rings a bell.
Speaker 1:I think Gehenna Gaming had behind it, not Nick, but another guy whose name I can't quite remember. Let me just see if I can find it. I can't find his dad. Yeah. Anyway, he had a whole bunch of personal issues and decided that he couldn't be running.
Speaker 1:Ganagami actually is a lot like us, Dave. It was well, not so much a podcast, but it was a Twitch stream initially doing a bunch of APs.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Then it started doing a whole bunch of events at cons. And I think this was effectively gonna be its first publication, like tales of the old west. And, you know, I I don't know if they had another job as well or whatever, but they raised a lot of money because their their backer kit was a little bit before we we put Tails of the Old West onto Kickstarter. So
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think, you know, you gotta go into this with your eyes open. And I think and one of the other issues, I think, looking back at the campaign is there were far too many add ons and other things you could buy, which raised
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a slightly separate issue to the the company now not even being in a position to try and deliver those. So their their their Kickstarter or back of kit delivery might have been more complicated and and hassle than it could otherwise have have been. But I suspect that's a a different issue to the fact that they've now, you know, gone under and and the money is is disappeared into the black pit of, you know, of
Speaker 1:I mean, they did get about three times as bloody backers as we did and Yeah. About a 100,000 more dollars Yeah. Than we did. So where that money has gone, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I like to think of lovely art that would all come out in value
Speaker 2:to the at least to PDFs that all the backers will be getting, but
Speaker 1:I don't know. Shall we move on to happier news?
Speaker 3:Well, let's, if there is some.
Speaker 1:Die RPG. So good. So you've played Die, haven't you, Thomas?
Speaker 2:This is No. I never play any, but I'm running. I'm really my role.
Speaker 1:That's my mantra.
Speaker 2:True. True. I mean, you know, and Die feeds that deep GM need to watch your players really experience deep trauma in public surrounded by other people. So, it's the best game for GMs who enjoy watching that happen in real time. No.
Speaker 2:Yes, I have run Die. I've tried to run a Die campaign less successfully than I would have otherwise hoped. And I've run die modules a couple of times. Really good.
Speaker 1:And just to fill people in who may not know Die. This is based on it's by Rowan, Rook and Record who are friends of the show. It's based on the comic by Kieran Gillen and artists.
Speaker 3:Stephanie Gantz. Yep.
Speaker 1:And that comic is based on is a little bit like a grown up version of the old D and D animated series in that a bunch of D and D well, RPG players, let's say, get sucked into the world that they built as kids. And I think, yeah, deal with their personal traumas in that world in some generally horrific way die having quite a few meanings in this game. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I mean, the comics explicitly It's second act, actually. So they've already been to the world once. They've escaped and then they go back. And so, it's actually also dealing with all of the things they left behind, all the unended stories that they didn't finish, the children that they had while they were there, that sort of thing. It's freaking amazing.
Speaker 2:It's actually a genius comic. It's truly brilliant. Might only get a sounds
Speaker 3:like recommendation, doesn't it? Yeah. It's really
Speaker 2:good. I mean, it's genuinely exceptional. Right. Okay. So yes, I am a fan.
Speaker 3:Okay. We're getting we're getting the hint of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah. They recently launched a, Kickstarter, I think, or Bakkerkit, can't remember.
Speaker 1:Bakkerkit. BakkerKit, we will put a link to it in the show notes for what they're calling the meta dungeon instead of mega dungeon. You see what they did there? Which is not just an enormous adventure, but also a history of role playing games and stuff. Can you tell us more, Thomas, as a backer?
Speaker 2:I can. It's done by Gareth Ryder Hanrahan. So, it is going to be genius. Let's just start.
Speaker 1:That's just
Speaker 2:Like they say in the back of kit, you know, the best scenario writer in the business, which is true. So it's it's a it's a statement of fact. He is a genius. I have run GPC, which he had his hands on. I've run Mirkwood, which he wrote.
Speaker 2:Mates of ours, the people on the Discord have run, you know, Heart and Spire and those things, which he also had a hand in. There's pretty much nothing he can't write that won't come out godlike. So there's that. The other probably comment to make that that this isn't meant to sound negative. It's just true.
Speaker 2:Die is not for everyone. Die requires a big group of people to commit. Actually, I've made a joke of it before, but it is very exposing. And there's actual formal mechanisms for managing how players interact with each other in the game because actually in some cases it can touch on things that have affected them in their real lives.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it takes that very seriously which I think is both excellent but also a fair warning that if you like to get together and stab the goblins to death I probably wouldn't go to die.
Speaker 3:This might not be the one for you.
Speaker 2:This might not be the one for you. But if you are genuinely in for a deep and rich narrative and story where you're willing to take some personal risks, and I do mean personal risks as part of the process then I don't think you can go wrong with having a crack at die. And I'm interested in it because I've tried to run a campaign and it didn't work which is an unusual experience.
Speaker 3:What was the why? Why was that?
Speaker 2:I think I put my players in the position of being too responsible for driving the narrative structure which is what Di expects players to do to some extent but I had been overly ambitious in my vision and had not been considered enough of my players in that vision.
Speaker 3:Right. Okay. So they didn't quite get the idea that you were pitching to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And they couldn't quite carry it through. So Die normally is played as a series of one shots. You don't actually- You can run a campaign and there's guidance on how to do that. But normally you do it as a one shot and then start again.
Speaker 2:Because your characters run through the story. They achieve the outcome one way or the other. The outcome being they either stay in die or and die and die. God, there's too many dies. Or they or they exit.
Speaker 2:There's this voting mechanism right at the end of the game where at the end of the one shot where they get to vote whether they leave the world.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:It's really fascinating and the characters are meant to really consider that. And so the campaign kind of is meant to place that right at the end and I just didn't do a very good job on that, like truthfully. Whereas I'm really fascinated to see how it's done in this. Like I'm buying this as much as anything for all the reasons I've already given. But I'm actually really interested to see how someone who knows what they're doing and who has, you know, obviously Kieran Gillen and the Rowan Rooken Deckard guys on tap as well as your own genius, Gareth Ryder Hanrahan, who has been on this show and I have used to him.
Speaker 3:He has.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know, just to make that point. And I think it'll be brilliant. Like, I I think it'll be it'll be kinda great. And I am hopeful that I can persuade one of my many groups to play it.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. They'll probably listen to this podcast and hopefully take that as inspiration. So, yeah.
Speaker 1:I would It does sound, that, Dave, you and I should not play in this game. Otherwise, my deep personal hatred of you will be exposed, and the whole enterprise, this podcast, everything else, will collapse. The thin
Speaker 3:the thin tissue of our friendship will be exposed for the hate that it really is. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Don't think we could go there.
Speaker 2:One other thing to say is they've restrained the urge to add lots of add ons. This looks like at least everything I've seen. There obviously are add ons. You can, you know, get the extra you can get the core rule books. You can get quick starts.
Speaker 2:You can get the modules scenario sets that they've already written, which I already own. But you can and there's absolutely no reason not to just get the book, tick the box, move on. And I deeply, deeply appreciate that.
Speaker 3:Have to say that I've never really particularly been interested in dye, and I haven't really looked at it in that much detail. But hearing your discussion of it there, Thomas, is beginning to pique my interest somewhat. I won't be backing this, but it might it might make me pick up the die book. There's a quick start. Convention.
Speaker 2:Yeah. There's actually just a quick start, which I'm pretty sure you can get for free, but it can't
Speaker 3:be
Speaker 2:for sure. I'd pick it up. Have a look. It's not for everyone. Make that point at the beginning.
Speaker 2:Make that point at the end. It's not for everyone, but it is Yeah. If you like that sort of stuff, it's genius.
Speaker 1:Cool. Next item in a world of gaming is Vampire Republic RPG, which was recommended to us by another one of our patrons. And now I can't remember who that was. Was that Yeppa or Jed? I feel there was a j in the title.
Speaker 1:Let me see if I can work it out quickly. Well, that's good without anybody noticing. Oh, too many people. I will also say that while while I'm scrolling through all these people, a supporter of the Die RPG meta dungeon Kickstart has a quiz on the Internet. We'll put a link in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Why not?
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Good to work out which era RPG er are you. I turn out to be an eighties nerd. No. Sorry. An eighties dork.
Speaker 3:As did I.
Speaker 1:Yeah. As
Speaker 2:did I.
Speaker 1:You probably got beaten up for it once or twice. Probably true. But you know you're never happier until you've got a calculator in your pocket and a massive black and white reference manual full of complex tables to represent the effects of wind resistance and gravity on your bullets. We played that game once, never
Speaker 2:again. Never again.
Speaker 3:Well, we didn't play the game. We played about ten minutes of actual time in the game one afternoon. Once we And it was my
Speaker 1:first time. It was Yeppa. Yeppa, who told us about, Vampire Republic. This is not a Kickstart. It's a buy on drive through RPG.
Speaker 1:Yeah. In English in US money, it costs $4.95. It's an Ashcan edition, but updates are free as it gets improved. And you are resistance fighters in a vampire police state that has ruled Transylvania openly since the nineteen forties. You can't win by force, not completely.
Speaker 1:The regime's military is unbeatable. Victory means subversion, turning servitors, peeling away vampire allies, capturing the three pillars of control, the regent's palace, state TV, and the military elite. So it looks like fun. And I just wanted to say hi to Yeppa's friend, Tom, who has created this I and created the company Porcupine Publishing. Prickly.
Speaker 1:Fast fast playing corvall's one d 20 test card initiative time and supply dice. So a little bit it feels like he's learned a few lessons from, some of our favorite games there. Yeah. Check it out. Link will be in the show notes.
Speaker 3:Yeah I'm not sure I've got anything else to add to that really.
Speaker 1:No we didn't I did mean to purchase a copy so we could look at it in advance of this year. Recording but you know what our level of professionalism is like. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So next on the list, we have Dungeon Crawler Carl, whatever the hell that is.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So this is a record breaking Kickstarter or soon to be record breaking and a series of books. It started off as a series of books, but it seems to be a bit of a phenomenon and and you know, it's doing as well as stuff that we've actually heard of like Avatar and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's it's currently got 27,437 backers. Six
Speaker 1:a 7,000 backers.
Speaker 3:6 and a half million raised with twenty six days left to go. So it's it's done quite well.
Speaker 1:Thomas you know everything about everything do you know anything about dungeon crawling no
Speaker 2:I think about dungeon I'm literally looking it up now so that I can understand what the hell we're talking about Oh you don't need to do that.
Speaker 3:We never we never do so you know.
Speaker 1:Well we that's exactly how we do every every episode Dave.
Speaker 2:That's what I mean we don't understand what we're
Speaker 3:talking about. Yeah. So Don't Call a Carl, that that was a book, was it? Or was that a, a
Speaker 1:It's a whole series of books, I think. So the original author was a chap called Matt Didymen and, originally self published and then since then acquired by one of the major publishers and published properly. Believe he is involved in a kind of televised D and D which is a bit like running man in that, you know, you kind of get put in a dungeon and they film you as you try and survive. Right. That is what I believe the concept is.
Speaker 1:Okay. And and what I can't quite believe is that thousands and thousands of people are well, I I guess I can believe thousands and thousands of people are fans, and they have backed a a game based on a book based on, I guess, D and D, to the tune of $6,000,000, so far, and it's still most of the campaign to go.
Speaker 3:Three and a half weeks left to go.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, it's got Seth which which one is it? I'm just reading this now. Oh. It's got Yeah.
Speaker 1:There is a picture.
Speaker 2:Isn't it? McFarlane's it, like, to make a TV series out of it. And the seventh book, I'm looking at the Wikipedia page, so honest admission, this is not my knowledge. Ranked number two, the seventh book was ranked number two in the New York Times bestseller list for audio fiction. I think he's he's he's climbed out of the well yeah.
Speaker 2:He has improved on his initial 55,000 copies sold when he did the first one. All the way to that. So yeah it's probably pretty popular. I did see a picture of a man with a cat the other day appear on one of my feeds. I was going what the hell is this about?
Speaker 2:I know. It's about this. This is what it's about. It's about a guy and his ex girlfriend's cat. Who I'm getting cased by aliens.
Speaker 3:It's called Donut. I think.
Speaker 2:Yes. This is the name of the cat. Yeah. Not the cat. I'm now vaguely tempted to know more.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Did
Speaker 1:not. Now interestingly. I I said Kickstarter is actually back at it. Yeah. So we will, again, put a link in the show notes.
Speaker 1:I am just kind of intrigued about how many well, I mean, I guess I was gonna say how many straight fantasy games this isn't a straight fantasy game, is it? It is riffing on a world that is based on the straight fantasy game, but it's obviously something a bit different. There's gonna be but it's more than just a role playing game. There's gonna be a card game and stuff like that as well. It looks like one of those that's gonna have massive amounts of add ons and plastic figures and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:And it's coming from Renegade Publishing who are an interesting house. You know, they've done a lot of stuff. They kind of pulled White Wolf out of the crap when when Vampire was going through its various controversies, and they they started publishing a bunch of the World of Darkness books. Yeah. I'm not sure I'm gonna be backing this, but you know what?
Speaker 1:I've got a few extra credits on my Audible subscription at the moment. I might get one of these books and have a listen. I'm not sure I'm gonna enjoy it, though.
Speaker 3:I'm quite liking the I the the general principle idea of a a dungeon race similar to the running man style, as in movie running man style.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I quite like that. And then they're talking about, you know, after a thirty hour day of hardship, find a safe room where you can rest. So I kind of like, well, it's a bit like levels in a in a in a video game, isn't it? You get to the safe spot where you can then save your progress kind of thing. So I quite like the idea of that.
Speaker 3:I'm I'm not sure I'm gonna back this, but, I mean, they've got the money for it, but it it looks like they've thrown everything, including the kitchen sink at it, it seems. I
Speaker 1:hope this is not the campaign that makes, Renegade go bust.
Speaker 3:And it and it looks actually, it looks pretty good looking at the looking at the campaign. So if people are interested in that but, you know, it it kind it's got a very sort of role playing humorous, like, tongue in cheek kind of feel to it, which isn't my normal thing, really.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think we're both of the same opinion that humor comes out of the table, whatever the rule set you're doing, and a rule set that's designed to be humorous rarely is.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But it'll be interesting. Yeah. I mean, I I I went back it, but I might have a look and see if I can have a flick through a book when it when it comes to a convention near me.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I think, Thomas, are you gonna back it, or have you backed enough games? No.
Speaker 2:It's not. It's got 30 classes, which is an immediate no
Speaker 1:to So
Speaker 3:you can create your own skills and stuff apparently.
Speaker 2:Which is fine. Don't don't mind that. It's targeting an audience to which I do not belong of people who are coming out of the sort of d and d milieu or the p r piezo milieu. Yeah. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I think yeah. Anyway
Speaker 1:Yeah. Nice segue.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Thank you. I was reading your run sheet. No. I don't think it's for me, and I agree.
Speaker 2:I don't think I would I think I would struggle to make it funny. I'm also a little anti as you're both aware. Endless dungeon bashing. So Yeah. This looks like it's just better version of a more complete version of endless dungeon bashing.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I haven't said I'm backing the mega dungeon. Yeah. Oh, you're right. The mega dungeon. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Alright. I can't really defend everything I say, but I you know?
Speaker 3:Well, we don't expect it to, but you can say what you like here with with no justification whatsoever. It's fine. That's what we do.
Speaker 2:And what I said five minutes ago is five minutes ago. That's what I'm really hearing.
Speaker 3:It it does appear that many, many, many, many people do like Dungeon Bashi though. There seem to be a place to go if you're a publisher or a writer if you want to get a big audience.
Speaker 2:Well, there's a so I was looking Bakkerkit has a back two mega dungeons this month, and you get a free unlocked mega dungeon of your own that you can download. So if you back this one and die, not that I'm suggesting you should, but if you were to, you would get the free mega dungeon from Bakkerkit that is the reward for having back two mega dungeons this month. It's a it's a, what's the term? A promo. It's a promo that they're offering.
Speaker 1:Promo offer. Wow.
Speaker 3:How how many mega dungeons do you need? I mean, presumably, a mega dungeon or a meta dungeon is gonna take quite a long time to run through anyway because it should be mega or meta. You know, it should be quite big.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Look. You know,
Speaker 3:one is probably enough in a lifetime, but
Speaker 1:if you
Speaker 2:want I am pleased to note that that Die is not promising to really get its book to you until mid twenty twenty eight. Okay. So, you know, you've got some time.
Speaker 3:At least they're being realistic about it, I guess, which is good.
Speaker 1:Right. Then, coming back to the segue, Thomas, talking about coming out of D and D, Paizo, who for many, many years since third edition D and D passed away for fourth edition, have made their money by making a version of D and D called Pathfinder. For the first time in all those years, nay, decades Mhmm. Are going to release a game that is not D and D based. And that is called 13 Omens.
Speaker 1:We don't know much about it yet because I don't think it's Kickstarter yet. But
Speaker 3:No. I don't think so. No.
Speaker 1:I thought this was just so newsworthy that we should bench in it. And it's a horror game, as I guess 13 opens might imply, and they're modern horror. So, yeah, I'm kind of intrigued by that. It will not distract me, though, from Unknown Armies, which is my favorite modern horror game.
Speaker 3:I mean, there are quite a lot of, you know, modern supernatural rules rules like horror TTRPGs set in a dark reflection of our world games out there at the moment, aren't there?
Speaker 1:There are quite a few. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's it's a crowded market for sure.
Speaker 1:But I just what what intrigues me most is that they're they're moving away from their bread and butter, which is
Speaker 2:Yeah. D and D,
Speaker 1:D and D ish.
Speaker 3:Well, guess maybe not moving away. They're just diversifying, aren't they? I mean, Diversify.
Speaker 2:Yeah. They're not moving away.
Speaker 1:And they're still gonna carry on producing a whole bunch of D and D stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But it's yeah. Like you say, it's interesting that they are they are diversifying in this direction rather than in in a another 5E variant or, you know, one D and D variant, whatever it's called, the new one.
Speaker 1:What it's, yeah, what it's called this month. D and D 24, I think it was last month.
Speaker 3:Okay. I don't fully. So So
Speaker 2:two designers of the new game are both PAs of long term as those. So it's not them being a publisher for some people who've come in with something like they've conducted in house, which is fascinating. Because my first assumption based on what you guys were saying was that it would be like, you know, Freely does with a bunch of people who come up with brilliant ideas, Mork Borg and Co, Mork Boyer and Co. But actually, it's two in house guys, one from Starfinder, one from Pathfinder who built it themselves. Anyway, fascinating.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I could happily believe that one's one's one's been immersed in a, shall we call it, d 20 milieu for for years as a staff writer, one might go, oh, hang on. Maybe there's something else we could play.
Speaker 3:What's what's this other strange shaped dice thing? I haven't seen these before.
Speaker 1:So, Dave, do you want to tell Thomas about our weekend last weekend?
Speaker 2:I wanna hear.
Speaker 3:Some parts of it, I guess. Not all of it.
Speaker 1:No. No.
Speaker 3:No. Yeah. So last weekend, Matthew and I were at salute fifty three. 53. That's very good going.
Speaker 3:Wargaming Convention at the Excel in London, where we were, as always, representing Free League selling, well, we were focused on selling Alien because of the the minis and, the new approach to running that, and Zone Wars, which is a game we sold there last year, the, skirmish game based on the Mutant Year Zero universe. And we had a really good day. It was very, very busy. It was absolutely rammed until sort of the afternoon, and even then we had a steady flow for the last for the last couple of hours. But we didn't sell very much of either of those.
Speaker 3:Well, we we sold quite a lot of, Alien Corebook and a bit of Raptor Protocol, but we didn't sell tons of the minis, which I was surprised about because I was expecting it largely being a mini stroke wargaming convention, that that we'd get a lot more interest in that. And then we also had to do quite a discount on Zomores to sell any of those. Now I do wonder that last year, we had the lovely Lily and George who came along and were running demos of of of Zone Wars, which when you put out out on a big table rather than just perched on the end of your desk at the stand, looks great. And and they do a great demo of that. So we got a lot of sales last year from people who go and had a half an hour demo and then were directed straight over to to me at the stand where they then bought both the game and the expansion.
Speaker 3:But yeah. So I think I mean, it's it felt a lot busier than last year. So I was there alone last year. Matthew didn't join me. We did okay last year.
Speaker 3:We sold
Speaker 1:more You were on the stand alone, Lily and
Speaker 3:Yeah. Lily and George were doing the demo. The setup was slightly different. So last year, we had a lot more space, whereas this year, it was probably an advantage having a slightly narrower, like, corridor path in front of us because it made the place look really busy as it was anyway. And we did sell more this year than we did last year overall.
Speaker 3:But actually, surprisingly, it was a lot more role playing stuff than than we had kind of expected.
Speaker 1:I think yeah. So I and Lily said last year that the Cleontel was very different from dragon meat. Yeah. You know, it was more old Grognardi, more male, much more male than dragon meat, and and older, as well. So Yeah.
Speaker 1:She, you know, she she definitely saw that there was a different audience there. But it strikes me this year that that different audience, if it is different, actually come to Free League for what they like Free League for. You know, the Free League brand is about role playing games. And Yeah. And maybe less about the board games and the skirmishes and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we sold we did very well on selling starter kits, really, in the the
Speaker 3:new Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But we
Speaker 3:Yeah. Albion as a game sold very well. I
Speaker 1:was Yeah.
Speaker 3:I was just surprised we didn't sell more of the minis. And I don't know whether I don't know whether they are priced at a level that makes them feel expensive because I'm not really in the mini market.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I again, that's the thing. You know, you and I would ignore the middies. Yeah. So so so do most of our customers at the stand.
Speaker 1:They are quite a big addition. Given that the game comes with cardboard counters so sorry. What we should say here is that
Speaker 3:The starter set. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, not the starter set. What I'm talking about is the Rapture Protocol adventure, which those minis are for, comes with another set of counters and, of course, can be run with just the starter set. You know, you don't need the core book to run any of those box adventures. And then when you've got that with all those cardboard counters, maybe spending another I think the list price of those was £45 on a set of minis wasn't enticing value. Maybe we should just cut some notes as well.
Speaker 3:And I do wonder yeah. I think long term alien players who like minis and like battle maps probably have got loads of minis already because they've bought the Galeforce nine game. We've got minis in it, and there are other, you know
Speaker 1:Yeah. There have been previous editions of alien games.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So maybe, actually, that market is, you know, that that constituency already has the minis it wants to run its alien games, perhaps. So I guess then that means that Free League should do try and do something slightly different with their mini line. I don't know what that would be. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Or may you know, maybe it's just an off day. We'll see at UK Games Expo how the minis go there, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yes. So that is our world of gaming. We don't have any news from the Old West. We reported all the news that was fit to print in our last episode. So, Thomas, according to our running order, we are now interviewing you.
Speaker 2:That's right. Because I am a doyen of development and design genius, which makes me an equivalent of a Gareth Ryder Hanrahan being on your show clearly. Perhaps I can't defend that statement.
Speaker 3:Did Matthew give you that copy or or did I? I don't remember. No. Yeah. Look.
Speaker 2:I I got the vibe of it when you reached out to me and said I know that it's only two and a half days before we need you on the show.
Speaker 1:Don't you fool?
Speaker 3:That's the preparation and planning we put into this show.
Speaker 2:It's it's Luckily, I'd assume that I was that at some point, I'd need a talk track, so I'd already written one.
Speaker 3:A little short and a day late. That should be our tagline.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But no. Yeah. Okay. Where do wanna start? I have a
Speaker 1:Right. Let's let's just, I think, start with your great, dark experience.
Speaker 2:Because Yeah.
Speaker 1:I you know, you GM'd the starter set or the starter game with us, starter adventure with I think
Speaker 2:the quick start. Yeah. Or whatever.
Speaker 1:And I played in that debut. Didn't, but I think I pretty much reported on that in
Speaker 2:the CF
Speaker 1:podcast. Very much enjoying it, but very much thinking that the things that I enjoyed most were your additions, Thomas, to that adventure, which were about great shit politics and shenanigans thereon. Rather than tell
Speaker 2:the bottom of the deck. Yeah. Which you joined as Oracle or at least
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I did. Well, you give me choreo lights.
Speaker 2:Know choreo lights with crazy beliefs and Matt will be there in a heartbeat. It could speak for the whole purpose of this podcast really. Yeah. So so then I got obviously the Great Dark, and I also head back to the Flowers of Algorand. And I think really important point.
Speaker 2:So the starter set has an adventure in it, obviously, which we're referring to, which I ran, which revolves around a pyramid in another star system. You get on the great ship you go there. It's kind of fun to play out all the great ship politics. Once again I want to make the point that I had borrowed some of the ideas that I used in that from an actual play that had been published already by that point in time, which made me think that you can go a lot harder on the intrigue than the starter set would suggest. That did work out.
Speaker 2:So, I've run the Flowers of Algorab now for about ten full sessions. So I'm nowhere near the end of it. Before that I'd run the modules that were already available for the group. They've done about 16 or 18 sessions in total. Thing
Speaker 1:that Just love clarify, this is within the Great Dark Rule Set?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this is all using the Great Dark Rule Set.
Speaker 2:I really like a lot of the simplicity of the rules. I think they're actually in some ways cleaner than the Coriolis, the third horizon rules in that they strip out a lot of noise. They try to make it simpler. You know, ship combat takes a page and a half, give or take, or two pages of content, not a whole chapter, most of which is noise, one could argue. They but then yeah, so so I really like that.
Speaker 2:But then what they did was, obviously, they got rid of skills in much the same way that they did with Electric State. And what they've got instead is, like, just an endless list of talents. Like the longest list of talents you'll ever see. All of which are really bespoke. Well, not bespoke but micro skills really.
Speaker 2:They're just mostly micro skills. They're not really talents at all. They're like you're good at shooting people with long rifles. You're good at shooting people with pistols. So it's just a lot of them are just a breakdown of skills to slightly you know smaller skills.
Speaker 2:Which is means your character ends up if you go the five points, you end up with like 20 talents in no time. Yeah. Like it doesn't take that long. And that's a lot. And players really struggle to remember which talents they're meant to be using and what.
Speaker 2:So that was one problem I had. The second thing is to compensate for the low dice pools that you start. The stats go slightly higher than they do in the third horizon. They go to six, not five. But to compensate for the low dice pools, you've got talents, but also all the gear bonuses are significantly higher than they are in the third horizon, often between one and two dice.
Speaker 2:So you'll see lots of items that give you plus three dice to a roll which is in effect compensating for the lower dice pool that results from not having the skills. So number one thesis was we're spending a lot of time to balance against what we used to get with the skills that were in third horizon. Like we've we've built all of these mechanics to create dice pools of a certain size so the characters have a reasonable chance of success. But we've done that by adding 70 different things including talents and equipment to to do that. Yeah?
Speaker 2:Which does it feel
Speaker 3:a bit like an unnecessary conceit really?
Speaker 2:I think so and it and it just means I
Speaker 3:stuck with skills.
Speaker 2:And look my groups are great but they don't always know every item of the rule set. And so I found myself spending an awful lot of time saying, don't forget you've got talent 27 and don't forget to use item 36. And so a lot of what I did when I was running the game was reminding people where they would find sex. That's number one. Number two and the biggie, delve.
Speaker 2:Okay. So, this is gonna sound harsh and it's not intended to be. I think this is a personal opinion. Very clearly. The delve mechanic is turgid.
Speaker 2:Right. It takes a long it it it it the the in the Flowers of Algorab, there are Dells that are going to take anywhere up to 30 to 40 roles to resolve.
Speaker 3:Right. And are they they these group roles or individual
Speaker 2:So an individual role because it's like the one ring. You've got someone who leads the group and they make the first role. And then there's a random thing if they get an encounter, if they fail the role, they get an encounter and then they have to roll one person out of the group has to roll to get past that encounter. And so you've got this kind of really lengthy dice rolling mechanic, which yes, of course, GMs can enhance with what they do around that. But man, 30 of them, like, no one's going to be able to do that.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, it's just unreasonable. And so it just takes a lot of it's just very boring. I mean, it's just sounds harsh, but it's very boring. So I started on the journey of thinking what I'll do is I'll just just use the core encounters that are called out in the random table for each of the delves.
Speaker 2:I'll get rid of all of the other dice rolling noise and just sees that. But then I realized I'd have to compensate for how Blight worked in the game which is a mechanic that's quite critical to the way the game works. Acquire blight as you move through these dungeons and that blight can corrupt you and do terrible things to you. So then I was suddenly reworking the blight rules and then I thought I'm reworking the blight rules. I'm reworking the delve rules.
Speaker 2:I don't actually like the way the talents and equipment work. You know what? Maybe maybe I should just use a different rule system.
Speaker 3:Maybe it's not the game for me. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Maybe maybe this isn't maybe this is just a journey to to nowhere. And that then led me obviously back to the third horizon, which isn't to say there aren't other game systems that I like running out of really because I do. And like I said at the beginning, there's lots about the great dark that I really like, but that was just a lot of work. And I was dreading running some of those later adventures for my group. Like actually dreading.
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 1:by later adventures you mean really later delves?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Later delves. Like people my my group much like, Matt, you were saying earlier, they freaking love the, the great ships. Matter of fact, commonly referred to as, can we just skip the delve and get back on the ship? Like, we'll just assume we were successful or not.
Speaker 2:You make a single role for that. And then we'll get back on the ship and we'll do the thing that we actually are here to play. Right? Yeah. Which reflects on, I think, the genius of the setting and perhaps the miss, to be pretty fair, in the rules.
Speaker 2:Now having said the ship thing, one thing we should say is the Flowers of Algorand does a really bang up job of bringing the ships to life. It actually does. Like full crew compliments, secret mysteries that are going on on both ships, crew dynamics are sort of covered off a little bit. I've obviously added to them, but they're there. Like so the ship descriptions are great and actually really cool and there's lots to work on.
Speaker 2:And my players have been now they're four sessions into traveling on one of them longer six sessions into traveling on one of the great ships. And man I've spent a lot of time trying to unlock doors they really shouldn't on the ship. Spent a lot of time. So it's been great. So anyway, that's the thesis.
Speaker 2:So the thesis was, I got to that point, I'd run it a lot. I didn't enjoy it. I don't like the way blight works within the context of DELLS and I don't like DELLS.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:So you've tried to turn it to translate it into the third horizon. Yeah. How have you gone about that? Think what have you learned from your efforts?
Speaker 2:It's not too hard would be my first comment. It's not too hard. There's a couple of thorny problems you'll have to treat with. But broadly speaking, I think the shift back to skills has made dice rattling so much simpler and has actually removed a gigantic mental load. Now I had to treat with and this will go straight to something you guys are talking about over the last few weeks.
Speaker 2:I had to treat with mystic powers which are explicitly not in the great dark setting. Yeah. So, I've killed them. I don't have them. You've got the bird.
Speaker 2:The bird does the same thing kind of. It's the weird mystical ability you have that you can all sort of contribute to. So, I made one change at skills. I replaced the mystic powers skill, the mystic skill? Mystic skill?
Speaker 3:Mystic powers. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. With a skill to do with effectively exploring and understanding the builder technologies because they're completely different to human technology. So, I've created a skill specific for that purpose. But beyond that, I've kept the skills as written. I did a couple of other hacks that were more personal than anything else.
Speaker 2:So, I like the fast slow action mechanic more than I like the action point mechanic. So, I've kind of shifted to fast slow actions because I think they're simpler and players get them quicker. But the major challenge you will face in coming across is obviously treating with blight Because blight doesn't it's not darkness well and darkness points. We should talk about prayer for one millisecond. So for prayer I gave my players a choice.
Speaker 2:I basically said you can either actually be a worshipper of the icons because you might be a choreo light, you might hold on to those fates in which case it just works. Yeah. If you don't in the Great Dark there's a whole mechanical set of talents and capabilities that come with being a member of the team and specifically having a role like Delver which is the person who's leading the group. So basically what I've done is I've said well that can count as a form of prayer because you've got self confidence right? You've rejected this kind of religious view but you're a sort of you know I'm a I'm a you know an optimistic nihilist.
Speaker 2:This is as good as it's gonna be. The universe doesn't have any greater story for me but I trust in myself. So I'm gonna push for it. And so, you can push on that basis. So, players have some of the players have chosen to continue to be icon worshippers.
Speaker 2:And some have said, No, I belong to the guilds. I've rejected that. I'm going with I'm a delver. So, I will push. And I've obviously expanded the concept of the delving beyond just the mechanics within the delve to an idea of that person being the leader of the group or the person who explores danger and finds the way out.
Speaker 2:And so, they can push for a whole stack of purposes that tie to that. So, it gives them a mechanical way of expressing themselves outside of the delves and pushing. So that's that. With blight, I basically took the radiation rules from the third horizon and adapted them. There's a fair amount of adaption in that statement.
Speaker 2:And the hot take from me, which is not going to be suitable for most parties, I have made permanent blight a thing. So much like the radiation rules in the third horizon, you accumulate blight that stays with you forever and eventually that's what tax you out of the game. So, I also had to create character replacement rules because I was basically in noting characters. But I wanted that because in the Great Dark they talk all about there are you know there are civilisation on the edge. They're all being going out there into the darkness risking life and limb again and and exposing themselves as very dangerous thing that destroyed entire civilisations.
Speaker 2:And yet, it's all just kind of temporary and if you make the right rolls, you're completely clean of it.
Speaker 3:You're okay.
Speaker 2:Didn't stick for me. So, I made a decision to create a permanent mechanic as well as a temporary mechanic for that. But once again, I wouldn't suggest every party will be all on board with that idea. But yeah. Anyway, I did that.
Speaker 2:So those were the things that worked. Quick question. Pretty much everything else just transferred. Yeah. Sorry, man.
Speaker 3:Fine, mate. Yeah. Before you move on to things that didn't work or whatever, the cost for pushing, did you keep that as
Speaker 2:did you keep
Speaker 3:the darkness
Speaker 2:kept darkness points because they are as entertaining as hell.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I had to bring the I wanted to use the d six attack rolling thing from the Great Dark for the Monsters because there's already monsters written. Right? And it's pretty easy to translate them across because it's just d sixes. It works really well. So I just use darkness points to activate the different abilities.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I make a choice on my own behalf about how many darkness points I think that ability's worth, but then I activate it.
Speaker 3:So Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, that's GM Fiat, but it burns the darkness points.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And that's what darkness points kind of asks, doesn't it? Implicitly, at least, if not explicitly asks the GM to be a bit imaginative with how they use them.
Speaker 2:And it it addresses the supply issue from the great dark because you've got to work out how to treat with supply as a concept like this exhaustible supply that's meant to, you know, you're the explorers with only so many rations to keep your eye. So, I use darkness points to exhaust things when it's narratively interesting to do so And then the characters, you know, scrabble around. I added jury rig skills and other things so that they could try and address those those things.
Speaker 3:Cool. Thank you.
Speaker 1:So let me get this. Let me clarify another point I've only just suddenly realized. You have moved have you moved the action from the lost horizon into a part of the third horizon as well, Or are we still playing in the lost horizon?
Speaker 3:Just the rules you've changed.
Speaker 1:Just changed the rule set.
Speaker 2:Just the rules. Yep. Absolutely still playing the Flowers of Algorab
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Because I think the campaign itself is really fun. And, you know, it's big as weirdly, Coriolis campaigns tend to be from Free League. They tend to go for world chattering events as you guys know. But it's it's a lot of fun. And I think my players like the setting.
Speaker 2:They like the sense that they're on the edge of survival. I think one of the really fascinating differences between The Great Dark and Coriolis, it's really important to hang on to. If you're doing what I've done or even thinking about it is hanging on to the desperation and the fact that it's not just, you know, you can go and buy a Mercurium sword and suddenly you've got a Mercurium sword to use a specific Coriolis example. Like, that should still be hard in this setting, right? You're meant to be a civilisation on the edge and there's nothing in the rules that should make that hard for the third horizon.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, I have kept everything pretty clean.
Speaker 3:Like an availability kind of-
Speaker 2:Yeah. Are harder to get and most things aren't powered, right? Like if you use a melee weapon, it's going to be a halberd that doesn't have it's not a magical halberd with a field running around it. It's a big hacky axe that you hit people with because that's what you can afford to use power on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, cool. So
Speaker 1:are you going to write this up for people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've actually written it up. I'm probably gonna like I'm quite happy to share it. I mean, it's my writings obviously, so take it as you will. I'm going to so there are some things I've written in there that are effectively me from my own group writing out Coriolis, the great dark IP, which I would take out because that wouldn't be appropriate. So tables of weapons and equipment, for instance, that I've adapted for the third horizon.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I shared the very early version on the- not on our Discord but on the year zero Discord. I'll share the rest of it. Yeah. And I think it's good to do.
Speaker 1:Cool. What was the reaction when you shared it on the year zero Discord? Because obviously this so far has been you and your group finding a happy place between the two systems. Have are you aware of people going, oh, yeah. This is definitely what I wanted or I I like this, but I'd do it differently in this respect or what's what have the comments been?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I had a bit of I I I only shared the blight rules because that's what I was working on at the time. And the feedback was these are really interesting but permanent blight. Doesn't that mean the players will tap out sort of, you know, anywhere between four and five delves? And I went, yep.
Speaker 2:Yep. Yep. That's exactly what it means. Yep. That's that's the point.
Speaker 2:I really want the players to feel the they're like heroes, right? And I was thinking about what it means to be a hero in this setting. And being a hero in this setting is actually being the person who goes out to save your civilisation at the inevitable cost of falling prey to the blight or retiring before that happens and being tempted to that one last delve that you think will finally, you know, get you enough money to be safe. Right? Which is why I did it that way because I want that that mechanic.
Speaker 2:And the players one week, two sessions into using the new rules, two sessions. Yeah. Are already talking about, oh, I think my character's gonna retire before that happens and another person's like, no. No. No.
Speaker 2:I'm going hard for the final. So they're already adapting to it, right, and and thinking, which
Speaker 3:is cool. So in in the narrative, what actually happens when you tap out to the blight, when the blight gets too much? Do you become kind of what you what you, you know, beheld, as it were? Yeah. So Turned into an evil creature or So it's
Speaker 2:I I I find Coriolis interesting because you can see so many of the same TV shows slash books that I assume you guys have read that I've certainly read and watched. And so spoiler alert, I think The Expanse might have had something to do with the way the blight was designed. Right. Which I really like because in The Expanse, I make no comment on how the, you know, on how Free League actually did it. But in The Expanse, the you get hijacked.
Speaker 2:Right? Your body gets hijacked by this thing that wants to propagate. And so ultimately, that's what it does. It hijacks you and tries to propagate you and people are manipulating it to try and make it do other things. But ultimately that's its purpose.
Speaker 2:And so yeah, when you reach 10 permanent flight, you become a spore factory for want of better language. You become the very thing. Which is why in the great dark they have laws against people who are badly infected with the bloke running around on the ship station. It's an automatic execution. So now you've got a secret that you're keeping from everyone else as well.
Speaker 2:Right? Because you're a threat. But you're also a hero because you're going out there doing the very things that they need you to do to save them. So I think that's the logic of that.
Speaker 3:That's a good dynamic. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. And let's get down to specifics then. Ten ten blighted 10 permanent blights and you're out?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:At what level of permanent blight do you start getting harried by your
Speaker 3:Does it is it apparent? Yeah. Or do you show the effects?
Speaker 2:It kinda depends because but anywhere five up, right, it starts to have proper physical effects. Before then, you just hear weird things in your head and and other things. Mhmm. And I should make the point that what I did was made So when you cleanse yourself with a temporary blight, you roll a d six just like the radiation rules and the third horizon. You roll a d six and on a I think it's on a one or a six.
Speaker 2:It doesn't really matter. On a dice, on a number, one of those transfers to becoming permanent line.
Speaker 3:Yep. So,
Speaker 2:it's not like they automatically convert or something like that. Like, your chances are pretty good that you're gonna get those five or six, you know, Dells out before you get too burned. And I changed completely how the blight rules work on the delves, but we don't need to talk about that.
Speaker 3:That's gonna say how many how much blight would you expect to gather on a on an average delve?
Speaker 2:Six to eight.
Speaker 3:Right. Okay. No. That's quite a lot. So you should get at least one permanent blight
Speaker 2:Yeah. From that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it and it adds up and Yeah. I mean, you can make better choices for one of better language. You know, not open the door to use the alien motif. But yeah. But that's but look.
Speaker 2:One thing I kinda wanna make sure I say is so I did all these adaptions of my own bat. I reckon the thing to most the the one thing to say really clearly is just how easy it is to take year zero content and port it from one system to another. Mhmm. But it's actually very easy to do. It's not actually hard.
Speaker 2:So to build out the tables I built out, I actually had to look at Twilight 2,000 even though it uses the dice step dice as opposed to dice pool. But it does a whole piece of thinking about radiation. It does a whole piece of thinking about sign fast movement and it does a lot of good thinking about mental damage and, you know, stress and those sorts of things. And so I've ported some of that stuff into the game as well because I really like that. Cool.
Speaker 1:And that's the beauty, I guess, of this house system of Free League. Now that what wasn't wasn't there when we started this podcast, that there now is such a wealth of different genres and different approaches to the zero engine.
Speaker 2:There
Speaker 1:can be a real smorgasbord to use, for example, a Swedish word of of mechanics and stuff that you can pick and choose from and be inspired by or adapt. To whatever you're doing.
Speaker 3:Brilliant.
Speaker 2:It's pretty impressive, right? Like, I pretty much own every Free League system, so I'm not necessarily a poster child for restraint. But you can find almost anything to enable you to do pretty much anything you're thinking of, right? So, that adaption capability is really high now. Super high.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so, if you want to build a special mechanic, this would be my main point. Like, ignore whether the great dark needs to be converted into the third horizon or not. But if you want to adapt something for some particular purpose, you want to hack a rule, there will already have been some something that thinks about it in the way that you're thinking about it. It will already exist somewhere in the many books that you're looking at.
Speaker 1:Cool. We should put a link in the show notes to the Free League World's Discord server as well so people can find what you put there. But there's whole channels in there on hacking the s zero engine. Mhmm. It seems.
Speaker 1:Well, brilliant. Thanks, Thomas. Now, normally, we'd we'd you'd finish recording. We'd say goodbye. We'd ask you to say
Speaker 3:The sign off.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The sign off. And then Dave and
Speaker 2:I will May the icons bless your adventures. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Got it. Wish we're gonna make you even though they don't exist in the August 3, we're still gonna let you do that. In the the great dark, we're still gonna let you do that.
Speaker 3:May the may the blight bless your adventures.
Speaker 2:May the blight corrupt your soul.
Speaker 1:But normally, David and I then talk about it for ten minutes afterwards before we finish the program. But I guess it would be impolite to do that. So I just wondered, Dave, whether we should talk about what we're gonna do next time and end the show. It's a nice just over an hour we've been doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's a good show. Yeah. What what what are we doing next time?
Speaker 1:To be honest, I have no idea, actually.
Speaker 3:So we're not gonna get Andreas because we're gonna leave that
Speaker 1:Andreas is gonna be in May sometime
Speaker 3:after that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Towards the May, I think.
Speaker 2:And it
Speaker 1:and will possibly be Andreas, but it'll definitely be the bloke who's actually written the adventure that they're putting out. Okay.
Speaker 2:Cool.
Speaker 1:Whose name? I can't remember. And so we'll be Maybe
Speaker 3:ask we Thomas to set his homework for next time. Not to put you on the spot,
Speaker 1:but Put you
Speaker 3:on the spot, Thomas.
Speaker 2:Oh, no. I've got one for you, Dave.
Speaker 3:Oh, for
Speaker 2:me. That's for Matthew Tyler. Specifically you. Because my hot take is I made the decision very long ago that the icons didn't exist. Yep.
Speaker 2:So my question to you, Dave, is how do atheists survive in the third horizon? What does it mean to not believe in the icons in the third horizon? What does it mean to reject this patently, you know, of made up religion? What if you're a draconite, mate? What if you're a draconite, you know, proper proper Roman style thinker who rejects all of that religious bollocks and, you know, is quite transactional?
Speaker 2:What does that mean for the third horizon?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I I could I'm I'm framing an answer to that question as we speak. So
Speaker 1:We have we we did visit this point very early on in Yeah. The
Speaker 2:Where we had
Speaker 1:the atheist talent. But but No.
Speaker 3:No. I don't apologize.
Speaker 1:Our development, we know. That that was, yeah, literally years ago, only months into playing. I'm convinced that philosophies may have changed since then. So let's have a relook at atheism, ridiculous though it is, in the third horizon. We know they exist because when you push your dice you succeed.
Speaker 1:Well, you don't necessarily succeed.
Speaker 3:Sometimes.
Speaker 2:I will point you at Ringworld Engineers and Pearson's Puppeteers and Teela as the counter to that, which is breeding people for an effect, a quantum effect, which is what I used as my inspiration for the dark. So in my in my Coriolis, it's all about the lucky people who got luck as a benefit and made it all the way here.
Speaker 3:So that begs another question, isn't it? Was of of how does how does luck operate? How does one gain luck? Or how how is one blessed with luck?
Speaker 2:Well,
Speaker 1:the these are questions that you can answer in your Could that essay?
Speaker 3:Another another icon actually is behind the scenes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Course. Yeah. That pantheon of icons don't exist. One great icon is there.
Speaker 3:Fortuna. Fortuna.
Speaker 2:That's right. Fortuna, the icon. There you go. Anyway, that was mine.
Speaker 3:Okay, well that's cool. No, no, I'm happy to do that.
Speaker 2:PS, we had done no planning for that idea. That was genuine.
Speaker 3:That was entirely.
Speaker 1:So it is time for our sign off then. How are we going to do this? I'm going to say, first of all, that it's goodbye from Thomas.
Speaker 2:And it's goodbye from Dave.
Speaker 3:And it's goodbye from them.
Speaker 2:And may the icons bless your adventures.
Speaker 3:You have been listening to the Effekt Podcast presented by Fiction Suit and the RPG gods. Music stars on a black sea used with permission of Free League Publishing.