Dave: 00:39

Hello and welcome to episode 283 of Effekt. We are the champions. I'm Dave.

Matthew: 00:50

And I'm Matthew. And indeed we are. We've got Whoo. A very exciting program for you in this episode because we've got some exciting old West news, but you're gonna have to wait for that until after we have well, thank thank god. You as a listener don't need to listen to us thanking any patrons because we haven't got any new patrons in in this episode.

Matthew: 01:19

But we have got a bunch of stuff in the world of gaming that we may well talk about at length. So wait for that. And then there's the Old West news where the exciting news, the exciting news is gonna happen.

Dave: 01:31

Well and then Let's not bury the lead, mate. I mean, come on.

Matthew: 01:36

Come on. There's exciting news. Don't wait for the exciting news. They if if they wanna if they wanna scrub forward, there will be timed things in there. Wait.

Matthew: 01:46

Otherwise, you're gonna have to listen to the whole thing. Don't don't mention it. Don't spoil it. You know, I want it to be a surprise to them.

Dave: 01:52

Okay. I'm not sure it will be a surprise. But anyway, carry on. Don't let me don't let me get you off track. Go on.

Matthew: 02:00

Then then the the main body of this episode is an interview that I did in your absence, actually, with Axel Wieden Wieden and Andreas Lundstrom from Nordic Skulls, and it is about an exciting new third horizon Coriolis campaign that is coming to Kickstarter very soon.

Dave: 02:28

Excellent. Yes. I was very disappointed to miss that. I I had hoped to make it, but sadly, it's it's summer season

Matthew: 02:36

What kept you in?

Dave: 02:37

At my new job, and I was stuck behind for health and safety reasons, whilst we had activities going on on-site and needed to be there. So sorry about that, and I'm really disappointed to have to have missed Andreas and Axel, but looking forward to listening to what they said.

Matthew: 02:55

Cool. So, yeah, let's get let's get into that thanking no new patrons. We're not thanking any new patrons.

Dave: 03:03

Thank you. No new

Matthew: 03:04

thank you no new Yes.

Dave: 03:06

Absolutely.

Matthew: 03:07

All our existing and they deserve a special thank you this week because, of course, they have, all of them, contributed not just to our running of the podcast, you know, through your donations, you you pay for all our hosting and and stuff like that, the translation into into transcripts service that we use and all sorts of things. But what's left over has gone into our pool that then pays for artwork for

Dave: 03:40

Tales of the Old West.

Dave: 03:42

Tales of the Old West.

Matthew: 03:44

There is some exciting news about that coming up, for which you should all of you think that you have contributed to that exciting news

Dave: 03:53

as well. Absolutely. I was I was thinking about that last night as I was lying in bed, and I, and I just I thought

Matthew: 04:02

That's what you think about when you lie in bed, is it? Our patients. Oh, yeah.

Dave: 04:09

Maybe we can edit edit this bit out. No. I was just thinking about the news that we are going to impart later on, and actually how how much of a collegiate, collaborate effort it was.

Axel: 04:21

Yeah.

Dave: 04:22

Yeah. And and it certainly was. Anyway, we talk more about that later. World of gaming. What do we have going on in the world of gaming?

Dave: 04:29

I've been so tucked up with work and trying to write alien stuff. I'm even less informed on the world of gaming this week than normal. So what's going on?

Matthew: 04:37

No. Right. Be prepared to gaffer then in that case. So first of all, are you entirely unaware of the four pillar AI slop controversy?

Dave: 04:54

I think I might be. Yeah. Yeah. Come and fill me in.

Matthew: 04:59

Right. So about a week or so ago, a a company appeared out of nowhere with a number of famous names attached at that time. We'll come on to this later on. And it was producing it was a it's a website, but it was producing kind of histories of famous famous people in personalities, shall we say, formative personalities even in the world of tabletop role playing games. So there was you know, a profile of Gary Gygax, for example, and a profile of all sorts of people.

Matthew: 05:40

Mark Miller. I mean, bunch of people. Yeah. People that had a real shape in the industry. These profiles were mostly bollocks.

Dave: 05:51

Okay.

Matthew: 05:51

No. No. That's that's not fair to say. They're they're they're they may have been mostly vaguely true, but there were weird weird things in there, almost as though they'd been written entirely by AI.

Dave: 06:06

As if as if AI were hallucinating about it.

Matthew: 06:10

This was some AI hallucination going on about the histories of these people. There were all the all the sort of profile pictures were, were AI created. And of course, they'd stolen the image of an actual portrait of said artist or writer and, and put them in there. And it was all a bit bollocks. Now at the time, Four Pillow were also saying this were also touting that they were about to open a new competitor to drive thru RPG with a far smaller cut.

Matthew: 06:48

So drive thru RPG take about 30% of every sale. Yeah. Which personally, I think is very reasonable. But other people may well disagree. There are people talking about the way that the Apple App Store takes 30% and that's unfair.

Matthew: 07:07

I don't know. I don't know. But anyway, 30% is what Drive thru charge. And I think it's a bit more if you're not exclusive with them.

Dave: 07:16

Right. Yeah.

Matthew: 07:18

We are exclusive in what we sell. So that's that's what we lose to them on all our sales. But they these guys were only gonna take 10%. And there were a number of names attached. Now I'm not gonna mention those other names because when all this blew up and a bunch of people, so some of these creators are dead and can't answer back.

Matthew: 07:40

Yeah. But some of these people who are being profiled are very much alive and were saying, hold on, but this is bollocks. And pretty much everybody else who read them was thinking this is bollocks too. And the the names attached to this new venture, they're on a website, you know, one of those kind of who are we at four pillar. Yeah.

Matthew: 08:07

They were approached. And, anyway, they all they all if they'd been attached to to four pillar, they are no longer attached.

Dave: 08:15

And Right. Okay.

Matthew: 08:16

Two of them at least have said, we didn't sign up to this.

Dave: 08:19

This has got nothing to do with me. Yeah.

Matthew: 08:21

Nothing to do with us. The the one name that is still attached is a chap called Walt Whitman, who has done some stuff. He did with Mark Miller. He created Imperium Games, and they did, I think, Oh, we need Andy Brick to tell us this one. Fourth edition Traveler, which was a bit shit, I think.

Dave: 08:44

Right. Okay.

Matthew: 08:45

He he's been behind a number of Kickstarters. Very few, if any of them, have actually delivered. What was promised.

Dave: 08:55

Okay.

Matthew: 08:55

He is, I feel, allegedly, shall I say, just in case he has angry lawyers, allegedly, he is a con man in the industry, and nobody's ever got what they what they thought they were getting out of him, be they customers or business partners.

Dave: 09:12

Right. Okay.

Matthew: 09:14

So this is a pretty stinky website, and I advise you to avoid it. I'd Now, on our Discord, so we've been discussing this a bit on the Discord, which if you're a patron, you get free access to the Discord. It's one of our exclusive rewards. And somebody posted, and this is a problem with AI shit. So Paul, posted this lovely graphic, in the same style as all this other stuff, called the Whitman Method, 12 steps to masterful game directing.

Matthew: 09:47

Now, I honestly don't know. Has Walt Whitman put this up on his site? In which case, I'm not gonna even go to the site to give him the to give him the hit. So I'm I'm not checking this. If he's put it up on his site, it is genuinely shit.

Matthew: 10:00

Because it starts off with, here are the 12 steps. Session zero, number one. Yeah. Two, timelines. Number three, session lime.

Matthew: 10:14

Number four, manicipatants.

Dave: 10:18

Okay. I'm looking at it now on the Discord.

Matthew: 10:20

Five, Percon cows.

Dave: 10:22

Percon cows.

Matthew: 10:25

Connect to your I so, honestly, I don't know whether somebody's put that up as a a kind of a pastiche of what he's been doing. It's hilarious.

Dave: 10:35

Someone's taken the

Matthew: 10:36

out put it up on his site, then it's even worse. But I I feel it can only be somebody taking the piss out.

Dave: 10:42

Yeah. I mean, those kind of those kind of mistakes are worse than your pos make. You know?

Matthew: 10:46

That's Yeah. Exactly.

Dave: 10:47

That is. And that's saying something. So

Matthew: 10:50

Yeah.

Dave: 10:50

Yeah. That's gotta be it's gotta be a piss take, isn't it? I I do I do love pork on cows, so there's gonna be a toto game with some pork on cows in

Matthew: 11:00

gonna be eating some pork on cows.

Dave: 11:04

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, he looks like he's been given a right a right shilling in the in the community, isn't it? So

Matthew: 11:14

So yeah. So enough enough said about that. I didn't wanna feel that, you know, that I mean, this has been the talk of the community Yeah. For the last week, and so it's a sort of thing that we have to talk about in the world of gaming. I mean, it's But there are actual games

Dave: 11:28

as It's so, I mean, it's so lazy. I mean, putting aside everything else, it's so lazy. Well, okay. Two things. So, you know, I use AI a little bit for doing research to try and find you know, I'll go on and I'll ask it, tell me about system g five one one or something, so I can see if I can find out some of the canon what what little bits might be out there that, you know, I'm not aware of.

Dave: 11:55

But then Yeah. But I know quite a lot about alien law anyway, and I can pick up when it comes back with a load of bullshit. And it does quite often come back with a load of bullshit, and then and then, you know, just ignore it. But I you know, first of all, someone's been lazy in not kind of checking the draft of this, and also they don't know what the fuck they're talking about because they've allowed stupid hallucinations to come through into the text as well. So not only are you lazy and using AI, you know, to just pump out content, You're not clever enough or well enough grounded in the industry to know when it's telling you a pile of old shit.

Matthew: 12:35

Yeah. And what worries me is not only are some users, if you like, more uninformed users likely to go, oh, that must be true because

Dave: 12:45

Might believe it. Yeah. Exactly.

Matthew: 12:47

Yeah. AI told me. But other AIs will now

Dave: 12:51

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: 12:52

Gobble that up in their large language model, and it becomes weirdly

Dave: 12:57

Truth.

Matthew: 12:58

True. I mean, not true. Obviously, not true.

Dave: 13:00

But, you know,

Dave: 13:00

it becomes Accepted.

Matthew: 13:01

Established on. Yeah. Here's my source. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: 13:05

Yeah. And there's the thing. You know? I've done a PhD. You've done a degree.

Matthew: 13:09

You you know how important it is to attribute your sources. And this is like everything that we were taught as academics about kind of uncovering the truth. Yeah. Is coming out the window with this AI model. There's nothing there's nothing to stop this AI model just producing this sort of stuff.

Dave: 13:30

Yeah.

Matthew: 13:30

And then repeating it and then somebody using somebody else's

Dave: 13:37

Yeah. Using using yeah. Using somebody else's misappropriation of that information as corroboration of the original information in the first place, which is based based on the same incorrect information. Yeah.

Matthew: 13:49

It's shit. This is a dark world we are heading into.

Dave: 13:52

It's rubbish, isn't it? Yeah. I agree. Okay. Well, let's let's leave that to one side then.

Dave: 13:58

What what's next?

Matthew: 13:59

Okay. Well, we've got some exciting news. For many, many years, there has not been an Elric role playing game. And now thank god for Goodman Games because Goodman Games are producing an Elric themed role playing game coming out in 2027.

Dave: 14:20

Okay.

Matthew: 14:21

It's gonna be, sadly, based on Dungeon Crawl Classics, which I don't like. Or I think they're also gonna be doing some D and D five e content for it. But it's gonna be Elric all the way, which I'm sure is really quite exciting. Are you quite excited by that, Dave?

Dave: 14:38

I'm not excited in the slightest. I'm just having to look up Elric to find out what the hell it is.

Matthew: 14:43

What the fuck? Why am I even your friend, Dave? Elwick, the Michael Moore. Quintessentially famous albino wizard sorcerer swordsman with a big black fuck off sword. I convinced Andy's run a campaign for us.

Matthew: 15:03

No. He actually he started running a campaign for us, but then he moved it into his own world. But it started in the young kingdoms of of Elvix novels.

Dave: 15:13

Okay. Yeah. That's fine. I've I've I've never really read much Michael Morcock. So Yeah.

Dave: 15:21

You know, I mean Yeah. I mean, is it well, we had this conversation before. I mean, I I've never been massively into fantasy fiction. Obviously, Lord of the Rings. Love that.

Dave: 15:34

There's a few other bits and bobs from when I was younger that I really enjoyed. But I wasn't one of those people who voraciously consumed every bit of fantasy literature you could find. So this is one of those that I haven't read. It is Get out.

Matthew: 15:51

Get out this podcast.

Dave: 15:53

It doesn't mean very much to me. So, I mean, fine. I'm glad that it's there for for those people who do love, you know, those those books, and have got a real relationship with that character. But, yeah, it doesn't doesn't do much for me. DCC, I know I know people, I mean, I've never played it.

Dave: 16:11

I've written stuff for it.

Matthew: 16:15

I I'm sure Which? Konan?

Dave: 16:17

I'm sure Dungeon Crawl Classics is, you know, a fine system. I know a lot of people have very, you know, have very positive things to say about it. But again, and, you know, not knowing the source material, I don't know whether DCC is a good system to use for the kind of atmosphere and themes you wanna be drawing out of an Elric game. So, I mean, is Elric very much just hack and slay hack and slash and slaying stuff, very action focused? Or is it a bit deeper than that?

Matthew: 16:47

Oh, it's it's deeper. It's, you know, it it's being a remorseful after you've killed everybody. There's quite a lot of that in there.

Dave: 16:55

Whilst you're whilst you're counting their gold. Oh, Dan. That was a bit harsh. Killing those goblins. Oh, well, let's go let's go and buy the new wing to my palace.

Matthew: 17:05

No. No. No. He's he's a sadder prince than that. I mean Right.

Matthew: 17:08

Okay. He he doesn't need anything. He he's come from the family that used to run the whole world, and he's the last sort of member of that family. He he probably buys drugs with any money he gets, to be honest, because Right. He does like his drugs.

Matthew: 17:22

He is well, right. I'm just I I I'm not gonna teach you about Elric. Instead, I'm gonna give you some exciting news about a new release coming from Free League.

Dave: 17:34

I did hear about this, but not very much. So you you can you tell me?

Matthew: 17:38

Right. So Free League are producing an Elric themed role playing game. Okay. So Oh, okay. So they're bringing what's called Legends of Stormbringer out in 2027, which is gonna be based on Dragonbane.

Matthew: 17:58

Now there's something interesting going on here. It has to be said. Because the original Swedish versions of Draca Ogdimena, as it was called back then in the eighties, generally used licensed artwork from the covers of Elvik novels. So Elvik has been a long standing figure, literally a figure standing up on the front cover of or riding a dragon or whatever on the front cover of many versions of Draka Oktumina in the past.

Dave: 18:27

Yeah.

Matthew: 18:30

And indeed, now here's here's the other. If you wanna get really deep into the weeds here, Draca Okdimona was based on Caercians.

Dave: 18:37

Okdimona. Sorry.

Matthew: 18:39

It just

Dave: 18:40

it's great every time you say demon. Draca Okdimona.

Matthew: 18:44

And Draka Okdemona. Is Dragonbane was based on

Dave: 18:52

Go on.

Matthew: 18:53

A licensed version of Chaosium's, not Rune Quest as many people think, but Dragon World. Not drag shit. What am I saying? Not Rune Quest, but what was called Magic World. Magic World was effectively the sort of generic fantasy version of of the basic role playing system that the original Elric role playing game Stormbringer and Elric role playing games, just in order, that that Chaosium Produce is based on.

Matthew: 19:26

So, actually, if there is a system that, at least in terms of historic precedent, is the most suited to playing Elric role playing games, it is Dragonbane. Just in answer to your question about DCC.

Dave: 19:41

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. So the other thing that's kind of interesting to me, presumably, Legends of Stormbringer is kind of a different part of the IP because, obviously, Freely and both Goodman games have got license to produce this stuff.

Matthew: 19:58

Well, this is the curious thing. So Stormbringer is the sword that Elvik uses. No other no. I'm gonna bore you rigid here.

Dave: 20:06

You are.

Matthew: 20:07

Stuff that you know nothing about. But Elric is just one aspect of the eternal champion. Michael Morcock basically wrote a whole bunch of relatively trashy novels, I'll admit. Really simple. You can read them each in a

Dave: 20:21

day. Right.

Matthew: 20:24

You know, they appeared in magazines. He was the editor of a science fiction magazine, and so these are often serialized or even in their whole in a magazine. Or they were they're they're they're short stories that are then smashed together into a novel or whatever. Yeah. And he he churned out a lot.

Matthew: 20:41

And there are characters like Oswald Bastable, who's a kind of proto steampunk guy. There's Hawkmoon. There's Coram. All sorts of different fancy figures, but he sort of, again, smashed them all together into what he called the story of the eternal champion. And then some of those figures, Coram, I think, being one of those, actually is aware that he is just one aspect of the eternal champion and ventures off into the multiverse and meets himself in different guises.

Matthew: 21:12

There's a nineteen sixties spy whose name I've just forgotten out of my head entirely. Jerry Cornelius. That's it. Thank you. Jerry Cornelius is like a you know, this these are all being written when ITV's the Avengers TV series was going on.

Matthew: 21:32

So Jerry Cornelius is like a slightly more doped up version of the Avengers Right. With his girlfriend who's called Oona Person, which is is probably the the easiest name to think of if you can think of a person that you wanna have in your novel. And and and and so, yeah, these are all different aspects of the eternal champion. One might imagine if one was handing out Morcock licenses that one might give Elric to one person or one company and, say, Hawkmoon to Yeah. Another company.

Matthew: 22:10

But, no. Elric is the the Elric is the bloke who wields Stormbringer. So if you've got Legends of Stormbringer, you're talking about Elric, basically. Nobody else uses that fucking sword.

Dave: 22:27

Are they doing nonexclusive licenses then? They give I'll give you a license, but

Matthew: 22:33

I can imagine. I

Dave: 22:33

would not to give a license to somebody else as well.

Matthew: 22:37

Yeah. I would love to see what's going on. And I think the the gaming community would love to see what's going on. Now there's some interesting wording in the Goodman games. I have this up, actually.

Matthew: 22:49

Hold on. I've got it. Give me let me just find it on the interwebs. I'm pretty sure. So there's some wording in how Goodman games announce it.

Matthew: 22:57

Okay. Where they call it the classic era of Elvik. Right. So I don't know whether they've licensed all the novels and short stories from x date to y date.

Dave: 23:13

And Right.

Matthew: 23:15

The subsequent novels and short stories are licensed to Free League Stormbringer. But yeah. I don't know. I would love to see what what those contracts say.

Dave: 23:29

So having a quick look at this website, you know, it says they've the license for the Elric of Melnibone series. So is that a specific a specific series of No.

Matthew: 23:43

Not particularly. No. So Elvig is of Melnibone. That's that's where that's where he starts off.

Dave: 23:49

Right.

Matthew: 23:51

But he soon leaves and goes off around the young kingdoms, which all those that surround the island of Melnibone.

Dave: 23:59

Okay. Fair enough. Maybe we'll we'll find out one day.

Matthew: 24:06

Yeah. I I would love sadly, we're we're not meeting anybody. I mean, Anna Anna from from Free League will be coming to join us in

Dave: 24:22

A couple

Matthew: 24:23

of In in Birmingham, but I would love to sit down in the pub with somebody from the more creative side and ask them Yeah. What the fuck's going on? I have a sneaking suspicion. I have a sneaking suspicion that Legends of Stormbringer was poodling along quite nicely through the licensing process. And then suddenly, TCC announced their license.

Matthew: 24:49

And the only reason that Free League announced it is because Goodman Games made an announcement. Because it seems to be it doesn't you know, it's not like we're kick starting this in September. There's we will tell you when we're kick starting it at a later date. Yeah. So it feels a little bit like they were forced into making an early announcement.

Dave: 25:13

Potentially. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: 25:17

The key thing about Yeah. Legends of Stormbringer is it involves Richard Watts. And Richard Watts wrote or was part of Chaosium's creative team for both the Stormbringer game, which is the first Elric role playing game they bought out, and the subsequent Elric game, which was like the second and third editions. So so, you know, the the the creative thread seems to flow with Frielig's lines. But Yeah.

Matthew: 25:50

But yeah. I don't know. I don't know what's going on.

Dave: 25:53

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I guess once once the Goodman games let their cat out of the bag, it didn't make any sense for Freely not to.

Matthew: 26:03

Yeah.

Dave: 26:04

Yeah. Okay. Cool. Cool. We'll we'll watch watch this space, see what happens.

Matthew: 26:11

Cool. That's that little rant of mine is entirely made me forget where we are in the episode order. Oh,

Dave: 26:18

yeah. Frontier

Matthew: 26:18

So Free

Dave: 26:18

League introducing Scum.

Matthew: 26:20

Another game. Frontier Scum. Yes. Free League are making a Western game. Or rather, they're not making it a Western game.

Matthew: 26:28

They've They've published in Western game. Co published a Western game that I already got. I bought this last year or a couple of years ago called Frontier Scum. In this version I've got, it's quite a thin 60 odd page role playing game in the Morkborgian style. With pasteboard covers.

Matthew: 26:53

It actually I I think we've spoken about this on on on the podcast before because it's kind of a bit like my vision for Tales of the Old West until this came out and I realized, oh, fuck. They've done it first. Which is to make it look a bit like the sort of catalogs that you'd get in old west general stores where you could order something to be sent from the East Coast with thick baseboard covers and lots of stuff. And then when it came out, thought, well, we're not gonna do that for our game then.

Dave: 27:25

No. No.

Matthew: 27:26

It's a five, like many Mork Borgian books. Yeah. I will note that it hasn't won any awards, though. Just apropos of nothing. Yeah.

Matthew: 27:42

It's not an award winning Western game.

Dave: 27:44

So, yeah, I think award winning Western games are kind of yeah. So I mean, that kind of style was never something I'd envisioned for Tales of the Old West. I'd always

Matthew: 27:55

No. No. I knew I knew you'd hate it as well. There was

Dave: 27:58

yeah. I Yeah. I mean, I don't So there are some books that that we've got, which are really fabulous of that size, but that was never what I had in my mind for for Tales of the West. And I'm glad you came around to that way of thinking, so we didn't have an argument about it.

Matthew: 28:16

Well, I I didn't need to, because as I say, this came out first. I thought, oh, fuck it. Well, that's that's that's a good idea.

Dave: 28:22

That's Stolen with thunder. Yeah. And what was I yeah.

Matthew: 28:26

But and I think I I think by then you'd already said, oh, I want a great big book. I think we've been talking about size of books, and you're insistent on having a US litter size book, which fine.

Dave: 28:38

Considering the considering the the ultimate result, then

Matthew: 28:42

No. Yeah.

Dave: 28:43

Wasn't a bad decision overall.

Matthew: 28:45

Yeah. I guess not. I guess not. What other news do we got for the world? So anyway, although we do produce our own Old West game, we are professional enough and grown up enough to not just promote Frontier scum on this here podcast, but we will also sell it to you if you catch us working at the Free League stand.

Dave: 29:13

Yeah. I mean

Matthew: 29:13

I mean, it's it's

Dave: 29:14

interesting. Yeah. Again, it's interesting because I I absolutely don't see Frontier scum as a competitor to Tales of the Old West because it's very it's very different. You know? Again, in in its look and feel, it feels much more weird West again.

Dave: 29:31

It's it's it's set in, as they say, you know, an unreal lost frontier. So it's Yeah. No. We are coming from a very, very different place for for our game. So I think, you know, Frontier of Scum may well appeal to to many, many people who want that kind of quick, dirty, you know, just I wanna be an outlaw and shoot people kind of style.

Dave: 29:55

Whereas ours would appeal hopefully to, you know, those who are who are interested in the Old West, who want to build a story, who want to, you know, get a bit more deeply into the genre. But yeah, I mean, good luck to them. Yeah, it's, you know, it's interesting that, you know, we had we had several conversations, there were quite a lot of conversations with different people from Free League about tales of the Old West. Some people were very keen to to try and try and do one, but then warned us there were others in Free League who were dead against the idea of a Western role playing game. But I think, you know, maybe if we'd if we'd been more, you know, less traditional in our approach and a bit more out there, then, you know, they may well have picked us up.

Dave: 30:52

But that wasn't the game that we want that wasn't the game we wanted to make.

Matthew: 30:55

That wasn't a game we

Dave: 30:56

wanted No. To Exactly.

Matthew: 30:57

Which is fine, though. To make the game that we wanted to make the game.

Dave: 31:00

Precisely. And the the way, you know, we we've said this a couple of times that actually in in as disappointing as it was at the time where they said no, in hindsight, that was the that was the best thing because, you know, we we did it ourselves. We we we got the help we needed to do it.

Matthew: 31:16

We got exactly the game we wanted to make.

Dave: 31:18

Yeah, exactly.

Matthew: 31:19

The outcome No compromises.

Dave: 31:20

And the outcome has been superb, as we will get to more information on that in a minute.

Matthew: 31:29

Yeah. So, anyway, that's quite a nice segue into the fact that we are gonna be at UK Games Expo selling Frontier scum if you see us on the Free League stand. You But and I will only be spending half our time on the Free League stand. Well, I don't know, actually. We'll But you and I will also be spending half of each day on our own stand.

Dave: 31:54

On Effekt Publishing stand. Woo.

Matthew: 31:56

Yep. Never together or only very briefly together Yeah. And change Yeah. One of us will be on the effects stand. And the effects stand is Dave, what's the number of the effects stand so

Dave: 32:10

people can find it? You

Matthew: 32:11

have no idea.

Dave: 32:12

I've got no clue. I was gonna ask, are we in the same spot as we were last year?

Matthew: 32:16

We're in exactly the same spot. We're paying a lot more for it this year than we did last year. Yeah. Year, we got it last year, we ordered a starter stand, and they've managed to double book the starter stands. So we got this, luckily, spare stand because somebody had just canceled in a really good position that would have cost us, and indeed does cost us this year, a lot

Dave: 32:39

more. Yeah.

Matthew: 32:41

But it was a good stand.

Dave: 32:43

It's a good spot.

Dave: 32:44

Yeah.

Matthew: 32:45

It might be the last time we could afford it. We'll we'll see how many books we sell. But we wanted to be there this year because this year, we knew we were also gonna be submitting books for awards, and we'll we'll talk about that in a bit. No news to say here right now. But that is Stand 3, because we're in Hall 3, which is the main hall, 601.

Matthew: 33:10

So we're on Row 6, and we're the first stand. You can't can't you can't miss us, basically. We're on one of the major walkways through the place in the in the biggest hall. I mean, the free league stand is also Hall 3 somewhere, but I can't even remember what the number that is. Probably four 12 or something nonsense nonsensical.

Matthew: 33:35

Entirely hard to remember. The the Effect stand, which is where you wanna come to for all your Western gaming needs, is 3601.

Dave: 33:47

Excellent. Yes. Good. Yeah. We're looking forward to it.

Dave: 33:50

It'll be it'll be fun to be there as always. We've got big team for the Freely crowd, and it will be, as you say, fabulous to be running our own stall again. One disappointment for me is I don't have I'd I got gazumped out of a seminar spot this year because they had so many so many seminars applied for. I'm a bit disappointed. I've

Dave: 34:17

been doing

Dave: 34:17

it for like five or six years now. So a bit disappointed. But on the other hand, it does make life a little bit easier because I don't have to prepare my seminar, and I don't have to disappear and do it. And at the moment, I am frantically busy with my day job and trying to get alien space truckers out the door. So in some respects, that's a good thing, really.

Dave: 34:37

So

Matthew: 34:38

I think it's a good thing, really. And the other thing that is a little bit sad, kind of, is we have in the past, not every year, but we have in the past recorded an episode of the podcast there. We're not this year. We we we didn't even ask to

Dave: 34:56

No.

Matthew: 34:57

To Books and Space because we're both you know, we're on two we're running effectively two stands between us, Free League and this one. We're doing events. I'm I've been writing an epic 60 player alien adventure, and I'm gonna be emceeing that on Friday evening.

Dave: 35:19

Friday Friday night? Yeah.

Matthew: 35:21

Yeah. From eight till twelve. Don't no. If you're not booked onto it, don't bother because it's booked up. They booked up within days.

Dave: 35:29

Booked up really early, didn't they? Yeah. So so it better be good, mate. It better be good.

Matthew: 35:34

Well, it better be good, actually. I I have sent it to two two GMs who are also patrons of ours, Frank and Bruce, and they've come back with a whole bunch of comments. But most of those comments are typos. So

Dave: 35:46

Right. Yep.

Matthew: 35:47

Which may surprise you because you know how good one a typos are. And so I'm gonna go through those when when this episode is in the can and Sure. And there were some other questions, you know, because this is the first time an actual GM who's gonna be running it has seen it, and they

Dave: 36:05

Seen the time.

Matthew: 36:06

They have questions. You know? Yeah. The clarifications. But but I've given them a quick scan.

Matthew: 36:11

They've written a lot of stuff, and I haven't read it all in detail. But there's nothing in what I've scanned there that feels

Dave: 36:17

Like a a game breaker.

Matthew: 36:19

A game breaker. No.

Dave: 36:21

Yeah. No.

Matthew: 36:21

Cool. Cool. So there's that. So anyway, we're not recording a podcast this year. I'm now I wasn't as I said, it was planned.

Matthew: 36:32

I am now, based on the news that we're gonna be talking about in Old West gaming in Old West news, I'm now slightly disappointed that we're not doing that. But we we wouldn't have had the time. We wouldn't have had the time. And also, the other reason yeah. The other reason I'm disappointed is it is when we are meant to be recording this podcast, because it is exactly two weeks.

Matthew: 36:52

So right now, when we are here recording this, and so it may well be that we're not gonna have a podcast for you in two weeks' time. Just put that down in in in the

Dave: 37:05

Yeah. Let's take the recording recording stuff with us and see if we can put some stuff together over the weekend. I mean, that might

Matthew: 37:11

Yeah. Be at least take my little mics.

Dave: 37:14

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. At least for a short episode, we might be able to do something, might we?

Matthew: 37:19

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I tell you what we could do. We could have our mics on in the Tootsuite at about half past five on a Thursday.

Dave: 37:32

We could, couldn't we?

Matthew: 37:33

For a special event.

Dave: 37:34

Yeah. We could.

Matthew: 37:35

And we may record some of that, see what we can I do

Dave: 37:39

think this feels like a segue, doesn't it?

Matthew: 37:41

It does. Yeah.

Dave: 37:43

Yeah.

Matthew: 37:44

So Oldest news, Dave.

Dave: 37:47

The big news, if if if you haven't heard it already, folks, the big news is that we were shortlisted for the UK Games Expo Judges Choice Awards for the best role playing game. And we were delighted over the moon to be shortlisted. But just imagine how over the moon we were when Tales of the West won the award. So we won the Judges' Choice Award for the best role playing game for this year. How fucking good is that?

Dave: 38:20

I mean, that is just I mean, I was I

Matthew: 38:22

was It's quite good.

Dave: 38:23

It's quite good. I was gobsmacked. I mean, I knew we had a good game. I was delighted that we'd won the silver award at Dragon Meet last year, which was absolutely fabulous. And, yeah, we put it forward, and I kind of thought we'd we might have a chance, but I never really expected us to get in the shortlist.

Dave: 38:41

Getting in the shortlist was good enough. And then I thought, well, that's great. We're not gonna you know, we won't win, but that's fine because we can say we're on the shortlist. Then and then got the message from you when I was at work on Tuesday last week. And it's like, really?

Matthew: 38:54

We win. We win is what I'm Really? Telling

Dave: 38:58

So it's it's amazing.

Matthew: 39:00

Believe me. I had to send you

Matthew: 39:01

a link.

Dave: 39:02

I I did believe you because I didn't think you'd take the piss with something like that. But yeah. No. It's fabulous. So, I mean, thank you so much to the judges for taking a look at our little game and for finding in it that, I guess, the things that we thought were really good.

Dave: 39:17

And, yeah, best game of the year. I mean yeah. I mean, that's just superb.

Matthew: 39:23

Best role playing game of the year. Remember, there were awards at the UK Games Explored.

Dave: 39:27

That is true.

Matthew: 39:27

Board games and card games and miniatures games and all sorts of games. But in a all role playing games. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: 39:35

It does mean that there are other role playing game winners as well. So there's a best expansion and a best adventure. And now we having won best role playing game, we go into a public vote against the Sutra of the Pale Leaves from Chaosium. Here are we in the company of Chaosium.

Dave: 39:58

Well, exactly.

Matthew: 39:59

Oldest, the oldest surviving role playing game company ever. And and another company who's done a game of oh, an expansion. I've just forgotten. Well, I think a D and D expansion on Japanese demons. I'll I'll I'll put a link to it in the show notes or something.

Matthew: 40:20

And we're against those two for the public vote. So So

Dave: 40:26

you've got the the Ryoko's Guide to the Yokai Realms.

Matthew: 40:31

That's it.

Dave: 40:32

It's the best role playing expansion. And the event best adventure is the Sutra of Pale Leaves, Twin Suns Rising, as he said, Call of Cthulhu by Chaosium. And as he's saying, just to be mentioned in the shortlist, you know, on on the same level as companies like Chaosium, It's just like

Matthew: 40:49

Or Cubicle Seven was who we were up against in the in the shortlist for the best game. The laundry game. Yeah.

Dave: 40:57

It's it's it's it's yeah. It's yeah. I mean, I'm rarely speechless, but it's just yeah, I can't find the right word to say how good it is. How what's the word? How how kind of validating it is that actually we've done something good.

Matthew: 41:18

Yeah. It's We thought we'd done something good. It's nice when other I mean, every time somebody says something nice to us about their game, anybody on social media or whatever, and and they say something, but particularly when they say it in a way that makes You know, we've spoken before. Like, when somebody picks up the book at one of these conventions and goes, Oh, I like this paper. And Yeah.

Matthew: 41:45

I chose that You

Dave: 41:46

are. Yeah. Know. You're

Matthew: 41:47

They love that paper.

Dave: 41:48

You're kind of wanting to pop off on your own and, know, be in your bunk for five minutes when you hear that,

Matthew: 41:52

aren't you?

Dave: 41:53

You know?

Matthew: 41:55

Yeah. It's

Dave: 41:57

yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: 41:58

But when people say nice things, we like it. It does validate everything we've done. Winning an award, obviously, does that even more because that's a bunch of people that were having a look at a bunch of games and deciding which is best. And they just like ours. Yeah.

Matthew: 42:17

Yeah.

Dave: 42:17

It's remarkable. But, yeah. So, I think the thing I was alluding to earlier is that, you know, we we've kind of congratulated ourselves. You know, we we we met up together. We knew.

Dave: 42:29

We were like, well done, mate. Well done, mate. But, obviously, there are so many other people to congratulate as well, because we weren't the only people who worked on this book. It was, you know, the huge team effort. All the support from our patrons as well that enabled us to do it.

Dave: 42:43

All the help we got from people who were playtesting it. All our fabulous artists, map designers, Stefan, who did the layout for us. Those people who just, you know, gave us advice. People like Shep, Shep Shepperson gave us advice about kick starting and know, some pitfalls to avoid there. All these people, you know, contributed to to this to this final product.

Matthew: 43:09

And Now, sadly

Dave: 43:10

Also, just to finish the point, failing to include the all the guest writers who who came on board and did little campaign tales for us. So Yeah. Yeah. It's even though Effekt Publishing is a two man band, this book is a thirty,

Matthew: 43:29

forty person project.

Dave: 43:30

Out outcome. Yeah. Exactly.

Matthew: 43:32

So thank you. Shame about the this I I agree with you. And it's a real pity that the awards ceremony does not even give us two minutes to make a speech about how brilliant all the people who helped us are. So I thought, given that we do have a podcast, we ought to mention some of these people, or all of these people that helped us. Actually, let's let's let's call them out right now.

Matthew: 43:57

Shall we?

Dave: 43:58

If you want to read out the credits of the book on the podcast, then yeah.

Matthew: 44:02

Yeah. Well, I yeah. So I I just wanted to first of all, let's talk about our artists, the brilliant Malin Sanderberg, the wonderful Thomas Elliott, Kagtas Demelwrap, Tazio Betin, who also draws for 2000 AD. Just saying. Matt Matt Zinner and Jenny Mork were who all contributed art.

Matthew: 44:25

Guest writers include Al Aguirre, who is founder of Alienware Computers. Yep. And Jude Gasker from of Alien fame. Andrew Peregrine. Chris Lights, Chris Shepp, you've mentioned already, E.

Matthew: 44:44

L. Thomas, GI Garcia, Gareth Hanrahan, Jonathan Hicks, Mary Takoda. Where did you meet Mary? You

Dave: 44:53

So Mary's I worked with Mary on Dreams and Machines with Modiphius, and she'd done a lot of writing for Star Trek and other Modiphius things as well. But, yeah, she was great. She's really creative. She has some really fabulous ideas for for Dreams and Machines.

Matthew: 45:11

And Marika Cross? Who's she? Yeah. Marika Yeah.

Dave: 45:15

Marika, I worked with we were the two writers working on Mythic Battles Ragnarok. We we combined together to do all the all the the mythology side of it and the the impact of the gods and all of that. She focused very much on a lot of the characters and the creatures. I focus more on the campaign and the setting. But together, she was a real pleasure to work with, and, again, you know, really, really good, really talented.

Matthew: 45:44

And, of course, Millie Lavelle, who does work for UK Games Expo, but was not part of the judging panel, just got to drive that home. She has

Dave: 45:54

The judging

Matthew: 45:54

panel was

Dave: 45:55

judged Millie.

Matthew: 45:57

No. No. She was not. And our Solster, our old friend and patron, Saul Morales Yeah. And Shana Germain from Monte Cook Games, they all wrote what we what we call them our campfire

Dave: 46:11

Campaign Tales. Campaign Tales. Yeah. Yeah. There was short short little vignettes giving a giving a a starting point and a and a story for for for GMs to pick up and then run with.

Dave: 46:28

Yeah. And they're brilliant. Some of those well, they're all they're all really, really brilliant.

Matthew: 46:31

They're all brilliant. They're all brilliant. Yes. And Bruce Lang, Chris, again, Dean, your son, Paul Watson, and Nick Brook as well. We all contributed in various ways.

Matthew: 46:45

So thank you all. This this award belongs to you just as much to us, although it has to be said we're keeping it.

Dave: 46:53

I mean, other the other couple of people who who you didn't mention, which I think definitely deserve a mention, Stefan Isberg, who did the the layout for us. That was great, and it was a real pleasure working with Stephanie, works for Free League. So I worked with him on Alien, which is how we sort of got got to know each other. And then our fabulous editor, Neil Kingham. I have to say, the value of a good editor is difficult to quantify, but it's huge.

Dave: 47:21

And Neil did a superb job editing the book and making making the writing tighter and and more more logical. So

Matthew: 47:30

Brilliant. And we also ought to mention, actually, Jordan Roach and Salt and Sage Books, who, you know, this is a very sensitive topic that we chose to make a game on, and they did an excellent job of reading for sensitivity for us.

Dave: 47:45

Yeah. There we go. So you see, it's a big team, and that doesn't even include the playtesters, and I'm not going read them all out. You know who you are.

Matthew: 47:54

Yes. Yeah.

Dave: 47:55

So, yeah, it's a it's a massive a massive collaborative effort, and thank you to everybody for contributing into making it such a great book. We were super proud of it even if it never won any awards. You know, Matthew and I were just super proud of of creating the game or getting the game we wanted to play. The fact that it's being recognised is great! It's even better.

Dave: 48:17

Of course we want to win awards, I love winning awards, but the game itself would have been, you know, would have been pride enough just in that. Yeah. Thank you to everyone. And thank you to everyone who's bought it. And thank you to everyone who's out there playing it and enjoying it.

Dave: 48:31

We couldn't have done it without all of you as well. So thank you so much.

Matthew: 48:37

And it's also worth saying, there's a final thing, just to give you another reason for us to thank you, is if you are able to vote in the People's Choice Awards, which I think you do via I think you can do it via the website, and definitely you can do it via the UK Games Expo app when it goes live. Then if you if you'd like us to win the overall People's Choice for for role playing thing, then then do vote for us, and we will thank you in advance for all your votes. Absolutely.

Dave: 49:15

Yeah. No. It's yeah. Thank

Dave: 49:21

you.

Matthew: 49:22

Yeah. That's pretty be seeing a bunch of social media from me really pushing those votes because Yeah. I'd like to win that as well.

Dave: 49:28

I mean Yeah. Would be that would

Matthew: 49:30

we've won the judges award.

Dave: 49:31

Oh, yeah.

Matthew: 49:31

Would be great fun, that.

Dave: 49:32

It would be superb to win that as well. Yeah. That's probably enough self congratulatory Yeah. Shenanigans. Right.

Dave: 49:43

You had an interview with Axel and Andreas. Let's get on to Coriolis and, listen to that, shall we?

Matthew: 49:51

Right. In the Hammam today, we have an old friend and somebody new. Our old friend is really frankly quite a regular in the Hammam, Andreas. Andreas Lundstrom of Nordic Skulls and our new naked engineer sorry. I I did say we didn't have to talk about us all being naked, but, Axel is the newcomer to the Hammam.

Matthew: 50:15

Axel, tell me a little bit about you.

Axel: 50:18

Hello. Thank you for having me. My name is Axel. I'm, like Andreas. I'm a Swede.

Axel: 50:24

I'm from Gothenburg, Sweden. I'm, 45 years old. And, yeah, I I like role playing games.

Matthew: 50:32

Right. So it is traditional that we ask every new member, every new newcomer to the Hamam, tell me about your life in gaming.

Axel: 50:43

Right. So I'm, I guess, probably, like, the the second generation of, of Swedish role players. Started out, you know, getting, games handed down to us from, from older brothers. Mhmm. And played the which is now Dragonbane, like

Matthew: 51:07

many In English. It's still.

Axel: 51:10

I'm I'm just being polite or impolite as it were. But, yeah, then I guess the reason that I mean, role role playing games was always kind of there for me. I I love storytelling. I love, you know, making fun stories up with my friends. But, but it really became an adult life hobby for me, when I started doing a a podcast with some friends about eleven years ago.

Matthew: 51:42

Mhmm.

Axel: 51:43

And it's called, and it's one of the largest Swedish speaking actual play podcasts. Mhmm. And that has been a very fun and very enjoyable ride that really got me back into gaming and also pretty much resulted in in the campaign that we're here to talk about today as well.

Matthew: 52:10

That that's that's brilliant. So I've got a couple of questions that come out of that. So I'm not going to try and pronounce the name of your podcast. Forgive me, but I'm not Swedish. And I don't like insulting people.

Matthew: 52:28

But so, obviously, we're gonna talk about a Coriolis campaign that you played in that podcast initially. But what other what other games have you played in that podcast?

Axel: 52:40

We we started off trying to to capture a certain audience because I knew that, you know, those those all older brothers from when I was a kid, I I imagine they must be, you know, having nice jobs and money now and feel nostalgic about the lovely old classical campaigns they played when they were young. So so we played a very classic Swedish campaign called. Ah, yes. Yeah.

Matthew: 53:15

Yeah. Effekt Vanstrom. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Axel: 53:18

Yeah. Yeah. You know the whole the whole shebang. And, yeah, and we were right about that. I think it was I mean, it wasn't a very populated scene at all.

Axel: 53:29

I think we were kind of the first ones to to try actual playing Swedish at least with, you know, attempting a certain production value, at least. So we we have, you know, the first mover advantage, and we had a very classic campaign. And we had a group of friends, and and that went really well. And, yeah, we've played Red Markets, which is an American I

Matthew: 53:56

know that one. It's the zombies and capitalism game.

Axel: 53:59

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's very it's very dear to me, that game. I'm very fond of it. Mostly, played fantasy.

Axel: 54:07

We played some Call of Godzilla as well. We finished horror on the Orient Express about a year ago, I think. I played it when I was in my early teens, so it was kind of fun to play it again as an adult and yeah. With my with my friends. And then, of course, there is a whole bunch of games that I like very, very much.

Axel: 54:31

I'm a huge Delta Green fan. Mhmm.

Matthew: 54:34

I'm a

Axel: 54:35

huge cosmic horror fan in general, but I know that I mean, taking any particular genre and putting it in front of my players, it's basically, you know, just putting it through a document shredder and and trying to make something out of it after it comes out. So it's whatever I put in front of them, I know it's gonna be their take on it. You have to be humble about that as a game master, I think. So there there are games that we avoid.

Matthew: 55:03

Are there so you're generally the GM then, Axel?

Axel: 55:06

Yeah. I'm one of those forever GMs, but I've been playing more lately. It's important to me to try to show our listeners that anyone can try try their hand at being a GM and can have a lot of fun doing it. And, yeah, it's it's getting there. We and I'm I'm a player in some of our Patreon content as well.

Matthew: 55:28

Right. So if they wanna hear you play, your supporters are gonna get that Patreon subscription.

Axel: 55:34

Yeah. You you're gonna need to pay to hear me play.

Andreas: 55:38

Did you play sometimes when you did the, Spiel Skopana, game creator, like, one shots a few years back or quite a few years back. Yeah.

Axel: 55:48

Yeah. We had a period when we were, you know, kind of figuring out what what our formula was for the podcast, basically. And we had a series of podcasts where we invited, you know, small Swedish developers and also Free League.

Matthew: 56:09

Who were a small Swedish developer at the time? I'm sure.

Axel: 56:12

Yeah. But yeah. And and that was a lot of fun, like, you know, playing passionate indie creators game with them as the GM was a lot of fun, I think.

Matthew: 56:25

Right. I've got one more question, and this is this is actually for both of you, And it's just inspired by some of stuff you've said. It's not a really obvious segue, but I'm going to have to ask it anyway. Talking of Free League, talking of Draca Oktymina, talking of all those pictures of Elric that used to sit on the front covers of Swedish persons of, Draca Oktymina. What do you both think about the legends of Stormbringer game that's just been announced by Freely?

Axel: 56:58

I speaking for myself, I read the Elric books as a young Dracjordemoner playing Swede. And, I mean, I I knew even then that the cover was from the the Elric books. And I thought it kind of were really useful. The new Drocchio Rudomona was like kind of like that, but not. You know, they got the greens and

Andreas: 57:24

Homage.

Axel: 57:25

Yeah. Yeah. Very much so. But I was like, why didn't they use the real one, though? And now I feel I've I've gotten that explained to me.

Axel: 57:33

But I know there's there's an old basic role playing Elric Yeah. Game. Right? Yeah.

Matthew: 57:41

But I think I think, interestingly, I'm I'm gonna nerd out here. I think it's of the basic role playing variant that is magic world, which, of course, is the originally licensed game that became Dracoke Demona. So there's quite a close connection between

Axel: 57:59

Because those two

Andreas: 58:03

I've been reading online that like, oh, then there's two Stormbringer RPGs coming. Do you guys know anything about that? Is there a

Matthew: 58:10

Yeah, yeah. So Goodman Games, make Dungeon Crawl Classics, are going to be producing Elvik content. Elvik as opposed to Stormbringer content. So I have no idea what Michael Morcock is doing with the license. Originally, he'd licensed it to Chaosium.

Matthew: 58:31

The story is that he fell out in some way with Chaosium at some point in the past. I don't know how true that story is, but anyway, the licenses ended. They produced quite a lot of content. Mongoose did have a bit of a license with him for their version of Rune Quest when they were looking after it. But, yeah, I don't know quite how he's done this.

Matthew: 58:55

So I think the Goodman Games content will be D and D and Dungeon Call classics, focused. And, obviously, the Stormbringer is gonna be mostly Dragonbane. Duckalt.

Andreas: 59:12

It's gonna be based on on dragonbane, from what I from what I read. Right? Yeah. But kinda like they're doing with Trudvang.

Matthew: 59:19

Yeah. Well, I think probably you're you're right. But, like, Trudvang is not just a supplement for the basic set rules. It's a rewriting of the rules. Yeah.

Matthew: 59:30

Exactly. And I think there'll probably be, you know, another rule book with all the rules in it for for Strombringer. But I think, to be honest, between you and I, I'm I'm feeling, in fact we might have mentioned this earlier on in the recording that we will be making later after this interview my feeling is that they felt they probably weren't going to announce it for a few more months because I do know that Feeley kind of don't like to announce stuff too early. But when Goodman Games announced theirs, I think Fili probably felt we've got to announce ours.

Andreas: 01:00:02

No. We're gonna As well. We're have to. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: 01:00:05

But I don't expect to see it even kick starting before next year myself, but we'll wait and see.

Andreas: 01:00:10

I personally don't don't don't don't really have a relationship with, with, Morcocke or Elric or Stormbringer. I didn't I I actually have not read a single Elric book.

Matthew: 01:00:20

Crikey. I was about to say when Axel said that he'd read them all in his younger days, didn't we all? But obviously we didn't all.

Andreas: 01:00:28

Obviously not. No. No. When I I mean, I came into the hobby in '94, so I've had I've had ample time to do so, but I I just haven't no reason. It's not like I've looked at them and been like: No, I'm not going to read that.

Matthew: 01:00:42

You know, they're really thin. You can read them in a day.

Andreas: 01:00:45

Yeah, know, I know, I know. Think they were part of the Target Game book series. Yeah. They released a bunch of books and translated into Swedish. They did Color of Magic by Pratchett.

Dave: 01:00:58

Did a

Andreas: 01:00:58

few Conan Oh, man. They did City of Thieves, Robert Asperin as editor of like, a collection of short stories, and they did at least one or maybe two Elric books as well. They did a series of was it twenty twenty five Books Act, I think, something like that?

Axel: 01:01:18

Not sure. Not sure.

Dave: 01:01:19

A series.

Andreas: 01:01:20

Something like that. Something like that.

Axel: 01:01:21

But I've I I always thought that they had a pretty kind of interesting and unique voice in in fantasy in many ways. Very, very heavy metal kind of fantasy. I always felt like very over the top.

Matthew: 01:01:38

But he was in Hawkwind at the time. Yeah.

Axel: 01:01:41

It happened. I mean and and also, like, with the the very present, you know, drama stakes in all of it with, lots of, like, big tragic tragedy stuff and, yeah, fun stuff.

Matthew: 01:01:59

Yeah. I'm just I was just thinking the reason I've been, not looking at you guys and indeed disappearing probably out of camera shot, is I'm trying to look at my bookshelves, and it looks like I either gave away or sold most of my Ilrics. I've kept only my Hawkmoon books, which I think oh, and my Oswald Dustable books, which are two other aspects of the Eternal Champion that were obviously my favorite at some point in

Axel: 01:02:27

the But

Matthew: 01:02:28

I used to have a whole bookshelf of pretty much everything Warcook had done. Anyway, that's not about me. Yeah. So you made this podcast. At what point did you start playing Coriolis?

Matthew: 01:02:42

Was it in the first edition days, or was it after the free league version?

Axel: 01:02:46

It was after the free league version. I was familiar with the game. I almost got a first edition campaign off the ground before the podcast was even a thing. So so I I had become intrigued with the setting. I I always found it very, you know, inviting.

Axel: 01:03:09

And when Free League really did the the third horizon, the the way that it was written, way the the information was, like, bite sized and spread out throughout all the books and left sort of vague. And every paragraph felt like an invitation for me to start making shit up.

Matthew: 01:03:30

Creating an adventure. Exactly. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: 01:03:33

Yeah.

Axel: 01:03:34

Yeah. This is

Matthew: 01:03:35

why we have a podcast, basically.

Axel: 01:03:37

Exactly. Yeah. And and I think it's really interesting because a lot of people it seems that people either love or hate that. I find that a a certain type of RPG reader wants, you know, something more textbook y or perhaps I want

Andreas: 01:03:55

the fact

Matthew: 01:03:56

clearly laid out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Axel: 01:03:57

Yeah. And and clear answers and stuff like that. But to a certain other type of brain, which I suspect you and I share, the type of it it becomes, you know, uniquely inviting as I believe we we wrote in the press material, Andreas. Yeah. But but yeah.

Axel: 01:04:17

We so we played we started playing this campaign in 2016.

Matthew: 01:04:24

Mhmm.

Axel: 01:04:24

2016. Played it for about two years. I intended for it to be you know, the the amount of adventures in it, I intended to be a bit bigger. But I felt that we had to to move on. So it's nice to return to this material now and be able to, you know, expand it properly.

Axel: 01:04:49

But it's, yeah, it's basically a two year Coriolis campaign.

Matthew: 01:04:53

Brilliant. And, of course, now your dates there are important because that tells me, although it was the free league version, it was the Swedish language version.

Axel: 01:05:05

Right.

Matthew: 01:05:05

And it because the English version kind of was kick started around that time, and I can't remember when we started the podcast pretty soon after I had the PDFs in my hands, but that was after 2016. So, so you had the box set.

Axel: 01:05:22

Right. Yeah.

Matthew: 01:05:23

Yeah. Cool.

Axel: 01:05:25

Generously gifted to us, I should add.

Matthew: 01:05:30

By by by the guys at Free League?

Axel: 01:05:32

Yeah. Excellent. I think they, you know I mean, there weren't many podcasts around at all back then, really. Like so we we kind of stood out and yeah, that was good for us.

Matthew: 01:05:46

It was really useful. So, right. Okay. So that was that was then ten years ago. And now a decade later, have the license, the, free tabletop license that lets you produce branded Coriolis, the third horizon content with its with its own brand.

Matthew: 01:06:10

And you've already obviously, Andrea has done this for, for Dragonbane, but here, we've got it finally for Coriolis and Third Horizon. You decided between the two of you to to publish this and and to re to maybe rewrite it and improve upon it, what you originally had. Can you give me can you sum up in a non spoilery way what is going to be exciting for players about stepping into this campaign and therefore exciting for those GMs who, like you and I, get inspired by every single paragraph in the Third Horizon book? What is there in this book that's gonna make them want to back it?

Axel: 01:06:58

Well, it is it is a campaign. It is a fun campaign. It is it is a campaign that is already pretty established, at least among Swedish gamers, as really showcasing the uniqueness of the third horizon setting with the juxtaposition of so many different parts of human history and experience and faiths and philosophies and sciences and all that stuff. So and that that is what I was trying to do when I when I wrote the the campaign. I wanted to find, you know, a couple of really interesting and cool places for the players to explore.

Axel: 01:07:42

So you get you get five adventures. Three of those are really big adventure sites with lots of different groups and NPCs and various happenings going on.

Matthew: 01:07:55

So when you say adventure sites, let's clarify then, really big adventure sites, does that mean new cities or moons or colonies or whatever? Settlements, space stations,

Axel: 01:08:09

that kind of stuff. What I think is really important when using the term adventure size, what I mean with it at least is like there is not one particular path defined for you as a GM that the players are supposed to take. Rather, It is a big machine with many moving parts, and you familiarize yourself with this as a GM. Reading it and knowing your players and knowing your characters, you're supposed to start making out a way for that the players will likely, take through this based on you you knowing your players. But because you know this machine that is the the place, you can adapt on the fly to to player shenanigans and still have an interesting time.

Axel: 01:09:06

And that is those kind of adventures are the ones I really enjoy the most myself as as a game master.

Matthew: 01:09:14

Yeah. And on a smaller scale, they're the sort of adventure sites that we saw when well, we in in in in The UK first saw when Forbidden Lands was published. Right. Yeah. Which kinda says, here's the situation.

Matthew: 01:09:29

You know? Here are some factions, and these are the beefs they have with with each other. It's up to your players what they're gonna do walking into this situation, which side they're gonna take. There's no obviously good sides to take necessarily. And you've tried to achieve that in in what sounds like a bigger scale.

Axel: 01:09:49

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So so there is, without, spoiling anything, I mean, this is in the, very scant marketing material we have, but the main hook is that the players are chasing a rogue scientist. They're hot on his tail, basically.

Axel: 01:10:09

And I I really I heard I actually stole that from the guy who wrote red markets. He Caleb Stokes is one of my my idols, basically. And I was listening to a campaign he ran in Eclipse Face where which had that structure, that hook. And I really I think it's a pretty good hook. So there are some instructions for for making it personal, but there are also some very, you know, materialistic reasons for the characters to to go after this guy.

Axel: 01:10:44

And gradually, they, you know, discover the conspiracy that he's involved with and an ancient threat and all that stuff that you need for a story like this.

Matthew: 01:10:57

Now, Doctor. Wanner is this character's name. Yeah. I'm sure I've heard that name before.

Axel: 01:11:05

It's You have because, yeah, it's it's one of the and that that's also interesting, I think, when writing a a pretty traditional, in many ways, campaign for a game like Coriolis, where playing it vanilla, you make very campaign defining decisions as you create your group of characters.

Matthew: 01:11:23

So

Axel: 01:11:26

the way I I went ahead with that is, like, you can you can do the the quick start, which is, well, then you pick doctor Vanna as your nemesis, and this is why he's your nemesis. Or you can, you know, check the appendix that has a bunch of optional setups for why you should go after this guy based on different group concepts and stuff like that. So you can do the quick start or you can put some thought into it. And if you wanna do that, then the book will help you do that and kind of adapt the campaign just a little bit, but make it fit for your group. So so, yeah, there's Did

Matthew: 01:12:07

that character was that was that a nemesis in your original version of the campaign?

Axel: 01:12:12

Yeah. And he's one of the nemesis. Nemesises. I don't know that that you But he's one of the ones you can choose in the third horizon book when you choose for nemesis. And it's the same with the and and those were the choices made by my players in that original campaign, basically.

Axel: 01:12:38

So so there's the three adventure sites. There's the and then there's two other adventures that are a bit more traditional maybe, are, but they are a bit heightened and serve, you know, specific drama purposes, basically. So they are they are a bit more of a roller coaster, but should still provide a lot of, you know, heightened tense and dramatic moments, hopefully. But what I I really think will be interesting and which is coming along quite nicely is having I I have this idea of, like, the campaign, the way the climax ends, the way the truth is revealed, all that third act good stuff, you know? Yep.

Axel: 01:13:35

Where everything is you kind of understand the truth behind it all and stuff like that. This this campaign, makes, some, some pretty big, metaphysical claims, about the third horizon.

Matthew: 01:13:50

And those the nature of the of the icons, are we?

Axel: 01:13:53

Yes. Yes. We're talking about the nature of the icons themselves. And, basically, the idea is that three three uniquely three mutually exclusive truths are possible based on the events of the campaign. Right.

Axel: 01:14:15

And one of them is really grim, and one of them is a bit less grim, but difficult in another way and so on and so forth. And I can't really spoil that

Matthew: 01:14:28

but No. No.

Axel: 01:14:30

But but depending on how you interpret and how you as a GM want the campaign to adapt and to feel, these three themes or as I like to call them predestinations in the campaign. They are, like, dispersed throughout the scenarios. So each scenario has, like, yeah, here here's if you're running with the martyrs predestination, for instance, then you could you could add this. You could do this little thing here and so on and so forth. So basically the campaign tries to show to the GM how you can work with theme in three mutually, you know, exclusive ways.

Axel: 01:15:18

And that shows you also, I think, how you can adapt to how the players interpret the events of the campaign. And it gives you kind of like a little mixing table so you can, you know, mix the campaign as a producer depending on how your players react to to the events presented on. So, yeah, that that's that's what I find really interesting writing it, actually.

Matthew: 01:15:44

This I like, and and I I keep rabbiting on to anybody who will listen. It's a thing I liked about the Dracula Dossier in by Ken Hite. And Yeah. In in a way, it's an adventure site writ large in that here are all these people, here are all these locations. There isn't actually a story.

Matthew: 01:16:05

You make up the story. But it emerges. And I remember in the campaign I ran, the players got it into their heads that some kind of starter vampire I had created for the very first adventure, they decided that this was oh, it's gone out my head entirely. Quincy. The the a a vampirized Quincy from the original novel.

Matthew: 01:16:33

So, you know, I just that wasn't my plan. But from that point on, that was my plan. Yes. And in the end, they ended up working for Dracula to defeat Quincy.

Axel: 01:16:44

Lovely.

Matthew: 01:16:45

And feel good about it in some way. But, yeah. So I, I, that sounds really attractive to me. Now it does bring me on to another question though. Given that the official campaign, the wake of the icons has been criticized in some quarters for being very railroad y and for, and without again wanting to spoil that because not everybody necessarily who's listened to this has yet played that and there are events in there which some people felt the players were forced to witness rather than change in any way.

Matthew: 01:17:33

And that event was quite a big change in the horizon. Can I ask? This was obviously written well before that change was even a twinkle in Richard's eye. Is it still set potentially before that big adventure in, before that, that, that big event of the last part of the second book of the official campaign?

Axel: 01:17:59

Yeah. I I had to decide, how to treat the, like, the official story of the third horizon. And I simply decided to just ignore it altogether. And I I have a little note in the beginning of the text as it is right now. It says, you know, about canon.

Axel: 01:18:25

And, yeah, this this text doesn't into it it doesn't really take into account anything else written for the game besides the base game. And I think that almost becomes a selling point as well because Yeah.

Matthew: 01:18:41

I think it could be a very attractive selling point to

Axel: 01:18:44

Yeah. Because you you have the the box and you have the campaign, and now you can play the campaign with the box. And it shouldn't be more difficult.

Andreas: 01:18:50

Or the book,

Matthew: 01:18:51

for those

Axel: 01:18:52

of you listening.

Matthew: 01:18:52

Right. Right. Yeah. I think I think a lot of people would be very pleased to hear that. But I'm gonna just converse argument.

Matthew: 01:19:03

Let's say I've I've run the first two parts of that campaign. I haven't yet run the third part. Let me go, I want to slot Doctor Wano in here and maybe in some adventure before we start that third bit, take my players and the first couple of bits of that campaign, into the, shall we call it, the new third horizon, trying to find out what the shape of that big event is and could I adapt this to that?

Axel: 01:19:39

Well, confession time. I haven't actually read

Matthew: 01:19:43

Oh, these mysterious things I'm saying about

Axel: 01:19:46

the big event. You have no idea what

Matthew: 01:19:48

I'm talking about.

Axel: 01:19:48

Nope. Well, I'm I'm vaguely familiar with the the broad strokes of it. I I should admit that. But

Andreas: 01:19:56

Some things have been hard to not hear.

Axel: 01:19:59

Yeah.

Andreas: 01:20:00

These recent few years.

Axel: 01:20:03

I mean, I'm absolutely sure it is possible to use material from this campaign and slot it into any ongoing campaign you have running mercy of the icons or whatever. But I I do not believe Eater of Worlds will have material to help you to do that as as as I have the ambition of it to, like, stand on its own very much.

Matthew: 01:20:30

That's I'm saying.

Axel: 01:20:31

Yeah. Yeah.

Andreas: 01:20:33

It's also it's also I mean, you played it for two years in your podcast, as you said. It's like it's gonna be quite massive. Like it is Not saying that it's meant to be that way, but I think most people will look at it and then go, well, we do have something going on, but you know, I'd like to try something else. I was an engineer in our previous campaign. I'd like to try and be a data spider this time.

Andreas: 01:20:58

So let's create some new characters, beginner characters. Let's put those ones into each of worlds.

Matthew: 01:21:05

Cool. Yeah.

Andreas: 01:21:08

Now It be a long campaign for you if you do that. Yeah. So it's like

Matthew: 01:21:13

Yes. And already, MSC campaign is pretty long. Let me ask you, Andreas. Obviously, you've got a at the moment, we're just looking at the preview of the Kickstarter. There's some lovely spreads that are being created.

Matthew: 01:21:36

How close do you think the know preview spreads. I know there are gonna be changes, but how close how happy are you with these preview spreads? How close is the finished book going to look to these spreads that you've got on the Kickstarter, do you think?

Andreas: 01:21:53

I would say a very boring answer, like they're gonna be different. We've done quite a lot of bit of work with graphic design since we did those, but it's not gonna be vastly different. Like I think for a person who's not into graphic design, it might not look

Matthew: 01:22:13

Might not even look that different.

Andreas: 01:22:14

Yeah, it might not look that different. For a person who knows a bit of graphic design, that person might think that it will look very different. It's hard to tell. We haven't really like 100% set the graphic design either. All three of the Nordic skulls are involved in the project.

Andreas: 01:22:36

Robert will do a big bunch of illustrations and cover and all that, and Christian will do the graphic design and layout. And Axel will be involved in the graphic stuff as well because he is very, very good at that stuff as well. So I'm basically the worst person to ask

Axel: 01:22:55

about, you know,

Matthew: 01:22:57

the spread. Was that? Together.

Axel: 01:23:00

I gotta say, if I can jump in just and talk a little bit about how amazing it is to work with Robert illustrating this because he hasn't really done sci fi that much before. And we're kind of feeling our way because, you know, this, he, his, his drawing style is significantly different from the third horizon free league books. Right? And I love that. I I mean, not that the free league stuff is is bad in any way, but I love to be creatively in a position where we are creating a new look for for established lore.

Axel: 01:23:44

It's it's really something. And I also think, you know, coming from fantasy, drawing curvy things and kind of rough and messy things, It's it's such a good fit for doing a sci fi fantasy kind of aesthetic. And Yeah. It's really fascinating to see this evolve. So, yeah, I'm very thrilled about that aspect of the book.

Matthew: 01:24:13

Now I I was gonna ask very much about that. Did you obviously, when you were doing the podcast, did you have any illustrations that you commissioned for that podcast that, or is this the first time you've seen the campaign actually visualized?

Axel: 01:24:28

I I did a little bit of, support, illustration. I mean, very quick and dirty, stuff, not, you know,

Matthew: 01:24:36

really And that was you?

Axel: 01:24:37

Free stuff. Yeah. That was me. So so I did, you know, player character portraits. I I I did a mashup of some Star Wars ship with my own drawing, and we call that their ship.

Axel: 01:24:53

And I found a bunch of cool sci fi pictures on Pinterest and I'm like yeah we're gonna set an adventure here and then I show that so you know basic GM stuff in a way I think. I think a lot of GMs find cool pictures and show to their players and, like, what's going on? But there's some there's some old maps and stuff that I have that I'm painstakingly trying to dig up from my archives. And, I mean, we're not gonna reuse those obviously because they are of, you know, your your home group quality Yeah. Level of presentation.

Axel: 01:25:28

But but yeah. They I mean, it's it's a pretty comfortable position also when you you kind of know the the basic just layouts, if you will, of the campaign. And it's more a matter of putting everything together and making everything shine.

Andreas: 01:25:47

And I think also, if I may just butt in for a little a little second here and and just I don't think we're really presented what Eater of Worlds I we we talked about what the what the campaign is, but, like, project wise. Mhmm. Because we've talked to you, Matthew, so you know all about it, but I don't think really think we mentioned like what why are we working together, for instance. Because I think we, as Nordic Skalds, we're known for doing the Windheim stuff for Dragonbane, of course, and Yggdrasil Burns, Viking hack for Mirkborg, and our own little fun pick up and play My Father's Sword epic fantasy game. But we got wind of that there was going to be a third party license like quite long ago.

Andreas: 01:26:40

And we were talking initially to Richard Antroja, who wrote the Mercy Vicodin trilogy. And it just so happened that he said to us, just a few weeks after we had our interview with you, Matthew, and you and I set loose the news that we were going to do it with him. And then there was a Spear Congresse where me and Axel ended up sitting between me and Christian.

Matthew: 01:27:08

And was this at the dinner?

Andreas: 01:27:10

Yeah, exactly.

Matthew: 01:27:13

Cool. Cool. I just saw

Andreas: 01:27:20

a seen a Facebook post by Axel where he was like, yeah, I'm going to do some writing now for while. And basically asking his fans, like, what Which ones do like campaigns would you like? And since I was a listener for his podcast back in the day and thoroughly enjoyed that campaign, I was just like, the stars are aligning. Like, the universe is telling us something. So I dropped a little hook and dangled it in front of Vaxx and said, you know, if you want to do Eater of Worlds, I mean, we would love to be involved in publishing it, you do that.

Andreas: 01:28:02

So it's not a Nordic Skalds product where we've hired Axel to do this for us. It's much more of a corporation. And that's the way we want to work with freelancers as much as possible, letting freelance writers or illustrators feel like it's their product, it's their baby, it's their thing. And we're just helping out with facilitating- Yeah. Getting it published.

Andreas: 01:28:33

And of course, in this product, we will be very involved, all three of us, of course. So it will feel like a Nordic Skulls product as well. But it's very much a matter of this is Axel's thing, it's Axel's campaign. And we are very honored and happy to be involved in in bringing it to life.

Axel: 01:28:54

Excellent. And I'm incredibly pleased, to, not have to do a Kickstarter for the first time, for instance.

Matthew: 01:29:03

Oh, it's easy. Don't worry about it.

Axel: 01:29:04

I just I just wanna write, dude. And I get to do that. And that is, very lovely indeed.

Matthew: 01:29:12

Cool. And actually talking about the product, I imagine there's a book involved, right?

Andreas: 01:29:21

Mhmm.

Matthew: 01:29:21

Yep. But Yeah. Anything else? What's what's the plan? What what are you what are you hoping to offer to backers as their rewards?

Matthew: 01:29:29

One book, two books? What's the what's the thought on the shape of it? Or do you not want to reveal that?

Andreas: 01:29:36

We did we did talk, initially, like, days, around, I don't know, the term, like, New Year's around that. And we were when we were, like, basically, okay, we're gonna do it, but how are we gonna do it? Are we gonna do these five adventures, like, in the more, like, booklet format, which is like, you know, Ghazali and Aram's Secret and all that? Or are we gonna do Mercy of the Icon, hardback, you know? And we I think we both felt that we lean towards doing one big book.

Andreas: 01:30:13

So that's what it's gonna be. And I talked to Christian today, and basically, we are now more or less, we're 99% sure we will offer some kind of limited edition, some kind of limited deluxe edition as well, with some extra cool covers and a little bling to it as well. We will most certainly be doing some custom die sets as well. We've done that for most of our other Kickstarters.

Matthew: 01:30:47

Does this mean we might have readable Coriolis dice?

Andreas: 01:30:50

Yes. Because if it's something we're known for, it's readable dice that are also beautiful. That's like I I can't I I just can't get why more publishers and producers are not doing this, because it's so annoying. We Yeah, readability is a high priority. It's even a higher priority than aesthetics.

Andreas: 01:31:16

But aesthetics comes in, of course, as a very close.

Matthew: 01:31:19

I might have to back this project just for those days. I'll get the book as well. Don't worry, actually.

Andreas: 01:31:25

And I don't know if you know this, but I did a little soundtrack called Music from the Third Horizon, which I just had out And of my then I was like, I'm not really, really happy with it. I would like to make a, like redo it. And so that's also going to be a part of the Kickstarter. Cool. So some songs might change names to fit better with the campaign.

Andreas: 01:31:50

We'll see. There'll be

Matthew: 01:31:52

some I mean, songs you mean to say is you're going to write new versions of the songs that fit better with the campaign. That's what you mean to

Dave: 01:31:57

Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: 01:31:59

That would be crass.

Andreas: 01:32:00

No. No. I'm I'm I'm rework them. Mean, might be very recognizable. Some might be not be very recognizable.

Andreas: 01:32:08

Apart from that, nothing's really decided unless something slips my mind right now. But book, Dice, music, deluxe limited edition, Kickstarter exclusive version. I think that's right, Axel. I don't think we've discussed anything else that is really set in stone. Oh, we have one thing.

Andreas: 01:32:35

We have one No.

Axel: 01:32:36

I mean

Andreas: 01:32:36

a little thing. Right? Should we should we tell them?

Axel: 01:32:40

Yeah, there are some Yeah, yeah, I

Andreas: 01:32:42

think When Axel did the campaign, there was an amazing player character called Abdallah, the poet. Henk, who was the player behind that, has agreed to write some Abdallah poetry.

Matthew: 01:32:57

Oh, lovely.

Andreas: 01:32:59

So there will be some Abdallah what was his last name? Abdallah?

Axel: 01:33:07

Abdallah. Something like that.

Andreas: 01:33:08

I don't really recall.

Axel: 01:33:10

So there

Andreas: 01:33:10

will be some some some poetry from him as well.

Matthew: 01:33:13

Excellent.

Axel: 01:33:15

Yeah. And may maybe maybe some other small Easter eggs like that for for, you know, the those backers who are also old listeners, of which I'm hoping there will be a generous number.

Matthew: 01:33:29

And these, of course, are gonna be Swedish speaking because this podcast, let's just warn the majority of our about a third of our listeners come from Sweden, so are Swedish speaking. But, the majority of our, listeners actually probably down to about a quarter now, but still a good a sizable portion. But, yeah, 75% probably don't speak Swedish. So

Andreas: 01:33:53

Yeah. Maybe this would be a good time to say that

Axel: 01:33:56

And obviously that's

Andreas: 01:33:57

The Eater Worlds will only be published in English. Not Swedish at all. That's the plan for now. Yeah. We we're making no promises for the future, but, we are really planning for one language.

Matthew: 01:34:15

Yeah. And it's an interesting conversation I had with Matthias because, of course, Symbroom was published in both languages, but this new tenth anniversary that they're doing for tenth anniversary edition, I should say, they're doing is only gonna be in English. And I I see that Matthias is already kind of funding off Swedish Swedish fans' anger about that. But, you know, he's saying, you know, actually, even when with you guys, least Swedish is obviously your your first language. But having having created it in English, it's we've you know, you spend time translating it back into Swedish and then doing the layout again.

Matthew: 01:34:55

And that's time that you could be making new product if you if you only had one language. So so yeah. Okay. Well, I'm gonna let you deal with that with your Swedish fans, Zach. So it's nothing to do.

Matthew: 01:35:08

I I'm I'm very happy with the English version. I'm not feeling a need for the Swedish version myself.

Axel: 01:35:13

Yeah. And yeah. And I I should also, really emphasize that, this is this is a it's a full fledged campaign for, a group of players, who who are completely unfamiliar with my podcast or anything like that. It's not just, like, a bunch of in jokes for old podcast listeners.

Matthew: 01:35:34

It's good today.

Axel: 01:35:35

A proper campaign for proper players. Yeah. Yeah. Just getting that in worth

Matthew: 01:35:39

saying, I think, possibly. Okay. This is this is all brilliant. I think I've run out of questions. Well, Well, I've got one more question actually to ask you Andreas.

Matthew: 01:35:48

You mentioned, talking with Ricard beforehand. You'd mentioned to me outside this, that the Eater Worlds wasn't necessarily going to be the first product that you were gonna release for The Third Horizon. What are your plans? I'm assuming this goes well, and there's no reason I think we need to worry that it's not gonna go well. But assuming it goes well and you do another one, can you tell us anything about what that might be?

Andreas: 01:36:13

There's nothing planned, like, very decided. But of course, we like, Yeah, assuming this goes well, we will, of course, produce more Third Horizon stuff. There's, of course, always the option of working with Axle again in the future, doing either more long stuff or a few shorter ones. There's also the option of because we did share a hotel with Richard during GOTHCON, so we had breakfast together each morning, and I could tell that his fingers are itching a bit to return to the third horizon. So I'm I feel fairly confident that I can say that unless bad things happen, we will do something with Ricard, but it will probably be

Matthew: 01:37:06

But there's no firm plans yet about No.

Andreas: 01:37:09

No firm plans yet. No firm plans. And I mean, I I also have a podcast. We've been playing, like, our Coriolis campaign is the second longest running campaign that we've done. This is not impossible.

Andreas: 01:37:20

I'll try and convert that into a playable campaign. It's not impossible. But, yeah, no firm plans whatsoever. Just a bunch of dreams and ideas.

Matthew: 01:37:34

Right. Okay. I guess we have to bring this to a close. I can carry on talking about this for the whole evening, but you guys have got to, you've got a life. So we, well, first of all, Axel, I've been avoiding saying your surname actually, because before we started recording, planned to ask you how to say it.

Matthew: 01:37:56

Vidian. Vidian. Okay. Vidian. Yeah.

Andreas: 01:37:59

That was really good, Matthew.

Matthew: 01:38:01

Yeah. So I I will write that in the show notes as well. So, Axel, it's been a real pleasure talking with you. Andreas, of course, always a pleasure talking with you. But Axel

Andreas: 01:38:12

Pleasure.

Matthew: 01:38:14

You very much for joining us.

Axel: 01:38:16

Thank you. Lovely being here.

Matthew: 01:38:18

And Andreas, thank you for bringing Axel into Hamam.

Andreas: 01:38:23

Yeah. More naked deuce than Hamam. I mean, what what do like?

Dave: 01:38:27

Well, now I'm even more upset that I was stuck at work because that sounded like a really great chat. And and Andreas is a is a lovely old friend of the show. Axel seems great. Would have been lovely to have met him.

Matthew: 01:38:38

He is lovely. Lovely.

Dave: 01:38:40

Yeah. So, yeah. Sword's Law. You know, obviously, you've got to pay the bills. But, yeah, I think I mean, the the thing that really struck me is, and actually which I strongly approve of, is putting to one side the events of the Mercy of the Icons and allowing the world of Coriolis, the universe of the Third Horizon, to play out in a way that perhaps many of us might prefer to see it play out in.

Dave: 01:39:09

Yeah. So, yeah, so I'm really pleased they've done that because I think that that just leaves so many options open, I think, for for players and and GMs.

Matthew: 01:39:21

Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting thing, isn't it? People tie themselves you know, last week when I was talking with or last episode, when I was talking with Matthias, you know, he was saying, well, we can't really tie it in with what happened in the Davagar campaign because we don't know what happened in your Davagar campaign.

Dave: 01:39:40

No. Exactly. Yeah.

Matthew: 01:39:41

So, you know, you can as you develop these things, you can tie yourselves in knots trying to keep up with what players do at their table. Yeah. And there are a bunch of tables who probably never played the emissary lost campaign. Wake of the icons is what I'm looking for. Yeah.

Matthew: 01:40:02

So so, yeah, this will be will be fresher then. I I would like to see

Dave: 01:40:13

Go how on. Go on, mate.

Matthew: 01:40:15

I was gonna say, I'd like to see how easy it is to adapt to a post Mercy third horizon.

Dave: 01:40:23

But

Matthew: 01:40:25

it's good that you don't have to bother. Although it's recommended to bother. I mean, you know, Pokey Boy Axel doesn't even doesn't even know what happened. I mean, he kind of does what happened, but he he's not gone through it in detail. So

Dave: 01:40:38

But, again, it doesn't matter if your campaign is being set, you know, in a universe where either that didn't happen or it happens before that.

Matthew: 01:40:46

Before it happened. Yeah.

Andreas: 01:40:47

Yeah.

Dave: 01:40:47

Yeah. But I mean, you know, I I really applaud the bravery of a designer to do something earth shattering, like, no spoilers, like what they do in in in the Mercy of the Icons campaign.

Matthew: 01:41:01

Like what Ricard did. Yes.

Dave: 01:41:03

I applaud I absolutely applaud that because it's brave, and it's it's you know, it it might be a surprise. But again,

Matthew: 01:41:11

think something has to be said. I resent those fantasy worlds that stay the same all the time because that

Dave: 01:41:19

sells more books.

Matthew: 01:41:20

Yeah. So anyway, carry on. Carry on.

Dave: 01:41:22

But yeah. But so so I so I applaud that. But I think in this case, it's such a big thing that actually I kind of prefer the third horizon without those events having happened. But I applaud the Courage for doing it.

Matthew: 01:41:39

Sadly, mate, in your game that you you're a player in, it's happened. You saw it happen.

Andreas: 01:41:44

I know.

Matthew: 01:41:44

You've gotta live with that.

Dave: 01:41:46

Right. If we ever get around playing the third the third.

Matthew: 01:41:49

It's not a Yaffet Kota situation either.

Dave: 01:41:51

No. No. We can't retcon that one. No. Yeah.

Dave: 01:41:56

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, well, let's not get into that. I

Matthew: 01:42:01

think we talk about a little

Dave: 01:42:03

today, don't you? Yeah.

Matthew: 01:42:05

Too Yeah. Long, frankly.

Dave: 01:42:07

Well, let's hope we can try and record something whilst we're at UK Games Expo. Obviously, it's a long weekend, so probably not gonna get time to sit down and record a podcast. But let's see if we can put something together and that we might be able to get out a short episode later in the week, perhaps.

Matthew: 01:42:23

Yeah. Anyway, until then or until maybe four weeks from now, who can tell? It's goodbye from me.

Dave: 01:42:33

And it's goodbye from him.

Axel: 01:42:35

You

Dave: 01:42:40

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.