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Episode 11: Miniatures, RPGs, and licensed IPs with Richard August of Steamforged Games
79 Plays1 year ago
Host Alan Bahr is joined by Richard August to discuss their collaborations, the direction the industry is going, how Steamforged develops their IP products and what is in store for them.
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Transcript
Introduction to Radio Free RPG
00:00:11
Speaker
I'm Alan Barr, and this is Radio Free RPG. Hello, I'm Alan Barr, and welcome to Radio Free RPG.
Guest Introduction: Rich August from Steamforged Games
00:00:33
Speaker
I'm joined by my guest, Rich August of Steamforged Games. Welcome, Rich.
00:00:40
Speaker
Hiya, good to be here. Thanks for having me on. Always lovely to speak to you. Yes, and you're joining us from Manchester, the United Kingdom, right? That's correct. Yeah, on a authentically miserable Mancunian day. Oh, well, I'm glad to hear that on your behalf, I suppose.
00:01:04
Speaker
And
Role and Responsibilities at Steamforged Games
00:01:05
Speaker
you are the lead RPG, muckety muck, at Steamforged Games. That is correct, yes. That is what I insist on being called. Excellent. I figured that would be an appropriate title. So why don't you walk us through sort of what you do, what your responsibilities are, what it's like at Steamforged Games. I suppose my job kind of correlates
00:01:33
Speaker
fairly well with a line manager slash editor, but across multiple lines. So I am basically in charge of a lot of the concepting, the development, the writing, and then the strategic overview of all the games, what they're meant to do, what we want them to do in the marketplace, and then
00:02:01
Speaker
seeing them through to completion. Basically, I'm involved at every stage of any of our RPG products. Whether it's Corebook or whether it's an African counter set or DICE or anything like that, I'm involved all the way through. Okay.
Collaboration with Art and Design Team
00:02:23
Speaker
Do you handle things like art direction alongside that?
00:02:28
Speaker
Well, we have we have an in-house art director, Russ Charles, who's also kind of lead sculptor. And like everybody here wears a couple of different hats. So I do do some art direction with him. So it's a, you know, it's a cooperative thing. So yeah, there is art direction. There is work. Our lead graphic designer, Elliot Smith, our lovely graphics team to, you know, make sure the look is right. Yeah, it's yeah. Okay.
00:02:56
Speaker
So it's not your sole responsibility, like it might be for a smaller publisher or something, but you definitely work in tandem with the people who govern that task. Yes. Yeah. We are in the fortunate position of having specialists who can then work with people who aren't naturally gifted in an area like me to make sure that the things look right and look nice and do what they're meant to do.
00:03:26
Speaker
That makes sense. That's the role of specialists to ease the burden on the non-specialists.
00:03:34
Speaker
So let's start talking about Epic Encounters.
Epic Encounters Product Line Overview
00:03:39
Speaker
So for those who don't know, Epic Encounters are boxes for specifically D&D 5e, but they are role-playing game adventures that come with a collection of pre-assembled miniatures and a one or two night adventure with a map, tokens, things like that, all in a box that in the US generally runs $35 to $50, depending on what's in it.
00:04:01
Speaker
They tend to be structured in a two box pattern with sort of like the minions and the MOOCs in the first box and the second half of the adventure and the boss are the second box, which is a big, large miniature, like a dragon or a giant worm monster. But they can also be ran as solo adventures, so they can be divorced. And one of the things about Epic Encounters is it really fills a niche for people who like miniatures at the tabletop.
00:04:31
Speaker
but don't maybe have the time or the inclination to run down and paint a bunch of minis because these come with pre-assembled minis, they are locked in with adventures. So what was the genesis of the Epic Encounters line? Why did you feel there was a niche in the market to fill with this product? Because RPG miniatures are not uncommon. No, no, they aren't.
00:05:01
Speaker
So there's two things. Do you remember Joan of Arc from Mythic Games came out a few years ago? It was 15 millimeter kind of game. I'm familiar with the game though. I've never played it. Yeah. Well, they did a dragon and it was a very nice dragon scale to 15 millimeters. And we had a deal with them where we sent them a load of gods here and they sent us a load of Joan of Arc.
00:05:31
Speaker
And so we got this, this dragon mini and Matt, our creative, uh, chief creative officer or director, great director, creative director. Was a big fan of this mini, but kind of basically thought, well, why can't we, we can do that. And I just been brought on board and we start basically discussing the fact that RPG minis while they weren't
00:06:01
Speaker
uncommon, they weren't specialized and they usually, without wanting to sound too kind of hostile, I think, you know, a lot of the major companies specializing in RPG miniatures don't do a brilliant job. You know, certainly I think that I won't name them, but the ones who have the 5E license, their miniatures are crap and they, they aren't cheap.
00:06:31
Speaker
and they aren't particularly good. And we at Steamforged, I think, you know, I would argue, do some of the best miniatures in the business. And we're able, you know, with with some kind of discussions with our manufacturers, we're able to do really, really cool miniatures at a relatively affordable price. And we had me to kind of, you know, come up with adventures and cool ideas. And basically, what we wanted to do was was
00:06:57
Speaker
give people something they could immediately take off the shelf and use, and it would have virtually everything you needed into play. So that kind of a bridging product, if you like, where you go from the starter set to something more complex, but you were still having that that guided, you know, hand holding feel, which I think is something that is missing in the industry. I think we're
00:07:25
Speaker
We're quite good at starter sets and we're very good at core books and we're less good at, you know, that, that, that transitional process that you tend to go from here's a starter set, which explains everything in minute detail. And it's very, very, you know, clearly broken up. It's very clearly delineated. And then suddenly here's a 400 page rule book and you need to read all of this if you go to GM. And there's not that kind of, you know, trainer wheels almost. And we felt that.
00:07:55
Speaker
we could offer something which gave a lot of tips, some guidance to GMs that gave them everything they needed to get a game to the table without the weight of expectation, which players can often put on a GM for each night of gaming, et cetera. And we could
00:08:19
Speaker
give them everything. So it's a combination of we can do cool RPG minis and we can make them as affordable as anybody else on the market and we can offer something genuinely useful to newer players. Okay. That's an interesting attitude towards the product.
00:08:46
Speaker
I think you're right, and this is something that certain games are very good at. I'm going to name Privateer Press right now. The War Machine Mark IV releases have been very good at providing a purchasing through line for the consumer. You bought the starter, did you like it? Great. And it tells you right there, the next two products you might want are these two.
00:09:09
Speaker
And if you buy one of those and you go, oh, I like this, they go the next two products you might want are these two. And they've created this clear purchasing line that walks you from start to sort of finish of the product line. And I definitely agree with you that that is something that RPGs historically don't do. You either get a core book or you get a starter set and the next product is the core book. Now,
00:09:35
Speaker
With a similar line that Steam Forest produces, the animal adventures line. You've kind of taken that idea of the epic encounters with the miniatures and the through line, but you've also included the starter set.
Animal Adventures for Collectors
00:09:50
Speaker
Yeah, because it does have its own starter set for this game where you play cats and dogs. It was indeed. But you don't have the same epic encounter boxes.
00:10:02
Speaker
in that there's adversaries within an adventure. There are adversary miniatures, but there's no equivalent epic encounter. What was the decision to pivot and do something different? I would have thought that you would try to emulate the same name and create a firm through line. That's a fair argument. With Animal Adventures, there is a very different market and a very different audience for it.
00:10:32
Speaker
And a lot of people who are buying animal adventures aren't buying them for role-playing games. They're buying them because they are cute animal miniatures and they're collectible. So what we've got with animal adventures is a split audience that we are trying to
00:10:56
Speaker
accommodate and to, you know, to please everybody. So you've got some people who really do like the Animal Adventures world and the RPG, the associated RPG-ness that comes with them, you know, and that's what the starter set was for. It was for people who, you know, might have the miniatures or might, you know, their kids might have seen the miniatures and want to play the games.
00:11:20
Speaker
And so we've given them, you know, an even more simplified kind of version of 5e. So, you know, strip away a lot of the excess additions, you know, really in 5e skills aren't really doing the whole lot. They just give you an, you know, an additional, you just get to use your attribute, what's your efficiency bonus, et cetera. So you can kind of strip those things out and cut it down even more and have this, you know, cute world, et cetera. But when it comes to the miniatures, there are a large percentage of people who just want the miniatures.
00:11:49
Speaker
And so basically we'd be kind of weakening a strength really to sell them as Epic Encounters because the additional costs associated with an Epic Encounter are going to put off buyers. And then there's also the fact that there's only a limited number of
00:12:15
Speaker
dog species you can recognizably do as miniatures and the number of cat species you can recognizably do as miniatures, et cetera. And people aren't necessarily going to want to buy 20 cat miniatures at a time. They might want to buy six or 10 and you can raise your hand all you like, but you know, you can, you can get sort of people want to kind of buy six, maybe 10 of them top that
00:12:43
Speaker
If nothing else, if we were to sell that as an African counter, I think people would feel slightly shortchanged. Okay, that's interesting. Is there a reason you haven't considered putting a digital adventure with a QR code or something in the product?
00:13:03
Speaker
Something that leverages. So for example, yes. So for example, if I go by the box of doggy heroes, number one, it comes with five or six little dogs and their miniatures, but it would be easy to do a PDF of like NPCs. They also use these miniatures or pre-generated characters in a small one site adventure or something that creates that value add.
00:13:30
Speaker
We do have four, I think four free adventures on, on the, on the website for animal adventures. And we also have basic character creation rules. So the more advanced character creation rules for cat and dog. Pieces on other animals are in the two source books. The Golden Cove, which is available and far away see, which is delivered, has delivered to backers now. And we'll be in retail soon.
00:14:00
Speaker
But we have, you know, more basic versions of those on the website. And we also do have a couple of I think there's two kind of free RPG day adventures on there and then two we just put up there. So there are materials available to kind of, you know, breadcrumb the trail in. But at the same time, you know, we're a company and we've got to we've got to make money. Right. And, you know, we can sell a 30 quid source book.
00:14:29
Speaker
and, you know, make a passable return on it, whereas, you know, a small, you know, unless you're kind of, I think, really pushing the digital side, which we haven't, that is something I'm hoping to change, but we haven't pushed it as much as we might have. Until that's kind of well established, you're not going to make the kind of returns on it we need to see. I see. It's interesting.
00:14:54
Speaker
And I think it's a different perspective from somebody in my boat where digital is such a large part of my market that I'm always considering how can I enhance the value proposition through digital content for this release or this item or what have you. It's just a natural path that my thought process as a publisher takes. So I think it's interesting that
00:15:19
Speaker
In your case, the value add isn't there necessarily at this time, whereas for me, it is pretty much immediately always there because so much of my consumer base expects digital content. Yeah, well, I think this is partly a legacy of... There are aspects of this I can't talk about for one reason or another. I'll tell you off air, but, you know,
00:15:46
Speaker
But part of the thing is, we're a miniatures company, or have been very strongly associated as a miniatures company. And so the physical product for us is, and to a greater or lesser degree, remains the central element, you know, that the actual artifact itself is definitely the main thing. So while we are, I mean, you know, Epic Encounters is
00:16:10
Speaker
being put up, is going to be put up on drive-through. All the Dark Souls books are available on drive-through. We started using that for pre-orders and, you know, putting the book out early, et cetera, you know, all of these things. They are incremental steps. We're not there yet.
00:16:25
Speaker
Okay. I think that's, and definitely, you know, every business has their own way of going about things. So I definitely think that's not, I'm not saying that's not valid, but I find it interesting, the thought process that leads into these decisions, especially as a person who controls the publishing aspect of my, you know, my experience of my company. Yes. Well, I, you know, I don't have that. I don't have the same freedom on that.
Market Trends and Digital Growth in RPGs
00:16:55
Speaker
Absolutely. What are you doing? Obviously, you know, there are advantages and disadvantages to our kind of, you know, various company situations. Yes. I think this is possibly a disadvantage of mine. But, you know, I'm not sure I've changed. No, and it's interesting to think about, but I don't think one way is any more valid than the other. They just work differently. Oh, definitely. Yeah. And I mean, it is something we're doing more of.
00:17:24
Speaker
We're not quite there yet. Yeah, absolutely. With digital being such a strong component of Gallant Night Games products, when the pandemic started, we were well positioned to keep moving roughly the same amount of product.
00:17:45
Speaker
through an easy channel. Though I have colleagues at other companies who, because distributors shut down or game stores were shut down, their sales dropped off a cliff relatively quickly. Because they relied on that physical component so much. Did that add any tension or is that part of this alteration to the strategic plan maybe? The realization that this could change and maybe it's good to have that extra buffer
00:18:14
Speaker
I think what's important to remember with Steamforged is that the majority of our business is board games. And as a result, actually the pandemic wasn't, as for I think a lot of major board game companies, quite good for us in some ways. People were and had the money to put into kickstarters.
00:18:42
Speaker
which isn't the case at the minute. Kickstarter was 27th down last year. And while obviously some of that is because it's been, you know, the market's been being contested in a way it wasn't prior to this, even then I think, you know, I don't think game found took 10% or 15% even of Kickstarter's money. I think they are 20% down because people are spending less on it. So our, you know, we are, we are good at Kickstarter as we do.
00:19:10
Speaker
good, you know, monster hunters delivering now. And that did very, very well. And in part, that did very well. People were at home, they had that expendable money. And they started investing in this kind of product. So RPGs are a growing part of our company, they are not the biggest part of it. And so the, the, you know, the hit on retail
00:19:38
Speaker
wasn't as big for us as it might have been for a company more solidly invested. Again, digital is always good because it's cheap. It's an easy way to disseminate product. It's popular. Everybody loves a PDF. It means we can get the product out earlier, we can get eyes on it earlier. It has only recently become something where we want to put
00:20:08
Speaker
or effort into it just was, you know, until recently, we were doing really on the kickstarters. Sure. But we're doing badly on the kickstarters at the minute, it's just that, you know, that market is smaller than it was. Our kickstarters are all doing very well, but there are fewer people wanting to put that kind of money into kickstarters.
00:20:29
Speaker
Sure. That's interesting. It can be easy when RPGs are a bulk of what you consume to look at a company that makes RPGs tangentially and afford it the same sort of weight to the company's bottom line or sort of structure. So it's a good reminder to be told, no, RPGs are nice, but we're a miniature company, I suppose. That must make your job interesting sometimes. I mean, it does.
00:20:59
Speaker
And, you know, there are, I won't pretend there hasn't been some tensions around that. Never actual kind of arguments or anything. But, you know, that's because I kind of know where, know what, what is what's needed. And that's, that's part of, I think, working in a bigger company is knowing what your role is, and where you value to the company. So, you know, there's no point, you know, let's, let's be honest, we look at,
00:21:29
Speaker
We look at RPG Kickstarters, only one RPG Kickstarter has ever done above 5 million and it was Avatar. And let's be honest, it doesn't look like anybody's getting close to that in the near future. Whereas million dollar board games and 2 million, 3 million, 4 million, there are a lot of those. Board games is a bigger market or has been until recently.
00:21:58
Speaker
You know, I think with the D&D movie, et cetera, that may shift the needle a little bit more towards RPGs. But at the end of the day, you only need one core book to play an RPG most of the time. So there are less, you know, there are fewer things to spend your money on.
00:22:20
Speaker
Sure. And, and a lot of those things are made by other companies. Dice, right? There's no way to, unless you have proprietary dice, there's no way to restrict where somebody gets their dice to play your game. Yeah. Whereas with a board game, they need the other components physically to play the add-ons. Yeah.
00:22:42
Speaker
Do you think that those differences in the Kickstarter totals are partially due to price point? For example, I see two hundred dollar three hundred dollar Kickstarter pledge levels for board games all the time, especially these miniature heavy ones. But most RPG pledge levels range from 50 to 100 dollars and maybe more if you're getting something unique or customized. Yes, I mean. The.
00:23:07
Speaker
That's part of it, yeah. There is definitely a greater room for the kind of plastic crack element of big board game Kickstarters that RPGs don't have the same scope for. At the same time, I also think some of it's just due to there being more people playing board games and more people willing to invest.
00:23:36
Speaker
And I also think that the pledge cost of board games is now becoming a problem because of material costs are skyrocketing. People are being turned off by
00:23:51
Speaker
the growing pledge costs, which are necessary. It's not like it was five years ago or eight years ago, stay where you offer huge, huge, huge numbers of miniatures at a relatively low cost to the company. And you look at a company that produces well-known zombie board games, we're able to offer inordinate numbers of miniatures at a ridiculously low
00:24:20
Speaker
cost per mini. And that's just not feasible anymore. Unless, I mean, even for Games Workshop, who own, of course, you know, they produce all their most of their miniatures. Even that they even started to hit them. So it's, I think that's where we're going to see a boom in RPGs. Okay. Based on the fact that, you know, books are still relatively
00:24:47
Speaker
cheap to produce relatively. I mean, they're still more expensive than they were, but things haven't shot up in the same way. Sure. So one of the things you do at Steamforged is you've worked on RPGs that are based on licensed IPs.
Challenges of Licensed IP in RPGs
00:25:06
Speaker
And I'm thinking specifically Dark Souls, which came out recently.
00:25:11
Speaker
Whereas Epic Encounters and Animal Adventures are in-house IPs generated by you and your team, Dark Souls comes from obviously a very well-known video game series.
00:25:23
Speaker
For those who might not know, Dark Souls is an exceptionally popular and well-received video game series. Exceptionally so. One of the best-selling video game series of all times. In full disclosure, I did do some consulting work on the Dark Souls RPG with Steamforged. In case that matters to the listeners, though I don't think that'll alter my questions in any way here.
00:25:44
Speaker
So there must be a lot of intense pressure on such a large IP, both in terms of fan expectations, but also in terms of the value the IP has to the parent company. I mean, I believe From Software is the producer of Dark Souls. They are. I'm sure they view their IP valuably. I mean, it's a world-renowned, instantly recognizable game.
00:26:13
Speaker
Well, they do and rightly so. And it restricts how you can depict things mostly. I think that's my main experience is that the way you can relate and provide the materials for players is firmly controlled. Okay.
00:26:43
Speaker
So for instance, in the Dark Souls core book, the areas we provide to play in that the world law has to be extremely carefully worked with. You can't just go making stuff up, which for role-playing game designers and writers is quite difficult.
00:27:12
Speaker
Because my instinct is to provide plot hooks by inferring and implying possibilities, which you can't do with a licensed IP. Sure. Or certainly you can't do with certain licensed IP. Your mileage may vary. There are some where they really encourage you to put your stamp on it and to
00:27:41
Speaker
to imply that, you know, maybe this isn't canon, but. It's canon for you. You know, that kind of your, your glarantha may vary kind of thing. Right. Other ideas are much more controlled and much more focused on what they want to be true or what they want fans to understand as true. Sure.
00:28:09
Speaker
And with Dark Souls where the lore is so oblique and is so, you know, rigorously focused within the game, you know, it's kind of divulged only through fragmentary things, you know, the descriptions of weapons, little scraps of lore, extremely kind of nomic utterances from the NPCs, etc. Most of the lore
00:28:36
Speaker
that fans are pieced together has been pieced together. It has been assembled through detective work. Therefore, even inferring and implying potential explanations of that law might then come to be seen as implying canonicity of one theory or another.
00:29:03
Speaker
And that is where the difficulty lies. If there are certain games, there are things which are canon and things which are not. And as long as you're with the canon side, that's fine. With something like Dark Souls, the elusive nature of the canon makes writing anything which might be seen to kind of expand on that really, really problematic.
00:29:29
Speaker
Sure. And it probably makes writing it difficult to begin with because there might be sections they expect you not to define, even though bands have pieced it together in case they want to have a twist later or something like that. And so you're sort of trying to create this nebulous, yet firm and concrete usable product in a way that differs from the source material. And yeah. And also to kind of say to fans, look, this is what
00:29:56
Speaker
what you've pieced together, what you want to glean from the wikis, etc. That can be true for you. We're just not allowed to say it. And obviously, you know, I won't go into the rigmarole of the myriad problems with that game. But that was something which fans were uncertain about.
00:30:24
Speaker
and it was a failing on my part is I didn't make that kind of permission clear enough. Okay. But at the same time, I couldn't say we're not allowed to tell you this shit. Make it up. Right.
Adapting Video Games to RPGs
00:30:40
Speaker
So with Dark Souls, you put that on the 5E chassis, the D&D 5th Edition ruleset, which has powered, I believe, all the RPGs currently published by Steamforged.
00:30:52
Speaker
That is correct. Yes. Although that will be changing soon. Yes. But I'm not allowed to say anything for the moment. Other than that. Other than that. Other than there's something different coming. Very soon. I've desired this. So with this 5E chassis use, now obviously I imagine there's sort of a fiscal slash marketing component in that it's a popular rule set. You're going to get the biggest player base sort of caught in the net out of the gate. And with a big IP like this, that's really valuable.
00:31:24
Speaker
But 5E differs a bit in tone from Dark Souls in a lot of ways. 5E is very heroic, is very epic. Dark Souls sort of has spawned a whole genre called Souls alike, which is very sort of grindy and lethal. And one of the things that's in the Dark Souls RPG that I quite like is this idea of respawning at the campfire, which comes from the video games, right? You die, you go back to the campfire.
00:31:50
Speaker
And it's an interesting way to address it because it's interesting that we're talking about this because I recorded yesterday with somebody and we talked about how RPGs can take more ideas from video games.
00:32:07
Speaker
And this has pulled this idea of the infinite respawn from a video game, where that's assumed to be the case. In a video game, if you die and come back, it doesn't break your immersion. Nobody's shocked that your Diablo character's back, right? And part of that is because the story is static and linear. And so you just kind of go back to the previous point in the story. In an RPG though, there is often a sort of pushback against resurrection.
00:32:37
Speaker
right, in that revival, it's seen as something that's potentially canon breaking or problematic or should be hard to do. Whereas video games kind of just, you died, come back, here we go. What was that like getting to work with that framework? Because to me, that's a very interesting divergence from sort of the tabletop RPG standard. So I went back and forth over how to do that.
00:33:07
Speaker
a lot. And again, there's a really positive Dark Souls Discord community on the Steamforged Discord, which I engage with quite a lot. And that's still one of the most controversial aspects of the game. Because the way the rules work is if half your party dies, you all respawn on the bonfire.
00:33:35
Speaker
And the reason I put that in was because in play testing, it was really un-fun for everybody who was dead to sit and watch somebody else roll dice. Sure. But obviously in the computer game, you are one person and when you die, you just restart. So I tried to balance the video game-ness of it.
00:34:04
Speaker
that kind of guy start again, die better with the tabletop RPG-ness of you're a party and you're working together. And I don't know whether I threaded the needle correctly. But yes, it was, I think RPGs are increasingly taking
00:34:27
Speaker
things from video games. I think Fabula Ultima, I don't know if you've seen that, does that really well with the JRPG genre. I think it's a really, really clever bit of design. And there's some, you know, lots of other games are doing similar stuff. At the same time, it is really difficult to make it work for a table of people sometimes because video games are nearly always predicated on a single player mode.
00:34:58
Speaker
unless they are actively multiplayer games. And even then, usually those are player versus player. You know, there are a couple of, you know, cooperative multi-players out there. But I mean, usually they're just hack and slash as well, which is quite a difficult genre to really work in RPGs. You know, you need much more to kind of, I think the hack and slash genre in RPG.
00:35:18
Speaker
is very different from that in video games, there's many more puzzles, there's much more, you know, kind of sitting down and thinking your way through the hack and slash bit, which, you know, is just button bashing in a video game. So it's a, it's a somewhat fraught relationship, I think, that that transaction. And I think I think if I had my time again, I would make the same choice. Because, you know, I understand the argument that, you know,
00:35:47
Speaker
uh, your kind of, I've eliminated the possibility of one player beating the boss on the final roll. But at the same time, I think I would make that choice because it's more fun for five people or four people to be around the table rolling that dice to beat that boss than one person getting the glory. If you want to be the one person getting the glory and just, we'll just play the video game. The whole pre RPG is to give you
00:36:17
Speaker
a framework to place similar souls like adventures, but cooperatively as a multiplayer experience. Sure. I think that's interesting. I think there's I think there's an interesting position for tabletop RPGs because video games take a lot unabashedly and they admit it from tabletop role playing games.
00:36:41
Speaker
I mean, if you look at really any video game RPG, you can draw its roots back to role playing games between levels and stats and classes and experience. All of that comes from there. But we have, as an industry, have not done a good job of cribbing the good ideas back into our space from them. It's very much kind of been a one way flow of information in a lot of ways.
00:37:03
Speaker
Yes, I would agree with that. I think there's definitely a lot of room for designers to explore video games and the mechanics therein and bring them back into the RPG tabletop space. I mean, on that subject, I have with the game, I'm currently working on the non-5e game.
00:37:27
Speaker
I have taken some combat mechanics from the excellent triangle strategy, which if people like tactics games, that is a very enjoyable example. And there are some very simple mechanics in there, which I think make combat interesting and engaging without
00:37:54
Speaker
without adding any real additional layers of complexity. It's very, very simple to grasp how it works. And they, they, you know, they put it over so beautifully and so easily. So it, I think it's, it's something I'm doing a lot more. I've kind of consciously been playing more video games for, for almost as research, because I do think, I think that is a, it's time we started stealing stuff back. I mean,
00:38:25
Speaker
They stole from us. It seems fair to go the other direction. Yeah, I mean, you know. So with Dark Souls, Steam Forge has also done Elden Ring and they've done Bloodborne related products, but now we have not. I thought there was a Bloodborne card game. I must be mistaken. Is my fantasy five. OK, well, you've done Elden Ring port games. You have indeed, yes.
00:38:56
Speaker
And I understand you probably can't answer my question, but are we to expect an Elden Ring tabletop role-playing game? I can't answer that question. That's fair. I figured that would be the answer, but I thought I would ask. If I were to give any information on anything to do with that, there would be my head on a pike. That's very British, so I suppose it's appropriate.
00:39:22
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that is still the de facto punishment for any kind of treason. That makes sense. So are there other video games you would love to adapt to RPGs? Yes,
Future RPG Adaptations: Video Games and Beyond
00:39:34
Speaker
there are. And there are a couple of IPs we already have done stuff with that we are hoping to begin work on adapting again on confirmed names. If it would, if we're just talking
00:39:53
Speaker
The pie in the sky theoretical, something that you can say you would like to do. Yeah. I mean, I would love to do a Final Fantasy seven RPG. I think that world's amazing. And I would love to do, you know, I mean, there's there's got to be other cells of eco terrorists taking on Shinra. And I think I think there's a game that you build your own little
00:40:20
Speaker
Faction, you know, you could probably bump into other, you know, cloud and aerial at different points. You're in one of the other hubs around. That's a confession. Despite despite being a 90s kid, I have never played a Final Fantasy video game. Not even. Not none. Not at all. Let me rephrase that. In college, we played. I believe it was Crystal Chronicles, the one where you would plug the Game Boy into the GameCube to play in.
00:40:49
Speaker
We did that over a Thanksgiving holiday where we were all stuck in the dorms and we finished the game. That was the only Final Fantasy game I think I've ever touched. I think I've played four, six, seven, eight, nine. I've not played any since nine. They all started to look a bit too realistic. I have seen the Advent Children movie.
00:41:15
Speaker
So I'm at least relatively familiar with the fact that it's a thing. Any others? I mean, I would quite I'd be quite interested in doing. Like a sinking city or something, I think that was a really good Lovecraftian game. That could be kind of cool as an RPG. But then I mean, I just love Cthulhu stuff, so it's really just that was kind of designed for me that game.
00:41:44
Speaker
Well, nobody's perfect. Yeah, I mean, you're just wrong. We've had this argument before, Alan. And you did a really good casino game as well. Tiny casino is excellent. I really like that game. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. So, oh, go ahead. Yeah, I did have, now it's completely gone. Oh, Assassin's Creed. Oh, okay. I only played the first one or two of those.
00:42:12
Speaker
Ah, you see, now I have almost no interest in the first one or two. I love Odyssey. It's ancient, you know, it's classical Greece. It's the Peloponnesian War. It's really, really well done. Your characters are really cool. The combat system's fun. I mean, there's some major historical inaccuracies which annoy me, but not so many that I can't, you know, enjoy it. And I believe that the kind of recreation of Athens and Delphi
00:42:42
Speaker
are sufficiently sort of accurate that they are used as teaching tools now. Wow. In several classes courses. So I'm a big fan of that one. And Valhalla as well is pretty cool. Okay. Well, I will probably have to try one of them at some point. Definitely, definitely encourage. I'm more of a 4X video gamer. I like my Stellaris and my Crusader Kings. Have you got the Crusader Kings board game?
00:43:09
Speaker
Yes, I have never played it, but it is on my shelf behind me. Yeah, I played the demo. It's quite fun. I have found people who I can force sit down and play it with me yet, but it's on my list. I'm still working on them. I'll break them eventually. So we're getting near the end of time. I generally have two questions I ask folks at the end here. The first one is, what is a question you've never been asked in an interview that you've always wanted to answer, and then I'll ask you to answer it.
00:43:41
Speaker
OK. I don't know how to phrase this as a question. Which bands deserve RPGs? Oh, sure. OK. Because I have long and opinions about this. One, the fact there isn't a Bruce Springsteen RPG. Is an abomination. Because I mean, born to run is an RPG, as is darkness on the edge of town.
00:44:10
Speaker
and they would make a great, that would be a great set. The Hold Steady, I am going to get them to agree to let me to write something where you get to play one of their, because obviously I don't know, for anybody who's not familiar with Hold Steady, they have a series of characters in their songs. There's one called Holly, whose pair is named Hallelujah, the kids they call a Holly.
00:44:33
Speaker
if she's scared you than she's sorry, sorry, I just get into the lyrics that there's Charlemagne in sweatpants, they have all these characters who recur in quite a number of songs. And I've always thought there should be some sort of whether it's a choose your own adventure book or something, something about them. And then obviously, there should be a Bob Dylan RPG, where you play some of the weirder characters from his kind of 60s psychedelic phase, you know, Napoleon in rags,
00:45:03
Speaker
Mr. Tambourine man All these characters there should be the that should be a trilogy of games and One day I will write them. So yeah, I've always wanted to talk about that. So thank you for the opportunity Those were not the bands I had expected to hear in this list either So that was interesting. I was I was expecting something akin to the Avenue Park role-playing game Which I don't know if you're really with the band Avenue Park. I am not I
00:45:33
Speaker
They are a sort of steamship, steampunk themed band, and they received a role-playing game from Cakebread and Walton. Oh, very nice. That was several years ago. I think it's Peter Cakebread. He lives not far from me. He's a fellow Northerner. OK. Good guy. All right. Do you have any questions for me at the end here? Always. We've always got stuff to talk about. OK.
00:46:03
Speaker
Have you seen Slow Horses yet? I have not. Or read it. I have read the first several books. Excellent. Because I feel I've just signed up for Apple TV, but I'm working my way through Foundation first. Fair enough. Well, I feel. I feel you and I should have a long talk about cold shadows.
00:46:30
Speaker
And what should be done with that? Because I love that game. You know I love that game. And I love that. I think that kind of dark spy genre is underexploited for RPG. And I think definitely should do something cool with that. I would love to do something cool with it. Excellent.
00:46:58
Speaker
What are your thoughts on the growth of solo RPGs? So it's interesting. You asked that because I've recently started designing solo RPGs as a design exercise. I find them interesting. What I really find interesting is a way to leverage solo RPGs inside a communal sense still. One of my go-tos for that explanation is epistolary RPGs, letter writing RPGs.
00:47:27
Speaker
where you would play it solo but then you write a letter and mail it to everybody else in the group so you can all experience together and that sort of becomes a cyclical letter writing campaign. And I find the concept of community through solo role playing to be an interesting, an interesting thorn to tackle maybe.
00:47:49
Speaker
How do you turn something that is inherently a one-person event into something that could be shared communally? And to me, the idea of turning the play session reporting into a mechanical aspect of the game is where it gets interesting. Yeah, okay. That's very interesting. And I very much enjoy stretching my legs with solo role-playing.
00:48:16
Speaker
I think solo role-playing provides some of the room to steal back from video games a little bit. Yes, I think there's definitely an aspect there. I assume you might not feel the same about this because you are far more prolific than I am. I find the notion of solo RPGs too close to creative writing exercises.
00:48:43
Speaker
And if I'm writing, it's because I've got writing to do. Sure. I don't know. I find it difficult to kind of summon the energy. To write just for me, I think anymore. Sure. And Adept Icarus recently announced a solo, a full solo RPG, probably my first as dedicated strictly to solo play called Cyan Starlight will be coming out this year.
00:49:11
Speaker
And it's a science fiction. It's a science fiction role playing game. But we're leveraging a lot of technology in that to create an experience that pulls you out of the game book into something else. There will be inputs into a website that generate results, things like that. And so we're trying to think of ways to take solo RPGs and move the needle in a way that allows them to be
00:49:38
Speaker
Not just in your like how you said creative writing because it can very much feel like writing a choose your own adventure. My first several ones have felt very much that way because I was the closest experience I had. But as I've stretched my legs, I've really learned that there's a lot of freedom because you get to you get to structure creative writing in a mechanical sense in a way somebody can consume and use it even if they're not a creative writer.
00:50:08
Speaker
Yes, you know, I can see that as a worthy goal. And certainly something, you know, it tends to be very useful and interesting. I've just I've not quite cracked it for me. And I know I've read Science Starlight is for anybody who's listening out there and hasn't. It's really, really good. And I think that the use of the technology is inspired. And
00:50:36
Speaker
That is the kind of thing I think we will hopefully see more of. Because I think that is the way to to really make them sing. It'll be it'll be an interesting experiment. And I'm I'm grateful that Adeptic Aris is going to take the kind of take the risk on trying this new thing from me because I'm not known for solo role playing games. And so they're taking a bit of a risk.
00:51:01
Speaker
by publishing this product. And I'm grateful to them for it. And I think it's going to be really exciting to see what happens. I think it's going to be great. Yeah. I hope so. All right, Rich, if people want to find you or support you, what's the best way to do so? I am on Facebook. And if you're a friend of a friend, you can be on there.
00:51:25
Speaker
And I am on discord, but I can't remember my discord handle and I am on mastodon, uh, at sea August at dice camp. Okay. I don't have Twitter because I hate it. So, uh, I will not ever be involving myself in that cesspool again. Thank God. All right, folks, I am Alan Barr and this has been radio free RPG.