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Episode 19: Mark Parish
58 Plays11 months ago
Host Alan Bahr is joined by Mark Parish to talk editing, proof-reading, licensing, and the perspective of the first time RPG creator working inside an established ecosystem.
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Transcript
Introduction of Podcast and Guest
00:00:10
Speaker
I'm Alan Barr and this is Radio Free RPG. Hello, I'm Alan Barr and welcome to Radio Free RPG. Today I'm joined by my guest, Mark Parrish. Mark, how are you today?
00:00:36
Speaker
I am doing great. That was a very soothing voice on that intro. I think I'll just go ahead and nap through that again. Well, let's wait until the interview is over before. Oh, okay. Good. Good. Yes. I aim for the Lizzie. Oh my gosh. Aim for the easy listening RPG podcast category because I'm currently the only one in the market and so it's easy to be first. There you go.
00:01:03
Speaker
All right. So, Mark, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your ties and history in the RPG space?
Transition to RPGs and Minimalist Systems
00:01:10
Speaker
Well, Mark Parrish, I've been a game designer, well, as long as I can remember, but not officially. It's always been a hobby. So for many years, I did card and board games. I still do. I actually have those out there on a print on demand site under the name of Art Free Games. I've got about 20, 25 titles out there.
00:01:34
Speaker
Nothing ever officially marketed. I mainly do them on a print-on-demand site so I can print them up and play them at home with friends and family. I got into RPGs recently, actually a couple of years back, when on a Kickstarter, one of the random things it showed me on Kickstarter was this thing called Tiny Dungeon. I thought, huh, that sounds interesting. I like minimalist stuff. Let's give that a shot. And I've kind of been hooked on the whole Tiny D6 system ever since.
00:02:05
Speaker
Well, I mean, obviously I'm a fan of the end of
Licensing TinyD6 and Expectations
00:02:08
Speaker
that story. I think it's fantastic. So one of the reasons I invited you on was you are in a unique position a bit where you are one of the few people who licenses TinyD6 from me to make your own content. Correct. And being able to talk to somebody from the view of the licenser to the licensee is I think of interest.
00:02:36
Speaker
So why don't we, uh, why don't we start with that? Sure. Uh, that actually, can you have specific questions or you just want me to some specific questions? I made a list. Oh, please go ahead. All right. So first, you know, uh, in your mind's eye, before you started licensing, what did you imagine RPG licensing was like? Uh,
00:03:01
Speaker
I kind of didn't have a preset thing because I'd never done anything like it before with any other company. It was more of an open question of, I wonder what the hell this is like versus I had some preconceived notions. But I can tell you it's worked out really well. Alan, you've been great to work with in that regard. Well, even if I haven't, feel free to call me out here. Gotcha. There's no problems with that.
00:03:28
Speaker
You've been great to work with except that one thing that we shouldn't discuss in public. Right, that one. Well, now everybody's going to think there really wasn't. There wasn't folks.
Bajavar Setting and Its Unique Features
00:03:38
Speaker
There wasn't, no. Now, what you licensed TinyD6 for was to do a campaign setting for Advanced TinyDungeon, which is one of our products
00:03:53
Speaker
But also was a setting, well, a game that you had written, you had sort of pitched just advanced Tiny V6 as a little satirical jab at ourselves. Because we're always building ourselves as minimalists, and this was kind of the opposite of that. In comparison to Tiny V6.
00:04:14
Speaker
and you had a world you wanted to expand Advanced Honey Dungeon with. It wasn't the right fit for the Gallant Knight games line proper, and so you asked for a license. Now, why, and now the setting is called, if I say this wrong, forgive me, Bajavar? Oh, Bajavar. Bajavar, okay. So what made Bajavar
00:04:41
Speaker
so good for Advanced Tiny Dungeon rather than, you know, 5e or any of the other open-source systems that you wouldn't have had to pay for. It is. Bovar is actually my own homebrew world. It was written originally. I've been playing in this world for 30 years. I actually wrote this world back in college, not to the detail that it is in this book, but this elemental setting.
00:05:06
Speaker
pretty much any RPG I go to, Bahavar is the world I've been playing it in for decades. But when I came to advance Tiny Dungeon and the Tiny D6 system, I found a world where it could actually finally make a good permanent home rather than being moved from system to system because I love the Tiny D6 system how
00:05:30
Speaker
In spite of being minimalist, it kind of gets out of the way and lets you play and it can still do absolutely everything you need it to do. So I think it is a great fit for the world just because it's such a good solid system. Okay. So what sets the setting apart from other settings?
00:05:53
Speaker
First off, it is an elemental world and as in a lot of fantasy, of course, you've got air, earth, fire, water. The elements are pretty normal. In this case, however, these are your heritages, like the air people can fly. The air people can move through a soft background like dirt or sand. They can't move through rock.
00:06:14
Speaker
fire folk can swim in or walk on lava or walk through fire. Each heritage has their own things that they're good at based on their element. And if there are elemental attacks in the game, each heritage has their own strengths and weaknesses, things they're resistant to or immune to, or take more damage from.
Licensor-Licensee Dynamics and Future Expansions
00:06:35
Speaker
So with that, as a licensee, what are your expectations of a licensor when you are working with them and bringing this thing to life? Because you are paying, depending on the structure of the deal, perhaps a licensing fee, perhaps royalties, perhaps both, perhaps something else. The active licensing is a contract between two parties, payment is going back and forth theoretically.
00:07:02
Speaker
What is your expectation of the licensor when you are in an agreement with them in this regard? In this regard, obviously, the payment part is automatic since it's all sold through drive-through RPG. The payment part of what goes back to the licensor, that part is taken care of. As far as expectations for what the licensor would do, the biggest one being just granting the ability to
00:07:32
Speaker
to sell and play in this world but do it in a system that you own. So the fact that you've allowed me to do that is a huge thing and I'm very appreciative of that. As far as my expectations of you going forward,
00:07:48
Speaker
I don't really have anything you can do as far as help plug the system, things like that. That's great, but I don't have any set expectations of that other than just being allowed to sell the book in the first place. Interesting. So for me as a person who has been on both ends of the licensing conversation,
00:08:08
Speaker
To me, being a licensee for someone does come with expectations, a minimum amount of marketing on my behalf, saying, hey, this at least exists, as it were. Access to, in times, community spaces, like, for example, in this case, Discord, but previously, forums, or things like that, would have all landed as part of the expectations I would have had under a licensing agreement.
00:08:33
Speaker
No. And actually, you're breaking up there, so I didn't hear that last bit if you asked a question. Not yet. I was about to, though. Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. Oh, no, you're fine. It's the hazard of online podcasting. Right. So what would you expect if, as a licensee, you needed to ask for something from your licensor, what sort of requests do you think you'd be making? And why would you expect the licensor to provide them?
00:09:01
Speaker
Right. And you know, this is, this doesn't have to be our specific case, but as somebody who is working with someone else in a, not quite as collaborative space as working together, but leveraging their creative work to make your own unique creative work. What does that look like?
00:09:16
Speaker
Um, I, I think if I were to come out with more expansions to this world, which by the way, if anybody asks are not currently playing, but I wouldn't put it out. But if I were to come out with say more adventures or things like that, that it's, it's, it would be easier to get those things to market, um, easier in terms of, um, because I'm already a licensee, it's kind of a,
00:09:43
Speaker
I don't know the term preferential treatment is the right word, but you'd be more ready to consider other things I might have, especially if they pertain to the same world that I've already got out there. Absolutely. I think that's a fair assessment that while the treatment isn't preferential, the act of being a licensee does have an innate implication of being elevated above just, in our case, our community content
Content Creation and Production Challenges
00:10:12
Speaker
program.
00:10:12
Speaker
Right. And that's a better word than preferential, but I couldn't think of the right word there. So good one. Yeah. It's almost like you write for a living. No, we say I did it well. So we can always be pleasantly surprised. So at this sort of elevated treatment, you know, it comes with various costs. No, also it will be, you know, a fee or money, but there's also requirements to not damage the brand you're licensing from, right? Correct.
00:10:39
Speaker
vice versa for me to you, there's a requirement for me to both support you as a brand as well as not doing that would damage your brand as well. We have sort of entered into a mutual ethical and moral compact to treat each other well in a sense. Right, which I think works out well for both of us because we can basically anything that raises the awareness of both products helps solve the other one. Exactly. So when
00:11:09
Speaker
If you were to consider another license, let's say with a different company and a different rule set, what lessons do you think you would be taking from this to that experience? What would your expectations be different? What would they look like if they were different? Or what would be a warning sign you might be looking for? I think the expectations would be
00:11:34
Speaker
pretty much the same given that I had no exposure to this before and now I've had exposure to all of one, I would go in with kind of this is a baseline of knowing, okay, now that I've worked with one person, I know basically what to expect, warning signs on it, look for, would be how much do they ask for as a licensing fee? Like what percentage do they earn?
00:12:03
Speaker
Are they expecting things? If I'm going in as the person writing this stuff, obviously what I have is this book, this product or whatever, are they expecting just that product? Are they expecting me to come out with certain things at certain times, things like that? What are their expectations beyond just this product if there are any?
00:12:28
Speaker
Um, which makes sense. So, you know, uh, let's, let's go to the example of this campaign setting. Uh, you described an elemental world. And one of the things this book is, is, is massive by tiny D six standards. It is my could fend off a home invasion with it. Yes. My, my coffee, my coffee hasn't, uh, my copy hasn't arrived yet, but I am looking
00:12:57
Speaker
I'm looking forward to finding shelf space on my Tiny Deeks decent shelf. By that, I mean I will probably have to buy a new shelf and just put all the Fat Goblin, Micronomicon, and your book there so we can take up the whole shelf.
00:13:10
Speaker
Absolutely. And so one of the things that was interesting on this book is I actually debated at first, because when I was writing it, it was actually four separate books. Right. So I debated, do I want to do one book or four? But the way they all kind of fit together, I decided to just do it as one large volume. But that is why it's so large, because it was four separate titles. You have The Game World, The Bestiary, Introductory Adventures. And this book does something that I've never seen in any supplement before is,
00:13:39
Speaker
It takes this medieval fantasy world. And the last section of the book is called Through the Ages. And there's a chapter for each age. So there's a chapter for 1800s Victorian, chapter for modern day futuristic post-apocalyptic. And then there's a separate genre section that says, regardless of the age, here's rules you can use to play horror, dystopian, time travel, airship campaigns. So you're able to take this one medieval world and play it in all kinds of time periods and all kinds of genres.
00:14:09
Speaker
Right. Which I think is a really interesting idea. And it's very in tune with the sort of metaversal design behind Tiny V6, where all the books are, you know, relatively compatible, some more than others, obviously, to genre constraints. But this really, this really showcases the potential of pulling all those together. Which is actually one of the things that helped me write this is Tiny Dungeon is so good at doing all that. Right. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. That's been the goal from day one. So that's good to know we achieved
00:14:39
Speaker
And I really hold the book in a high esteem for that. I think it does a really good job of communicating how that can be gamified and made gameable. In a way, even our own products at Gallant have it. We've always stuck to very genre-separate products. And you pulled them together and, in my opinion, created the benchmark for that sort of integrated, multiversal TinyD6 experience. Well, thank you.
00:15:07
Speaker
What were some of your concerns going into this and this project? Honestly, the big concern, not so much the writing of it, because like I say, since I've been playing in this world for so long, it's kind of grown on its own over time. So it wasn't
00:15:24
Speaker
like John D. Payne's Micronomicon, which is a great book, but he had this idea of what he wanted to do. Then he had to sit down and write the whole thing. For me, it had been written for decades. It's just kind of been building on itself. So most of the material was there. So the concern wasn't getting the material out. The concern was more, honestly, the cost. I'm not an artist or a layout artist. So when you do a book of this size, you've got to find stock art. You've got to find a layout artist who can put it all together and make it look good. And in both of those cases,
00:15:54
Speaker
I mean, you've got Rick Hershey's art for the most of it, and then Karl A. Murley's cover is phenomenal. And of course, the book design, the Robert Denton, he's just such an amazing layout artist. But so the biggest concern is just the cost of putting it all together. Sure. So one thing that's interesting is all those names you mentioned, well, for the most part,
00:16:17
Speaker
They are what I might call Tiny D6 veterans. Rick owns and runs Bat Goblin games, which produces their own Tiny D6 compatible material. The Stranger Stuff game, which is a very Kids on Bikes genre game. And he also did a lot of the art and he did the layout for Advanced Tiny Dungeon. Right, yes. He did art for Advanced Tiny Dungeon and did the layout.
00:16:43
Speaker
So he's very versed in Tiny Dungeon. Robert Denton notably is our primary layout artist at Gallant Night Games who does most of our Tiny D6 books in terms of that layout.
Sales Strategies and Marketing Support
00:16:56
Speaker
And so this is sort of a team of people who are already familiar with Tiny D6 and how it works. Was that intentional or was it more just a kind of a happy happenstance of you're just connecting with people who you knew could do it?
00:17:13
Speaker
I think it was more the latter because I hadn't done things like this before and because I'm on the GKG Discord server, I was familiar with those names from being on that server. So it was more when it comes time to go look for people who do these things, these are the names I was aware of.
00:17:33
Speaker
they sort of fell into this thought. And I will say that a lot of the art I've been getting recently, Rick Hershey has his own Patreon where if you do your own books, so people are interested in doing books, he does a Patreon where you pay a certain amount of month and you get a certain number of pieces of art per month. So that's actually a very good Patreon to be on also if you're looking at doing this kind of thing. It's an excellent deal. Yeah. High quality art from an industry veteran who knows what it takes to make good industry art.
00:18:03
Speaker
We've used, I mean, Ricker, she's already numerous Gallonet games products, and it's only ever been a benefit to us. And I will tell you that whole concern of cost, since a lot of that is the art, once you own the stock art, you can use it in multiple things. So if I were to do another book, the cost would be significantly lower. So that helps. Yeah. And for the listeners, check all your stock art licenses, because not every stock artist allows you to reuse the art infinitely. Rick does. But that is not always the
00:18:32
Speaker
situation. So just be aware of whatever license you might be operating under. Good to know. So now here's I suppose the loaded question. And considering that you and I have been talking in relation to an upcoming Kickstarter, we're going to engage some of our gallon marketing on your behalf anyway, because we haven't pushed it out yet. But has the book sort of performed what you would have expected coming into this audience?
00:18:59
Speaker
Actually, it's performed a little lower than I expected. Given the amount of sales that Advanced Tiny Dungeon has had and given that people frequently ask for adventures or bestiaries or campaign worlds, I actually thought it would sell better than it has. Sure. That's the game publisher's dilemma. Customers ask for something, but the chances of them actually buying it are not as high as you might think. Right.
00:19:28
Speaker
There's more adventures, I'm like, oh, adventures don't sell.
00:19:31
Speaker
Yeah. And for me, it's probably something I would have done anyway. I knew going into it that based on, like we talked earlier, the cost of the art and the layout, I knew that campaign worlds wouldn't sell that much. For me, it was more a labor of love. If I was actually doing this from a business standpoint, I never would have put this book out. But since I've been playing in this world for 30 years and I love this world, I wanted to have it out there for other people to play in. Sometimes we make games just because we need to make the games. Exactly.
00:20:00
Speaker
And I don't think that's a problem at all. But it is always good to know. So with, and obviously, like I said, we're planning to engage some of our marketing on your behalf soon.
Editing Role and Consistency in RPGs
00:20:13
Speaker
So there won't be any. I appreciate that. There will be hopefully a small bump from sales. But it is a thing I've noticed as a both a licensing and a licensure is that when the actual parent will say of the product line, in this case Gallonite Games, because 1086 is our system,
00:20:30
Speaker
Um, when that occur, when they get involved and sort of push it, sales tend to go up because there's seen as a stamp of approval that even though a license is, um, is permission and approval to make a product, the, the, uh, the actual marketing on behalf of the company sort of applies a more official stamp. Right. Um, and I'm interested if you have any ways you think that can be overcome.
00:21:00
Speaker
From your end, as a publisher, we've given out compatible licenses that our licensees can use to indicate that sort of official, literally an official stamp. How to overcome that? No, I wouldn't be sure about how to do that because it's more like, like you say, once people see you backing it, then that kind of gives its own seal of approval. Absolutely. Interesting. So continuing the conversation, one of the other things you've done
00:21:28
Speaker
alongside me is you have served as sort of a proofreader and editor for various Gallant Night Games projects.
00:21:33
Speaker
I have, I've been editing stuff for quite a while, which is funny how that started because I'm not actually an editor. I mean, I've, I'm pretty good at spelling and grammar. Uh, anybody who picks up Bovar, the, uh, the title page, that is deliberate error. I have editor Mark Paris. I did the own stuff. Editor is misspelled. That is on purpose. It's a joke. Anyway, Alan just rolled his eyes at me when he saw that he, did you mean to do that? Yes, Alan. I meant to do that. You know,
00:22:10
Speaker
But the way it started with GKG, since I'm not actually an official editor, Alan just asked if people would be willing to proofread things. And I just found myself finding a number of errors and sending them back to them. More what I'm good at is... A small number of errors, folks. Small. Sorry. A lot of errors in other people's books. Very, very few in Alan's. They are near unto perfect. He barely asked. Absolutely. But what I'm actually good at finding are
00:22:25
Speaker
It's a valid question because I had literally misspelled my names as the author.
00:22:40
Speaker
consistency things where something on page 20 doesn't match something on page 150. You exemplify the split that RPGs have, which can be unusual sometimes in that you have your copy editors, you have your proofreaders, and then you have developmental editors. And a developmental editor is all about consistency. They tend to make sure the product presents a uniform vision, that it is
00:23:08
Speaker
coherent and consistent in the way the mechanics and the communication works, right? Because sometimes as a writer, we will decide, oh, I need to rename this. And, you know, sometimes you do control F replace whatever, but you miss stuff. And so right now I call nights paladins and I still might mention a night here or there. And a developmental editor sort of helps to catch that and make sure that is being addressed both, you know, just in the text, but also with the mechanics.
00:23:36
Speaker
Right. And so I started out doing more kind of that and then kind of became, I also do copy editing. So Alan will send me stuff, I'll give it a read, send back, obviously no spelling punctuation edits, because as Alan says, those are always perfect. But it's a, for anybody who's ever
00:23:57
Speaker
and they teach you never to edit your own work. Yep. For anybody who's ever written a book like this, you find that doesn't matter how many times you read it, you still find more stuff to be fixed. So Alan will edit it, send it to me. I'll send back more edits. He'll make those. Then it'll get released and people will be going, well, what about this on page five and this on page 50? And both of us would be going, yeah, we all miss it. There's always more to find. I think my favorite editing miss we've ever had at Gallant was in Mecha's and Monsters. There were two.
00:24:25
Speaker
And the first one was at some point, I don't know how it happened, but in a sidebar we called it Mecha and Momsters, which will be my April Fool's release probably. That was a minor one, you know, M instead of N, whatever. But the bigger one was under the attack helicopter description. We had a big red piece of text that said, description goes here. And that made it all the way to the print that delivered.
00:24:54
Speaker
That is a thing of beauty. I missed it. The layout guy missed it. All 1500 backers who got it in advance and we gave them a window to give some feedback missed it. Like sometimes you miss things. Now luckily it was a generic helicopter. So the description is it looks like a military helicopter, right? It wasn't like we missed something that was unique or something people, you know, if you'd seen an action movie, you've seen this kind of helicopter. Right. But it was
00:25:23
Speaker
Very much, wow, this is our 100 and something that's released. And look what we did. That's the kind of thing you leave in there just for the heck of it, just because it's funny. I would have, but I kept getting questions on DriveThruRPG. And I was like, I have to change this. But that's the sort of thing that happens. And Mark provides really great feedback. He's got a real eye for it, which is one of the reasons he's so valuable as part of our process.
00:25:53
Speaker
Now, when you were doing your stuff, did you have an outside editor review it?
00:26:03
Speaker
I did not because I've been doing it for so many years and I've read through it so many times. Like I say, there's always more to find, but I didn't feel the need to go to an outside editor. Now, if it had been something that was just brand new, I might've considered that, but it was just kind of a different beast. Because you've been iterating over the years so long, you felt like it had received so many passes that you were going to be okay. Correct. Makes sense. Now, with all this in mind and kind of what we've been talking about,
00:26:33
Speaker
What was your favorite part of the RPG production process now that you've sort of done it from pseudo start to finish?
Favorite Aspects of RPG Production and Collaboration
00:26:41
Speaker
Obviously, the design, the play testing is fun. Of course, it's a game. Play testing is what it's all about. But I've always loved game design, which is why I do the cardboard games also. And especially that last section we talked about earlier, the Through the Ages section, of all the things I've written, honestly, that was the most fun to write. It was just a blast.
00:27:02
Speaker
Imagine how does this different world behave in these different eras and trying to come up with rules for each era without it being overly complex and rules, just a few new tweaks in each era to make them slightly different. I mean, yes, that's accurate.
00:27:23
Speaker
I will tell you, it's been fun working with GKG because these two books, Advanced Tiny Dungeon and Bhaavar, are both very different in that I didn't become a licensee until Bhaavar, Advanced Tiny Dungeon, is actually owned by GKG. I'm not licensed. That's more something. I asked Alan early on, you mentioned this. I was back I think in like 2018 or something. It's actually many years old. It's been in testing and playing for a long time.
00:27:48
Speaker
And I made the gaffe of actually posting something on the forum that had all the rules attached of how to play the game, and Alan had to immediately take it down. Learn from that one. So when it did come finally time to write the book, it was actually going to be produced through Alan Su. He actually did the book production and art and layout and all that. I just supplied the text. But the book itself was a lot of fun to work on and the testing and all that.
00:28:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of the reasons, and I posted this on my social media previously, but one of the things I find as both a publisher, but also as a designer primarily, that the validation I receive from having somebody else want to publish my work oftentimes outweighs what I do for myself, because of course I run a publishing company. I can publish anything I want that I write. The only person who can stop me is me, right?
00:28:44
Speaker
But having people want to redo your stuff in other ways, that's huge. Or in the case of Osprey, who hired me to write some original games for them. They liked my design work enough that they were like, hey, we'd love to have you work with us. And we want to put your creative vision into production with our style. And that, to me, has been the most validating experience I have when working.
00:29:10
Speaker
in the industry. And I get to learn a lot from working with other publishers because every publisher does things a little bit differently. And I've been able to go, oop, nope, I don't like that. Let's not make sure we never do that. It hasn't happened yet, but it could put a safeguard in place internally. Or I really like the way they handle the situation or they do this process or what tool they use, or I can go, I'm going to steal this because this is a really effective way to handle it.
00:29:34
Speaker
Then one of the fun things about working with you on this, on the Advanced Tiny Dungeon, is just so people who haven't seen it aren't aware, when Han kind of said, okay, let's go ahead and start moving this towards production, like go ahead and write the book, he basically wanted kind of a one-stop shop for everything. And what I mean by that is he's, at that point, like the first 20 issues of TinyZine around, he says, go through the first 20 issues of TinyZine, anything that's applicable to Advanced Tiny Dungeon,
00:30:02
Speaker
put it in there. So a lot of stuff in the optional rules chapter and a lot of the heritage as you see, basically the first 20 issues of Tiny Zener included in Advanced Tiny Dungeons. That was actually a lot of fun to work with Alan on kind of getting all that in there. Well, good.
00:30:19
Speaker
Yeah, I really think, you know, we kind of a little bit took the piss out of ourselves with advancement done. We launched the crowdfunding on April 1st. We made it kind of a 26 butt advanced joke, which to me was fun because we were able to say, yeah, we know we make this minimalist game and our brand is this way. So we're going to kind of poke at ourselves a little bit, have a little bit of fun with that.
00:30:46
Speaker
as somebody who worked on it, did you find that, you know, and in hindsight, I probably should have asked this at the time, but did you like to be minimizing of your work? Not at all. Actually, I because I do have that same kind of sense of humor. I love irony. I have a self depreciating sense of humor. I can poke fun in myself. So I thought that was the perfect way to release it. Cool. Yeah, it was it was a lot of fun to sort of say,
00:31:09
Speaker
We kind of homage that classic old-school RPG style being able to say, look, this is the thing. This is where we are. This is the situation. And that was a lot of fun. I think it made the game a little more tongue-in-cheek, which was a lot better.
00:31:29
Speaker
I agree, and I also think it helped. So releasing it as kind of tongue-in-cheek was good, but it was also the game answered a number of questions. If you look on the Discord and on Facebook, people for years have been asking about, well, what about armor or what about variable damage, all these kinds of things. And it kind of does a lot of things that players have been asking for for a while. So it was nice to be able to get something out that they answered so many of the community questions that have been coming up for a while.
00:31:58
Speaker
Right. Yeah. It was, it was a lot of fun and you know, there's a lot of validity to that in terms of how we approach game design. I think it can be really easy to get in our own head as a publishing company or creatives and go, no, that's disingenuous to ourselves. Um, but there's actually a, you know, we can afford to be a little tongue in cheek
RPG Influences and New Game System
00:32:21
Speaker
with ourselves. We're not, we don't have to be serious about every single thing we do all the time. Absolutely.
00:32:27
Speaker
So I think that's a, I mean, I think that's a valuable thing to remember. Well, Mark, we're getting near the end of time here on the podcast. We have about half an hour and 45 minutes. So I've got a couple questions for you. The first one is pretty easy. Is there anything you'd like to ask me while we're on? Oh, sure. Put me on the spot. Actually, I... This is the only question I don't warn people about.
00:32:57
Speaker
Well, ironically, I don't actually have anything because you're good about answering my questions. We've got our own kind of chat on the side. So anything I want to know, I've already asked you. So I've got nothing new. Excellent. Well, let's just pretend that is the right answer there, then. Right. OK. And then. Wait, I know. Are you ready for my next game? What's your next game? Oh, I haven't told you about it yet. So I'm putting you on the spot. You did it to me. So now it's my turn. Potentially.
00:33:25
Speaker
What is it? Tell me about it. Actually, it's been in play testing. It is a...
00:33:33
Speaker
an opposed roll system where I've always liked the idea of your stats or dice sizes. So if you're strong but clumsy, you might have a strength of D10 and a decks of D4. Absolutely. So whatever you're doing, you roll the dice based on your stats and the GM sets a dice size based on the difficulty anywhere from D4 up to D12. Your skills simply give you a bump. So if your decks is a D8 and you're trying to be sneaky, if you have a sneaky skill, you'd bump that D8 up to a D10.
00:34:03
Speaker
So fairly simple system. I'm just trying to keep it minimalist. It's about 100 booklet pages right now, but over but about half of that is micro settings so that the actual rules part is fairly rules like wow.
00:34:18
Speaker
That's great. Oh, I mean, I'm excited to see it. I think it'll be fun to see what you've done. I think. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, I think it's still early on in play testing. I think technically, yes, the game works. The question is, is it fun enough to be its own release and be worth the time enough to put it out there and that part we're still working through? Sure. So it might be interesting to make a homebrew that doesn't go anywhere. Which is, you know, valid at times. Sometimes I've made games where I'm like, let's do this. And then I get there and I'm like, no, never mind.
00:34:49
Speaker
It actually has some things we're really enjoying in playtesting, like there's a karma system that lets people muck about with the dice and do stuff. Yeah, there's dice size, game mechanics are a lot of fun. I greatly enjoy and appreciate them. So, you know, using this, using this idea of game design, what are the three most influential RPGs on you from a game design perspective?
00:35:20
Speaker
Ironically, D&D, but in the opposite way. It's not because I want to be like them. It's because I don't really enjoy D&D because I don't want to have a game where you buy the game and then you have to keep buying all these other
00:35:34
Speaker
is just too many books. Now it's different from Tiny D6 where each book is its own game. In D&D, it's all one game and there's just a hundred different supplements. And I never wanted that in a game. I want just a game that I can pick up in one book and go. So that's actually one of my things is I want a single book system. Sure. I mean, that makes sense. And I think there's a
00:36:03
Speaker
I think there's certainly a way to handle that, right? Right. Yeah. And I don't mind additional books if there are things like, you know, adventures or a game world, things like that. But I don't want to have to have a dozen books just to play the game. Right. Absolutely. You like a cohesive all in one book so you can then add whatever you want to the recipe to do your own thing. Right. That makes sense. That was the first one was D&D. What are the other two?
00:36:34
Speaker
Um,
Where to Find Mark's Work and Engagement
00:36:36
Speaker
I really liked the, the Cypher system. Now it has, it has gone into the route of having a bunch of different books, but what I liked about it was in a lot of the older games you have, here's how you do magic. Here's how you do fighting. Everything kind of had its own system. Whereas a Cypher system was a really good system for here's the rules for how to play. And it doesn't matter if you're fighting or picking a lock or trying to convince somebody to do something, how you do something systematically all works the same way.
00:37:05
Speaker
And now, of course, TinyD6 does it also, but Cypher system was what I was playing when I first found TinyD6, so I wasn't aware of your system yet. But I love that idea of one core set of rules can do everything that lets you get the mechanics out of the way and get to the role-playing. And the third one, of course, is TinyDungeon.
00:37:27
Speaker
You start with that idea of one core mechanic that can do everything and then massively minimize it. So you don't need a 400 page book. You can do it in 30 pages. So your game was actually one of the biggest influences in how I write games. I appreciate that. Folks, I want to assure you, I didn't invite
00:37:46
Speaker
Mark on here to smoke up my ass. That was not the point of this conversation. That's not why he invited me, but he is offering me a small payment on the side for each comment. Oh no, you are going to give me a bad reputation that I do not. That is in no way, Mark. Not true at all. No, he's just been really good to work with and I really enjoy the games. Well, good. Thank you. So Mark, if folks want to support you and find you, where can they do so?
00:38:15
Speaker
I don't really have a whole lot of an online presence so you can find me on the Gallant Night Games Discord server or the TinyD6 Facebook. I don't really have my own spaces because I just do game design as a hobby so I don't really have my own location. There is artfreegames.com is just a blog page where I would put some of my own
00:38:37
Speaker
card and board games. But since I've been doing role-playing for all that hasn't been updated, but you can go there to see a list of all the card and board games I've done. Okay. Well, that's great. Folks, I highly encourage you to check out both Mark's tiny D6 work as well as his other work. He has an excellent insight into games that makes them fun. And he is more than worthy of your support. So, Mark, I want to thank you for coming on and being game to kind of answer my questions. I think the idea
00:39:07
Speaker
understanding how it works from both ends of the licensing spectrum is compelling and definitely something people who want to work in the RPG space should be aware of. It was good to talk about it, so thank you for having me on. Oh, it's my pleasure. I will have you on again. All right, folks, my name is Alan Barr. This is Radio Free RPG, and we'll see you next time.