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Tabletop Mysteries! A Conversation with Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy
14 Plays26 minutes ago
In this episode, Satsunami is joined by Addison and Ash of the hit indie tabletop game Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy. Join us as we discuss what it means to create a tabletop game. How has tabletop RPG culture evolved over the years? Has the impact of Dungeons and Dragons affected the way we look at TTRPGs? And what is the secret behind Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy? All of this and more in this exciting episode of Chatsunami!
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Transcript
Introduction to Chatsunami and Guests
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Chattsunami.
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Chatsunami. My name's Satsunami and joining me today from the absolutely fantastic tabletop RPG, Eureka! Investigative Urban Fantasy is none other than the creators themselves, Addison and Ash. Welcome both of you, how are you doing tonight?
00:00:36
Speaker
Hello I'm Addison from the Agency of Narrative Intriguing Mystery or ANIM. creators of Eureka Investigative Urban Fantasy. Our team is about seven, eight people. Got two of us on today. And the other one is Ash.
00:00:48
Speaker
Yeah, I'm Ash. I'm the editor. One of the original writers who actually came up with the concept is not here today, but you've at least got the lead writer and the editor. What great combo, to be fair.
Inspiration and Gaps in Mystery RPGs
00:01:00
Speaker
This is an absolutely fantastic tabletop RPG. And before we dive into what makes it great and what makes it so unique, yeah, I've got to ask, what led you to this point? What was the inspiration to work on something like this? Because i was giving a very thorough read of your guidebook for this, and it's an absolutely compelling read, by the way. And I'm not just saying that because you're both on, but what was the inspiration behind starting work on this? No one else had done it. Which is kind of unbelievable. Yeah. So we like tabletop RPGs. This idea started in 2020, 2021, maybe. It kind of started with Brandon a little earlier than that. I joined the team in December or January, like 2021 to 2022. And of course, I've played tabletop RPGs with Brandon. He's one of the other writers for a long time. And a lot of the overlap of what we wanted came was a tabletop RPG that is about mystery investigation, where the Player characters solve mysteries, not necessarily as police detectives, but as off the top of my head, you know, like Scooby-Doo.
00:02:07
Speaker
And that really didn't exist in
The Stagnation of Tabletop RPG Mechanics
00:02:10
Speaker
a way. that we were satisfied with before Eureka. There have been attempts at it, right? Because yeah you have your Call of Cthulhu's and your gumshoe, but Eureka and particularly the central system, the Eureka system that we I'm sure we'll talk about later, came about from Brandon's own frustration with running Trail of Cthulhu, which is a gumshoe adaptation of Call of Cthulhu, and just finding it not equipped to handle mysteries in a way that was
00:02:38
Speaker
really resonant with the genre or they worked well in the medium of tabletop games. We're going to probably get to this later in the discussion, but the medium, the artistic medium and like technology, you might say of tabletop RPGs is it's about 50 years old now, but so are video games. Video games are also about a 50 ish year old artistic medium slash technology. And if you look at how far video games have advanced in not just in like, oh, the graphics are better now, although that is something that you know a lot of people put a lot of work into getting more polygons on screen without destroying the computer. If you compare how much both game design, game programming has advanced and what video game developers have learned about what makes a video game more fun and what makes it less fun and what makes it run better, what makes it not run better, and you compare that to tabletop RPGs, Even though they're both 50 years old, tabletop RPGs of the technology are just absolutely super stagnant by comparison.
00:03:34
Speaker
And I think there's a few reasons for that. The gumshoe system was probably the first big attempt at an advancement in trying to run that kind of gameplay in a tabletop RPG. And that was, when did Gumshoe come out? Like 2009 or something? Something like that. Fairly recent. And before that, all you really had was Call of Cthulhu. And of course, all right, i'm I'm also skipping over probably 50 indie games that just never made it out of the group that made them. And Call of Cthulhu, while it was the best thing around that, ah best thing around for that, it's based off of RuneQuest, which is a dungeon crawling game. And once you know that, you really can't unsee it because Call of Cthulhu gameplay and Call of Cthulhu modules work a lot like dungeon crawls and really did not advance, even in seven editions, really did not advance the investigation part of the gameplay. And I think Gumshoe also has its issues with that. The Call of Cthulhu has been around for at least like 40 years. So yeah, the medium is fairly stagnant and does not advance quickly. And there's not a lot of people making these real innovations in it.
Innovative Mechanics in Eureka
00:04:38
Speaker
And so the gameplay we wanted where the player characters solve mysteries and by looking at clues, it didn't really exist. The closest thing was Gumshoe and we weren't really satisfied. with Gumshoe. Yeah, I joined the project a lot later, and I've been looking for a good mystery RPG for, i mean, years, really. i thought that Gumshoe had a lot that sparked my imagination that I liked, but I still wasn't fully satisfied with it. So when I came across Eureka very early in its public release, I really immediately p thought this was a real diamond in the rough. And just wanted to spend as much time as I could polishing it. So I'm very grateful to be on the team and be able to refine it into something that I hope speaks for itself. Because it's something interesting that you both brought up there that when you think of the tabletop RPG genre, Genre is probably with the wrong word, but you know, when you think of that kind of bubble, you usually think ah of the heavy hitters. You know, if you're looking for investigative stuff, as you were saying, Call of Cthulhu, you've also got Dungeons and Dragons, which is definitely something we will be touching on later, term I'm sure. And you're right, it seems to be the kind of heavy hitters that have been there for and years, I As versatile as those games can be, you're completely right. There are certain restrictions to these games, especially if you follow the rules to the letter or even if you want to bend the rules. There's also that question as well. For example, if you were playing a D&D session and you said, oh, I don't want to follow this rule, that rule, which is fine. But if you chuck out 90% of the rules, you know, then you kind of have to ask yourself, well, are you playing D&D?
00:06:15
Speaker
ex Exactly. Thank you for reading my thoughts. You ask either me or Ash, the answer is no. After you change enough rules, you're not playing D&D anymore because the rules are what make up the game of D&D. D&D is a big book of rules and you follow those rules to play D&D. And maybe whatever game you're playing is better for what you're doing. But in that case, you should get into game design.
00:06:36
Speaker
Yeah. People trying to turn D&D 5th edition into noir mystery investigation and failing. One of the good and, again, slightly problematic things of that is, although Dungeons & Dragons is quite a versatile game in the forefront, at the same time, as you said, you know, it's like, how much can you take out of this before it transforms into something different? You know, as you're both saying, it's like, well, why wouldn't you just create your own game at that point? Or find one that already does it, someone who's already created Out of curiosity, did you do that before you went on to Eureka? Were you trying to not modify the game, but you know what I mean? Try to suit it to your play style before you realised, yeah, we might as well just create
Game Design Philosophy and Origins
00:07:20
Speaker
a new game. Oh man, I feel like that's where every... designer or contributor to art starts, right? As in consuming that art and then in thinking, wow, I could do this. Because I mean, definitely I've been just speaking for myself. I mean, I've been GMing for like 15 years now and countless times in the beginning, I just adjust a rule here and there or change things to fit my table. I think it's a very natural start to the process is modifying what you have in front of you. But just I think because this medium is
00:07:48
Speaker
the culture surrounding the medium is such that that isn't recognized as what it is which is game design if you're a gm and you're altering the text of the rules what you're doing is game design what you're doing is an act of creation and it's altering the product you have at your table i don't think that it's understood that you're doing the equivalent of taking a painting and altering it with your own brush or taking a movie and making an edit of it it's also an act of creation that changes what you're working with no that's an absolutely fantastic point though because yeah yeah you're taking the source of this game and then you're just completely changing that because there's a difference between wanting to change the play style versus as you were saying before you know you're changing the fundamental foundation as it were of what you're coming into i have to say, reading through Eureka as this absolutely fantastic game, there is a lot of interesting mechanics that you have brought into it. One of the things that, if you don't mind me bringing it up, is this idea of third-person verbiage. So usually whenever I've personally, maybe except for Warhammer 40k, but then again, who hasn't imagined themselves as an space meeting at one point weirdly a lot of people do play warhammer 40 000 in first person and it drives me crazy because i play warhammer 40 000 the person across the table is like i'm gonna shoot you for 15 shots at strength four i'm like i've got 16 units on the board man
00:09:21
Speaker
I mean, that's true. Warhammer isn't one of those games where it's like, oh, a one versus one. no, no, no. no It's like, which? Especially if you're playing the Imperial Guardsmen, then it's an utterly different nightmare. But yeah, usually when you play tabletop RPG games, a lot of players want to go in and they want to be the character that they're going to play this game as, especially with D&D. And I'm assuming the same for Call of Cthulhu. I'm not as knowledgeable for that one. But, you know, they want to say, I go into the dungeon or I pick up the clue. But for this game, there is a heavy emphasis. And it's in the book here that you try to emphasize something called third person verbiage, which is separating the player from character. character. So instead of saying, go in and I pick up the thing, I would say, my character does X, my character does Y. So out of curiosity, and this again links back to what we're talking about in terms of tabletop culture, but what was the inspiration about going for that rather than first person?
Narrative Perspective in Gaming
00:10:28
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think we both have a lot to say about this topic. Oh, go ahead.
00:10:32
Speaker
So the first thing that I would say is, i mean, it's a struggle to get people to acknowledge the fundamental nature of tabletop games as a medium. And this can really be identified in this assumption of first-person verbiage. At an elemental level, a tabletop game is a conversation, right? It's you talking to people.
00:10:54
Speaker
It's composed of words. it's It's not just the words in the book, but it's also the words you say at the table during play to describe the world and what's happening. And something so fundamental as the perspective of that narration is not even considered or other stances to approaching a character. You talked about seeing yourself as inhabiting the role of a character and That's one stance of play to borrow a term, actor stance, where you see yourself as an actor inhabiting a role. And that's fine. That's one way to approach things. But there are other ways to approach this topic as well. Other ways to approach this like situation.
00:11:29
Speaker
You could approach it as audience. which is something that is a lot more like what Eureka is doing is author stance for players. So rather than seeing yourself as an actor inhabiting a role, you see yourself more as almost a writer who is putting a character in a situation and determining what they're going to do based on who they are. It's it's a more detached point of view. And I think that changes that and the language changes the emotional impact of the game in a really fundamental way. I've said this before on another podcast, but the The difference between first person and third person is that it creates a different feeling and a different emotional response.
00:12:02
Speaker
Like if I say, you know, Alice grabs Bob and kisses him in a passionate embrace, that creates a different emotional space than saying, I grab you and I kiss you passionately. I'm not opposed to the idea that there are times where either one is appropriate, but just getting people to acknowledge that the former is an option in a tabletop game is a struggle sometimes, which is just crazy to
Influence of Shows like Critical Role
00:12:23
Speaker
me. It didn't used to be. Yeah, that's true.
00:12:24
Speaker
If you were in a gaming table like 15 or 20 years ago, you would see pretty often kind of a mix of third person and first person verbiage. Sometimes like, you know, the same person would swap between them or you'd have, you know, half the tables using third person, half the tables using first person. And think like I think almost every Dungeons Dragons editions rulebook says that you can use first person or third person, even the recent ones. But in the past eight to 10 years, third person verbiage for RPGs, which is something that did exist, has been entirely extinct. A big part of that is large budget actual play shows made of people who are literally actors half pretending to play D&D and always using first person verbiage. And people are learning to play through them and by them. And so often, sometimes without even touching the rule book, meaning that they learn that this game is played in first person. And like Ash said, it's very hard to get them to acknowledge or think that it could be done any other way. Do you think that's a big problem though with shows like Critical Role and just in general, these kind of big budget shows that on the one hand, I will say that they have been quite successful in bringing things like Dungeons and Dragons to the mainstream. But on the flip side of that, you think there's also been a different impact that it's had in the tabletop RPG community as a whole? The damage they have done is incalculable.
00:13:46
Speaker
And let me roll back this, because that's a very exaggerated extreme statement. For legal reasons, this is a joke. Yeah. ah So we have to talk a bit about how Wizards of the Coast, the makers of Dungeons and Dragons, third edition, fourth edition, and fifth edition, but not the first two, have an absolute monopoly on tabletop RPGs as a artistic medium. In fact, to the point where tabletop RPGs are often just known to people as playing D&D.
00:14:12
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, regardless of whether it's conscious or not, it is in the interests of Wizards of the Coast to ensure that when people think of tabletop games, they think of D&D and nothing else. And so Critical Role is just one example. There's a bunch of them that are very big, very popular. So they are a show. It is framed as let's just get a bunch of friends together to play Dungeons and Dragons and film it. But it's a show. It's got editing. It's got a script. It doesn't have a word for word script. It is very improvisational. But there are beats.
00:14:42
Speaker
Yeah, there's beats. Something I like to compare it to is professional wrestling. You know, Hulk Hogan, The Rock. Pro wrestling is scripted. Who wins and who loses That is part of the script. And there's a few beats that are part of the script. But other than that, they go out and they do a mostly improvised fight. This is not to talk down either, but they're stuntmen. They provide a very exaggerated and melodramatic show of about people who fight in a ring. While they themselves are not really fighting in a ring, they're semi-choreographed, scripted stuntmen.
00:15:15
Speaker
Right. I really like wrestling. And there's a lot of craft to the theatrics of it and to the work of it. I would not denigrate, but you wouldn't look to a professional wrestling match if you were trying to study how to actually fight someone. Right. What is often happening is that if critical role, for example, is professional wrestling, then regular tabletop RPG gameplay is practicing taekwondo or karate or judo. And those are related, but they are very different skill sets with very different goals and very different best practices.
00:15:47
Speaker
And if you learn all your fighting from Hulk Hogan and then you try to step into the karate dojo, you're not going to be very good at it. And it's going to be detrimental to your experience and to the experience of the instructor and your fellow classmates. The problem is not that pro wrestling or, you know, critical role in this analogy exists and is entertaining to people. The problem is that people are using it as a tutorial. And sure, why shouldn't they to their minds? Because there's no other resource to look to It's like as popular, right? Other than just word of mouth. So you have people watching pro wrestling and going into the dojo and trying to use pro wrestling moves. And when they're told that's not how you do it, that's not how the game actually works.
00:16:32
Speaker
There's a portion of that audience that gets upset about that. Yes. No, that is quite an interesting analogy because ironically enough, one of my fellow co-hosts, Martin McAllister, he's also a wrestler and he also ran my very first D&D campaign. Oh, that's awesome. So if you're listening to this, Martin, big shout out.
00:16:51
Speaker
um Yeah, no, those are some absolutely fantastic points because you're right, there's nothing wrong with enjoying it or consuming the content or whatever, but you're right, as an instructional piece, it is quite interesting how so many people have really tried to emulate. And that is something that I have to say i am really annoyed at, not just in TTRPGs, but also other things where it's like they don't want to be themselves. They want to be the next Matt Mercer or, you know, whoever. They want to be the next so-and-so.
00:17:24
Speaker
Again, not to sound like an after-school special to say, be yourself, it's enough. But it's weird how people want to be ah exactly like that. And one of the examples, off the top of my head personally, I remember, was that when my friend Martin said, do you want to play Dungeons & Dragons?
00:17:41
Speaker
and Initially, I thought, oh, it still had the stigma at the time. I was like, oh, Dungeons & Dragons, really? That game that everybody makes fun of. But, you know, once you start playing it, you realise, oh, it's actually not that bad. And then I unfortunately ended up in another situation where one of my other friends said, oh, let's play Dungeons and Dragons in this comic shop. And long story short, I've got a whole episode ranting about it, but it was not a good time. It was basically, I thought, oh, it's a starter session because one of my friends wanted to get involved. And yeah, the table was really hostile and... It just wasn't a great experience. And I kept thinking, and I still think to this day, if that was my first experience with a tabletop RPG game, especially Dungeons and Dragons, I would never come back to Genuinely, if that was my first experience. And that is the danger that I don't think a lot of people really understand.
Navigating the RPG Community and Industry
00:18:37
Speaker
because and especially in terms of the culture of tabletop rpgs that they want to be animated and they want to be this and that and that's fine taking inspiration but if you're trying to emulate them one for one then you make the experience bad for someone else they're not going to return to that hobby are they
00:18:54
Speaker
Yeah, this is a discourse that you see even in like mainstream 5e play culture of GMs feeling like they're expected to be Matt Mercer or players feeling like they are sitting on the sidelines while a story is told at them. And yeah, this kind of also hostile table culture to anything outside of one specific kind of experience, which is super common in public play spaces like a comic shop or a game store, or especially like just playing with a random group. It's a total roll of the dice. And I think that a lot of the issues that arise are in part due to the lack of literacy and a lack of respect that this medium has. That's what a lot of it comes down to is the medium does not have a lot of respect, even from people who claim to be fans of it, because if certain people were here, what they'd say to our discussion of saying, well, that's not really the way the game is played. You're trying to do WWE in the karate dojo. It's not going to work very well because it works in a show context, but not in a live sparring context. The goals are fundamentally different. A lot of people would say, well, as long as they're having fun, how can you tell them how to play the game? How can you play Dungeons and Dragons wrong?
00:20:00
Speaker
It's about having fun. You might very well have fun stacking a bunch of checkers like a Jenga tower, but you aren't playing checkers, are you? Right. It's a game. It's a structured activity. Maybe you love checker stacking and you might actually enjoy checker stacking more than the game of regular checkers, but you can't say you're playing checkers. And that's less important than the probably a very large amount of people who would either a rather just be playing unbeknownst to them, they would really enjoy Jenga more than stacking checkers like a Jenga tower, because Jenga blocks are built for stacking and checkers aren't, or they would have more fun if they were playing checkers correctly. But due to the attitude of, well, you can't tell people they're having fun wrong, you can't tell these people, maybe you'd have more fun if you either played a different game or you played the game you're, say, you playing correctly.
00:20:49
Speaker
To tie that into your bad experience that you had, Satsu, at the comic book store, it also opens the space to say, because you said that if you had had that as your first interaction, you would have never come back. But, you know, it opens the space to say the table opens up by saying this is how our group operates. This is how we do things. This is the game we're playing. It's not and with the expectation that that's not how every game is. It's like if you see a movie you don't like, it doesn't open the space to say, oh, I must just not like movies. I didn't like that movie.
00:21:18
Speaker
Do you know, think that's quite interesting, and though. You make a fantastic point there that if you watch a film or you play a bad video game, you're not immediately going to go, oh, I'm completely off films now or off TV shows or video games, you know, because it's such a vast medium. But for tabletop RPGs, if you had a bad experience with one of them, then you would say, nah, I'm not coming back to that. It's quite strange. Strange, isn't it? I've got plenty to say on this because it's the monopoly. It's the Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition monopoly, where Dungeons Dragons 5th Edition is due to massive marketing, stands as representative of the whole thing. And it's like, if we make the comparison to video games, this is like if video games were called Skyrims and you're like, oh yeah, I love video games. And people are like, what? What's that? Oh, it's like Skyrim. And everyone's first video game is then Skyrim. That's the kind of stranglehold that
00:22:11
Speaker
Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition has on the culture of tabletop RPGs. And i think Skyrim is a very good comparison because we won't get into this, but I don't personally think that Skyrim is a very good game, but it is one that a lot of people enjoy. And it's one that is perhaps most known for its modding or like highly known for its modding. And there's people that will say, Skyrim can be any kind of game because you can just mod it. And that's only a little true because if you wanted to play Half-Life And you just downloaded mods to replace all the drog in Skyrim with the Combine soldiers and give guns you can equip.
00:22:46
Speaker
It would look a little bit like Half-Life, but it wouldn't play like Half-Life. And you'd probably have a better time if you played Half-Life 1 or 2. And it would also be easier and crash less. And I guess that kind of arrives at the heart of the discussion, which is the one point that flies in the face of this monopolistic marketing, which is that game design is real. If you create a product that is different, it creates a different experience. It's a different piece of art. That seems so obvious to say when you say it out loud. Wizard the Coast Monopoly is incentivized to get as many people playing Dungeons and Dragons, even people who don't really like what Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition is, and right get those people playing. They say Dungeons and Dragons can be anything. You can mod it however you want. Don't look at the games that already do out the box what you want. Play our game and mod it.
00:23:35
Speaker
But you know, in practice, what that does is say like, oh, sure, D&D can be anything. But what that means in practice is everything in this medium is D&D.
00:23:46
Speaker
That's the corollary. Which is not true, but that's what it sounds like to someone walking in from the outside. So if they sit down and they don't like a game of D&D, the prevailing culture is to reinforce the idea, well, if you don't like this experience, then you must just not like the medium. If you didn't like the movie Cars, then you don't like movies.
00:24:05
Speaker
It's an interesting one because I don't know about you both, but when I was growing up and before I started playing D&D and, you know, learning that at least tabletop RPGs weren't as bad as, you know, I was led to believe. But when I was younger, I remember, and again, it was D&D at the forefront, but it was just these kind of games in general that they were absolutely ridiculed back in the day. you know, it was, oh, it was for nerdy people, and oh, if you play it you've got no friends, which is ironic, because it's a group game, you know, it was the strangest thing. But then all of a sudden, towards, I want to say, at least the late 2000s and early 2010s, that's when it kind of started to shift, and of course, throughout the 2010s, the reputation of tabletop RPGs definitely got better compared to where it started. But it's as you were both saying, it's
00:24:58
Speaker
interesting to see and it's almost like a ship of theseus it situation here but it's like they're trying to market something that isn't really the original product and don't get me wrong i'm all for having a game that everyone you know can enjoy get included in and so on and so forth but if you're looking at it from a purely tech technical standpoint, you're thinking, is this the D&D that everyone began with? Or is it just a bunch of modules that are kind of duct taped together? And oh if you don't like these ones, you can try this.
00:25:31
Speaker
Because something that I have to say I thought was very unique about Eureka, and I think you actually brought this up in it, that there's not going to be hundreds of modules that you're going to bring out and they're all going to be separated. It's going to be fairly core that you've got the set amount of rules, you've got the stuff yeah we weren't planning on writing a bunch of supplements yeah we're not planning on having the eureka player's handbook the eureka dungeon master's guide the eureka player's handbook two three four five we're not planning on doing that we are planning on having adventure modules lots of those but those are i guess if you were making the video game comparison a lot those are like you know levels to play whereas the eureka rulebook itself is like the game engine yeah And we don't want to change that around too much or encourage this culture that's like you have to buy a million supplements to be the most up to date on the rules. If you buy the rules, you should have the rules. Since we're bringing the conversation back around to Eureka, there was something I was curious about Satsu, which is what brought your attention to Eureka. I've been curious about that.
00:26:32
Speaker
Well, it must have been Blue Sky, because it may have been you, Addison, that commented underneath one of my posts. And I have to say, I'm always ah looking out for whether it's indie games or whether it's tabletop indie games, things like that, because I saw you as well. You were previously on Kickstarter and things. And as soon as I saw it I was really curious because, you know, I wanted to obviously talk to you both because you are lovely people. And I'm not just saying that because you're on But I was looking into it and the more and more that I read about the game and the more that I delved into what this game was about, what it stood for, i just thought it was a really interesting and almost necessary game. And maybe I'm being a bit dramatic there, but what I mean is... When I was reading it, one of the things that caught my attention as well, and it loosely links to what we were talking about earlier with third-person verbiage, was the idea that you're not only doing that, but you're also tackling player versus character conflict, where but it's so easy in these particular games that you are taking a first-person, you're saying, oh, I attack. you and then someone's going to get really offended and take it as a personal attack. Say, well, why are you doing this? And that's the emphasis. Why are you doing this? And then, of course, you get the age old argument of it's what my character would do, which here at Chatsunami, we don't abide by that either.
00:27:55
Speaker
but I thought it was interesting that, again, not only was there that separation, but the fact that it is character versus character, there is that emphasis of, if you want to play it as this character, then you're playing as this character, you're playing game. This is not a personal attack on people, and it's getting one step ahead that I think does a lot better of a job than a lot of the more mainstream games. as you say people can choose to be first person or third person and technically you know there's nothing wrong with choosing one or the other but it doesn't take away that personal touch if you know what i mean personally i think it's a very important thing that you've addressed in this game and considering it's one of the first bits of the rule book i thought that is absolutely fantastic because it's not something you really think about with these games.
00:28:47
Speaker
I'm lucky in the sense that because I met my friend and we played together, and I mean I've played with other friends for other things like 40k and we had a great time, the fact is that because I'm playing with people I know, then at least I can say, oh well I'm having a great time, whereas if I was to play the same game with strangers, I probably have more of a risk of not enjoying it, and again going back to that idea of having a negative perception of it, but the fact that you've basically gone ahead of the player and said, listen, this is the player, this is the character, two separate things, and you're trying to encourage either cooperative behaviour or at the very least limit the conflict.
00:29:31
Speaker
And I think that is just such an important thing. Apologies, that was a long-winded way to say. No, thank you. But no, I think it's just very important for the tabletop community. Eureka can be an important game in a lot of ways because a lot of other games just sort of tell you the rules, but they don't tell you how to use the rules.
00:29:47
Speaker
A game will tell you the rules, but doesn't really tell you what the game master is supposed to do with them. And that matters because that's different for different games. Some games expect a game master to have different duties than other games. A third person verbiage in like the separation of player and character, I think it's also pretty important for Eureka because Eureka is a game that can get pretty nasty. Yeah, was going to bring that up. It can get pretty nasty, and it doesn't want to be a purely cooperative experience. i mean, arguably, as long as the players are all having fun, they are cooperating, but the characters do not have to cooperate. The characters can go against each other, and that's something that's completely alien to a lot of people who have ah a more shallow perception of tabletop RPGs. There's a lot of these concepts in Eureka that are very different to the mainstream. I won't say that all of them are completely unique. Certainly, there are other games that have attempted one thing or the other. But holistically, to use the term coined by a good friend of ours, it's very Gleeblor. It's very alien. There's a lot of concepts that just are not taken as a default assumption. And yeah, one of those is like the separation of player and character and the idea of a non-cooperative party of investigators and the idea of third-person verbiage. I think we're both very flattered, by the way, that you said that it was an important game. I agree that it's important to establish this separation up front, particularly in a game like Eureka, because one of the things that it's also doing that we wanted to do with Eureka was make it clear that the medium can accommodate other kinds of stories and other kinds of character interactions than just cooperative and can get dark and pretty horrific in tone. And one of the things that we really want to avoid is people transplanting this character who does awful things in the course of the story to their friend across the table who is playing that character. But I think that the medium can handle those kinds of stories. And I think it should, because that's the root of horror, right? Is like challenging our preconceived notions and shocking us and scaring us.
00:31:44
Speaker
And while I won't say that Eureka is always a horror-focused game, it frequently is. Because one of the interesting things that read in the guidebook was that it doesn't always have to be, you know, uber serious. And I mean, don't get me wrong, as you said, there's a lot in there to craft a game like that. But there's also, if you wanted, there's also a lot Scooby-Doo-ness as well. Yes.
00:32:08
Speaker
And I love that about it, that if you wanted to introduce someone to the world of tabletop RPGs and, you know, you didn't want to say, oh right, there's a dead body in the middle of the floor and white graphic and whatnot, you could just say, okay, there's a guy with a mask running around, right? go catch them and I think that's important as well that idea of accessibility that if you wanted to change that story but still keep the core mechanics because that is something that's quite interesting that if you're changing certain things about other tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons there has to be a lot of tweaking of the mechanics as it were. Although the tone can change, it depends how much you're plucking away in order to both accommodate keep the core of the game. But I just thought that was absolutely fantastic that you can have a more light-hearted version of Eureka, or if you want to go for, yeah, the darker tone, as you were saying, then it's there, it's available. And I'm not going to read through them all, but you've got a long list of creatures and things like that that of course you can encounter through the game so it's absolutely incredible and it is very versatile in that regard it's kind of like real life because in real life you could have a goofy guy with a mask going around eureka has rules for getting chased by a goofy guy with a mask it also has rules for characters getting shot with guns quite extensive ones that are very punishing and intense just like in real life because in real life you could get shot with a gun and it would be very punishing and intense you Yeah, mean, I do appreciate the versatility of Eureka because we have created a toolkit system to a degree. Even so, it's like it's opinionated, I guess, on how the rules of the game are going to impact the tone of the story. You said earlier that there's that versatility there, and I guess that's the point in adventure modules. We kind of want the modules to be like a library of different stories that can be told using the game engine Eureka. In different levels. Yeah. But I also appreciate that versatility. I like the Scooby-Doo goofiness that Eureka can bring around. um i mean, sometimes even in the same adventure that it then turns around and becomes some of the most deeply horrifying stuff I've ever seen in a tabletop game, honestly. Well, what about games being opinionated? That's the topic to talk about. Sure. something we've kind of been talking about on and off the whole time and barely talked about Eureka. Yeah. Because Eureka is opinionated no matter what you do with it. Yeah, and all games are. All tabletop RPGs are opinionated. They are. Eureka is just one that sort of states its opinions out loud.
00:34:31
Speaker
And I don't mean that I have opinions and I'm the writer of Eureka. That is true, but that's not what I'm talking about. Because, all right, let's take Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition. Dungeons & Dragons, if you look at a Dungeons & Dragons character sheet, you look at the rules, which not every Dungeons & Dragons player has. About 90% of the information on that character sheet is combat information. And there's not a lot of rules for interacting in a non-combat sense. And also experience points are given for defeating monsters in combat. The lists of items are that your character can have and equip are mostly about combat.
00:35:04
Speaker
And some of them are about exploring combat. a dungeon or a forest or some other dangerous place where you would get into a lot of combat. And that means that the game is opinionated. And if you play the game by the rules, your characters are probably going to get into a lot of combat. And if you make characters that are pacifists, you can still technically try to play it, but you will quickly run into you and the rules are going clash and run into an impasse.
00:35:33
Speaker
I mean, I would say in the case of fifth edition, it's almost that the game really has very little to say about what a character can do outside of those specific circumstances. and That's not bad. That's not a bad thing. No, no it's not. Because Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition's combat, despite being the main part of the game that the game both funnels characters towards and, you know, is opinionated about, it's not very good. I do personally find it boring. but This is also like we talked about where people come away from a bad session and think, oh, they just don't like tabletop RPGs.
00:36:03
Speaker
Very common that people come away from Dungeons and Dragons and say, i don't like combat in tabletop RPGs because they've only played a game that A, has lots of combat if you play it right, and B, the combat is not very well designed. I would argue that one of the other big problems is that it's just not really integrated into the gameplay, like into the way that it operates.
00:36:22
Speaker
Because, I mean, 5th edition says somewhere in its rulebook that like there are three pillars of D&D or whatever. It's combat, it's exploration. I know it says exploration is one of the pillars, but what rules are there for exploration?
00:36:33
Speaker
It's not meaningfully supported. And what this means is that combat ends up feeling like a totally separate minigame and not the thing that the game is about. it ends up feeling tertiary in a game whose design language makes it primary. So because the game is opinionated, so if you try to make a bunch of pacifist characters who don't get into combat, then you can try to do it, but you'll quickly run into a clash with the rules. where they get into a situation and what are the options there? The options are either A, use the sword that everyone has and the magic spells that blow things up and the combat battle abilities, or B, try to resolve that in a non-combat way for which there are very little abilities or rules. There's a perfunctory stapled on role. And many people think that's a good thing. and are kind of praised Dungeons and Dragons edition for that. And then they do it. But at that point, if you're not engaging with the rules and you're going off rules to completely freeformly do this, then maybe you shouldn't play Dungeons and Dragons. You should do some freeform roleplay you're not going to engage with 90% of the rules. Or you should play a game which actively seeds that portion of play on purpose, like Mothership. Yeah, and both encourages and supports characters that are pacifists and don't get into combat. And that's an example of a game being opinionated. But Wizards of the Coast and through their marketing, critical role being an arm of which really want you to not learn and not know that games are opinionated so that you'll play Dungeons and Dragons whether you like it or not, essentially. Well, because that means that D&D can be anything. Yeah, they say D&D can be anything so that people that want anything will go to D&D and never leave it. And Eureka is opinionated too. And this is a good thing. As you're always saying, Addison, the rules in a rulebook are the wind behind the sails. They're what make the game happen. The fact that Eureka is opinionated about time is going to pass in a pretty granular way and at like a certain pace and is pretty is pretty opinionated about the fact that all of these investigators, they're not
The Art of Game Design
00:38:39
Speaker
fearless people. They can be rattled. They can be shaken. They can lose their nerves.
00:38:42
Speaker
And it's opinionated about the fact that these people are not police officers or have any structural power. Even just the skills. Yeah, it's opinionated about what skills are the default. A character from Eureka walks into a room and sees anything in the room. How can they interact with it? Right.
00:38:58
Speaker
They can interact with it with those skills that are on the character sheet. And those are a specific set of skills. They aren't everything that's available in theory. yeah those are the abilities of a eureka character is those 21 skills on the character sheet plus maybe it's more complicated you know plus traits plus write-in skills right etc it but those are their abilities and therefore if you're engaging and trying to play the game instead of just doing free-form role play and i don't have a problem with free-form role play but i think that it's just a different activity from playing a tabletop rpg because the tabletop rpg is the rules and if you're not engaging with the rules are you engaging the Those skills on the character sheet, those will partially, but not entirely, if it was a video game, they would entirely dictate it But because it's a tabletop RPG, they partially dictate what the character can do and therefore what the character will do. And every other rule also does that because the fact that Eureka characters have five penetrative hit points and a gun takes away, getting shot by a gun takes away four penetrative hit points.
00:39:53
Speaker
They are going to get real scared when they the gun is pointed at them, as opposed to a more action-focused Rambo badass tabletop RPG where characters have lots of hit points and bullets and they just shrug off bullets.
00:40:06
Speaker
All of those opinions that the system has are going to impact any story told using the engine, whether it be a serious crime drama or a paranormal horror thriller or a goofy Scooby-Doo-esque whodunit.
00:40:20
Speaker
And honestly, that is just such a great approach for it. I was actually just thinking there when you were talking about D&D being a very combat heavy, at least for the latest module, that I remember when I was playing it ages ago, and I think we were playing 3.5 edition my friend had said every week why don't we have a guest DM and by that you know we kind of rotated just for a while and I remember one of our friends who he had this story planned but there was only a certain amount of time that we all had that we could do it in he only got halfway through because the majority he had a big battle at the beginning or a fight against some guards but he completely overestimated how
00:41:05
Speaker
powerful they were but they were going back and forth between us the players and then the npcs and it's something that i think a lot of people don't really ah least especially for dnd they don't really know how to judge how strong certain elements in terms of the combat should be because i think it was you saying ash that it can get quite dull and boring if it goes on and on and and on and you completely right there. If it's just the same kind of repetitive, I swing the sword or my character swings the sword and then it's just back and forth and you're both missing one another.
00:41:39
Speaker
That's not as interesting as maybe what you're thinking in your head of, oh, they're clung. clashing swords and they're doing this and throwing energy balls. But for this, for Eureka, it definitely seems a lot more grounded that you're in a world where, although it's relatively similar to ours, it is at the same time got these elements that the characters have to think, where am I going to go with this?
00:42:05
Speaker
makes sense you know the character's not going to walk into a room and be like oh that's a gun that's fine i've got 10 points that i can take for damage the character's not going to think like that it's going to be a lot more careful and i think from a player perspective as well it allows them to slow down a little bit because and again going back to that very bad experience i had with dnd there was a guy on the table who played as want to say a ranger but honestly i was just raging um He would rush into every situation, like he would be saying, oh I'm going to grab this ruby and then his hand would get taken off by this trap and then he would keep going on and on and on. And the first, you know, one or two times you went, oh, ha ha, polite laugh. The more and more it went on, then he did this for a good five to ten minutes. And I think he had a feat that allowed him second wind. And that's the thing, though. It's like you sit there and you listen to this person clearly know that they've got all these hit points of damage, thinking, oh, I'm not immortal, but I've got enough to spare. Their ranger has all these hit points or whatever. Yeah. Again, when you look at Eureka, it's not really the same mindset that you would take in. But at the same time, you wouldn't really want to take a D&D mindset or even a Call of Cthulhu or Gumshoe or anything like that. You wouldn't really want to take that in.
00:43:26
Speaker
You want to create a character, again, whether they're a gruff detective or, as we say that, an extra and Scooby-Doo kind of thing. The players will want to create a character and then put a character into this situation and then the character then forges their own story within the world of Eureka rather than thinking, yeah, that it's going to be just, you're going to tank bullets and what i'm saying is it's well thought out. I'm not saying that D&D isn't well thought out, but you know, it's a lot more clear, if that makes sense, what you're expecting going into Eureka. Thank you. Yeah, i think that has to do with like setting expectations, right? Because it creates a different tone. Because yeah, this is a difference in like what the character is thinking and what the player is thinking. The character walks into a room and sees someone pointing a gun at them. And the character thinks, oh my god, I'm having a gun pointed at me. This is a really dangerous situation. And maybe in another game, you have the player thinking, well, my guy can take like a bunch of bullets, so I don't really care. One of the goals with Eureka specifically is to create a really grounded feel. So to that end, you have to kind of bring those expectations in harmony. If you want a character to feel intimidated by a gun within the fiction, then it helps that in a tabletop RPG to have the player look at the character sheet and think, oh, it's going to be a real problem if my guy gets hit. I was going to say, if you look at something like Warhammer 40k, you technically don't feel the same way, but then I remembered that, you know, when you play Eureka, you don't think that the character is an eight foot super soldier from space. Yeah, I think that would change Eureka significantly, and I doubt you're going to create an extension that's going to have super soldiers like that.
00:45:09
Speaker
But again, no, for legal reasons, that's a joke. I'm looking at the Red Panda lawyer in the corner, and yeah, he's nodded his head, giving the thumbs up, so yeah and hell a joke. If we were going to create a game where investigators were big, muscly warriors from space who could take a bunch of bullets, then we would have made a different set of rules.
00:45:27
Speaker
See, to be honest, the see if you did, a think Games Workshop probably would be quaking in their boots right now. They're just watching as if, I wonder what this Eureka team is up to this time.
00:45:40
Speaker
ah take over the market. Yeah, exactly. I mean, with Eureka, you probably could with a different game. Not that I'm saying you should, because you've got more than enough on your plate with
Challenges and Advice for Indie Game Design
00:45:49
Speaker
this game. But I honestly think that, and again, I joked about it before, but I genuinely think that this is quite and both an interesting and probably quite a good start for anybody who is trying to get into tabletop RPGs. It's going back to something that Addison...
00:46:07
Speaker
I think you said at the very beginning where you've got Wizards of the Coast who have quite a monopoly and then on the other side, if you're looking for the combat side, Games Workshop is there with a big bolter gun pointing at people. But it's quite good to see that there's more people breaking into this space now because like you think about, and again, 20, 30 years ago, probably even longer ago, that you have these companies that made it, obviously, to create revenue and money and things and get players involved but you know you didn't really have many or as many independent game makers coming into the scene and it's the same with video games as well because I have to say the older I get the more I think that I prefer playing indie games that these are games that people have spent their time and their artistic merit creating and things and they've got a clear vision and I swear to goodness I don't mean to sound like a hipster when I say But you know, it does definitely feel a lot more... It feels a lot more interesting to see the stories and the mechanics that they are creating as opposed to what's going on in and mainstream games.
00:47:17
Speaker
Again, I think it's very similar here that I think not only is it great starting point for people wanting to get into tabletop roleplay games, but it's also great to see the both of you and your whole team as a whole. So if your whole team are listening, I do want to shout them out as well.
00:47:32
Speaker
that you've created something absolutely fantastic here. And it is great to see you that you've had that opportunity, you know, to bring Eureka to life. And I know I'm not the only one who probably thinks that because, and I hope you don't mind me saying this, because I did have a wee peek at the comments that your game got. And I have to say, they're all majoritively positive, aren't they? Yeah, thank you so much. We do have some other stuff that we're working on as well in the wings.
00:47:59
Speaker
We're trying to push Eureka down the path towards a physical release. Just a note to any new designers out there. Oh my God, don't attempt something this huge. If you are doing a first project, we have bitten off so much more than we can chew. And it's a miracle that we are you know able to pursue it as much as we have. But once your kit does come out, we do have some other stuff coming down the pipeline, like Silk and Dagger, if you wanted to say a word or two about that, Addison. but Way to put me on the spot, because Silk and Dagger is a completely unmarketable game. To even come up with what to put on the store page for it. Maybe I can have a shot. You have a shot at what Silk and Dagger is.
00:48:34
Speaker
It's a social politics slash comedy game about a, I guess, an exaggerated or like a deconstructed version of Forgotten Realms Drow.
00:48:46
Speaker
Taking a different interpretation on that and setting up a society with them where the Drow and several other lower caste servant dark elves are participating to try and basically avoid embarrassment and political scandal in a scenario that I could best compare to like Fawlty Towers.
00:49:04
Speaker
That does sound incredible. I'm not going to lie. It's very, very early in development, but we're not just doing mystery games. We're releasing the alpha version of Silk and Dagger. i don't know when this episode is going to be released, but at the time of recording, it's March 5th, and the alpha version is going to be released on Itch.io March 10th.
00:49:24
Speaker
course, this is an alpha. It will not be as finished or polished as Eureka, which we consider to be in beta now. The game is finished. We're just going through and editing, fixing bugs, and polishing. Yeah.
00:49:36
Speaker
That's still what we're spending the majority of our time on. Yeah. But because Eureka is at such a finished point that I, the lead writer, I've lead written everything that I'm going to write on Eureka. So during my time, quote unquote, locked in, I've started bringing some of our other games from napkin notes to something that's almost playable. Silk and Dagger will be playable. We're releasing it when it's at the bare minimum of p playability. And of course, it's payment is optional and development is ongoing. It's a bit like on Steam, you have early access where you can pay for it and we're still working on it. And if anyone listening, by the way, is wanting to get into either, wanting to look at Eureka, get involved with the community, whatever you like, right now, the beta version of Eureka is pay what you want on itch.io. So you can look up Eureka Investigative Urban Fantasy. You'll be able to find it. Nope. problem. Silk and Dagger will be coming out and I believe we will also be pay what you want. And we have a discord server, the NMRPG book club. I'm sure we can send you a link. that So if you want to put it in the description, you're welcome to, which we play lots of indie games right now. We're doing Eureka and it may come up again in the future, but we do lots of indie games there. We have our Patreon server, all kinds of stuff to get involved. We try to make it as easy of an entry as you can, and we would love to see you there.
00:50:45
Speaker
Yeah, and also for anyone who is looking to start creating tabletop RPGs, like Ash said, don't do something as big as Eureka in the same... I don't really like this term, but it's a term that gets thrown around a lot and kind of describes Eureka as simulationist. You should probably do something a bit smaller and in a style that is a bit less dense and heavy for your first thing, and definitely not if you're just one person. But also, you have to, first of all... Yeah.
00:51:14
Speaker
can't just be you've played the six sessions of dungeon and dragons fifth edition can't just be oh you've played eight years of dungeon and dragons fifth edition if you've played only one game you can't make a new game would you go and watch a movie that was directed by a director that has only seen one movie, even if it was a good movie? No, you wouldn't. You have to experience a lot of examples of the art form and also really experience them, not just set the rule book on the table, barely open it, and just go to go by vibes and budge the dice rolls, ignore the rules so that things don't happen that exactly way you want them to. You've got to play those games and you got to find out how those rules affect the gameplay and understand that you got to learn how dice probability works and i see lots of indie games that will be like oh roll two six-sided dice and they'll give you their results from one to twelve as like how did you look at the probability on this did you know that you can't roll a one with two six-sided dice yeah a lot of these fundamentals you gotta understand that eureka is different from something like monster of the week in not just in how its rules are different but how its opinions and the way it wants to be played are different and it's something that's kind of hard to put into words i'm not satisfied with any of the other ways that other people have put into words but i don't have a perfect solution myself but those are very different styles of games and they expect the
00:52:33
Speaker
player to take the rules, even though the rules are already different, they expect the player to take the rules in a very different way and for the game master to take the rules in a very different way and apply them in a very different way. You've got to understand that and you have to know how you want your game's rules to be applied and what kind of gameplay will result from those game rules. You have to know what the art form can do and what the tools you're working with can do. Just like a filmmaker has to know what a camera can do. And none of this, some of it may sound harsh, but none of that is to say that you shouldn't get involved with playing RPGs or with writing them or that it's some elite skill that requires a special kind of person. Rather, it's an invitation to engage.
00:53:14
Speaker
We want you here. We want you in the medium. Please join us. We want you to really be here. Right. We don't want you to. right. We want if we're working in like a movie theater, we want you to go in sit down and watch the movie all the way through and form your opinions on it. We don't want you to sort of sit around at the entrance on your phone and kind of listen to the movie.
00:53:35
Speaker
We want you to engage so that you can appreciate the movie. And if we're movie makers, we want you to appreciate our hard work and have a good time with our movie. So please come join us because we'd love to talk to you about it and we'd love to see what you make. Yeah. And honestly, I feel as if that's the perfect point to wrap up this episode, because honestly, you're both absolutely incredible. So is your team for creating this game and yeah getting this far. So first of all, thank you so, so much for coming on to this episode and really just discussing your passion on tabletop RPGs, because it is clear that you both are absolutely passionate. about this topic. Second of all before we wrap up, where can these lovely listeners at home both find your content, where can they find you on social media, and where can they find the game most importantly? Thanks for having us, Satsu.
00:54:26
Speaker
Yes, also thank you for bringing us on. This has been a very nice discussion. If anyone who wants to just use a search engine, if you just Google search Eureka Investigative Urban Fantasy, that should pull up our itch.io page. And you can find us on Tumblr and on Blue Sky for social media under the name anim-ttrpgs on both. And we do have a Patreon. I'll leave you to search Agency of Narrative Intrigue and Mystery Patreon to find that.
00:54:53
Speaker
We also have Kofi and stuff. We have a Kofi as well. The Patreon, you get basically more frequent and earlier updates as we work on finishing all our stuff, as well as hang out with us in the Patreon Discord server where we have playtests.
00:55:09
Speaker
You can play those games with us because we playtest them there. We very frequently take ideas from that server and talk to people in that server about what ought to be done and what direction something ought to go yeah then we also have the book club the tabletop rpg book club discord server which is a much larger server that one you don't need that one's completely free where you come and you can talk about tabletop rpgs talk to a lot of people who are very very passionate and knowledgeable about tabletop rpgs and they can find you the games that you really want to play. If you're like, oh, I've only played Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. Where do I go? What do I do if I want to play something else? There's a million games and I don't know which one I'd like. Which game should be the game I play instead? Well, first of all, you shouldn't just play one game. You don't play one video game. i mean, most people don't. If you're playing video games, you You play a variety of them and you hate some of them and you love some of them. But the people in that server will be able to tell you based on what you enjoy about tabletop RPGs or think you enjoy. Because again, a lot of people have only had the very slightest brush with the concept of playing it. Even if you've been playing Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition nominally for years, you'll be able to find what you're looking for. You'll be able to find what you're looking for. Plus, we also play games there. We have the main book club where people nominate what game they want to play, then everyone votes on the nominations, and then we sort people into groups based on their schedule compatibility. Then we have an organized play session or various organized play sessions based on schedules.
00:56:35
Speaker
And people, they sort off in their own groups, they play the game, and then they come back and we discuss it like a book club. But there's also just channels specifically for finding basically just Hey, I want to run Call of Cthulhu with this adventure module. Who wants to join? Can you join it at 4 p.m. on Friday to start? We'll make characters. It's a great place for you to dive deeper into the world of tabletop RPGs and become someone who plays lots of tabletop RPGs instead of being like a video gamer who only plays Skyrim.
00:57:03
Speaker
We hope to see you there. I just want to reiterate for the lovely Mandalorians listening at home, seriously, go check out this game. It is such a fascinating tabletop RPG, and I know a lot of you out there are listening to this, you are into tabletop RPGs, so yeah, go check out Eureka. But if you would like further episodes from ourselves, then can check us out our website, chatsunami.com, as well as allgoodpodcastapp. I also want to thank our amazing Pandalorian patrons who have supported us. Robotic Battletoaster, Sonia, Ghostie, and Cryptic1991. Thank you so, so much for supporting the show. And if you would like early access, exclusive episodes, commentary tracks, me rambling some more, which of course is a classic, then of course you can catch us at our Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash chat tsunami. This podcast is a member of the podcast. Collective for further information, please check out our Twitter slash X handle, Podpat Collect. But until next time, thank you all so, so much for listening.
00:58:05
Speaker
Stay safe, stay awesome, and most importantly, stay hydrated.