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Good GMs Podcast - 3 - I Have No Mouth and I Must GM
65 Plays23 days ago
Welcome to another episode of the Good GMs Podcast! Your hosts, James Currie and Chuckie Tee, are joined by a legendary figure from their gaming past: screenwriter and long-time DM, James Gordon Ross. We’re putting aside the usual notes to talk about the evolution of the hobby and a revolutionary new system currently in the works.
In This Episode!
- The $10 Dungeon Master: James Gordon Ross shares a formative memory from 1992 involving a university student who actually charged for sessions. It wasn't a con though! It was a masterclass in atmosphere, featuring four Discmans for theme music and a completely diceless session of Mage that melted his 14-year-old, combat-heavy brain.
- The "Seven Session" Problem: We discuss the reality of modern gaming, where the average group only meets seven times. James Gordon Ross explains why he’s designing a system specifically to support those massive, 120-session campaigns where characters actually have time for arcs, growth, and redemption.
- Bleed Through: A New System:
- The Locution Engine: Instead of standard stats, players form "sentences" to take actions, choosing from three adverbs (Physically, Mentally, Socially), three verbs (Overpower, Manipulate, Endure), and three nouns.
- Dice and Fracture: A roll-low system using a dice pool where ones are great, but rolling a four gives the GM "fracture" points to use against you later.
- Genre Mashups: The system is designed for "Bleed Through," where characters from different genres—like a cowboy whose gun doesn't kill people versus one whose gun does—can exist in the same party, each governed by the "media rules" of their own home world.
What do you think of a system where you build sentences instead of adding modifiers? Could your group survive 120 sessions?
- James Gordon Ross: Check out his films Poor Agnes and Happy Fucking Sunshine.
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Setup
00:00:03
Speaker
Good. Good. So good. Good. So very good. Good.
00:00:24
Speaker
Welcome to the Good GM's podcast. I'm E.E. Morris, and today's episode is Have No Mouth and I Must GM. And now here's Chuck and James.
Special Episode with James Gordon Ross
00:00:37
Speaker
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Good GM's podcast with your host, James Curry and my co-host. Hey, I'm Chuck E.T. Hey, you are. We have a special episode today. We have a zero prep episode today because I have a dear friend of mine. um i'm I'm currently online in a virtual room with two of my absolute favorite GMs of all time.
00:00:58
Speaker
So Chuck, obviously you're one of
James' RPG Journey
00:01:00
Speaker
them. And then James Gordon Ross is here today. And James Gordon Ross messaged me out of the blue last week or week before last and said, Hey, want to talk about role-playing? And I'm like, no. um And so I called him up and we talked and he was telling me about a new role Game system setting that he's creating and he's going to tell us a lot about it. But first things first. So James is pal of mine from the big city.
00:01:24
Speaker
I knew him because a friend of mine was his roommate, I think is really the big story there. But he was running a game of a Game of Thrones. using a Game of Thrones system and then later converted that to Savage Worlds, which was was a lot of fun. Great story. I think I flipped a horse. One of my characters accidentally killed his best friend because he was trying to get him to stop talking and crushed his skull. There was a few good moments from that. i really enjoyed playing that system. I was a half giant, I think. is the the Well, secret half giant. they would have and would have died if they found out I was a real half giant.
00:01:56
Speaker
Oh my god. I don't know. I don't know. west Westeros, right? Am I right? So James, welcome. um Hi, thank you. How you doing? Pretty good. Pretty good. James is also a screenwriter. He has written a few things you may have heard of or may never have heard of, but should look at. Poor Agnes is one of my absolute favorites of his. He had a movie come out, Happy Fucking Sunshine, FKN Sunshine, for those of you who heard a beep.
00:02:21
Speaker
And then of course, he's got a web series that you may have seen heard not sure if that web series is available anymore. but Well, hopefully it might get a lot of hits if, once this show goes live um and it's called a microwave porn. And if that's not enough to make you check it out, there you have it. So yeah, welcome. And so why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, the kind of games you play in general and what, what, what brought you to come up with a better system?
Transformative Gaming Experience
00:02:46
Speaker
Oh, wow. Um,
00:02:47
Speaker
I started DMing, I guess, probably 1992. I played one game of D&D with some older boys. I was just like, I must have this in my life.
00:02:58
Speaker
I want to crawl inside Lord of the Rings. yeah ah No one else is helping me. So I acquired a player's handbook and a dungeon master's guide. And at the time had experienced the game so little that I decided that everything had to be improvised.
00:03:12
Speaker
I would show up with a few, I didn't have a monster's manual. I just had some stats that I came up ah with, with sort of the level. And I was just like, Hey, you guys are in a tavern. Now what? And Used to just just improvise. Sandbox versus railroad. that's No, don't be ashamed of that. That's amazing. Yes. Right. And and got a little bit of... People are... Even back of the 90s, people were so desperate for a good dungeon master yeah that I was running three or four different crews and thought of myself as high and mighty.
00:03:43
Speaker
And I had one player who... ah His family rented the room upstairs to a university student. And he was like, no, that guy's good. That guy's a DM. And I was like, he couldn't possibly be as grand as me, a 14-year-old comes up with everything himself.
00:03:59
Speaker
Well, he had four books? Yeah. Yeah. This university student is so busy, we would have to pay him to to Dungeon Master. And then it was unheard of at the time. Oh, he conned you. Oh, he conned you. I have to see this. I have to see this. So we all paid, i think it was like $10. Which in
Challenges in Long RPG Campaigns
00:04:16
Speaker
1990s money was like, it's like $35 today. Yeah.
00:04:19
Speaker
But we show up and he ran a session of Mage the Awakening Diceless. Diceless? What? Yeah. And he had a system of four different Sony Discmans plugged into a stereo system through various things. So he he he could have different theme music ready to go.
00:04:38
Speaker
And he sat us down at his couch and he had a bunch of props on the table and he like moved around the room like a classic, you know, around the fire storyteller. And he was playing this music, half improvising and half writing a story, all diceless.
00:04:52
Speaker
And I came away from that playing just only hardcore combat D&D, having my brain melt. Yeah. And being like, I was just going to say, never mind. yeah You got yourself a free show, kid. That's awesome. ah Yeah.
00:05:08
Speaker
And i don't think i i I think I've run maybe two sessions of D&D since. It's been indie games. Yeah. And trying to explore what's possible through GMing ever since.
00:05:19
Speaker
Nice. Right. You know, especially back in the nineties, man. mean, like, come on, you know, it's it's not like now, I mean, now kids, kids are spoiled now. It's like, what do you want to play? It's like, well, how do I find it? You can just, you know, almost every virtual tabletop system has a looking for group looking for GM. It's like, there go. $10 an hour.
00:05:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's like, now you really can get paid to do this. Holy crap. When I started running the Mask and Iron Lethotep game, and i couldn I was trying to find another player because ah because Rainy had left, and I was looking for another lady player, and I put put it up on on one of the sites, and and Claire, who I'm glad joined us, she was like, you know,
00:06:02
Speaker
People are charging money on these sites to run Mask of Meier Lethal Tap. Like it's, you know, I'm like, oh, really? How much? um So you've played them all. you've You've played them all and decided they all suck. And it's time for i've played them all and decided they don't quite do what I want.
Developing a New RPG System
00:06:19
Speaker
Okay. Which is.
00:06:20
Speaker
So I'm specifically looking for that huge long running campaign experience. okay I think when you watch something like a critical role campaign where they do 120 sessions with the same characters,
00:06:36
Speaker
that movement of plot like a long-running tv show there's something narrative and emotional about that that's just different yeah there are a lot of awesome games for one shots if you want to sit down and play paranoia for three hours it's it it'll blow your mind call of cthulhu is like it's a good campaign but it goes far really good one shots right because it's like Yeah, let's kill you or make you go crazy in the first like three sessions and that's it. like But I honestly think that even D&D, which is probably is the the sort of...
00:07:11
Speaker
You know, it's certainly the go to, but does it yeah about as well as it has or ever has been done that level one to 20 progression. Even D&D doesn't do that all that well.
00:07:21
Speaker
After level 14, 15, it's it's getting messy. D&D I stay away from because I heard someone say a long time ago and if it's dangerous at level one, it should be dangerous at level 20. Mm hmm.
00:07:33
Speaker
m You know, and I heard level seven. People say that for D&D is like level seven. Once you get past that is where things get ugly. m Chuck and I are both big fans and you've played Savage Worlds before. yeah Savage Worlds has a great system for amping up your character and their ability.
00:07:51
Speaker
For a while. For a while. 30, 40 sessions is really good. and and that's But eventually every character starts to have like, well, I guess I can take, you I know you have this edge, but I'll take it too, I guess. And, you know, it starts to be harder and harder to pick where you're going to put your D12 two.
00:08:07
Speaker
you know And realistically, I would tell, especially grownups, trying to bring a group of other grownups together with schedules and life and stuff, doing 30, 40 sessions is pretty damn good. Exactly.
00:08:18
Speaker
Oh, yeah. yeah Oh, yeah. what what Nowadays, you can get what? if you're lucky, 10. Yeah. yeah And it's like you had better told the whole goddamn story. For me, that's what I found is like once you hit the 10, if you're lucky, get 15. Yeah.
00:08:32
Speaker
Man, you you had better have told that whole damn story. Otherwise, yourere you're scrapped. there are people for sure who are looking for that. Like, no, Thursday is my rotary. I'm going to go and, you know, we're going to play some role-playing games. and Yeah. So tell us your secret.
00:08:45
Speaker
What's in the sauce? Yeah, what you got? is One more thing on that. Yeah. i think I think Wizards of the Coast did a huge survey in 2019 or something like that. And they found their numbers were that the average D&D group met seven times. Oh. Yeah.
00:09:00
Speaker
And if you think about that, there are D&D groups that started it in the mid-1970s and are still going. Yeah, that throws off the average. yeah What seven means is lots of people make characters and never actually play. Well, and exactly it's like most podcasts don't get at past episode three, you know, and this is episode three. So I'm just saying.
00:09:19
Speaker
God damn it. It was good. It was good seeing y'all. And one of the big problems with a ah short campaign is you never get that climax and epilogue. Mm-mm.
00:09:30
Speaker
You never get the big, bad endgame boss, looks you in the eye, challenges you, you meet that challenge. good or bad, you know, even, even a tragic campaign where you fail and and the world is forever changed. You don't get that end of the story that you get in every other form of narrative we have.
00:09:47
Speaker
Right. We're losing it. yeah You got time for character growth. You got time for character, like arcs, like redemption, all those things. When you play more than seven, like you can't be a character who's an asshole in session one. And by session three has learned the error of his ways.
00:10:01
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, you could. No, no no it's it's it's no that that takes some some of the oomph out of it. just that Sorry, can we move on?
00:10:11
Speaker
Right, right. Well, for for Savage Worlds, there was a, because they have their one-sheets. And one of the first stories that I ran that James was part of was lynched. And that's supposed to be just a one, two session thing. And I stretched that damn thing to like 12 sessions. Yeah. You know, um just just because for me, what has to make sense So I can't just start off in like where the bad stuff is happening. I want to know for me, I want to know how do they get there? Right. Let's do that. Once they get there, I need to know, okay, how are they finding the problem?
00:10:53
Speaker
How they trying to handle the problem? And then, like you said, the epilogue, you know, I want to know what happens after. Mm-hmm. the problem, good or bad. So yeah, no, I agree. It's like, no, you're you're you're not going to get that in three sessions. You know, you got to piecemeal that crap out.
00:11:10
Speaker
So yeah. So what have you got for us? What are what are you seeing? A lot of ambition so far. um Yeah.
Locution System Explained
00:11:17
Speaker
I'm working the math. okay Right now I have, it's a dice pool system where the die face can change.
00:11:24
Speaker
The pool size can change. A number of rerolls can be added to that. And basically what you're doing is an attribute chart kind that's three by three.
00:11:36
Speaker
And you always form what I'm calling a locution, like a sentence. Basically, imagine three adverbs, physically, mentally, socially. Okay. okay The domain that this action is taking place. And then picture three verbs, overpower, manipulate, endure, type of thing you're trying to Okay. And then three nouns, you, us, myself. Okay. Okay.
00:11:58
Speaker
And so you're you're kind of forming a sentence like ah physically overpower you. I'm going to hit you with a sword. Oh, okay. Each one of those words will have its own die face.
00:12:10
Speaker
which will increase like Savage Worlds. D4, D6, Okay, okay, okay. And then for each of those words you put in, you can add a boost to it. And the boost will be the stuff on your character sheet, like gear and skills, magical powers, things like that, environmental situations. And so you could say something like, I'm attacking, so I'm going to physically, with my sword, overpower, with my skill as a fighter, you, and it's raining.
00:12:40
Speaker
And what will happen is a die pool will appear in front of you of different die faces with a different set of re-rolls. And then when you roll that, there's always a static target number of three. Okay, okay.
00:12:53
Speaker
A one always explodes, and a four gives me a nasty game master point called fracture that I can use to mess you up if I get enough of them. Oh, wow. So it's a roll low system. It's roll low.
00:13:05
Speaker
Okay. It's a roll low on a die face that changes, in a die pool that changes size, with re-rolls that change. So so the worst die would be a 20? Would be a 20. Yeah, okay. But the odds of rolling that four, of rolling that fracture, are worse on the d20. Right. As do you get more skill, as you sharpen up and get to D4, you're going to be giving me more of that fracture.
00:13:26
Speaker
I see. Because you're getting more powerful. So it's only a four. It's not a four or worse. No. It's just a four. It's just that bad number. Good number's one, bad number's four. okay always And so when you're rolling, it's this big, massive mess of a dipole in your hands, but you throw it on the table and you just count twos and threes and you set them aside.
00:13:45
Speaker
You don't have to add anything. You don't have to. It's it's for those people who hate the math and like it makes them cry. Get rid of that. Right. it's It's physically there. And rolling dice is satisfying, right? Like I like Powered by the Apocalypse, but i I also did really enjoy the couple of sessions where we played like, ah what was that one with the futuristic trolls? Shadowrun. Shadowrun, yes. You had like horde of dice. Like you had you could you could put it in a bag and sleep with it. Oh, no, come on. Vampire the Masquerade. Oh, yeah, same thing. There you go. Your D10s. Boom. There it is. It's West End game, Star Wars.
00:14:22
Speaker
Yes. Had nothing but D sixes that you add had to add the faces on. Oh my God. And when you use the force, you basically just added another dipole on. So swinging a lightsaber was sometimes 36.
00:14:34
Speaker
Yeah, it was insane. That you had to add. It was just crazy. You didn't even count it. We just figured out what combinations made tens. Right. Yeah, so just that.
00:14:45
Speaker
Well, yeah, with like like Vampire in your game, it's like, just count the successes, right? You're just counting successes. Yes. Yes. yeah I don't want dipoles to get too out of hand, but they can get a little big. What are you thinking? Like a total of like nine? or I think like when you're level 20, when you are a demigod,
00:15:03
Speaker
We're talking, you know, 24 dice maybe. okay Oh my God. So you'd have, you could have six, six dice per, per. like When you're starting, it's like four. It's like four. Right. Right. yeah Yeah. You can afford to save up to buy more dice as the game goes on. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. player It's like, yes, thank you so much for that. For the game master. It's like, you better have a bunch of dice boy. bunch a bunch of di roll Do you roll in your, like on your side of the table? Do you roll? I'm still thinking about that. Okay. Yeah.
00:15:32
Speaker
I like the the math of of rolling a defense every time there's an attack, but but not doing a separate damage roll. Right. Having successes of the attack, like the the White Wolf games, Masquerades like that, I think, where just your successes are just damaged. right yeah Armor will take those successes away, but there isn't a separate damage roll the way there is is in most games. I'm thinking, I i kind of want a defense roll every single attack, but I'm being... wella Everyone I say that to says, that's going to slow things down way too much.
00:16:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it it is possible, right? Like, that's the one thing I, you know, one of the best tips I learned from, like, Savage Worlds, again, I go back to, is I've got bennies, and if I use those bennies to soak, the game goes on forever.
00:16:12
Speaker
But if I use those bennies to reroll my attacks, the game is fun. And so what if I kill you? I mean, it's fun, but if if it's just, like, soak, like, soak the damage, I'm going to take damage, I spent my bennie, it's like, the game just ends up, like...
00:16:24
Speaker
Combat in most game systems takes forever. Yeah. Call Cthulhu also does it where both parties are essentially rolling at the same time. Yeah. So it's whoever does better.
00:16:38
Speaker
Combat is so lethal in Call of Cthulhu. It is. It really is. It's that one attack roll. That's it. If combat lasts five rounds, then you're just doing it wrong. But that's the other thing, too, in lot of Call of Cthulhu is another example of that is monsters never dodge. They only ever fight back. they They only ever fight back. So there's a better chance you're going to hit them because they have to beat the tide. Tide goes to the attacker in that case. right But it would take forever if everybody was just dodging constantly. Yeah.
00:17:07
Speaker
yeah I love how you're approaching it is that, okay, I'm making a sentence. So here we go. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And these are all the dice you're getting and stuff like that. Do you write your own words as a player or everybody has the same nine words?
00:17:21
Speaker
I think it would be the same nine words in each language
Inspirations for RPG Mechanics
00:17:24
Speaker
of the game. And I was really inspired by a lot of point and click adventures. I think in general, this system lends itself to a kind of mashup interdimensional type story.
00:17:35
Speaker
I was thinking of, um they made a video game of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Oh my God. Classic classic sci-fi classic sci-fi story. and And the story I heard was that Harlan Ellison, the author, was called up by the video game company that wanted to do this.
00:17:53
Speaker
And he was angered by the idea. How dare you? Video games. This is a story. This is literature. I'm not going make some stupid video game. And Apparently, they were sort of downtrodden and then and they really sort of worshipped this guy. And they were like, OK, we won't make we won't make a game. We won't buy the license. And sort of as they were saying goodbye, the guy on the phone with Ellison said, hey, by the way, so I have no mouth and I must scream is a story about this godlike computer torturing five specific people. Why those five people?
00:18:25
Speaker
And apparently Harlan was dumbstruck. He had never thought of that. how the robot had had chosen those five particular people in the whole world to keep alive, to torture forever. It was this huge gap. And apparently Ellison was like, wait a minute, what what do you mean? And he was like, well, we around the studio thought this guy's here for this reason and she's here for that and this guy's for that. And apparently Ellison was like, okay, I'll make her again.
00:18:50
Speaker
but ah you've thought about it You've thought about it more than i did. All right, sure. Nice. But that game is challenging and disturbing in that it it sort of switches around the way you interact with the environment. And those those words of, and in point and click adventures, of sort of like, use, hammer on, nail. Yep. The way they can twist that grammar and make you see things differently. um Disco Elysium really I love that one.
00:19:18
Speaker
game that came out of Scandinavia a few years ago. It's a point and click adventure that is sort of philosophical and mind bending. And I thought about games like this and how much TTRPG is the sort of the game master describes a space.
00:19:33
Speaker
And basically, you're doing that sort of point and click adventure. You're doing that hammer on nail. And so why not just explicitly do that? And with a simple three by three framework, I can make 27 skills out of that.
00:19:46
Speaker
On a character sheet, you can fit on a postage stamp. The three by three combinations is 27 outcomes. Holy crap. right Holy crap. That's more skills than D&D has. Oh, right. Only D&D character sheet takes up the whole page. Okay, let's play it. Let's play a quick game of. um Okay, so I'm going to do some research in the library. What's my what's my role?
00:20:04
Speaker
how how How do you think that would be... over over like It wouldn't be physical. It would be mental, right? Probably mental mentally. I'm going to mentally manipulate.
00:20:16
Speaker
Or what's the third choice again? It was overpower... Over endure endure. oh are you going to study late into the night? Right. So that's another question, right? So are you going to employ the help of the librarian? I would choose. I would choose that because I'm because I'm the one doing the skill. So I would I would say, well, I'm better at enduring than I am at manipulating. So, yeah, I'm going I don't mind the late night work, you know, so mentally endure myself. I'm going mentally endure myself. Yeah. OK.
00:20:43
Speaker
At the library all night. Yep. All right. What do you got, Chuck? Throw an example out. ah Wow. Okay. Hold on a second. No, see, it it's cool. And I like the idea that normally what we're doing now, we take for granted. Like, well, like just how James described it in the beginning of, okay, I want to, I want to, want to to library. I want to study.
00:21:06
Speaker
okay, roll me your research or roll me library use. But now it's like, okay, well now take a step back. And just how you just threw in, well, are you getting help? Because that changes things now.
00:21:17
Speaker
It creates a negotiation too, right? Like it's it's like the GM might say, no, no, you're goingnna manipulate. And I'm like, no, because if there's no time limit to my research, it's more of an endure. Okay, I'll give you that, right? Like, you know, like, yeah, I like that. I like that. I do too. Yeah. Oh, nice. Okay. Okay. All right. So, so you're looking, um, cause a lot of times people are now talking about crunch, less crunch. So this sounds like it's more in the middle kind of, because there's not really adding a whole lot, but it does require some forethought, you know, but the collaboration is still there. Yeah.
Balancing Narrative and Mechanics
00:21:54
Speaker
It sounds narrative, but there's a lot of details that people can get their teeth in.
00:21:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I like that. and i And I think a lot of people could actually like that. And it's got a unique enough um gimmick, I guess, if you want to say where it's like, no, no, no, no. It's not just strength, you know, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom. Here we go. No charisma. No, no, no, no. It's its it's these.
00:22:15
Speaker
These what we're looking at. Yeah. And then as you're tacking on more details, you're getting more dice. Yeah. So, yeah, I like that. That's, oh, nice. Okay, okay. Crunch is great in the right context and horrible in the in in the worst context, just like role-playing. Role-playing is wonderful. Right, right.
00:22:34
Speaker
Just my entire philosophy, try to gamify the things that are bad and try to stay out of the way of the things that are good. Oh, nice. Okay, all right. If you love crunch, if you if you're a ah Magic the Gathering player and you want to min-max and optimize and stuff like that,
00:22:48
Speaker
I want players to be able to combine their powers in smart ways and argue in smart ways. No, this is a manipulate role because I get plus two dice on all manipulate. So this is a manipulate and I'm going to tell you, why I'm gonna lawyer it. yeah I'm going fight for it. And there's going some crunch here. And for the people at the table who cry when they hear the word mathematics, going to To just say, well, i I go over there and do this. You tell me what to roll. I want those both to be available in the game. And it's a hard balance. Well, and it's counting. It's not even addition, which is the simplest math. It's counting. Yeah, it is. It's like, okay, well, look at well I'm looking for, you're looking for ones and fours, kids. Yeah, twos and threes.
00:23:27
Speaker
What have you got? Show me your dice. How many dice you will i just roll? just rolled 5,000 dice. Fantastic. Start counting me your ones and fours. Let's go. So, I mean, so where where I can see where it would be slower is just trying to think of the wording. I can see where initially it could, but you have it right there. to Simplify it right there on the sheet of, okay, nine bing bing, bing, bing, bing. Okay. What have you got?
00:23:52
Speaker
Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. Well, eight d and I see it being the kind of thing, too, is the more you train your players to have their shit prepped, like the more you do it, it's like, OK, it's your turn. What are you doing? I'm going to do this. This is I'm going to do this, this, this. Like they already got there. They should be counting their dice pools before the turn comes. Right. Like that should be the second layer, though, where you can add a boost to each word.
00:24:13
Speaker
You start getting into choice paralysis. Okay. Okay. whereas Because we didn't say, you said mentally endure myself. Right. But you can add something to each of those words. Okay. You can say, I'm a PhD. Right.
00:24:27
Speaker
Yeah. Maybe that adds a diet pool. I'm going to throw that on my mentally. Yeah. this is I drank a lot of coffee today. Yeah. That boosts yourself. Yeah. Or the year endure. It makes your endurance go longer. And this is a great well-stocked library and we can, we can throw that on there. yeah But, and the amount of boosts that are going to be going around and you can argue for and stuff is going to be a lot. So there is that. It feels a little like what i remember from fate where you can add um conditions to things.
00:24:52
Speaker
And that increases or decreases your successes. Again, I've only played fate once. i can't remember all the rules, but I remember it had to do with like you add, you write down a thing on a piece of paper and then that becomes part of the world because you
Genre Flexibility in 'Bleed Through'
00:25:04
Speaker
created it. So I can see there being like, yeah, those add ons, like, is it, you know, I'm in the library, but it's raining outside. So I'd rather be in the library. So it's easier to endure.
00:25:13
Speaker
Well, and you also got that guy who's like, I use my sword on the library. Yeah. My sword gives me plus three. ah So well that that's a good question. Is it a sword game? Is it ah is it a laser gun game? is it ah Is it a run from the tentacles game?
00:25:28
Speaker
System agnostic? i I like this sort of Riff's idea of of sort of... You can go anywhere. I would like to have a mashup of characters from different genres in the same party.
00:25:39
Speaker
there you go There you go. Where the the media rules of their genre only apply to them. Oh, okay. So a Silverado cowboy's gun doesn't kill people.
00:25:51
Speaker
but 310 to Yuma's cowboy gun does kill people. He literally hands the same pistol to the other guy. One shoots a hand, the other one shoots a chest. Right, yeah. A Game of Thrones sword does a completely different thing than a Disney Robin Hood sword it does. G.I. Joe laser gun.
00:26:09
Speaker
Oh my God, that's G.I. Joe. That's yes. Okay, wow, wow. Versus Fallout. Ooh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Oh, my God. Okay. Okay. Hold on. um My my brains still my so brain's still swirling with that. I think all of our brains are, and I think we're going to have to have you come back on and tell us more as you go ah go along with this. I haven't actually done this yet. No, I know. I know. Get it going. Get it going. exactly yeah I think you have all you have a lot of good stuff here. You really do. I think it appeals, and it could easily appeal to a lot of different players, a lot of different GMs. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. you know, what what is it now? ah Collaboration is the gold word, the buzzword for the last several years. And it sounds like your system is hitting on all cylinders in regards to that. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think and if anyone, if anyone's listening, let us know what you think. Tell us if you can't wait to try out James's new game and and what, you know, if you've got ideas that we can throw at him.
00:27:09
Speaker
But yeah, that's awesome, man. Like, I'm very excited to have a name. I have a name.
Focus on Interdimensional Storytelling
00:27:13
Speaker
That's what I was going to ask if we were that far down the road. yeah but ah I'm calling it bleed through. oh wow. Nice. Okay. Yeah.
00:27:21
Speaker
No, I love that idea. I love that idea. And so your, so your idea would be that but what Robin hood, James Bond, ah Billy, the kid and ah Conan,
00:27:34
Speaker
wake up or they're in a tavern and the wizard comes like what's the what i would like to see part parties use licensed material that they care about like first for selling a game that's that's not going to work no but the way i would actually like it played is if you're a nerd and you have some book on your shelf that no one else has read right grab a minor character from that thing that you love that you know all the lore about And then bring them into this game. And then over the course of 120 games, you're going to slowly explain this lore to all your friends. Instead of being that obnoxious nerd at the table, just being like, and then they do this in my story that I love. It comes out slowly.
00:28:12
Speaker
And, you know, five or six people do that together. And so the disparate set of people find themselves in a kind of, I have no my mouth and I'm a scream situation. you know so Five people wake up in the desert.
00:28:24
Speaker
They don't know why they're there. They're in trouble. All of their lives back in their dimensions are probably in a bit of trouble because they come from big stories. They all have to figure it out. It's going to take a long time. Yeah.
00:28:34
Speaker
Oh, I love it. Oh, I love it. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. This is, yeah, I want to see you get this out. I want to see this. This is interesting. Well, I can't wait to playtest it. Let's have him back when you know a couple of times before then. but let's ah Hell yeah. you could do We could try it. Maybe next time he comes on, we can just try out a scene using the using the system to see how it plays out if you want. Like whenever you're ready for that. Yeah, when you get it, man, please, yes, let us know. We'll we'll get myself, James, and we'll get a couple others, and you just walk us through. yeah Just like, hey, this is this is a simple, this is an example.
00:29:08
Speaker
I love that. I'm trying to work out mechanics for for sharing your backstory yeah and making combat a little faster and and more tense, and and we'll we'll work on stuff. That's awesome. Oh, I love it. That's great. Okay. Well, thanks for thanks for joining us. And for those of you listening, if there's a way for you to like, share, or subscribe, do that. I don't know how that's going work yet, but here we go.
00:29:28
Speaker
Hell yeah. See you guys. Yeah, see you. Wow.
00:29:34
Speaker
Thank you for listening. If you like or dislike what you heard, let us know. If you want to suggest an idea for an episode, ask the host a question, or just tell Chuck and James what you really think of them, join our communities at patreon.com forward slash good GM's podcast, or find us on the usual social media platforms.
00:30:03
Speaker
For now, I'm E.E.
00:30:20
Speaker
We are so grateful to all of our Patreon supporters at the good level. Carl Kiesler, Preston DuBose, Francis, E.E.
00:30:32
Speaker
Morris, and You are all good, GMs.