 Hey folks, I'm joined today by Matt and he is going to talk us through a little bit about Dungeon Saga Origins in terms of the game mechanics and things like that. And first of all, Matt, why have we done it? Well, that's a good question. So this is actually, let's call this a lockdown game and lockdown project. So obviously we all spend a lot of time at home with our families and things like that. And we were working through and through the whole of that. And, you know, we played a lot of board games, certainly my family did, and I think everyone did as well, and we're buying a lot as well. And, you know, I had some chats with Ronnie about accessibility of games and things like that. And I'd looked at, and I'd obviously, you know, you're in lockdown, you're thinking about all sorts of things. I was thinking about, you know, how did I start in the hobby and where did I get started and the kind of games I was playing at the time. And we felt that, you know, it would be great if we could come up with something that hit that nostalgia vine, you know, the cracking open a box of stuff and you show, wow, I've never seen this sort of stuff before. And something that you can, that is then accessible for multiple people for, you know, for all age groups, all types of gamers, new gamers, veteran gamers, people playing all games or miniatures games for the first time, that kind of thing. And could we combine all of that in one product? So, you know, we had to think about it, had to think what it could be, is there something that we could, one of our existing games that we could take and use as a basis for that, go back and re-explore. And we picked Dungeon Target because it had been so popular and so well received. But it gave it, it was that nostalgic vibe that you wanted to go back to. So we picked that as the game and said, okay, what can we do to this to make it a new baseline for the game, a new entry point, not just for the range, but for that wider range of gamers. And yeah, that's where it started. Fantastic. And do you want to just explain a little bit for those people that have played Dungeon Saga, the changes in terms of mechanics and that sort of thing, and then also for people completely new to the game or to dungeon crawlers in general, what the game sort of entails in terms of mechanics. Yeah, absolutely. And it's probably worth saying why we've called it Origins as well. So Origins is a kind of double, maybe the triple meaning really. So it's Origins in terms of the, if you've played Dungeon Saga, you know the characters that are in this, the four main heroes. This is their origin story. So this is before they go and tackle the Necromansum autobrists. This is them, it's almost like a training mission for them. So they're getting together for the first time, they're going to learn how to fight the undead. So those that quests in that first quest book are then getting together for the first time. So it's origin in that kind of sense, it says their origin story if you like. But also because as we said, we want this to be a great experience for just not just veteran plays, but for new gamers coming in. This is the first time they've played it, whether that's kids or people who just used to ball games or whatever. So it's their origin story too. This is where I started in this hobby. This is where I started, how we remember starting all those years ago, that kind of origin story too. And it's kind of a reset and a building block for us to go onwards and upwards in terms of how we develop Dungeons and Saga as a range going forward. So it's origins in multiple ways. Try to think through origins. Yeah, exactly. It's really interesting. So we looked at some of the other games that we've got, some learnings we've taken from other games. We looked at League of Infamy and how that handled the tiles. So those double-sided tiles that still give you a huge amount of variety and how you can construct a Dungeon by blocking things off and only access to certain bots. And they don't have to be butted up to each other, those bigger tiles. They can be offset and all over the place. So there's a huge variety there. And so there's things like that which do multiple things there. They're easier to set up. You're removing that complexity and you should get on the game faster. So your kids aren't waiting around all over for you to set up. You play straight away. And your clean up and put away is easier. And the smaller tiles we have before, while they're great for lots of tactical play, it can be a bit fiddly. They're easy to lose. You can get knocked, et cetera. So taking away some of those things that make the game then more accessible was a big thing. And in terms of mechanics as well, we looked at what do people want to do that they can't or what's maybe some of the barriers to some people engaging with the game. So we looked at how we could make some of those things more accessible. So things like your movement options and action options. You're not fixed into moving and acting. You can do it either way around. Things like that. So doors, doors you can just open. And now there may be some quests that do still require a key for you to go and find stuff like that. But by default, you can just move up to door and open it and reveal the next section. There's no range rulers anymore. So as long as you can see something, you can hit it. And some spells also still say you need to be in your front arc or it needs to be in line of sight, that kind of thing. So that's still all there. And the spell usage we've adjusted as well. So there's no energy crystal or anything. So that bookkeeping has gone away as well. So there's little bits and pieces like that that we've taken away and adjusted, but also put some stuff in to compensate. And it's all taken away through the heavy admin that dragged it down. And we looked at some of the things that people wanted out of Dungeons Hargo like more ways of searching and exploring. That's now in there. So there's an exploration deck that will go over. And obviously you're shuffling it. So it changes every time. And obviously expansions can add different cards in and things like that. So you will be able to search for treasure. You'll be able to search for secret doors. You'll be turning over these exploration cards. And so you'll be getting maybe rewarding monsters. You might find a treasure chest. You might be a trap. Yeah, you can have good dance band surprises. Yeah. So as well as opening doors and revealing your map, you can also search for other stuff that you're not necessarily finding as well. There's things in there as well. There's also merging threats. So actually you might turn over some quests have got spawn points for monsters and enemies to come in anyway. You might get emerging ones where actually there wasn't one on the map, but then one suddenly appears. Those kind of things as well are great for if you've got loads of extra models, those can be very broad to play with the expansions. It allows you to add those models back in as well. So you might be playing the undead thing, but actually some of your goblin models might appear later on. That sort of thing, which I think is quite cool. And I think one of the big things we looked at, once we'd worked out what it was we wanted to do and how to do it, then the next thing was, well, how do we make this not just with an overlord player, not just with versus the players, because lots of people do like to play this cooperatively. We were talking about family games and things like that. And a lot of people like to play solo as well. So those automated overlord rules, as we're calling it, are baked in from the start. So that will be in the rulebook. And the way that works is you've got some behavior cards for the minions. And then the different players, obviously, over your solo, you've taken all of them. You've got a head henchman role, who does all the administrative bit for the overlord. And then you've got one retro-tates on a round basis, which is the villain of the piece. So they get to make some of the decisions that, if a decision needs to be made, they get to do that. So out of the book, that's how it works. Now, obviously, that's if you're the head henchman in your playing in a group, you still need to control the game a bit and not reveal what the map is, because you can see that. And with solo, obviously, you can see it too. So one of the stretch goals that we're going to go for in the campaign is to build into our Mantik companion, which is our digital offering on online list builder and everything else, the ability to reveal that map as you play, so you can have that companion as you're playing. And it'll only show this bit of the map. You say, right, I've gone through that door and it goes right now, show this bit of the map and the monsters and stuff. So that will drive you through it. So you can close that quest, put it to one side, and you don't know what's coming. Particularly good for solo players. You're not having the book there and almost sort of pretty determined what you're going to do. I know where to go, that sort of thing. It gives you that suspense back when you're playing. Should I go from here yet or not, etc. Couple of other things we did. I know people have mentioned why have we switched to round bases. Well, I think that's a lot of modern games come with round bases now. There's a number of reasons for that. Aesthetically, a lot of people prefer them. I know some people do like their square bases, especially for fantasy games. But we've shown that it worked in star saga and it doesn't affect facings or anything like that. And actually, from a functional and practical point of view, they are easier to cast because you can obviously as a round base can be cast from any angle. So it doesn't matter if the model is being cast on it, not all of them are. It doesn't matter how you orient. You can orient the model as you want in the mold and it will still close on it. You can't do that with a square base. They have to be separate pieces. And then you're increasing and out of tooling. You're doing the complexity and assembling it and everything else. And they might snap off, etc. So there's a number of reasons we did it. It's one of the benefits of it being a one piece model then, isn't it? It's straight out of the box and there's no worrying about it. Some of them might still be two pieces, but it's probably the arm that's come off or something like that. Everything else can be shot in one piece. And of course, the model scale. People have been asking that question too. So we didn't go out purposefully and match the scale of dungeon saga origins. We went with our existing model scale. So we've based it off of Kings of War. So we've gone back to the teaposes. For example, the goblins, we went back to the teaposes, which are the kind of the unposed kind of static ones for the goblin plastics for Kings of War. And then those are the basis for the goblins that were sculpted for London Tower of Origin. So everything's based off the Kings of War, Kings of War scales. So it's slightly bigger than the original dungeon saga. In some cases, some might look similar, but they're certainly going to be bulkier and chunkier because that works better in PVC and in the plastic. You're not going to get the bend or anything like that. So they're going to be more solid pieces, and they'll be cast in a high grade of the PVC as well. So it'll be tougher anyway. Yeah. The Hellboy War games are a great example of absolutely. You can see that kind of high quality. Yeah, that and the walking dead, you know, those models, there's no bend in them. Yeah. So in terms of the Overlord, what's new for him? Or her. Or her. Yeah, or anyone. Yeah. Anyone we like. So yeah, see if you're not playing solo or cooperatively, there is a role of the Overlord very similar to the existing dungeon saga. So their job is to drive the game and drive the game forwards. But what you don't want them is to feel that they're distanced from the game and that obviously that the hero is having all the fun. So one thing we've done is we've taken away the the Overlord command deck. Now that was in that was a kind of a also acted as a timer mechanic in dungeon saga. And that was kind of the default for the game. So everything was driven by time all the time. Now that is exciting, but it also limits your design space a bit because, you know, that is driving the game forwards and it limits your ability. So we took that out. Now that's not to say that you can't have some games later on that you could put a timer mechanic back in, but it's not the default anymore. So that you just just remove that bit and then everyone's a bit more relaxed in what what they can do, etc. Now, in terms of the way that the Overlord can then interact now, they're not restricted anymore on what they can do, how many things they can move. So they get a turn just like the players do where they can move all of their monsters if they want to and fight with them all. And to replace the cards we had before for interrupts, they now get four interrupt tokens. And they can use that they can spend those whenever they want. Once they're out of them, they're out of them though, but they can get them back, which we'll talk to talk to you about in a second. And there are some new rules for traps. Now, the rules that went out of the traps in the samples that we sent out, we have we have changed and modified to work with the solo and the cooperative play. Because originally the idea was that we said, okay, well, you can have a number of possible trap locations. And the Overlord player decides on the map, which ones are going to use this time. So actually, every time you play it was going to be different. But that doesn't work if you don't have an Overlord, because the heroes will just get, well, it's those ones and we'll never get one avoid them here. So we've changed the way that that works slightly. So it's still so you actually put the traps out everywhere, and they're all facing in a particular direction. And so there's a load of trigger squares. So as soon as you go over it, you flip it to see whether it is a trap or not. So you'll never know each time you play, you're shuffling those counters, so you don't know whether they're traps or not. And if it is a trap, you then roll to see what type of trap it is. So there might be dark traps, poison gas traps, that kind of thing. So you see, and then that works as well, whether you're playing as the Overlord or solo or co-op, it all works the same way. It allows us to do more traps as well. Now there are also traps in the Exploration Deck, because you might trigger a booby trap in there as well. So there are random ones anyway that can come up at any time. So that adds to that replayability. And as I said, we've got the automated Overlord as well with these behaviour cards as well. So just try and replicate what the obviously a human would be doing to drive the game with some artificial intelligence rules in there for the guys themselves. Fantastic. And in terms of the heroes, what's new for those? So as I said before, they've got a lot more freedom in the way that they interact with the game and the environment in terms of moving around, acting and moving whichever order they want to, and exploring as well. All that's been added back in to keep it to keep the interest level and to keep the to keep more options. There's, I know, some people have noticed obviously on the cards that have gone out that there's no injury state anymore. So in Dungeon Saga, as we had launched it before, the heroes had a different, once they'd lost a certain number of wounds, they'd be injured and then that would be a penalty. Now what we've done this time is you haven't got that, but when you're crippled, you get a chance to revive. So everyone's got a revive token, but if you spend it to come back, you flip it over and it's actually then an interrupt, which you have to give back to the overlord. So, you know, there's a penalty for reviving and that the you're giving the overlord then an advantage back again. So, so we've taken away in one regards, there's less to worry about there for, you know, or, you know, so your wizard obviously tended especially early on before they've kind of the tooled up and stuff tended to get injured very fast. They haven't got that worry anymore, but there is the worry that they're going to have to spend that token and give the overlord back an advantage. So we've kind of, we've moved the goalpost slightly in that, but to give more interest back to the to the overlord player as well. So there's a there is a penalty, there's a trade off for doing that. So we've gone quite a light touch. So this, this isn't Dungeons RR is isn't designed to be a super crunchy dungeon saga in terms of character progression and in between quests and all that stuff. You know, we want the idea is that it gives people enough and there's a light experience thing and you can buy stuff in between quests and all that stuff and you can keep your legend true gear. But it's not, it's not super, super crunchy, you know, well, this, this is a basis for where we can go in the future with that kind of stuff for future, you know, if we, if we, you know, we will at some point look at advanced versions of this game, but this is the building block, this is where we're going. So all those people asking, well, what do I do with Dungeons RR, you can continue to play with Dungeons RR, will there be an advanced dungeon saga? Absolutely. But this is the building block, this is where you want to go first. And then we'll advance on top of that. But as I said, there is a light, there's a light XP thing so you can gain experience for completing quests, not getting crippled, etc, etc. You can then spend that on what we're calling boons. So there's a, there's a like a pile of, I think it's 12 or so different advantages that you can buy. But if you buy one, I can't buy it until you've used it. But it's a one-off for the next, for the next adventure. So it might be that I'm buying some re-rolls or extra spell use or something like that. Or I can automatically ignore damage, that kind of thing. And when, once I've spent that, it's gone, but it goes back in the pool. So then someone else can buy it for the next two. So it's a way of, it was also a way of making sure that we're, we can easily balance the, the adventures. And that if you've got this expansion and you're playing it before this one, you know, you're, you're not having to address the whole, well, these guys have got tons of equipment now and their, their stats are through the roof. How do I play this mission now? So it keeps it, it takes you to a level and then you, you're balancing out and then you're having to manage your equipment and those boons and stuff that you want rather than doing tons of bookkeeping on all the other stuff, which we know people love and we will get to. But, but not for this game. This is the, the accessible version. Get people into the idea of that kind of character variation and then want more. Yeah. Excellent. And what's staying the same for the, for those that love the original dungeon saga, what sort of things can they expect that are going to be still very much baked in there? Yeah, absolutely. So we've got, obviously we've got the same, we started off with the same heroes and villains. So it felt, felt familiar. Obviously, you know, the same kind of feats we've used a lot of the same artworks. It starts to feel familiar in that regard as well. So the heroic feats, you can, you actually choose, you get double sided cars and you can choose one or the other to go in. So actually each time you play, you can choose a different theme, which changes it. People were looking and worried a bit about because of a round basis, have all the arcs gone? No, they're all still there. And as I said, because we, we saw that working and no problems in Star Saga, there's no problems for us to go to the round basis. So that's still there. So you still have your front arcs, your back arcs, which are obviously your adjacent squares. So all that tactical placement is all still there. Obstacle is still counting for cover. All, all of those, those things are still there as, as is the dice mechanic. Now we know there's another question people have asked us, why didn't we go for custom dice? Or because we wanted to keep it familiar to Dungeons Saga, we've, we've kept with the same dice mechanic that Dungeons Saga has. And the other reason is a game for accessibility, people coming from a board game environment or people coming, you know, or kids playing their first games, that sort of thing. What are they used to? A lot of them used to just playing them, you know, simple D6. That's an easy, that's an easy, that's one less thing to think about to start playing the game. So you can just get playing straight away. Fantastic. Great. Thank you very much, Matt. That's brilliant. The informative look at the design process and some of the mechanics and some of the reasonings behind why we've done what we've done. Hopefully you'll all be really keen to jump on board. We now have a launch date. That's going to be the 30th of March at 3pm, that's UK time. So make sure you follow along on the Kick Starts page, you'll drop a link in and be there on Thursday and we'll see you there. See you later, guys.