 I'm rim. I'm Scott and I'm Epidia and we are here today to talk about Epidia's amazing new tabletop role-playing game wolf spell Let's do this All right, welcome to the show epi. How you doing? I'm doing well. How are you? You know good considered. I guess that's what everyone would say these days, right? My stock line is there's an asterisk there Yeah, exactly good asterisk All right, so, you know, we're gonna talk primarily I guess about wolf spell today obviously because that's your new your new hotness We'll talk about other things later. All right, so so wolf spell this this big Final album cover Situation here, right? So I think that what the meme is what disappeared in Swords Without Master Are worlds without master volume 2? Yes, that is correct Yeah, so I noticed that on Twitter a lot It's always like wolf spell appeared in worlds without master number two sorts of that master appeared in You know worlds without master number three, right? What's the let's first address? What's the worlds without master, right? Oh, okay. Yeah, so I'm gonna say six years ago. I don't know how old I am anymore I don't know how old anything is anymore, but somewhere around six years ago. I did a digital magazine sword and sorcery magazine for 11 issues called worlds without master which included sword and sorcery fiction and each One had a game in it because I I knew that if I if I was selling something I was more likely to sell something with a game in it than I was to just be like hey enjoy my fiction and Each one has a little sword and sorcery comic in it because I have fondness for the old dragon magazines and the the comics that are in there and Yeah, it was Something that came about when patreon first showed up Because it looked like a way to fund something like that Not not rolling in cash. So I can't just make a magazine Which is you know a dying industry anyways. I have to like somehow budget so For a while there it wasn't like a monthly or bimonthly schedule It was like whenever I get done with an issue. I get done with an issue schedule But for a while there I had this sort of pressure to get games done and put in which was good It was like a creative drive some of the games in there are not mine, but some of them are mine and The first issue had a game called into the Avenger, which isn't one of mine But I have a piece of short fiction in each one and in the second Issue I was writing a story for it called one winter's dew and this story is a It's about a group of adventurers who have to turn themselves into wolves in order to solve a problem And I wrote that story in the halfway to the story. I was like am I I Really I really enjoyed that story I really really liked that story, but I was wondering am I wasting a really good role-playing game on a Piece of short fiction or would I waste a really good piece of short fiction on a role-playing game? Like what what's and then that's I was like, well, I don't have a game for this issue So why don't I write that role-playing game and that's the origin of wolf spell That's fascinating because usually I see the opposite of someone has a game and then they write a story using the game Yeah, it was I mean it was the premise itself was so captivating to me Just this this idea that they had in the story. It's this like Problem with oaths that they've taken they have to like solve a blood debt and and one of them has taken And of these two sisters one has taken an oath not to do it and the others taken a note to make sure it gets done and So they're like well if we if we keep doing it It'll just go back and forth and these two families will keep killing each other But if some wolves happen to kill them then maybe We can and it goes downhill from there like all good adventures do yeah exactly and so yeah, I really like this idea of these adventurers who have put themselves in the bodies but also somewhat in the minds of wolves and So the game kind of comes out of that duality you play adventurers Of the sword and sorcery type of the kind that we all are familiar with in our fantasy role-playing games who are At a point in their lives where they need in order to accomplish something in order to Solve some dire quest. They have to transform into wolves. So the game starts off with you choosing Which characters fit what kind of arc types and then you become wolves and You interact with the world as wolves with human minds and you try to solve you try to Complete your quest and see in the end if you manage to return to human form. I See human. I try to hedge my bets on human there because I like If people want to play elves that do it, I'm fine with that. Like I just I didn't even consider that yeah, yeah, I just didn't write elf rules into the game But what you need to because like you're playing the game once you're be a wolf, right? Yeah, exactly Yeah, so I like in in the text I use the word civil civilization to represent the quote unquote human mind Or it's the blood die that way if people are like We're I mean because it'd be a lot of fun to be like a bunch of dwarves who have to turn into mountain wolves to deal with something I think we know what we're doing next time So I didn't want to like step on those toes at all so Now you've done better you've shown toes I didn't even see yeah So mechanically like the game is fairly straightforward like we've played it with our group And we'll maybe talk about our first experiences with it But like what were the mechanics you really focused on to make your story work or to make the game tell the kind of story You wanted so you've got two dice in the game. You have your blood die and your wolf die They're both six-sided dice and you're gonna roll them and you're gonna look to see which one is higher and this determines For your character what side of your character is in charge, right and depending on Which die is higher it's going to limit your options to things that a human would do or be capable of doing Again, you're in wolf in the body of wolves So it's more about like how a human would look at a situation and less like having opposable thumbs or anything like that and if the wolf dies higher then you kind of embrace those instincts and You do the sort of thing that a wolf would do and in the game I did like I don't know I don't make it terribly evident But like the things that wolves do are keep themselves safe and away from harm Which is the thing that human adventurers don't right? So if you want to throw yourself at the danger Getting the human side is actually better than the wolf side But you're more likely to end up sacrificing yourself for or some member of the party doing that the wolf the human has like Like if you look at the world the human gets to ask all these analytical questions about what's going on Whereas the wolf is like, what do I smell? What do I taste? You know, it's it's more of the the more visceral side of things and So you have that duality and then to kind of Nail that home. There is one stat, which is your feral and that goes up as you play the game and The higher it gets you just add it to your wolf die So you just get better and better at being a wolf which generally speaking Makes your life easier Until the very end and you know, I'm not gonna worry about spoilers here or anything like that Yeah, at the very end you got to make a role to see if you're gonna be human again And that feral is going to it's gonna bite you right like the higher your feral score is The less likely you are to become a human Although like some of those results if you're if you're like, yeah, I wouldn't mind being a wolf then yeah, go for it The worst results are if you roll if the dice are similar In size right like if they tie that's bad And especially in that last one if they tie you end up Not not comfortable in either situation that actually happened to my first play of this That was exactly what happened. I went very feral, but the way things went my die rolls I had a very for the character unsatisfying ending not the player, but for the character, right? Yeah So if you notice like people playing your game like feedback you get or you playing it Do people tend to try to remain human do you find players tend to like dive into the wolf side? I'll be a wolf forever. Let's roll like how does that tend to play out? It's it's really It's a fun Metagame for me to play when I run it Because you sit down For me like my favorite moment running the game is we go through we make the the adventurers You know, which is just basically saying I'm the one that kills people and I'm the one that knows magic You know, whatever. I don't want to dismiss my mechanics, but it's very simple. It's very simple And then there's that moment in the game. I got to open my book One second the book for the listener is a record like album cover. It's we'll talk about that Where it says you are now wolves describe your coat your size your scent and your voice and like That's the moment when everyone when it becomes very real to everyone that they're there a wolf because they have they're like I know very few people think of how their player characters smell I think I did you know like that kind of and then once that happens I can start laying bets on who is going to like who wants a tragic story out of this Who's like I'm gonna be a wolf To the end of time And who's gonna be like, oh, oh wait a minute. I didn't want to be this like or not Not the player, but like they realize that their character is like I want out of this I want to I want to get back to my the streets of humanity Get back to cheating people at cards or whatever Yeah, I think when we played I ran the game and I actually had I made sure everyone read the rules in advance Yeah, they sort of knew but I would I when I ran it I still went through everything in order, but I had to remind everyone from the beginning like you're not wolves yet You're not wolves yet. Yeah. Yeah, you're wolves, right? You know, but I could I was able to see that same thing only earlier because people having read it in advance Already had wolf on the brain. Yeah. Yeah start, right But then some of them a few of our players did died like in terms of the order I'm curious how much like how you crafted the character creation bit because it basically Assumes you don't have a character idea in mind in advance in the way the questioning worked a lot of our players Ended up with characters that were probably very different from what they envisioned coming in But then when as soon as they became wolves, they had that same sort of moment of realization And some of the people who I expected would be very down with the wolf after their character got created They described their wolf and then they really tried to become human again because they liked that character that had come out of the Yeah, I mean I love questions. Yeah, that's a That goes way back for me. It's a great way to the questions too, right? Yeah, yeah The the only Character creation mechanic and dread is just to ask these leading questions because and this serves a similar function that it does in dread where it really kind of Fits you into that character you you it you invest in it, right? It's in you've spent the time thinking about it, and then you're like, oh, no I was totally ready to throw this character away and be a good dog. Oh, but whoops And that doesn't happen to everyone obviously, but like yeah, I definitely wanted that There was also an artifact to how this is done where I wanted it open enough that people could throw it on to Ongoing campaign in another system if they want it So there's like it's open enough to you could play that character creation And it's just converting the character to wolf spell right like that's Just answering those questions and you'd have to do a little bit more work than that, but not not a ton I wanted to make it obvious, but you know, I didn't want to And the other thing is that like I don't think it's a good idea for every group to take it on Ongoing campaign and play wolf spell because you you're gonna lose characters like that's a Both both to like becoming wolves, which you know, you know, if you got an ongoing burning wheel campaign You're like well now I get to make up a wolf. Give me that monster burner. That's you know, that might be a Yeah, I I would enjoy that But also the there's a frailty to the characters that I think people don't expect until the first wolf gets injured and then you know, you read these the Rules for for harm Gotta open my book again. Yeah, we definitely saw that RK our players as soon as there was real danger for the first time Everyone backed the heck off. Yeah, I just want to point I point out this to listeners whenever there's any kind of RPG thing going on Right, it's like look here's the person who made the game checking the book already for the second time Yeah, this is not out of the ordinary in any way whatsoever. No, I I tell people like I Write these in a book for a reason. I don't I don't want to have to remember this shit Yeah, the the suffering harm when when when you suffer harm in the game there are three options One of them increases your feral It either increases or decreases it's up to you and you get like a scar One of them is that you lose a limb or an eye and then another one's you're dead And you can you pick one of those three and you can't pick that one again next time And I think the first time someone goes through that list everyone else in the group is like. Oh, oh Okay Wolves are badass, but like they're also mortal creatures So I just want to go back to the leading questions mechanic for a second Now at least for me the thing I like about it a lot is it feels like you're doing a collaborative Creation because the person asking the question sort of gets to decide something about your character And then you decide the rest so it's like it's always like a team effort You know, it's easy to see in retrospect, but there's no way I could have thought of that out of nothing Right. Yeah. So like where did that like Idea of using the leading questions like originate from so there's like two Sort of origins there one of them is running dread at conventions Yeah, I'd like that game is Uh 15 No, it would okay. I've been running dread at conventions I first started running. Let me put it this way. I first started running dread at conventions 20 years ago, so that's The game itself is like the the book that everyone knows is about 15 years old But we're running it for about five years before we published the book We ran it all the time just constantly and one of the things That started to happen is that you just get Not to knock the game. I just you just get bored of it, right? Like you you as the I'm sure this happens with musicians. I'm sure that they have songs that they just don't If they never had to play them again, they'd be happy, you know, or yeah, and I don't have a problem with dread but like having to come up with all of those questions again, so What I did was I just started to Excuse me I started to create a little demo that I could do that ran faster than normal dread and Forced other people to come up with those questions for everyone else I was just like we're just gonna go around. I mean, it's essentially what's in here in in wolf spell where you just go around and ask questions And it did I noticed that it did these these two things like it it It told me what each player wanted from the situation, right? Like I could see You could see what what they what they were interested in and then the other part that kind of solidified that is Swords of that master was published in the issue right after wolf spell In worlds, but it had been written before wolf spell and in stories of that master one of the design Edics was that no Two people no one person could decide anything like all the rules are focused on One person bringing half the equation in and then the other person bringing the other half So it had a lot of that that that duality of like I'll ask you a leading question or I will make a demand of you and you answer that demand because I find that more Oh, I just it's more interesting to me when I play like to have Even if I'm not one of the two people coming up with it It just feels more engaging to me to have rather than have like one person monologue or or whatever not to to You know, however people want to play it's fine by them. I just I design games that I enjoy playing uh, I think I would go a little a little um Little off the rails if I didn't so so how leading do you see players tend to do this because our group with those leading questions People went right for the throat with things like how did you lose your eye? Why did you murder your companion? Like they just went the first round of questions Didn't quite get it but that as soon as this, you know, I as soon as someone gives a good example Right of like a leading question everyone else goes. Oh Yeah, and every question from then on is a is a killer. I think I think that's exactly is you just need one person to just uh Dip their toes into the the forbidden waters. I mean everyone's like, oh hold on Because because we you there's a there's definitely a culture Uh that that has been like sort of handed down to role playing in general through d&d that like Sometimes is it's not evident that you can step out of side outside of certain boundaries that would You know, I feel like in a lot of d&d games You wouldn't be allowed to ask these kind of questions and go with them I didn't you wouldn't necessarily break the game to do that but I think that that's uh people would be like Oh, and but so yeah once you get a little taste of it, you're like, oh, okay. Yes. Let's let's you know It's helpful that it's usually just a one shot. You're just playing You know that this this one story out, uh, so Yeah, why not go for it, right? Like you're not ruining somebody's character for Again, like a campaign or anything like that Although I have played Um return returning games of wolf spell which is Uh Particularly fun thing to do when you have characters that have become wolves And now you've got those players playing new people You know what I mean? Like the the players who in the previous game Were unable to return back to human form and so they're like, oh, I'm going to make a new character And then they meet the the wolf From the previous game in the wild and oh, that's just a wonderful moment But the people who return who who turned back into non wolves are gonna wolf a second time Yeah, some of them do How bad could it be? Yeah, I know how to do this um, and when I did it the even had people change the um They're they're who they were in the pack like they like uh go from being Uh the the Shifty one the one that that nobody knows where they the the one that's good at lying and being sneaky to the one with the sword arm Because they're like no I've changed. This is a this is a different character now. And this is uh This is who I am so in terms of In terms of the scenarios like because uh you're talking about these rails to make this easy to set up Like the game sort of has a list of these are the reasons you're a wolf What you're after so how did how did you decide on that set because it's a very short list? Like how what was where were your goals in those used to be shorter, right? They yeah, yeah, it's slightly longer and um I have ones that haven't made it to this. Uh, okay, so like we Part of part of what happened was all right, so we've got the the version of wolf spell that shows up in worlds without master and uh that one Is both has like a time constraint like I had to I think I finished that one in a month and a half uh, and uh And then also like I had um So my rules for for worlds without master. I had like a uh word count and I Uh didn't let anyone go over it because I had a budget and I was like I want to pay you but a a Reasonable rate for what you're doing here. Do not go over this word count because I cannot afford anything beyond you know these words Uh, so the rules were like nobody gets cheated out of money or out of what they're owed in worlds unless their name is epi So epi could go over the word count a little bit, but I had to be very reasonable about that um So there was this that pressure and then of course when when it came to this final form this this tri-fold album cover I had again, uh There's extra material I wanted to put in here isn't there isn't a whole lot of it But a lot of it's like to kind of clarify some things. I rewrote a few of the the moves to just Uh further explain what I wanted to do with them. Uh, and I've changed up some of these spells and I did I came up with um quite a few more spells and a and a even a few more pack members but uh Ultimately it just didn't fit the the the layout and I was you know Through the mouth. There was early early days when shell and I were shell con who's the artist who who uh did this amazing cover Uh, when we were talking about it. I was thinking about putting like the pack members or the wolf spells as track listings on it Yeah, but in the end I look at that art and I can't I cannot put anything over top of it, right? Like I was it was We even left like a little space where it might you work and I was just in the end I was like no, I can't I can't bring myself to doing that. Um But I you know, uh Yeah, so I wanted to come up with I locked myself into something of a setting by naming the the game master winter and that is Because it came out of that uh that story and that story took place during the winter I don't play all my games during the winter. Uh, so we have like some games and I I play a character named winter You know, I'm the game master called winter anyways. Um, but uh I that I mean there's this thing about when you when you make a game You don't want to Make the fullest game you want to leave bits there for people to uh Kind of build their own game off of so like I was I was perfectly happy to say Stuff like we'll call it winter, but if You can figure out that you can play it, you know in the summer and you know or whatever um Do you think players get that like Some I feel like some rpg players will read the rules and follow them exactly and they set 100% like sacrosanke guardrails and some players take the rules and they see the gaps and they try to drive as hard to word those gaps as possible I mean, yeah, I think everyone's got their own thing, but like you you You it's easy to design for both if you make a complete game that works But has this this room for play, uh, and then Don't try to like uh because in the beginning Uh in the beginning back I used to be like I wanted to tell everyone all of my ideas for how the different ways that this game would work Uh, and then in the end I just kind of got to this thing where I was like if I do that It's just a list of things That people will get bored of reading at some point, right? They won't go through it and look for I mean you can give them a list of things and give them some ideas of the directions that things can go, uh, but Fundamentally they're going to come up with their own, uh, so you just kind of want to Leave leave room for that to happen, right? Like you want to let them, uh Exercise their own design minds Yeah, so speaking of winter one thing I noticed when I when I was winter was I actually had a difficult time Uh, it could be because just the way the players played applying winter's wrath I was like I'm going to get winter's wrath on somebody. It's written all over this book Right and every time I had a chance to do it someone had a thing that said no get winter's wrath And I couldn't figure out how to get the winter's wrath. It happened zero times Oh interesting. So is there was there something I'm missing or I mean like it's uh Winter's wrath is one of those to some extent is there to soak up some of those Oh, I've got an extra thing to you know put in here like, um It's it's basically A way to punish people Not punish people That's a really bad way to put it It's it's a way to create a consequence for for actions. Uh, that isn't immediate, right? Uh, so the effect of winter's wrath generally speaking is that when you face the peril You're going to be in trouble. You're you're going to have um, and I didn't want like uh Hit points. I mean you have something akin to hit points in the harm, you know, but uh Uh, so I wanted something that said hey, you're you're feeling blue because you couldn't wrestle Uh, so now when something bad happens, you just not you you're in that You know as the pack is loping across the the the planes or whatever the tundra uh, you're At a spot where you're vulnerable because you don't feel like you're a part of the pack You're maybe out a little bit further than everyone else or something like that. So when the peril hits The the winter is going to focus on you um I think it's okay if nobody gets it Uh, but I also that's probably due to some pretty good rolling or maybe they were just like nobody Everyone was like, I don't want to be left out of this pack. I don't want to be Well, I think yeah, I think what it now that you talk about the the immediate versus the delayed consequence I do remember people will seem to be intentionally opting for the immediate consequence. Yeah It's like yeah, I'd go to winter's wrath But basically they suffered consequences immediately every time something bad happened Right, they didn't you know try to push them off to hold out longer We also had players very willing to sacrifice themselves for each other and we had a few like very i am a wolf Let's roll character. So we're really just like I want to stay a wolf forever. This is better than my human life And and the other thing about winter's wrath uh to Maybe make you feel a little better is that it's easy to get rid of you just groom with the pack Like, uh, which was intentional. I wanted people to just be like Oh, you know what? I'm not feeling good. Maybe we just hang out We'll pick the lights off of each other or whatever it is Deal with some pests and there's also that rule, right? I think where it's like immediate at least immediately after grooming or wrestling You can't be immediate peril to sort of force force the flow the narrative flow to not be like, you know You're hanging out suddenly a bear comes Because there's a certain Temptation to do that. I think like um, there's there's drama Of for instance, it's like in uh horror movies that happens all the time anytime people are relaxed You're like, okay. Here it comes, you know, like this is this is the thing and That shows up in action movies as well. And I just wanted to be like Hey Don't Punish the players for being wolves. Like that's why we're playing, you know, we're we're gonna wrestle for a bit We're gonna groom for a bit. We're just gonna enjoy it. And then, you know The way the game works for me Generally speaking is that like, you know, you have those things that just let the players do Wolfy things that uh are of I don't want to say of less consequence, but like because wrestling can actually have some pretty bad consequences You know, but uh are more playful and more, um Less central to your quest, right less central to you know Where the human mind is focused and then for me if I'm the winter it's all in the uh, Beholding the world move. I just like anytime somebody Like we don't know what to do. I'm like, does anyone want to behold the world because that series of questions and back and forth Usually inspires something, right? Like if I'm just sitting there going I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't and then somebody's like Uh, I'm chewing on this log. What can that tell me? I'm like, oh Oh, yeah, what can that tell you like this is interesting um That's interesting because that's exactly what scott ended up doing. You would basically Get us to behold the world and then you would sort of come up with what's going on from there And that pattern just emerged over and over and over during during play Right. Yeah, it's it's it goes back to the leading question, right? Or it's like beholding the world They're sort of asking winter leading questions, right to fill in You know about what happens next rather than what's your character like I particularly like the What am I missing style question? Like what should I have paid attention to that I did like anything like that Which you've done in this game just always seems to really ratchet the the slow tension up Yeah, when um When you roll a tie in the game, uh, so basically, uh for the listeners is you roll these two dice You look for which one's higher and you subtract the lower one from the higher. So you're The gradient of how well you do is based on the difference between the two dice If you roll a tie you pick whether you want to have like a one of wolf or a one of blood And those are some of my favorite decisions in the game. Some of them are just obvious and that's whatever that that's great You know the situation just makes it obvious, but like it's the like, oh, do I want a Bad wolf thing to happen or I want a bad human thing to happen. Like that's the Uh, I really enjoy when when that comes up because it's it's it's that exact thing where it's like What should I have noticed that I didn't or you know, how how are my wolf senses? Making me scared right now when or again checking my Yeah, uh asked the winter what sight sounds sense or tastes confuse or scare you right like yeah All right, so this amazing game wolf spell was an issue two out of you said 11 there's 11 total issues. Yeah. Yeah, so why Did this one be the one to go for a kickstarter get its own thing and not any of the 10 other Right that appeared. Well, okay. So the several of the other ones, um Are like I said are other people's games. I think, uh, Nathan D paletta did uh in um The tomb of the mummy king and I think I don't remember if he did a kickstarter for it, but it definitely has its own physical form It's out there. Um Uh, and it beat me to the punch because I'm I'm usually slowing these what happened here was um I wrote that story and I knew the artist. I wanted to illustrate the story So I contacted shell shell con and they uh did these gorgeous, uh pictures there in the story. There's like a giant owl that it takes attacks the wolves and it's like Above and beyond when it comes to like, uh, what what I was expecting. Um, and uh So like I I really really dug that and I that's when I think I mean, I can't tell you when it actually formed in my head But like I knew for a while there that I was like I'm going to publish a game on a record album and I you know, which one and Like what artist can I get like, uh, and so that's what made me I was like, I'm gonna do wolf spell and have shell do the art for it and then was up in, uh, Canada at a convention where uh shell happened to be at as well and we We were hanging out in a cafe afterwards talking about this And they just pulled out an hope pad and sketched out this Mountain wolf that's on the cover, right? So this cover is, uh It's a trifold so it's got these three panels And if you go from the left to the right, you've got a bunch of adventurers Uh out on a mountain and then you have a bunch of wolves out on the mountain and then the mountain itself turns out to be the back of a giant wolf and it was just I was like, oh, yeah Seeing a lot more than I saw the last time I looked at there are so many hidden wolves on this cover gave in and of itself There yeah, definitely seeing at least three hidden wolves. I didn't see previous Okay, it's not feeling like we gotta back up. I drove why an album cover? How long you've been stewing on that idea? Oh, I like I've been stewing on that one for for a while I the Originally I've wanted to do swords without master in that format like I was gonna have it like a book That was a 12 by 12 book until like I talked to actual printers and they were like, yeah Uh, here's the vast amounts of gold. You will need to accomplish that I was like, oh, okay. Yeah uh, so um and the I think in 2010 2010 or 11 somewhere in there. I I had done a preview of swords uh That I had public that like this it's so bad. It's so bad Uh, I did the cover art myself. It is not good Uh, there was interior art. That's great. Like I paid actual artists to do some great interior art. Um, and uh, I printed that as a square album I know it wasn't I don't believe it was album size. I was I think it was like a more reasonable like nine by nine or something that like Uh printers could do and it wasn't You know, I think I'd be surprised if it was 16 pages It was it was uh pretty small that I took to to gen con to kind of show off and and whatnot And said I'll have this done in a moment and and it took me Five years I guess is that moment to put it out in issue three. Um The other thing about worlds is that worlds without master created an excuse for me to publish games that I otherwise was like I need to make this a beautiful game and then you know The perfect being the enemy of done, you know that kind of thing. So yeah worlds. It was like, why don't you publish it here? Um So when it came around to it, I thought well, wolf spell is about the size and I went looking online to find like Places that that make these album covers And downloading their layouts and throwing it in and it did it fit Like I didn't have to like also write a booklet that I'd have to hand insert because like again All of that stuff ends up It's just more and more money and more and more, you know Either I have to hand insert them or I have to pay someone to do it or or Yeah, it just gets Uh out of control And then I thought this is going to be my first kickstarter. I wanted to make um Like I had the game already written I was going to do some rewrites and do some editing passes I did like thousands of editing passes Uh And I wanted to like get this gorgeous art for it, but then otherwise is a pretty straightforward kickstarter I didn't want to do anything complicated with a lot of stretch goals or you know, like I didn't want a lot of moving parts. So I was like, here's the thing That's it. Uh, this is what I need to fund it and let's go No stretch goal of here's a vinyl of me reading the rules to you Right. A lot of people wanted a record and I had to keep telling people I'm a game designer not a record producer. Like I'm not Like I'm going for the aesthetic and then like so now there's a there's a it's not a game. It's an adventure Uh, oh All right, I'm gonna look this up. I think it's like death jungle robot I haven't heard of it Death robot jungle. I had them in the wrong order. Okay, uh, and this is a Adventure thing Setting it so it's a it's an album cover. It comes with vinyl. It comes with its own music So that like it's this whole thing plus an album. So, uh, I just wanted to give a shout out to them I should get a hold of that game at some point. Um, maybe I should too. Yeah I guess I don't have a I don't have a turntable Yeah, that's that was that was it for me too. Like I don't and like The other thing is like, how do you Like I would have loved to have had like a bunch of bands that I enjoy on here, but also like, uh Yeah, that's just a whole lot of more work And like I said, I am not Not a record producer and nor nor should anyone be subject to my taste in music. That's the other thing I should Like actually that's that's a fun aside question. Uh, what kind of music do you like? Yeah, uh, well, I mean like I'm into metal. I'm into prog rock. Uh, I'm into uh, I do enjoy, uh, quite a bit Uh of music of you know different varieties and whatnot like but this cover is because like for me Uh metal and you know the the Old prog rock albums and things like that that hit my life the same time that role-playing games did right like The mind-expanding drugs of black Sabbath and you know Fantasy role-playing games all at once Uh, so they were intrinsically connected in my brain Uh, so that was I guess the the reason why I wanted to do like an album cover because I I You know have these old albums and just spend hours staring at the cover while listening to the music and I wanted to kind of Uh pay homage to that experience if if not recreate it So clearly, you know the fact that I have this game and I've played it Right indicates the Kickstarter is long over. Yes, right? So if somebody out there listening wants to get this game, right, how would they how would they do that today? as Kickstarter is longer an option the easiest, uh, way would be to go to worlds without master.com Uh worlds is plural I and master is singular. Don't When you make URLs Don't do what epi did And um, there's that's where you can get all the back issues in the magazine, but also I'm selling uh, both the pdf and the physical copy of this All I ask is that you're patient with me, uh Shipping these days is Is a growing nightmare Yeah, yeah And and if you buy if you buy the physical copy I will send you the pdfs as well. So bonus um Because yeah For the longest time I had sworn off physical games And just did pdfs and then I was like, let's get into this physical game thing The moment a pandemic hits and then well, I don't know Like a Everything just kind of started falling apart right then and there when it seemed like here we go We're about ready to publish. Yeah, I too was playing starting things when pandemic hit as well That's the idea we're talking about they're probably not gonna happen till next year. Yeah at the earliest It's I actually want to talk about something else unrelated Because I follow you on twitter for a long time, right? And it was a period where you're tweeting a lot of calculators Oh, yeah, right. So so what's up with the calculator? Yeah So this is this is a um All right Dread Exists because a long long time ago. I was like the problem with role-playing games is there's too much math and that That really is an oversimplification of how that happened But anyways, the point is is that I used to think that I hate it math like I went to college and Got my degree in english for the emphasis in creative writing because I was like, I'm not going to touch math I'm gonna have anything to do with math And then that led to making role-playing games which led to a small business which means you got to learn math And you got to do accounting And so I started taking some courses In accounting to kind of get an understanding of what's going on Financially speaking with the business and There is this calculator It's called the hp 12c it came out in the 80s It is still kind of considered the standard financial calculator and um, it's one of those things it's one of those moments in history when like uh, the technology hit the right group of people at the right time And when you look into what this calculator can do with the memory it has and everything else like all the technical details It's it's astounding. It's one of those like just well-crafted pieces of of uh technology And it's part of a A line of calculators. There's like a scientific one the hp 15c Which the the 12c is a financial calculator, which does like Do your mortgage on it or you know that kind of thing there the 15c is going to help you with your trigonometry and and do like integrals and things like that but uh, it doesn't work like Most people think of a calculator. Uh, it uses what's called rpn, which is this reverse polish notation. That's what it stands for Uh, and in a normal calculator situation, you'd be like two plus three equals and this one is two enter three plus You basically you have this stack and you put your numbers on the stack And then you decide the operations that you're going to do to the two lowest numbers on the stack And you just kind of go through it that way I cannot truly describe What happened in my brain when I tried that but it was like This is how I've always thought of math And this is this is different and the other thing about these calculators is that they're programmable as like keystroke Programmable like you can get it to remember the key order that you've typed things in So you could you could well you can program it to do like a bunch of interesting things But it had these great creative constraints, right? Like it's just you know, you weren't able to like uh, it's not programmable like a Well, like your computer is or you know, it's not like it's got a java running on or anything like that it's just these keystrokes and so that set of creative constraints Uh, and just enough keys on it that were a mystery to me like I didn't at the time Didn't know what a natural logarithm was or why it was important or why it was considered natural uh, and the fact that it like Came at math at a slightly different way but a way that made kind of sense to me I shouldn't say math. I should say calculations because that's what it does Uh, just triggered something and I just started learning math like I just we now uh, we have near where we live here. There's in fact actually it's the uh, the distributor for wolf spell is uh a used bookstore And they basically do most of their sales online especially nowadays um, but they they bring in a ton of well, literally a ton of books uh from Like charity shops and Goodwill's and things like that sort them through figure out what what they can sell online And then they put the rest out in these Giant bins out in front of the store and they have like a little Box that says the you know the cash register of truth 50 cents a book And it's just 24 hours a day and you just walk by these giant bins and just dig through it like little Book raccoons, right? You're just like tearing into them and it it is On a regular walk, uh that m and i do for our house So yeah You can see us late at night sometimes We're just out for a nice lovely evening stroll and we have our Cell phones out for light as we're digging through these things and I was I was like dropping A dollar or two here to bring home math textbooks, right? Like what is happening to me? Something is broken um, and it's just It just kind of opened the door and allowed me to see that like a lot of what's happening Happens in mathematics is is just a game it's just People playing with things we kind of get treated as like this super important thing because it does allow for these amazing You know all the technology we're using right now and uh, it's obviously on the financial side it's Let's say important it at least affects everyone's lives I have some qualms about that. But anyways the point is Yeah uh But anyway, it's it's it's this very powerful force But when you get down to it when you talk to actual mathematicians, they are They're gamers, right? They're just like a lot of the the high-end mathematics is like What if the rules are this what would happen and it just played into uh That that same Thing that drew me to designing role playing games in the first place and some of these old, uh math Not textbooks, but the well some of the textbooks as well actually the really old textbooks are really neat, but the um The manuals for these calculators from the 70s and the 80s are kind of neat like I actually I bought a compilation of like hundreds of them And uh, uh, just sometimes we'll pull one up on my phone and just read through it to see what a calculator can do Like this particular calculator from this particular time Uh, it's it, uh, you know, it's one of those I can go on forever. I know I apologize, but like no We asked the question because we're Fascinated by this. I was like I was like, let me throw out a little bait here. Oh, I caught the big fish There's there's a calculator the um It's another hp hp, uh, particularly in the uh 70s and 80s and 90s they they did a lot of the reverse polish notation stuff uh, and um, I have like actual feelings about Uh, what happened to make texas instrument the base uh calculator for everyone like actual angry feelings that I shouldn't have like I'm angry about a thing that that what anyways the point is, um, there's, uh There's one the um HP 41 I'm gonna, uh Bring this up to make sure I'm not telling lies about this. There's a bunch of different, uh Uh versions of this one, but it's the one with magnetic card reader and thermal printer. Yes I'm looking at the same Wikipedia page you are. Yeah, and I see the heading use on space shuttle So there's something interesting going on here. Yeah, like they would go up into space with these to double check their The astronauts would bring them into space so that they would have something to double check the computers on like these were But what's really interesting about these these came out? Um, they were long lived for a calculator they had some I think they advertised as the alpha numeric revolution because the the um The display it was still like that's uh segmented display, but it allowed for It had more segments so you can have a rudimentary English alphabet on it. Um And again, you could program it. They had magnetic card readers so you can save those programs They had a pen that was a barcode reader. So you could actually print out a barcode of the program photocopy that into little calculator zines Share them at conventions. Oh, snap. Someone else scan that in like If cell phones didn't happen it could have been this right like this could have been the thing that everyone had in their pocket That they were you know, I mean that's like the game boy had the e-reader thing, right? Yeah swipe the it's it's like There was there was a whole culture to it like a part of that You know 800 document thing that I have has a whole bunch of these zines that are are just Like sometimes they're just handwritten instructions to program your calculator to do things and all of those are windows into either other fields like like um Uh surveyors have all sorts of programs lots of uh programs for um If you're in if you're uh a pilot, you know, uh aerial navigation and whatnot lots of astronomy programs uh, but also just like yeah just like hobbies that math intensive hobbies that people had and then Games like people programmed games for these things. They weren't Fancy and then the the uh, they figured out that Uh, and I'm I'm really gonna mess up how this works because I never had a physical one. So I don't know Uh, you know, I've played with the apps of it or whatever but like there were ways to Directly address some of the memory in the calculator so you could go beyond what the calculator was actually capable of and you can do like Hacking with it so you could get it to like you could make it Overclock it and all these other things that like it just really was this whole uh universe that um I missed out on partly because I'm a little too young like But like even I've I've now since in my old age bought calculators that existed when I was in high school that if I had this in my mind uh, I would probably be like an engineer now or uh, or or um Something in that direction rather than the direction I ended up going. I don't have regrets about that I really enjoy what I'm doing. But like it's it is it is so weird to have come at it So much later in life and been like What the hell were they teaching me like? I wanted to learn trigonometry like as a 45 year old. I'm trying to figure out trigonometry. I took A whole year's worth of trigonometry in high school. I know I remember being there I don't remember any of this or caring about any of this So Yeah, I feel like I have a similar thing with like cameras right as I get in care about photography until Much later in life and I have cameras that are older than me, right? Yeah. Yeah, but right And then I'll I'll read manuals of cameras and like look at old cameras and say like how did they work? Whoa, it's different about this one. I can't afford it. I won't buy it But you know, it's interesting that way with like weird old capital markets protocols Just basically where my career is gone and everything like oh wow Yeah The bat is the bad guy That's great. All right. Uh, okay, so I think we've gone on quite a bit. Um, yeah Is there anything like what's coming next from from epiland? What are you looking on if if anything or if anything you're willing to share? Yeah, I've got um well, okay, so There, uh, I've got several things that are like at that the I'm trying to think of like a way to describe the stage. They're on deck They're not like the the thing that you know, I don't have anything. I'm about to knock out of the park There's a game that I was working on. Um Going back to jenga and uh called it lives at wakes, which is a uh a kaiju game Yeah, it's you you would take the jenga tower and you divide it up into three towers of uh different sizes and you would Collectively make characters that either like live in this city That's about to be attacked by this giant monster or are responsible for it in some way or a part of like, uh Like a professor or some scientist or something like that and then you play out a godzilla movie, right like you and uh Depending on which character is in the scene It tells you which towers you can pull from and you take some of them come from like The smallest tower is like the house and that's the family Like you have like this family unit or these closely related people and you can take some of the blocks and put them in the other towers so you can Kind of protect some of them because when that tower falls A character associated with that has to die And so you have this whole like, um You know giant monster. I want to like for a long time. I wanted to get uh a giant monster one I I really really love all of the godzilla films Uh for a number of different reasons, but like the the element I wanted to sort of take in are those Moments like it is very evident in like the very first godzilla of each era where It's horrifying to live in a city being attacked by godzilla, right like later on that that Kind of falls out although it shows up again in in some of them But like there's that that first one where it's like Yeah, anyways, it's it's horrifying for that to have happen I wanted to kind of play into that but not obviously I wanted to also allow for all of the Um Sort of can't be stuff that happens in it, but it's a jenga based game So I'm going to wait a while. I'm gonna wait till people meet face to face Yeah, we can play wolf spell over a discord pretty well, but that would be a lot harder So the games i'm focusing on now. I have uh two games that um are sort of in my mind they're they're uh descendants of swords without master one of them is a uh That you it's called the game feel public library curious research society And you play a bunch of people the characters by the rules of the game have to be at least 45 years old Uh, they meet at a library once a month To investigate the weird goings-on in their town So you have like a town that you have and they're like old scooby-doo people and again in you Roll these dice, uh, one of the die will tell you if your hypothesis is contradicted by what happens in the narration Uh, another one will tell you if somebody suffers the peril of what's happening Uh, and it's inspired a lot by 90s horror television like uh friday 13th the series or american gothic and x-files and American gothic that's a name i haven't heard in a long time I was weirdly obsessed with that show I mean, uh, what's his name? Uh, gary coal as the sheriff who is probably the devil Yeah, he's so good so good Um, yeah And then the other one that i'm doing is my robin hood game. Um, which i've been working on for quite a while that um Finally made a whole lot of headway on it that Again, it'll it'll be A bit like swords of that master except instead of rolling tone dice you have three coins A bold a sly and a stout coin and you throw those and somebody in your narration has to have that attribute of like whichever ones came up heads So you have to be like this is a bold character. This is a sly one and Open to interpretation so you could be like he's not bold. He's full hearty or She's not stout. She's just very stubborn. You know that kind of thing so Very good. All right, uh, is there anything else? That you would like to tell us or our listeners? Uh that I didn't think of no We've covered the gamut. We've done the calculators. Yeah, this was a great time. Thanks so much for coming on the show Yeah, a lot of fun because we had a lot of fun with wolf spell It was cool to sort of hear your thoughts on where it came from and sort of why it was crafted the way it was And I think i'm going to read all these wikipedia articles on calculators tonight. Oh, yeah That's day. I I've got five tabs open. I had to stop myself from just reading them Every time somebody's like, hey, did you know that people are really into sundials? I'm like, I don't need to know Oh, no Am I gonna be into sundials? All right, well, uh, I hope you have a wonderful or as wonderful as possible Yeah weekend and I hope to see you at the convention whenever those exist again. Yes Yeah, it sounds lovely. Thank you. All right. Thanks so much This has been geek nights with rim and scott special thanks to dj pretzel for the opening music cat lee for web design and brand Okay for the logo