Latest / Story Games / Episode 20: Interview with Andi Licht, Creator of Between Clouds
Transcript
- Maggie Studio: Hi friends and welcome back to Story Games, a podcast all about your favorite narrative-driven games. My name is Momo and I will be your host. Today is going to be super, super fun. So last week you watched us play Between Clouds by creator Andy Licht. Well, this week I'm sitting down with Andy and asking her a bunch of questions about her game and her design process. We had such a fun conversation and I cannot wait for you to hear it. Without further ado, here's me and Andy. Hello friends and welcome back to Heart of the Deer in a Corn. My name is Momo and I am here with Andy Licht, and today we're gonna talk about her games. And I'm so excited. I got to play her game between clouds/slash cat's paw quarriers. That is so hard to say still. I know you did that on purpose. And I made it that way. I made it that way. ⁓ but I got to play them yesterday and we had such a fun time. You will be seeing that game session shortly. So I'm just excited to sit down and talk to you. Yeah, me too. I love Heart of the Dearnicorn so so much and ⁓ had a lot of fun playing and I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much. Yay, so let's get right into it. So would you like to introduce yourself and your games ⁓ for everyone? Yeah. Totally. ⁓ yeah, my name is Andy Lick. They use she, her, or they them pronouns. I'm a game designer, illustrator, gr graphic designer, marketer, at one point ⁓ professional TikToker, d a person of many hats. So I'm I'm doing a lot of stuff. And ⁓ yeah, and primarily I I make tabletop role-playing games. That's my that's my main fascination. Wonderful. Well thank you so much. So excited for you to be here. Yes. ⁓ and I should divulge too. I also, if my face looks familiar, it's because I, you know, used to work here at Heart of the Deernacorn. So you might see some old TikToks with me, this person in them. Absolutely. ⁓ right, so I've been around. I've used your TikToks as inspiration for my own TikToks many a time. Right. Okay. Wow. The legacy, the lineage. Okay. Yes. ⁓ it's very prestigious. Yeah. Awesome. ⁓ Funny little side story real quick. I actually found you first and then found Deer Decorn, but I found you through TikTok. ⁓ and then saw the Deer Decorn TikTok. So yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, TikTok is very regional, so it'll make you feel popular in your own town too. Absolutely. Because it's Sending videos to people in your zip code. Yes. Yes. It's really interesting. Very interesting, very fascinating how regional it is and how it really reaches people and I could I I digress. I could talk about social media for a long time. But we're here to talk about your games. We're here to talk about games. Okay, let's do it. So ⁓ ready to introduce Between Clouds for us. Sure, yes. I I did it last night on the stream. I'll do it again. Let me pull out my my canned introduction for the game. Between Clouds is a ⁓ colorful, queer biopunk. Tabletop role-playing game about a found family of mutants known as symbiotes and their beloved flying beast known as a Kirin. We take on the role of symbiotes and we travel across the ⁓ open skies of a land known as Emperor on the back of our Kirin, going from one location to the next, ⁓ solving problems, getting into trouble, and in the case of The zine that we played, this supplemental add-on for the game called Cat's Paw Couriers. ⁓ we act as ⁓ delivery people, ⁓ kind of a renegade delivery service bringing parcels from one location to the other. So wonderful. That's the game. Wonderful. We had so much fun playing last night. I really am in love with the world that you made. I just think it's like a very fun place to exist in. Yeah. ⁓ I feel very emotionally attached to the Kieran that we made as well. We made two twin pigs. they were volt and static. And I yes, I was doodling them last night, ⁓ because I just I adore them. So I just I love the world that you made. ⁓ but I wanted to pick your brain about a few things. Please. So what is biopunk specifically and why would you choose that to be such like an integral core concept of your game. Yeah. don't do a Google image search of biopunk right now because you'll be disappointed. first off I kind of have my own grievances with the punk and nomenclature of anything, steampunk, diesel diesel punk, you know, solar punk. We're slapping punk on everything, and we may have lost the meaning of it. And I have too, and that's okay. But we know what we're talking about. It's a shared language. Anyways, I I elected to dub this game Biopunk, purely because of the ecological edge that the game has and because the game deals with like the malleability of the body and of organisms. ⁓ Biopunk typically does this in kind of like a weird and sinister evil way, which is why I'm saying don't go on Google Images, you know. ⁓ it can even like run adjacent to body horror. This is like a hopeful biopunk setting where ⁓ we're tapping into the mutability of living things, the ability of living things to change. ⁓ we're tapping into that concept to dream about ⁓ hopeful future and ways that life might sustain itself. So the Kierin, which acts as your mascot essentially, for the Found family, possesses the ability to ⁓ change. the genetics that your characters possess and to give you mutations and powers. but this like changing of your body is seen as a positive thing and it's seen as a way of your character to like grow in their affinity with the cure in itself and also their affinity with nature and this change is kind of embraced. so that's why I chose the label Biopunk. But I would ⁓ if I could go back, if I had a magic wand, ⁓ I would maybe dub this like a Ecological science fiction. I think solar punk is also a word that could be used to describe it in ways. yeah, I hope that answers your question. It does, and that's beautiful. I loved what you said about like the change is a good thing. Yeah. Because so like you kind of touched on it before, it could easily fall into body horror, which yeah, funny enough is one of my favorite genres. For sure. And I love like the idea of like, ⁓ the body is doing something it shouldn't be doing and that's really scary. Yeah. But I love that you've kind of taken it and flipped it on its head a little bit and like the body is doing something new, but that's like exciting and like cool. It's not a bad thing. Right. And I think that's like a fun place to be in where it's like, ⁓ we're the my b my body's changing, but like how cool is that? Yeah, I think maybe the other word that would be useful is adaptability. Right. And I mean this is the ⁓ a a key term if we're thinking about like preserving the ecosystem, you know, preserving ecosystems is adaptability. And that kind of goes in line with like the the lore of this game as well. The idea being that we're in this post-apocalyptic world above the sky and ecosystems have been broken down into little chunks where they are no longer able to be connected. They're separated by vast distances of sky and clouds. And so ⁓ learning to adapt to these new niche ecosystems and adapting to new environments and then also borrowing traits from other existing environments is kind of a key idea in the game. So yeah, I think na ⁓ adaptation is a natural part of nature and yeah, that's that's what we're thinking about, at least in the lore of this game. I love it. I love it. And it's fun too because it's it's hopeful. It's not like it it's drawing parallels almost to ⁓ Adventure Time in my brain, where it's like there is post apocalyptic place, but there's like it's fun, exciting things happening too. It's not like a walking dead apocalypse. It's a colorful post apocalypse. It's a colorful post apocalypse. And there's like an an element of like hope and excitement in that. Mm-hmm. And I think that's important to engage with stories that are hopeful. Yeah. ⁓ Yeah, they act as a North Star for us. Exactly. Yeah. And I will say I'm thinking now, adaptability is nature's hope for the future. Beautiful. That's my thought. I'm gonna put that on tagline. Wonderful. I love that. That's very, very fun. Another big core concept of your game is this concept of found family. Yes. And you play as a literal family with you and your players and your Kirin and you're all sharing these traits, like you said before. And I just wanted to pick your brain about why you wanted to focus on found family as another core concept of your game. Yeah. ⁓ found family is a term that is used very often in queer ⁓ language, queer lives, ⁓ queer media, ⁓ almost to the point of it being a trope. Totally. And that's okay. And we're leaning into this trope here. Tropes are good. They kind of let us build out stories from a starting point. so the the found family element of this game is certainly like related to my own experience as a queer person. and you know I this might go without saying but the reason that a lot of ⁓ queer individuals wind up in situations where they are needing to choose their families is because they have been rejected by their birth families or by the ⁓ social structures that they grew up in. And ⁓ there's a parallel in ⁓ between that experience and between the experience of your symbiotes in the game where the act of living as a symbiote that is ⁓ choosing to like form this bond with a Kirin and live your life traveling alongside it, ⁓ the act of living as a symbiote is kind of shunned. It's it's seen as rather inappropriate. ⁓ Kirin are reckless, dangerous beasts that are meant to be poached and used for resources in this scarce resource guardian apocalypse. That's kind of the mindset of the lay b lay person in this world. And because of that, I was trying to draw these parallels between the experience of a queer person you know, being rejected by their birth family or these structures early in their life, and then the experience that a symbiote would have, being rejected by the island that they grew up on, or the tower that they grew up on, and not quite fitting in and needing to find a place in the world with other people where they can fit in and they feel like they can be themselves and express themselves. And I think I even write about this kind of at length in the book where I'm like, You're a symbiote should actually look really weird or really cool, you know. They should have they should have funky outfits and like fun makeup and the reason for that is because these people are no longer really bound by the ⁓ confines of society. They're free to live as nomads and they have each other. So that's that's why I chose the theme of Found Family. I love that. I think that's so important also because yeah, like you said, like so many queer people have that same unfortunate Backstory of being rejected by society or family or friends or what have you. And I know so many of me and my friends have that similar story as a queer person myself. And being a like like found family, the family that you can choose later on in life is so important to you. And I just love that you've kind of like lovingly made that a core part of your game is that like okay, we're family now. And we're relying on each other. And even like mechanics of the game is like there's a mechanic where you can get like a unity point when you rely on another family member. Yes. And I just think that is so special. And that's like a a skill that can be really hard for us to do in real life. Yeah. So being able to act that out in play makes it easier to kind of internalize that and be like, ⁓ this is a thing that I can do. And I think that's really important. That's really interesting that you bring that up, Momo, because I ⁓ have been thinking a lot about the intersection of ⁓ tabletop role-playing games and therapy, or like group therapy and drama therapy, and the specific applications, and that is a specific application where there as you mentioned, is a mechanic in this game that says if you want a unity point, which is like an important meta-currency in the game, you're using it to heal yourself and activate your powers and things like that. If you want one of these points, you can't do it on your own. You need to go to someone else and ⁓ ask for something, right? Yeah. You need to rely on others. Which ⁓ I myself am bad at in the real world. So maybe same best. Maybe I should play this game more. I don't know. That's that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I just I was I was thinking about that mechanic and how how cool it was and how just like it really adds to the whole found family aspect of it of you need to you need to rely on each other. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I thought that was beautiful. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. And I want to shout out Avery Alder for that mechanic. I borrowed that from Dream Askew, Dream Apart, where it's a similar, similar mechanic, but yeah, I thought it worked well with the ⁓ found family theming here. Beautiful. I love it. Yeah. It's so fun. We're borrowing stuff from other people too and creating this beautiful amalgamation of wonderful stuff. Yeah, g I mean games games are so built on everyone else's ideas. And that's, you know, this is kind of a tangent, but that's one of the things I love about Tabletop role playing game world is that people are so like generous and liberal with their ideas, you know, people actually want others to iterate on their concepts and because of that we can all uplift each other's work. So it's really cool. I love that. That's beautiful. ⁓ Maybe like one big found family even. ⁓ my god. Maybe maybe maybe even. No, that may be too far. That may be too far. ⁓ At least at least a beautiful community of creative people. Yes. Yes. Yes. Love it. I would love to talk about your inspirations for Between Clouds. Sure, yeah. What inspired me to make Between Clouds? And what media inspired it? Well, I think there's an obvious one. There's an obvious one. There's kind of an obvious one, which is ⁓ Avatar, The Last Airbender. A very different setting from this game, but there is a you know, core kind of like image in avatar of our group of young people, Aang and the others, riding atop of APA, the flying sky bison. And I'm not even like an Avatar super fan, but I think I must have watched that at some point and it just like bam got lodged in my head. That's so valid. And I I almost think I rejected that comparison for a while because the settings were so dissimilar and I was like, ⁓ I don't want people to get the wrong idea. But you know, Ross just kept pitching the game that way as it's like Avatar and you're flying around on APA. ⁓ pitched the game in that way to people and it was really effective and I said, Yeah, you know, that might be the quickest way to say it. It gets the point across. It gets the point across. but there's other pieces of media too. ⁓ never ending story with Falcor, the big flying dragon. ⁓ Kipo and the Age of Wonder Beasts, ⁓ which you may have seen, maybe not. Yes. You have seen that. I have seen. I haven't seen all of it, but I've seen enough of it to definitely understand picking up what you're putting down. Yeah, you know of it. It's kinda yeah, I feel like it's a more niche cartoon, perhaps. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but it's like actually very specifically aligned with what's happening in between clouds, and I didn't see it until I was halfway through making this game. ⁓ but it has a lot of big Colorful creatures and people are getting mutated and not necessarily in a bad way. Also, like post-apocalyptic. Also post-apocalyptic. Yeah. If you really want to get tapped into this, that might be like a sensual reading. Absolutely. and also Treasure Planet. Hell yeah. Yeah, I don't you know, Treasure Planet's just a good as media period. ⁓ but I think it works well for this because it captures the intersection of like science fiction. And swashbuckling in a way that I like. And it's also very playful with its ⁓ characters and allows for a level of like other creatures and anthropomorphic characters, you know. I think there's like a very attractive ⁓ cat captain lady who's introduced at the start. ⁓ yeah, right. I would have remembered. Definitely not a core memory for me. ⁓ So yeah, Treasure Planet ⁓ is absolutely a core memory and ⁓ I think also informs this game really well. Those would be some inspirations, yeah. Love it. Do you have any like outside of media inspirations? ⁓ I know we talked a bit about like ecological hope and found family and queer relationships, ⁓ anything else like that that kind of like found its way into the game? Mmm, this is interesting. Well, I will say I don't own a cat or a dog. Okay. I have allergies. I'm so sorry. One thing. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, it's a it's not an easy life, you know. I pet with my eyes. But ⁓ one thing that has really touched me in making the game and also having released it and played it now, is that there is this sort of like kinship between people and their pets, between their cats and dogs, that gets mapped on to their experience of playing the game. Okay. And I think it's like a lot of the same. tools that are being used to anthropomorphize people's pets, you know, and like give them personality and life and like give words to their experience. ⁓ people use a lot of that same skill when they're playing the game. which is really fun to see. You know it's like another way of people kind of expressing expressing and exercising their love for animals. And actually I really I really ran with that concept as I was working on the game. I included as a Kickstarter reward that I would ⁓ transform people's pets into into Kieran. So at the So at the back of the book and you can use these Kieran in your game if you want. That's that's part of the deal. So if you need like example Kieran on the fly There's six little example Kieran in the back of the box. Are there a few goats? Yeah, somebody, somebody submitted their goats. I'm gonna die. Yeah, their names are Sean and Gus. ⁓ my god. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. I can't, I can't. That's so precious. I think I was quite excited when somebody said, Can you draw my goats? So I was like, psh, yeah, why I'm of course I'm gonna draw your goats. So amazing. So, yeah, that's maybe not my inspiration, but ⁓ it's definitely been an inspiration for ⁓ the community of people. play in the game. I love that. That's so fun. And like I said before, I emotionally bonded to our pigs. So I totally get like put like putting that love into the game in role play and being able to express how much you love your animals in an in a game that's explicitly about loving an animal. I love that. Yeah. Yeah there's a certain level of caretaking that happens and then it almost makes me feel bad to like you know mark a condition against the Kirin where I'm like your Kirin got a boo boo and everybody goes no He screams. I'm like, I'm sorry, it's just it's just a mechanic, but you can make him better, you know? You can like feed him a fish or a little trisket, he'll be fine, I swear. ⁓ the the emotional damage though. Yeah, it makes me feel like a bad guy, you know. So yeah, user beware if you're thinking of running this game, just w watch out for that. Yeah. Watch out. Yes. That's amazing. Well that actually it leads me into another topic of conversation that I wanted to pick your brain about. There are so many beautiful illustrations in this game. Yes. Who made those? I made the illustrations. What? It's tri Yeah, I did all of them. ⁓ I can talk a little bit about ⁓ my background as an illustrator too. Please, would love that. ⁓ so yeah, I do all of my own illustrations for my games. I did them all for Between Clouds, and then I have another game that I made prior to this called Soulbound Dark Industrial Fantasy, and it has Over 500 illustrations in it. I spent like too long on it. But wow. but ⁓ I initially, when I was younger in my life, wanted to be a concept artist for video games and movies because that felt like a real job to me. I can relate completely. Yeah, I thought okay, I could like be at a company and get benefits. And so I actually briefly went to like a portfolio prep. Concept art program in Montreal, Canada, of all places. And learned a lot of good concept art skills and have since been able to apply those to my ⁓ tabletop games. So I think because of that, I have a slightly different background than maybe other illustrators might, ⁓ only because I am thinking more about like landscapes and composition and set design. It's ⁓ it's like a concept art brain kind of being mapped onto tabletop role-playing game, splash art and spot art. so that's that's a look into the reason why I illustrate the way I illustrate. But ⁓ it is it is interesting ⁓ making a game and illustrating it at the same time. I'd kind of love to do just one or the other for a little bit, you know? That would sound like a lot. I would I would tell anyone, it's kind of a lot, you know. And it ⁓ it doesn't allow as much wiggle room to like ⁓ just focus on mechanics or to improve as an artist. ⁓ but yeah, it's a real it's a real labor of love. Yeah. And it lets At the same time though, this is all yours, which is pretty cool. Which is really cool. Yeah. Yeah. And the other nice thing about illustrating your own games. And I would I would recommend anyone who is working on a game to, even if you don't learn illustration, to learn some graphic design. Because you're going to be able to express your ideas better through your game. ⁓ you will have more creative control over what you are putting out into the world and ⁓ you should want that. You know, that should be that should be important. but yeah well I mean one really cool thing about me illustrating everything is that it means there's a lot of consistency in the artwork which is which is fun. yeah, it's all it's all in the same style, which can get a little mind numbing too. I'm sure. Sometimes I want to explore and do a different style. But it's very cohesive and it all is it all belongs to the same world. Yes. Yeah. Which is pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. But in the future, maybe I'd like to work with another illustrator. So if you're an illustrator, think about that. You know, we should talk. ⁓ could be big. Could be big. Could be cool. Could be big. Right. Plus there's collaboration too that can happen, which is always like very exciting and helpful for something like a big creative project. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Benefits and cons to to both. I think my advice having made this game mostly entirely on my own would be to collaborate with your peers. Totally. Yeah, that's that's that's my tip. It's a good it's a good tip. That's my tip. Collaborate with your peers. Yeah, yeah. Make friends. Make game friends. Make game friends, as you should, as you should. 'Cause that's like one of the beautiful things, like we talked about it little bit before, just like the games community is so beautiful and rich and wonderful and everyone has so many beautiful ideas and everyone's so generous with their ideas. Generous, friendly, yeah. Excited. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The yes, if you can think of a game designer though and you have a a question for them, they'll probably probably be stoked to hear from you. Yeah. I've I've learned working here. I was kind of afraid to reach out to people at first just because I don't know, I come from a social media background where that's kind of less of a thing. But every time I've reached out to a game designer, they are one million percent so excited to talk, which is really exciting and it's Fun to talk to people who are so excited about their own work and are so proud of their own work. Yeah. And I just think that's really lovely and wonderful. Yeah. I mean, they put hundreds of thousands of hours into the thing. Yes. They might be a little interested. That you know what? That makes sense. That makes complete sense. Wonderful. Okay. ⁓ I've got another thing I want to pick your brain about. Please. Why did you want to make between clouds? Like what was your goal in making this game? Mmm, I actually have a horrible reason. ⁓ well not like an evil reason, but just kind of a ⁓ overthought reason, which is that I was frustrated with the concept of session zero in other tabletop games. Sure. I think I, like many people, came into story games ⁓ later on in my life and began with a more traditional gaming background and like Pathfinder and D D. Totally. And I was always a little irritated with the time spent at, let's say, a tavern at the start of a game where our characters don't know each other. We've just spent two hours making our characters, we already have eaten all the pizza that we ordered, and now it's time to play, and we're gonna spend another 45 minutes ⁓ making up some convoluted reason that the four of us are going to join are going to join together. Are going to join forces. And I thought to myself, wouldn't it be so nice if there was a game that just told you that you were all together already and that you had a reason to be together? Yeah. And maybe even you had a reason to like not break up or split the party at any point, or somebody says, I'm gonna go this way, I'm gonna go that way. What if there was just some central thing at the center of your group at your party that kind of like bound you all together, you know, and was pulling you around with it. ⁓ And that thing was the the Kieran in Between Clouds was your big fluffy flying mascot. And that felt that felt really nice for me. That felt like a good and easy solution. Okay, I love that. I will say, yeah. Now, having played many more games since making Between Clouds, ⁓ I recognized that there's actually a million ways to skip session zero and to have to introduce all of your characters. You can just say that. You can just say right at the start, you four have known each other for years. Yeah. And you're thick as thieves. Yeah. And start. Yeah. But this felt like a great in world reason to kind of bring people together. And I think the narrative coding of it being a found family really adds a lot of cohesion. Yeah. So there's no question about why we're here or what we're doing together. Yeah. From the start. Yeah. Like When we played, we kind of immediately jumped into, okay, we all know and love each other. Let's go do the thing that we're here to do. There's not this, ⁓ what's your name? What's my name? It's like, no, we immediately already just kind of jumped into role play. And it was really easy to kind of fall into these roles that we kind of like started developing for ourselves. Like my character was a jester. She juggled everything. The others were kind of ⁓ not upset, but kind of like They understood this about her and they loved her for it, but also like, come on, you broke all our plates. Like it was just these silly little things that were easy to kind of build relationships, even though we don't have a prior relationship yet. Yeah. It was easy to roleplay these imaginary relationships that we did have. If that makes sense. It does, yeah. Yeah. Well, and what I like too is that because of the because of the found felly found family element and the context of the game, there's a lot of room Actually for tension between the symbiotes between the players, as all families have TNI. But the tension is stored within a container where unlike other games, the tension might it is very likely not going to like break up the party or break up our characters, you know? We're all kind of bound to this creature, we're in it for the long haul. ⁓ but that allows for a lot of room for, you know, Banjo the Jester. To break plates and for other people to go banjo. Like a little slide whistle and and yeah. but ⁓ but then still stay together and work on a solution together. So Yeah. Like trying to find more plates. Like trying to find more plates, yes. No, you're so right. There is that like fun tension. It's like a fun tension. It's not like ⁓ you're gonna portray me and you know, I can't exactly it's like this fun sibling kind of back and forth banter that was really easy to fall into. Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ the part of the game too that I think helps with that a lot is when you have completed character creation, you've made your Kirin, you've finished making your saddle, so everything is in place. And then you do this ritual of asking one question to the left. That's quite popularized in story games now. couldn't say where it started in this moment. Don't at me. But ⁓ this ritual of asking questions kind of in character to the other characters really just gives a little seed right at the start to kind of build those bonds. That's where the plate breaking came from, is I think you got the question of like Banjo, what what happened in the kitchen? Why don't we let you in there anymore? Right. It's like, ⁓ well, I'll tell you why. And you kind of start out with that that question of what's the th what's the what's the thing that happened that maybe wasn't great, but it happened anyway. Yeah. And yeah, that was really cleverly done the way that you kind of like laid out those questions and those kind of those first role play opportunities. But you did a good job with that. Where's the tension between our people? ⁓ w w where is the ⁓ joy between our people. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, 'cause there's also like where do we like to cuddle, which is very sweet and cute. there's a good mix of like, yeah. Where do we eat our meals? Like, I would look up the questions, but I'd have to open the book. But yes, there's a lot of good ones. Totally. Yeah. I love it. ⁓ my gosh. is there anything we didn't cover? That you would like to shout out or point out or a mechanic that you like or anything like that? Mmm, that's a good question. Wow, about the game of between clouds. Yay. Yeah, ⁓ I think one other thing that I really like about Between Clouds and specifically about running between clouds is that the game is full of resources and processes. To help you run the game spontaneously. It does require a little bit of game master improvisation, ⁓ as being a facilitator or game master often always does. But I myself enjoy facilitating games. Okay. I don't like love facilitating games. Sometimes I also want to play, you know? Totally. And even even less than facilitating games, I really don't like prepping. I don't like doing the homework in advance. So there's a lot of parts of Between Clouds that are ⁓ automated or played off of tables. Like when you travel from one location to the next, all of the events are randomized. I don't know what's going to happen. Okay. ⁓ all of the locations or different location types like islands and towers. ⁓ all of those locations have ⁓ you know, dozens of options for ⁓ like little quest hooks that might appear there. Or names for the place, or the way that people in that area feel about symbiote and Kieran, the way that locations are there, and ⁓ or the like what landmarks are around there. And often when I'm playing, if I'm feeling especially lazy or generous, I will actually ⁓ invite players to collaborate on designing those places because it takes pressure off of me as the a storyteller. Yeah. And I think that's the reason that a lot of people are not facilitating games is because they're worried about how much pressure it is. Totally. But for example, if I take us to like let's say this island spread here, I'm looking at a page with an illustration of a big mountain poking up out of the clouds and there's a city built on it. Often I'll pass the book around when we get to this section. Yeah. And it says, ⁓ traits choose one or places choose or traits choose three, places choose three. And so I'll pass the book around, and as a group, we can decide that the city on this island is cozy, ⁓ tranquil, but also chaotic. Ooh. Or we can decide that there are boneyards there and ⁓ windmills and mansions. Alright. And so that's a little bit of collaborative world building that lets people feel like they have a stake in the story and also makes things easier for me. And I really wanna lean into that more in the future as I continue to design games. And I think everybody should, you know? Yeah, no, I think that's great. I think that's what makes like story games really fun and exciting is that collaborative aspect. Mm-hmm. And then yeah, it takes the pressure off of the person running or facilitating the game, because they don't have to think of everything and come up with a whole bunch of stuff and lore and everything. We can kind of decide that together at the table as a group. Mm-hmm. And I think that's I think that's great. And As someone who is learning how to GM myself, I'm excited about a game like this because it's much more approachable to run a game like this than to run like an entire D and D campaign where it's like, ⁓ my god, where do I start? This kind of gives you a lot of ⁓ my god. This gives you a lot of like jumping off points ⁓ that are kind of built into the game. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Sweet. Sweet. Awesome. Well, what is up next for you? Do you have anything that you're currently working on that you wanna shout out a little bit? I do. Yeah, I really do. Okay, so this is actually ⁓ my first time announcing this ever. I haven't announced this anywhere. Let's go. ⁓ my god, I'm so excited. Anywhere ever. Okay, alright. but I am working on a new game right now. There's a lot of art done for it already. I'm doing a weird thing where I've produced most of the art and ⁓ haven't released any Promotional materials for it yet, but the game's pretty close to done. ⁓ I'm working on a game called Weavers of the Death Loom. And it is a it is a card-based story game. Doesn't come in a book. It's a card-based story game where you play as ⁓ ancient weavers of fate looking down on a small town where a murder mystery has occurred, and the tapestry of fate itself is beginning to To unravel. I won't say much more on it, but it's kind of like a tarot card, string and scissors, witchcraft, love triangle, murder mystery, ⁓ conspiracy board, podge podge of a game. But you're speaking my language. It's been a lot of fun. ⁓ my god. So yes, so look out for that. That'll probably be on Kickstarter maybe this summer, maybe next summer, depends on how things look. Absolutely. Well, we will keep people updated absolutely. And I will have all of you social media links, so please everyone go follow Andy because she's amazing. But ⁓ anything else no we didn't cover. Did we cover everything? We got it all. I think we got it all. Well, thank you so much, Andy, for spending time with me today. You are such a gem to talk to. You asked I absolutely love Between Clouds. I love the work that you're doing. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for your next game because ⁓ my god, it sounds like it was made for me specifically. So thank you. Thank you for making a game for me. But ⁓ like I said, we will have all of Andy's information in the description box below. Go send her some love, go play between clouds. It's a great game. And we'll see you around, Andy. Thank you. Thank you very much. Bye everyone. Bye.